Crown in Candlelight (36 page)

‘There goes the Pig!’ she cried, as young Brabant galloped by.

‘You shouldn’t speak so of your husband.’

‘Oh, Kéti!’ She was almost the only person now who used the old pet-name. It touched Katherine, and Jacqueline knew it. ‘When true love comes, all other men are pigs. Besides, Brabant’s father killed my father, the great and good William of Holland …’

‘It’s past,’ said Katherine.
(Do not speak of the past. Be my comforter.)

‘Does the English king please you?’ Jacqueline asked impertinently. ‘He looked very pale this morning. Is he well?’

A warning little cloud settled on Katherine’s features. Incapable of leaving the subject, Jacqueline said: ‘Is he a strong man?’

Katherine knew exactly what was meant. She said: ‘The strongest, the best.
And
I do not care that he fights against my brother.
And
if Madame of Hainault does not stop this insupportable probing she will not come with me to England!’

A troupe of minstrels on horseback cantered past the eight white horses, startling them. Clarions sounded; the men sang a little war-song, riding. Jacqueline leaned from the litter.

‘Look Kéti!
There’s
a handsome!’

‘I thought you said all other men were pigs.’ But Katherine looked where Jacqueline looked, saw bright curling hair, bright eyes, blue flecked with gold, the gold seeking supremacy, catching the sunlight almost like blind eyes. Snatched song, warring with the trumpets. Gaff, Gaff, catch him then, bring!

‘Yes,’ she said, and leaned back on her cushion, suddenly weary and wanting Henry, wondering if his pain had returned, sending up a little prayer for his easement. Ahead, his standards blew, winking at her reassuringly. He was wearing his crown about the battle-helm. Jaqueline knows nothing about love. There are no bursting stars, no angels singing. Only a sick tormented man finding solace in the arms of one who herself was the familiar of sickness and torment.
Harree
… she whispered, turning her face away from her companion. He has his pet-names too. For many years we shall do well together.

The bridge at Sens had been destroyed by the Dauphin’s party still in possession and several outlying dwellings burned; they smoked among blackened cornfields. The porcupine standard of the Armagnacs hung from the town walls. From the safe distance of her pavilion, ringed with armed men under de Robsart’s command, Katherine watched the little figures begin the siege, saw the cannon belching drifts of smoke as tiny and innocuous as snuffed candles. She guessed that her brother the Dauphin Charles was not there. He preferred to wage war remotely and had likely remained in his Bourges château. Patiently she waited and on the third day Henry came to her lodging where they shared a meal. She thought: he looks better,
grace à Dieu!
His colour was bright. He kissed her. She thought he had even put on a little flesh.

‘Does it go well?’ she asked, so softly that he had to bend close. The pavilion was filling with men, all the great generals and commanders.

‘Better than expected. Madame—have you all you need?’

She looked straight into his eyes. I need constant news of your safety. I need you here to enhance my peace. She dropped her glance and missed his tender look that said:
I know
.

‘The siege will soon be over.’ He turned from her to Sir John Cornwall who was saying, ‘Sire, there is an emissary outside our lines. I think he wishes to
parler
.’

‘The one with the torn banners and the dirty face? Bid him visit a barber and change his clothes before he comes to our presence. There are great ladies here.’

This time she caught his look of affection. He murmured: ‘I am so pleased with you, my Katherine. Be patient.’

‘Do you ever think of me?’ she whispered, and bit her lip.

‘No.’ But he smiled, the smile cancelled the hurt. ‘That way, battles are lost. I must live only upon the moment …’ Then stopped, thinking: what eyes she has! They fill her whole face with darkness and light, a mystery. She is still my mystery. Sudden anguished panic made him take de Robsart aside to say: ‘With your blood, guard her. Double her escort!’ He thought: what would become of her if I were slain?

Sens fell within the week through attrition, which was the way he liked it best. There were few casualties, and he was pleased with the way Philip had handled the deployment of his forces, despite a certain impetuousness that sometimes marred his judgement. Paler than ever, still wearing his black, Philip had been in favour of storming the walls of Sens, even when the citizens were ready to surrender the keys. He wept when they entered the gates. So did the Archbishop, passing once more into his cathedral.

‘God will reward you,
grand seigneur/
,’ he said. ‘Blessings on you and your bride.’

