Catherine: One Love is Enough (Catherine Series Book 1) (34 page)

The Duchess had been born and brought up in Holland and had absorbed the solid, housewifely virtues of the Dutch; their love of orderliness and a well-run home. She was not above taking an active interest in the running of the palace, and she kept an eye on the expenses of her household, the kitchens and even the poultry-run. She knew almost exactly how many sheets she had, how many turkeys, and whether the money spent on candles was reasonable or not. She had a fondness for strange animals. A pet dolphin had been raised in a pool in the palace gardens, and the Duchess lavished her most tender care on a porcupine for which she had had a little niche built at the bottom of the staircase of the New Tower. She also owned a huge parrot, a handsome white cockatoo with a pink crest that a Venetian traveller had brought back specially for her from the Moluccas islands. At that very moment a page entered carrying the resplendent but bad-tempered bird on its gilded perch, and it provided a ready-made subject of conversation between the Duchess and Catherine. Catherine admired the bird’s vivid plumage with a genuine enthusiasm that won Marguerite’s heart, and she talked about Gedeon in reply to the countless questions with which the curious Duchess plied her. The Duchess had christened her bird Cambrai after the town where she and Duke Jean had been married. She laughed heartily at the story of Gedeon’s misdeeds and at the account of his banishment to the little Moorish doctor’s room.

‘You must bring both the bird and his keeper to see us,’ said Marguerite. ‘We are as curious to see one as the other. And perhaps this heathen doctor may be able to do something for our ailments, which are indeed numerous.’

The Duchess was so delighted with her new lady-in-waiting that when the collation was brought in by the head cooks she ordered that Catherine be served first. To drink there was galant, a concoction of heated, perfumed and pungently-spiced wine that the late Marguerite of Flanders had made fashionable and had enjoyed preparing with her own hands.

Catherine forgot her shyness in this benevolent and sympathetic atmosphere. She felt she could be happy in this setting even though two or three of her high-born companions, such as Marie de Vaugrigneuse, might look askance at her. She nibbled two custard tarts and drank a goblet of the punch with relish. Garin had told her that the Duchess approved of hearty appetites like those of her own countrymen.

They had finished the collation and a footman was just taking away the remains of the meal when a page entered with a message for the Duchess. He told her that a horseman from the Duke’s Grande Écurie had ridden with all speed from Arras with a message for her.

‘Bring him here!’ Marguerite commanded.

After a few minutes they heard rapid steps of armour-shod feet echoing along the flagged floor of the anteroom. A moment later a man entered, dressed in the green cloth uniform, reinforced with steel plates, that was worn by members of the Duke’s House. He was not very tall but unusually powerfully built. The page escorted him to the Duchess and he knelt at her feet. He had removed his dusty helmet and carried it under one arm. Now he took a roll of parchment bearing the ducal arms from out of his tunic and gave it to the Duchess, bowing his head respectfully as he did so. This head, with its thick crop of square-cut black hair, seemed strangely familiar to Catherine. As she stared at it, her first reaction of astonished disbelief gave way to a joyful certainty. Could it really be he? Might it not be the effect of some trick of the light, or of her imagination? And yet that profile, with its aquiline nose, was just like the one she remembered so clearly from all those years before.

‘You have come direct from Arras?’ inquired the Duchess.

‘Direct, madame, and I await your commands. Monseigneur the Duke himself urged that I should make all possible haste. The news I bring is of considerable importance.’

The stranger’s tone was easy without being familiar. Listening to that voice, now a little deeper than she remembered it, Catherine’s last doubts vanished. This cavalry officer of the Duke’s was none other than Landry Pigasse, her childhood friend.

He had not seen her. He had not so much as glanced once in the direction of the whispering, rustling group of maids-of-honour. He was simply knelt there waiting for further instructions. Catherine had to summon up all her newfound training in courtly etiquette to restrain herself from flinging her arms round her old friend and confidant and thereby shocking everyone present. Alas, what Catherine Legoix could do with impunity was forbidden to the Dame de Brazey, especially under the Duchess’s eye.

The Duchess had taken the parchment with its great red seal and was unrolling it slowly, holding it in both hands. With knitted brows she studied what appeared to be a short enough missive.

Her face sharpened a little and her lips tightened. The onlookers’ curiosity turned to anxiety; it must be bad news.

