In a Dark Wood Wandering

by Hella S. Haasse

  Curtseying three times once again, Valentine prepared to leave the Queen; the ladies curtsied to her, each in their turn. Among them was the Dame de Cany, Mariette d’Enghien, who had, since her marriage, entered the Queen’s service. Valentine smiled at her, but with a heart filled with pain; she knew that Louis desired the chaste, faithful wife even more fiercely than he had the shy maiden of the past.

  In the anteroom the damsel again took up Valentine’s heavy train; the Duchess of Orléans left the palace of Saint-Pol on her husband’s arm. Before she climbed into the coach, she looked up once more at the rows of windows, the galleries and battlements. Somewhere within those grey walls was the King, raving with fever and madness, kept like a ferocious animal behind bolted doors. She had not seen her brother-in-law since the day of the christening, a year and a half ago. She whispered a farewell, her eyes dimmed with tears. Then she seated herself in the carriage; she pushed aside one of the leather curtains so that she could see Louis, who would accompany the procession on horseback part of the way.

  Riders and carriages began to move; slowly the heavy vehicles rolled over the inner court; the restless horses strained forward. The people who had gathered outside the palace stared in silence at the handsome painted carriages, the armed horsemen, the standard-bearers and heralds. They caught a glimpse of Valentine’s pale profile; they saw Louis who, clad in gold and black, rode on a spirited horse. Finally, in one of the coaches a small child could be seen, who sat prattling on his nurse’s lap, unaware of the uproar around him—the sole surviving child of Louis and Valentine, their last born, Charles d’Orléans.

  The departure of the Duchess of Orléans created less disturbance than had been initially expected. Before long the minds of the royal court, of the city of Paris, of all France, were engrossed with a more important event: the army which was to fight against the Turks marched out of Paris, commanded nominally by Jean de Nevers but in actuality by Enguerrand de Coucy. The army consisted of groups of knights and barons, accompanied by squires, bowmen and foot soldiers. Nobles without retinues and able-bodied men without leaders could also be found among the troops. The largest contingent of followers belonged to the four Princes of the blood, Comte d’Eu the Constable, and the Sires de Coucy and Boucicaut. Most of the nobles, especially those who had never before been to war, had spared no expense on equipage for themselves and their retinues. The ranks brisded with banners and gleamed with caparisons embroidered with gold; silk tents and silver dinnerware were conveyed in processions of wagons; ships came down the Danube laden with victuals and vats of good wine. A train of camp followers brought up the rear.

  In October, the young Queen of England—the child Isabelle, who had been married by proxy to Richard II—departed for Calais, where she would meet her husband and embark with him for England. Never had there been a more splendid exodus. All royal personages and nobles of high rank at the court set out for Calais in the bridal train. Richard, having stayed on in France for a few months to settle the details of the marriage contract, had been, with his retinue, the guest of the Duke and Duchess of Burgundy in Saint-Omer. In addition to the Dukes of Rudand and Nottingham, who had come the previous year as envoys, the English King was attended by the Dukes of Lancaster and Gloucester who fiercely opposed peace with France; they delayed the negotiations at every turn.

  Burgundy did not view this without concern; the war party in England was becoming more powerful every day—of what benefit would the royal marriage be, and the peace treaty provisionally set until 1426, if the princes and the people still strongly wanted war?

  Accompanied by her father—the King was at this time relatively calm, if he could not be called lucid—and by the Dukes of Orléans, Berry and Bourbon, Isabelle reached the coast. On the beach, a city of tents had been set up, glittering with gold, azure and purple, decorated with banners. Four hundred English, and four hundred French knights in armor, bared swords in hand, formed a double hedge between the two tents of the Kings.

  At ten o’clock in the morning the Kings went bareheaded to meet each other, Charles attended by Lancaster and Gloucester, Richard by the Dukes of Berry and Burgundy. The King of France, who looked very ill, kept his eyes fixed on the ground before him; the glint of sunlight on the swords and armor of the guard of honor was making him uneasy. After they had dined, Isabelle was delivered to her husband. Surrounded by duchesses and countesses of the two kingdoms, she appeared in the tent, a small eight-year-old girl, pale with excitement. When she placed her hand in her father’s, the King seemed to realize for the first time where he was and why he was there. He cast a timid glance at those present.

