In a Dark Wood Wandering (22 page)

The mood at the Christmas feast, at least at the royal table, was constrained. The King stared sleepily at the performance in the center of the hall, a battle between armored knights and a dragon; Isabeau, weighed down by her ungainly body, did not feel up even to feigning interest in what was going on around her. Conversation at the table was dull, despite the wine; even Louis d'Orléans, who was usually
the center of attention on these occasions, spoke little. His glance wandered again and again to a certain spot at one of the lower tables where, among the lords and ladies of the royal retinue, beside her husband, the Dame de Cany sat, dressed in dark green. Aubert de Cany showed his wife every conceivable attention, but Mariette did not laugh and seldom responded—she was constantly aware of Orléans' eyes upon her. Whenever she raised her head she saw him, sitting next to the royal chair; he rested his chin upon his fist, scarcely touched his food but took some wine. When their eyes met, the young Dame de Cany was overcome once more by the emotion which had tormented her day and night during her service with the Duchess of Orléans. Her heart began to thump, slowly and violently. She forced herself to look only at her husband, or to keep her eyes on her plate. But she heard nothing that was said to her and could scarcely remember where she was.

About nine o'clock in the evening, a commotion started at one of the entrances to the hall; the sound of raised voices was audible above the hubbub at the tables. Out of the throng at the door a man appeared, booted and spurred, in torn clothes, sweating and exhausted. He crossed the hall, heedless of the sham fight that was going on there and threw himself, still breathless and unable to speak, onto his knees before the King. At first no one knew who he was; Louis d'Orléans finally recognized the dirty, deadly tired man as Jacques de Helly, one of the knights of de Nevers' retinue, a vagabond and adventurer who had the reputation of being very familiar with the routes to the East. The King looked at him apathetically, without comprehension; his expression did not change when de Helly cried out hoarsely, “Sire, my King, I come from Basaach's camp—our army was destroyed near the city of Nicopolis on Saint MichaePs Day!”

At the royal table there were gasps; many sprang from their seats. The news spread quickly through the hall; there were exclamations of fright, the clatter of chairs; then, under the standards and banners, under the thousand torches, it became quite still. The performers vanished quickly through a side door; only the scaly cover of the dragon lay in the middle of the floor, a painted rag.

“Monseigneur de Nevers, the Lords de Bar, de Coucy and Bou-cicaut, and twenty-three others are prisoners,” murmured de Helly, almost inaudibly. “Their lives are not in danger because Basaach intends to deliver them in exchange for ransom.”

“And the others?” Orléans leaned toward him over the table.

Jacques de Helly hid his face in his hands.

“Basaach ordered all those who did not perish in battle to be put to death,” he said in a smothered voice. “No one is left alive except those whom I named, and me. I don't think anyone else can have escaped the slaughter.”

Louis took firm hold of the King who, thinking that the meal had ended, was about to get up.

“Give the names of the survivors,” Orléans said shortly.

The knight obeyed; although his voice was low, everyone heard him in that deathly quiet room. A woman shrieked; it was the signal for a great outbreak of weeping and wailing.

For little Charles d'Orléans, the days passed as peacefully and at the same time as festively as a procession which he had once seen at the church of Asnières. First of all, there were the many journeys, the purpose of which he did not understand; but he went through the colorful landscapes with great delight. Standing at the carriage door, he looked out over the wooded hills, the vineyards and fields, the sloping land softly green and brown, the broad sparkling rivers. Sometimes the fields were filled with flowers. If they rode through a forest the greenery murmured over their heads; sometimes red and gold leaves hung on the trees and rustled and crackled mysteriously under the carriage wheels. The sky was black with swarms of birds. Sometimes he had traveled, wrapped in furs and velvet, with a hot stone under his feet; then the trees were bare, streaks of snow lay on the fields and the wind blowing through the narrow openings of the carriage made the court ladies shiver. The child was later to remember clearly that everything about those journeys fascinated him: the steam that the horses exhaled, the parcels and things that they brought with them, the soldiers and horsemen who rode beside the carriages and the handsome standards flying from their lances.

