Free Crown in Candlelight by Rosemary Hawley Jarman Page B

blame her, thought the nun. Yet she said:
    ‘Princess, it’s good and right that you love your sister. But Madame is as sinful as you and I, as any mortal creature. There’s One above all princes, exempt from sin, eternal. It is He whom you must love …’
    ‘Oh, I do,’ said Katherine quickly. Into her mind came an old picture from the breviary with the burning heretics. God had been there, gravely judging from the clouds above the smoke and flame. Her eyes returned to the portrait, the face with its certain pledge of love. Her choice was already made, but it would not do to acquaint Dame Alphonse with it. Better anyway not to pursue the argument, for Dame Alphonse had recently returned from a rare expedition to Calais and Katherine was longing to hear about it all. She rose and laid her long white hand on the nun’s capacious sleeve.
    ‘Did you enjoy your journey?’
    ‘Too swift at my age. My joints are still aching.’
    ‘Did you see many people?’
    ‘I visited the Dominicans. Their house can’t hold a candle to ours’ (with a smirk that embraced the sin of vanity). ‘Their discipline comes and goes like April weather. But then, they’re in English territory and doubtless infected by that wayward environment. They’ve a fine image of St Catherine. I asked intercession for you, and I swear she smiled at me.’
    ‘What else?’ said Katherine eagerly.
    ‘Isn’t that enough?’ Dame Alphonse was hurt.
    ‘Did you see the English? Belle told me that some are more fiends than the Fiend himself. Did you attend any banquets?’
    ‘Banquets! Me? I stayed in cloister, of course. By courtesy of the Abbess. I saw no fiends!’ A little alarmed, she glanced at Katherine. Madame had put some wild notions into the child’s mind. The princess was looking so disappointed that Dame Alphonse relented.
    ‘I did see Prince Harry, though. He rode by with a great train, very fine, on the way to the harbour. They say his father’s likely to die in England, but it seems he takes his time over it. And Harry badly wants the crown …’
    Just as your own young brother Louis lusts to rule France unhampered by regency, she thought. Already Louis was grotesquely playing at manhood – eyeing the women at court, and more than once drinking himself insensible.
    ‘How does Prince Harry look?’
    ‘I only had a glimpse.’ The nun hurriedly collected her thoughts. ‘His head was bare, his cheek florid. He has a scar on his face. Aged about twenty-three. He looks … clever.’
    Katherine felt, in loyalty to Belle, that he should at least have ridden in a haze of fire and brimstone … but then Dame Alphonse often confessed she needed spectacles. Strange to think that she, Katherine, could have been his bride. A wicked thought popped up: it couldn’t be more boring than Poissy!
    To counteract her instant guilt, she said loudly: ‘They wanted me to marry him. But I would first have put an end to myself!’
    ‘Now there’s real heresy!’ said Dame Alphonse grimly. ‘Pray for pardon. This minute.’ She slid stiffly on to a priedieu and pulled the princess down beside her. Together they murmured quietly to the little flame above, while a willow branch tapped at the window as if afraid of approaching winter and begging entry. Its tapping was echoed from outside the chamber door. Dame Alphonse prayed on steadily for a few moments, then rose, and opened the door. Katherine remained kneeling. Just outside the door the nun saw the house chaplain and a young man, mud on his mantle. She recognized him after a moment; Antoine l’Astisan, secretary to Charles of Orléans. Katherine, pretending to pray, listened hard. She caught only a stray word or phrase.
    ‘God save us!’
    ‘Amen. Do your best.’
    ‘Michelle … attends the Dauphin, and he is loath to leave Paris.’
    Marie was mentioned. ‘… in seclusion. The little one …’
    ‘Of course, the favourite. God, sir; be hasty!’
    Katherine got up just as the nun returned,