gave me a reproachful look. ‘I have said it before, Mette, you are too flippant in your attitude to God and the Church.’ However she spoke more calmly having revealed what was the immediate cause of her outburst. ‘Tomorrow the king will be leaving us and going on ahead to London to supervise arrangements for my coronation,’ she informed us. ‘The date has been set for February the twenty-third. That is just over a fortnight away.’
‘And what will you do in the meanwhile, Mademoiselle?’ I asked, seeking to glean some idea of when and where we were to make our own arrangements for this momentous event.
‘We are to travel to Eltham Palace, which is apparently a royal palace close to London, where we can rest and organise ourselves for the big day.’ Catherine turned to young Joan, who had been hovering quietly nearby waiting to assist her to undress. ‘You may help me to choose my maids of honour for the ceremony, Joan. I am told that a number of young ladies are to present themselves at Eltham Palace for my consideration and I believe three of them share your name, or a version of it. It seems that in future I may call “Joan!” and four of you will answer.’
Young Joan Beaufort lifted her chin proudly. ‘But I was here first, Madame. The others will have to take different names.’
I was delighted to hear Catherine’s laugh ring out and see a twinkle return to her eye. ‘You are right, little one! You shall be the one and only Joan and we will call the others something else. Meanwhile, please come now and help me take off this headdress.’
Joan advanced to pick up the discarded veil and remove the jewelled net and fillet which had restrained Catherine’s pale gold hair for her dinner with the abbot. Agnes and I exchanged relieved glances; a crisis had erupted and now seemed to have subsided, but I did not doubt there would be many more over the next weeks and months. This had been a warning that for the foreseeable future we would have to deal with a vulnerable young queen whose growing popularity would doubtless continue to wreak its share of havoc with her mood, causing her to veer alarmingly between intense self-belief and a desperate sense of inadequacy, unless and until her confidence was bolstered by the arrival of a viable male child. King Henry would not be the only one praying for an heir at the shrines of the English saints. Very likely I would be creeping in behind him with my own fervent prayers of intercession.
Our first sight of Eltham Palace was a disappointment to those of us who measured English palaces against the sprawling, marbled splendour of the French king’s Hôtel de St Pol in Paris. Eltham had once been a royal hunting lodge and the densely wooded park around it was certainly extensive, but the demesne itself had been developed in a higgledy-piggledy fashion with a variety of accommodation towers and half-timbered guest houses strung out around the walled bailey, cheek-by-jowl with the kitchens, dairies and breweries, not to mention rows of lean-to wooden stables, kennels and mews, with all their attendant muck and stink. Situated above all this, on a raised mound, were the royal apartments, great hall and chapel which, although built of beautiful mellow stone and modernised with elegant oriel windows, looked surprisingly inadequate for a palace where King Henry’s father was reported to have lavishly entertained the Byzantine Emperor twenty years before. However, as we rode up to the gatehouse, I noticed a vast tourney ground laid out beyond the curtain wall and concluded that the entertainment on that grand occasion must have been chiefly al fresco.
My information about Eltham had been provided by a pleasant and unassuming young man called Walter Vintner who joined us during the later stages of our journey. To my surprise he did not seem averse to riding alongside an older, wimpled member of the queen’s entourage. As we rode out of Rochester that morning, I had smiled at him, thinking what a personable youth he was, polite, fresh-faced and soberly attired in riding hose and boots, a short dark-brown doublet and cloak and a cheerful green hat with a feather in it. A clue to his employment was an ink-horn which he wore slung from his belt alongside a leather scrip, which I quickly learned contained the quills and paper he needed as one of the clerks of the king’s household.
After we had discovered each other’s positions within the royal retinue, I took the bold step of pursuing him with flattery. ‘You are so kind to speak French with me, Master Vintner, and with such clarity that I am prompted to pick your brains rather than those of your fellow countrymen who speak with accents I am afraid I find difficult to understand.’
‘Ah, you have my father to thank for that,’ he confided. ‘He is so often in France on the king’s business that he speaks the language like a Parisian and has teased me into doing the same.’
‘Royal service is a family tradition, then,’ I remarked. ‘Is your father also in the king’s employ?’
‘Indirectly,’ he replied. ‘He is a lawyer at the Court of Common Pleas in London, but the royal council has need of his advice on diplomatic missions to Rouen and Paris. I do not ask what these missions are, nor do I think he would tell me if I did.’
My eyebrows probably disappeared under the band of my coif. ‘Is your father a spy then, Master Vintner?’
He laughed. ‘No, Madame! He deals with confidential legal negotiations between the English and French administrations. In truth I know no more than that. And please, why do you not call me Walter? I am not yet used to being addressed as “Master”.’
‘Why, how old are you … W-walter?’ I stumbled over the very English way he said his name, pronouncing the W as I remembered Catherine’s younger brother Charles had mispronounced his Rs when he was an infant in the nursery, and Catherine was his adored playmate; the same brother who now called her traitor for marrying his country’s conqueror.
‘I am nineteen. Although my father thinks I behave more like a twelve year old.’
I was struck by the sudden thought that he was the same age as my firstborn son would have been, had he lived. But he had not lived; instead I had suckled Princess Catherine and come to love her and, for that reason, now found myself here in her train on foreign soil with a lump in my throat.
I coughed, forcing out my next words. ‘Fathers can be hard to please. What does your mother think?’
His face grew solemn and he made the sign of the cross. ‘Sadly for us all, my mother died last year.’
My heart gave a little lurch to think of his grief for the mother so recently deceased. ‘God give her rest,’ I murmured. ‘But who is “us all”? Do you have brothers and sisters?’
‘Two sisters,’ he nodded, ‘younger than me. They try to run the house, but fifteen and thirteen is too young really.’
‘And who guards them while you and your father are away?’ I asked with concern. ‘They will need protection surely?’ Then I heard my own words and felt ashamed of their intrusive nature. ‘I am sorry. It is none of my business.’
He regarded me thoughtfully. ‘No, do not apologise. It is kind of you to take an interest. In truth it is an awkward situation because our aunt – my father’s sister – has recently come to live in the house. She is a widow but my sisters do not like her. Meanwhile, my father buries his grief in his work and does not notice.’ He gathered up his reins and clicked at his horse impatiently. ‘Hey, Dobbin, shall we get there today?’
I took his impatience with the horse to be an indication that he wanted an end to the subject so, after a pause while I urged my Genevieve to close the gap between us, I reverted to my original topic. ‘Have you been to Eltham
