3 Antwerp, Flanders, July 1338

3

Antwerp, Flanders, July 1338

In the house where the royal family were lodging, having arrived in Antwerp earlier that day, Jeanette sat with her maid, Hawise, and Joan Bredon listening to a musician singing a lai of King Arthur and felt irritated when Lady Katerine ordered them to retire to bed. The story had just reached the part where Sir Gawain had arrived at the castle of the Green Knight. Jeanette knew the tale by heart, but was always enthralled by the clandestine, forbidden kiss between Gawain and the Green Knight's lady – the perfect knight resisting the ultimate temptation, until brought to the point of his downfall by a beautiful woman. However, it was useless to argue with Lady Katerine who was still in a sharp and queasy mood after their crossing, especially when Lady St Maur was backing her up.

They were lodged in a fine house by the river while more permanent quarters were made ready and the royal household was cramped together in more proximity than usual, although the soldiers were camped under canvas in nearby orchards.

Jeanette, Joan and Hawise left their places, curtseyed goodnight to the gathering, and climbed the simple ladder stairs to their sleeping quarters on the floor above which had a trap door that could be bolted to increase the women's security. The King and Queen were housed in a more luxurious chamber on the other side of the building.

A series of pallets stuffed with straw lay the length of the room, each one covered by a linen sheet, with a blanket folded on every bed. It was hardly the height of luxury, but Jeanette was accustomed to such when travelling, and this was only for a night or two.

Without space for major disrobing, the girls helped each other to remove their shoes and outer gowns, and loosened each other's laces. Hawise helped Jeanette to take the gold pins from her hair and softly plaited it for comfort. A swift wash of hands and face, a prayer to God and His Holy Mother, and it was time to snuff the candles.

Jeanette listened to the other girls and their attendants settling down. Joan was sneezing from the straw in her pallet. Petronella had an irritating dry cough. Jeanette wondered if she would be allowed to visit the markets of Antwerp with their interesting array of goods, many from exotic lands filled with strange creatures. Perhaps she would buy John a monkey, which she would train and feed almonds, or instead a green popinjay in a cage with a belled red collar around its neck. A fan of peacock feathers, a new hood for her hawk. Silk belts, hair combs set with pearls. She closed her eyes, imagining the stalls, and the cries of the street sellers. She saw a man balancing a tray of hot pies on his head. Indeed, they were so hot that they were burned and smoking from the oven, and as she tried to avoid their acrid stench, she awoke to Joan shouting in her ear and shaking her.

‘Get up, Jeanette, get up! Quickly! Fire!'

She sat up with a jerk; the acrid scent of burning was real and powerful and she could taste smoke in her mouth. Some of the girls had begun to scream and cry out in panic.

Petronella ran to the trap door and yanked it open, but smoke roiled through the hole, and she reeled back, choking. Jeanette darted forward and slammed the door down, then turned back into the room, coughing hard, her heart hammering. Everyone knew about stray sparks in summer heat and how swiftly a small fire could become a deadly conflagration. Dear Holy Virgin, she wasn't ready to die with her life unlived.

‘Enough of this!' Lady St Maur's voice rose above the wails of panic and distress. She banged a candlestick upon a coffer to draw everyone's attention. ‘You are like a gaggle of foolish poultry. The next girl that screams, I shall slap! All of you, gather your things together, and return to me in good order. Quickly now!' She nodded to Katerine of Salisbury, who stood a little to one side, her eyes wide and lips tight. ‘My lady, if it please you, will you unbar the window shutters?'

Katerine went immediately to work with her maid, ramming the latches back and drawing the shutters wide. The window arches were narrow, with perhaps just enough width in them for a person to squeeze through.

Jeanette hurried to her bed, swept her cloak around her shoulders and bundled up her gown, headdress and jewel coffer in the sheet, tying a knot in the top. Although focused and tense, she was not terrified, but instead was filled with a strange, fierce exhilaration. Several girls were weeping and stumbling about, foolish with terror. A sharp snapping sound came from the room below, and then a roar as the flames took hold of some object. Tendrils of smoke began seeping up through the floorboards, and Lady St Maur's palm cracked across Petronella's cheek with a savage admonition to stop screaming.

Jeanette darted to the windows and shouldered up against Katerine's maid, making room to peer down. Torches wavered underneath, where a party of soldiers had gathered. Someone had set a bucket chain in motion, and people were passing pails from hand to hand and beating at the fire with brooms. Several more soldiers arrived at a trot carrying a long ladder, and heaved it up against the window. One man climbed up while another held the base of the ladder. Jeanette twisted to look round and saw the thickening fog of smoke rising through the floor cracks, and the taste of smoke thickened in her nose and throat.

The soldier arrived at the top of the ladder and spoke through the window. ‘There's a ladder to the ground, ladies,' he said briskly. ‘You must make haste. I will come down beneath you, and guide you, but I pray you be swift.' He gestured to Katerine of Salisbury. ‘You first, madam, if it please you.'

Katerine firmed her lips, but without hesitation and setting an example, she gathered her skirts, eased through the aperture and stepped out on to the ladder, barefoot. The soldier took her bundle and threw it down to be caught by one of the others. Her maid followed, and then two of the girls. Petronella backed away, shaking her head like a wall-eyed horse, until Lady St Maur roughly grabbed her arm, gave her a cuff worthy of a fishwife, and almost pushed her out. Her cries as she stepped down the rungs carried up to the other girls.