The Duchess dismissed Landry with a wave of the hand. He stood up and backed his way out of the royal presence. Catherine watched him go with a sigh, but promised herself that she would find him again as soon as possible …

Marguerite of Bavaria sat in silence, one elbow leaning on the arm of her chair and her chin propped in her hand. She appeared to be thinking deeply. A moment later she sat up again and looked round, first at her women, and then at her daughters.

‘Ladies,’ she said, slowly and solemnly, ‘it is important news indeed that our prince and son sends us. We feel it is not too soon to pass it on to you. Monseigneur has sent for two of his sisters to join him as soon as possible, and it will be necessary for some of you to accompany them.’

This news was greeted with excited, curious murmurs among the ladies. Meanwhile the Duchess turned toward her elder daughter and looked at her earnestly.

‘Marguerite,’ she said, ‘it is your brother’s wish that you should once more enter the state of holy matrimony. He has given your hand in marriage to a rich and noble lord, a man of ancient lineage and fair name.’

‘Who is he, Mother?’ asked Marguerite, who had grown slightly paler.

‘You are to marry Arthur of Brittany, Comte de Richemont. And you, Anne,’ the Duchess went on, turning toward her young daughter with ill-concealed emotion.

‘I, Mother?’

‘Yes, you, my child. Your brother has chosen a husband for you too. He intends to marry you at the same time as your sister to … the Regent of France, the Duke of Bedford.’

The Duchess’s voice faltered over these last words, but this was covered by the young girl’s horrified exclamation: ‘I must marry an Englishman?’

‘He is your brother’s ally,’ said the Duchess, with an effort, ‘and his policy demands that the bonds should be tightened between our family and that of … King Henry.’

A harsh, powerful voice resounded from the other end of the room.

‘The King of France is Monseigneur Charles and the Englishman is no better than a thief! If it were not for that damned whore Isabeau having proclaimed her son a bastard there would be no two ways about it!’

A tall, robust figure of a woman had just marched through the door in the manner of one accustomed to finding them open automatically at her approach. She had the build of a foot-soldier, draped in a flowing scarlet gown, and the soft wings of white muslin that framed her face only further accentuated her masculine cast of features and slight moustache.

The Duchess, far from showing annoyance at this outspoken interruption, watched with a smile as the woman approached. Everyone at Court knew that the noble Lady Ermengarde de Châteauvillain, the Duchess’s Mistress of the Robes, was allowed the privilege of speaking her mind. They also knew that she was implacably opposed to the alliance with England and would have been quite prepared to voice her convictions on the subject in the midst of the English court if she had felt her opinions merited so much attention. She hated the English and allowed no-one to remain in ignorance of that fact. Indeed, more than one doughty warrior had retreated in alarm and confusion before the intensity of her wrath.

‘My dear,’ the Duchess said gently, ‘unfortunately there is some doubt about Charles’s birth.’

‘Not in my mind, and I am as proud a Frenchwoman as I am a Burgundian! So this little ewe-lamb is to be handed over to the English butcher, is she?’ she remarked, extending toward the Princess a hand as large as a plate but surprisingly finely shaped. The poor girl needed no encouragement to break down. She was already quietly weeping, quite oblivious of protocol.

‘The Duke wishes it, my dear Ermengarde. As a good Burgundian, you know that his wishes must be obeyed.’

‘That’s just what makes me so furious!’ said Dame Ermengarde, seating herself heavily in the chair that Anne de Bourgogne had just vacated in order to kneel at her mother’s side. Suddenly her eyes fell upon Catherine, who had been looking at her open-mouthed since she entered the room. The large but comely hand now pointed toward her.

‘Is that our new lady-in-waiting?’ she asked.

‘It is indeed Dame Catherine de Brazey,’ said the Duchess, while Catherine curtseyed to the Dame de Châteauvillain as deeply as her importance seemed to require. The latter studied her, replying to her obeisance with a brisk nod of the head, and then remarked good-humouredly:

‘A pretty recruit! Truly, my dear, if I were your husband I would place a strong guard round you! I can think of more than one gentleman here who will soon be scheming to get you into his bed as quickly as he can!’

‘Ermengarde!’ said the Duchess reproachfully. ‘You are embarrassing the child.’

