My life with Henry had been built on a swamp, all its footings unsure except for the legal binding in the eyes of the church. I had worshipped him, been blinded by him, made excuses for his neglect.

And had he not drawn me into the mirage? He had treated me with such chivalric respect when we had first met and he had wanted to woo my consent—not that he had needed it—but perhaps it had pleased him to acquire a besotted bride. Henry had enjoyed being lauded on all sides, and requiring unquestioning obedience had been part and parcel of his life.

My mind ranged over the times when I had been an encumbrance or, even worse, a person of no real importance to him. No, he had not been cruel, I admitted with painful honesty, he simply had not seen the need to consider me as part of his life. I had never been part of his life. It had been John who had sent me the portrait, James who had kept me company during the sieges of my honeymoon and played Henry’s harp with me.

What need to tell his wife of any change of plan? Why tell her that his brother was dead in battle? And as soon as my body had co-operated with the promise of a child, he had abandoned me for the demands of the battlefield. Oh, I knew his commitment to England had been strong, and had he not had a God-anointed duty to his country as King? But did he have to leave me for a year of our young marriage?

And I, not guiltless in this, had been too immature to forge a relationship with him. I had been obedient and subservient, I had never forced him to notice me as Katherine because I had not known how. I had never dared call him Hal, as his brothers had. And now all my chances to build a loving marriage with Henry were destroyed.

Perhaps there had never been any real chances.

A howl was rent from me, hot with fury and grief. I swept my lute from coffer to floor, the strings twanging in complaint. I dragged the curtains of the bed closed. He would never lie there again with me.

How could this be? How could I have fooled myself for so long? His family, his captains, his confessor all summoned to his bedside. But not me.

And at last true horror laid its vicious hand on me, and the degradation, for I had not been ousted from his affections by another woman, or even by another man. Or even by a cold and distant duty laid down by God. War and conquest and English glory had proved to be a demanding mistress, against whose enchantment I had never been able to compete. At last I sat and wept, my infatuation for Henry as dead as his earthly remains, my body an empty shell.

Saddest of all, Henry had never even set eyes on the son he had so desired.

All the structure of my life lay in pieces, the pattern of my life as Henry’s wife and Queen of England.

What was expected of me now?

‘Do I go to him at Vincennes?’ I asked John next morning. Surely I could make this decision for myself. Of course I would go. As my last office to him as his wife, I would kneel beside his coffin and pray for his departed soul.

‘No,’ John replied. ‘They will have already begun the journey back to England. I advise you to make your way to Rouen.’ I had found him in the entrance hall, already dressed to leave, shrugging into a heavy jerkin, pulling on his gauntlets, outside in the courtyard, his horses and entourage already drawn up. ‘I’ll leave James here. He’ll escort you when you’re ready.’

So I would go to Rouen. The customary flutter of apprehension that attacked me when all was not clear was beating against my temples, warning me of imminent pain. I realised that I had not even asked John what provision had been made for me on my return to England. I had no idea what would be expected of me there.

‘What will I do?’ I asked Isabeau in despair. My mother was already making her way towards the chapel for her daily petitioning of the Almighty, but she turned and considered, head tilted, a little smile on her mouth.

‘Do you not know? You are more important now, Katherine, than you ever were before the English King’s death. Are you not the living, breathing symbol of all that was agreed between Henry and your father?’ She sneered. ‘They’ll put you on a pedestal, place a halo around your head and clothe you in cloth of gold. Glorious motherhood personified.’

Her brutal cynicism horrified me. ‘I can’t…’

‘Of course you can.’ A sour twist of her mouth, wrecking the smile, coated Isabeau’s words in disdain. ‘What is your alternative? Better that than to be driven to return here to France, to live out your days in penury in company with a bitter, aging woman and a witless man.’

It shook me into a terrible reality I could not envisage.

As advised—or instructed—by Lord John, and accompanied by a silent James, for once robbed of all his high spirits, I travelled to Rouen. I was there, in the position prepared for me at the door of the great cathedral, when the remains of King Henry of England arrived.

I watched the scene unfold, all in sharp detail but as if at a great distance from me. The vast doors had been opened wide to receive the procession. It was truly magnificent: a mighty host of mourners. If I had not realised before the honour in which Henry of Lancaster was held in Normandy, I did now. Bells tolled, clergy chanted, while beneath it all simmered a dark and doleful sense of doom as a carriage drawn by four burnished black horses came to a halt.

A canopy of rich silk was held aloft. Behind it they came, John of Bedford, James of Scotland, the Earl of Warwick, all the English lords and royal household who had been there at my husband’s death, sombre in black. They bowed to me as they approached and stopped.

I walked forward, my limbs stiff, to where the bier lay draped in black silk. My errant heart, lodged in my throat, beat louder still. For upon it there was an effigy, a more than life-sized effigy, of Henry, fashioned in leather. I took in the details of it as if it were Henry himself, clad in royal robes, furnished with crown, gold sceptre and orb.

Slowly I placed my hand on the arm, as if it might be a living body. It was warm from the sun, but rigid and unresponsive. How could this stiff facsimile contain all Henry’s exuberant life-force? The austere features would never again warm into a smile that could pierce my heart as it had in that long-distant pavilion, with the hound and the hunting cat, at Meulan. How strange that now I was free to touch him without redress—except that this creature was not real.

‘Is he…?’ I tried to ask. How ignominious it would have been for him if he had been dismembered as the dead sometimes were. His pride could not have tolerated it. ‘Is he…?’ I could not think of the words to ask.

John came to my rescue. ‘Henry has been embalmed. He was very emaciated at the end. And it is a long journey.’

Of course. His body would have been packed with herbs against putrefaction, but still my mind could not encompass it. All that life snuffed out. Too young, too young. And as the procession passed by into the dark interior, there was James of Scotland at my side, as he had been for the whole of that terrible journey from Senlis.

‘Are you strong?’ he asked, closing a hand around my arm. I must have looked on the brink of collapse. I could not remember when I had last slept through a night.

‘Yes,’ I said, my eyes following the preserved remains of my husband.

‘When did you last eat?’

‘I don’t recall.’

‘It will be all right, you know.’ He stumbled a little over the words. ‘I know what it is to live in a foreign country—without friends and family.’

‘I know.’ The cortege had now made its ponderous way into the cathedral where Henry’s body would lie in state.

‘You will return with us to England?’

I did not think I had a choice. I raised my head and watched the effigy still moving away from me into the shadowed depths, until a bright beam of light illuminated it with colour from one of the windows, and for that brief moment the effigy was banded majestically in red and blue and gold. It woke me from my frozen state and with it came an inner knowledge of what I must do.

‘I was his wife. I am the mother of his son, the new king. I will make his return to England spectacular because that is what he would have wanted.’

James’s hand was warm on my cold one. I could not recall when I had last been touched with such kindness, and I said it to him because I could say it to no one else.

‘Henry did not think of me, but I will think of him. Is it not the duty of a wife towards her husband in death as in life? I will carry out his last wishes—whatever they are—because that is what he would have expected of me. I will do it. I will come home to England. Home to my baby son, who is now King of England.’

‘You are a brave woman.’

I turned my head and looked directly at James, seeing a depth of compassion in his face as I remembered John expressing similar sentiments. How wrong they were. I was not brave at all. ‘Why could he not have loved me?’ I asked. ‘Am I so unlovable?’

It came unbidden to my lips, and I expected no answer but, surprising me, James replied. ‘I don’t know how Henry’s mind worked. He was driven by duty and God’s will for England.’ He hitched a shoulder. ‘No one held centre place in his life. It’s not that he could not love you. I doubt he could love anyone.’ His smile was a little awry. ‘If I did not love Joan, I would love you.’

It was an easy response, and one he had made before, but it struck at my heart. And I wept at last under the arch of the cathedral door, tears washing unhindered down my cheeks. I wept for Henry, who had not lived to see his visions fulfilled, and for myself and all my silly shattered dreams: the young girl who had fallen in love with the hero of England, who had wooed her as a political necessity.