Whispers at Court

by Blythe Gifford

  ‘No, my lady, but they ride for Dover today to greet the king.’ He paused when she looked puzzled. ‘You do not go with them?’

  If she had not been so distracted by Marc, she would have realised. The French king would land, as did everyone who crossed the Channel, at the port of Dover, guarded by Losford Castle. Yet King Edward had not asked her to return to welcome King Jean to England’s shore. Did he, too, believe she was not ready for her role? ‘I will not be home until...spring.’

  ‘Then, with your permission, I will travel with them and begin work now. It might even be complete when you arrive.’

  ‘I see.’ Of course. The plan was one she should have anticipated. The mason could not travel alone and it could be weeks before there would be another chance for an escort. ‘Yes, that is wise.’

  He paused, as if waiting.

  ‘Yes,’ she said again. ‘As long as the king has released you, you may leave.’

  ‘But your mother’s effigy, my lady. What would you have me do?’

  She had not found the sketches. She had not even searched for them. Again, in all these ways, she had proven unworthy of her parents’ trust. ‘Use the one she was looking at last.’

  ‘But, my lady—’

  ‘You have done this many times. I never have.’ A harsh tone. For him, or for herself? She felt as if Marc’s scent still clung to her. ‘Do as you please.’

  He tilted his head, puzzled. ‘You do not wish to approve the design?’

  No. She did not. She did not want to look at pictures of her parents, already transformed into unmoving rock, looking back at her, judging her for violating every lesson they had taught.

  She waved her hands, as if to shoo a fly from her room. ‘I’ll look at it when I return. In the spring.’

  ‘By then, it will be too late to change.’

  ‘Then it will not be changed.’ Her words were clipped. ‘You spoke to her about it. I did not. Do what you think represents her wishes.’

  Nodding, he mumbled his yes, my lady and left.

  And only after he was safely out of earshot did she pound her fist against the table and weep. And she was not certain which loss sparked the tears—her parents, her illusions, or Marc.

  * * *

  Late in the morning of St. Stephen’s Day, Marc mounted his horse, ready to leave Windsor, Cecily and all of Angleterre.

  He and Enguerrand were surrounded by squires and servants, one of the masons who had worked on the palace, another court member he didn’t know. And dozens of Anglais knights. He wasn’t certain whether the number needed was to honour the king or to guard the hostages.

  He leaned close to Enguerrand. ‘Did you see her?’

  Enguerrand shook his head. ‘Not since...’ Not since I left her bed. ‘You?’

  Marc shook his head. As he intended, he had not seen Cecily and was glad of it. No need to fight that battle again. The next time, he might lose.

  Wordless, they mounted and turned the horses towards the gate. Just before they left, Enguerrand looked back over his shoulder and raised his hand in a wave.

  Marc gritted his teeth, gripped his reins and kept his eyes on the road ahead. The way home.

  Home. The word conjured no vision. His home had been on a horse, in battle. Even the castle of his youth belonged to de Coucy, not to him. Marc was born of a chevalerie family, yes, but wealthy in blood only. Everything else had been earned. By his sword. By his strength.

  Weakness meant death.

  Now, as they rode east towards the sea, he struggled to summon memories of his country. The green of spring, bright enough to burn his eyes. The cliff crowned by de Coucy’s castle, high above the river. These things seemed strangely distant now, as if he had left them not when he came to England, but when he went to war.

  No, when he said ‘home’ now, all he could see was Cecily. Someone he intended never to see again.

  * * *

  In the weak sun of the late morning, Cecily and Isabella stole away to the top of the Round Tower, escaping their attendants and the other ladies, to watch the party depart.

  As Lord de Coucy, Marc and the rest rode out of the new Lower Ward gatehouse, the French count looked back and waved.

  Marc did not.

  She glanced at Isabella, who clenched her leather-gloved hands together.

