In a Dark Wood Wandering

by Hella S. Haasse

  “Savona has surrendered,” Louis said, after he had asked about the state of her health and the health of their small son. “Enguerrand de Coucy’s courier arrived in the palace this morning. I talked briefly with the man—he was dead tired; he seems to have ridden day and night without stopping.”

  “Is that good news then?” she asked. Louis bent forward, tracing lines with his finger on the velvet edging of the coverlet, and shrugged. After a short silence, he said, “De Coucy has appointed Jean de Garencieres captain of the fortress of Savona, and left a fairly substantial garrison behind. But I have the impression that the people of Savona have a few tricks up their sleeves—they are willing to support us in future action against Genoa, so long as the campaign lasts—provided we pay them a monthly stipend—and not a small one, either.”

  “The alliance with Savona is not insignificant,” said Valentine. “It will make both Genoa and Florence uneasy.”

  Louis laughed shortly.

  “I don’t trust any of them,” he said. He smoothed the velvet with his hand. “In the course of years I have finally come to see what they understand over there by the word ‘negotiation’. While the city fathers come to offer the keys and a long list of conditions, their ambassadors slip out through a back door to reach an agreement with our bitterest enemies. In any case, victories in Italy don’t mean much to me, as long as I do not have the support of the Church; this alliance with Gian Galeazzo alone is no recommendation—quite the contrary. I hope you won’t mind, ma mie, if I speak frankly. If I were to take up residence in those vanquished lands, I would live as safely as a lost sheep among wolves—although perhaps that image doesn’t fit me too well because I am neither guileless nor helpless. And besides …” He leaned sideways against the edge of the bed, crossing his arms under the cover of his long green sleeves. “… why should I pursue conquests in distant lands when God knows I can well serve my country here even if it is only as a pot watcher? I have repeatedly been able to accomplish things, either directly or through the exercise of influence—which I suppose is the same thing—things that I knew the King would approve of if he were able to understand them. The Dukes will never take my brother’s wishes into account, insofar as they do not agree with their own plans. In those moments when the King’s head is clearer he often tells me how he approves of the way I have handled this or that matter—you know that yourself, my dear. I hope that my brother’s illness is only temporary …”

  “Yes,” said the Duchess of Orléans softly, but without conviction; she turned her head away to conceal the anxiety in her eyes. “God knows that I pray every day for his recovery—whatever else they may say about me …” Her voice quivered with suppressed tears. Louis looked up quickly.

  “Madame,” he said, almost sternly, “you must rise above gossip. I would be very sorry if your self-esteem were to be jolted by the idle chatter which travels round from time to time …”

  “Alas, it is no idle chatter,” said Valentine; her voice still shook. She made an effort to restrain her tears, the treacherous, embarrassing tears which threatened to overwhelm her in times of physical weakness. “It is not gossip, my lord, you know that as well as I. It is a bulwark of hatred and slander, which is being constructed stone by stone. Don’t think that I am blind and deaf,” she continued, in a vehement whisper, clasping her hands tighter. “In the streets of Paris they are saying I wish to kill the King …”

  “Hush, hush, Valentine,” Louis interrupted, reaching for her hand across the coverlet. The fact that she was aware of all this upset him greatly. He had not expected it.

  Valentine continued to speak swiftly and angrily.

  “They say that at my departure, before I left for France, my father said to me, ‘Farewell, daughter; see to it that when we meet again you have become the Queen.’ But, my God, that is … Surely everyone knows that I left without saying goodbye to my father, who was then in Padua. It grieved him enough that we could not bid each other farewell.”

  “Hush, hush,” repeated Louis, angry at the suffering she had borne because of the malice of stupid people. But Valentine went on.

  “They see sufficient proof in my coat of arms, I’m sure. Yes, it sounds foolish, but it is true … You know what people are like, they even create the evidence they wish to believe.”

