Katerine firmed her lips, but without hesitation and setting an example, she gathered her skirts, eased through the aperture and stepped out on to the ladder, barefoot. The soldier took her bundle and threw it down to be caught by one of the others. Her maid followed, and then two of the girls. Petronella backed away, shaking her head like a wall-eyed horse, until Lady St Maur roughly grabbed her arm, gave her a cuff worthy of a fishwife, and almost pushed her out. Her cries as she stepped down the rungs carried up to the other girls.
‘Oh God, oh God, Jesus and His Mother save me, save me!’
Jeanette was next. She tossed her bundle out and squeezed through the window arch on to the ladder. It wasn’t that far from the ground, little more than the ladders she had scrambled up and down in the orchards at Donington when picking fruit – work for servants, her mother said, and no place for a lady, but she hadn’t cared a jot. Tucking her chemise between her legs and stuffing her shoes inside the top of the garment, she made her way down the shaky rungs with confident agility, and even jumped the last one to the ground.
Thomas Holland was standing near the base of the ladder and gave her a brief smile, although his eyes were already on the next lady descending. ‘Bravely done,’ he said.
‘I’m not scared,’ Jeanette said proudly, then flicked a superior glance at Petronella who had collapsed in a weeping huddle. God help her indeed if she ever had to face the fires of hell.
‘I do not imagine you are,’ he answered. ‘I hazard you would pass any test.’
She could not tell if he was mocking her for his face was turned away as he helped Joan Bredon to the ground, followed by Hawise. Jeanette removed her shoes from her bodice and put them on her feet.
Holland gestured to another knight among the group. ‘Sir Otto will take you all to safety.’
Lady St Maur was the last to descend the ladder, coughing, but still intrepid. Smoke drifted from the window above her like the trail of an autumn leaf burn.
Otto Holland opened his arms in a shepherding gesture. ‘Come, ladies. We shall find you accommodation for the rest of the night. Stay together, stay with me.’
Two more household knights joined him to escort the women a short distance to an open area where tents had been emptied of soldiers to make room for the King and Queen and others displaced by the fire. The King had a comforting arm around his wife’s waist, but Philippa’s expression was brave and calm. One hand was cupped protectively over her womb. Nearby, her two small daughters sheltered under the wing of a nurse’s cloak.
Sir Otto placed a cup of hot wine in Jeanette’s hand, and as she sipped the steaming liquid, excitement fizzed inside her like small sparks. She gazed round, all her senses heightened. She had survived potential death and was standing outside under the stars at midnight, drinking wine. Some of the other girls were still crying, but they were milksops. Sir Otto escorted the ladies to the tents that had been made ready, and in due course took his leave with a bow, while another knight, Sir Henry de la Haye, remained behind on guard.
The girls gathered in their tent and chattered for a while. Jeanette joined in at first, but eventually retreated to the soldier’s pallet that was to be her bed for the rest of the night. Stroking the coarse cover, she wondered what it would be like to be a knight and live like this, camping in the open, with all the perils and freedoms of being male. To wear armour and ride a warhorse through the streets, harness jingling, people casting flowers under her stallion’s ringing hooves. Or she might not return from battle, of course, but perish in brave and tragic nobility. That particular notion, born of the tales that she had been hearing at the Queen’s feet, felt romantic and poignant, with an aching sensation that almost brought her to tears, but at the same time held their own sort of perfection.
At dawn, the court moved to the guest house of the Abbey of St Bernard several miles upriver from the main dock. Jeanette was last into the covered cart, having wandered off to look at the devastation wrought by the fire. The King’s soldiers and neighbouring households had eventually managed to douse the blaze, but not before great damage had been done to the lower room where the interior was pitch-black with soot and scorched half-eaten beams. That no one had died was being touted as a miracle. The fire seemed to have been caused by a broken candle that had fallen from a table into a basket of dry kindling and gone unnoticed as people retired to their sleeping quarters.
Gazing at the destruction, Jeanette’s previous excitement was flattened by reality – how easily they could have suffocated in their beds.
She had seen the household knights from a distance that morning, breaking their fast in the open as the carts were readied to take the royal entourage to St Bernard’s. Lacking sleep, filthy from their efforts, they were joking together nevertheless in tired but tight camaraderie. No glances werespared for the ladies; everything was business, and she was a little envious.
