Saddest of all, Henry had never even set eyes on the son he had so desired.
All the structure of my life lay in pieces, the pattern of my life as Henry’s wife and Queen of England.
What was expected of me now?
‘Do I go to him at Vincennes?’ I asked John next morning. Surely I could make this decision for myself. Of course I would go. As my last office to him as his wife, I would kneel beside his coffin and pray for his departed soul.
‘No,’ John replied. ‘They will have already begun the journey back to England. I advise you to make your way to Rouen.’ I had found him in the entrance hall, already dressed to leave, shrugging into a heavy jerkin, pulling on his gauntlets, outside in the courtyard, his horses and entourage already drawn up. ‘I’ll leave James here. He’ll escort you when you’re ready.’
So I would go to Rouen. The customary flutter of apprehension that attacked me when all was not clear was beating against my temples, warning me of imminent pain. I realised that I had not even asked John what provision had been made for me on my return to England. I had no idea what would be expected of me there.
‘What will I do?’ I asked Isabeau in despair. My mother was already making her way towards the chapel for her daily petitioning of the Almighty, but she turned and considered, head tilted, a little smile on her mouth.
‘Do you not know? You are more important now, Katherine, than you ever were before the English King’s death. Are you not the living, breathing symbol of all that was agreed between Henry and your father?’ She sneered. ‘They’ll put you on a pedestal, place a halo around your head and clothe you in cloth of gold. Glorious motherhood personified.’
Her brutal cynicism horrified me. ‘I can’t…’
‘Of course you can.’ A sour twist of her mouth, wrecking the smile, coated Isabeau’s words in disdain. ‘What is your alternative? Better that than to be driven to return here to France, to live out your days in penury in company with a bitter, aging woman and a witless man.’
It shook me into a terrible reality I could not envisage.
As advised—or instructed—by Lord John, and accompanied by a silent James, for once robbed of all his high spirits, I travelled to Rouen. I was there, in the position prepared for me at the door of the great cathedral, when the remains of King Henry of England arrived.
I watched the scene unfold, all in sharp detail but as if at a great distance from me. The vast doors had been opened wide to receive the procession. It was truly magnificent: a mighty host of mourners. If I had not realised before the honour in which Henry of Lancaster was held in Normandy, I did now. Bells tolled, clergy chanted, while beneath it all simmered a dark and doleful sense of doom as a carriage drawn by four burnished black horses came to a halt.
A canopy of rich silk was held aloft. Behind it they came, John of Bedford, James of Scotland, the Earl of Warwick, all the English lords and royal household who had been there at my husband’s death, sombre in black. They bowed to me as they approached and stopped.
I walked forward, my limbs stiff, to where the bier lay draped in black silk. My errant heart, lodged in my throat, beat louder still. For upon it there was an effigy, a more than life-sized effigy, of Henry, fashioned in leather. I took in the details of it as if it were Henry himself, clad in royal robes, furnished with crown, gold sceptre and orb.
Slowly I placed my hand on the arm, as if it might be a living body. It was warm from the sun, but rigid and unresponsive. How could this stiff facsimile contain all Henry’s exuberant life-force? The austere features would never again warm into a smile that could pierce my heart as it had in that long-distant pavilion, with the hound and the hunting cat, at Meulan. How strange that now I was free to touch him without redress—except that this creature was not real.
‘Is he…?’ I tried to ask. How ignominious it would have been for him if he had been dismembered as the dead sometimes were. His pride could not have tolerated it. ‘Is he…?’ I could not think of the words to ask.
John came to my rescue. ‘Henry has been embalmed. He was very emaciated at the end. And it is a long journey.’
Of course. His body would have been packed with herbs against putrefaction, but still my mind could not encompass it. All that life snuffed out. Too young, too young. And as the procession passed by into the dark interior, there was James of Scotland at my side, as he had been for the whole of that terrible journey from Senlis.
‘Are you strong?’ he asked, closing a hand around my arm. I must have looked on the brink of collapse. I could not remember when I had last slept through a night.
‘Yes,’ I said, my eyes following the preserved remains of my husband.
‘When did you last eat?’
‘I don’t recall.’
‘It will be all right, you know.’ He stumbled a little over the words. ‘I know what it is to live in a foreign country—without friends and family.’
