In a Dark Wood Wandering

by Hella S. Haasse

  “There she is again,” he said, a catch of agony in his voice. “Go away! Begone—don’t look at me like that. What does she want of me? Let her be gone! Valentine, Valentine!” he screamed, pounding his fist against the sidewall of the canopy.

  “Sire!” hissed Isabeau sharply, white to the lips. “Don’t forget who or where you are. You are the King of France!”

  “Who says that?” Shuddering, Charles gripped the sculptured armrest of the bench with both hands and half-turned toward Burgundy. “That is a lie! Why do they insist that I am the King? Begone, leave me in peace! Do not believe this idle chatter, my lords and ladies,” he went on loudly to his table companions. “It is a slander, the King will surely punish those who say it when he gets wind of it.”

  Burgundy stood up resolutely, but Isabeau, driven by now to extremes, thrust him back. She was torn by shame and impotent rage. She gripped Charles’ hand so tightly that her nails tore his flesh. “There are the lilies and escutcheons of Valois. You stand before the throne, Sire. Surely you must know you are the King himself.”

  Charles shrieked in pain and fury and wrenched his hand free. In his anguish he fell against Burgundy, who threw an arm around his shoulders to keep him on his feet. The King’s face was white as chalk; foam appeared between his lips. Isabeau, who had never before seen him like that—she had not been present during his attacks of madness at Creil—stepped back and sought support against the edge of the table.

  The guests sat motionless; servants and musicians withdrew into the shadows of the colonnades. The dwarf slid from the pie and crept timidly away under the drooping folds of a table cover.

  “Hush now, Sire, hush,” said Burgundy, attempting to take hold of the King’s resistant body. “No one will do you harm; you are among friends. Now sit down calmly; do. We will summon the man who juggles burning torches.”

  But the mention of fire woke in the King’s disordered brain recollections of the fearful night which had brought on his second period of madness. He shrieked and struck out wildly about him. Bourbon moved quickly to pull the dagger from its sheath on Charles’ girdle and get the weapon out of the madman’s reach, remembering what had happened in the forest of Mans, where the King in his frenzy had stabbed two noblemen of his retinue.

  “Your Majesty,” the Duke of Burgundy began, but he was not able to finish. The King spat on the lilies on the canopy, tried to tear the tapestry, making derisive, scornful gestures.

  “Away, away with that weed!” he screamed. “Take the plants away! Majesty, majesty—it is all blasphemy! My name is George—my escutcheon bears a lion pierced by a sword. I am a valiant knight! To arms! To arms!” His lips turned blue; his eyeballs turned up, showing the whites of his eyes.

  “In God’s name, call a physician,” said Louis d’Orléans with vehemence. “My lords, forgive the disturbance. The King is gravely ill. I regret that I did not cancel this banquet—under these circumstances.”

  Jean de Bueil left the hall quickly, followed by a few retainers. The Archbishop of Saint-Denis approached in long, trailing purple robes and held a cross before the King, while he moved his lips in prayer. The King, somewhat restored to himself by the wine which someone had sprinkled on his forehead, shook his head fearfully.

  “Let him rest awhile—give him a chance to breathe.” Orléans had come under the canopy. Now he took one of the King’s ice-cold hands in his. “Brother—do you not know me?” he said softly, insistently. “Come sit by me here, and let us talk awhile together. Tell me about the sword and helmet which our father gave you when you were a child.”

  The sick man shivered; he seemed to shake off his frenzy, like a wet dog shaking off drops of water. He blinked his eyes.

  “Come, now.” Louis tapped the cushion of the bench. Burgundy looked at the Archbishop with raised eyebrows.

  “It seems that Monseigneur d’Orléans really knows a treatment which is mightier than any treatment from the Church,” he remarked in an undertone. Isabeau, still breathing heavily, gave him an angry look, but remained silent. The veil was damp on her temples; her legs could no longer hold her. Leaning on the Duchess of Berry, she sank into her seat. The King slumped against his brother’s shoulder. Seen together, the likeness as well as the frightful disparity between the two was startling: one face was like a twisted reflection of the other.

