In a Dark Wood Wandering

by Hella S. Haasse

  Charles was often with his mother and her guest; while they talked in the high-ceilinged room hung with bright tapestries, the child sat in his favorite spot in the deep window niche looking; out the small, thick, slightly cloudy panes at the winter landscape and the crows’ nests in the tall trees around the castle.

  Once on an afternoon filled with grey light and squalls of rain, he amused himself by breathing on the curved glass of the panes and then drawing a puppet on the clouded surface with his finger. But when it got dark and he grew tired of that, he caught fragments* of the conversation between his mother and the Dame de Pisan; he listened more attentively when he heard mention of his father’s name. The lady Christine described a brilliant fete given by the Duke of Orléans on Saint Valentine’s Day in the Hotel de Behaigne in Paris: she had been there watching the spectacle from a bench set against the wall. She described the elegant repast, enlivened by the music of Orléans’ famed minstrels; an allegory was presented with Love and My Lady Fidelity and her retinue. Young maidens wearing wreaths of flowers in their hair, clearly and sweedy sang a new motet, and after the banquet an Order of the Rose had been created in honor of the ladies present. And after that they arranged themselves in long rows to begin the dance. The Dame de Pisan, a widow who would wear mourning as long as she lived, did not join in the dance, but she enjoyed the dancers’ pleasure. She watched the ladies and knights move forward slowly and elegandy over the mosaic floor in the great hall of the Hotel; the dance seemed unending. None of the couples who moved, bowing and turning under the chandeliers, wanted to break the spell.

  “With whom did Monseigneur, my husband, dance?” asked Valentine with a sad smile. The glowing splendor of Louis’ fetes in the Hotel de Behaigne seemed very remote to her, like images in a dream.

  “With the best dancer of all, surely,” replied the Dame de Pisan readily. “The wife of Sire Aubert de Cany—I have never seen anyone so graceful.”

  The Duchess of Orléans bent her head over her embroidery.

  “Charles,” she said to her son after a prolonged silence, “ask the woman to bring candles. It is getting so dark I cannot see the thread.”

  The child obeyed, surprised at the change in her voice.

  One early spring morning the Demoiselle Marie d’Harcourt came to tell Charles that he had a new brother, Monseigneur Jean d’Orléans. Later they brought Charles to his mother, who lay motionless in bed, white as snow, with closed eyes. The baby was so ugly that Charles turned away in horror; he had expected to see a small child like Philippe, who followed his older brother everywhere on his sturdy little legs. Every day, for a few minutes in the morning and evening, Charles was allowed in the lying-in chamber. His mother sat up now, but she looked strange and thin and she spoke little.

  The buds on the trees and shrubbery burst open. A light green haze hung over the tree branches in the forest; the sky was filled with white shining clouds. Charles, less carefully supervised now that his mother and little brother took up all the nurses’ time, chose to spend his days watching the falconers exercising the young birds. The hawks were taught to fling themselves upon the prey—which at the moment were heron wings tied to a stick—and then to drop it at a certain spot. Charles was fascinated by this bird training; he watched closely as the falconer bound thin strong cords to the hawks’ legs, as they artfully handled stick and hood.

  But his mother’s first walk to church was also an event; as her nearest male relative, Charles was permitted to lead her by the hand, a task which he discharged with gravity and discretion. The Duchess of Orléans offered the customary taper and gold piece; but her pale lips were pressed tightly together and her eyes were full of tears.

  Not long afterward she called her eldest son to her where she stood in the armory, a long, narrow low-ceilinged room where bows, bucklers and other equipment hung, greased and polished, on the walls. The Duchess had ordered her gold and silver plate to be laid out on a table in the middle of the room; it was such a dazzling display of treasure that Charles had to close his eyes when he entered the chamber. Giles Malet, the librarian, and a clerk held writing tools. Valentine explained to the boy that she intended to make her will and therefore she wanted her valuables to be described and counted.

  “But I wish to make you a gift today, Charles,” she said, leading her son to the table, “because you took your father’s place so nobly on my first walk to church since the birth of your brother Jean. I have set two things aside for you, a silver goblet and this …”

  She took a gold box from the table and raised it for a moment in her narrow pale hand. “Open it, child.”

  Charles obeyed. In the box were a large golden cross and a bright enameled crucifix with a chain. Somewhat disappointed, the child thanked her. He would have preferred a ring or shiny buckle to wear on his hat, but he understood that this was a more important gift—indeed, a grown-up gift—and that pleased him.

  “This is the only comfort the world offers, Charles,” his mother said slowly; she closed the box. “Do not forget that when grief overwhelms you, and remember then what I say to you now: life is a long awaiting of God’s peace.”

  “Yes, Madame ma mere,” replied Charles, somewhat distracted by the activities of Maitre Malet and the clerk. The librarian was dictating while the clerk wrote: “To our dearly beloved son Charles, Count of Angoulême, a silver drinking bowl…”

  In the afternoon of this memorable day, a messenger arrived from Paris with letters and gifts from Charles’ father; the Duke inquired after the health of his wife and children and sent his minstrel, Herbelin, to amuse the Duchess.