  Involuntarily, Louis’ eyes glided to the coat of arms stitched in gold on the bed curtain behind his wife’s head: a field, divided in two, displaying a lily of Valois on the left, and on the right the adder which symbolized Milan, a viper about to devour a child at play. Who could deny that it was an image which inspired little confidence? Louis felt the throbbing of his wife’s pulse under his hand; he was overwhelmed by deep compassion.

  “I don’t know,” he said, withdrawing his hand from hers. “This is becoming a most painful situation. Most likely I shall have to dissuade you from visiting the King more often than is strictly necessary.”

  “That is impossible,” said Valentine in a dead voice. “I do not go to him, he comes here—and against that I am helpless. It does him good. With me he is often more cheerful and placid than anywhere else; it is wonderful to see how at times he is completely his old self again; he talks sensibly about all sorts of things—even though it lasts only a few moments,” she concluded, with a sad smile.

  The couple gazed at each other in silence, each lost in thought. They were, thought Valentine, like solitary trees which sometimes take root in the stony soil of mountain tops. Exposed to rain and lightning they stand; clouds drift past them, by degrees wind and weather polish them to stumps as barren as the rocks around them. When, as a bride she had crossed the Italian Alps, Valentine had seen such trees on steep crags, hanging over precipices, pressed obliquely by the wind, scorched black by bolts of lightning. Everything which still bore foliage at that altitude seemed fated to come to a frightful end.

  A door opened and two women entered the lying-in chamber: the Dame de Maucouvent and the nurse with the baby in her arms. They were followed, as protocol required, by two rows of demoiselles from Valentine’s retinue. Mariette d’Enghien was one of the last pair; as soon as she saw Orléans, she pulled back as though she wished to leave, but her companion held her hand. Louis, who rose when the women entered, greeted the Dame de Maucouvent and lifted the veil which partly covered the small Charles; nothing more was visible of the sleeping child than a pink face as large as a fist. Smiling, the Duke walked past the curtseying maidens; the glance which he cast upon the bent head of Mariette d’Enghien did not escape Valentine’s notice; stretched out under the coverlet she watched her husband while the pounding of her heart almost suffocated her.

  FIRST BOOK:

  Youth

  Je suis celuy au cueur vestu de noir.

  I am he whose heart is dressed in black.

  — Charles d’Orléans

  I. LOUIS D’ORLÉANS, THE FATHER

  Se j’ay aimé et on m’amé, ce a faict amours; je l’en mercie, je m’en répute bien heureux.

  If I have loved and have been loved, it was Love that made it so. I am grateful to Love, I am fortunate.

  — Louis d’Orléans, in a letter.

  n a July day in the year 1395, the King sat in the open veranda which bordered his rooms on the garden side of Saint-Pol. A green canopy had been set up over him to protect him from the blazing sun; on both sides of it tapestries hung down to the floor. Inside this tent, the King had been playing for a considerable time with oversized, gaily colored cards; he arranged them on the table before him, built tottering towers, and now and then swept them all together with trembling fingers. The court physician, Renaud Freron, personally appointed by Isabeau after de Harselly’s dismissal, walked back and forth over the red and white tiles of the gallery, his hands behind his back. A few courtiers stood, bored and weary, in the shade under the archways.

  The aviaries had been brought outside to amuse the King; birds of all sizes and colors hopped twittering about the gilded cage. The hot white li
ght quivered above the slate roofs of the palace; for more than a week the sun had shone from a cloudless sky—the heat grew from day to day, scorching grass and shrubs. The streets of Paris lay deserted as though the city had been struck by plague: the stench of garbage hung over the squares and along the banks of the Seine. Under the bridges the river water flowed sluggishly, turbid, full of silt and filthy. Only in the fields outside the walls of Paris work continued without interruption, despite the scorching heat. The farmers wanted to get the grain inside the barns before the storms began. From the windows of Saint-Pol and the oudying castles, the mowers could be seen moving over the fields like tiny specks; the sun flashed on sickles and scythes. Half-naked, dripping with sweat, the men cut row after row of stalks of grain. The women came behind them, with cloths bound around their heads and shoulders, stooping and squatting, binding the sheaves. Blinded by sun and sweat, swarming with flies, they gathered the bread for the city of Paris, fodder for the beasts.

