Crown in Candlelight (7 page)

‘And where was the Queen yesterday?’

‘At Troyes, my lord. Orléans was with her. They are preparing to leave for winter quarters.’

‘Where?’

‘Paris. The Palais again.’

Jean sans Peur lowered his head, smiling ruefully, his heavy nose like a preying bird’s beak.

‘She’s confident, then.’

‘Yes, lord. So is he. Very light of heart.’

‘She would not go to Paris,’ he said, raising his head and addressing the listeners directly, ‘were she not sure of some calamity to follow that will render her immune. After the Bosredon affair she swore never to return while Charles held power. Are there physicians with the King?’

Anxiety cooled his brain further; his thoughts, like swordsmen in dark places, moved deliberately on. He weighed the whole structure of events; intuitively seeing France in the round, a globe balanced precariously on the fragile thread of her sovereign’s spirit, a globe about which rats crept and gnawed. Also he foresaw the danger from beyond that sphere, from Henry of Lancaster, who even though sick was capable, through his heir, of further ruthless demands. Henry had been willing to compromise for a French princess but would soon be willing no longer. Jean sans Peur thought, suddenly appalled: Valois has behaved like a true imbecile. Diplomacy is dead. Were I in my cousin’s shoes, I would, by now have averted disaster. Should that cousin’s reason fail, what then?

Isabeau, allied to Orléans, will see the country damned. So long as she can have her pleasure, rape the treasury before Henry of England gets to it, and doubtless flee with her favourites across the nearest frontier … just as I caught her once before, on the road to Milan. Milan.

The name came like a flash of flame. Violante of Milan was wife to Louis of Orléans. A poor neglected wife for sure, but Louis had a certain sense of responsibility, a basic tenderness. Had not Jean himself seen him, refusing to travel on because of a sick child? Was this the answer, or part of it? The way to weaken by elimination, at least some of the dangerous power of the Queen?

There was a trick to which lovely sinful Paris would lend her darkness. He beckoned his agent closer.

‘All others may go,’ he said.

Murder is not the king’s prerogative, he told himself again. Had I been king, France would be safer than she is today. It is not too late.

At seven years old, Katherine had grown tall but was still very thin. She had a trick of holding herself tight, arms crossed over her waist. Her appetite was hearty but she remained pale, and the nuns, surveying her like some jewel, worried in whispers. Daily they enveloped her in prayer.

She found Poissy safe and boring. She watched her sister Marie take her final vows: she played with Jacquot, who had outgrown puppyhood and guarded her with dignity. She wove small coloured tapestries of St Denis and St Antoine. She rose obediently to the night offices and yawned through the long services of the day, and all the time she waited for visits from Belle. She marked the days off on tally-sticks, she cut them from candles and watched them waste to bring Belle nearer. Sometimes there was an unexpected visit, which threw her whole calendar into joyful chaos. On a foul November day, Dame Alphonse bustled into the parlour where Katherine sat coughing from the fog which seeped even through the lead-lined windows.

‘My princess!’ She stopped mid-stride, keys and rosary swinging. ‘Have you
la grippe
? Here …’ She fumbled in her pouch. ‘Wear this. It will cure you quicker than anything I know.’

It was a suckered frond of sweetbriar, noduled with a warty growth.

‘
L’églantine
,’ breathed Dame Alphonse. ‘The bush from which this came was planted in our garth during the time of Philip-Augustus. When the canker shows on the briar, it cures the cough. Permit …’

The princess bent her long neck to receive the garland. From his corner Jacquot watched sternly, then seeing that the nun means no harm, went to sleep again, waking the next instant to leap and fawn round Isabelle, who entered with a smile.

‘Oh, Kéti!’ Isabelle cried after a moment, half-strangled. ‘How strong you’ve grown! Wait, I can’t breathe. I want to give you a present.’

It was a miniature painting by Colard de Laon mounted in blue enamel. It was a good likeness; the little artist had caught Isabelle’s courage and much of her beauty. She sat down on a high-backed chair and drew her sister on to her lap.

‘You’re too old for that Princess,’ said Dame Alphonse, hovering near the door. ‘You are nearly grown up. Nursing is for babies.’

‘Then I’ll be a babe for ever,’ said Katherine.

‘Madame.’ The nun was red with importance under her wimple. ‘All the community offer you felicitations on your betrothal. When is the marriage taking place?’

‘Very soon,’ said Isabelle absently. She took between thumb and finger the sweetbriar garland round Katherine’s neck. ‘What’s this nonsense?’

‘The princess was coughing,’ said Dame Alphonse, redder than ever.

‘Then she must have a physician.’ Isabelle looked gravely down at Katherine. She removed the prickly trophy and held it out in silence to Dame Alphonse. Defeated, the nun withdrew.

