shrugged.
‘And you, Countess? Did your parents give you everything you desired?’
She nodded, her smile quick but sad. ‘Until they died.’
He should not have reminded her of her loss, yet he felt a moment’s regret. He had lost his family years ago. Had he loved them? He could not remember.
‘Yet you have not wed either.’ Suddenly, he wanted to know why.
‘Only because the king has not yet selected my husband. I expect the man to be named by the end of the Christmas season.’
I hold the title, she had said, the first night they met. She, and her title, would be a prize for some nobleman. One far above a humble chevalier. He wondered, with a thought he refused to call jealousy, who the man would be.
‘So now,’ Lady Cecily said, in a tone that he now thought of as her ‘countess voice’, ‘I’ve told you about Lady Isabella. What is your plan?’
He must convince this woman he was doing something. ‘She sounds wilful and capricious.’ And thus, perhaps more dangerous than de Coucy had suspected. ‘Perhaps knowing that will cool his ardour.’
‘You shall not disparage her! Would you have me tell the princess vile tales about Lord de Coucy?’
‘You would find none. He is admired even by his enemies.’
‘The Lady Isabella has no enemies!’ As if there were nothing more to say. ‘She is the daughter of the king.’
‘If you will not let me speak ill of her, how am I to dampen his ardour?’
They had reached the top of the stairs and, ahead, saw Enguerrand enter a room. The princess followed.
Cecily gripped his sleeve. ‘We must do something.’ She looked towards the open door, then bit her lip. Suddenly, she smiled. ‘I know! While you are here, you will entertain the princess.’
‘What?’
‘That way, she will find it difficult to spend too much time with Lord de Coucy.’
Already, the plan had gone awry. ‘The princess may be content to while away her hours with one of the mightiest lords in France. She will not feel the same way about a landless chevalier.’
‘Ah, but that is the way it is practised in the French courts of love! The landless knight inspired by the high-born lady. That is what Isabella told me.’
Landless knight. Did she know how true that was? ‘And you? Will you then distract Lord de Coucy?’
‘Of course not.’ Her voice dripped with disdain. ‘I am to be betrothed soon. I cannot be seen too much in the company of a French hostage.’
The Lady Isabella emerged from the room, looked over her shoulder with a smile and waved to de Coucy unseen, still inside.
Marc raised his eyebrows and looked back at Lady Cecily. ‘You blame de Coucy for this folly,’ he whispered, as the princess approached. From what he knew of women, this one seemed as eager as his friend. Or more. ‘I think Lady Isabella shares the fault.’
‘How can you say such a thing?’ She gestured towards the room and then raised her voice so that the princess would hear. ‘You will share quarters with Lord de Coucy.’
Then, putting on her countess posture, she joined the princess, who smiled in his general direction, though he could not be sure she actually saw him. The Lady Isabella, he was certain, had already chosen her courtly lover for the season.
Now, he faced three weeks of Yuletide celebrations pretending to interfere with Enguerrand’s plans in order to support them. He sighed.
This Noël would be anything but joyeux.
With the hostages settled, Cecily left the tower to give her deference to Queen Philippa.
Isabella had said renovations were complete, but as Cecily entered the new wing in the upper ward, glassmakers, painters and carpenters still littered the corridors.
‘I thought the work was done,’ she said, rising from her curtsy. Yet it obviously continued. The sculptor would still be needed and she could not possibly ask for him to be released.
Despite her promise to Gilbert, she felt a sense of relief.
The queen dismissed the workmen still painting the walls of her receiving chamber. ‘Their work on the outer walls and the Hall is complete. My quarters are near finished, as are the king’s, but your guest quarters are still wanting, I’m afraid. Edward plans two more wings...’ She waved her hand in the direction of the outer walls. ‘But until those are built our guests are still crowded, I’m afraid.’
Cecily swallowed a grimace. They would not be so crowded if rooms had not been sacrificed to de Coucy and de Marcel.
‘But come,’ the queen said. ‘Let me show you my chambers.’
She led Cecily through rooms for praying, for sleeping and for dressing, pointing out the details, including the glass windows, each embedded with the royal coat of arms, which quartered the lilies of France with the leopards of England.
As if de Marcel and his kind had invaded the most private heart of England. As if she could escape him nowhere.
‘And this,’ the queen said, when they reached the final chamber, ‘is for dancing.’
Cecily looked around in wonder. ‘Mother would have loved this. She loved to dance...’ She bit her lip.
A countess does not cry. Not even when her husband is killed.
The queen paused. ‘This is your first Christmas without her.’
The queen’s compassion made Cecily feel like a child again. How many Christmases had she spent with the royal family and her own? And now, only her royal family remained.
‘I also miss my son Edward this year,’ the queen said.
‘Yet you will see him again, some day.’ The queen’s son was absent, but still on this earth. The prince and his bride, Joan, the Countess of Kent, had left for Aquitaine in July, one corner of France, at least, where an Englishman still ruled. She wondered how far that was from Marc’s home.
‘But not the others. I will not see the others.’
‘Forgive me, Your Grace.’ How could she complain of her own loss when the queen had lost six of the twelve children she had borne? Yet the king’s wife, plump and motherly, was full of sympathy that made it easy to forget her station. ‘I should not have spoken so.’
The queen reached for her hand and squeezed. Forgiveness. ‘Your parents did not expect you to mourn for the rest of your life.’
Cecily’s parents, she knew, would have been appalled to see her
