‘but I heard there’s forty- nine English bachelor knights with him.’
‘Forty-nine?’ An odd number. ‘Why not fifty?’
‘I don’t know, milady, but every blessed one is wearing a red silk eyepatch day and night.’
Katrine shook her head. ‘How can a knight fight with only one eye?’
‘Not only can’t they see, but they don’t talk.’ Merkin’s voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. ‘I heard they vowed to their ladies that they would wear the eyepatches and speak to no one until they had performed some deeds of arms against the French.’ A sigh escaped her grin. ‘Isn’t that romantic?’
‘Romantic?’ Katrine sank on to the bench, cradling her forehead in her hand. At sixteen, Merkin still had dreamy notions in her usually level head. ‘My father is in prison, my coffers are empty, England and France are near war, and the English have nothing better to do than gallop the countryside wearing real eyepatches and imaginary gags?’ Unseemly laughter spilled over her anger. ‘And my uncle harps on the lunacy of women!’
‘Ah, there you are.’ Her aunt Matilda squinted in the direction of Katrine’s laughter as she entered the room. Matilda’s weak eyes could barely see what was before her nose. Her pale forehead was lined from years of trying to focus on things beyond her scope. ‘We were worried. How many times have we told you not to be on the streets without an escort?’
Every day for nine months, Katrine thought, sending yet another silent prayer to Saint Catherine for forgiveness. At least her name saint had always listened to a motherless child. ‘Without apprentices, it is all for me to do.’
Let her aunt think she left the house only from necessity. The woman would hear no ill spoken of her husband.
‘Well, I’m glad you’re back, Catherine.’ Her aunt spoke the French of the nobility and always called her ‘Catherine’ instead of the Flemish ‘Katrine’. ‘I need you to tell the girl that the Baron did not like the wine she bought yesterday and she must always buy Gascon wine in the future.’
‘The girl’s name is Merkin,’ Katrine said, before she translated, softening the rebuff as she did. Her aunt spoke the Flemish of the workers as little as possible, a blessing, since she did not speak it well. Merkin rolled her eyes heavenwards, muttering something that sounded like ‘no wool means no wine’.
Katrine’s lips twitched towards a smile. ‘What was that, Merkin?’
The front door swung open and hit the wall with a dull thump. Katrine’s smile died. Charles, Baron de Gravere, was home.
‘English bastards think loyalty can be bought,’ her uncle shouted as his men swarmed in behind him towards the watered wine set out for the main meal.
Her aunt scurried to help as the squire unbuckled the Baron’s sword belt. Impatient at Matilda’s slow fingers worrying the knot holding his cloak, he jerked it, breaking the tie for her to sew again, and let the garment drop on to the floor. Matilda stooped to pick it up.
‘We leave for Gravere today,’ he said, sitting at the table. ‘The castle must be in readiness should the English actually have the stomach for a fight.’
Katrine’s appetite fled. ‘I thought they came to speak of peace.’
‘Pah! This English Edward acts like a merchant, not a king.’ Her uncle drained his goblet and slammed it down on the table for his wife to fill. The Baron’s wine was never watered. ‘He thinks the Count will break his God-given oath of fealty to King Philip for English gold.’
If the Count’s belly were as empty as those of his subjects, he certainly would. She had heard her uncle admire the Count’s loyalty to the French fleur-de-lys too often. The man cared more for fealty than his people’s stomachs.
A king was necessary, of course. You gave allegiance; he gave protection. Such loyalty was a luxury of the nobility and, she was beginning to think, a foolish one. While the lords battled, the burghers suffered. What did it matter to the dyers who claimed France’s crown? Why should the weavers care whether the throne passed through the daughter or the son? Cold winters grew thick wool all the same.
Her uncle waved his goblet. ‘Here’s to Philip of Valois. Now and for ever King of France.’
The men at arms, mouths full, echoed ‘Valois’ without looking up.
Katrine rested her head on cold hands. Deeds of arms, the English promised. Flanders’s soil would be soaked with blood as red as their eyepatches.
And she might never see her father again.
‘Is there word of my father? Do they want a ransom?’
‘No one cares about him now,’ he said.
Least of all you. ‘Then what about my wool? Can the Count get some from France?’ It would be poor stuff, but she could weave it.
He filled his spoon with fish and vegetables. ‘I didn’t ask.’
‘You promised!’ Her words exploded. The men at the closest table looked up. She lowered her voice. ‘I cannot make cloth without wool,’ Katrine said, angry at the Count, at the French, at the English, at all of them who cared for affairs of state instead of people’s lives. ‘The Count is bad for business.’
‘Catherine, hush. If anyone heard you, you might be imprisoned.’ Aunt Matilda peered anxiously at the knights breaking bread over their trenchers. ‘We all might be imprisoned.’
‘No one cares what she thinks,’ her uncle said with a shrug. ‘Her hair bears the mark of the Devil. She speaks French with a Flemish accent and has calluses on her fingers. No man of noble blood will soil himself with her.’
She winced at his words. He made her ashamed to be alive.
She pushed the pain away. ‘All the more reason for me to tend to my weaving.’ There, at least, she could do something of value.
‘Bad enough that my brother violated the God-given order of things, wielding scissors instead of the sword he was born to.’ At first, the family had tolerated her father’s dabbling in the cloth trade. He was a younger son and gold was always welcome. But with the gold and her father gone, her uncle unleashed his true feelings. ‘He let you grow up like the spawn of that weaver instead of a noblewoman.’
‘That weaver had a name.’ Giles de Vos, her father’s partner, had died childless two years ago and left his share to her. She missed him almost as much as she missed her father. ‘You welcomed Uncle Giles into your house as long as our looms turned wool into gold.’
Her uncle’s temper flared like a poked fire, lifting him out of his seat. ‘Don’t call him that! He was a common burgher. I am your uncle.’
She stood to face him, no longer caring who heard. ‘I wish I shared his blood instead of yours.’
‘Enough!’ He raised his fist.
Her aunt’s hand blocked it. ‘Mind your tongue, Catherine. Apologise.’
His hand wavered. No mealtime noises drifted up from the retainers’ table.
