exchanging a long embrace and many tearful kisses before I laced her into her new, high-waisted blue gown, ready for the journey. Then I brushed out her long, fine, flaxen hair for the last time and tied the ribbons of a white linen cap under her chin, trying not to let my hands shake and transmit my own churning emotions to her. When the Duchess of Bourbon held out her hand to lead Catherine to the waiting litter, she looked the perfect royal princess; obedient, sweet and decorous. Only two bright pink patches on her cheeks indicated the misery and turmoil beneath the calm façade. Looking back, I think the diamond quality of her character was revealed in that moment.
At the door of the litter the grand lady turned to me with a gracious smile. ‘I believe your name is Guillaumette,’ she said. ‘For one who can have no knowledge of courtly manners, you have done well by the princess. However, I am sure you understand that there is much for her to learn that you could never teach her. Now you may go to the grand master’s chamber and collect what is due to you. The nursery is to be closed. Goodbye.’
As the litter swung out of sight through an archway, I longed to run after it and shout, ‘I do not want what is due to me! I do not want your blood money! No payment can be recompense for losing my darling girl!’
But I did not. I stood, frozen like a statue, praying. I prayed that Catherine knew my love for her was unconditional, knew that it would never fade and that whenever – if ever – fate brought us together again, she would remember her old nurse Mette. I was nineteen years old and I felt like a crone of ninety.
Hôtel de St Pol, Paris
The Shades of Agincourt
1415–18
‘I have news that may lift your spirits,’ said Jean-Michel as we lay in bed, whispering so as not to wake our children who slept in the opposite corner of the cramped chamber.
‘News of what?’ I responded dully, too tired to rouse much interest. I was always tired these days – had been ever since returning to the Hôtel de St Pol, after years away. Many highs and lows had led to Jean-Michel and I sharing a bed together in the royal palace and our lives were very different now.
For over eight years I had raised my children in my old home under the Grand Pont. The summer after leaving the nursery, I gave birth to a baby boy and, thanks be to God, he lived. We called him Henri-Luc after both his grandfathers, but he was always just Luc to me. Jean-Michel completed his apprenticeship at the palace stables and was appointed a charettier, driving supply wagons between Paris and the royal estates, which meant he was away a great deal. He was allocated family quarters at the palace, but my mother became increasingly crippled by painful swollen joints and I was needed at the bakery, which suited me fine, because for a time the Duke of Burgundy had kept his hands on the reins at the Hôtel de St Pol and after my terrifying encounter I preferred to stay as far from him as possible.
But city life wasn’t easy. No one lived in cosy harmony with their neighbours any more, for after Burgundy’s abduction of the royal children, Paris had become a sad and vicious place, its people divided into factions according to which of the royal affinities they supported or were dependent upon. Locked in their battle for power, the Dukes of Burgundy and Orleans lobbied and bribed all the various guilds and in the church and university. As a result, split loyalties tore society apart, causing a succession of riots and murders, burnings and lynchings, which brought terror to the streets. Officially the ailing King Charles still sat on the throne, but for long periods he was unable to command the loyalty of his lieges and, while attempting to rule in his stead, the queen played one duke off against another – as rumour had it both in and out of bed.
It must be said, looking back, that Catherine was well out of it, tucked safely away in her convent in the country, but I missed her like a limb. I knew I should forget her and that I would most likely never see her again, but every new stage of my own children’s lives reminded me of her. I loved Alys and Luc, of course I did, and as they grew older it was obvious that they loved me. Under their grandparents’ roof and with Jean-Michel coming and going, they were part of an outwardly tight-knit family unit, loyal to each other and loving, but for me they were also the source of an intense heartache, which I could confide in no one, for I knew that no one would understand or condone such maternal ambivalence.
Gradually my mother’s illness grew so bad that in the morning she could barely haul herself out of bed and spent most of the day sitting behind the open shutter of the shop telling me what to do and finding fault with my efforts. I knew she could not help it because the terrible pain in her swollen joints made her cry out in agony, but I found it hard to keep my temper with her and I have to confess I often failed. That she only ever scolded me, not my father or the children, did not help. Eventually she started taking a special remedy, which I would fetch for her from the apothecary. It was hard to believe how a syrup made from poppies could affect someone the way that potion affected my mother, but from the day she started taking it she was more or less lost to us. At first I was so grateful that it relieved her pain that I ignored her total lassitude and the vacant look in her eyes, but after several weeks I grew worried and secretly substituted another remedy. However, when she started shaking and vomiting and screaming for what she called her ‘angel’s breath’, I was forced to give in. One night I think she must have swallowed too much of it, or else the mixture was tainted in some way, because my father woke up to find her dead beside him.
We were both devastated, remembering the strong woman she had once been, but we were also thankful that her suffering was over. In some ways she was lucky to die in her bed, for at that time life in Paris was perilous and cheap. People were murdered simply for wearing the wrong colour hood or walking down the wrong alley. Bodies were found in the streets every day with their throats slit or their skulls cracked like eggs.
One freezing November night it was none other than the Duke of Orleans himself who was hacked to death, set upon by a masked gang in the Rue Barbette behind the Hôtel de St Antoine. He had been a frequent visitor at a mansion there, in which a lady, widely believed to be the queen, had been living for several weeks. As royal guards swarmed through the streets seeking the duke’s murderers, news spread that the corpse’s right hand had been severed at the wrist. Blue-hooded Burgundians declared this to be proof positive that Orleans had been in league with the devil, who always claimed the right hand of his acolytes. White-hooded Orleanists maintained, meanwhile, that the only devil involved in this murder was the Duke of Burgundy who, rather giving credence to this claim, abruptly quitted his coveted position of power beside the king and fled to Artois, destroying strategic bridges behind him. That left a power vacuum, which for the citizens of Paris was the most dangerous situation of all. In the gutters the body count mounted nightly.
My father knew the baker who delivered bread to the heavily guarded house in the Rue Barbette and it was he who told us that the lady the Duke of Orleans had visited so frequently and foolhardily had given birth to a baby and had only just survived. After the murder she too fled, no one knew how or where. The house was just suddenly empty. A few weeks later, a royal pronouncement told us that Queen Isabeau had given birth to another son, stating that the boy had been baptised Philippe and died soon afterwards.
My father and I wore brown hoods and kept our mouths shut. We managed to stay alive, but it was a daily struggle to keep the ovens fired. The brushwood we burned had always been collected by
