Blood Royal. Vanora Bennett

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СКАЧАТЬ time on her own was the only thing that being a nearly forgotten part of her mother’s eccentric household would guarantee her.

      Christine’s Jean, who (God willing) had found a permanent professional home with Chancellor Henri de Marle, was put to work on negotiating the English marriage. The stories he came home with, as the summer of 1414 curdled into a miserable winter, horrified his family, especially Christine.

      The new King of England’s negotiating style was a ruthless mixture of threat and promise. As Christine had feared, he was turning the negotiations into the pretext for full-scale war on France.

      Henry of England was claiming as rightfully his all the French lands that last century’s English kings had fought for, and which, after capturing old King Jean the Good, had been granted on paper – a third of France. But this Henry wanted even more than the rightful kings of England had: he was also demanding the duchy of Normandy, which once, centuries ago, had belonged to the ancestors of the English kings, and all the lands in the south and west that had ever been controlled from England – he wanted even the lands that English kings had explicitly given up claims to a hundred years ago.

      Jean de Castel wrinkled his forehead as he told his mother the list of demands. Henry of England wanted the lordships of Normandy, Anjou, Touraine, Maine. He wanted the homage of Brittany and Flanders. He wanted full sovereignty over the duchy of Aquitaine, not just the little strip of Gascony that the English still actually held, along with Poitou, Quercy, the Limousin and the Agenais. In the north, he wanted to add to the English territory of Calais and its march the counties of Ponthieu, Guisnes and Montreuil. He also wanted northern lands between the Somme river and Gravelines; half the county of Provence in the south; and the castles and lordships of Beaufort and Nogent.

      On top of that, he wanted eight million crowns in cash – a fantasy figure.

      Once he was satisfied on all these counts, he would marry Princess Catherine and make peace.

      ‘Impossible,’ Christine said flatly.

      ‘Of course it’s impossible,’ Jean agreed. ‘He must know that. How can he expect anyone to think he’s negotiating in good faith? If we said yes, there’d be nothing left of France.’ He rested weary head in hands. ‘Still,’ he added bitterly, ‘we are supposed to say yes, somehow. The Queen’s in charge. And this is what she says she wants.’

      During the winter, the King of France recovered from his illness enough to take negotiations with the English into his own hands. The eventual French counter-offer, made the next spring, was more lands in the south, bordering English holdings in Aquitaine, and 800,000 crowns, with dresses, jewels and furniture for Catherine.

      ‘It’s more than he deserves,’ Christine said, as ambassadors set off in both directions.

      ‘It still won’t work,’ Jean replied.

      It didn’t. The French ambassadors were sent back from London. The English ambassadors returned from Paris without agreeing to anything.

      On 7 April 1415, Henry of England wrote to the King of France to say again that he was so determined to have peace with France, and to marry Princess Catherine, that he was willing to settle for less than what justice demanded. But why, he added, all injured innocence, had the King of France sent ambassadors to London who had told him that they didn’t have full powers to agree to all England’s demands? Could the French King kindly hurry and send some proper ambassadors?

      On 12 April 1415, Henry of England called a council meeting that placed England on a war footing. He set the rates of pay for soldiers in an expedition to an unnamed location in France.

      On 15 April 1415, before King Charles of France could have had time to reply to his letter, Henry of England wrote again. He said he was sending a safe conduct for a new French embassy of 360 people. He demanded they come quickly, so that the peace he so desired could swiftly take shape.

      Jean de Castel tried to avoid being part of the French delegation. ‘I don’t want to be humiliated,’ he said. But Christine reasoned with him. She told him he must do all he could to avoid a war. She used the word ‘hope’. She ignored the set look on her son’s face. He left with the ambassadors on 4 June.

      Jean de Castel was bone tired at the back of the horse train, jiggling along from one inn to the next, through dreary English villages, over potholed roads. The French visitors had gone from Dover to London, where they’d been told the King of England had left for Winchester. The Archbishop of Bourges’ pink-and-white face had gone red at the news, but he knew his duty. They’d turned right around and followed the King south.

      They’d had to wait an hour at the gate at Winchester, watched by curious, speculative eyes. There was a lot of traffic leaving the city. The gatemen were letting out cart after cart, loaded with arrows and longbows, tents and lances. They wouldn’t let the Frenchmen in until the carts were all gone. ‘Where is all that going?’ Jean de Castel had asked a gateman; his English was good enough to talk to townspeople. The man laughed roughly. ‘To Southampton,’ he said, with rude good humour; ‘like the King, once he’s done with you lot.’

      The King of England was staying in the palace of his uncle, Bishop Beaufort. The leading French ambassadors were put up there too, but there was no room for the retinues; the palace was too full of men-at-arms, obviously preparing for war on France.

      Jean found a bed at an inn. There was a green outside. He watched the evening archery practice: all those undernourished yeomen deforming their skinny bodies, struggling to pull back the hundred-pound weight of the string, twisting and crunching their backs. They never healed. They lived with the pain of their bows. They had to. Archery practice was the law in England. Then he watched the men who’d been practising go marching out of town, in the direction of the coast. ‘Off to Southampton?’ he asked. They roared cheerfully back. Of course they were going to Southampton. The innkeeper wouldn’t talk to him, but after an hour sitting quietly in the inn, listening to what people were talking about all around him, Jean knew enough to be sure that six thousand men-at-arms and fifty thousand archers would be taking ships from Southampton any day.

      When he rejoined his party at the palace, Jean found them as shocked as he was. They had been greeted by Henry of England’s uncle, Henry Beaufort, the Bishop of Winchester. Bishop Beaufort’s welcoming words had consisted of no more than a brusque warning: ‘You have to finish your business and leave before the end of the week.’

      The French delegation was trapped in its futile peacekeeping role. The Archbishop of Bourges’ sermon that night was, ‘Peace to you and your house.’ But Henry of England – who turned out to be tall and wiry and mouse-coloured, with big girlish eyes fringed with long eyelashes set in a hard, bony frame – sat through the speech blank-faced, drumming his fingers against his book of hours.

      The gathering in the council chamber the next day was no warmer.

      Henry of England didn’t come. Bishop Beaufort (who also had big, odd, knobbly Lancaster features in a pinched face) presided. He strode in at the head of a bristling train of guards. He didn’t bother overmuch with pleasantries. In a voice as thin and hard as his face, he set out a new list of impossible demands. England wanted its differences with France settled by the end of the summer. That was the cut-off point for France to hand over all the lands England wanted. Princess Catherine, a treasure trove of jewels, and 600,000 crowns, were also to be delivered to Calais by Michaelmas.

      Bishop Beaufort was a calm negotiator. He sat down and examined his nails when he’d finished. He pretended not to hear the murmurs of dismay from around the table. He only shook his head and let a contemptuous little smile play on his lips when СКАЧАТЬ