‘May I serve you in some way?’ I mean to say ‘Please let me go’; but a girl of my age cannot say such a thing to the greatest man in France.

He gives a little choke. ‘Indeed, I think you may. Jacquetta, you are going to be a beautiful woman, a beautiful young woman.’

I glance around. His entourage are waiting for him, hardly moving, pretending not to see, not to listen. Nobody here is going to tell him to let me go, and I cannot do so.

‘Do you have a sweetheart? Eh? Someone taken your fancy? Some cheeky little pageboy given you a kiss?’

‘No, my lord. No, of course not . . .’ I am stammering as if I am in the wrong, as if I have done something as stupid and as vulgar as he suggests. He is chuckling as though to indulge me, but the grip on my elbow is hard as if he is angry. I lean back from his grip, from his avid gaze. ‘My father is very strict,’ I say feebly. ‘The honour of my family . . . I have been staying with my uncle John and his wife Jehanne. They would never allow . . .’

‘You don’t wish for a husband?’ he asks me disbelievingly. ‘Don’t you think of the man who will marry you, when you are in your bed at night? Do you dream of a young husband who will come for you like a troubadour and speak of love?’

I am trembling now, this is a nightmare. His grip is as hard as ever, but his hawkish face comes closer and closer, and now he is whispering in my ear. I begin to think he has gone mad. He looks at me as if he would eat me, and I have a shuddering sense of a world opening up before me that I don’t want to know.

‘No, no,’ I whisper. But then, as he does not release me, but presses me closer, I have a sudden spurt of anger. I remember in a rush who I am, what I am. ‘May it please Your Grace, I am a maid,’ I say, the words tumbling. ‘A maid of the House of Luxembourg. No man has laid a hand on me, no man would dare. I was in the keeping of the Demoiselle of Luxembourg, a virgin like myself. I am fit to capture a unicorn, and I should not be so questioned . . .’

There is a noise from the duchess’s room and the door behind us suddenly opens and at once he drops me, like a boy throwing down a stolen pastry. He turns and stretches out both his hands to his plain little wife. ‘My dear! I was just coming to find you.’

Her bright gaze takes me in, my white face, my hood pulled back, and his rosy bonhomie. ‘Well, here I am,’ she says drily. ‘So you need look no more. And I see you found little Jacquetta St Pol instead.’