‘Bah!’ Dame Ermengarde exclaimed, with a wide grin that displayed a formidable array of strong white teeth. ‘A compliment never killed anyone, and I dare say Dame Catherine has heard a few in her time.’

The good lady would undoubtedly have gone on in this vein a while longer, for she was fond of tales of gallantry and bawdy jests. But the Duchess Marguerite hurriedly intervened and told her ladies that they should all begin packing their travelling chests for their forthcoming visit to Flanders. Meanwhile she asked them to leave her alone with her dear friend the Dame de Châteauvillain, with whom she had many important matters to discuss.

Catherine dropped her curtsey and left the room with the others, determined to seek out Landry at once. But as soon as they entered the gallery, Marie de Vaugrigneuse plucked her by the sleeve.

‘I love this velvet you are wearing, my dear. Did you buy it at your uncle’s shop?’

‘No,’ said Catherine sweetly, remembering what Garin had said about the fabric’s source, ‘your grandfather’s donkeys brought it for me all the way from Genoa.’

10

Arnaud De Montsalvy

Catherine went to look for Landry as soon as she could, but failed to find him. The ducal cavalry’s quarters were near the stables, in a part of the palace where a lady-in-waiting could not go without the Duchess’s consent. Besides, she was told by the squire from whom she sought information that Landry Pigasse was staying only a short while in Dijon. He was resting at that moment but would be in the saddle again that very evening to carry some dispatches that had just arrived from Chancellor Rollin in Beaune. He would certainly have crossed the city boundaries before the curfew.

Catherine did not dare pursue the matter further. But she reminded herself on the way home that if she were one of the ladies who accompanied the Princesses to Flanders she would surely have further opportunities to see her childhood friend there. She vowed that this time nothing would stop her. She had been overjoyed to see him again because, apart from anything else, he was one of the few links to her past, to the days when they still lived in the shop on the Pont-au-Change, to the streets of Paris she remembered so vividly and the terrible day of the citizens’ revolt.

During the weeks that followed, however, she had little time to dwell on reminiscences of those days. She had first of all to attend the Dowager Duchess, who had taken a fancy to her and called upon her services more and more frequently, requiring her at the palace almost every day. Catherine found that she, together with Marie de Vaugrigneuse, the Duchess’s god-daughter, had been placed in charge of their mistress’s wardrobe. This proximity led inevitably to an occasional unsheathing of claws, and some barbed exchanges. There was little love lost between the two young women. Catherine would gladly have done without this little private war, for the other girl inspired only contemptuous indifference in her, but her character was not such that she could patiently endure the constant pin-pricks Marie administered to her pride. Uncle Mathieu’s cloth and Grandfather Vaugrigneuse’s donkeys formed the principal ammunition in this war. Grandfather Vaugrigneuse’s rise to the nobility had been quite recent. He had made his fortune in a somewhat clandestine, but very profitable, fashion, smuggling with the help of the invaluable donkeys.

Another thing that took up a great deal of the young women’s time was their imminent departure for Flanders, and the preparations for the Princesses’ double wedding. The wardrobe being her responsibility, Catherine was actively concerned with the two Princesses’ trousseaux. She helped them choose the materials and styles for their dresses. She bullied Dame Gauberte, the worthy seamstress, with the vigorous assistance of Ermengarde de Châteauvillain. She had had the foresight to make an ally of the formidable Mistress of the Robes by a gesture as discreet as it was endearing. This was the gift of a superb length of crimson and gold Genoese velvet that she had found in her uncle’s shop and that delighted the Countess. Ermengarde had, it seemed, a strong liking for bright colours and particularly for bright red, which she seemed to think added to her natural dignity. The length of velvet and Catherine’s own enchanting smile, together with her undeniable taste in clothes and domestic appointments, had placed the Countess very decidedly on the side of the Lord Treasurer’s young wife.

As for the new lady-in-waiting’s private existence, however, that passed without incident. Life with Garin slipped by peacefully and uneventfully, each day much like the one before. The Treasurer did not entertain much and did not like to make too much display of his great wealth, being well aware of the jealousy and envy that great riches incite in others. If he tended toward a show of luxury and ostentation in the privacy of his various homes, that was purely for his own personal pleasure and the gratification of his eyes alone. To large banquets and noisy, crowded festivities, he preferred a quiet game of chess by the fireside, reading a book, contemplating his collection of rare
objets d’art
, and, recently, the company of Abou-al-Khayr, whose learning and Oriental wisdom pleased him.