  Thoughtfully Valentine read the letters; she looked over the bales of velvet and woolens and after the meal received Herbelin. The minstrel, who was a still-young man with black curling hair and an animated expression, was universally loved for his liveliness and his skill at the harp. The Duchess had great respect for him; he had often taught her new songs.

  Herbelin played and sang now till late in the evening. Valentine’s retinue sat listening as though they were entranced; the Duchess herself sat in quiet enjoyment with her hand shielding her eyes. The dogs were sleeping, stretched out before the fire. Charles, huddled on a small bench beside the hearth, was careful to make no noise for fear he would be sent to bed; he did not want to miss a note, not a sound of the music, clear as raindrops, cool and shimmering like the green river, filled with fragrance and the color of unknown things. He watched Herbelin’s long fingers grasp the chords quickly and surely; but more beautiful still was Herbelin’s voice, in which could be heard the wind and the peal of church bells, as well as the murmur of water and the clash of weapons.

  “One more song, my Herbelin,” said the Duchess at last. “It is late and you must surely be tired. Send us to bed with something pretty.”

  “Madame, if it please Your Grace, I shall play my own composition,” said the minstrel, “set to a poem which Monseigneur Orléans wrote a short while ago.”

  “Monseigneur still writes poetry?” Valentine asked, with an odd smile. But the harp player had already begun. Charles listened breathlessly; he had never heard that his father could write poetry; he was amazed. The song which Herbelin sang was about a knight who roams through a wood, a forest of long awaiting. Charles did not understand it; he remembered vaguely that his mother had spoken that afternoon about awaiting—but what sort of forest was that? Thorns and thisdes and poisonous plants grow there in profusion, sang Herbelin; on all sides danger threatens and there is no escape. But in a still clearing in the forest a tree stands, heavily laden with golden apples. The shining, living fruit tempts the knight, who is weary of his wanderings and suffers from hunger and thirst. He knows that he is forbidden to pluck the apples, for the tree belongs to another. But he snatches an apple and bites into it.

  Charles saw his mother’s hand close convulsively over the arm of her chair; she sat rigid as though in violent pain. The child moved; he expected her to silence Herbelin. But the Duchess of Or
léans said nothing and the minstrel sang further of the knight in the forest of awaiting.

  “Who once has tasted of the golden fruit is prepared to risk death and damnation for another morsel. Let no one pity the sinner; he will not give up his place under the magic tree, not even for Heaven itself.”

  So ended the poem that Monseigneur d’Orléans had written and for which the minstrel Herbelin had composed a melody. Valentine ordered her retinue to bed. As a token of her appreciation, she gave Herbelin a small gold cup which he could wear on a chain around his neck. Absently she kissed Charles good-night; she did not say anything about his staying up so late. She quit the room walking between Marie d’Harcourt and the Dame de Maucouvent, but it was not from fatigue that she stumbled on the threshold.

  Charles did not see his father again until the end of the year, when his arrival in no way resembled the stately, festive earlier visits which the child remembered. The Duke did not send couriers abroad as usual; he rode in the evening into Valentine’s temporary home, the castle Villers-Cotterets, with only a small following. Servants and court were too stunned to give warning to the Duchess. She sat with Charles and Philippe in her bedchamber; the boys, who were romping on the great bed, noticed that something unusual had happened only when they heard the book which their mother was reading aloud fall to the floor with a thud. They looked up.

  Their father stood in the center of the room spurred and booted, with a dark cloak over his leather jacket; his hose and the hem of his cloak were splashed with mud; he looked tired and worried.

  The Duchess leaned with one hand on the arm of her chair; she did not rise to greet her husband.

  “Children,” Valentine said. Her sons had slipped quickly and quietly off the bed. “Greet your father and then go to the Dame de Maucouvent.”

  That night Charles lay awake for a long time in the darkness, his head throbbing; he asked himself fearfully why his father had looked so strange, why he had arrived unexpectedly, out of breath and exhausted, his clothes splattered and filthy—as though he were in disguise. Charles slept fitfully. Once he was awakened by the sound of voices and footsteps in the adjoining nursery and he saw a light burning under the door.

  “Is it day already?” whispered the child. He sat up, but no one came. His little brother Philippe slept soundly and peacefully in the other bed. Presently an infant began to whimper in the nursery. Charles knew instantly that it was not Jean. The child that cries there is a new child that was just born, he thought, amazed. His first feeling was anger and chagrin because his mother had not confided in him this time. Surely his father had come to lead her to church. Charles huddled back into bed and pulled the blankets over his head so that he would hear no more howling.

  Because his pride was wounded, he said nothing the following morning. The Dame de Maucouvent, who usually came to wake him and Philippe, behaved as though nothing had happened, but the harsh lines of her mouth showed her displeasure. Jeanne la Brune was busy in the nursery with little Jean, but next to the fire sat an unknown woman with an infant in her arms. Philippe stared at the strange baby with his mouth open. Charles did not betray any surprise because la Brune and the Dame de Maucouvent were watching him.

