In a Dark Wood Wandering

by Hella S. Haasse

  The young Duchess of Orléans looked forward to the visit with secret trepidation: she feared her mother’s hard, probing stare and inevitable questions. But anything seemed preferable to staying in Blois. Now that most of the troops had left, life in the castle was monotonous and quiet. After the unrest and mourning of recent years, both young people longed for the carefree happiness which nature seemed to promise anew each spring. As they rode forth amid a great entourage, surrounded by the green hills, forests and vineyards of the domain of Orléans, they felt in their blood for the first time something of the joy of life which belongs to youth itself.

  With flushed cheeks, Isabelle looked over the fields from the window of her palanquin, enjoying the clatter of horses’ hooves, the gleaming armor of the riders and the bright colors of the banners. She saw the flocks of birds wheeling in the bright sky, the shrubs along the road sparkling golden-green in the sunshine; on the wind the odor came to her of newly-ploughed earth, of heavy damp soil.

  Charles rode at the head of a small group of noble friends. At the village of Olivet they were greeted by the people and offered, following the custom of the country, flat baskets filled with silvery glistening fish, and vats of wine. Charles, increasingly intoxicated by the spring air, not only accepted the gifts but decided to partake of them there as a token of his appreciation. Everyone dismounted outside Olivet in a meadow strewn with flowers; while the fish sizzled in hot oil over hastily-built fires, Isabelle’s maidens danced in a circle, the gentlemen galloped their horses across the field and held a tourney, tilting at the ring. Charles flew about at mad speed, pursued in jest by his equally elated companions. He stood in the stirrups, his black cloak streaming behind him like a flag in the wind. Never before had he amused himself that much. Suddenly life seemed a great adventure, crammed with unsuspected possibilities. Had he spent his life dozing over books? Had he passed his days in a grave, melancholy dream-world? Mourning and struggle—yes, that would go on, but wasn’t a man free to choose his own company? Nothing could be better than a life so sunny and carefree as this mealtime under a spring sky filled with blue and golden light; as he gave his horse full rein and dashed over the meadow, he vowed to effect friendships and keep peace with those he knew and those he was yet to know, to the end of his days. Why not also with Burgundy? Who would benefit from a quarrel between the two of them? True, the obligation to avenge his father’s death weighed heavily upon him, but he could not take that obligation seriously here amidst the flower-strewn fields outside Olivet.

  It seemed to him that until this moment he had lived under the influence of other peoples’ lives. He had learned to see the world through the eyes of his mother: a menacing, dangerous place where slander and cunning reigned, where enemies crouched to spring on the innocent. Grief and mourning were every man’s inheritance—Valentine had often said—happiness could not endure, it was as fine as a mist, as intangible as a shadow. As a child, as a young boy, he had accepted these pronouncements, but now his heart rebelled against this gloomy view of life. Standing in the stirrups, he looked out over the undulating fields, tinted bright green and brown in the spring light; he saw the women dancing in the meadow with wreaths in their hair. Isabelle sat on the grass and sang the refrain of the dance-song. The horses stood farther off, guarded by riders and grooms; the men had thrust lances into the ground adorned with bright banners—a veritable thicket of pennants. The shouts of the tilting and riding nobles filled the air; in the background among the waiting carriages, fires shimmered rosily. Against the hills lay the houses of Olivet arranged about a grey church tower; the Loire gleamed through the leafy boughs. Over all arched the blue-white sky tinted with light like a transparent dome strewn with golden dust. Charles inhaled deeply—this was bliss, he wanted to live like this. When he saw the long rows of servants and pages approaching laden with platters of baked fish and flagons of wine, he rode back to the company laughing and waving his glove.

  Later, he lay in the grass beside Isabelle: he watched his wife wind wild flowers into a wreath. The sun stood high now in the heavens; it had grown warmer in the meadow. The courtiers were still occupied with their games and races; the sounds of lute and harp and singing rang in the quiet noon. The horses grazed, the tiny bells on their reins and saddles tinkled softly, the gaily colored saddlecloths of the ambling steeds flapped in the wind. The young ducal couple sat a short distance from their retinue, their faces turned toward the hills; they could almost believe themselves alone. Isabelle still hummed the melody of the dance; Charles, glancing at her from time to time, thought that she had never looked so healthy and contented. Her cheeks were pink, and she had gained some weight, which suited her.

