around the walled bailey, cheek-by-jowl with the kitchens, dairies and breweries, not to mention rows of lean-to wooden stables, kennels and mews, with all their attendant muck and stink. Situated above all this, on a raised mound, were the royal apartments, great hall and chapel which, although built of beautiful mellow stone and modernised with elegant oriel windows, looked surprisingly inadequate for a palace where King Henry’s father was reported to have lavishly entertained the Byzantine Emperor twenty years before. However, as we rode up to the gatehouse, I noticed a vast tourney ground laid out beyond the curtain wall and concluded that the entertainment on that grand occasion must have been chiefly al fresco.
My information about Eltham had been provided by a pleasant and unassuming young man called Walter Vintner who joined us during the later stages of our journey. To my surprise he did not seem averse to riding alongside an older, wimpled member of the queen’s entourage. As we rode out of Rochester that morning, I had smiled at him, thinking what a personable youth he was, polite, fresh-faced and soberly attired in riding hose and boots, a short dark-brown doublet and cloak and a cheerful green hat with a feather in it. A clue to his employment was an ink-horn which he wore slung from his belt alongside a leather scrip, which I quickly learned contained the quills and paper he needed as one of the clerks of the king’s household.
After we had discovered each other’s positions within the royal retinue, I took the bold step of pursuing him with flattery. ‘You are so kind to speak French with me, Master Vintner, and with such clarity that I am prompted to pick your brains rather than those of your fellow countrymen who speak with accents I am afraid I find difficult to understand.’
‘Ah, you have my father to thank for that,’ he confided. ‘He is so often in France on the king’s business that he speaks the language like a Parisian and has teased me into doing the same.’
‘Royal service is a family tradition, then,’ I remarked. ‘Is your father also in the king’s employ?’
‘Indirectly,’ he replied. ‘He is a lawyer at the Court of Common Pleas in London, but the royal council has need of his advice on diplomatic missions to Rouen and Paris. I do not ask what these missions are, nor do I think he would tell me if I did.’
My eyebrows probably disappeared under the band of my coif. ‘Is your father a spy then, Master Vintner?’
He laughed. ‘No, Madame! He deals with confidential legal negotiations between the English and French administrations. In truth I know no more than that. And please, why do you not call me Walter? I am not yet used to being addressed as “Master”.’
‘Why, how old are you … W-walter?’ I stumbled over the very English way he said his name, pronouncing the W as I remembered Catherine’s younger brother Charles had mispronounced his Rs when he was an infant in the nursery, and Catherine was his adored playmate; the same brother who now called her traitor for marrying his country’s conqueror.
‘I am nineteen. Although my father thinks I behave more like a twelve year old.’
I was struck by the sudden thought that he was the same age as my firstborn son would have been, had he lived. But he had not lived; instead I had suckled Princess Catherine and come to love her and, for that reason, now found myself here in her train on foreign soil with a lump in my throat.
I coughed, forcing out my next words. ‘Fathers can be hard to please. What does your mother think?’
His face grew solemn and he made the sign of the cross. ‘Sadly for us all, my mother died last year.’
My heart gave a little lurch to think of his grief for the mother so recently deceased. ‘God give her rest,’ I murmured. ‘But who is “us all”? Do you have brothers and sisters?’
‘Two sisters,’ he nodded, ‘younger than me. They try to run the house, but fifteen and thirteen is too young really.’
‘And who guards them while you and your father are away?’ I asked with concern. ‘They will need protection surely?’ Then I heard my own words and felt ashamed of their intrusive nature. ‘I am sorry. It is none of my business.’
He regarded me thoughtfully. ‘No, do not apologise. It is kind of you to take an interest. In truth it is an awkward situation because our aunt – my father’s sister – has recently come to live in the house. She is a widow but my sisters do not like her. Meanwhile, my father buries his grief in his work and does not notice.’ He gathered up his reins and clicked at his horse impatiently. ‘Hey, Dobbin, shall we get there today?’
I took his impatience with the horse to be an indication that he wanted an end to the subject so, after a pause while I urged my Genevieve to close the gap between us, I reverted to my original topic. ‘Have you been to Eltham before … er, Walter?’ I asked.
‘Once,’ he admitted, ‘on the way to Dover. I was only recruited into the royal household last month to serve the king on his return.’
‘It is a royal palace though, is it not? Is it much used?’
‘I believe the king has hunted there a number of times and the court came for Christmas a few years ago. I am told that his grace’s father liked it particularly, but of course the present king has been out of England a good deal.’
‘Yes indeed. He has seen more of Normandy than England lately,’ I observed. ‘What do your fellow countrymen think of that?’
Walter shot me an appraising glance. ‘Well the battle of Agincourt was a great victory, of course, so he is very popular.’
‘For us French it was a catastrophe,’ I remarked dryly.
I saw his cheeks colour. ‘Yes,’ he muttered awkwardly, ‘I suppose it was.’
‘What do the English think about having a French queen?’
His colour deepened further. ‘She is beautiful, Queen Kate!’ he exclaimed. ‘The people love her as soon as they see her, as you have witnessed.’
‘Yes, they do,’ I agreed, ‘and long may it last.’
‘Why should it not?’ Walter cried. ‘A glorious king and a beautiful queen – that is what the people want in their monarchs.’
Catherine may have thought she would miss King Henry’s company at Eltham but, in truth, there was little time for moping. Couriers brought letters daily, outlining the developing plans for her coronation and the surrounding celebrations; there were gowns to be tried and adjusted, headdresses to fit, veils and jewels selected to match each set of robes, visiting courtiers to entertain and for exercise, some hawking in the surrounding forest.
In the midst of all this, a group of court damsels rode in for her appraisal as maids of honour and over the following days I was happy to hear Catherine’s laugh ring out amidst a chime of girlish giggles as half a dozen young daughters of the nobility did their best to teach her some of the English court dances, while she attempted to teach them the French way to play bowls and they all swapped tips on the art of harmless flirtation. Catherine did not confide her thoughts to me but, as a close observer, I soon assessed which girls I hoped she would choose. Then, just before she was due to appoint them, the Duke of Gloucester threw a stone into still waters when he arrived at Eltham unannounced, bringing with him among his large retinue, a young lady. Within minutes of their arrival, a page came to Catherine’s solar to request audience with the queen for his grace of Gloucester and the Damoiselle Eleanor Cobham.
‘What does it mean this word “Damoiselle”, is it an English version of our “Mademoiselle?”’ Catherine asked her sister-in-law, the Duchess of Clarence.
We were all in the great solar, a royal presence chamber large enough to hold upwards of twenty people comfortably and had been listening to a new poem celebrating the royal marriage, penned by a poet called John Lydgate whom King Henry apparently much admired and patronised. It was written in English and, even though it was declaimed with great clarity by a professional player, Catherine had been frowning over the strange language and meter of the verse, so she looked quite grateful for the interruption.