The Forbidden Queen Read Free

indifference to my plight. ‘Have you made confession?’
    ‘Yes, Mother.’
    ‘You will spend two hours on your knees before the altar. You will learn the value of the Greater Silence andyou will keep the rules. If you persist, Katherine, I will put you in a cell of your own, away from your sister.’
    I shuddered, my mind full of the horror of that threatened isolation. I made my penance, my knees sore and my anguish great as I knelt in the silent, dark-shadowed church, but I learned a hard lesson. I never broke the rule again, the fear of separation from Michelle a far greater deterrent than any whipping. My mind did not have the strength to encompass such shattering loneliness. So I did not speak, but I wept silently against Michelle’s robust shoulder, until I learned that tears were of no value. There was no escape for us from the dank walls and rigid rules of Poissy.
    ‘You will not speak,’ the Prioress admonished. ‘Neither do I wish to hear you weeping. Give thanks to God for His goodness in giving you this roof over your head and food in your mouth.’
    The silent threat was all too apparent. I wept no more.
    Thus was the tenor of my young days as I grew into adolescence, becoming no more poised or self-reliant as the years of my life crawled past. I learned to control my emotions, my features and every word I uttered, in fear that I might give offence. I had no map or chart to guide me in what love, or even affection, might mean. How to measure it, how to respond to it.
    How could a child, who had never tasted the warmth of her mother’s arms or the casual affection of a father, or even the studied care of a governess, understand thepower, the delights of love given freely and unconditionally? I did not know love in all its intricacies.
    All that was made plain to me in those years was that to keep my feet on a narrow path and obey the dictates of those in authority over me earned me recognition and, very occasionally, praise.
    ‘I hear that you have learned to play the lute with some minor skill,’ the Prioress observed.
    ‘Yes, Mother.’ I flushed with pleasure.
    ‘That is good.’ She eyed my heated cheeks. ‘But pride is a sin. You will say three Aves and a Paternoster before Vespers.’
    If I tried hard enough to follow the rules, to live as good a life as the Prioress expected, would I not become a creature worthy of love? Perhaps my father the King would recognise me and lavish affection on me. Perhaps the Queen would grow to love me and smile on me. Perhaps someone would rescue me from Poissy so that I might live as a Valois princess should live, to my immature mind, wrapped around with luxury, with silk robes and a soft bed.
    I could never control my dreams of a better future. My heart remained a useless, tender thing, yearning for love, even when my childish dreams of rescue came to naught. For no one came to release me from my convent cell. No viable husband appeared on my horizon, however obedient I might be.
    I did not see the Queen again for more years than I could count.
    Then, when I was nearing my fifteenth year, Isabeau, our unpredictable and absent mother, found her way back to Poissy. I was summoned to her presence, where I went, drawing on all my hard-learned composure. I no longer had Michelle, now wed to our Burgundian cousin, to stand at my side, and regretted it.
    ‘You have grown, Katherine,’ she observed. ‘In the circumstances I suppose I must open my coffers for some new garments for you.’
    Her gaze travelled over me, from the coarse cloth that strained over my developing body down to the well-worn leather on my feet. Voluptuously plump, her own extravagant curves clothed in silk and damask, the Queen’s mouth tightened at the prospect of spending money on any project not for her own pleasure. But then, startling me, she smiled, stepped close and took my chin in her hand, to lift my face to the weak light struggling through the high window slit in the nuns’