  Charles had mixed emotions about the coming of the child; he was more embarrassed and confounded than happy and proud—primarily because he still could not think of the new relationship between Isabelle and himself without constraint. So many things remained unexplained in his own behavior and the way in which Isabelle behaved whenever they came together. To be sure, the aversion he had felt for his older, haughty bride had gone, but a certain element of uneasiness remained. Charles was continually aware that he fell short of the mark, but he did not know how. He understood that love was a more complicated matter than he had once supposed, relying as he had on the words of others. He did not dare to speak with Isabelle about the things which bothered him; she was the last one he would turn to. He had never guessed that it would be so difficult to approach someone; under all circumstances—whether he encountered her now in the great hall amid retinue and guests or found her waiting in the green-curtained bed—she remained equally strange: shy, quickly offended, taciturn and surly. Only once had she shown spontaneous tenderness—on the night of his mother’s death. But since then she had seemed to be waiting for something. What did she really want from him? He did his best to treat her with patience and affection; he wished honesdy to be a good husband, a devoted friend. He believed staunchly that he loved his wife; it never entered his head that he could do anything else—they had been given to each other, now they must cherish and respect each other. To Charles this was a given. If Isabelle turned away, sighing, began to weep in the darkness or walked past him by day with a smile full of sad resignation, he felt obscurely guilty and depressed. In Blois a really close understanding had never existed between them.

  Now in the fragrant grass near Olivet, they experienced something new: the ability to speak with each other comfortably, with gentle joking, in contented pleasure. Charles chewed thoughtfully on a blade of grass: he sampled the tart, fresh taste of the plant sap. He saw a small transparent green insect climbing the deep folds of Isabelle’s dress. He caught it and blew it away. Isabelle set her wreath on his head, and laughed. Leaning toward each other, they chatted about things which up to now they had scrupulously avoided—they deliberated about what names they would give their child if it was a son and what names if it should be a daughter; they discussed the invitations to the christening feast and the baptismal service, the appropriate festivities and gifts. Isabelle wanted to order a state bed from Paris; she knew in exact detail how it must look—the figures of the apostles in gold thread on a green background for the canopy, and green velvet for the curtains. While she spoke, Charles gazed at her right hand with which she gestured to describe the bed. He saw the blue veins in her thin wrists; he had often thought that her hands were delicate and weak like an invalid’s. With amazement, he listened to her stream of words; he did not know that for years fantasies over this and similar subjects had been Isabelle’s only comfort.

  “I will also have new mantles,” said the young Duchess firmly. “After the christening, shall we get out of mourning? You must order gloves, Charles, and capes. You have had nothing new for more than a year; you are growing out of your clothes.”

  “Certainly.” Charles laughed at her authoritative tone; the Dame de Maucouvent had spoken to him like that when he was a child. “You must take care of these things for me. I intend
to buy new horses and falcons; next spring we shall go hunting at Montils, Isabelle.”

  She looked at him quickly with sparkling eyes.

  “Do you mean that?” she asked softly. “Can we leave Blois? I dislike Blois, Charles. It is so gloomy and cold and we have known only suffering there. We have lived all these years as though there were a war, as though we were besieged or pursued. I won’t wear black any more, I am tired of mourning.”

  “Yes, we haven’t had much opportunity for celebration,” remarked Charles; he ran his finger over the golden embroidery on Isabelle’s sleeve. “But it will be different now, I think. I have no desire to let myself be thrust into a war with Monseigneur of Burgundy—or that which he calls peace. At first I thought—trick for trick and lie for lie, but what does a man gain by that? Burgundy still does as he pleases and it makes very little difference to me—I don’t care a whit about having power abroad or about winding the government in Paris around my finger.”

