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4

‘What can I hear, Mette?’ asked Catherine when I drew back the bed-curtains at dawn. ‘It started a few minutes ago and I have been lying here listening, thinking it might be angels.’

‘It is a choir, Mademoiselle,’ I told her. ‘There are boys dressed all in white on the green below your window and they actually look rather like angels, only lacking wings. They are here to herald your coronation day.’

‘That is very special. They sound wonderful.’ Catherine made to sit up but hastily snuggled down again. ‘Blessed Marie it is cold! Those poor boys, how can they sing in this frost? They need something to warm them. Will you make sure they get hot drinks, Mette?’

‘I will send a page with your orders at once, Mademoiselle,’ I assured her. ‘But do not let your own drink get cold.’ I had placed a cup of warm buttermilk and honey at her bedside. I held out her chamber robe and with reluctance she shed the covers, quickly stepping down from the bed to don the fur-lined robe. ‘The fire has been burning all night so you can warm yourself at the hearth.’

At last the day of her coronation had arrived and, following a tradition begun by England’s first King Henry, Catherine had spent the night in the Tower of London.

The previous morning she and the king had left Eltham at dawn, mounted on white horses, bells jingling on their harness and tasselled trappings of scarlet and blue boldly displaying the lions of England and the fleurs-de-lys of France. They were met on Blackheath Common by the city’s mayor and aldermen who had ceremonially escorted them through the narrow shop-lined thoroughfare that crossed London Bridge and into the crowded and festooned streets of the city. I had not taken part in the parade that followed, but Catherine had excitedly described it when she returned at dusk.

‘London is magnificent, Mette. Hundreds of bolts of cloth of gold had been distributed by the Guild of London Mercers and hung from the windows of the houses where they billowed in the breeze, turning the streets into a golden pathway. It was truly magical. A holiday had been declared and the roads were free of foul-smelling rubbish and lined with young girls in white kirtles with baskets full of dried herbs and rose-petals to throw under our horse’s hooves so that we smelled only fragrant perfumes as we rode. For the duration of the parade the fountains ran with wine, although as you know King Henry has an abhorrence of drunkenness and had ordered it diluted with spring water. Even so, there were plenty of people in very high spirits. Spectators crammed every vantage point, blowing trumpets and horns, and some of the more agile citizens leaned from attic casements or perched on rooftops and even clung to church steeples to get a clear view. I was fearful that someone might fall, but no one did, as far as I know.

‘There was plenty for them to see. On raised platforms at each crossroads mummers staged biblical tableaux celebrating marriage and monarchy and outside every church on the route choirs sang psalms and anthems. Fifty knights of the king’s retinue rode before and behind us flying their brightly coloured standards and wearing full suits of armour, which glinted in the sunshine. Then, mounted on bright chestnut palfreys behind them were my six maids of honour attracting deafening cheers and whistles – and so they should have, in their blue fur-trimmed mantles and sparkling jewelled headdresses. We made a circular route through the centre of the city, stopping at St Paul’s church to hear a celebration mass, and then to a feast in the Guildhall before returning along the river, past moored barges, docks and warehouses all decked with flags and crammed with more cheering crowds of people. I have to admit that today we were more enthusiastically greeted than when we rode into Paris last Christmas.’

I had left the royal cavalcade after crossing London Bridge and ridden with the household servants and baggage straight to the royal apartments in the Tower of London, on the city’s eastern flank. The quiet of the inner ward, where I had spent the day supervising the queen’s unpacking, was suddenly broken by the fanfare of trumpets. I found a window from which to watch the returning procession as it clattered over the drawbridge that spanned the moat, past the Lion Tower where the king’s animals were housed, through the massive gatehouse, under another gatehouse and into the inner ward. Steam rose from the horses’ flanks and the riders’ cheeks were flushed bright red, their breath condensing in the icy air as daylight faded. A hot tub awaited the queen before a blazing fire, not only to warm a body stiff and chilled by the February wind, but even more importantly to begin the purification process essential before the divine rite of coronation.