  The princess was adept at cloaking her feelings behind a regal smile, but she must be mourning de Coucy’s departure as Cecily mourned Marc’s. Still, for both of them, this time apart would break the Yuletide spell. When Enguerrand returned with his king, Isabella would have found a new amusement.

  And Cecily? She would soon be married. She would force herself to forget.

  Yet she stared at the snowy mud churned by the destriers’ hooves long after the line of horses had disappeared.

  Isabella broke the silence. ‘They are gone.’

  Cecily nodded.

  It was over.

  Isabella, silent, turned away as gentle, lazy flakes of snow drifted from the sky. Cecily pulled her cloak closer and followed, searching for something unimportant to say. ‘Well, we will have good account of the trip,’ she began. ‘The queen sent her chronicler with them. Froissart will give us every detail.’

  Mindless chatter. And Cecily never chattered.

  Not even a nod from Isabella. ‘They will be cold,’ she said, turning against the wind to gaze in the direction they had ridden.

  An echo of her own thoughts. She pictured Marc in cold armour, with a wet cloak, and worried.

  ‘Let us do something gay,’ she said, touching Isabella’s arm. Isabella had forced her to gaiety. She could return the favour, for both of them. ‘Let’s find Robert the Fool. He will make us laugh.’

  Yet Isabella only shrugged, as if her energy had departed with Enguerrand.

  That was not her way. She was always ready to stretch out her hand, and her purse, to fill her life with clothes and jewels, minstrels and dancing.

  But not today. Staring back at the gate, she shook her head. ‘I don’t know what I am going to do.’

  ‘About what?’

  Her eyes met Cecily’s. Not the eyes of a princess, but of a woman. ‘About him.’

  ‘You are going to do nothing.’ Cecily shook her arm. ‘Remember what you said? The Yule season is short and a time for us to enjoy ourselves. So I played with that surly French hostage, just as you did with Enguerrand. Now, the season is over. We will put it behind us and go on.’

  As if saying so could make it possible.

  She held her breath, hoping her friend would smile again, shrug off her melancholy and agree. Waited as if for a sign. If Isabella could forget, surely Cecily could, too.

  Instead, Isabella shook her head and looked at Cecily with sad, hollow eyes. ‘I want to be with him.’

  Such simple words. Which meant something impossible.

  ‘You will be with him in London.’ The court was to be on the move again. In five days, they would all be reunited in London to welcome the French king in royal style. Maybe Marc would not leave immediately. Maybe she would see him again...

  ‘You know that is not what I mean. That is not what you want, is it?’

  ‘What I want?’ Things she could not even speak. Things she certainly did not want Isabella to suspect. Cecily attempted a laugh. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The time you have spent with him. The way you look at him.’

  Was it so obvious to Isabella what she had barely admitted to herself? ‘You were the one who told me to be volage and giddy with someone who could never be considered a match. It was only a game, for me as well as for you.’ As if her insistence could make it so.

  Isabella shook her head. ‘No. No, it was not. You see, I have...done things...’ She pursed her lips and closed her
eyes.

  I know you would do nothing to disappoint your parents. The queen had said those words to Cecily. And Cecily had assured the queen for herself and for her own daughter. Surely, surely Isabella would not—

  ‘What things? What have you done, Isabella?’

  Wide eyes now, meeting hers. ‘I have lain with him.’

  And Cecily’s tongue turned to stone, for what she had feared the most, and tried in vain to prevent, had come to pass.

  Distracted by Marc, caught up in her own emotions, far from preventing this, she had, no doubt, made it possible.

  Taking a breath, she tried to think. What if... ‘Are you with...?’ How could she even ask? Kings, princes, dukes and earls could father bastards with impunity. Even with admiration. A woman could not. And the daughter of the king? It was beyond thinking. And yet, she must ask. She must know in order to help. ‘Child?’

  ‘No. I don’t know. I don’t think so. It was only last night.’

  Last night. While Cecily had wrestled with the same desires, the same feelings, certain that Marc was all in the world she would ever want. No, she could not shame Isabella for sins she herself had nearly shared.

