In a Dark Wood Wandering

by Hella S. Haasse

  In a flat wooden box which he carries with him always, he keeps the letters: small thin narrow rolls of paper covered closely with writing. At night, by the light of a single candle, carefully screened within the bedcurtains, he reads and rereads countless times the small pages which are all he has of France. Although he learns a good deal and guesses even more, he still cannot form a clear picture of the real state of affairs. Like a blind man who feels unknown areas with his fingertips, he knows the contours of everything which comes within his reach, but he cannot imagine the whole.

  So he reads in a letter which he has received early in 1430 that in the previous May the city of Orléans was relieved in four days; the garrison fought heroically under the command of a girl, Jeanne, who is called everywhere the Maid of Orléans. Dunois has not enough space to explain this remarkable leader, but respectful mention of her recurs constantly in his letters. Despite the opposition of the favorite La Trémoille, Jeanne has led the King across enemy territory into Reims and there had him anointed and crowned. Jeanne at the head of 8,000 men purges the area along the Loire of English troops. Jeanne’s fame causes the people of Normandy, Pi-cardy and the Isle of France to declare themselves ready to acknowledge the King. Jeanne wishes to free him, Orléans. At Jargeau, Jeanne takes the Earl of Suffolk prisoner and, after consultation with Dunois, releases him for a ransom of 20,000 gold ecus and the promise that in England he will make every effort to bring about the release of Charles d’Orléans and Jean d’Angoulême.

  “Jeanne, Jeanne,” murmurs Charles dubiously; he does not understand how a woman can exercise authority over men like Dunois, Gaucourt, Richmont, Alençon. Do they really believe then that the Maid of Orléans will do what the most experienced commanders have not been able to do? Even the calm, level-headed Dunois now writes with such elation that Charles assumes that everyone in France is intoxicated by hope and new courage. And he cannot deny that according to the information he receives, the King’s armies are making good progress.

  “The end is in sight,” Dunois writes at the end of his letter. “Within a short time we will advance with Jeanne to Paris. I have high expectations that people in the city who are well-disposed toward us will open the gates to us. Perhaps, dear brother, it will not be long before we see each other again.”

  Considerably less sanguine is the intelligence that reaches Charles three months later. The attack on Paris has been beaten off by the English—the King’s troops have had to withdraw over the Loire and the army has even been partially disbanded for lack of money. And Jeanne? For the first time Charles senses uneasiness and doubt behind Dunois’ words.

  “It would be better if she were to return to Lorraine,” writes the Bastard, “before she is led by her ignorance and presumption to commit grave errors.”

  After that, almost a year passes before Charles receives another visit from le Brasseur. He is somewhat prepared for bad news; he has heard from the knight Cornwall that ten-year-old King Henry VI was brought to Paris and ceremonially crowned King of both France and England. Charles thinks it is unlikely that this could have happened if the partisans were still active on the other side of the Loire. He has been informed with great pomposity that a certain Jeanne, nicknamed the Maid of Orléans, an inciter of insurrection, a witch, a rebel against English authority and an apostate from the True Faith, was captured at a battle near Compiegne. The brief letter which Charles finally receives from Dunois in July, 1431, confirms this.

  “They have betrayed and sold her. She stayed with us too long. Because the King does not need her any more, he has not lifted a finger to save her. At the court of Bourges, they swear by a new prophet, a shepherd from Geveau who for the present finds it safer to flatter and delude the King than to march into battle for him as Jeanne did. The English handed her over to the University and especially to their friend and protege Pierre Cauchon, the new Archbishop of Beauvais. And, as was to be expected, Jeanne was accused of sorcery. They forced her to confess—I do not know what that means—that she served the Devil. But although she knew perfectly well what was in store for her, she recanted the confession. On the thirtieth day of May, she was burned to death.

  “I do not know if she was sent by God. She was brave and devout and she gave us the strength we needed at the critical moment. But she should have seen that her work was finished when she led the King to Reims. She did not want to leave her post, not even when she no longer heard her voices which, she said, told her what to do. She liked to exercise command and to ride at the head of the troops. She liked nothing better than to urge the men on in battle. She didn’t want to give up that pleasure. Since the defeat before Paris, I have often called her undertaking foolish and blamed her for her stupidity. But now that I know how she died, I find her no less holy and heroic than the martyrs we read about when we were children. Because of her death many have regained the faith lost when fortune turned against us. Surely the people of France will remember her steadfastness with loving reverence and persevere in the struggle against England. And surely the King will bitterly regret having abandoned her to her fate. For my part, I know I can never again be completely happy now that I can never again meet Jeanne on her black charger with her gleaming banner raised before her, calling, ‘Come, Bastard, the dawn is breaking—on to battle, to the attack!’ ”

  Another year crawls slowly by. Some information reaches him in the course of the year, not only through the letters from France; he can infer one thing and another from words dropped by his servants and his English visitors; now and then he overhears a rumor, an echo of events in London and overseas in France and Flanders. Things are not going well for England in those territories which she still holds; riots and uprisings are the order of the day among the population; step by step they are forced from the cities and villages where they had been entrenched. In the government of London the parties of Gloucester and Winchester are quarreling; the evil which King Henry believed he had destroyed has spread over England like a pestilence: feuds between the great lords, dissension at home.