  “I regret,” he mumbled, “I regret that our daughter is still so young. If she were fully grown, she and our son from England could celebrate this day with greater joy.”

  Isabelle looked up uncertainly. The royal kinsmen and their wives stifled smiles. Richard saw the child’s confusion; he found the little girl charming in her state dress covered with golden lilies. He replied quickly, “Father-in-law, we are exceedingly pleased with the age of our new wife. If France and England should ever be united in love as I hope I shall one day be with my wife, no power on earth could ever disturb our peace.”

  He took Isabelle’s hand from her father’s; while the court bowed, he whispered to her that a beautiful dog, white as snow and with a golden collar, awaited her in England. The child gazed up silently into his shrewd, friendly eyes. She thought he was a much more impressive king than her father; he was not so young as her uncle of Orléans, but surely he was taller. Her hand warmed in his. After many ceremonial farewells, the King and Queen of England embarked with their retinues. They arrived in Dover the same day.

  At first, his wife’s departure had left Louis feeling gloomy. His melancholy would not yield to hours of prayer and meditation in the Celestine monastery, nor to continual concentration on affairs of state, nor yet to absorption in games and the hunt. Jealously he had watched the departure of the crusaders; at that moment he could conceive of no more enviable lot than had fallen to these men, who were free to seek valorous adventure. He could—and this thought especially tormented him—have been riding at the head of the armies, instead of Jean de Nevers. The state of affairs in Italy had grown increasingly confused; the cities of Florence, Genoa, Savona, Adorna, played a double-dealing game with one another and with France and Milan; negotiations which accomplished nothing, pacts which none of the parties observed, equivocal statements which only clouded the issues further.

  It seemed to him often during the course of that year that every enterprise he undertook or had ever undertaken was doomed to failure. The negotiations with the Pope in Avignon had collapsed; the Prince of the Church, entrenched in his city, had solemnly declared that he would never be dislodged. The University incessantly pressed for action, while the princes of Europe, on the other hand, whose opinions and help had been requested, answered generally in an evasive way. No one seemed to want to involve himself with this painful matter of the schism. The King was hardly in a condition to render a judgment. Berry and Bourbon chose to remain aloof. And because Burgundy always worked more and more zealously for cession, Louis felt constrained to support the authority of Avignon. At the moment, however, he could not do much; there was too much discord and dissension, and in any event the public was distracted by the crusade and the marriage of the princess.

  In the month of August, Louis visited his wife in the castle of Asnieres, on the occasion of the birth of his son Philippe—named not without irony after the Duke of Burgundy. During this visit Louis had an opportunity to devote his full attention for the first time to little Charles. The child was now about two years old, of a rather delicate constitution and, in his father’s opinion, a littie too quiet and gentle. He would sit for hours in the same spot in the garden or hall playing with a stone, a flower, a piece of colored cloth.

  “Doesn’t he ever laugh, this son of mine?” Louis asked the Dame de Maucouvent. She replied that th
e child was grave because Valentine had been depressed during her pregnancy, and because his first year had been spent in the Hotel de Behaigne in an atmosphere of tension and uncertainty. Louis picked the child up and let him play with his gold chain and the hilt of his dagger, which was shaped like a rolled-up hedgehog. The child stared at the gleaming ornaments with bright grey-green eyes, but he did not attempt to touch them or crow with joy as his dead older brother would have done.

  To Valentine, Louis gave costly gifts and a considerable sum of money to spend on decorations for her apartments. But he did not stay very long with his wife; he had to return to Paris to help with preparations for Isabelle’s bridal journey.

  The days he spent in Saint-Omer gained significance for Louis chiefly because he met a remarkable and interesting man there: Henry Bolingbroke, the eldest son of the Duke of Lancaster. In this taciturn, somewhat rough and moody young man, Louis saw a companion in distress: here too was a gifted, ambitious prince’s son who condemned his government’s policies. Orléans and he were about the same age—it was natural that, among the other princes, they should seek each other’s company at meals and at the hunt. Their relationship hovered on the brink of friendship; they got on well with each other, but despite jests and courtesies neither of them forgot that they pursued absolutely opposed interests. Secretly each attempted to gauge how useful the other might be to him in the future. Their parting was comradely enough to awaken in Richard of England and the Duke of Burgundy the hope that Lancaster’s son could perhaps be won over to the peace.

