Crown in Candlelight (6 page)

Bon an, bon jour, joye et liesse,

Li doinst dieux et bone aventure!

Moved by the music, he believed that his lady was all that the song said: soft and kind. Only when he looked up at her did he know himself deluded.

‘That’s Grenon’s work!’ She scowled. ‘I would rather not hear the songs of Burgundy.’

She was on her feet again, murmuring and frowning. Louis sang an Italian ditty and the servants dozed on their feet, like horses. Twice Isabeau sent to ask if there had been messages from Bosredon, and her frown grew tighter. The hours hobbled by. In the last shred of night Louis slept, to be awakened by the Queen kicking at his leg with her spurred boot.

‘We ride to Paris! If Bosredon has forgotten his duty to me, I shall take pleasure in reminding him.’

Within minutes horses and an escort were ready. Stiff with weariness, Louis mounted and followed the Queen. Four days’ ride! and if he knew Isabeau, she would do it in three. He was not looking forward to meeting King Charles and he wondered how much he remembered of the cruel baiting in which he, Louis, had taken part. Skirting Orléans, he saw distantly his own manor, castles, churches, farms, his own fief with peasants toiling there. Somewhere in one of those misted towers was his wife, the patient pale Violante. Bearing and raising his children, uncomplaining of his adventures and thus enhancing his guilt. He thought of her with sudden sad regret, and rode fast through the county of Blois, trying not to look behind.

Charles of France was well at ease. Nothing could alarm him now. He felt as if all his dormant wits had renewed themselves, bright, like fine old armour carefully stored. Standing firm amid a swirl of diminished anxieties, he was a worthy successor to St Louis, to Philip-Augustus. His dangerous calm was ruthless. He knew through his agents that Isabeau would come to Paris. He could anticipate her every scheme. From his high plane of megalomania he saw her powerless beneath his will. He did not recognize his grand euphoria as the fragile thing it was. Thoughts of revenge made him grin like a schoolboy and kick his heels against the silk step of his dais.

He moved between palace and
château-fort
, and had again taken up his quarters in the Palais. From his raised throne he could see through a window the mast-tips of river craft and the bastions of the Grand Châtelet, crammed with treasure and prisoners, most of them Isabeau’s adherents, victims of his recent purge. From above he could hear the sound of choristers in the royal chapel. Jean sans Peur was in there, listening, praying. Yes, Burgundy was under the King’s roof, cousinly and subservient, daring no harm. Charles sighed contentedly, as he sat beneath the banners of Damascus cloth embroidered with lifesize birds and beasts. His amiable gaze moved over the three young people kneeling before him.

‘Be pleased to rise, my dears,’ he said.

Isabelle got up, her hand still firmly held by Charles of Orléans.

‘And you, my prince, come closer to me.’

The Dauphin Louis mounted the dais. His robe was heavily embossed with gems and his pointed ermine-trimmed sleeves dragged on the ground. Lately he had cultivated a certain smile—more of a sneer; it sat on his soft mouth like that of a wicked old man.

‘Isabelle,’ said the King, ‘soon you will marry.’

‘Sire.’

‘You will bear fine princes.’

‘And,’ burst out the Dauphin, ‘I will make every one a chevalier of honour … when I am king!’

Charles continued to smile. ‘Yes, but not for many years. And you, my lord of Orléans, will you cherish our jewel?’

The youth said fervently: ‘I shall love her as Our Lord loved the world.’

His fingers clenched tighter on Isabelle’s and she gave a hiss of pain. The King looked up at the sparkling banners. On one of them was a pelican, blood on its breast, from which its young fed.

‘They drink their mother’s life,’ said the King, and for an instant his eyes became opaque. Then he shook himself like a dog from a river, saying forcefully:

‘Yes, you will be happy. I’ll give you great estate. Better, eh, Belle, than marrying the English prince?’

‘Rather death,’ said Isabelle softly.

‘Did you know that Henry of Lancaster sent word that he was willing to abdicate the English throne should you wed his son, so think of that, Belle! You can sway kingdoms! He laughed a little too high, too long.

‘Sire,’ said Charles of Orléans, ‘is it true that Henry seeks to invade us, being so thwarted?’

‘All threats and wind. Henry Bolingbroke is sickly, leprous, finished. As for Harry his son …’

‘A coxcomb,’ said Isabelle viciously. ‘Who leches with men and women both. Who chases the matchless spirit of Glyn Dwr through Wales and calls it war! Yet who dares to aspire to my hand and my sister … even Marie, a bride of Christ! Michelle, Katherine … I know all about him—brawling with his brothers in the London stews …’

‘But surely, Madame,’ said Charles of Orléans, still holding her hand, ‘he was with King Richard in Ireland.’