  She put an arm around her friend’s shoulders, shielding her from the wind. Nothing more could be said once they went inside. Ears were everywhere. ‘We will wait then. Wait and see.’

  Isabella shook her head, violently. ‘Even if I am not, I want to be his wife.’

  Cecily opened her mouth to list the objections. He is a Frenchman. A hostage. Below you in rank. And then, did not waste the wind. Too late for arguments now, for her or for the princess.

  Enguerrand and Isabella will be apart for some days, she had said to Marc. As if absence was a solution. It would be. It must be. ‘Your parents? You have said nothing to them, have you?’

  ‘How can I? They have never denied me anything, but this...’ She sighed. ‘Yet Father has been hospitable, has he not?’ She perked up. ‘Perhaps in time...’

  ‘But the queen, surely she would...hesitate?’ The queen who had never fully recovered from the battle over her son’s marriage. Who had begged for Cecily’s help. How could Cecily face her now? ‘Besides, if you married, you would have to go to France.’

  ‘Father has already agreed to consider restoring de Coucy’s English lands,’ she said, with a lifted chin. ‘We could stay here.’

  Only love could be so blind. Certainly Marc wanted only to return home to walk on earth he did not own. De Coucy was one of France’s most powerful lords. He ruled his lands from one of the strongest castles in Christendom. No man would exchange that for a few acres in the trackless north of England. ‘And de Coucy?’ She must suggest, gently. ‘Does he want the same?’

  ‘Well, I know that with King Jean’s return, he is no longer bound by the treaty to stay. But he has not said...I haven’t asked...’

  Cecily sighed. ‘Well, there’s nothing for us to do until...later.’ Nothing but to pray the princess was not with child and hope for God’s mercy on both of them.

  Isabella nodded, looking miserable. ‘Not a word of this, Cecily. To anyone.’

  And yet, as they descended the stairs into the shelter of the Tower’s walls, the one thing Cecily wanted to do was to tell Marc.

  And to thank him.

  For she had not saved herself from Isabella’s fate last night. In this, too, she had failed. It had been Marc who pulled away, and Marc’s honour, honour she had long disdained, that had saved them both.

  Chapter Fourteen

  With the end of the Yuletide celebrations, the court moved back to London. King Jean had returned to captivity by making a processional entry to the city, accompanied by two hundred French chevaliers.

  And thirty wild boars.

  ‘I’m not certain I can tell the difference,’ Cecily said, archly. She had scorned the French so for years. If her words turned hard again, might she hope her heart could do the same?

  The other ladies laughed. Isabella did not. And Cecily felt as petty as when she had tricked Marc at the disguising.

  The French king settled into the Savoy Palace, and though the Twelve Days of Christmas were over, the royal entertainments continued into frozen January.

  Together, Isabella and Cecily counted the days until her woman’s time and watched for any signs that she might be with child. And when King Edward hosted his royal ‘guest’ at Westminster, Isabella, crying, refused to leave her bed, forcing Cecily to concoct a story about her sudden, but not dangerous, illness. De Coucy, it seemed, along with the other noble hostages held to ensure the French king’s return, was still in England, for reasons only kings would know. So after the event, Cecily had to recount exactly how Lord de Coucy looked and every syllable of his smoothly worded concern about the princess’s health, which, Cecily knew, was asking more than he could say.

  She and de Coucy had exchanged not a whisper beyond his polite, public concern. She had not even asked whether Marc de Marcel was still in England. No doubt he had sailed back to France. She was not privy to the conversations of diplomats, so she had heard no details of the coming or going of any individual hostage.

  As the days went on, they still could not be certain whether the princess carried de Coucy’s child. Isabella still brooded about the man.

  Cecily would brood no more. Neither about her parents nor about Marc de Marcel. She was ready to release the past and its griefs and to marry any man the king decreed.