  There is little money with which to fight the war, and as a consequence there are not more than four or five thousand English troops under arms in France. Burgundy, officially still England’s ally, gives them no support. In England voices are raised, demanding peace. When he hears this, Charles looks forward with almost feverish impatience to news from Dunois. Peace … the word which he has not even dared think for many long years—now the thought of it propels him into a state of constant restlessness. Peace is his only hope for freedom; after seventeen years of imprisonment, he knows this only too well. For him and for his brother of Angoulême everything hinges on peace, and now that peace is a possibility and freedom seems within his grasp, he can barely hold out any longer.

  In God’s name let the King seize this chance, he thinks. Let them see over there that they have never had a more favorable opportunity; things are going so badly for the English that they are willing to withdraw in exchange for land and money. God grant that negotiations begin soon.

  En regardant vers le païs de France,

  Un jour m’avint, a Dovre sur la mer,

  Qu’il me souvint de la doulce plaisance

  Que souloye oudit pays trouver;

  Si commençay de cueur a souspirer,

  Combien certes que grant bien me faisoit

  De voir France que mon cueur amer doit.

  As I was looking toward the land of France

  One day at Dover on the sea,

  I remembered the sweet plaisance

  Which in the past I found in that country;

  So I could not help but sigh from my heart

  Despite the great good it did me

  To see France, my heart’s great love.

  Je m’avisay que e’estoit non savance

  De telz souspirs dedens mon cueur garder,

  Veu que je voy que la voye commence

  De bonne paix, qui tous biens peut donner;

  Pour ce, tournay en confort mon
penser.

  Mais non pourtant mon cueur ne se lassoit

  De voir France que mon cueur amer doït.

  I thought that it was a foolish thing

  To sit and sigh within my heart

  When I could see the way begin to open

  To the good peace, which can help us all.

  So I began to think comforting thoughts,

  But despite this my heart never wearied

  Of seeing France, my heart’s great love.

  Alors chargay en la nef d’Espérance

  Tous mes souhaitz, en leur priant d’aler

  Oultre la mer, sans faire demourance,

  Et a France de me recommander.

  Or nous doint Dieu bonne paix sans tarder!

  Adonce auray loisir, mais qu’ainsi soit,

  De voir France que mon cueur amer doit.

  Then onto the ship of Hope

  I put all my wishes, bidding them to go

  Beyond the sea, without delay

  And to remember me to France.

  Now may God give us good peace soon!

  Then I shall be able, may it only happen,

  To see France, my heart’s great love.

  Paix est trésor qu’on ne peut trop loer;

  Je hé guerre, point ne la doy prisier;

  Destourbé m’a long temps, soit tort on droit,

  De voir France que mon cueur amer doit.

  Peace is a treasure above all acclaim,

  I hate war; there is nothing in it to respect;

  Rightly or wrongly, it has kept me a long time

  From seeing France, my heart’s great love.

  In the course of the year 1434, the English Council consigned the guardianship of Charles to William de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk—the same Suffolk who, five years before, had conducted the siege of the city of Orléans; the same Suffolk too who, after being captured by Jeanne at Jargeau, had been set free in return for a ransom of 20,000 gold ecus. As a man of honor, Suffolk had kept the promise he had made to Dunois: the improvement in Charles’ circumstances was due in no small degree to Suffolk’s intercession. Since his return to England, Suffolk had pressed the Council repeatedly to entrust the Duke of Orléans to his care.

  So at last Charles left the rich wooded hills and valleys around Ampthill with a great escort of horses and armed soldiers, for his new home: the castle of Wingfield, ancestral home of the de la Pole family. Wingfield lay not far from the sea in flat land, some of it grassy, some cultivated, divided by hedges and orchards; small windmills were driven by salty breezes. The smell of seaweed and foam floated over the empty land. The clouds seemed thinner and swifter-moving than in other places. The barren hills outside Pontefract, the forest near Bolingbroke, the stately gloomy parks of Ampthill, had never oppressed Charles’ spirits as did this wind-swept, chill, monotonous landscape under a colorless sky. This land was the absolute antithesis of the lush Loire valley, the lost homeland for which, in deep pain, his heart incessantly yearned.

  Wingfield Castle dominated the hamlet of Wingfield, a group of cottages and small thatch-roofed farms set in the midst of orchards and kitchen gardens. At the end of the village, directly opposite the castle, was the church; its blunt, stunted towers rose toward the sky. The Earl’s castle itself looked extremely forbidding with its ramparts and moats, its corner towers and battlements. Weary and depressed, Charles passed into Wingfield through the heavy arched gate and over the drawbridge. But his reception exceeded all expectations. Suffolk proved to be an amiable and courteous host and his young wife, a granddaughter of the poet Chaucer whose work Charles knew, seemed educated and exceptionally well-read. Both spoke good French, as did the members of all noble families which had come from Normandy. Although Charles had learned over the years to express himself quite well in English, the Earl of Suffolk and his lady, out of a desire to oblige him, spoke only French in his presence. They treated him completely like a guest; he could move freely both inside and outside Wingfield Castle, without the hindrance of an armed escort.