The two men frequently had long discussions together. Catherine sometimes joined in, but more often than not they made her yawn with boredom, because, unlike Garin, she was not interested in the mysteries of medicine or the dangerous and subtle science of poisons. The little Moorish doctor was not only a remarkably skilled medical practitioner for that age. He was an even more remarkable toxicologist.

At length the time arrived for the two Princesses, Marguerite and Anne, to leave Dijon with their retinue. It was toward the end of March when the long train of horses, carriages, carts and baggage mules passed through the Guillaume Gate. They soon left the fortifications behind them, and it was not long before Dijon, its fantastic skyline fretted with towers and steeples, which looked like a forest of spears at a distance, had faded from sight.

The cheerfulness usually to be found in expeditions of this sort was, Catherine noted without much surprise, totally missing from this one. The Duchess Marguerite’s health had taken a turn for the worse of late and she had had to abandon the idea of accompanying her daughters, as she had originally intended to do. The Countess Ermengarde was travelling as her representative, and was to act as chaperon to the two Princesses.

Comfortably ensconced in her saddle, enveloped in an enormous maroon pelisse lined with red fox, which doubled her already impressive girth, Ermengarde de Châteauvillain ambled along at Catherine’s side. Neither of them spoke, being too busy admiring the fresh green foliage on the trees, inhaling the sharp early morning air and enjoying the sunshine – sunshine which was so little seen in the town’s twisting, narrow, dirty streets. Catherine had always enjoyed travelling, even short distances, and this journey reminded her of the one she had made with her Uncle Mathieu the year before, which had been so rich in incident and adventures.

The Countess Ermengarde also enjoyed travelling, but for different reasons. There was the satisfaction of being able to gratify her insatiable curiosity about people and places. She also liked the horses’ slow, tranquil pace along the endless roads, which allowed her to nod off comfortably, and she found that these siestas in the open air gave her an agreeable sense of wellbeing and sharpened her appetite.

The Duke of Burgundy awaited his sisters at Amiens, where the double marriage was to take place. These marriages were the outcome of many months of negotiations and talks with the English Regent and the Duke of Brittany. The Duke had chosen this Episcopal city ostensibly because, since it was neutral, in theory at least, this arrangement would cause least offence to the Duke of Savoy, with whom protracted peace negotiations were still going on. But the real reason for the choice was that the Bishop of Amiens was a loyal servant of the Duke, and in Amiens he felt as if he were in his own country.

As the two Princesses and their retinue reached the Somme, after a long but uneventful journey across the devastated country of Champagne, Countess Ermengarde’s conversation was reduced almost entirely to curt, unladylike but expressive monosyllables. The reason for the good lady’s wrath was that, wherever the lavish, glittering royal cortege passed, they saw only starving and ragged men, women and children, their features wasted by hunger and their eyes glittering wolfishly. The English and their thieving soldiery had spread misery, hunger, fear and hatred wherever they went. The winter now drawing to an end had been a terrible one. The famine caused by the destruction of entire crops by fire had ravaged the countryside for hundreds of leagues around and decimated the population. Those villages that had not been razed to the ground were quite empty of signs of human habitation. The journey, which Catherine had found so pleasant while they were travelling through Burgundy, now became an interminable nightmare. The young woman shut her eyes with a stricken heart when she saw the armed escort using the wooden shafts of their lances to beat back a little group of half-starved people who had made the mistake of asking for their charity. Whenever this happened, however, Princess Anne intervened indignantly, reproaching the soldiers bitterly for their hardheartedness. Her own generous heart was touched to the quick by the sight of so much suffering, and wherever they went she would give, give and give still more, till her purse and hands were empty, leaving a shining trail of sweetness and compassion behind her. If Garin had not respectfully but firmly opposed the notion she would undoubtedly have distributed the thirty thousand gold ecus carried by the mules along the route. This money represented a part of the Princess’s dowry of a hundred thousand écus that had been exacted by the English Duke. The size of this dowry contributed to Dame Ermengarde’s increasing bad temper.

