In a Dark Wood Wandering (9 page)

“Loves … !” said Queen Blanche, not without mockery. “Pure madness. That is the love of the doe for the buck, the ewe for the ram. It is irresistible in the spring and when the leaves fall, it is over.”

Valentine shook her head.

“You cannot say that, Madame. I was with the Queen when
they brought her the news of the King's first attack of madness in the forest of Mans; I saw how the blow struck her. It was as though she had lost her senses herself. And doesn't she do what she can for him? Each day while he was there, she sent a message to Creil to ask him if he wanted anything. I have heard it said that she stands weeping outside his door when he does not wish to see her. Oh, but I feel with her too,” she continued vehemently. “It is unbearable to know that someone you love is close by and unreachably distant and … gone …”

“The Queen has a staunch advocate in you, ma mie,” the older woman said shrewdly. “And she does not deserve it.”

A flush flooded into Valentine's face; she lowered her eyes.

“I know very well that the Queen cannot abide me,” she murmured, almost inaudibly. “That is also one of the things that pains me. I understand it—the discord between Bavaria and the Visconti …”

“And more yet…” Queen Blanche nodded significantly. “Much more yet—and that is worse. You know what I mean.”

“Yes, my God!” whispered the Duchess of Orléans; she raised both hands in a gesture of despair. “But I do not
want
that at all—I cannot help it. I love the King very much … he has always been kind and gentle to me … but surely no one would dare to say …”

She pressed the palms of her hands against her cheeks and turned her head slowly from side to side. “The Queen cannot think that, Madame; she knows there is nothing between the King and me but close friendship …”

“As far as that is concerned, you have certainly never given her cause for complaint,” Blanche agreed. “The King usually sought and found his pleasures far from the palace with wanton women and peasant girls—shabby amusement for a king! But the Queen could not be angry about that—no one is jealous of an hour's nameless love. Oh no, ma mie, envy of you suits her convenience remarkably well; she
wants
to believe that she has a reason to blame you.”

Valentine raised herself slightly from the pillows; two bright red marks stained her cheeks.

“So much is being said,” she whispered. “I don't know what to think. One of the chamberwomen overheard a story they are telling in the streets … They say I let a poisoned apple roll into the nursery while the Dauphin was playing with my little son.”

“Hush—that's foolishness.” Blanche half-rose from her seat and
pushed the young woman back among the pillows. “Lie still now, Valentine. Your face is glowing with fever. Don't you know that kind of talk is meaningless? Why, your little Louis could have eaten the apple himself.”

She stroked Valentine's cheek soothingly, but she kept her eyes cast down to conceal her look of alert disquiet. She had heard that strange story. Isabeau did not always do her work with caution. Valentine moved her head back and forth over the pillows as though she were in pain; her lips were dry from thirst. Queen Blanche noticed this and beckoned to one of the young women nearby; she asked her to bring a spiced drink.

“I feel danger everywhere,” whispered Valentine. “Perhaps I am imagining it, perhaps it is not true. God grant it is not true. But I don't know … my feelings have never deceived me about things like that …”

“Yes, yes,” the older woman nodded, sighing, while she took the goblet from the waiting-woman and helped Valentine to drink. “Try to go to sleep now, ma mie. It wasn't sensible of me to let you talk so long.”

“I can't sleep now,” said the Duchess of Orléans. She waved the beaker away after she had taken a few sips. “I should like someone to read to me; that would distract me from my thoughts. I am too tired to read myself; perhaps the Dame de Maucouvent can come sit with me … with the Histories of Troy which I was reading before my confinement.”

“I shall send her.” Blanche rose. The ladies of her suite came up quickly, ready to push away the chair and to pick up the Queen's long train when she descended from the dais. She bent over Valentine again. “Be brave,” she whispered within the shelter of the falling veil which hid both their faces. Then she left to enter the adjoining room.

A few of Valentine's ladies stood around the wet nurse who was holding little Charles at her breast. The infant's wrinkled, red head seemed smaller than the rounded breast from which he suckled. He moved his little hands aimlessly back and forth, and made loud smacking sounds, to the delight of the young women. As Queen Blanche entered the room, they moved aside and curtsied. The wet nurse made an effort to stand up.

“Please sit, la Brune,” Blanche said, with a wave of her hand. The child, who had lost the nipple, turned his head to left and right.
He was bound to a small oblong cushion, stiffly wound about with bands of cloth.