  Toward the end of November, the King of France and the Regents returned to Paris. Orléans took advantage of a temporary improvement in the King’s condition to enlarge his landed property considerably and to acquire command of the usufruct. When all the relevant documents had been signed, he saw with satisfaction that his possessions were, in extent and value, hardly second to those of any other princes of the blood. The Dukes, greatly angered by this move, commented on his avarice. So the Christmas season came—but peace was still far off.

  Following an ancient tradition, the King of France gave an elaborate banquet on Christmas Eve, at which not only royalty, the court and eminent officials sat at table, but also numerous burghers. In addition, on the ground floor of Saint-Pol an open table was provided for the people of Paris. The Christmas feast of 1396 was not less lavish in any way than its predecessors; as always, vast amounts of game and pastry appeared on the tables, and plenty of good wine was on hand. In the palace banquet hall, high-ceilinged and wide as the nave of a cathedral, the King entertained his guests. It was very crowded and sweltering; so many torches were burning that one could almost believe one was dining in daylight. At the royal table, beside the King and Isabeau, who was pregnant again, sat the Dukes of Burgundy and Berry with their wives; old Bourbon and Louis d’Orléans, surrounded by a number of highly-placed people, including many wives of men who had gone to Turkey with Jean de Nevers. Since early summer, little or nothing had been heard of the crusaders; the messengers repeatedly dispatched by the King to Hungary and Italy had brought back only vague reports.

  The mood at the Christmas feast, at least at the royal table, was constrained. The King stared sleepily at the performance in the center of the hall, a battle between armored knights and a dragon; Isabeau, weighed down by her ungainly body, did not feel up even to feigning interest in what was going on around her. Conversation at the table was dull, despite the wine; even Louis d’Orléans, who was usually the center of attention on these occasions, spoke little. His glance wandered again and again to a certain spot at one of the lower tables where, among the lords and ladies of the royal retinue, beside her husband, the Dame de Cany sat, dressed in dark green. Aubert de Cany showed his wife every conceivable attention, but Mariette did not laugh and seldom responded—she was constantly aware of Orléans’ eyes upon her. Whenever she raised her head she saw him, sitting next to the royal chair; he rested his chin upon his fist, scarcely touched his food but took some wine. When their eyes met, the young Dame de Cany was overcome once more by the emotion which had tormented her day and night during her service with the Duchess of Orléans. Her heart began to thump, slowly and violently. She forced herself to look only at her husband, or to keep her eyes on her plate. But she heard nothing that was said to her and could scarcely remember where she was.

  About nine o’clock in the evening, a commotion started at one of the entrances to the hall; the sound of raised voices was audible above the hubbub at the tables. Out of the throng at the door a man appeared, booted and spurred, in torn clothes, sweating and exhausted. He crossed the hall, heedless of the sham fight that was going on there and threw himself, still breathless and unable to speak, onto his knees before the King. At first no one knew who he was; Louis d’Orléans finally recognized the dirty, deadly tired man as Jacques de Helly, one of the knights of de Nevers’ retinue, a vagabond and adventurer who had the reputation of being very familiar with the routes to the East. The King looked at him apathetically, without comprehension; his expression did not change when de Helly cried out hoarsely, “Sire, my King, I come from Basaach’s camp—our army was destroyed near the city of Nicopolis on Saint MichaePs Day!”

  At the royal table there were gasps; many sprang from their seats. The news spread quickly through the hall; there were exclamations of fright, the clatter of chairs; then, under the standards and banners, under the thousand torches, it became quite still. The performers vanished quickly through a side door; only the scaly cover of the dragon lay in the middle of the floor, a painted rag.

  “Monseigneur de Nevers, the Lords de Bar, de Coucy and Bou-cicaut, and twenty-three others are prisoners,” murmured de Helly, almost inaudibly. “Their lives are not in danger because Basaach intends to deliver them in exchange for ransom.”