‘Belle,’ said Katherine in the peace that followed, ‘are you really to be married soon?’

‘Yes, my love.’

‘Will you be very unhappy?’

‘I trust not.’ Isabelle laughed. ‘Why?’

‘When you were married before …’ She slid from her sister’s lap and knelt. ‘I remember, Belle, how you wept.’

‘That was afterwards.’ She looked down tenderly at Katherine. ‘I was only a year older than you when I married Richard … he said to my father: “I would not have her any older. I am young enough to wait for her. We shall be so strongly united that no king in Christendom can in any way … hurt us.” ’

‘Oh, sweet Belle!’ cried Katherine. ‘You’re weeping now!’

Unheeding, Isabelle went on. ‘And when I was conveyed in state from Lambeth to the Tower, soon after we came to England, nine people were crushed to death in their effort to see me—the little queen! It was a bad augury which was fulfilled worse than either of us had dreamed …’ She brushed her tears away. ‘It’s finished. Charles loves me and I am fond of him. His father was kind to you. I shall be saved from Henry Bolingbroke and his knavish son. You also, and Michelle. You will make good marriages and be happy. When I’m married I shall live at Blois. Or Charles will take me to Angoulême, where he is Count. It’s lovely there in spring.’

Katherine’s dark eyes were suddenly wild.

‘You swore you’d never leave me, Belle! Never while life lasts!’ She began to sob, and Isabelle took her close again.

‘I swore it. I swear it now. We shall not be parted for long.’ She shivered. A ghost-voice whispered in her head:
Adieu, Madame! Adieu! until we meet again!

‘I want to be with you. Take me with you to Blois, to Angoulême!’

‘Katherine,’ said Belle sternly, ‘you must trust me. It’s safer for you here at Poissy, until such time as you marry. Oh, Katherine! as if I should ever desert you! I’ll come to see you often, do you think I don’t miss you? Care for you constantly, pray for you every day? I’ve told you, Kéti, this is a dark, evil world. Stay a while longer here. Dame Alphonse is loyal and this place is so holy none dare meddle with it. Here, dry your eyes. Bring your lute and sing to me. We’ll have a lovely time together.’

While they played and sang and told one another stories, the day shortened and the fog thickened, becoming a noxious brew like that which had covered Paris the previous evening as if obedient to some powerful will. Death-cold and filled with the stench of sewers and river, it seemed elemental and gorged with sin.

As Katherine played and Isabelle tapped her foot and smiled, there came a hammering on the outer door of the convent. A hammering that might have come from the swordhilt of one seeking sanctuary, so desperate and violent were the blows. They heard the porteress’s raised voice, and feet running down the cloister to where the sisters sat. A man’s voice cried: ‘Madame! I must see Madame!’

It was a henchman of Charles of Orléans, one who loved the family well and who consequently wept and whose white disastrous face made Isabelle spring up with a cry. When he could speak he told a dreadful tale. The secret premonitions of Louis of Orléans had come to their full.

For him, triumph and consummation had been all he had ever hoped for. After the evening of Bosredon’s murder had ended in chaos, the Queen shrieking with rage and grief, the King laughing wildly and eventually becoming pale and silent, Isabeau had almost collapsed. Leaving the table with its overflung goblets and skirting the gruesome corpse, Louis had followed her from the hall, offering her his arm, expecting it to be struck away with a malediction. But she had turned to him, her face patched scarlet and white, her eyes sunken with shock.

‘For God’s love, Louis, take me from this place.’

He summoned for all his resources to find a lodging fit for her and not too far away, for her strength seemed on the wane. An unfamiliar sense of power possessed him; he blessed Bosredon’s demise and found it possible in his mind to congratulate the King. It seemed a long time since he and Isabeau and Louis of Bavaria had wandered into the Hôtel de St Paul to taunt the filthy and raving Charles. St Paul was where he took Isabeau. The place had recently been refurbished; fires were kept burning and chambers sweet. There they lay that night, Isabeau tossing in a great bed, Louis watching from the foot and soothing her with eloquence he had not known lay in him. On the following day they returned to Tours, and there the Queen rewarded him at last. No longer did she flaunt her person before him only to send him off next minute with an oath. She scarcely let him out of her sight, accepting his embraces voluptuously, sharing with him the days and nights, her cup, her bed. After a few days they left Tours and moved to Troyes, within sight of the Seine and easy access to Paris. There she breathed her poisonous ambition in his ears.

‘I have the King watched day and. night. Yesterday he dropped his cup, his hand was shaking. The day before he wept for no reason. He is failing again, and soon we’ll show him no mercy, you and I!’