‘What more does the greedy goddamn want?’ she demanded of Catherine when the walls of Amiens at length came into view. ‘He comes here unlawfully, unasked, and bleeds this country of its last drop of blood. He takes as his wife the sweetest, loveliest and most virtuous of our princesses, and yet he is still asking for gold when he should be down on his knees kissing the dust in thanksgiving for the favour heaven has shown him! I boil with rage, Dame Catherine, I literally boil with rage to see our Duke extending a friendly hand to this country’s ancient enemy and, not content with that, giving him his own sister too!’

‘I think he does it only to revenge himself on King Charles. He hates the King bitterly.’

‘To revenge himself, perhaps, but also in the hope of usurping his throne,’ the Countess complained. ‘That sort of behaviour is disloyal in a vassal! Even when the vassal is a prince and trying to forget his obligations. It is dishonourable behaviour, and that is all there is to it!’

A smile flitted rapidly across Catherine’s lips, chapped by the icy wind that had arisen and was driving the clouds pell-mell before it high above the spires and towers of Amiens.

‘Those are dangerous words, Countess,’ she said slyly. ‘They could be dangerous both for you and for me if the Duke were ever to get wind of them.’

But the look with which that good lady fixed her was so open, honest and proud that Catherine felt herself reddening under it.

‘The Duke is perfectly well aware of my views, Dame Catherine. A gentlewoman does not stoop to deceit, not even for a Duke of Burgundy! What I am saying to you now I would be equally ready to say to him!’

Catherine could not help admiring her. Fat, stentorian-voiced, and faintly comical though she was, Ermengarde nevertheless came of a great and noble line, and this high breeding was something that no amount of excess fat or eccentric behaviour could ever disguise. Her greatness and dignity were instinctive, and triumphed over all the pettier human frailties. She was a loyal friend, but she could also be a formidable enemy. It was far wiser to be her ally.

When they reached Amiens, the Princesses went to meet their brother, who awaited them in the Bishop’s Palace. Their retinue meanwhile sought their lodgings in the houses that had been set aside for them. Ermengarde, naturally, accompanied her two young charges, while Catherine and her husband installed themselves in a house that stood a stone’s throw from the large white stone cathedral, its back windows facing on to a tranquil canal. This house, which, although not very large, was extremely comfortable, belonged to one of the town’s most important cloth-merchants, with whom the Lord Treasurer had close business ties. Garin had sent his steward Tiercelin and his valet and secretary on ahead, together with Catherine’s maidservants, the latter under Sara’s supervision. They had taken the bulk of their baggage with them, under armed escort, and when Catherine entered the cloth-merchant’s house she was delighted to find that nothing had been overlooked that might have added to her comfort. A fire blazed in the hearth, her bedroom was comfortably appointed and hung with embroidered tapestries, her bed had been made and a huge bunch of violets in a painted faience bowl lent their delicate fragrance to the scene. A meal was prepared for them in the principal room.

This lodging of theirs, modest though it was, was a rare luxury and privilege in a grossly overcrowded town where any form of accommodation fetched an inflated price. The large retinues of the Dukes of Brittany and Bedford, the Comte de Richemont and the Earls of Suffolk and Salisbury had overrun the town. More than one burgher of Amiens had been reduced to crowding into one small room with his entire family and all the servants in order to leave more room for the followers, most of them arrogant and ill-mannered, of all these lords who had come to parley with the Duke Philippe.

Every house had an escutcheon at its windows, and innumerable pennants and banners fluttered on the evening air. The device of the Duke of Brittany, black ermine tails on a field argent, covered all the houses to the east of the Bishop’s Palace, while the blood-red perpendicular stripes of the Comte de Foix covered the western sector of the town. The south part belonged to the red Lancastrian rose of the Duke of Bedford. The English Duke and his followers, together with those of the Earls of Suffolk and Salisbury, occupied fully half the town. The Burgundians were crowded together in the northern sector and the servants of the Bishop of Amiens had to fit in wherever they could.

Despite her weariness, Catherine did not sleep that night. All night long the town echoed with singing and shouting and trumpet fanfares of such vigour that they left the houses shaking. This was but the prelude to the magnificent and lavish feasts that the Duke Philippe had promised. And added to the din outside was her own nervous condition. Garin had visited the Bishop’s Palace that evening in answer to a summons from his master. On his return he had paid a call on his wife, who had just gone to bed. She had been chatting to Sara while the devoted gypsy woman brushed and folded away the clothes her mistress had been wearing that day.