  “Yes, brother,” said the King, who recognized Orléans and at that moment began to speak to his brother as he had done in their childhood. “That was a wondrous story, with the weapons—they hung over my bed. I had to choose … how was it again?” He became lost in thought; his head drooped over his breast. Orléans gazed down at him with a smile which was not without bitterness.

  There was some disorder at the tables. Food remained untouched on dishes and platters. The chimes of the wine fountain played monotonously without pause. The guests at the lower tables talked softly to one another, following the advice of Boucicaut, who thought as little attention as possible should be paid to the King’s condition.

  A door opened under the portico and Jean de Bueil re-entered the hall with Maitre d’Harselly, a few other of the King’s physicians, two valets and an old retainer who enjoyed the King’s special confidence, and who was always with him. The doctors’ presence was linked in the King’s consciousness with unspeakable bodily and spiritual torments; he was beside himself again. Neither persuasion nor gentle compulsion could induce him to accompany the court physicians. Finally, they had to carry him away by force past the tables, guests, musicians, servants and the ever-growing group of spectators in the gallery.

  “Valentine, Valentine!” shrieked the sick man desperately before the doors shut tight behind him and the doctors. Immediately Louis d’Orléans signalled to his servants; music sounded again from the balcony, cup-bearers and table servants hastily resumed their work. A few dogs played in the hall with some feathers which had dropped from one of the silvered birds decorating the platters; the dwarf slipped away unnoticed between the pillars of the gallery. Orléans sat down beside the Queen. For the first time he saw a look of cruelty in the set of her mouth. She threw her brother-in-law a glance he had never seen in her eyes before.

  “Valentine,” she murmured, almost without moving her lips. “Always Valentine. This situation is becoming unbearable, Monseigneur.”

  Louis shrugged. “The King is like a child,” he responded softly, beckoning to a cup-bearer to fill her goblet. Isabeau, however, laid her white, fleshy hand over the mouth of the goblet. The page bowed and moved on. “Will you not drink with me, Madame?” The Duke of Orléans spoke with an astonished smile that only partly disguised his wounded feelings.

  “It is a situation that must be remedied,” continued Isabeau, her eyes fixed on his face. Orléans laughed, somewhat irritated. He did not understand. After a pause she said in a cold voice, “You can do much to prevent greater difficulties in the future, my lord.” A shadow crossed Louis’ face; he bit his lip. Because the mood among his guests was still constrained, he felt obliged to attempt to restore the lighter atmosphere. While he looked about, trying to think of a way to re-open the conversation, his eyes met those of Berry, who sat staring at him, rather shapeless in his colored brocade, slowly turning his beaker in his hand.

  “Really, in all the excitement we have forgotten to drink to the health of the baptized child,” Berry declared with a malicious smile. “Would this not be the time to wish him prosperity and a glorious future?” He raised his goblet. “Charles of Orléans, long may he live!”

  It was not long past midnight when Louis set out for the room which the people of Saint-Pol called “the chamber where Monseigneur d’Orléans says his prayers.” He went there frequently and stayed long, especially on those days when circumstances prevented him from going to the chapel of the Celestines. An odor of frankincense and a profound silence, all the more soothing after the hubbub in the dining hall, greeted him when he opened the door. After the dessert there was a rowdy atmosphere at the
tables because of the wine and the wit of Louis’ six jesters who were famous for their insolent subtleties. Orléans retained an unpleasant memory of Berry’s flushed face, the empty uncontrollable laughter of his young wife, Isabeau’s barely veiled anger. Over the creased damask, strewn with bread crumbs and fruit pits, the enemies had traded gibes and taunts, encouraged by the forced mirth of the other guests who boisterously approved of everything the fools said as they walked past the tables.