The queen would make a lone vigil ahead of the solemnity of coronation. Having escorted his queen formally to her lodgings, the king immediately rode away again to Westminster, leaving the Archbishop of Canterbury with Catherine in the royal chapel of St John. The archbishop spent an hour explaining the vows she would be taking and the indelible nature of the sanctity which anointment with the holy chrism would bestow. When she emerged, she looked pale and slightly dazed and went immediately to the small oratory beside her chamber, where she dropped to her knees before the portable altar that always travelled with her with its precious triptych of the Virgin.

Each of the maids of honour had been given particular duties regarding the queen’s personal grooming – meticulous washing, trimming and brushing and the application of fragrant unguents – but I knew that if Catherine wished to pray, these treatments would have to wait. The wooden tub, draped in fresh white linen and set before the fire in the royal solar, had to be refreshed with hot water and re-draped three times before the queen felt that the preparation of her mind and soul for coronation could give way to the smoothing and soothing of her body and its ritual cleansing.

I waited with her in the little oratory, standing quietly in the deep shadows cast by the flickering wax pillar candles. When she rose from the prie-dieu and turned to leave, she noticed me there, smiled at me wistfully and moved close to whisper, ‘I do not feel worthy, Mette. I fear the filth of Burgundy will never be prayed away.’

There was no one else to hear us but, nevertheless, I replied in the same hushed whisper, ‘You have said yourself that the crown is your destiny, Mademoiselle. You did not allow that devil duke to snatch this marriage from you and now your coronation will demonstrate forever your high worth in the eyes of God.’

Although nothing had been said, I was intuitively aware of Catherine’s fervent hope that the crowning ritual would bring a spiritual rebirth that might banish once and for all the dark memories of the torrid abuse inflicted on her by Jean, Duke of Burgundy; appalling ill-treatment which had ended only with the violent death of the duke, murdered in the presence of, if not by the hand of, her brother Charles. I had prayed that her marriage to King Henry would allow her to set the past aside, but it seemed it might take more than that.

‘Perhaps the weight of the crown will finally instil a sense of right,’ I added gently; ‘that and the birth of an heir.’

She closed her eyes and crossed herself. ‘I have been begging Our Lady for both, Mette. I earnestly pray that she will intercede for me and that I will emerge from the abbey tomorrow fortified with God’s divine strength and ready to carry the heir that our countries demand.’

When her eyes opened, the expression of determination in their deep-blue depths startled me. Looking back, I had not anticipated how fundamentally the catharsis of coronation might affect her.

Over recent days two of the three Joannas (they all shared the extra syllable to their name) had formed a tight friendship, always keeping together and helping each other in the performance of their tasks. Joanna Belknap and Joanna Troutbeck were both from the north of England and seemed to possess a certain down-to-earth practicality. In order to differentiate between them, Catherine had decided to call them by their family names, a habit which made life easier for the rest of us but which did not please the third Joanna whose name was Coucy, a solitary girl not given to smiling readily or volunteering for anything. She complained out of Catherine’s hearing that she considered being addressed only by her surname to be disrespectful. When I suggested that being in the service of the queen and addressed by name at all could only be deemed an honour, she gave one of her habitual, dismissive sniffs. Through careful enquiry I discovered that the Coucy family held, among others, the estate and barony of Dudley, which included possession of a substantial castle, and that her father had served King Henry in France and was recently appointed a court official. The Coucys were what might be described as ‘top-rank’ and very conscious of the fact.

When all six young ladies came to dress Catherine on the morning of her coronation Coucy, sniffed and sneezed and complained about the penetrating chill of their allotted rooms at the top of the White Tower, but Eleanor Cobham remarked on the glorious view to be had from its windows.

‘They are calling it “coronation weather”, your grace,’ she told Catherine, kneeling to present the first of the queen’s fine white hose, embroidered with fleurs-de-lys to signify her French royal lineage. ‘From our chamber you can see across the River Thames and miles out over the countryside. I think today you might even be able to see as far as my father’s manor of Hever!’

