Читать книгу The Agincourt Bride онлайн | страница 50

After years of scheming and struggling to keep the bakery going, a sudden apoplexy carried off my father and even before we had buried him, the Guild of Master Bakers callously informed me that our license was revoked. It was pointless to protest. Women were not admitted into the guild and only guild members could bake bread. Although, as my father’s sole heir, I owned the ovens, I could not use them, nor could I safely live alone with my children in lawless Paris. So, lacking any choice, I let the house and bakery to one of our former apprentices and brought Alys and Luc to live with their father at the Hôtel de St Pol.

I was far from happy to be back, but at least Burgundy was no longer in charge. By then the dauphin – little Prince Louis who had dropped the hairy caterpillar down my bodice – had turned sixteen and taken his seat on the Royal Council, aided and abetted by his much older cousin, the Duke of Anjou. Between them they managed to prevent Burgundy and his cohorts from making any successful moves on Paris, but it wasn’t all good because the queen had clung onto her position and she and the dauphin had to share the regency. It was a daily feature of life at St Pol to see red-faced emissaries scuttling between the Queen’s House and the dauphin’s apartments, making futile attempts at building bridges between a mother and son who were constantly at loggerheads.

Not that I was one to talk. I have to admit that it wasn’t all peace and harmony between me and Jean-Michel. After the death of my mother, I had grown used to being mistress of my own home and helping to run a business. Now I was once more on servant’s wages and living in one damp, dark chamber with no grate and no garderobe. We peed in pots and had to use the reeking latrine ditch behind the stables. I grumbled constantly about my reduced circumstances, so no wonder Jean-Michel was glad to have news to cheer me up.

‘Not news of what,’ he countered. ‘Of who. Of the Princess Catherine.’

I sat bolt upright, wide awake. ‘Catherine! What about her? Tell me!’