‘And upon you and yours.’ Henry thought: I have kept my word. Holy Church blesses me! A wave of thanksgiving invaded him. Henri de Choisy was bearing from the cathedral the holy relics, a piece of the True Cross, a bone from St Denis’s foot, for him to kiss. Looking about him he saw King Charles, mute, being borne on a litter which for all he knew might be set on the road to Hell. He said to the Archbishop: ‘I pray you, take them first to our dear father. It is his privilege.’

Then Henry saw the eight white horses. Their drivers had whipped them up on Katherine’s orders. They came like a stream of living pearls, their belled trappings echoing his own joy. It was not only the taking of Sens that gladdened and released him; it was her. She was leaning forward, her coiled dark hair escaping from the elaborate headdress, her eyes seeking him over the heads of the excited soldiery and courtiers. He went quickly forward, seizing the leading horses’ bridles and bearing them strongly backwards to a halt. She alighted and ran to him.

‘Is it over?’

‘For the moment.’ He kissed her, and wanted to go on kissing her, but modesty in face of the crowd inhibited him. He had sent servants ahead to make ready the best lodging in Sens. For the first time in years, his desires were channelled into something other than the gains of war …

‘Now, will you think of me?’ She was smiling, radiant. He caught her up and lifted her into the
charrette
.

‘Of you,’ he said. ‘Of you, Madame, and nothing else.’ To the coachman: ‘Stand down! I will drive the horses!’

The pearly river moved forward, deep into the captured town of the Armagnacs.

The honeyed time was over, and she was diminished, as by the loss of a limb. She had been raised to a height, and the abyss to which she had now been lowered was deeper than in the black times of old uncertainty. She thought of the babies at the siege of Rouen, winched up from the moat for the kiss of God, then cast back down the swifter to meet Him. For Henry had taken her, loved her, and was gone.

North he had departed, with his army, following the Yonne to Montereau. The sun had gone too, leaving a chill rain like the tears she could not shed. Louis de Robsart had broken the news that Henry thought it best that she remain in Sens. The reason he gave was that the campaign was becoming too dangerous, but she knew better. The laughing ladies, the hawks and playthings, misplaced revelries, had posed a threat to discipline. If only he had told her himself during the nights when he had bound her to himself until she was bemused by contentment! There had been no Archbishop to dew the bed with solemnity, no malaise to sap Henry’s power. It had been her turn to lie safely in his arms, listening to his lazy voice lapping her in sweetness. The pledge never to talk of the past was honoured, but neither would he discuss the future. Only now did she realize he lived from day to hazardous day. There was also the bitter knowledge that, away from her, he put her from his mind.

When she had heard of his impending departure, all that had passed between them seemed for a moment oddly soiled and shameful. For she discovered in herself a wellspring of abandonment almost too powerful to contain. Shared with him, it was beauty and goodness; here in the abyss, she was reminded only of her mother, of the succession of paramours taken for policy or lust, all of whom had met terrible ends. God preserve me, she thought, from such an inheritance! Yet she had recognized her own carnality It couched within her, an animal, a coiled, purring need. Her shame was such that she could not voice it even to her chaplain. Terrible regrets and embarrassments assiled her. How wildly she had laughed when Harry had said, breathless with delight:

‘Forgive me, Katherine! I’ve lived like a monk of late, and now …’

‘My monk! Now the monk sheds his habit … Harry, Harry!’ She had met his passion like a soldier in close mortal combat. She had made him very happy, and in herself had lit a fire to burn forever.

When they said farewell in the courtyard at Sens, she hardly knew him. He was a steel man in a host of steel men, his face closed, his mouth set. Harry of the night was gone, locked away by another implacable being. Shining brigandines covered his frail flesh. Then there was only the spark of hooves on the cobbles, the banners diminishing to little coloured blurs, and her own tearing loss.

‘Madame has been weeping,’ said Jacqueline. She sat at Katherine’s feet, teasing a kitten with a bobbin on a thread.

‘I have not,’ said Katherine. I leave all the weeping to you. Long ago I learned that tears solve nothing. My eyes are red from sleeplessness in that great empty bed. She looked down at her own hands. They were trembling and for a moment seemed to have a strange transparency.

‘The flowers of agrimoine are good for the eyes. Shall I distil some for you?’