  The two eldest boys were brought to the Duchess. She sat completely alone in the small room which was furnished as a private chapel. Charles had expected to find his mother in bed; he could not remain silent any longer.

  “There is a new baby,” he said reproachfully. “Why is it not lying with you in the lying-in room?”

  Valentine looked calmly at her sons and smiled; the anxiety and bitterness of the past few years seemed to have vanished.

  “Come here,” she said. “Now listen carefully to what I am going to tell you, and promise me here in this place that as true knights you will repeat it to no one. The infant who came to us last night is not my child. But he is your half-brother; therefore you must love and protect him as you love and protect Jean.”

  “Half-brother?” asked Charles hesitantly; leaning against his mother’s knee he looked close up into her large, shining amber eyes.

  “That means,” Valentine continued, “that Monseigneur your father is his father also. His mother died in childbirth; and that is why he has come to live with us.”

  Philippe understood nothing of all this; barely listening, he stared at the reflection of the candle flame in the golden altarpiece. Charles, however, frowned in thought.

  “Where is Monseigneur my father then?” he asked at last.

  “He is still asleep,” answered the Duchess; she gave her oldest son a searching look and then began to stroke his hair gently. He was six years old; did he really understand what she meant?

  Charles remained silent as he had sworn he would; he rebuked Philippe when his brother tried to ask him questions about the newest baby. The Dame de Maucouvent gave neither glance nor word to the infant; she walked about with a surly look on her round face, as though she had been personally insulted.

  However, the stableboys were less reticent. They spoke once in the courtyard in Charles’ presence of the bastard of Orléans who had been taken into the ducal family. Charles knew very well what a bastard was; he had heard a scullery servant’s puppy called that. But he did not understand how this word could be applied to his half-brother.

  “Why is the little baby a bastard?” he asked his mother later. The Duke his father had been sitting by the fire with his face in his hands; he looked up.

  “I want to tell you that it is not always disgraceful to be a bastard,” he said before Valentine could reply. “But I forbid you to call your half-brother that, my son, before you are old enough to know what you are saying. His name is Jean and he is Lord of Chateau-Dun, just as you are Count of Angoulême. Address him as Dunois, that is his rightful name.”

  “Do not be angry at your half-brother, Charles,” said the Duchess gently. “I love him as much as you and Philippe and Jean, child. He really should have been mine …” She looked past Charles at her husband, and gave a low, sad laugh. “He was stolen from me, the small Dunois.”

  The sudden death of Mariette de Cany flung Louis back into the vortex of battle. He had with her—for a few months at any rate—been able to forget the frustrations of the past year: the death of England’s former King, Richard; the fall of Wenceslaus, followed by the coronation of Ruprecht of Bavaria. Nor had he enjoyed undiluted happiness at the castle of Epernay, where he had brought the Dame de Cany after they became lovers. She never spoke of love, but her silence was more eloquent than words. Her desperate surrender terrified Louis; it was true that he was profoundly aware of guilt and sin, but he believed his passion could justify the relationship. For Mariette, however, there was no future; it had died, she thought, from the moment that she betrayed Aubert de Cany; she went through a purgatory of humiliation and remorse. Louis blamed her pregnancy for her emotional state; to the end he did not understand her.

  “Forgive me that I must flee from you,” said Maret before she retired to the lying-in chamber. The pains had already begun, but she held herself erect and refused to allow the women to support her. Louis wanted to cheer her up. He took leave of her lighriy, with a joke. “You cannot escape me anymore, ma mie!”

  “Alas, it is true,” replied Mariette slowly, turning back to face him. “But think of me sometimes, when you cannot find me.”

  Louis had reason to think of her; when he saw her again, after the confinement, she lay straight and stiff between two rows of burning candles. Without a smile or farewell, she had left him forever.

  After the quarrel in the presence of the King, the feud between Burgundy and Orléans was an accepted fact. Uncle and nephew avoided each other as much as possible, but in the Council passionate reproaches and thrusts burst out at every turn. Their mutual hatred could no longer be hidden; in Paris the rabble taunted Orléans’ household with cries of “Burgundy! Burgundy!”

  In the beginning of the year 1401, Isabeau’s father, Duke Stefan of Bavaria, a
ppeared at the French court to try to conclude a pact between Charles and the Emperor Ruprecht. Isabeau promised to use all her influence. But before she could act, she received a heavy blow: the Dauphin caught a chill and died; he was barely eight years old. Only a few months earlier he had made his solemn entrance into the city of Paris; accompanied by his granduncles and a brilliant procession, he had ridden on horseback through the city to the cheers of the people. Neither the efforts of the physicians nor the masses held in the King’s name in all the churches of Paris could save the child. His weak constitution succumbed to an illness which should not have been dangerous. Once more he was brought through the city to Saint-Denis, but now he was borne in a bier intended for dead kings, and weeping had supplanted the cheers. Under the weight of affliction, Isabeau for a time lost all interest in public affairs. She did not trouble Burgundy, who had begun to negotiate a betrothal between the small Marguerite de Nevers and the new Dauphin, whose elder brother lay still unburied.