In a Dark Wood Wandering (4 page)

Isabeau had sat down too; she turned to whisper to Louis d'Orléans, who stood behind her. The Duke of Burgundy finally decided to put an end to this painful waiting. He took off his hat and approached the bed. He had been Charles' guardian and the real ruler of France in the first years of the kingship. Now he had completely regained the power which had been threatened when the King, full-grown, had chosen other advisors. He bent down and
spoke to Charles as though he were speaking to a child, with his stern impenetrable face close to the King's.

“Sire, my King, it is time.”

“So soon?” the King asked impatiently. He had taken off his rings and set them on the edge of Valentine's bed. Now he picked them up one by one and dropped them into the Duchess's lap. “For the child—from his godfather,” he said with a smothered laugh as he arose. “Valentine, dear Valentine, don't forget to come and visit me tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow.”

He kissed her on both cheeks, stroking the damp braids on either side of her forehead. The Duke of Burgundy drew him away. The King looked back. “Be sure to remember,” he muttered. The courtiers stepped aside to make way for him. Isabeau took leave of her sister-in-law, but her kiss was no more than a fleeting touch with pursed lips; her eyes remained cold. The ladies-in-waiting picked up the Queen's train.

The old Duke of Bourbon, Charles' uncle on his mother's side, took Isabeau's hand and led her out of the room; the court followed. Even before the anteroom door had closed, Valentine fell backward upon the pillows. The heat in the lying-in chamber was unbearable, but custom forbade anyone to let in fresh air before the mother had taken her first walk to church. Not the Dame de Maucouvent nor any of the other women could unlace the Duchess's bodice to make her breathing easier because Louis d'Orléans, who had stayed behind in the room, came and sat on the edge of the bed. The women withdrew to the hearthfire.

“Well, my darling,” said Louis, smiling. He stooped to pick up his wife's handkerchief from the floor. “Our brother the King has been quite generous today.” He took the rings which lay scattered over the bed and looked at them carefully, one by one; finally, he slipped one onto his index finger. “How are you feeling today? You look tired.”

“I am tired,” answered the Duchess. She did not open her eyes.

There was a brief silence. Louis looked down at his wife's face, which had an ivory tint in the green reflection of the bedcurtains. In a sudden rush of warmth and pity, he reached for her hand which lay weakly, half-open, on the coverlet. She turned her head slightly toward him and her narrow lips curved into a smile—a gentle smile, not without melancholy.

“Maître Darien brought me our new son's horoscope this morning,”
Louis went on. “He says the child was born under a lucky star.”

Valentine's smile deepened. Her husband rose to his feet.

“Adieu, Valentine.” He pressed her cold fingers. “You should sleep well now.” He stepped easily from the dais, tossed his right sleeve over his shoulder, saluted the women and left the room.

The Duchess beckoned. The Dame de Maucouvent came quickly forward and removed the heavy crown from her head.

Louis d'Orléans went directly to the armory, a room adjacent to the library. That portion of the palace of Saint-Pol which he and his household occupied was no less sumptuous and was, in fact, more elegantly furnished than the apartments of the royal family. The armory reflected, in a small way, the opulence with which the Duke liked to surround himself. A Flemish tapestry depicting the crowning of Our Lady covered two walls with the colors of semiprecious stones: dull green, rust red and the dark yellow of old amber. Facing the arched window hung racks of Louis' weapon collection: daggers with wrought-gold sheaths, swords from Lyon, Saracen blades, the hilts engraved with heraldic devices and set with gems, the scabbards covered with gold and enamel.

Three men stood talking before the fire; they turned when Louis entered. They were Marshal Boucicaut and Messires Mahieu de Moras and Jean de Bueil, noblemen of the Duke's retinue with whom he was on very friendly terms. They bowed and came toward him.

“Well, gentlemen,” Louis said; he flung his gloves onto a chest. “You were able to see the King today.”

De Bueil strode to a table where there were some tankards and goblets of chased silver—part of Valentine's dowry—and at a nod from the Duke poured out wine.

“The King is undoubtedly mad,” said de Moras, fixing his eyes upon Louis with a trace of a smile on his heavily scarred face. “To whom do you want us to drink, Monseigneur?”

“To the King—that goes without saying.” Louis sat down and raised the goblet to his lips with both hands. “I don't want you to misinterpret my words—not for anything.”

