shortcomings?’
This comforted me a little, until hunger and neglect forced me once more to acknowledge that my life, my hopes and fears, had no meaning for anyone. Isabeau’s reputation might paint her a woman of heat and passion, but none of it ever overlapped into maternal warmth. With the King enclosed in his chambers, and the Queen engaged in her own pursuits, Michelle and I survived as best we might, like the animals that the King had called us.
Until without warning our mother, Queen Isabeau, descended. It was not a happy reunion.
‘Holy Mother of God!’
My mother the Queen took one look at us. Even she, after her initial outburst, was silenced. Keeping her distance from the lice and squalor, she issued orders in a tone that brooked no disobedience. We were swept up, as if we ourselves were despised vermin, bundled into cloaks as filthy as we were and packed into a litter. The Queen, understandably, travelled separately and luxuriously in an eye-catching palanquin, whilst Michelle and I huddled in our hard carriage, cold and frightened, shivering with fear like a pair of terrified mice since no one had bothered to tell us of our destination. In this manner we, the two youngest of the Valois princesses, were delivered to the convent at Poissy.
‘These are the last of my two daughters. I leave them with you. They have sore need of discipline,’ the Queen announced on arrival.
It was after dark and the sisters were preparing to attend Compline, so there was no welcome for a child. I was frightened into silence. The figures in their white tunics and scapulars were ghostly, the Dominican black veils and cloaks threatening to my mind. My sister, smug and pious Marie, might already have taken her vows and be one of these shadowy beings but, so much older than I, I did not know her.
‘This is Michelle,’ the Queen continued. ‘Her marriage is arranged to Philip of Burgundy. Do what you can with her.’
I clutched Michelle’s hand, my fears multiplying at the thought of being alone with these magpie-clad creatures in so cold and bleak a place. How could I survive here, alone, when Michelle left to marry? My great-aunt, Marie of Bourbon, Prioress of Poissy, eyed us with chilly hauteur, much like one of my father’s raptors.
‘They are filthy.’ Supercilious, fastidious, her pale eyes flitted over us, disapproving. ‘And this one?’
‘This is Katherine. She is five years or thereabouts.’ Isabeau did not even know my age. ‘All I ask is that she be clean and well mannered. Suitable for a bride. There must be some high-blooded prince who will look favourably on her in return for a Valois alliance.’
The Prioress looked at me as if it might be a task beyond her abilities. ‘We will do our best for her too,’ she announced. ‘Does she read? Write?’
‘Not that I am aware.’
‘She must be taught.’
‘Is it necessary? Such skills are irrelevant for her future role, and I doubt she has the mental capacity to learn. Look at her.’ The Queen was cruel in her contempt as I snivelled in terror, wiping my face on my sleeve. ‘She will be wed for her blood, not for her ability to wield a pen.’
‘You would have her remain ignorant?’
‘I would not have her made a pedant. As long as she can catch a prince’s eye and grace his bed, someone will take her.’
They talked over my head, but I understood the tone of it and cringed from the shame that I knew I must feel. And then, the arrangements at an end, Isabeau looked at me directly for the first time.
‘Learn obedience and humility, Katherine. Be a credit to your name. You will be whipped if you choose to run wild here.’
I looked at the floor.
‘If you are sullen, who will wed you, Valois or not? No husband wants a sullen wife. And without a husband you will remain here and take the veil with your sister Marie.’
Those were her final words. She left without touching me. I was not sullen, but how could I explain? I dreaded a life I did not know or understand.
I was taken to a cell with Michelle. I could not complain, for we were not separated and it was suitably if sparsely furnished. Were we not princesses? I was given instructions to lie down, not to speak but to go to sleep, to rise the next morning at the bell for Lauds before dawn. My life at Poissy would begin.
And so it did. I lacked for nothing materially in those years. I was scrubbed and fed and given a modicum of instruction, I attended the services and learned to sing the responses. I learned obedience and humility, but no confidence such as blessed Michelle. All in all, it was a life of mind-numbing monotony as the years passed, coupled with anxiety over the strange prince who would one day take me if I proved to be pretty enough and humble enough. It was a cold existence.
‘They have need of discipline,’ the Queen had said.
And that was what we got. No love. No affection. Great-Aunt Marie’s rule was uncompromising, so that living at Poissy for me was like being encased in a stone tomb.
‘Which sins have you committed this week, Katherine?’ the Prioress asked, as she did every week.
‘I broke the Greater Silence, Mother.’
‘On one night?’
‘Every night, Mother,’ I admitted, eyes on the hem of her fine habit.
‘And why did you do that?’
‘To speak to Michelle, Mother.’
Michelle was my strength and my comfort. My solace. I needed her in the dark hours when the rats pattered over the floor and the shadows encroached. I needed to hear her voice and hold tight to her hand. If I had no confidence as a child, I had no courage either.
The Prioress’s white veil shivered with awful indifference to my plight. ‘Have you made confession?’
‘Yes, Mother.’
‘You will spend two hours on your knees before the altar. You will learn the value of the Greater Silence and you will keep the rules. If you persist, Katherine, I will put you in a cell of your own, away from your sister.’
I shuddered, my mind full of the horror of that threatened isolation. I made my penance, my knees sore and my anguish great as I knelt in the silent, dark-shadowed church, but I learned a hard lesson. I never broke the rule again, the fear of separation from Michelle a far greater deterrent than any whipping. My mind did not have the strength to encompass such shattering loneliness. So I did not speak, but I wept silently against Michelle’s robust shoulder, until I learned that tears were of no value. There was no escape for us from the dank walls and rigid rules of Poissy.
‘You will not speak,’ the Prioress admonished. ‘Neither do I wish to hear you weeping. Give thanks to God for His goodness in giving you this roof over your head and food in your mouth.’
The silent threat was all too apparent. I wept no more.
Thus was the tenor of my young days as I grew into adolescence, becoming no more poised or self-reliant as the years of my life crawled past. I learned to control my emotions, my features and every word I uttered, in fear that I might give offence. I had no map or chart to guide me in what love, or even affection,
