The Lady of the Rivers Read Free Page B

doorways.
    ‘It is very beautiful,’ she says. ‘But I should not like to wear such a thing.’
    I pause and twirl before her in the bright sunlight from the arrowslit. The colours of my gown are brilliant: a skirt of dark blue and an underskirt of sharper turquoise, the skirts flaring from the high belt tied tight on my ribcage. The high henheaddress sits like a cone on my head and sprouts a veil of pale blue from the peak that drops down my back, concealing and enhancing my fair hair. I spread my arms to show the big triangular sleeves, trimmed with the most beautiful embroidery in gold thread, and I lift the hem to show my scarlet slippers with the upturned toes.
    ‘But you cannot work, or ride a horse, or even run in such a gown,’ she says.
    ‘It’s not for riding or working or running,’ I reply reasonably. ‘It’s for showing off. It is to show the world that I am young and beautiful and ready for marriage. It is to show that my father is so wealthy that I can wear gold thread on my sleeves and silk in my headdress. It shows that I am so nobly born that I can wear velvet and silk; not wool like a poor girl.’
    ‘I couldn’t bear to be showed off in such a thing.’
    ‘You wouldn’t be allowed to,’ I point out disagreeably. ‘You have to dress for your position in life; you would have to obey the law and wear browns and greys. Did you really think you were important enough to wear ermine? Or do you want your gold surcoat back? They say you were as fine as any knight in battle. You dressed like a nobleman then. They say that you loved your beautiful standard and your polished armour, and a fine gold surcoat over all. They say you were guilty of the sin of vanity.’
    She flushes. ‘I had to be seen,’ she says defensively. ‘At the front of my army.’
    ‘Gold?’
    ‘I had to honour God.’
    ‘Well anyway, you wouldn’t get a headdress like this if you put on women’s clothes,’ I say. ‘You would wear something more modest, like the ladies in waiting, nothing so high or so awkward, just a neat hood to cover your hair. And you could wear your boots under your gown, you could still walk about. Won’t you try wearing a gown, Joan? It would mean that they couldn’t accuse you of wearing men’s clothes. It is a sign of heresy for a woman to dress as a man. Why not put on a dress, and then they can say nothing against you? Something plain?’
    She shakes her head. ‘I am promised,’ she says simply. ‘Promised to God. And when the king calls for me, I must be ready to ride to arms again. I am a soldier in waiting, not a lady in waiting. I will dress like a soldier. And my king will call for me, any day now.’
    I glance behind us. A pageboy carrying a jug of hot water is in earshot. I wait till he has nodded a bow and gone past us. ‘Hush,’ I say quietly. ‘You shouldn’t even call him king.’
    She laughs, as if she fears nothing. ‘I took him to his coronation, I stood under my own standard in Reims cathedral when he was anointed with the oil of Clovis. I saw him presented to his people in his crown. Of course he is King of France: he is crowned and anointed.’
    ‘The English slit the tongues of anyone who says that,’ I remind her. ‘That’s for the first offence. The second time you say it, they brand your forehead so you are scarred for life. The English king, Henry VI, is to be called King of France, the one you call the French king is to be called the Dauphin, never anything but the Dauphin.’
    She laughs with genuine amusement. ‘He is not even to be called French,’ she exclaims. ‘Your great Duke Bedford says that he is to be called Armagnac. But the great Duke Bedford was shaking with fear and running around Rouen for recruits when I came up to the walls of Paris with the French army – yes, I will say it! – the French army to claim our own city for our king, a French king; and we nearly took it, too.’
    I put my hands over my ears. ‘I won’t hear you, and you