“Monseigneur of Burgundy is not present,” said Jean de Bueil with a significant look. Louis frowned.

“I've noticed that seems to make little difference,” he remarked,
sipping the wine slowly. “My uncle hears everything, even things which I never said and which I never had any intention of saying. Things which I don't even
think,
” he added. “For Monseigneur of Burgundy, Satan himself couldn't be any more evil than I.” He began to laugh and set the beaker down.

“It's a good thing that he can't hear you speak so lightly of the Enemy,” said de Moras. “I doubt that would help your reputation much—in the inns and the marketplace …”

“I've heard it said that men suspect you of sorcery, my lord,” said Jean de Bueil; at Louis' nod he refilled the goblets. “You have brought astrologers from Lombardy …”

Louis interrupted him with a gesture. “I know that. Don't they say too that my father-in-law, the Lord of Milan, has signed a pact with the Devil? The learned gentlemen of the Sorbonne are behind this; they hate me so much that they would even learn sorcery if with that they could cause me to vanish from the earth. My father-in-law is anything but pious, and perhaps he does know more about the Devil than is good for him. But I vastly prefer him to the bellowing clerics who can only expel wind.”

Marshal Boucicaut looked up quickly. “Monseigneur,” he said earnestly, “talk like that can give rise to misunderstanding. Everyone who knows you knows that you are a devout Christian.”

“You are not abreast of the times,” Louis said sarcastically. “If you were, you would know that things are not what they appear to be. Do you know what the common people call the chapel of Orléans? The Monument to Misrule' …
my
misrule, do you understand? Building it was the penalty I paid for my sins. And don't forget above all that this spring I set fire to the King—to say nothing of the six noble gentlemen who did not come off as well as he did.”

“You can mock, Monseigneur,” said Boucicaut coolly, “because you know that with us your words are in safekeeping. But you must remember as well as I do how the people behaved the day after the unfortunate accident.”

“They came by the hundreds to Saint-Pol to see the King himself and to curse us,” Louis said, the ironic smile still on his lips. “They would have torn the Duchess and me to pieces if a single hair on his head had been scorched. The people think a great deal of the King.”

“They would think as much of you if only they knew you,” Jean de Bueil said staunchly. Louis stood up.

“You ought to concern yourself with reaching a good understanding with the people of Paris, my lord,” Boucicaut said in a low voice. “You will become regent if the King dies.”

Louis turned quickly and stared at the three men, his hands on his hips. “If the King dies, indeed,” he said finally. “May God grant the King a long and healthy life.”

He walked to a window and stood looking out, his back to the others. Beneath the windows in this part of the palace was an enclosed garden with a marble fountain in the middle, surrounded by galleries. The trees, to which a single half-shrivelled red leaf still clung here and there, loomed mournfully through the autumn mist. The turrets and battlements of the palace walls were barely visible on the other side of the courtyard. The Duke turned. The three young noblemen still stood near the table.

“You're right, Messires. I joke too much,” Louis said. “And I must certainly not make jokes about such worthy gentlemen as the doctors of the Sorbonne. And now enough of these things.”

He took a lute from one of the tables and handed it to Jean de Bueil. “Play that song of Bernard de Ventadour's,” he said, sitting down. In a clear voice de Bueil began to sing:

Quan la doss aura venta

Deves vostre pais

M'es veiare que senta

Odor de Paradis …

Two servants entered the room; the arms of Orléans were embroidered on the cloth over their breasts. One of them began to light the torches along the wall; the other approached the Duke and stood hesitantly before him because Louis sat listening to the song with closed eyes. Jean de Bueil ended the couplet with a flourish of chords; the Duke of Orléans opened his eyes and asked, “Why have you stopped, de Bueil?” Then he noticed the servant. “Well?” he asked impatiently.

The man slipped onto one knee and whispered something. The peevish expression vanished from Louis' face; he smiled at the servant absently, absorbed in thought. Finally he snapped his fingers as a sign that the man could go and rose, stretching, as though to shake off every trace of lassitude. “Forgive me, gentlemen,” he said. “I am needed elsewhere.” He saluted them and walked swiftly to disappear
behind a tapestry where the servant held a hidden door open for him.

