John drew in a breath. ‘No…’
The sense of terror, dark and bottomless, began to grip harder, so hard that I could barely take a breath. ‘What is it, John?’ I whispered with a terrible premonition. ‘James?’ I glanced at the silent King of Scotland. ‘Will you not tell me?’
James looked away.
‘Have pity,’ I whispered.
It was John who told me in the end. ‘Henry is dead.’
The words dropped like a handful of pebbles, cast to clatter onto the floor in an empty room. I looked up, away from John, my attention caught, as if I had missed something. Perhaps a bird flown in through the open window to flutter and cheep in panic. Or a murmur of gossip from the damsels. Or Thomas entering with a platter of wine and sweetmeats. Or even my father, come to discover where in France he actually was.
No bird. No conversation. No page or father. No sound except for an echoing silence. Every detail of that room seemed to be fine etched in my mind. My mother was staring at me, her embroidery abandoned in her lap. My damsels seemed frozen in time and space, silent and still as carved statues.
Inconsequentially I marked that the lute player had stopped playing and was looking at me, open-mouthed. That John’s boots and clothing were mud-spattered, that James’s hair, curled on his neck, was matted and sweat-streaked. They must have ridden hard and fast. How strange that they had not sent a courier to tell me about this vital matter that had brought them hotfoot from Vincennes to Senlis…But—I shook my head, trying to release my thoughts from some muffling cloud.
What was it that John had just said?
‘I’m sorry. I don’t…’ I heard myself murmur.
‘Henry is dead,’ John repeated. ‘He died two days ago. I am here to tell you, Katherine. I thought it was my duty to come in person.’
Duty! All was black. My sight, my mind. These words, so gently spoken by a man whom I would call friend, could not be true. Was it a lie? Had it been said to deliberately cause me hurt? My mind shimmered, unable to latch onto the meaning of those three words.
Henry is dead.
‘No.’
Although my lips formed it, I could not even speak the denial. The floor moved under my feet, seeming to lurch towards me as my sight darkened, sparkling with iridescent points of light, jewel bright, that all but blinded me. I felt my knees weakening and stretched out for something solid to catch hold of…And as I felt John clasp my arm, in a rush of silk damask my mother was at my side, catching hold of me with her nails digging into my hand, her voice as harsh as that of a crow’s warning in my ear.
‘Katherine!’
I heard a mew of pain—my own voice.
‘You will not faint,’ my mother muttered. ‘You will not show weakness. Stand up straight, daughter, and face this.’
Face what?
A cup of wine was pushed into my hand by Thomas, but I did not drink, even though my throat felt as raw as if it was full of sand. Unheeded, my fingers opening numbly, the cup fell to the floor and liquid splashed over my skirts.
‘Katherine! Show the courage of your Valois blood!’
And at last, at my mother’s command, I drew myself up and forced my mind to work.
‘Two days ago,’ I heard myself say, slowly. ‘Two days.’
Why had I not known? Why had I not felt some powerful essence leach out of this world when so great a soul left it? What had I been doing two days ago? I frowned as I tried to recall. I had ridden into the forest of Chantilly with a group of my mother’s courtiers. I had visited my father, who did not know my name. My mother had bemoaned the quality of my embroidery. I had done all of that and felt no sense that Henry was dead, that Henry’s soul, at some point in those meaningless events, had departed from his body…
How could he? He was young. In military skill he surpassed all others. Had it been an ambush? A chance attack that had gone wrong?
‘Was it in battle?’ I asked. But surely John had said that there was no battle. I must have misunderstood. ‘Did he lead the army against Cosne after all?’
‘No. It was not a wound,’ John explained, relieved to be asked something that he could answer. ‘He was struck down with dire symptoms. The bloody flux, we think. A soldier’s disease—but far more virulent than most.’
‘Oh.’ I could not take it in, that he was dead of some common ailment. My magnificent husband cut down by the soldiers’ flux.
‘For the last three weeks he could barely rise from his bed,’ John continued to explain in flat tones that expressed nothing of the agony Henry must have suffered. Or the anxieties of his captains.
‘I sent for a new doctor from England,’ I said. ‘Henry said that he should wait here. I should have sent him to Vincennes…’
‘I doubt he could have reversed the illness,’ John soothed. ‘He was failing for three weeks. You must not blame yourself.’
The words swirled around me, pecking at my mind like a flock of insistent chickens. This made no sense. Three weeks!