  “You promised your mother …” began Isabelle hesitantly. Charles sighed and rested his face in the wide pleats of her dress.

  “In the end I will surely get the King to grant my demands,” he said. “It seems to me more fitting that Burgundy should be punished by the King than by me.”

  “You spoke differently when you returned from Chartres.” Isabelle touched his head for a moment with her fingertips. “You change your mind quickly, I think.”

  Charles laughed, embarrassed. “Are you beginning to lecture me too?” he asked, in a low voice. “Don’t think that I am too cowardly to fight. I have no desire to exercise an authority which does not belong to me. Burgundy’s punishment is a matter for the government. He wants nothing more—does Burgundy—than to get my brothers and me into trouble. You understand, I’m sure, that the easiest thing would be to give him what he wants. But I will not let him have that satisfaction. If he wants to fight me, he will have to violate the agreement which we made at Chartres. Then he will be the disturber of the peace, the spoiler, and that will cost him the King’s favor.”

  “Charles,” said Isbelle suddenly, “try to maintain good relations with my mother the Queen. You will have gained much once she is on your side. And listen to me. Be wise and try to get back the land they confiscated from you—or demand compensation. That is your right.”

  “True.” Charles sighed deeply and sat up. “I don’t know why,” he said, “but I have no desire to talk about these things now. It’s such beautiful weather. Look, even the season has taken off its winter cloak and decked itself in green and gold and blue.”

  He paused, for Isabelle had turned her head toward him in surprise.

  “That was prettily put,” she said. “Let us also take off our mourning dress—like the season—and go clad in gold and green and blue as though we were to attend a festive ball.” She began to hum again, but Charles saw that her eyes were filled with tears. He took her hand in his and looked up. The swallows skimmed through the bright sky, the sun sparkled on the wavelets of the river; moment by moment the world adorned itself with new leaves, new flowers.

  Charles and Isabelle did not stay long in Melun. The King was in no condition to see them; he spent his days in a specially guarded tower of the castle, cared for by Odette de Champdivers. Isabeau was distracted; the news from Paris did not please her. Burgundy, apparently convinced that he needed again to present himself to the Parisians as their champion, had ordered an inquiry into the expenditures of money by the officers of the Crown. Isabeau knew only too well what that inquiry would bring to light. The officers of the court administration and the Audit Room were often forced to juggle figures because the Queen neglected to state accurately what she spent, or because she demanded more money than her expenses justified. In the last few years Isabeau had been on a mad spending spree: she had bought land, jewels, furniture, ornaments. The government had been distracted by other matters; nothing more was demanded of the officials concerned than an apparently balanced budget. The Queen was afraid that through Burgundy’s probing, most of these transgressions would be unearthed and be traced back to her.

  She was too annoyed and uneasy to pay much attention to the visit of her daughter and son-in-law. The young couple did not mind; after a few weeks they went on to Montereau, a castle near Melun that belonged to Charles. They wanted to spend the summer there, but de Braquemont warned that the armed escort was too small to defend that castle if the necessity arose. With some reluctance, Charles and Isabelle returned to Blois in July. After the carefree happiness of the early summer, life within the walls of Blois felt doubly oppressive; although the sun burned on the roofs of the houses and on the fields around the town, Isabelle shivered in her apartments—it was always chilly inside the thick walls. Even the arrival from Paris of the state bed could not put the young Duchess in a more cheerful mood.

  At noon on the tenth of September, two women from Isabelle’s retinue brought Charles the news that Madame d’Orléans felt suddenly unwell; she had been taken to the lying-in chamber. Charles waited with Philippe. Dusk fell and then night; they passed the time playing chess until midnight, after which Charles sent a page to his wife’s apartments. The young man returned quickly to say that according to the physicians the birth of the child would be delayed a few more hours. But he did not mention what he had heard the court maidens whispering—that it was not going well with the young Duchess, that she would have to fight hard for her own life and the life of her child. Unaware of this, Charles spent a sleepless night; he had sent Philippe off to bed and sat alone now, reading by candlelight. The hours crept by slowly; he heard the page speaking in an undertone with a soldier of the guard in an adjoining room—the silence of Blois was broken from time to time by the sound of a dog howling at the moon.