She nodded and swallowed her anger. That morning she had made confession, revealing matters which took aback even the royal chaplain, inured to sin.

‘Father, when the usurper Bolingbroke was at Windsor, I ordered that a spiked poisoned instrument be placed in his bed. I confess this because I am weary and sick of murder and would lead a good life. I am to marry again. I must go to my marriage clean.’

She wept, and the chaplain, hating the sound of her grief, said: ‘Go then, and renounce your hatred. Wish ill to none. Sin no more. Be penitent.’

But, she still thought, there had been such dangerous glory in it! Such disappointment when the chamberers annonced their find with cries of horror. Already she had bidden her retinue tear off Bolingbroke’s badge and replace it with Richard’s White Hart. The glory was gone. Murder brought only madness. She returned the anxious pressure of Charles’s hand.

‘Yes,’ she admitted. ‘King Richard liked Prince Harry well.’

Jean sans Peur entered, full of bonhomie, with a large entourage, including Colard de Laon, merry, with a gout of red paint on his pointed shoe.

‘
Ma foi!
God Himself dwells in that chapel aloft! I feel the presence of our mighty ancestors!’

‘Yes,’ agreed the King. ‘And were they not swift to root out the ills from our house?’

Jean sans Peur nodded. His long Valois nose had already sniffed out the King’s mood and his heavy eyes glinted. Gladly he anticipated whatever gave the King this gay brittle confidence. There was not long to wait. The outer door shuddered under a violent knocking.

Isabeau, followed by the Duke of Orléans, marched up the Hall. The King, sitting erect, extended his hand, palm down.

‘An honour, my dear Isabeau.’ he said, as she snatched angrily at his fingers and brushed them with her lips. ‘And how is Tours? Our court is bereft without you. Will you not admire my new Italian tapestries? All beauty comes from Italy. Your little painter will know this. But I was forgetting that Monsieur de Laon is no longer in your service. A pity, he is so skilled in the new
grisaille
…’ He half-turned, almost winked at Jean sans Peur.

It was a puny gibe, but enough. Isabeau mounted the two stairs of the dais and put her mouth close to the King’s ear.

‘Have a care, Charles. Remember when you were Georges Dubois!’

‘Dubois?’ he said pleasantly, so that everyone heard. ‘A paramour of yours? Dead, as I recall.’

The King was ahead of her in taunts and in strategy. No longer could she raise his nightmares. Like a vicious child, he ordered wine and sweets, bidding her admire the gold goblet and plate that had once graced her own table at Tours.

She took a long draught of wine and said roughly: ‘I did not come here to parry insults. Where is Lord Bosredon?’

He said seriously: ‘If he is not with you, then … God help us, is there no loyalty? He must have deserted your household. Come, let me console you!’ He stretched out his hands. She saw with fury the wry amusement of Jean sans Peur and the lips of her own son the Dauphin parting in a chuckle. This was a game he understood.

‘I demand you bring Bosredon to me. Let me know the nature of his disaffection. Its instigator I need not ask.’

‘Why should he be within my court?’

‘I sent him—’ She bit her lip. ‘I sent him here to Paris.’

Charles laughed. ‘Paris! It’s full of taverns and rogues who play with cogged dice. Perhaps even now he lies in drink with his pockets cut, tattling of his high associations …’

‘No,’ she said tightly. ‘he’s here.’

‘Maybe.’ The king’s whole mood changed suddenly. ‘You are weary from your journey. You must rest, change your clothes.’ He clapped his hands, and Odette came forward. ‘My little one, attend the Queen.’

‘I have my own servants,’ said Isabeau.

‘I’ve ordered a special banquet,’ he went on. ‘A rare, unequalled catch was taken from the Seine today. I impounded it for my table. You must share the feast.’

She looked back angrily on her way from the Hall, but she was hungry and there was little merit in argument.

‘You will join us?’ He was almost pleading. ‘Then we will talk further of Bosredon.’

Servants set damask-covered trestles in a rectangle to the dais. Plates rimmed with gems were brought, and multi-coloured goblets of Venetian glass. A place was laid for Isabeau on the King’s right, and for Louis of Orléans on his left. The Dauphin sat next to Jean sans Peur, and Isabelle and Charles lower down. Minstrels arrived and began to play a rondel. The King skipped from the dais to greet Isabeau’s return, showing such amity that she almost wondered whether secretly he desired a reconciliation. It was only six years since she had borne a child of his.

