Читать книгу The Agincourt Bride онлайн | страница 51
Until he said her name I had not realised how starved I had been of her, my longing raw and secret, like a concealed ulcer.
‘She is coming back to the Hôtel de St Pol.’
‘When?’ I nearly screeched, rearing round and shaking him by the shoulder. ‘When, Jean-Michel?’
‘Shh!’ I could not see him in the dark, but I could sense the admonitory finger on his lips. ‘Sweet Jesus! Simmer down, woman, and I will tell you. Quite soon, I think. One of the grand master’s clerks was down at the stables today, making arrangements for her travel from Poissy Abbey.’
My mind was doing somersaults, but I tried to steady myself so that I could ponder this development. ‘I wonder why she is coming back now. There must be a reason. My God, Jean-Michel, will you be involved?’ There were occasions when he was called on to ride in the teams which carried the royal horse-litters.
‘No, no. She is the king’s daughter. There is to be a full escort – twenty knights and two hundred men-at-arms – too grand a job for me.’ Jean-Michel reached out to pull me down beside him. ‘I must find more things to get you excited,’ he murmured, nuzzling my ear, and being by now full of pent-up feelings, I reciprocated. But after we had stoked the spark of passion to a blaze and zestfully quenched it, I lay wide-eyed, my mind spinning like a windmill in a gale.
A few weeks previously, an embassy from England had arrived at the French court. A cardinal and two bishops, no less, had ridden in with great pomp and show, parading through the city with banners flying, trailing a huge procession of knights and retainers eager to enjoy the sights and brothels of Paris. It was a surprise to see them come in peace, because up to then we had heard tell that the English king was mobilising to re-claim territories on this side of the Sleeve, which he considered belonged to England. Normandy, Poitou, Anjou, Guienne, Gascony, they were all on his list. I remember wondering why he did not just claim the whole of France, the way his great-grandfather had done. Being a staunch royalist, my mother had told me how seventy years ago King Edward III of England had tried to claim the French throne as the nearest male heir to his uncle, King Charles IV of France, who had been his mother’s brother. But thirty years before that, in their own male interests no doubt, the grandees of Church and State had decided that women in France could not inherit land – pots and pans yes, horses, houses and gold yes, land no. They could not even pass land through their own blood line to their sons, pardieu! They called it Salic law, but my mother never explained why. Perhaps she did not know. Anyway, this law nullified King Edward’s claim and put Catherine’s great-grandfather on the French throne instead. Arguments over sovereignty had been rumbling between France and England ever since.