‘Jeanette, come, come, girl, we’ve been looking all over for you!’ Katerine of Salisbury raised her velvet skirts fastidiously above the puddled ground as she joined her. ‘Why are you the one who always goes missing? What in God’s name are you doing here?’ Her sapphire eyes were fierce with censure.
Jeanette turned to face her frown. ‘I wanted to see what the fire had done,’ she said. ‘I wanted to know.’
‘Well, now you do,’ Katerine snapped. ‘Let that be a lesson to always check the candles – never trust the servants. Make haste, everyone is waiting – and hold up your gown! The laundresses will never be able to remove that mud.’
As if that was what mattered, Jeanette thought irritably. Katerine of Salisbury was reckoned a great lady and exemplar for the young girls in the household. She was beautiful in the glittering way of a hard, stone jewel, and as the mother of several sons and daughters had provided her husband, Lord William Montagu, with the required dynasty. She was an accomplished military wife, efficient in all things, and courageous, as she had demonstrated last night. Her husband was one of the King’s closest friends and rode in high favour at court, as did Katerine herself. Jeanette was wary of her, especially when she got that sharp brightness in her eye.
Sighing, she followed Katerine to the cart, and hoped their journey wasn’t going to be long. She hated the idea of being cooped up with the other women like so many hens in a cage. She wasn’t a hen and never would be.
4
Antwerp, Flanders, December 1338
The sun cast stripes across the frosty grass, glittering the silver with icy gold and gilding the pavilions of the lords and knights who had gathered to tourney in celebration of the birth, four weeks ago, of the King and Queen’s new son, baptised Lionel after one of King Arthur’s knightly heroes.
Jeanette had never seen so many depictions of lions in one place before. They decorated banners and shields and barding. People sported lion badges on their clothes and woven into the fabric itself, or embroidered on hems and cuffs and belts. There were hats decorated with lions, and garters and shoes. The wafer sellers and hot pie vendors were hawking lion-shaped confections and pastries, all to celebrate the baby prince.
The King had been absent from court well into the autumn, busy about the matter of gathering allies and raising funds to aid his war with France and seeking support for his claim to the French throne, but had returned to celebrate his son’s birth and to spend the Christmas festivities with his family.
Jeanette sat in the stands that had been erected for the eager spectators. Her breath emerged in puffs of white vapour, but bundled up in her fur-lined cloak she was not cold, and extrawarmth rose from the hot stones placed beneath the benches occupied by the Queen and her household with a clear view of the lists. A squire sent a basket of sweetmeats down the line and Jeanette selected and nibbled on a delicious morsel of almond marchpane.
She was tingling with anticipation, for although she had attended tourneys before at court, she had been younger – a child. Now of marriageable age, she could take part as an eligible damsel of the court. A basket filled with artificial flowers crafted from fabric and wire sat in her lap, ready to be cast at the heroes as they rode on to the field. Having spent most of the autumn cooped up in the Abbey of St Michael, attending on Queen Philippa while she awaited Lionel’s birth, Jeanette’s anticipation was as keen as a knife. Of course, she adored the baby. He was so sweet with his huge blue eyes and a coppery glisten to the hair beginning to grow on his little round head. She loved to hold him, sing to him and rock his cradle, but even so, there were many more things in the world to see and do that did not involve babies and sewing.
Occasionally, she had managed to escape when the older ladies were preoccupied with the Queen or too comfortable around the fire with their hot wine to bother about her, but she had had to choose her moments wisely and not abscond for too long, lest she be reined in and forbidden to go out at all.
Her greatest success was spending time in the mews visiting her merlin, Athena, which was at least viewed as being a legitimate occupation. The small, creamy-brown falcon had been a gift from Queen Philippa when Jeanette was six years old, and she had learned the art of falconry and hunting with her. Athena had already been fully grown when she came into Jeanette’s keeping, and she was overdue a new bird, but she remained fiercely loyal to the little merlin, and loved her with every fibre of her heart. She whispered her thoughts to her, hersecrets and desires. Who she liked, who she didn’t. How much was unfair and unworthy and boring.