  Toward dawn Charles could not bear it; it was impossible for him to distract himself any longer with the tales on the parchment. He took up the candlestick and tiptoed from the room through a side door. Etiquette prevented a husband from coming near the lying-in chamber during his wife’s labor; if he wanted to inquire he sent a messenger. Charles had never doubted the wisdom of this custom—now all this secrecy seemed irksome and stupid to him. The first apartment was empty. In the second, Isabelle’s court maidens and servant girls knelt, praying aloud for aid and succour for their mistress. The Dame de Travercin, Isabelle’s companion, frightened, came swiftly to Charles; her eyes were red from weeping.

  “In God’s name, Monseigneur,” she whispered, “you cannot come here.”

  “I want to know how it goes with my wife,” replied Charles; he had no intention of being sent away without information. It was not necessary for the lady to tell Charles anything now: suddenly, from behind the closed doors of the lying-in chamber came a hoarse shrieking which filled Charles with deep horror. Even in that awful sound he recognized Isabelle’s voice.

  “Monseigneur, Monseigneur, will you be good enough to go away?” The Dame de Travercin was at her wits’ end. “The master of the council and the physicians are with the Duchess. They are doing what they can, Monseigneur, but Madame d’Orléans is having a most difficult time. We do not know how it will end.”

  Her words echoed in Charles’ ears long after he had returned to his own room. He could not sit still; he paced back and forth, pushed open a window shutter, looked outside: a grey line was visible on the horizon, a harbinger of dawn; cocks crowed around Blois and farther away on the farms. A bell began to peal somewhere; the sound brought the young man to awareness of the reality of what was happening behind the closed door. He fled to the chapel in the inner court of the castle.

  In the gilded candlesticks on the altar tapers were burning. The lighted altar seemed an island of peace and safety in the gloom of the early morning. He remained kneeling even after the sun had long risen. Philippe joined him.

  “What news is there?” Charles whispered; but his brother shook his head without replying. Why must she suffer so? thought Charles, while he murmured mechanically all the p
rayers he thought appropriate. As the day went on he felt more and more beset by doubt: was this a punishment because he had not kept the promise that he had made to his mother? Must Isabelle do penance for his irresolution, his reluctance to attack his hereditary enemy with fire and sword? Was God’s finger pointing at him: could he perhaps free Isabelle from her suffering by swearing anew, this time by all that was holy, that he would not shrink from the destiny that had been laid out for him?

  “Vota meaDomine reddarn” prayed Charles more loudly. “I shall fulfill my vows unto the Lord.” Philippe looked up in fright and astonishment and tapped him on the arm, but Charles wiped the sweat from his face and walked quickly from the chapel. In the courtyard he found one of the doctors, who told him that the progress of the labor showed little change. However Monseigneur must not despair; it might take a few more hours.

  It lasted another twenty-four hours; on the afternoon of September twelfth 1409, Madame Isabelle at long last brought a child into the world, a daughter. The baby was healthy and well-formed, but the birth cost the young mother her life. Physicians and nursing women had to stand helplessly by while the Duchess of Orléans bled to death under their hands.

  By candlelight and amid the tolling of church bells Isabelle was laid to rest in the church of Saint-Sauveur, beside the spot where Valentine had been buried not quite a year earlier. Tearless, silent and motionless, Charles attended all ceremonies. Then he returned to the castle; in the great hall he accepted condolences, and gave necessary orders: he requested de Braquemont to dispatch couriers to Saint-Pol and to his royal kinsmen in all parts of France. Later he went into the lying-in chamber for a moment; the beautiful state bed stood made up, unused, in the middle of the apartment. The women showed him his little daughter, Jeanne, the name Charles and Isabelle had chosen in the sunny meadow near Olivet: it was in memory of their mutual grandmother, the wife of Charles the Wise.