  The King, who had stacked the cards neady, pushed them to one end of the table and sat quiet, with downcast eyes, waiting for his brother Louis d’Orléans and the Provost of Paris, whose presence he had requested. The haze in which his mind had been enveloped continually since the previous year, had lifted. He recognized the people in his suite, was aware of events and joined in the festivities honoring the delegation which had arrived from England to make a formal request for the hand of the child Isabelle.

  Although the physician Freron had, on the Queen’s insistence, advised him to rest and avoid state affairs, the King wished to take advantage of the brief respite between periods of insanity. He knew only too well that the calm clarity, the comfortable feeling of being free, would not last long; that he would be overcome again by mortal fear, fierce pain in his head, darkness filled with hellish visions—but when? How? He saw with despair how much time had passed since he had last been sane. He could still remember hazily a few of the things which had happened afterward; a conversation with his sister-in-law, the Duchess of Orléans, who lay in bed—why? When? And the birth in January of his youngest daughter, Michelle. Charles shook his head slowly, and pensively bit his nails. He had a strong desire to see Valentine; he had wanted to send her a message but he gathered from what the courtiers said that she was no longer in Saint-Pol. Shame and pride prevented him from asking questions of the gentlemen of his retinue who sneered at him haughtily, or smiled at him with compassion. Only from his intimates could he learn about those things which interested him deeply. He considered himself fortunate that his brother was nearby and that the Provost was an able, honest and upright man, who knew how to hold his ground in the face of all opposition.

  The King was secretly relieved that the pressure of business prevented Isabeau from coming to see him. The full responsibility of receiving the English legation rested upon her shoulders. Above all else, he feared an interview with his wife; although no one alluded in his presence to the affronts which he, blinded by madness, had offered the Queen, he knew enough. He remembered Isabeau’s tears and reproaches, her nocturnal revelations; frozen with horror at his own unwitting cruelty, he had lain listening to her whispers.

  That had been in the spring of the previous year. What have I said or done since then, he thought uneasily. He looked quickly and diffidently at the courtiers who chatted under the arched entrance. Before him on a table stood a silver tray heaped with fruit; he removed the peaches one by one and raised the tray before his face. He did not yet have the courage to complain about the absence of mirrors from his rooms, because he surmised, with considerable anguish, the reason for this absence.

  Now, partially concealed within the tapestries, he looked at himself in the polished bottom of the tray, touching his cheeks and forehead with clammy fingers; his lips parted involuntarily in disbelief and horror. The sound of footsteps and voices reached him from the adjoining corridors; the birds twittered loudly and beat their wings against the bars. Hastily, the King set the tray back on the table. He saw his brother approaching; Louis’ lips trembled with emotion.

  “Sire, my King,” he said, kneeling before the King without taking his eyes from his brother’s face. “Are you well again?”

  The King patted the cushioned bench. “Come sit beside me,” he said in a low voice, “and tell the others to leave us alone.”

  Gentlemen and pages retired to the end of the gallery; Renaud Freron, annoyed, continued his pacing back and forth. The King was receiving against his advice; he feared Isabeau’s displeasure. The brothers sat side by side under the canopy: Louis, tanned from frequent exercise in the open air, his posture that of a man who knew how to control every muscle of his body; and Charles, pale, drab, huddled together like an old man.

  “Tell me, how goes it with you, brother?” said Louis, laying his hand on the King’s. “Are you free from pain now? Is your head clearer? Nothing has made me so happy in a long time as this—that we can speak together in good health.”