“A healthy youngster,” said the wet nurse proudly. “And he suckles well, much better than Monseigneur Louis did at his age.”

Blanche smiled and brushed her forefinger lightly over the baby's little cheek, as cool and soft as fine silk. She let her eyes travel over the room, which, like the lying-in chamber, was hung with green tapestries. Two beds of state stood there, richly made up with pillows, cushions and counterpane.

“Is the Dame de Maucouvent not here?” she asked one of the young women. “The Duchess would like someone to read to her.” The girl curtsied, colored with shyness and replied in the negative. The Dame de Maucouvent was in the nursery, putting Monseigneur Louis to bed. Queen Blanche frowned and cast a look of quick concern toward the lying-in chamber. She was about to send for the governess when another young woman stepped forward.

“Let me sit with Madame,” she said. “I can read.”

Blanche had the impression that this offer did not sit well with the other women: their faces stiffened almost imperceptibly, their eyes were hostile. The young woman who stood before her was hardly more than a child; tall and slender, with white, almost translucent skin. She kept her eyes lowered modestly and her hands folded over her breast in the manner prescribed by etiquette, the upper part of her body bent slightly backwards and her head held a little to one side. The Queen was pleasantly impressed by the voice and appearance of this girl, whom she had not seen before among Valentine's retinue.

“Good. Go then, Mademoiselle,” she said, “and take the Histories of Troy with you.”

The young woman curtsied; before she arose she looked directly at Blanche, a flashing glance, green as clear deep spring water. Those wonderful eyes struck the Dowager-Queen particularly—they reminded her of an old, half-forgotten love song which described the leaves of an early spring. She felt for a moment as though she stood in the cool spring wind in the meadows near Neauphle-le-Chateau.

“Who is that?” she asked, staring after the newcomer. The women exchanged significant looks—her own women as well as those of the Duchess of Orléans. But their silence lasted so long that it impinged on the respect due to the Dowager-Queen. A lady
of the court hastened to reply in the subdued, expressionless tones of a subordinate.

“Madame, that is the Demoiselle d'Enghien.”

Servants in short jackets, with napkins slung over their shoulders, jostled past each other on the spiral staircase leading down from the dining hall to the kitchens. They carried great platters on their heads and some smaller ones at the same time on their widely outstretched arms. A double curtain of worked leather, weighted on the bottom with lead, hung at the entrance to the hall, from which rose the talk and laughter of the guests, the clatter of tableware and the sounds of music. Those servants who carried fowl took them first to the carving tables which stood at the entrance; those who had fruit, pastry and wine brought them directly to the guests.

The feast celebrating the christening of Orléans' youngest son was being held in a long narrow hall made even narrower by the existence of two rows of flecked marble pillars. At the end of the hall opposite the servants' entrance stood a dais where, against a background of tapestries, the royal guests sat at table.

Above the colonnades were galleries where the musicians and a few courtiers were. A great number of torches were burning; pages ran back and forth continually tending to these sources of light. Several of the Duke's house dogs lay on the mosaic floor, gnawing bones and growling whenever the servants came too close to them. The musicians in the gallery played without pause on their wind and brass instruments. A dwarf squatted behind the grating of the balcony, his face pressed against the opening between two bars, gazing down at the company on the dais below him, and especially at Orléans, who was chatting politely with his neighbor, the young wife of the Duke of Berry. Later in the evening, to honor her and Queen Isabeau, the dwarf would be brought to the table in a pastry to recite a couplet composed by Louis.

The Duke wore a crimson garment with voluminous sleeves, so densely stitched with series of his favorite emblem, the crossbow, that from a distance one could not tell whether the background of the cloth was red or gold. The Duke was in an exuberant mood; the Duchess of Berry, who was easily amused, shouted almost unceasingly with laughter.

On Orléans' other side sat the Queen, silent and lost in thought. Dull fatigue weighed more heavily upon her than her crown and necklaces. She smiled mechanically whenever her brother-in-law spoke to her, replying with automatic motions of head and hand. She looked often at the King who sat next to her, but as far away from her as possible, in a corner of the bench under the royal canopy. He was pulling at the threads of the tapestry with his knife and muttering unintelligibly. He had been brought to the table despite the physicians' advice. At the beginning of the meal, diverted by the bustle and stir around him, he had sat motionless and attentive, without a glance or a word for Isabeau.