De Bueil took up the lute again and softly played the melody of the song he had just sung. “Things are allotted queerly in this world,” he remarked, without looking up from the strings. “The King is a child who plays with sugar candy. And Monseigneur d'Orléans deserves a better plaything than a ducal crown. We are not the only ones who think so.”

Boucicaut frowned and rose to leave. “But it's to be hoped that everyone who thinks so is sensible enough to keep quiet about it for the time being,” he said curtly. De Moras was about to follow him; he turned toward the young man with the lute.

“Don't worry about it, de Bueil,” he said. “No man escapes his destiny.”

In one of the towers of the ducal wing was a small room to which few had access. Louis d'Orléans had turned this room over to his astrologers: two of them, Maitre Darien and Ettore Salvia, could carry on their experiments here in privacy, working with the powders and liquids which they were attempting to transmute into gold. Other, stranger things undoubtedly took place in this murky chamber into which, on the brightest day, little light seemed to filter through the small greenish windowpanes.

The usual appurtenances of the magic art lay spread upon a table shoved up against the window: parchments, shells, glass vials filled with liquids, rings, balls and mathematical symbols forged from metal. A pungent odor of burnt herbs hung in the air. In this room two men awaited the Duke. One was Ettore Salvia, an astrologer from Padua whom Galeazzo Visconti had sent to his son-in-law with warm recommendations. He sat hunched forward on a bench beside the table. His companion, a filthy fellow clad in rags, stood behind him, staring at the door with the tense look of a trapped animal. When he heard footsteps, Ettore Salvia sprang up. Louis entered the room.

“Have you been successful?” he asked the astrologer who fell to his knees before him. “Stand up, stand up,” he added impatiently, “and tell me what you've found.”

Ettore Salvia rose to his feet. He was taller than Louis; he stood between the hearthfire and the wall, his shadow extending over the
beamed ceiling. He stepped aside and pointed to the other man who too had fallen to his knees at Louis' entrance—his eyes, sunken under a bulging, scarred forehead, glistened with terror.

“Who is he?” Louis asked, seating himself. “Stand up, man, and answer.”

“He cannot do that, my lord,” Ettore Salvia replied swiftly and softly. “They cut out his tongue a long time ago—for treason.”

Louis laughed shortly. “You haven't been squeamish about choosing an accomplice.”

Salvia shrugged. “There are not many to be found for the sort of mission you wished carried out,” he replied evenly, with downcast eyes.

A flush crept over Louis' face; he was on the point of responding sharply, but he checked himself. “The important thing is that you bring me what I asked for,” he said coldly.

Salvia spoke some low words to the ragged man, who groped in the folds of his garment and drew out a small leather sack, wound around with cord. Perspiration stood on his forehead. “He is afraid of the consequences,” remarked the astrologer, handing the sack to Louis. “He hid for two days and two nights under the gallows and he thinks he may have been detected.”

Without a word Louis took a purse from his sleeve and tossed it onto the table. The mute snatched it up and concealed it among his rags. Salvia smiled contemptuously; he turned and stood watching the Duke of Orléans. Louis had opened the leather sack and removed a smooth iron ring; it lay now in the palm of his hand. He feigned a calm interest, but the astrologer knew better. To him the young man was as transparent as the figures of veined blown glass with which Venetian artisans ornamented their goblets—thus he anticipated the questions on Louis' lips.

“There is no possible doubt,” he said mildly, without emphasis, as though he were giving the most trivial information. “This ring lay twice twenty-four hours under the tongue of a hanged man. This fellow here swears to it. He did not take his eyes off the gallows—no one apart from him touched the corpse after the execution.”

Louis raised his hand, signalling that enough had been said. Salvia fell silent. A trace of a smile gleamed under his half-closed eyelids. A ring which had undergone that treatment became a powerful amulet: it made its bearer irresistible to women. Apart from preparing a single potion, which had only served to strengthen a
dormant inclination, Salvia had never been required to render the Duke this sort of service. Louis' youth and charm had always smoothed his path to each bower in which he wanted to make an offering to Our Lady Venus. But now he desired Mariette d'Enghien, a demoiselle of Valentine's retinue; she was still very young and had been in the service of the Duchess only a short time. The customs of Saint-Pol seemed strange to her; she came from the provinces. Her reserve excited Louis exceedingly, because he could not fathom whether what lay behind it was genuine modesty or a refinement of the art of seduction.