  After the Queen’s abrupt departure, the banquet had ended. Orléans had already ordered his chamberlain to arrange a tournament in honor of his new son, to make up for the abortive christening feast. Walking through the narrow draughty corridors he had deliberated whether he should still go to the chapel of the Celestines. But after the strains of the evening he longed for the perfect tranquillity of the chapel. Kneeling in the fragrant twilight on the mosaic tiles, under which his two eldest sons lay buried, he sought to recover the shadowless peace, the serene faith untainted by guilt, which he had known as a child. The cold, quiet room which he entered now awoke memories of his childhood; it was here that he and his brother used to kneel together, leaning against the knees of their governess, the Dame de Roussel. Charles, the elder, could recite all the prayers fluently, without mistakes, and he did it willingly, with scarcely concealed pride; Louis, who could not yet speak clearly, had enough difficulty kneeling and concentrating on keeping his small hands together at the same time, could only stammer after the governess: “Ave Maria—full of grace …”

  He shut the heavy door carefully behind him. A perpetual lamp, hanging from long chains, stirred slightly in the draught. The shadows on the face of the image of the Virgin alternately faded and deepened, so that there seemed to be life in the painted eyes and the artfully carved, smiling lips. The Mother of God wore a gilded crown on her head and the cloak which enveloped her as well as the child was stitched with gold thread and jewels. Something in the pale, narrow wooden face reminded him of his wife, equally delicate and pale, who lay beneath the coverlet of her lying-in bed. Was it the sad, patient smile, or the way she held her head, slightly inclined to one side, under the heavy crown? Shame and remorse welled up in Louis, a bitter, scalding wave; he dropped to his knees before the statue, his fists pressed against his forehead. He did not notice the icy coldness of the stone floor. In the silence he heard the throbbing of his heart and the gentle crackling of the hot wax of the altar candles dripping onto the candleholder. He felt overwhelmed by melancholy, the inevitable reaction to tension and great excitement; by sorrow for vanished innocence and childish happiness.

  What had become of the two boys in their matching brocade cloaks; the King’s two small sons who had learned their prayers kneeling here? Where had the sounds of their voices gone? And the jingling of the bells on the harness with which, each in turn, they played the part of the horse? Somewhere within these walls their excited cries must still echo—when they played at battles and tourneys with friends Henri de Bar and Charles d’Albret, each window niche had become a fortress, each mosaic tile a territory to be conquered. Although Louis was still a young man, it seemed to have been an infinity since he had come here as a child and as a youth. He remembered his father clearly, although he had been barely eleven years old when Charles V had died. The King usually sent for his sons when he sat in the library, his favorite room, between stacks of manuscripts, beautifully ornamented pages in vellum. To collect books, and sit poring over them in a quiet room behind walls which shut out the outside world, was the only desire he had which approached passion. His library was housed in one of the towers of the Louvre, his imposing castle which dominated Paris with its high battlements and pointed roofs. Bars had been placed before the windows to prevent birds from flying in and damaging the books.

  The King loved to bring his little sons here and show them about, after what seemed like an endless climb up the circular staircase which wound between the white walls of the tower. Louis still vividly remembered those hours: first the small procession on the stairs, his father in front, his thin, slightly misshapen body wrapped in a fur-lined mantle, black like all his clothes, and with a velvet hood on his head, intended to protect him against headache and cold draughts; behind him came Charles and Louis, apparently climbing the stairs with all the decorum expected of the sons of a king, but in reality counting the steps under their breaths or trying to push past each other on the narrow landings; and last came the librarian, Giles Malet, who, after the King’s death, would be librarian in Louis’ ducal household. Later, at the tables piled with manuscripts, the conversation between father and sons took on the character of an examination, a random test. The King, leaning against a reading desk, quietly and patiently asked questions in Latin, which he chose to use on these occasions; thoughtful, beautifully constructed, eloquent sentences, strewn with quotations from his favorite writer, Aristotle.

  When Louis thought of his father, he remembered him so, teaching, his pale face with strong arched eyebrows in the shadow of his hood; the long nose had the tint of old ivory. He had a large, sensitive mouth. It was a face that gave a preponderant impression of sadness and suffering; it was clear from the lines that ran from his nostrils to the corners of his mouth that old age had come to him prematurely; but his brown eyes were sharp and lively, the eyes of a man of great understanding and clear insight.