‘You sound like an old nun who once cared for me.’

‘Me! A nun!’ Jacqueline laughed shrilly. Katherine thought bitterly: you are part of my trouble. Had you and the others tempered the glee I should be riding with my lord, quiet and stern and soldierly as he would wish. Had he wanted it I would have put on armour!

‘Kéti, don’t look at me like that! Don’t be so sad!’

‘Husbands are often away. I didn’t realize it.’

‘Yes, they are, thank God! Madame, you
will
take me with you to England! Please …’

‘You only want to be with Gloucester.’ Katherine frowned. Let Jacqueline wait. No need to tell her yet that Harry was amost brought round to the idea—it had taken all persuasions. ‘As for divorce,’ she said, ‘you will be excommunicated.’

‘Faugh!’ cried Jacqueline, and as others would protest for generations: ‘What does the Pope know of love?’

Minstrels were playing continuously outside the chamber. Someone was singing, an air so rapturous and melancholy that it hurt the heart. Katherine pulled her tapestry screen towards her and stabbed her needle deep. She started carelessly to embroider an acanthus leaf.

‘Send them away,’ she told Jacqueline. ‘I wish for quietness.’

‘It was the handsome one,’ Jacqueline said brightly, returning.

‘There are no handsome men,’ said Katherine, and bit off a thread.

‘Father, my noble father!’ The cry echoed around the dusty little church as Philip knelt by the recently opened coffin. A spider had woven veils across the fleshless face of Jean sans Peur, and rats had been at his eyes, dislodging the two silver pennies. The parish priest of Montereau had made some attempt at embalming the duke after his assassins had left him on the bridge, but most of the body was rotted like its cheap shroud; it was hard to distinguish between cloth and flesh.

Infected by Philip’s grief, Henry swallowed his tears. He said: ‘May almightly God have mercy on his soul. We must send for salt and myrrh to mend the damage done to him.’

Philip’s face blazed red and white. ‘This is damage that cannot be mended, my lord. As for God! Let Him witness that I will not leave a soul alive in Montereau!’

Henry bit his lip. This ill-judged emotionalism was a facet of Philip that he feared. He had already been disturbed by the overheated manner in which Montereau had been taken. Screaming Philip’s challenge, flailing the banners with the gold-fleeced ram, the Burgundians had stormed the town like madmen. For one terrible moment it seemed that the barely controlled ranks would break when they came onto the bridge, hurled up their siege-ladders and then themselves over the walls. He looked down at his own mailed shoes, rusted with blood to the ankles. Through the church walls he could hear the screams as Dauphinists were chased, clubbed and stabbed to death in the streets.

‘Where do you wish him to be taken?’ he asked, deliberately calm.

Philip arose, wiping his eyes. ‘The Charterhouse at Dijon. With other heroes of his line.’

‘My brother of Clarence will attend to it. You and I have work to do. Not in haste or rage, my lord, but with expediency. We have the town. Now we must capture the castle.’

Philip said: ‘The castle! The garrison hides within the castle, with their families. We’ll raze it to the ground.’ But he seemed suddenly exhausted, his voice was feeble.

‘Why decimate the populace?’ Henry asked. ‘Rather, have them work for us to build Montereau anew.’ He found himself once more in command. Already he had set up a bridge across the Seine linking the force on the right bank of the Yonne where his cannon were trained on the castle. While Philip had been mourning his father’s corpse for the past two hours, Henry had captured eleven hostages, who now knelt beside the moat, begging the garrison’s captain, Guillaume de Chaumont, to surrender, or see them hanged.

Summoning his escort, he went outside. The walls of the church were splashed with red flowers, long-stemmed where the blood ran down. A drizzle of rain was pinkening the red on the flagstones. Glinting silver caught his eye in a doorway; a holy vessel. Earlier, men must have been fighting in the church. As he looked, an English footsoldier ran past, stopped and caught up the silver plate, thrusting it into his belt and running on.

‘Take him.’ Henry said softly to the guard.

Shortly the man confessed. He had stolen the salver, leaving it to be later retrieved, and he had murdered the priest protecting it. Henry knew his grimy face; one of his most courageous soldiers, due for promotion to armiger, who had been in the front line at every battle and siege. For a second he found himself poised on the edge of mercy. Then he ordered: