Mathilde 01 - The Cup of Ghosts by Paul Doherty Page A

what I was thinking and who I really was. I sat down beside her. She edged closer, pressing her body against me. I felt her warmth and realised she must have a jar of heated coals beneath her cloak to fend off the cold.
    ‘You see, Mathilde, no one really wants to come with me to England. Father has chosen the ladies for my retinue as well as the servants for my household. Most of them will be his spies and dutifully report back. I told him that I wanted servants I could trust, people not from the court. Father, of course, has had his way, so he’s become too bored, or too busy, to deal with it. Uncle Charles said he would do what he could. He mentioned you. Anyway, you are a change!’
    Again she turned away to talk to the invisible Marie, chattering away in a language I couldn’t understand. She glanced back at me.
    ‘You’re wondering what tongue I’m using. Well, I will tell you, it’s a language only Marie and I understand.’
    ‘How long has Marie been with you?’
    ‘Oh, as long as I remember. I was telling you why they are frightened, my brothers and my father? Well, for the last two years my brothers have come into my bedchamber. Oh yes they do.’ She nudged me playfully. ‘They slide between the sheets and fondle my body; even Father, when he wishes to embrace me, puts his hands where he should not. I know that, Mathilde, because of Ursula; she was an old lady-in-waiting, one of my mother’s people, dark of skin, with a sour disposition but a keen eye and an even sharper tongue.’
    ‘And what happened to Ursula?’
    ‘She protested. She objected to what she had seen and became angry with my brother Louis. Anyway,’ she shrugged, ‘a week later Ursula fell down some steps and broke her neck. They buried her in the poor man’s plot in the cemetery, the one the soldiers use, as no one claimed her body. She had no relatives here.’
    The two knights remained huddled in the corner, lost in their own conversation, no longer bothered about me or the princess they were supposed to be guarding.
    ‘Yes, they are frightened,’ Isabella repeated. ‘They don’t want me to tell Edward what has happened. Can you imagine, Mathilde, if the new King of England, that lusty warrior, discovered I had shared my bed with my own brothers, where we’d played tumble games? He’d object. He’d write to the Holy Father in Avignon. I have sworn an oath to my father and my brothers to keep silent on that matter, provided I have my way in certain things; one of them is you, Mathilde. You will sleep at the door of my chamber.’ She rose to her feet and thrust the small heated pot she brought from beneath her cloak into my hands.
    ‘Warm yourself and come, follow me.’
    We entered the palace, and climbed a wooden staircase. The princess’s chambers stood along a small gallery, three rooms in all: a main chamber, flanked by a waiting room and another for stores. The gallery was of polished wood, panelling along one wall and against the outer one deep window seats overlooking the fountain courtyard. Ladies-in-waiting were sitting there muffled against the cold, warming themselves over chafing dishes, pretending to be busy with embroidery; of course they had been watching us all the time. They rose as the princess approached. One hastened forward and grasped her by the hand, exclaiming loudly how cold her mistress felt. The princess shrugged this off and dismissed them. She swept into her own chamber. I followed.
    ‘Close the door,’ the princess called out over her shoulder. I put down the warming pot and hastened to obey.
    ‘Pull the bolts at top and bottom,’ she continued. ‘So no one can disturb us.’
    I did so. Isabella turned, unfastened her cloak and let it fall. She was dressed in a blood-red woollen gown edged with ermine, fastened at the neck by a silver cord. Before I could protest, she undid this, easing the gown over her shoulders to fall at her feet. She then removed her kirtle, and her undergarments,