‘Thank God!’ I remarked to John. ‘At least we can draw breath.’ Even though Isabeau and my father had followed hard on our heels. ‘Perhaps he can rest at last.’

In all this time Henry had not shared my bed for even an hour, which in itself was a source of anxiety for me. One son left a throne weak. I would imagine that Henry would want more, and that this would be too good an opportunity for him to miss. How many more days could we guarantee that we would be together? But he did not. Fine drawn, strung with nerves, Henry avoided me, and I knew better than to suggest any of Alice’s nostrums. I dared not. The tension around Henry was sharp as his goshawk’s talons.

I dared not, not even when Henry came to my room that final night, when I least expected it, when I had given up hope. As I was kneeling at my prie-dieu, he entered quietly, pushing the door closed at his back and leaning against it. His face was in shadow but I could not mistake the dark smudges of exhaustion below his eyes. Where his chamber robe fell away from his neck, the tendons stood out in high relief. For a long moment he did not move. He was looking at me but I did not think he saw me.

‘Henry…’

It was the first time we had been alone together since I had returned to France. Unnerved, I stood and I stretched out my hand, my mind suddenly flooded with compassion. Where was the pride, the stern composure? Here was a man suffering from some terrible weight, but whether of mind or body I did not know. Instinct told me that he needed me, and I would respond with all the generosity in my heart, but would he tell me what troubled him?

‘Forgive me,’ he said softly.

For what I was uncertain, neither did I ask when Henry took my hand and led me to the bed, where he pushed me to sit on the edge. I would allow him to do as he wished if it would bring him relief from the pain in his clenched jaw and tired eyes. He sat beside me, his actions spare and controlled, and, leaning, he pressed his lips where my pulse beat at the base of my throat, his hand pushing my shift from my shoulders. When his kisses grew deep, almost with desperation in them, I clung to him. Then Henry groaned against my throat, becoming still. His eyes were closed, every muscle braced.

‘Henry?’

He flung away, to lie supine beside me. Then: ‘Before God, I cannot do this.’ And turned to press his face against my hair. ‘I can’t. Do you know what it takes for me to admit that?’

Despite the nerves that were clenched hard in my belly, compassion ran strong through my blood. There was some problem here, one even greater than I had feared, that Henry could not control. My hands, holding tight to his shoulders, becoming aware of the sharpness of bone and sparseness of flesh, told their own story.

‘You are unwell,’ I murmured. I slid my palms down from his shoulders, along the length of his arms where the muscles had wasted. I pushed the robe away from his chest, and I could see his collarbone stark beneath his skin. ‘What is it?’ I whispered, horrified.

His attempt at a smile, perspiration standing out on his forehead, was a poor one. ‘The usual soldiers’ disease—a bout of dysentery. But I’m on the mend—although this seems worse than I can ever recall.’

‘But you are not on the mend,’ I observed carefully, fearful of driving him away in a bout of pride. ‘It has gone on too long, hasn’t it? I think we should send for your doctor from England.’

He stiffened. I thought he would refuse, then he capitulated, which said much for his state of mind. ‘Yes. I can’t say no, can I?’

‘I will send for him. To come here—or to Vincennes?’

‘Here—to Senlis. I will come back here after the next battle. It shouldn’t be long.’ His voice was a mere thread, the old scar on his face standing out, angry and livid.

‘I don’t think you should go,’ I remonstrated, but again gently. Henry was in no state to be harangued, even if I thought it would do any good. ‘You are not well enough. You drive yourself too hard. You should stay here and recover your health.’

His response, on a laboured intake of breath, was predictable. ‘It has to be done. I’ll fight your brother at Cosne, and defeat him.’ He kissed me, a perfunctory brush of lips, on my brow. ‘God will give me the strength I need. I’ll deal with the rebels and then I’ll come back here.’

‘We should go home.’ I tried to keep the distress from my voice. ‘You should see your son.’

‘Yes. You’re right, of course. I’ll leave John in command here.’ He kissed me again. ‘I can’t rest…I can’t sleep.’ I had never seen him so close to despair.

‘Stay,’ I said, as I had so many times before, but now with a difference. ‘Stay and sleep.’

And he did. For the first time Henry spent the whole night in my bed. Restless and plagued by dreams, he found little healing, but I stayed awake at his side in an anxiety-filled vigil, trying to quell my mounting fears. His flesh was heated, his hands curling into claws as his head thrashed on the pillows. As I covered Henry once again with the disordered bed linens, all I could see was a man driven beyond endurance by some monstrous assault.

He is strong. He will overcome this.

Henry cried out, shouting in anguish, as if wounded or facing an enemy on the battlefield.

My heart sore, I kissed his cheek, smoothed back his matted hair and wept.

The next morning, somewhat restored, although still ice pale, Henry went to Vincennes with his army, taking John and James with him. I sent to London for his doctor, who arrived and waited with me. We both waited, with my mad father and my ever-complaining mother for company, through the long, hot month of August. All I knew was that Henry was still at Vincennes, and that I had never found time to talk to him about the injustice of Madam Joanna. But I would when I saw him again.

I prayed. The beads, carved ivory and jet, clicked through my fingers in perpetual petition that the Blessed Virgin would watch over my husband and restore him to health.

When Lord John was announced in the solar of the old palace where I sat with my mother and the handful of damsels who had accompanied me, the silence between us—for what had we to say to each other?—masked by a lute player, I sprang to my feet, delighted to see a familiar face, abandoning my needlework to Beatrice’s care. John would have news of the campaign and perhaps a message from Henry. He would also have some conversation to while away even an hour of my time. He came to an abrupt halt just within the door, pushing gauntlets and helm into the hands of the surprised servant who had announced him.

‘John.’ I approached with hands outstretched in welcome, my heart light. ‘What brings you? And James too.’

For there behind him, similarly clad in a metal-riveted brigandine, gripping gloves and sword, was James Stewart.

‘My lady.’ John bowed to me, and to my mother. James’s inclination of the head was cursory in the extreme.

‘What are you doing here?’ I asked. ‘We didn’t expect you. Is the battle at Cosne won?’

‘No, my lady. The battle has not been fought,’ John replied, lips stiff, voice raw.

It seemed to me that there could be only one reason. ‘Has my brother then surrendered?’ But a sudden touch of apprehension prickled over my skin. How formal he was. But perhaps it was simply the presence of my mother that had made him circumspect. It was hard to read anything from the dust-engraved lines on his face, unless it was weariness from the journey.

‘No, no.’ Lord John hesitated. ‘The Dauphin has withdrawn from the siege. There will be no battle.’

‘Then what…?’

‘I am here…’ As he stepped forward into an angled shaft of light from the high window, I saw that his face was a graven mask, imprinted with far more than weariness. ‘It is the King, my lady. The King.’

What was this? I frowned at the unaccustomed formality. ‘Henry—has he then recovered? Do I go to join him?’

‘No, my lady. Not that.’

Dark dread began to close around my heart, but I clung to what I knew must be the truth. Henry would control the situation, the reins firmly in his hand, as skilfully as a knight would direct his mount when riding in the lists. How could the news be bad if both sides had withdrawn from battle? ‘Does he come here, then, to Senlis?’ I asked.

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? Henry is dead. It couldn’t be.

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.