Catherine merely smiled and raised her eyebrows, being distracted by Agnes who was polishing her long pale-blonde hair with a silken cloth to make it glossy, but Coucy gave another of her chronic sniffs and commented tartly, ‘Hever? I thought you came from some place with a borough in it, Cobham.’

‘Yes, my home is at Sterborough,’ Eleanor agreed equably, affecting not to notice the other girl’s scornful tone, or her use of the surname. Joanna Coucy had decided that, since she was to be addressed by her family name, she would call all her fellow maids of honour by theirs. ‘But my family has rents from more than one manor, as I am sure does yours. Hever is one of them.’

‘Not manors,’ responded Coucy scathingly. ‘My family has estates – and more than one of those.’

Catherine eased her foot gently into the toe of the pale hose and stretched out her leg for it to be rolled up. Without turning she said, ‘Is it not your task to raise my skirts, Coucy, to allow Eleanor to pull up the hose? And you might remember, while you boast of your estates, that they are granted to your father by the king and what is granted may also be withdrawn.’

Joanna Coucy flushed bright red, muttered an apology and carefully lifted the skirts of the queen’s chemise and chamber robe. I watched Eleanor duck her head to hide a smirk as she tied one cream satin garter and wondered how long Coucy would keep her place at the queen’s side.

Catherine wore two kirtles for her coronation – one of fine ivory Champagne linen directly over her chemise and the other of more substantial weight, for warmth when she was ceremonially stripped of her grand outer robes before her anointing. This second garment was a tunic of heavy white silk, lined with a layer of soft shaved lamb’s wool and sewn with tiny seed-pearls. It had tight sleeves with long trailing tippets of ermine. Around her neck was draped a white stole of the type worn by bishops and senior clergy, lavishly embroidered in shimmering gold thread. At the anointing, and before the crown was set on Catherine’s head, this stole would be removed to allow the sumptuous ivory velvet houppelande gown made for her in Paris to be drawn on and fastened with four fabulous diamond-studded clasps which were part of her French dower, followed by the crested, crimson, ermine-trimmed mantle of state, the train of which was twenty-feet long. Abbot Haweden of Westminster was due to officiate at the anointing, and he would keep the stole as a reward and a memento of his pivotal role in Catherine’s transformation from ordinary mortal to one of God’s divine representatives on earth.

In the Abbey Church of St Peter, I squeezed into the north transept among the officials of the royal household, where we had a clear view of the raised chancel and the high altar. There the carved and gilded throne stood on a stepped dais in the centre of a beautiful mosaic pavement, laid in squares and circles of brightly coloured stone and glass. Above it heraldic banners hung from the ceiling vault, showing the honours and devices of all the English Kings since William of Normandy. And so, as the ceremony began, I was able to raise my voice in loud approbation along with the great congregation of barons and ladies, when we were asked if we would have Catherine as our rightful queen. She looked modest and graceful in her embroidered white kirtle with her hair tumbling loose from a simple circlet of gold as she was escorted to each corner of the chancel by King Henry and the abbot and their demands for approval were swamped by loud shouts of ‘Aye, we will!’

Then she was led to the altar by the Archbishop of Canterbury, where she made her solemn vows, speaking the Latin words fluently and without mistake. A lump came to my throat as I watched her prostrate herself before the great gold crucifix while the choir sang an anthem of dedication. She lay on cushions with arms outstretched in total supplication and inside my own head I could almost hear her fervent prayers that a great and compassionate God would demonstrate her worthiness to be queen by removing her burden of guilt and granting her an heir for England’s crown.

Her maids of honour came forward to raise her up and remove the stole and circlet. While the choristers sang a plangent benediction, she stood waiting, head bowed, under a cloth of gold canopy held by the four highest-ranking noblewomen of the court. Then the archbishop advanced to anoint her with the holy chrism on her forehead, intoning solemn prayers of dedication and intercession. Another anthem was sung while the holy oil was carefully wiped from her skin with a soft cloth, which was carried to the altar and placed reverently in a jewelled pyx. Then she was robed in her coronation garb and taken in procession to be enthroned.