  “I am like someone who has temporarily exchanged hell for purgatory,” replied the King with a melancholy smile. “No, I feel no pain, but I suffer even more from uncertainty.” He looked at his brother timidly, from the corner of his eye. “I cannot remember anything,” he whispered, with a sigh.

  Louis was silent. He could find no words to express the pity which consumed his heart. The King sat very still, huddled within the folds of his mantle, blinking his slightly inflamed eyelids.

  “You must tell me everything now,” he went on, after a pause. “No one knows how long I shall be able to busy myself with affairs of state. Have you kept a watchful eye, brother, in spite of everything, as you promised me?”

  “I have been vigilant,” said Louis, in an equally soft voice. He picked up the playing cards from the table and fanned them out; there was the smiling Queen, who bore a falcon on her wrist, the armored King, and the Jester with bells on his cap.

  “Yesterday I received the English delegation in an audience,” the King went on. “It seems I gave them permission to come here just before Christmas.”

  “Our uncle of Burgundy was strongly in favor of it,” said Louis lightly, while he examined the handsome cards one by one. “And so Messeigneurs de Berry and Bourbon gave their consent also—at last. As to the Queen—the Bavarians maintain friendly relations with England. There is no better and easier way to strengthen an alliance than by contracting a marriage, especially when one is so indirectly connected to the bride that no financial obligation is entailed.”

  “What do you think, then, brother?” asked the King without looking up; he was preoccupied with braiding and unravelling the fringe of the tablecloth. Orléans smiled bitterly.

  “I agree with those who say that if s senseless to conclude a treaty between two kingdoms which still have a few more years of armistice between them. And it is meaningless politically, because I don’t believe it is possible to end hostilities. And it will be a crime against the child Isabelle who will suffer if the war goes on when she is queen over there.”

  The King shrugged. “They are here now,” he said hesitantly. “They bring gifts and friendly letters from King Richard. This Norwich—he’s Earl of Rudand, isn’t he?—he seems to be a capable, courteous ambassador. Richard must really crave peace,” he added doubtfully, “if he approaches us and leaves us to name the conditions.”

  “Ah!” Louis made a passionate gesture. “Don’t think that England—to say nothing of Burgundy—will fare badly after a treaty has been signed. I’m even willing to assume that Richard does not intend to fight again—why shouldn’t I? They say he is a trustworthy man, ready to settle any dispute quickly. But it remains to be seen whether a new armistice will really mean the end of raids and looting. For two years I’ve been working on the plan you and I discussed before you became ill the first time. Surely after Poitiers and Crecy anyone who knew anything about it could see that our soldiers were no match for the English bowmen. It’s incredible that none of our captains thought of teaching our fellow
s to use English weapons. Now I have that in hand; you can rest easy. Now most towns and cities have bands of archers who can use handbows as well as crossbows. That was really useful last year in Normandy and Brittany when the English kept raiding the coast.”

  He was silent for a moment, and the bitter lines appeared again at the corners of his mouth. “It’s really hard to have to watch the constant efforts of our noble lords to disband well-trained groups of fighting men. They are so frightened of rebellion that they would sooner hand the land over to the English.”

  The King’s sigh was so deep that it was almost a groan. The physician turned on his heel abruptly and came toward him. The King, who, not without reason, hated and feared Freron, began to ramble, but he managed to pull himself together and call out with a semblance of his former authority that he wished to be left in peace. Freron backed away, bowing, and joined the group of attendants.

  “I do not want that man near me anymore,” the King said nervously. He drew the curtain and shifted the bench so that the physician could not see him. “He takes too much blood from me; I am weak and dizzy from it. No, no, brother, let me finish! God knows when I will get the chance again. I commiserate with you,” he said vehemently, pushing away the beaker which Louis offered him, “your lot is more difficult than mine. Few will thank you for your efforts, and you will be thwarted at every turn—and I am not able to help you. God, God, why don’t they kill me when the madness comes upon me!” Tears trickled from under his enflamed eyelids; he sat motionless, a shattered man.