Charles always lived with his mother, little brother and all the gentlemen, ladies, demoiselles, servants and pages in other castles: from the outside they looked alike, one and all; he could not remember all their names, there were too many of them: Chàteauneuf, Blois, Montils, a whole series of them—but if you tried to follow a familiar route along passages and staircases, you could make a bad mistake. Only the little windows, the thick walls and circular stair
cases were the same everywhere. Charles always slept in his own bed because that was taken along. And in every inner court of every castle he had his own painted wooden horse to play with.

The child did not trouble himself about the how and why of all this moving: he was easily satisfied and happy; the world teemed with things one could amuse oneself with. He did not notice that he always played alone; he could amuse himself with a small stick, a stone, a piece of colored glass. His mother's maidens tried to teach him games—tag, hide and seek, leapfrog—but although Charles played willingly, he was not really interested. He preferred to look out through the narrow peepholes of tower or gallery over the land which, bathed in sunlight or covered with shadowy clouds, alternately glowed and faded. He could see the roofs of the small houses clustered in a hamlet around the citadel, and the tapering steeples of a church or a far castle against the horizon. It was not so much this looking at what could be seen through the windows that he loved; it was rather the standing still, the waiting, which enthralled him—that curious feeling that at any moment a miracle would happen. What—he did not know. He knew about miracles only from stories he had heard and from wall paintings in churches and chapels. An angel with golden wings, holding a lily in his hand, who appeared to the Virgin Mary… he had heard it said that that was a great miracle. And the dead man who rose up again, and the pilgrim's staff on which roses began to bloom. No, he did not expect anything so amazing as that.

The Dame de Maucouvent, his governess, usually put an end to his secret pleasures. The tower stairs and galleries were too dangerous for a five-year-old child, he could easily break his neck. So then he had to go to the room where his little brother Philippe pushed himself in his walker, where the women sat the whole day talking to one another or yawning and looking out of the windows as soon as the Dame de Maucouvent showed her heels. Eagerly, Charles went by himself on secret searches through the vast, usually empty halls, where the tapestries stirred mysteriously against the walls. His mother told him about the tapestry pictures: in one castle the tapestry told the story of Charlemagne, in another of Saint-Louis, or Lancelot, or Theseus and the Golden Eagle. The figures of heroes and saints seemed to come alive in the dusky halls; in the evenings, in the light of wax candles and torches, Charles saw their eyes glitter and their lips move; their heads nodded, they raised their hands, the dogs
sprang through the brushwood, the horses reared; yes—he could even hear the banners flapping.

He did not tell anyone about these fantasies, not even his mother, whom he loved more than anyone else. He was glad to sit close to her on winter afternoons when the corridors were dark and uneasy feelings lay in wait for him on the silent steps, in the empty doorways. His mother sat by the fire and played the harp or embroidered with golden thread. The light gleamed in the little colored jewels in her necklace and in her eyes; she told long stories which he found splendidly thrilling, although he did not completely understand them. Or she sang songs with her maidens, very sad songs. Often she sat silent. At those times she put her arms around her small son and held him close against her. An odor of honey and roses wafted from the deep folds of her dress. Charles looked close up at her sweet face, her narrow pale lips and her soft tresses. Her sighs made him feel sad. It was always something of a relief when she had the chess set brought to her so that she could play with Marie d'Harcourt, or when she told the librarian, Maitre Giles Malet, to fetch a book—one of her breviaries with little paintings in gold and azure, or the great book of King Arthur.

In the spring, Charles' mother became livelier, but at the same time more restless; then she usually wanted to travel to castles as yet unvisited. The prospect of a carriage ride quickly reconciled Charles to the bustle in the inner rooms, the running back and forth of women and servants, the moving of pieces of furniture, carpets and other household goods. Later, when summer came, with sun and flowers and deep greenery, his mother hurried each day to leave the castle and sit outside on the grass, braiding garlands or gathering herbs. Often too she went horseback riding; the harness was studded with gilded knobs and embellished with tiny bells; golden tassels hung from caparison and saddlecloth. So she rode to the hunt with a falcon perched on her glove. Charles' mother never looked so beautiful as when she returned home after such an outing, with flushed cheeks and bright eyes. She talked a lot to Charles about his father, who was the King's brother, a courageous knight and a splendid figure like the heroes of the romances.