  “And the others?” Orléans leaned toward him over the table.

  Jacques de Helly hid his face in his hands.

  “Basaach ordered all those who did not perish in battle to be put to death,” he said in a smothered voice. “No one is left alive except those whom I named, and me. I don’t think anyone else can have escaped the slaughter.”

  Louis took firm hold of the King who, thinking that the meal had ended, was about to get up.

  “Give the names of the survivors,” Orléans said shortly.

  The knight obeyed; although his voice was low, everyone heard him in that deathly quiet room. A woman shrieked; it was the signal for a great outbreak of weeping and wailing.

  For little Charles d’Orléans, the days passed as peacefully and at the same time as festively as a procession which he had once seen at the church of Asnières. First of all, there were the many journeys, the purpose of which he did not understand; but he went through the colorful landscapes with great delight. Standing at the carriage door, he looked out over the wooded hills, the vineyards and fields, the sloping land softly green and brown, the broad sparkling rivers. Sometimes the fields were filled with flowers. If they rode through a forest the greenery murmured over their heads; sometimes red and gold leaves hung on the trees and rustled and crackled mysteriously under the carriage wheels. The sky was black with swarms of birds. Sometimes he had traveled, wrapped in furs and velvet, with a hot stone under his feet; then the trees were bare, streaks of snow lay on the fields and the wind blowing through the narrow openings of the carriage made the court ladies shiver. The child was later to remember clearly that everything about those journeys fascinated him: the steam that the horses exhaled, the parcels and things that they brought with them, the soldiers and horsemen who rode beside the carriages and the handsome standards flying from their lances.

  Charles always lived with his mother, little brother and all the gentlemen, ladies, demoiselles, servants and pages in other castles: from the outside they looked alike, one and all; he could not remember all their names, there were too many of them: Chàteauneuf, Blois, Montils, a whole series of them—but if you tried to follow a familiar route alon
g passages and staircases, you could make a bad mistake. Only the little windows, the thick walls and circular stair cases were the same everywhere. Charles always slept in his own bed because that was taken along. And in every inner court of every castle he had his own painted wooden horse to play with.

  The child did not trouble himself about the how and why of all this moving: he was easily satisfied and happy; the world teemed with things one could amuse oneself with. He did not notice that he always played alone; he could amuse himself with a small stick, a stone, a piece of colored glass. His mother’s maidens tried to teach him games—tag, hide and seek, leapfrog—but although Charles played willingly, he was not really interested. He preferred to look out through the narrow peepholes of tower or gallery over the land which, bathed in sunlight or covered with shadowy clouds, alternately glowed and faded. He could see the roofs of the small houses clustered in a hamlet around the citadel, and the tapering steeples of a church or a far castle against the horizon. It was not so much this looking at what could be seen through the windows that he loved; it was rather the standing still, the waiting, which enthralled him—that curious feeling that at any moment a miracle would happen. What—he did not know. He knew about miracles only from stories he had heard and from wall paintings in churches and chapels. An angel with golden wings, holding a lily in his hand, who appeared to the Virgin Mary… he had heard it said that that was a great miracle. And the dead man who rose up again, and the pilgrim’s staff on which roses began to bloom. No, he did not expect anything so amazing as that.

  The Dame de Maucouvent, his governess, usually put an end to his secret pleasures. The tower stairs and galleries were too dangerous for a five-year-old child, he could easily break his neck. So then he had to go to the room where his little brother Philippe pushed himself in his walker, where the women sat the whole day talking to one another or yawning and looking out of the windows as soon as the Dame de Maucouvent showed her heels. Eagerly, Charles went by himself on secret searches through the vast, usually empty halls, where the tapestries stirred mysteriously against the walls. His mother told him about the tapestry pictures: in one castle the tapestry told the story of Charlemagne, in another of Saint-Louis, or Lancelot, or Theseus and the Golden Eagle. The figures of heroes and saints seemed to come alive in the dusky halls; in the evenings, in the light of wax candles and torches, Charles saw their eyes glitter and their lips move; their heads nodded, they raised their hands, the dogs sprang through the brushwood, the horses reared; yes—he could even hear the banners flapping.