‘How is Katherine?’ she said, following her own thoughts.

‘She is well, at Poissy,’ said Isabelle instantly.

‘Broth, my lady?’ said the King.

Steaming bowls of venison from the Loire, the meat crushed and blended with eggs, cream and wine. Isabeau ate greedily, while the King watched with solicitous approval.

The minstrels played; a youth sang a chansonette. Isabeau, her confidence swelling with her stomach, thought: he
is
ready to be reconciled; the idiot is as weak as ever. After supper I shall demand some of my treasures back. Charles kept her cup filled up with the cornelian yield from Jean sans Peur’s vineyards which tasted, to her, none the worse for that. After a time her reasoning grew muddled and her head hot. She said:

‘You keep a good table, my liege. Once we were great and powerful together, and could be so again.’ Louis of Orléans heard this and bit his lip in dismay. The King smiled warmly.

‘Agreed, why should we not all be friends? You and I, my lords of Burgundy and Orléans, and your chevalier, Monsieur Bosredon …’

Fuddled by wine and food, she had almost forgotten.

‘So he is here! Charles …’ almost wheedling: ‘Tell me.’

‘He’ll be with us, soon.’ Flambeaux had been lit all around the hall, shining on the tapestries and the goblets, jewelled eyes. At Charles’s signal, the minstrels played a fanfare. From the buttery twelve men bore in a vast covered dish.

‘Fresh!’ said the King. ‘The bounty of Mother Seine!’

Isabeau leaned forward. ‘Is it salmon?’

‘No, but a big fish.’ The butlers lifted the cover of the dish. Neatly lying in the middle of a bed of green herbs lay the naked, cyanosed body of Louis Bosredon. Before drowning he had been half-strangled, and the marks were livid on his neck.

Even the butlers had not been told, having been forbidden to lift the dish’s cover earlier. One of them reeled into a corner to vomit. For a moment his retching was the only sound.

Then the Dauphin Louis, jumping up, ran round the table to peer closer into the dish. He let out a shriek of laughter, while the King watched Isabeau greedily; the wine-flush faded to chalk and her hand snapped the stem of her goblet so that Burgundy wine ran softly over the table edge. Then the child’s laughter died away and there was only the drip of wine on the tiles.

The Princess Isabelle sat very still, her head filled with rolling waves of faintness. She saw her father’s terrible triumphant eyes, the gleeful face of the Dauphin, the barely concealed satisfaction of the Duke of Orléans. She felt herself surrounded by monsters from some lavish portrait of Hell. A voice beat at her silently: you too inherit Charles’s madness, Isabeau’s evil. All the intercessions in the world cannot temper this devil of Valois. She would have cried out, then felt an arm about her. Charles of Orléans was beside her, pulling her up and through a side exit between the ranks of stunned servants, just as the storm broke.

‘Your doing, my lord!’ Her mother’s voice.

‘Yes, mine! And so shall I do to all your mountebanks and spies that fill your lust, that weasel into my Council chamber …’

There was a scream, the crash of glass, wild weeping. Isabelle and Charles went, as urgently as if heaven itself were about to close, up the stairs to the chapel.

‘Sometimes,’ she said faintly, ‘I would gladly die!’

He swathed her in his cloak. ‘And take my own life away! Madame, sweet Madame …’

She clasped him tightly about the waist. I told Katherine … love is the only candle .…

‘The world seems darker still today,’ she said.

They reached the chapel. The door was open and the scent of flowers and wax wreathed about the high altar with its burning golden Christ.

‘Stay by me,’ said Charles of Orléans, ‘and I will be your light.’ ‘Murder,’ said Jean sans Peur, stretching his long legs in the hearth, ‘is not the royal prerogative.’

It was November, sickly with fog and the stench of wet withered fruit left on the bough. A grave-cold mist clung about the fortress at Bapaume where the Duke had installed himself to meditate, to assess, and to worry more than a little. Tense and sober, a small ring of followers deployed themselves quietly about his presence.

Three things fretted Jean’s cool mind, and two of them concerned the House of Orléans. Isabelle’s forthcoming marriage with the young Charles solidified the rival claim to Valois. Bosredon’s assassination two months earlier had proved fortunate for Duke Louis. Lastly and most important, the King’s health, when last assessed, had given Jean sans Peur some disturbing moments. He could only hope he had imagined that clouding of the eyes, those non-sequiturs in the royal conversation. The King had studied his own fingernails intently; always a bad sign. His calm was precarious. Any shock could overset him. Jean sans Peur spoke quietly to a man in the forefront of the circle about his chair.