‘Oh God, oh God, Jesus and His Mother save me, save me!'

Jeanette was next. She tossed her bundle out and squeezed through the window arch on to the ladder. It wasn't that far from the ground, little more than the ladders she had scrambled up and down in the orchards at Donington when picking fruit – work for servants, her mother said, and no place for a lady, but she hadn't cared a jot. Tucking her chemise between her legs and stuffing her shoes inside the top of the garment, she made her way down the shaky rungs with confident agility, and even jumped the last one to the ground.

Thomas Holland was standing near the base of the ladder and gave her a brief smile, although his eyes were already on the next lady descending. ‘Bravely done,' he said.

‘I'm not scared,' Jeanette said proudly, then flicked a superior glance at Petronella who had collapsed in a weeping huddle. God help her indeed if she ever had to face the fires of hell.

‘I do not imagine you are,' he answered. ‘I hazard you would pass any test.'

She could not tell if he was mocking her for his face was turned away as he helped Joan Bredon to the ground, followed by Hawise. Jeanette removed her shoes from her bodice and put them on her feet.

Holland gestured to another knight among the group. ‘Sir Otto will take you all to safety.'

Lady St Maur was the last to descend the ladder, coughing, but still intrepid. Smoke drifted from the window above her like the trail of an autumn leaf burn.

Otto Holland opened his arms in a shepherding gesture. ‘Come, ladies. We shall find you accommodation for the rest of the night. Stay together, stay with me.'

Two more household knights joined him to escort the women a short distance to an open area where tents had been emptied of soldiers to make room for the King and Queen and others displaced by the fire. The King had a comforting arm around his wife's waist, but Philippa's expression was brave and calm. One hand was cupped protectively over her womb. Nearby, her two small daughters sheltered under the wing of a nurse's cloak.

Sir Otto placed a cup of hot wine in Jeanette's hand, and as she sipped the steaming liquid, excitement fizzed inside her like small sparks. She gazed round, all her senses heightened. She had survived potential death and was standing outside under the stars at midnight, drinking wine. Some of the other girls were still crying, but they were milksops. Sir Otto escorted the ladies to the tents that had been made ready, and in due course took his leave with a bow, while another knight, Sir Henry de la Haye, remained behind on guard.

The girls gathered in their tent and chattered for a while. Jeanette joined in at first, but eventually retreated to the soldier's pallet that was to be her bed for the rest of the night. Stroking the coarse cover, she wondered what it would be like to be a knight and live like this, camping in the open, with all the perils and freedoms of being male. To wear armour and ride a warhorse through the streets, harness jingling, people casting flowers under her stallion's ringing hooves. Or she might not return from battle, of course, but perish in brave and tragic nobility. That particular notion, born of the tales that she had been hearing at the Queen's feet, felt romantic and poignant, with an aching sensation that almost brought her to tears, but at the same time held their own sort of perfection.

At dawn, the court moved to the guest house of the Abbey of St Bernard several miles upriver from the main dock. Jeanette was last into the covered cart, having wandered off to look at the devastation wrought by the fire. The King's soldiers and neighbouring households had eventually managed to douse the blaze, but not before great damage had been done to the lower room where the interior was pitch-black with soot and scorched half-eaten beams. That no one had died was being touted as a miracle. The fire seemed to have been caused by a broken candle that had fallen from a table into a basket of dry kindling and gone unnoticed as people retired to their sleeping quarters.

Gazing at the destruction, Jeanette's previous excitement was flattened by reality – how easily they could have suffocated in their beds.

She had seen the household knights from a distance that morning, breaking their fast in the open as the carts were readied to take the royal entourage to St Bernard's. Lacking sleep, filthy from their efforts, they were joking together nevertheless in tired but tight camaraderie. No glances were spared for the ladies; everything was business, and she was a little envious.

‘Jeanette, come, come, girl, we've been looking all over for you!' Katerine of Salisbury raised her velvet skirts fastidiously above the puddled ground as she joined her. ‘Why are you the one who always goes missing? What in God's name are you doing here?' Her sapphire eyes were fierce with censure.

Jeanette turned to face her frown. ‘I wanted to see what the fire had done,' she said. ‘I wanted to know.'

‘Well, now you do,' Katerine snapped. ‘Let that be a lesson to always check the candles – never trust the servants. Make haste, everyone is waiting – and hold up your gown! The laundresses will never be able to remove that mud.'

As if that was what mattered, Jeanette thought irritably. Katerine of Salisbury was reckoned a great lady and exemplar for the young girls in the household. She was beautiful in the glittering way of a hard, stone jewel, and as the mother of several sons and daughters had provided her husband, Lord William Montagu, with the required dynasty. She was an accomplished military wife, efficient in all things, and courageous, as she had demonstrated last night. Her husband was one of the King's closest friends and rode in high favour at court, as did Katerine herself. Jeanette was wary of her, especially when she got that sharp brightness in her eye.

Sighing, she followed Katerine to the cart, and hoped their journey wasn't going to be long. She hated the idea of being cooped up with the other women like so many hens in a cage. She wasn't a hen and never would be.