The Forbidden Queen

To my relief Isabeau did not descend on Poissy to vent her fury, but the portrait did. I saw it, because Michelle brought it to me, before it was swathed in soft leather to protect it from weather and sea water on its journey, and was truly appalled. The artist was either lacking in talent or had been paid too little. The long Valois features were there right enough, and not beyond liking, for my oval face was not uncomely, my neck had a certain poise. But my lovely hair was completely bundled up and obscured by a headdress with padded rolls over deep crispinettes, the whole structure made complete with a short muslin veil that neither flattered nor seductively concealed. As for my skin, always pale, it had been given more than a touch of the sallow. My lips were a thin slash of paint and my brows barely visible.

Michelle gasped.

‘Is it so bad?’ I asked uncertainly, knowing that it was.

‘Yes. Look at it!’ She stalked to the window embrasure and held up the offending article. ‘That ill-talented dabbler in paint has made you look as old as our mother. Why couldn’t he make you young and virginal and appealing?’

I looked at it through Michelle’s eyes rather than my own hopeful ones. ‘I look like an old hag, don’t I?’ My silent plea to the Virgin was impassioned.

Holy Mother. If Henry of England does not like my face, may he at least see the value of my Valois blood.

And how did my erstwhile suitor receive my portrait? I never knew, but I was informed by the Prioress that my days at Poissy were numbered.

‘You will leave within the month.’ Great-Aunt Marie’s manner was no more accommodating than on the first day that I had stepped over the threshold. But I no longer cared. That new life was approaching fast.

‘Yes, Mother.’

‘King Henry has made a vow to wed you.’

‘I am honoured, Mother.’ My voice trembled as I shook with a new emotion.

‘It is a political alliance. You must play your part to chain Henry to Valois interests.’

‘Yes, Mother.’ One day soon I would wear fur-edged sleeves far richer than those of Great-Aunt Marie.

‘I trust that you will take to your marriage the attributes you have learned here at Poissy. You training here will be the bedrock on which to build your role as Queen of England.’

‘Yes, Mother.’

Bedrock. Role. Chaining Henry to Valois interests. It meant nothing to me. I could barely contain my thoughts, or the smile that threatened to destroy the solemnity of the occasion. I would be a bride. I would be Henry’s wife. My heart throbbed with joy and I hugged Michelle when next I could.

‘He wants me! Henry wants me!’

She eyed me dispassionately. ‘You are such a child, Katherine! If you’re expecting a love match, it will not happen.’ Her voice surprised me with its harshness, even when, at the distress she must have seen on my face, her eyes softened. ‘We do not deal in love, Katherine. We marry for duty.’

Duty. A cold, bleak word. Much like indifference. Foolish as it might be, I was looking for love in my marriage, but I would not display my vulnerability, even to Michelle.

‘I understand,’ I replied solemnly, repeating the Prioress’s bleak words. ‘Henry will wed me to make a political alliance.’

And in truth doubts had begun to grow, for there had been no gifts, no recognition of King Henry’s new-kindled desire for me as his wife, not even on the feast of St Valentine when a man might be expected to recall the name of the woman he intended to wed. There were even rumours that he was still looking to the royal families of Burgundy and Aragon, where there were marriageable girls on offer. How could that be? I think I flounced in sullen misery. My Burgundy cousins, the daughters of Duke John, were inarguably plain, and surely the Aragon girls could not be as valuable as I to the English King’s plans to take Europe under his thrall.

I offered a fervent rosary of Aves and Paternosters that the portrait had been more flattering than I recalled to fix me in his mind, and that he would make his choice before I became too old and wizened to be anyone’s bride. Before I became too old to covet sleeves edged with finest sables.

‘Is the English King young? Is he good to look at?’ I had asked the Queen.

Now I knew.

King Henry took my breath. I saw him before he saw me. King Henry the Fifth of England, in all his glory. There he stood, alone in the very centre of the elaborate pavilion, quite separate from the two English lords who conversed in low voices off to one side. Oblivious to them, and to us—the French party—hands fisted on his hips and head thrown back, Henry’s eyes were fixed on some distant place in his mind, or perhaps on the spider weaving its web into one of the corners between pole and canvas. He remained motionless, even though I suspected that he knew we had arrived.