Because he toyed with his food like a child, his sleeves and tunic were soon spotted with bread crumbs, grease and wine. Finally he became restless. He could not get up from the table and walk around when he wanted to, as he did in his own rooms. The Queen bit her lip. It seemed to her that everyone was staring at the royal seat as if it were a stage framed by tapestries and festive garlands.

Charles overturned his goblet; wine sopped onto the freshly baked white bread which nobles, kneeling respectfully before him, had put upon his plate. He bit his nails, scratched his thinning grey-blond hair. Because of the long confinement in Creil, his face was as pale as wax; his nose was sharp, deep grooves ran from his nostrils to his mouth, which looked sunken and old, because he had recently lost some teeth. He was only a few years older than the Duke of Orléans, but the disparity between them appeared to be one between a very young and a very old man. The softness of Charles' faded, enflamed eyes made his appearance all the sadder; they were the windows through which his spirit looked out, the captive in his cage, forever isolated from the world. From time to time the involuntary contractions of his cheek muscles caused his face to contort into a grimace.

He listened at last to the whispered entreaties of Burgundy, who sat beside him, and leaned back into the shadow of the canopy. He seemed to have lost all interest in food and festivities. He mumbled and poked the point of his knife between the brightly colored threads of the tapestry beside him. Burgundy, soberly dressed in a garment of black Flemish cloth which had cost a fortune, and with his hat glinting red with rubies, sat eating with a cold smile, as though he noticed nothing. Only the censoriously compressed lips of his wife Margaretha betrayed disapproval.

The Duke of Bourbon, however, could not conceal his displeasure; he was still upset by the dispute with Berry. He was deeply offended by the accusation that he would work exclusively for his own interests now that he was once more a regent. Naturally, like Berry, Anjou and Burgundy, he had not hesitated, in the period before Charles came of age, to take advantage of any opportunity for profit that came his way. But he was no longer particularly interested in worldly affairs. He stood, he believed, at the brink of the grave; his health was failing. Moreover, he was extremely fond of the King, in whom he had always seen a resemblance to his sister, the late Queen Jeanne. Was it guilt that made him eager now to set himself up as a protector of the royal family? That was what Berry had the audacity to assume.

Bourbon saw him sitting at the other end of the table, looking all but ridiculous in a garment of flowered brocade trimmed with ornaments, like a heathen Turk. From Berry his glance shifted to Isabeau, whose forced smile he did not see through. He blamed her for the stupid decision to allow the King to come to the table and expose his scandalous behavior to the derision of the court. Bourbon listened without interest to the remarks of his neighbor, the Duchess of Burgundy, whose mind he found as cold and materialistic as her Flemish estates.

Berry followed their conversation from a distance; he knew Bourbon's antipathy to Philippe's wife and secretly rejoiced that protocol had made them neighbors at table. He himself was seated between two comely, flirtatious princesses, his own wife Jeanne and the young wife of Jean de Nevers, Marguerite, of whom it was whispered that she had received Louis d'Orléans in her bower, although there was no proof of that.

The Bishops of Saint-Denis and Saint-Pol and other dignitaries of the Church, as well as the Dukes of Bar and Lorraine, sat at both ends of the horseshoe-shaped royal table. Queen Blanche did not attend the christening feast; the sober life at Neauphle had given her a distaste for prolonged repasts. She had gone with her retinue to one of the palace chapels to offer candles in honor of the newborn baby. At the lower tables sat nobles from Orléans' most trusted entourage: the Sires de Garencieres, de Morez, de Bethencourt, Jean de Bueil and Marshal Boucicaut. The servants in their dark green
livery constantly carried in new dishes—haunches of venison, pork, capon and other fowl, stuffed with truffles or cooked in sour sauce, all accompanied by compotes, by spiced meat pies and egg dishes. The two tall buffets on either side of the tables were loaded with platters piled high with pyramids of fruits, raisins, dates and nuts. The Duke's precious silver plate, the jugs and goblets which Valentine had brought him as part of her dowry, stood displayed there. The servants filled graceful decanters from almost man-sized narrow tankards with wines from Bordeaux and Burgundy, mead spiced with honey and currants, malmsey and sweet hippocras. The music continued without pause; minstrels appeared on the balcony and started singing the couplets of Bernard de Ventadour, so beloved by Orléans.