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the Queen’s chambers at the mean way Louis treated her that she didn’t have time to worry about where her clothes were. Marguerite was always weeping; always running to the Queen for sympathy, and getting it, too. Catherine couldn’t understand why her mother was so muchsweeter with Marguerite than she was with her own children. They all hated Marguerite’s father, the Duke of Burgundy; they all knew that was why Louis was so cruel to his wife. And the Queen hated the Duke of Burgundy at least as much as anyone else. But it didn’t seem to make her hate Marguerite. Struggling with the jealousy that thoughts of her mother’s public affection for Marguerite always aroused in her, Catherine thought, without really questioning why: perhaps Maman just hates Louis more than she does Marguerite’s father.
    All Catherine had on below the houppelande was the dirty shift she’d worn for two days. She’d been tucking up its greying sleeves for hours under the green velvet, to keep them out of sight.
    She stopped. There was someone already snuffling under the bedclothes. She held the candle close. Charles, damp and muttering, with his thin boy’s arms and legs rumpling the sheets into a linen whirlpool. She stood at the side of the bed and, with one hand, reached down to straighten the covers and stroke his hair. Then she saw there was a trace of meat grease still on his face. She raised the candle to look round the room. Sure enough, there was a hunk of bread and a slice of beef waiting on a platter under the window. ‘Thank you, Christine,’ she muttered, as she tiptoed towards it.
    She put the candle on the table and ate, remembering the anxiety on Charles’ pale little face when he’d slipped out of the audience hall. There was no need for him to worry, she thought, rather sadly. Everyone else knew nothing would come of this marriage offer.
    Still … it would be nice to be a queen … to know you’d always be fed and clothed and happy … and safe. She sighed, snuffed out the candle, and got into bed beside Charles.
    In pitch darkness, Catherine sat bolt upright in her bed, with her hair wild and her eyes wide in terror. That woke little Charles up too. He sat up; started to shake. He clutched her hand.
    She pulled open a corner of her curtains, so they could see out. They waited. They listened. But all either of them couldhear, through the thump of their heartbeats, was the doubtful creaking of floorboards, and draughts flapping distant cloth. There was no one there.
    ‘Nothing,’ Charles whispered stoutly. ‘You must have been dreaming. Go back to sleep.’
    He snuggled back down into his quilt. He didn’t want to remember the butchers with thick bare arms and leather jackets smelling of death, with aprons streaked with blood, who’d broken into the Hotel Saint-Paul last summer. Screaming. Sweating and waving sticks and yelling and jeering. Smelling.
    Catherine lay down again too, but she couldn’t stop listening or controlling her breathing to keep it quiet, in case someone else was listening. She could have sworn she’d heard the smash of glass again.
    When they’d come last summer, they’d broken right into the ballroom. There was nothing to stop them. The Hotel Saint-Paul didn’t have proper battlements. It was just a collection of houses and gardens, bolted together by long galleries – a made-up palace of pleasure gardens, created inside the city wall by her grandfather in times when there were no rebellions. They stayed here still because her father liked it; it reminded him of his own happy childhood. But Catherine’s memories were different.
    She’d watched three of the butchers chase one official down the corridor. The official had flung himself at Marguerite and clung to her skirts. She’d thrown her arms round him, but the butchers hardly noticed. They had yanked Marguerite’s arms away and torn her sleeve. They had pulled him off her, sobbing, the terror of a hunted animal on his face.