  Charles V seemed to have been born old. Before he came of age, he had known enough trouble to make him realize the relativity of all things under the sun. In his sickly body lived a spirit which coldly and calmly surveyed a France ravaged by war and pestilence, a welter of famine, chaos and boundless misery, in which he began to create order, following a system that did not meet with a positive reaction from the people around him, the pretentious and haughty nobles who had not only lost battle after battle against the English invaders, but had brought their own country to the point of ruin by squeezing the commoners and peasants dry. He rendered them harmless by surrounding himself with advisors from the bourgeoisie, men who were tirelessly zealous in their newly awakened social consciousness. Gradually, by proper organization of the armies, he freed the country from the pillaging bands of roving mercenaries who came from all over; he let the English exhaust themselves on unimportant skirmishes—now on the coast, now deeper in the land again; buildings rose up—forts, palaces, the towered Louvre, the Bastille and a long series of connecting halls in Saint-Pol.

  The King was extremely frugal and sober; he had no desires to be gratified at the cost of the exchequer and the prosperity of the country. Day after day he kept punctually to a regimen of work and relaxation. The pleasures of the table meant nothing to him; he ate little meat and drank diluted wine. He loved his family, his work; above all, however, he loved his books—and the writers, philosophers and astrologers who lived in great numbers at his court. France had raised itself from the morass of misery into which it had fallen; the eyes of all Christendom were fixed again upon the heart of the Western world.

  “Le Sage” he was called in his time; the wise, the thoughtful one. So he was seen, with his books and his scriveners, governing from his library; so Louis saw him when he thought of his father: leaning against his reading desk, the fingers of one hand between the pages of a manuscript, and the other hand—permanently paralyzed as a result of the poison given him as a youth by his archenemy Navarre—resting in the folds of his mantle.

  As long as the King lived, much care was expended on the education of both boys—a succession of excellent tutors instructed them in all accomplishments essential for princes of the blood and, perhaps because of the direct supervision of the King, this instruction was more thorough than would have been the case in other circumstances. And as was customary with him, the father looked to the future. He was righdy concerned about his health. The inheritance he was leaving—a reviving France, barely-allayed hostilities with England, discontented nobles who waited, hand on sword, in their castles for a chance to rehabilitate their positions, and
an awakening populace of commoners and peasants—this inheritance was a dangerous toy for children or reckless youths. In addition, ambitious rivals, the King’s brothers, waited near the throne—the avaricious Anjou, the crafty Burgundy, the cold, sensual Berry and his brother-in-law Bourbon, meddlesome and pompous—in truth, a pack of vultures which could never be feared enough.

  Therefore, the King set up a guardian trust consisting of various high dignitaries of the Church and some of his advisors—among them Philippe de Maiziéres and Clisson, later constable of France. These men were part of the group which the King’s brothers and knights referred to tauntingly as ‘the Marmousets’—the fools. Charles V expected that these tested servants would be a temporizing influence on the far-from-disinterested Regency of the Dukes. At the same time he decreed that his son should be considered to have come of age on his fourteenth birthday.

  Even as the King lay dying, the Dukes swooped down upon the Regency. With their armies they came riding from their domains to challenge one another in turn for the greatest power. The King lay in his death agony, surrounded by his court; at his feet knelt his sons, his friends, his devoted servants. While he was receiving the sacraments, a bitter argument raged in the anteroom between his brothers which resulted in Anjou ransacking the deserted rooms of the palace. Furniture, golden tableware, jewels were carried off with no further comment. Anjou withdrew as regent; with the plundered gold he could carry on a war for the possession of Sicily, to which he lay claim. Bourbon, Berry and Burgundy now fastened their claws in earnest into the crown of France, which at Reims had been placed on the head of a twelve-year-old boy.

  Louis remembered it as though it were yesterday: the colorful silk banners rippling in the breeze along the stone pillars; the reflection of the flicker of wax candles in the golden censers, in the jeweled ornaments, in the burnished steel of armor.

  He knelt behind his brother on the altar steps, holding in both hands the sword Joyeuse which had belonged to Charlemagne and which had been brought from the royal treasury for the occasion. Even more than the sight of the slender figure of his brother in his royal robes of gold and purple, the legendary sword filled Louis with pride and awe. Where his childish fingers grasped the hilt, the hand of the great Emperor had once rested. He thought it a good omen that he had been given the sword to carry, a sign that he was destined to perform valiant deeds.