The Agincourt Bride. Joanna Hickson

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СКАЧАТЬ hatchway, glowing in the beam of her horn lantern. ‘Come, Mette,’ she said, scrambling off the ladder. ‘Quick, get yourself dressed. We’re going to the palace.’

      Still befuddled with grief, I stood like a docile sheep while she squeezed my poor flabby belly and leaking breasts into my Sunday clothes and pushed me out into the daylight.

      The route to the king’s palace was familiar from my frequent love-trysts with Jean-Michel. We walked east along the river where the air was fresh and the sky was a bright, uncluttered arc. In the past I had often lingered to watch the traffic on the water; small fishing wherries with fat-bellied brown sails, flat-bottomed barges laden with cargo and occasionally, weaving between them, a gilded galley bedecked with livery, its crimson blades dripping diamond droplets as it ferried some grandee to a riverside mansion.

      It was in these leafy suburbs close to the new city wall that many imposing town-houses had been built by the nobility. The highest tower in Paris was to be found there, rising brand-new and clean-stoned above the Duke of Burgundy’s Hôtel d’Artois. In the shadow of the ancient abbey of the Céléstins lay the impressive Hôtel de St Antoine where lived the king’s brother, the Duke of Orleans. Neighbouring this, however, and overlooking the lush meadows of the Île de St Louis, was the king’s magnificent Hôtel de St Pol, the largest and most sumptuous residence of them all. It sprawled for half a league along the north bank of the Seine, the spires and rooftops of a dozen grand buildings visible behind a high curtain wall of pale stone which was fortified with towers and gatehouses constantly a-flutter with flags and banners.

      Old men in the market-place told how the present king’s father, King Charles V, distraught at losing eight consecutive offspring in their infancy, had eyed his nobles’ airy new mansions with envy and went about ‘acquiring’ a whole parish of them for himself around the church of Saint Pol. Then he had them linked with cloisters, embellished with Italian marble, surrounded with orchards and gardens and enclosed within one great wall, thus establishing his own substantial palace in a prime location and leaving his disgruntled vassals to rebuild elsewhere. This regal racketeering was justified on the grounds that the king’s next two sons survived, born and raised in much healthier surroundings than the cramped and fetid quarters of the old Palais Royal.

      For my trysts with Jean-Michel I used to slip into the palace by a sally gate in the Porte des Chevaux, where the guards came to know me, but the queen’s messenger led my mother and me to the lofty Grande Porte with its battlemented barbican and ranks of armed sentries, his royal staff acting like a magic wand to whisk us unchallenged through the lines of pikes into a vast courtyard. Men, carts and oxen mingled there in noisy confusion. I was kept so busy dodging rolling wheels and piles of steaming dung that I failed to notice which archways and passages we took to reach a quiet paved square where a fountain played before a fine stone mansion. This was the Maison de la Reine where the queen lived and held lavish court and where, presumably, since she’d produced so many children, she received regular visits from the king, although rumour had it that he had not fathered her entire brood.

      The grand arched entrance with its sweeping stone staircase was not for the likes of us, of course. We were led to a ground-level door alongside a separate stone building from which belched forth rich cooking smells. The heat of a busy kitchen blasted us as we were brought to a halt by a procession of porters ferrying huge, loaded dishes up a spiral tower-stair to the main floor of the mansion. The queen’s household was dining in the great hall and it was several minutes before we were beckoned to follow the final steaming pudding up the worn steps to a servery, where carvers were swiftly and skilfully dissecting roasted meats into portions. The aroma was mouth-watering even to my grief-dulled senses and my mother’s long, appreciative sniffs were audible above the noise made by the hungry gathering on the other side of the screen that hid us and the carvers from them.

      We were ushered through a door beyond the servery and down a narrow passage into a small, cold chamber lit only by a narrow shaft of daylight from a high unglazed window. Here our escort brusquely informed us that we should wait and then departed, closing the door behind him.

      ‘What are we doing here?’ I hissed to my mother, stirred at last into showing some interest in our circumstances.

      ‘Not being fed, obviously,’ she complained. ‘You would have thought they could spare a bit of pudding!’ Huffily she sank onto a solitary bench under the window and arranged her grey woollen skirt neatly around her. ‘Come and sit down, Mette, and compose yourself. You want to make a good impression.’

      Gingerly I lowered myself onto the bench beside her. It was not many hours since I’d given birth and to sit down was painful. ‘Impression?’ I echoed. ‘Who should I make an impression on?’ My breasts throbbed and I was becoming distinctly nervous.

      ‘On Madame la Bonne, who runs the royal nursery.’ Now that she had got me here, my mother risked divulging more information. ‘She needs a wet-nurse for the new princess.’

      ‘A wet-nurse!’ I echoed, wincing as I recoiled along the hard bench. ‘You mean … no, Ma! I cannot give suck to a royal baby.’

      My mother drew herself up, both chins jutting indignantly from the tight frame of her goodwife’s wimple. ‘And why not, may I ask? Your milk is as good as anyone’s. Better than most probably, for you are young and well-nourished. Think yourself lucky. If they take you, you will have drawn the top prize. It might have been a butcher’s baby or a tax collector’s brat.’

      I opened my mouth to protest that a baker’s daughter could hardly despise a butcher’s baby but swallowed my words as the door opened to admit a thin, erect woman of middle age and height, dressed in a dark wine-coloured gown with sweeping fur-lined sleeves. The eaves of her black gable-headdress shadowed a pinched, rat-like face and she looked so unlike anyone’s idea of a children’s nurse that my mother and I were both struck dumb. We stood up.

      ‘Is this the girl?’ the woman asked bluntly. Her lip curled. ‘Ah yes, I can see it is.’

      Following her disdainful gaze, I glanced down and saw that damp milk-stains were beginning to spread over the front of my bodice. Shame and grief sent fresh tears coursing down my cheeks.

      ‘What is your name?’ demanded the fur-sleeved lady but any reply I might have made was forestalled as she grabbed me by the arm, pulled me under the beam of light from the window and wrenched my mouth open, peering into it.

      My mother spoke for me. ‘Guillaumette. My daughter’s name is Guillaumette.’ She frowned at the crude treatment I was receiving but was too over-awed to object.

      Madame la Bonne grunted and released my jaw. ‘Teeth seem good,’ she observed, aiming her rodent nose at my damp bodice and taking a long investigative sniff. ‘And she smells clean. How old is she?’

      ‘Fifteen,’ replied my mother, trying to edge her ample frame between me and my tormentor. ‘It was her first child.’

      ‘And it is dead, I hope? We do not want any common nursling bringing disease into the royal nursery.’ My instantly renewed sobs appeared to convince her of this for she nodded with satisfaction. ‘Good. We will take her on trial. Five sous a week and her bed and board. Any sign of ague or milk fever and she is out.’ Before my mother could question these terms, the dragon-lady turned to address me directly. ‘You should stop snivelling, girl, or your milk will dry up and you will be no use to anyone. The queen was delivered at the hour of sext and the princess needs suck at once. I will send someone to collect you.’

      Not waiting to hear whether or not her offer was accepted, Madame la Bonne swept out of the room. My mother stared after her, shaking her head, but the mention of five sous a week had struck a chord. Although my eyes were blurred with tears, I caught СКАЧАТЬ