  Suffolk was two years younger than Charles, a man in the prime of life. He had been under arms almost uninterruptedly since Agin-court; he had fought in all important battles and sieges and, after Salisbury’s death, had assumed supreme command over the English armies in France. But now, as he repeatedly remarked, he was weary of life in the field; after twenty years of fighting, of combat, even the highest military office could not tempt him to remain in France.

  “I have my hands full already, managing my estates and settling my personal affairs,” he said to Charles one day after mass, as they walked slowly through the nave of Wingfield church.

  The pillars in the nave rose up like white tree-trunks which branched high overhead into little fan-shaped arches like leaves in a forest of stone. Before the altar were the tombs of Suffolk’s ancestors; on raised slabs slept armored knights sculptured from stone, their hands folded in prayer on the hilts of their broadswords. As usual, Charles spelled out the Latin phrases engraved on the sides of these memorials: “Here rests in God Michael de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk… Here the mortal remains of John de la Pole await the Day of Judgment”.

  “Believe me, my lord,” Suffolk went on, “one must have seen as much of war as I to realize that peace is the highest good.”

  Charles stood still.

  “One realizes that even more acutely when one is a caged bird like me,” he said, glancing at his host with an ironic smile. “And I am quite certain that you have chosen wisely, Messire. A tranquil life on your own land, surrounded by friends and kinsmen, what more can a man desire? Ambition and the urge for adventure are evil companions. I can’t imagine a better life than the one you are leading now. I only wish that I may do the same in France. It is precisely because I long for such a life with all my heart and because I believe that everyone has the right to enjoy the quiet possession of house and hearth—it is precisely because of this, Messire, that I am perhaps the most dedicated champion of peace that you could find anywhere.”

  Suffolk turned slightly and looked at his guest. He was taller and more robust than Charles and he looked considerably younger. During the long years of forced inactivity indoors, Charles had lost the suppleness and muscular slimness which had characterized him as a young man. His body had become corpulent and soft, his face prematurely faded. Furrows, the signs of bitterness and silent grief, were visible from his nostrils to the corners of his mouth. Although he was not yet forty years old, he walked like a much older man, cautiously, his shoulders slightly bent, slowly, almost unwillingly. Invariably he wore black, without ornaments, in a sober cut; winter and summer he wrapped himself in a fur-lined cloak; inside the castle it was damp and chilly, and he was easily susceptible to gout.

  It was difficult for Suffolk, who had not met him before, to believe that Orléans had ever been young; no trace of youth appeared in this quiet, somewhat heavy man. Occasionally, during a discussion of subjects in which the Duke was interested, he seemed to forget his situation sufficiendy to cast off his depression and inertia, if only for a brief time. Then a brighter note could be detected in his always pleasant voice, a rare smile sparkled in his eyes, he gestured vivaciously with his exceptionally graceful hands. Melancholy and ennui seemed to leave him in those moments; as if by magic he displayed a spirit and dash which struck a special chord in Suffolk and in his wife, since the nobility were by education and way of life very familiar with French courtliness. Moreover, they respected the prisoner as an individual; it is rare to meet a man who does not under any circumstances lose his self-control or abandon his good breeding. There was no question that his altitude did not result from shallowness or indifference. No one who came into daily contact with the Duke of Orléans could help noticing that he responded deeply to events.

  Suffolk became extremely fond of him; true, he sometimes felt that the Duke was too acquiescent, listless, but God in heaven, the man had sat in prison for twenty long years, it was no wonder that his resiliency had broken unde
r it. Suffolk thought it unlikely that this prematurely aged man with his striking interest in intellectual matters, should still desire to play a role in politics. There was no point in holding Orléans in England any longer;.anyone who knew anything about what was happening on the other side of the Straits must see that Orléans could do little, either for or against England. Since Henry V’s time, the relationship between the two countries had undergone so profound a transformation, domestic affairs had changed so much, that it would be extremely difficult for the Duke, whose focus and concepts were twenty years out of date, to get a true picture of the present situation, let alone involve himself in diplomacy. Suffolk found the government’s hesitation to release Charles d’Orléans to be unreasonable. Time and again over the years he had pointed out that it was senseless to prolong this exile. Why not at long last fix the amount of the ransom and set a term for payment? On second thought, why not return Orléans to France on his word of honor and with certain guarantees?

  The young Henry VI had bent a willing ear to this proposal, but the Regents and most of the King’s advisors were inclined against it. They felt that in Charles d’Orléans and his brother, England held two valuable pawns which they must continue to grasp; perhaps the moment would come soon when they could play these pieces to great advantage. Orléans remained—even if he should be considerably more broken by his captivity than was actually the case—the head of one of the foremost Houses in France; it was a foregone conclusion that he would once more exercise influence, once more make his mark.