[[A.D. 1421.]] Towards the end of the month Katherine was crowned at Westminster Abbey and then conducted to the great hall, where a feast was served to a large party of noble ladies and gentlemen. But this feast had to be prepared without meat of any kind, for it was Lent, and called for a great deal of ingenuity on the part of the caterers. Each course was contrived to express some political meaning, the motto of explaining it being always attached to the most prominent dish. The only instance of active benevolence that we hear of Katherine took place at this feast, when she asked her husband to give James I. of Scotland, who was a prisoner and sat at the table, his liberty. Henry consented on condition that the king would go with him to fight in France. Then the young queen went to live at Windsor, where her husband would have joined her, but he was compelled to go back to France to fight. It was during the siege of Meaux that news was brought him of the birth of a son. "Where was the boy born?" he asked eagerly, and when he was told "at Windsor," he repeated the following prophetic verse, which shows not only that he must have been very superstitious, but that he was a wretched poet:-- "I, Henry, born at Monmouth, Shall small time reign and much get; But Henry of Windsor shall long reign and lose all; But as God will, so be it." {276} Henry requested that the child should not be born at Windsor, because he had some mysterious belief that bad luck hung over that palace, but Katherine had not chosen to obey him. The following spring she wrote a loving letter to her lord, declaring that she longed to see him, and he immediately wrote her to join him in France. She landed at Harfleur with an army of twenty thousand men, who were to assist in fighting against her unhappy country. Her father and mother advanced with Henry V. to meet her, and the reunion was a source of great joy to them all. No doubt the king wanted to see his little baby, but it had been left in England, and he was never to have that great pleasure. His health had been failing for a long time, but amidst the excitement of war he would not allow himself rest until he could no longer stand. Shortly after his wife's arrival he was carried on a litter to the castle in the wood of Vincennes, where she was stopping, and where he spent his last hours on earth. [[A.D. 1422.]] When he was dying, he said to the Duke of Bedford: "Comfort my dear wife, the most afflicted creature living." Katherine was not twenty-one years old when her husband died, and her grief was most violent, for she loved him devotedly. She made all the funeral arrangements herself, and they were conducted with great pomp.