Conn Iggulden: Stormbird

King Charles’s arrival had not been as impressive as Margaret thought it would be. She’d watched from the tower window as a small group of horsemen came riding along the road from the south. There had been no more than twenty of them, clustered around a slender, dark-haired figure wearing a pale blue cloak. The king did not stop to acknowledge the peasants, as far as she could see. Margaret wondered if he thought the world was filled with cheering people, as if they were part of the landscape, like trees or rivers.

As the royal group rode through the main gate, Margaret had leaned out of the open window to watch. The king had seemed rather ordinary to her as he dismounted in the courtyard and handed his reins to a servant. His men were hard-faced and serious, more than one looking around with an expression of distaste. Margaret resented them immediately. She had watched her father come out and bow to the king before they went inside. René’s voice carried up to the windows, loud and coarse. He tried too hard, Margaret thought. A man like the king would surely be weary of flattery.

The feast was a misery, with Margaret and Yolande banished to the far end of a long table, wearing stiff dresses that smelled of camphor and cedarwood and were far too precious to stain. Her brothers sat further up the table, turning their heads to the king like travellers facing a good inn fire. As the oldest, John even attempted conversation, though his efforts were so stilted and formal that they made Margaret want to giggle. The atmosphere was unbearably stuffy and of course her sister Yolande pinched her under the table to make her cry out and shame herself. Margaret poked her with a fork from a set of dining silver she had never seen before.

She knew she was not allowed to speak; her mother Isabelle had been quite clear about that. So she sat in silence as the wine flowed and the king favoured her father or John with an occasional smile between courses.

Margaret thought King Charles was too thin and long-nosed to be handsome. His eyes were small black beads and his eyebrows were thin lines, almost as if they had been plucked. She’d hoped he would be a man of panache and charisma, or at least wearing a crown of some kind. Instead, the king fiddled nervously with food that obviously didn’t please him and merely raised the corners of his lips when he attempted to smile.

Her father filled the silences with stories and reminiscences of court, keeping up a stream of inane chatter that made Margaret embarrassed for him. The only excitement had come when her father’s waving hands had knocked over a cup of wine, but the servants moved in swiftly and made it all vanish. Margaret could read the king’s boredom, even if Lord René couldn’t. She picked at each course, wondering at the cost of it all. The hall was lit with expensive fresh tapers and even white candles, which were usually only brought out at Christmas. She supposed the costs would mean months of hardship to come, when the king had gone. She tried to enjoy it all, but the sight of her father’s long head bobbing in laughter just made her angry. Margaret sipped her cider, hoping they would become aware of her disapproval and perhaps even abashed. It was a fine thought, that they would look up and see the stern girl, then glance at plates heaped with food they would scarcely touch before the next course came. She knew that King Charles had met Joan of Arc and she longed to ask the man about her.

At the king’s side, her aunt Marie listened to René with a disapproving expression much like Margaret’s own. Again and again, Margaret saw her aunt’s gaze drift to her mother’s throat, where no jewels lay. That was one thing René had not been able to borrow for the dinner. Her mother’s jewels had all gone to finance his failed campaigns. As the king’s wife, Marie wore a splendid set of rubies that dripped right down between her bosoms. Margaret tried not to stare, but they were meant to attract attention, weren’t they? She would have thought a married woman would not want men to stare at her bosoms in such a way, but apparently she did. Marie and René had grown up in Saumur and Margaret saw her aunt’s assessing eye flicker from the bare ears and throat of her mother to the enormous tapestries hanging along the walls. Margaret wondered if she would recognize any of them. Like the servants, they were borrowed or leased for a few days only. She could almost hear her aunt’s thoughts clicking away like a little abacus. Her mother always said Marie had a hard heart, but she had won a king with it and all the luxury of his life.

Not for the first time, Margaret wondered what could have brought King Charles to Saumur Castle. She knew there would be no serious talk during the dinner, perhaps not even until the king had rested or hunted the following day. Margaret resolved to visit the balcony above the upper hall when she was allowed to go to bed. Her father took honoured guests in there to enjoy the great fire and a selection of his better wines. At the thought, she leaned closer to Yolande, just as the girl was trying to tweak her bare arm in pure mischief.

‘I’ll twist your ear and make you shriek if you do, Yolande,’ she muttered.

Her sister pulled her hand back sharply from where it had been creeping over the table. At fifteen, Yolande was perhaps her closest companion, though of late she had taken on the airs and graces of a young woman, telling Margaret pompously that she couldn’t play childish games any more. Yolande had even given her a beautiful painted doll, spoiling the gift with a dismissive comment on baby things she no longer needed.

‘Will you come up the back stairs with me after the feast, to listen at the balcony? By the Crow Room.’

Yolande considered, tilting her head slightly as she weighed her exciting new sense of adulthood against her desire to see the king speak to their father in private.

‘For a little while, perhaps. I know you get frightened in the dark.’

‘That’s you, Yolande, and you know it. I’m not afraid of spiders either, even the big ones. You’ll come, then?’

Margaret could sense her mother’s disapproving stare turned on her and she applied herself to some cut fruit on a bed of ice. The slender pieces were half-frozen and delicious and she could hardly remember when a meal had finished with such fine things.

‘I’ll come,’ Yolande whispered.

Margaret reached out and rested her hand on her sister’s, knowing better than to risk her mother’s wrath with another word. Her father was telling some tedious story about one of his tenant farmers and the king chuckled, sending a ripple of laughter down the table. The meal had surely been a success, but Margaret knew he hadn’t come to Saumur for wine and food. With her head low, she looked up the table at the king of France. He looked so very ordinary, but John, Louis and Nicholas were apparently fascinated by him, ignoring their food at the slightest comment from his royal lips. Margaret smiled to herself, knowing she would mock them for it in the morning. It would pay them back for hunting her like a little fox.

The Crow Room was silent as Margaret moved across it in bare feet. She’d spent part of the previous summer sketching the floor in charcoal on the back of an old map, marking each groaning joint or board with tiny crosses. The light from the fire in the upper hall spilled up over the balcony and she crossed it like a dancer, taking exaggerated steps in a pattern that matched the one she saw in her memory. The crows remained silent and she reached the balcony in triumph, turning back to gesture to Yolande.

Lit by flickering gold and shadow, her sister gestured in frustration, but she had caught the same illicit excitement and crept out across the polished boards, wincing with Margaret as they groaned under her. The two girls froze at every sound, but their father and the king were oblivious. The fire huffed and crackled, and an old house always moved and shifted in the night. René of Anjou didn’t look up as Yolande settled herself beside her sister and peered down through the upright wooden balusters on to the scene below.