That idea was strengthened on the few occasions when he saw his father. Surrounded by horsemen in armor, he came riding over the bridge and courtyard on a magnificent steed; when, with spurs jingling, he entered the great hall, he knelt to salute Charles' mother,
who waited for him in the seat of honor. When his father stayed with them, the castie overflowed with people, and each evening there was a feast; long tables were added to accommodate all the guests. After the meal the minstrels Colinet and Herbelin, who were always with his father, sang songs and Gilot the Fool somersaulted along the tables. Later, gifts, brought from Paris on donkeys, were brought in: mantles of silk and gold for Charles' mother, household linen, fur and leather, silver dishes, books; for Charles and Philippe, mantles like the ones grown-ups wear, in green or black, embroidered with emblems: thisdes, vines, heraldic wolves. Once Charles was given a leather case which held three combs and a little mirror; he wore it proudly on his girdle.

Then during his father's visits, there was hunting; that was quite a spectacle. Early in the morning, while it was still dark, a sleepy nursemaid held Charles, wrapped in a blanket, up to a window so that he could look down on the inner courtyard where torches burned, servants kept dozens of restless dogs together on long leashes, horses stood stamping and snorting. All day long the child could hear the blaring of the hunting horns in the forest, and the furious baying of the dogs. Later he found the deferred booty less attractive: he was filled with pity and revulsion when he saw the stiffly outstretched legs of the does, their great glazed eyes, the wild boar black with congealed blood, the limp bodies of the hares, and the dead birds, a heap of feathers stuck together.

Charles most admired his father when he blew on his hunting horn—no one made a prettier sound than he did. Sometimes, to please his little son, Louis, outdoors in the gallery or somewhere in the castle gardens, blew for him all the signals he knew, along with little melodies which he made up on the spot. These sounds remained linked in Charles' memory with the image of a castle looming dark against the light of a pink evening sky, the twilight fragrance of herbs, flowers and earth. Always early in the morning his father was suddenly gone; each time these departures took Charles completely by surprise; he was angry then because no one had warned him.

Once—it was the middle of winter, when the trees stood frosty-white in the fields—there was a great feast. They were living then in a castle called Epernay: Charles remembered that because the journey there had required unusually long and full preparations. The castle was filled with so many tapestries and candlesticks, cushions and valuables, that Charles asked himself if it were Christmas, but
no one seemed to have time to tell him anything. The Dame de Maucouvent kept her eye on the chamberwomen who folded and spread the linen; Charles' mother supervised the polishing and display of the gold dishes and tankards; servants hammered in the stables; the court ladies embroidered crowned initials on a set of new bedcurtains. At last Charles was fetched to be fitted with a small cloak that glittered with gold and precious stones. Now he heard something about what was going on. The Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, Wenceslaus, was coming to see Charles' parents; the Dame de Maucouvent told him this while she knelt before Charles to see if his state robes sat upon him properly.

“Emperor Wenceslaus, Wen … ces … laus,” she repeated. “Say that once, Monseigneur.”

“Wen … ces … laus,” said Charles hesitantly. The Dame de Maucouvent seemed to be very excited; her headdress was all on one side, which was not her usual custom, and her dress was rumpled. Later that evening his mother came to sit on the side of his bed; she laid her narrow, cool hand against his cheek.

“Tomorrow the Emperor is coming here, child,” she said.

“Wen … ces … laus,” whispered Charles quickly, to show that he remembered this remarkable name. His mother smiled. “Your father is bringing the Emperor to Epernay,” she went on. “The Emperor is coming to see you. Don't forget that; be brave and carry yourself like a true knight. You are growing so big, my little son. Kneel before the Emperor when you are brought before him and say, Welcome, Sire.'”