In a Dark Wood Wandering

by Hella S. Haasse

  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 a
nd 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.

  Her eyes, which she so seldom raised to his, were green: the grass in spring-time could not be greener, thought Louis, consumed by passion. The desire to possess Maret—her pet name—dominated him completely, so overwhelmingly that he had resorted to what was for him so revolting a measure as the ring which he held in the palm of his hand. This amulet, worn on a chain on the naked body, could not help but make the conquest easy for him.

  The Duke of Burgundy, about to depart from Saint-Pol with his attendants to return to his own dwelling, was interrupted by some gentlemen from Isabeau’s retinue who delivered the request to him that he visit the Queen before he left. Accompanied by some trusted friends, the Duke went with Isabeau’s messengers; he found the Queen in one of the vast gloomy halls which had once served as a reception and meeting room, but was now seldom used.

  Isabeau preferred the castle of Vincennes; if she had to reside at Saint-Pol she stayed mostly in her own apartments which, although not spacious, were comfortably furnished. However, there were too many eyes and ears there—a confidential conversation was impossible; greater security was offered by these deserted salons in the old section of the palace.

  The Queen sat near the hearth. The projecting mantelpiece was decorated to the ceiling with immense sculptures in relief: twelve heraldic beasts and the figures of prophets in pleated robes. Along the walls hung somber tapestries depicting hunting scenes. Some wax candles burned on a table before Isabeau. The silk damask of her clothing and her jewels glowed crimson and violet in the candleflames and the light of the setting sun which streamed in through the windows behind her. In a dark corner of the room the Duke saw a few court ladies and other members of Isabeau’s retinue; he ordered his own followers to remain near the door and approached the Queen. He knelt before her despite the stiffness of his limbs. He attached great importance to the conventions and was particularly punctilious about the expression of all due marks of respect. Not the difference in age between Isabeau and himself, not the fact that they tolerated each other only out of self-interest, nor that he was essentially the more powerful of the two, could prevent him from the performance of these ceremonies. Three times he allowed himself to be encouraged by the Queen to rise, before he stood up.

  Isabeau, who usually enjoyed Burgundy’s voluntary—although purely formal—self-abasement, was in no mood for compliments. She was frowning and her full lips were pursed; with her that was always a sure sign of annoyance. She sat erect with her hands on the arms of her chair. She had put aside her robes of state and so, despite the fact that her garments had been cleverly altered by her seamstress, it could no longer remain a secret that she was pregnant again as a result of the rapprochement between herself and the King during Charles’ short period of relative lucidity in the spring. There was a general sentiment that a second son was needed; the Dauphin was weak and frail. Isabeau had already lost two children who had suffered from the same lack of vitality. That she, with her strong healthy body, apparently was not capable of giving the country a robust heir was a disappointment and a source of amazement to many people. But the sickly blood of the most recent generation of France’s royal House seemed to be predominant.

  The Duke of Burgundy waited. The candlelight seemed to emphasize the sharpness of his features; the shadows lay deep around his nose and in his eyesockets. He held his mouth rigidly closed; Isabeau knew that only carefully tested and rehearsed words passed those lips. She had become accustomed, during the years when Charles was underage and Burgundy acted as his guardian, and now again during his renewed regency—which actually amounted to single-handed control of the government—to look for double, even triple, meanings behind the Duke’s words. Despite the fact that she considered him to be dangerous, she had a great deal of admiration for him. She recognized the similarity between them: like him, she was intent on working to her own advantage, on safeguarding her own position, on amassing gold and property, and on building power for herself. And she knew now that it was he whom she had to thank, in the main, for her marriage. His own children were married to members of the Bavarian royal house, whose possessions in the Netherlands Burgundy craved. Nothing could be more precious to him than a stronger bond between France and Bavaria. Isabeau had found that she could learn a great deal from him. Already she knew how to keep secret any plans of hers which ran counter to his. Now she concealed her growing desire for power behind a show of docility.

  “The King is not well,” she said abruptly, without preamble. Her manner of speech was unique in that court: she had never completely lost her foreign accent and had the habit of using short sentences, coming right to the point without the fashionable flowery circumlocutions and paraphrases.

  “Madame, I regret the incident in the apartments of the Duchess of Orléans,” said Burgundy in a low voice, without looking at her. “The King must, indeed, be far from well to demonstrate publicly an inclination which—”

  “Be still!” Isabeau cried. A dark flush spread over her face. The Duke of Burgundy fell silent; the released arrow quivered in the target.

  “How is he now?” Isabeau asked after a moment. “You brought him back to his chambers? What is he doing?”

  “The King is resting for a while. He was extremely excited.” Burgundy’s tone was, as usual, unruffled. “I believe that the physicians do not find it advisable for him to appear at the christening feast.”

  “That’s absurd!” Isabeau tossed her head; the pear-shaped pearls trembled in her ea
rs. “Why can’t he come to the table? A meal is less tiring than going to church. I do not want them to bring food to his chamber,” she announced with sudden brusqueness.

  The Duke looked at her directly for the first time, and raised his eyebrows. “What objection can you possibly have to that?” he asked. Isabeau glanced toward her courtiers who stood talking in low voices in the farthest corner of the darkening room. She did not answer at once but stared, her face averted, at the fire, while she toyed with an ornament which the King had sent her when they were first married and he was staying in the south of France: a small golden triptych with a tiny mirror in the back.

  “The King is bewitched,” she said finally, leaning toward him. Burgundy’s eyes did not change expression; only his mouth showed a trace of satisfaction.

  “Madame, may I ask on what grounds you base your opinion?”

  “Someone came to me—a man from Guyenne—his name is Arnaud Guillaume,” replied the Queen without looking at the impassive face opposite her.

  “Came to Your Majesty?” The Duke’s lips barely moved. Isabeau felt the reproof. She raised her head defiantly. “I had him brought—I had heard about him,” she said shortly. “He believes he can protect the King against sinister influences. He knows all about magic …”

  “Magic?” repeated Philippe. Isabeau shrugged. She let the gold triptych drop into her lap and looked at him almost defiantly. “What else helps against sorcery?” she asked haughtily. “We see all the time how little comes from the measures of the learned physicians. The King no longer recognizes me.” She lowered her eyes and fell silent.

  The Duke of Burgundy maintained the silence. A new fruit had ripened on the tree which he had so carefully planted.

  “Maitre Guillaume says,” Isabeau continued, “that those who bewitched the King are concentrating all their energies to prevent his recovery.”

  “Why should anyone—” the Duke stressed the last word. “—cast a spell upon the King? Does the King have enemies then, Madame?”