  He was still a cipher, this future husband, and somehow, she hoped he would remain so, even after they had wed. It seemed that she had lost, one by one, everyone she had cared for. Perhaps that was the reason her parents had stressed duty and suppressed emotion. They must have been trying to prepare her for the life they had led, the life that would be hers.

  And yet, for that short time, someone had looked at her and seen not just a countess, but a woman. Not just a woman, but a person. Seen so much that she had struggled to hide from the world. It had been sweet.

  And dreadful.

  * * *

  One cold night in January, the former mayor of London, intent upon his own importance, decided to entertain King Jean. With King Edward’s blessing, he planned an extravagant evening in his own house for the Kings of England and France, and their retinues, an illustration of the power of London’s merchants, as well as her warriors.

  The princess could hide no longer and her preparations were exhaustive, for she must finally face de Coucy again.

  ‘If I see him, what will I say?’ Isabella asked.

  ‘You must not worry,’ Cecily said, straightening the tippets that dangled from the princess’s sleeves. She had hoped Isabella’s Yuletide madness would fade, but here was proof it had not. ‘You look beautiful.’

  Not an answer, but she had no answers for her friend.

  Cecily, of course, would never have to ask that question, never see Marc again. But if, in some far distant, dreamed-of future, she did, what would she say?

  I missed you.

  No. He was a French hostage. Someone who had been useful to her, not someone she cared about.

  Instead, this night, in a house only a fraction of the size of Windsor’s Hall, Cecily spoke pleasantly to each of the unmarried lords at court and even danced with a widowed earl from the West Country, whose accent was more incomprehensible than that of the French hostages.

  What would it be like to share a bed with this one?

  She tried to imagine, but instead, Marc’s unwelcome image rose before her, along with a strange sense of regret. Isabella, at least, had a memory to cherish. While Cecily—

  No. She was, truly, thankful for Marc’s honour.

  As Isabella had expected, Lord de Coucy was at the evening’s event, more ebullient than ever, singing, dancing, as if making King Jean feel welcome and ente
rtained was his personal responsibility.

  Yet throughout the evening, Isabella and Enguerrand did not dance or sing or even speak together, which meant that both of them were deliberately avoiding each other. Cecily hoped that was not as obvious to the rest of the court as it was to her.

  She turned her attention to the rest of the crowd.

  This was the first time Cecily had been able to study the French king and she tried to see him through Marc’s admiring eyes, a king truly worthy of the title, the most honourable man in Christendom, but she could not picture him besieged by English knights, swinging a sword and shield. With his reddish hair and prominent nose, he looked to her eyes more like a peevish clerk than a royal monarch. King Edward, older, imposing, overshadowed him as they sat side by side.

  Her gaze wandered the room, full of newly arrived French chevaliers who had accompanied the king. Despite her sharp remarks at the procession, she no longer saw them as faceless enemies, but now as ordinary men, no better or worse, perhaps, than their English enemies.

  Then, across the room, she saw one tall, broad and blond, standing apart from the others, only pretending to be at ease.

  Just as he had weeks before when they first met.

  Marc de Marcel.

  * * *

  As Cecily came closer, Marc forced himself to stand rigid. Yet he was more afraid of this delicate, unarmed femme Anglaise than of all les goddams with swords and arrows.

  He had time to prepare, for she did not come directly. No one would suspect that she crossed the room to meet him, for she chatted with one, then another on her way, meandering as a stream might, seemingly without purpose, but inevitably towards the sea.

  He marshalled his defences. They had left it behind at Windsor, this thing between them, along with the Christmas season and their ruined plans to separate Enguerrand and Isabella. Now, Lady Cecily was again an English countess. And he, nothing more than a French hostage.

  And, even to himself, a lousy liar.

  And when she finally stood before him, all he could do was stare at her wide-set eyes and the arched brows that he had seen every night in his dreams. Her dark hair had spilled across his hands. He knew the taste of the pale flesh of her neck. And more—