She was confident. It would have surprised her to learn that the agents of Jean sans Peur also watched the King just as avidly, and bore back to their master the disconcerting evidence of their eyes. It was as if the whole of France reverberated with the beat of hooves and whispers. And at Blois, Violante of Milan watched sadly from her château-tower, watched the empty courtyard and the barren vineyards and wondered then, if ever, her husband would come home. Sometimes, Louis still thought of her, but he was enwrapped in Isabeau, feeling ecstatic and afraid, as if he rode a wild horse down an avenue of darkness. By the time they left Troyes and took up residence at the Palais, joy had vanquished his fear. He grew bold and more assertive. He was in bed with the Queen, late at night, when the message came, voiced in ancient squeaky tones outside the door.

Isabeau said: ‘Call out. Say we have retired, and that tomorrow I’ll punish whoever has disturbed us.’

The scratching on the door continued with the urgent summons.

‘Make a light.’ Louis fumbled for flint and tinder. The Queen raised herself on her elbow. The light rippled on her heavy white breasts; her face was puffy with sleep. Louis slid from bed,. threw on a robe and opened the door. The servant confronting him was unfamiliar but there were many such in Isabeau’s entourage; distant relatives, hangers-on.

‘Seigneur, you must come. Your wife, the Duchess Violante.’

‘She is at Blois,’ he said curtly.

‘No, she is in Paris here, at the Louvre, mortally ill. She was brought this evening so that the King’s physicians might save her life, but it is hopeless. She is asking for you.’

‘Wait.’ He went back into the chamber and began quickly to dress. Isabeau had overheard the conversation. She watched him cynically.

‘You still have a tender heart,’ she mocked.

‘She’s my wife,’ said Louis, and threw on his chaperon and mantle. He picked up sword and belt and buckled them. ‘But you, my queen,’ he said gallantly, ‘are my life!’

The old page, agitated, was waiting, and went ahead down the stairs and out through the great gate into the foggy street where horses and an escort of five men waited. We must hurry, they said, and took Louis at a fierce pace through the deserted city. He rode in the midst of the escort, the man at its head going so fast through alleys and courts that the lantern he carried swung up and down, its rays like pale steam against the. fog. Louis thought of Violante: I could have treated her better, though I was never cruel … They turned over cobbles glossy with fog, into the Rue Barbette, narrow and dark, in the meanest quarter of Paris. A short cut, seigneur, said the leading rider, slowing his horse and turning to smile with unpleasantly black teeth and unshaven jaw poking from his hood. What a devil, thought Louis; why does Isabeau employ such villains, but then doubtless he is good with his fists. It was his last conclusive thought. From a darkened house on the left four men rushed out. Louis turned with a cry to the escort, just as the first blade drove into his side, doubling him in agony. He raised his head appealingly and was instantly almost blinded by blood from a slash to his brow, yet saw the unshaven man steadying the light and smiling. Louis slipped from his horse. His left hand clawed upward and clutched at the saddle-horn. one of the assailants raised a short sword and the Duke felt a searing pain. He looked up through blood, saw his own severed hand still clinging to the saddle, and fell below it to the ground. There nine men hacked at him and he died.

Nearby a window was flung open, a light bloomed and a voice called sleepily. Quickly the leader doused his lantern and shouted through the murk.

‘The Watch here! All shut, blow out your candles!’ and the window went dark again. Nine red blades were sheathed. Nine riders set spurs and were gone. Louis lay still in his blood. A little runnel of it was moving, coming to rest beside the severed hand on the other side of the street.

By a strange irony, Violante of Milan had indeed been ill at Blois, and now in Paris she had a deathly appearance. With the Princess Isabelle she sat in the foremost carriage of a long mourning procession which wound north-easterly to the Hôtel de St Paul, where the King now resided. Isabelle had designed the cortège with as much care as her resources could muster. Seven black
charrettes
, each drawn by a pair of white horses, slowly moved, a magpie chain of grief, from the Porte St Jacques where at the south outer wall she had received Violante with tears. In the second of these carriages lay the black-clad body of Louis of Orléans, wearing his orders and jewels, with his left hand wrapped in cloth of gold and placed by his head. Following the corpse came the young Charles, his sword drawn and carried before his face. Behind him in the remaining wagons sat Isabelle’s retainers and those who were prominent in the household of Orléans. Word of the procession’s approach had leaped ahead and the streets filled with citizens craning for a long look at the murdered Duke. From the Abbey of St Victor, from St Geneviève and St Etienne the students and tutors came hurrying and followed the cortège into the Cité. As the slow black-and-white river moved over the bridge at the Petit Châtelet and into the shadow of Notre Dame, the crowd swelled. The bell was sounding, mingling with the rattle and ring of hooves and wheels. The train passed through the Porte au Blé into the precinct of St Paul where the Célestins bell joined that of the cathedral. Men bared their heads, looking awestruck on tiptoe at the Duke’s remains. A voice said loudly: ‘Whose evil work was this?’