During this procession the train of Catherine’s heavy ceremonial mantle was carried three to each side by the maids of honour. Halfway across the chancel, without warning or apparent cause, Joanna Coucy suddenly tripped. By a supreme effort she managed to save herself from tumbling to the floor but not without jerking the mantle and pulling Catherine to a halt.

The procession resumed directly, but the gasp of dismay I had heard reminded me of when the Duke of Gloucester had tripped on the Dover shore. While all attention was on the king, who stepped forward to formally place Catherine in the throne, I kept my gaze fixed on the maid who walked last in the line of train-bearers, a pace behind Joanna Coucy. It was Eleanor Cobham and on her lips there played an enigmatic, smug little smile. I could not help suspecting that Eleanor had deliberately trodden on Joanna Coucy’s skirt and made her trip in order to pay her back for slighting her family earlier in the day. Eleanor Cobham may have been the youngest of the maids of honour but she was far from being the meekest.

A glorious fanfare of trumpets and the sound of soaring soprano voices raised in a triumphant ‘Vivat Regina!’ and ‘Long Live the Queen!’ announced the moment the crown was placed reverently on Catherine’s head by the archbishop. The crown was a precious and ancient relic of English history first used by Queen Edith, consort of the saint-king Edward the Confessor, who was buried behind the altar only yards from the coronation throne and whose shrine and sanctuary was a much-visited place of pilgrimage. We French often expressed scorn for the Saxon people who had been conquered by the armies of Normandy nearly four hundred years before, calling them uncouth and uncivilised, but if the workmanship of that crown was anything to go by such disparagement was sadly misplaced. Dozens of highly polished gems of every size and hue were set in a coronet of gold surmounted by pearl-studded cross-bars centred on a finial carrying a diamond the size of a goose’s egg. It was a crown just light enough for a lady’s head, but grand enough for an empress’s regalia and wearing it, with two gold sceptres placed in her hands, Catherine was transformed from a beautiful young girl into a regal figure of power and patronage, an icon of sovereignty. I could not tell what was going on in her head, but in mine a subtle alteration was taking place. I felt my eyes fill with unbidden tears. The image of the infant Catherine tiny and helpless at my breast seemed to be slipping from my mental grasp, to be supplanted by this awesome figure of authority, crowned with gold and precious stones and invested with the symbols of earthly and divine power.

King Henry did not attend Catherine’s coronation feast. He explained that it was because the rules of precedence dictated that if he were there she would not be the centre of attention, would not be served first and her new subjects would not do her full honour, being obliged to bow the knee to him first. Disappointed though she may have been, in his absence she was unquestionably Queen of the Feast. The highest nobles in the land acted as her carver, server, butler and cupbearer, while two earls knelt at her feet throughout the meal, holding her sceptres. The Earl of Worcester made an impressive spectacle riding up and down the centre of Westminster Hall on his richly caparisoned horse, ostensibly to keep order, and the Duke of Gloucester, in his role as Great Chamberlain of England, strode grandly about displaying his physique in a short sable-trimmed doublet of gold-embroidered red satin, brandishing his staff of office and directing the seemingly endless parade of dishes and subtleties.

In truth it was more of a pageant than a meal, a feast for the eyes rather than the stomach, as course after course was presented, each one more magnificent than the last and, because Lent had begun the previous week, all consisting of fish in one form or another. I had never seen so many different sea foods presented in so many guises. Anything that swam or crawled under water and could be hooked, trapped or netted had been turned into a culinary masterpiece; sturgeon, lamprey, crayfish, crab, eel, carp, pike, turbot, sole, prawns, roach, perch, chub – roasted, stewed, jellied, baked or fried, embellished with sauces or topped with pastry confections – culminating in a spectacular roasted porpoise riding on a sea of gilded pastry and crowned in real gold. It was all too much for me, but the great and good of the kingdom seated around me on the lower floor of the hall clearly relished it. From her royal dais, the new queen consort smiled and nodded at her subjects, admired the extraordinary skill of the cooks and, I noticed, consumed scarcely a morsel.

