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!
‘He could barely ride when he left here—he was too weak in spite of his insistence,’ John continued. ‘We travelled to Vincennes by river in the end, which was easier. Henry tried to ride the final miles into camp but it could not be.’ John passed his tongue over dry lips. ‘He was carried the last distance in a litter.’
‘And that was three weeks ago.’
‘Yes, my lady. On the tenth day of August. He did not leave his bed again.’
But…it made no sense. He had been so ill that he could not ride a horse for three weeks? For a moment I closed my eyes against what I now understood…Then opened them and fixed John with a stare, for I must know the truth and I would not allow him to dissemble.
‘My husband was bedridden for three weeks.’
‘Yes.’
‘Who was with him? At the end?’
‘I was. His uncle Exeter. Warwick. His captains. James, of course.’ His eyes slid from mine. Dear John. He knew exactly what I was asking. ‘I think there might have been other members of his council, and of course his household. I forget…’
‘And what did you speak of?’
‘What use is this?’ my mother demanded, still at my side, her hand still gripping mine. ‘What use to know what he said? I swear it will give you no comfort.’
I shook her off, stepping to stand alone with a bleak resolve. ‘I need to know. What did you discuss in all those three weeks, John?’
‘Matters of state. Government affairs, of course. The direction of the war…’
‘I see.’
Henry’s brother, his uncle, his friend and captains had all been summoned to his side, but not his wife. They had discussed matters of state, but nothing as personal as the ignorance of a wife who had not been invited to attend her husband’s deathbed. His
