the bare ears and throat of her mother to the enormous tapestries hanging along the walls. Margaret wondered if she would recognize any of them. Like the servants, they were borrowed or leased for a few days only. She could almost hear her aunt’s thoughts clicking away like a little abacus. Her mother always said Marie had a hard heart, but she had won a king with it and all the luxury of his life.
Not for the first time, Margaret wondered what could have brought King Charles to Saumur Castle. She knew there would be no serious talk during the dinner, perhaps not even until the king had rested or hunted the following day. Margaret resolved to visit the balcony above the upper hall when she was allowed to go to bed. Her father took honoured guests in there to enjoy the great fire and a selection of his better wines. At the thought, she leaned closer to Yolande, just as the girl was trying to tweak her bare arm in pure mischief.
‘I’ll twist your ear and make you shriek if you do, Yolande,’ she muttered.
Her sister pulled her hand back sharply from where it had been creeping over the table. At fifteen, Yolande was perhaps her closest companion, though of late she had taken on the airs and graces of a young woman, telling Margaret pompously that she couldn’t play childish games any more. Yolande had even given her a beautiful painted doll, spoiling the gift with a dismissive comment on baby things she no longer needed.
‘Will you come up the back stairs with me after the feast, to listen at the balcony? By the Crow Room.’
Yolande considered, tilting her head slightly as she weighed her exciting new sense of adulthood against her desire to see the king speak to their father in private.
‘For a little while, perhaps. I know you get frightened in the dark.’
‘That’s you, Yolande, and you know it. I’m not afraid of spiders either, even the big ones. You’ll come, then?’
Margaret could sense her mother’s disapproving stare turned on her and she applied herself to some cut fruit on a bed of ice. The slender pieces were half-frozen and delicious and she could hardly remember when a meal had finished with such fine things.
‘I’ll come,’ Yolande whispered.
Margaret reached out and rested her hand on her sister’s, knowing better than to risk her mother’s wrath with another word. Her father was telling some tedious story about one of his tenant farmers and the king chuckled, sending a ripple of laughter down the table. The meal had surely been a success, but Margaret knew he hadn’t come to Saumur for wine and food. With her head low, she looked up the table at the king of France. He looked so very ordinary, but John, Louis and Nicholas were apparently fascinated by him, ignoring their food at the slightest comment from his royal lips. Margaret smiled to herself, knowing she would mock them for it in the morning. It would pay them back for hunting her like a little fox.
3
The Crow Room was silent as Margaret moved across it in bare feet. She’d spent part of the previous summer sketching the floor in charcoal on the back of an old map, marking each groaning joint or board with tiny crosses. The light from the fire in the upper hall spilled up over the balcony and she crossed it like a dancer, taking exaggerated steps in a pattern that matched the one she saw in her memory. The crows remained silent and she reached the balcony in triumph, turning back to gesture to Yolande.
Lit by flickering gold and shadow, her sister gestured in frustration, but she had caught the same illicit excitement and crept out across the polished boards, wincing with Margaret as they groaned under her. The two girls froze at every sound, but their father and the king were oblivious. The fire huffed and crackled, and an old house always moved and shifted in the night. René of Anjou didn’t look up as Yolande settled herself beside her sister and peered down through the upright wooden balusters on to the scene below.
The upper hall had survived the stripping of Saumur almost intact. Perhaps because it remained the heart and centre of the family seat, its tapestries and oak furniture had been safe from the men of Paris. The fireplace was big enough for a grown man to walk into without dipping his head. A log the size of a small couch burned merrily there, heating black iron pokers laid across it until the tips glowed gold. King Charles sat in a huge padded chair drawn close to the flames, while her father stood and fussed with cups and bottles. Margaret watched in fascination as René plunged one of the pokers into a goblet of wine for his king, sending up a hiss of steam and sweetening the air. She could smell cloves and cinnamon and her mouth quirked as she imagined the taste of it. The heat did not reach as far as her hiding place, unfortunately. The stones of the castle sucked warmth away, especially at night. Margaret shivered as she sat there with her legs curled up to one side, ready to dart away from the light if her father looked up.
Both men had changed their clothes, she saw. Her father wore a quilted sleeping robe over loose trousers and felt shoes. In the flickering light she thought it made him look like a sorcerer, gesturing with steam and fire over the cups. The king wore a heavy garment of some shimmering material, belted at his waist. The fanciful idea pleased her, that she was witness to some arcane rite between magic workers. Her father’s unctuous tones shattered the illusion.
‘You have brought them to this position, Your Majesty, no other. If you had not secured Orléans and strengthened the army into the force it has become, they would not be pleading for a truce now. This is a sign of our strength and their weakness. They have come to us, Your Majesty, as supplicants. It is all to your glory and the glory of France.’
‘Perhaps, René, perhaps you are right. Yet they are cunning and clever, like Jews almost. If I were dying of thirst and an Englishman offered me a cup of water, I would hesitate and look for the advantage it brought him. My father was more trusting, and they repaid his goodwill with deceit.’
‘Your Majesty, I agree with you. I hope I am never so trusting as to shake the hand of an English lord without checking my pockets afterwards! Yet we have the report of your ambassador. He said their king hardly spoke to him at all and he was rushed in and out of the royal presence as if the room was on fire. This Henry is not the man his father was, or he would have renewed their wanton destruction years ago. I believe this is an offer made from weakness — and in that weakness, we can regain lands lost to us. For Anjou, Your Majesty, but also for France. Can we afford to ignore such an opportunity?’
‘That is
The king drained his cup, his long nose dipping into the vessel. He made a face as he reached the dregs and wiped a purple line from his lips with his sleeve. He gestured idly, lost in thought as Margaret’s father refilled the cup and brought another poker out of the rack in the fire.
‘I do not want to strengthen their claim with one more drop of French blood, Lord Anjou. Will you have me disinherit my own children for a foreign king? And for what? Little Anjou? Maine? A truce? I would rather gather my army and kick them black and blue until they fall into the sea. That is the answer I want to give, not a truce. Where is the honour in that? Where is the dignity while they sell wheat and salt peas in Calais and polish their boots on French tables? It is not to be borne, René.’
Above, Margaret watched her father’s expression change, unseen by the gloomy king. René was thinking hard, choosing his words with great care. She knew her mother had been feeding him oil and senna pods for his constipation, one legacy of his imprisonment he seemed to have brought home with him. The heavy white face was flushed with wine or the heat from the fire and he did look congested, she thought, a man stuffed full of something unpleasant. Her dislike only deepened and, against reason, she hoped he would be disappointed, whatever it was he wanted.
‘Your Majesty, I am at your command in all things. If you say it is to be war, I will have the army march against the English in spring. Perhaps we will have the luck of Orléans once again.’
‘Or perhaps the luck of Agincourt,’ King Charles replied, his voice sour. For a moment, his arm jerked, as if he was considering throwing his cup into the fire. He controlled himself with a visible effort. ‘If I could be certain of