In the absence of her husband, seated beside the newly crowned queen was a pleasant-faced young man who also wore a crown; King James of Scotland who, although a monarch in his own right, did not outrank Catherine because he was a king without a kingdom. It was the first time they had met and his story was one which kept Catherine spellbound for much of the feast and earned her heartfelt sympathy. So much so that she regaled us with it at length the following day.

‘King James told me that there are warring factions in Scotland, just as there are in France and that his older brother, David, the heir to the throne, was starved to death in a castle dungeon by his uncle, the Duke of Albany. Fearing that James might also fall into Albany’s clutches, his father, King Robert, put him on a ship to France for safety. He was only twelve. Just think how frightened and lonely he must have been. And before he got near France, his ship was boarded by pirates off England. When they discovered his identity, they sold him to the English king, my own lord’s father, who then demanded that the Scots pay a vast ransom for him. When word of this was brought to King Robert, he fell into a seizure and died; so Albany achieved his evil ambition, took power in Scotland and the ransom has never been paid.’

At this point she gave me a meaningful look. She was thinking, as I was, of the parallels between this story and the civil wars between Burgundy and Orleans which had shaken the throne of France and led to her own marriage treaty, in which King Henry had supplanted her brother Charles as the Heir of France. However, she made no reference to it and continued her tale of the hostage king.

‘King James says the English have always been kind to him, particularly my own lord, the king’s grace, and the recent death of Albany has set the stage for the ransom to be paid. So, since under the rules of chivalry it is a queen’s prerogative to plead just causes, I mean to ask the King of England to instigate the King of Scots’ return to his kingdom.’ She clapped her hands with delight at the prospect of exerting her new powers.

‘Incidentally, little Joan,’ she turned to address Lady Joan Beaufort, who was gazing absent-mindedly out of the solar window, no doubt wishing she was galloping over wide-open spaces to the cry of the hunting horn, ‘King James made particular mention of you during the feast. He pointed you out to me, asked your name and who your parents were. I think you might have made a conquest there.’

Surprised at being addressed directly, Lady Joan went pink, but I think it was more from confusion at being caught day-dreaming than embarrassment at being singled out by the Scottish monarch. ‘Oh,’ was all she said, casting her eyes down as though she had no idea what the queen was talking about.

Catherine laughed. ‘I think most girls would be more excited by the attentions of a young, unmarried king than you appear to be! Perhaps if I told you he has recently purchased a new jet-black destrier from the Earl Marshal’s stud you might be a little more impressed?’

Joan’s eyes did light up at this. ‘Has he, your grace? How much did he pay for it?’

The queen spluttered with mingled mirth and exasperation. ‘I have no idea. You will have to ask him yourself, but you may have to wait a while because he departs tomorrow in the king’s train. King Henry fears that the Welsh border is too dangerous for ladies to visit at present, so he intends to go there first while we stay here at Westminster and make preparations to meet him further north. Belknap and Troutbeck, I want you to tell me all about the northern shires. Who are their leaders? What are their grievances and concerns? I am to join the king at a place called Kenil-wort.’ She stumbled slightly on the pronunciation of the English name and gazed enquiringly about the room. ‘Is that how you say it? Which of you can tell me about this place?’

Joanna Coucy was ready, as always, to air her knowledge. ‘It is the grandest of the Lancastrian palaces, your grace, situated right in the heart of England. I went there once with my father who had business at the duchy court. I believe the king spent his early childhood there. It was his mother’s favourite castle.’

‘Is that so, Coucy?’ Catherine beckoned to the girl. ‘Bring your stool nearer and reveal to me all you know about Kenil-wort and the king’s mother.’

‘Forgive me, your grace, but I believe it is pronounced Kenilworth,’ remarked Coucy, smirking as she picked up her stool to carry it across the room, deftly dodging Eleanor Cobham’s suddenly outstretched foot. Observing this, her second attempt to capsize the big-headed Joanna, I decided it was probably fortunate that, with her coronation duties over, the tricky Damoiselle Cobham would be returning home to Sterborough the following day.