In a Dark Wood Wandering

by Hella S. Haasse

  Charles was charged to enter into communication with representatives of the English government; immediately he sent couriers to Suffolk and Sir Robert Roos. He did not have to wait long for an answer. Suffolk wrote back in detail: the legation which would speedily cross the Straits of Calais would serve a two-fold purpose: to conclude peace, or at any rate an armistice and, in order to confirm the good understanding between the two Kingdoms, to negotiate a marriage between Henry VI and the daughter of a French prince.

  Princesses of royal blood who were already betrothed were not to be considered; moreover, memories of the tragic nuptials of 1396 and 1420 were still fresh in both countries. “But,” Suffolk wrote formally—Charles knew how strongly his erstwhile warden opposed the idea of a French bride on the English throne—”But we hear that there are daughters in the Houses of Brittany, Armagnac and Alençon.”

  Charles paid a visit to his sovereign to acquaint him with the English proposals. The King rejected out of hand any alliance between an English king and a member of those French feudal Houses.

  “Do they think I am going to admit the Trojan horse with my own hands?” he asked with his faint, bitter smile. “I charge you, Monseigneur my worthy cousin, to put yourself immediately in communication with my brother-in-law of Anjou; I can trust him without reservations. He has a daughter. It is our wish that you offer her as a bride to our cousin, the King of England.”

  So Charles began at once to prepare for the journey to Tarascon in the extreme south of the realm where Anjou lived; still mindful of his claim to Sicily, he always called himself “King”. He was some ten years younger than Charles; from his father he had inherited a glittering series of sonorous and imposing titles and claims to crowns: he should rule—so he had been taught from childhood on—over Jerusalem, Aragon, Valencia, Majorca, Sardinia and Corsica, Barcelona and Piedmont. In actuality he possessed only the domain of Anjou, and the regions of Provence and Lorraine which his wife had brought to him as her dowry. King René—he was never called anything else—had, since succeeding his father, been obliged to wage one war after another to protect his rights, battles in which he had been defeated time after time, so that of so much worldly power and glory, of a kingdom which stretched from Spain to Jerusalem, nothing was left except the gleaming crown emblazoned on his coat of arms.

  Along with the Duchy of Lorraine, his wife had brought him armed conflict with Burgundy. The results for René were defeat and six years of captivity in Flanders. During that enforced stay in Burgundy’s court, it became apparent that René was a gentle visionary, an aesthetic dreamer. Burgundy freed him without compunction and saw his assumptions justified: in sunny Provence King René immersed himself in his many hobbies and bothered no more with politics.

  “We have definitely settled all our business,” mused King René, rising and drawing the folds of his wide, flowered brocade robe around him. “No more politics, worthy friend, no more of that. Let’s enjoy the sunshine together as friends; here the good God grants us so abundantly all the joys which life has to offer. I have hardly had the chance to tell you how delighted I am at your coming here. We are brothers, dear friend, brothers, more firmly attached to each other than if we had been linked by bonds of blood.”

  Charles stood up too, somewhat dizzy from the heat and the blinding glare of the sunlight on the landscape around him. They had held their conversation under a spacious awning of tapestries in the open gallery which King René had had constructed, in the Oriental fashion, against the walls of his castle in Tarascon; one sat there as though one were sitting on a cloud high in the sky, with an unimpeded view over the richly variegated landscape.

  The cool amber wine proffered by the pages seemed headier than its aroma might lead one to expect; Charles felt remarkably carefree, as though he had partaken of the nectar of oblivion. He took the hand which his host held out to him and allowed himself to be led inside the cool shadowy halls of the castle; lute players and minstrels accompanied the princes. They passed through many apartments adorned with Moorish mosaics; finally they went down some stairs.

  King René clapped his hands and nodded to his followers: nobles, pages and servants stopped behind them. Charles and his host stepped together through a small arched gate cut into one of the outer walls.

  “Yes, follow me, worthy friend, follow me!” King René looked behind him, smiling and nodding; his white teeth gleamed in his broad olive face; he made a grandiose gesture of invitation. Charles bowed in assent; he was somewhat taken aback but amused at the almost childlike pleasure of his royal host, who had confessed that he attached infinitely more importance to his visitor’s poetic art than to all the honorable messages from the French and English governments together.

  King René opened a little door, so narrow and low that they both had to stoop. When Charles looked up, he could not repress an exclamation of amazement. He was standing in a walled courtyard filled with blossoming trees and bright flowers; paved paths traversed the garden where three fountains played. Exotic, brightly colored birds sat chained to swinging perches set among the branches of the bushes; the air was filled with their penetrating sweet fluting and twittering and with the heavy fragrance of the flowers. The walls surrounding the garden were so high that only the tops of the trees on the other side could be seen. Above the garden and the treetops arched the dazzling deep blue sky.

  On one side of the little door through which Charles and René had entered, stood a pavilion without walls; above a floor of large shining tiles a canvas had been stretched between poles; it drooped to one side to temper the light. Beneath that awning stood a bench, a slanted reading desk like the one Charles used and a table heaped with boxes, cases and folio volumes. To this bower King René, still nodding mysteriously, led his guest.

  Charles entered the pavilion, feeling that he had left the everyday world for one of the symbolic fairy gardens described in the Romance of the Rose. He stared enchanted at the exotic birds and flowers, at the grass and leaves suffused with a greenish glow, while King René busied himself at the table and the reading desk.

  “Look here now.”

  Charles gave ear to the gently urgent tone in which the request was made and turned around. King René had set out a number of small wooden panels on which were painted miniatures in brilliant jeweled colors, in the style of the Flemish masters whose work Charles had seen at the court of Burgundy. He was strongly interested; he removed his spectacles and leaned over to inspect the paintings.

  “These are singularly beautiful,” he said after a while. “Who painted them, Monseigneur?”

  King René had watched Charles with quiet intensity as, one by one, he took the little panels in his hand; now he began to laugh. In his large, round face his jovial black eyes glittered like stars. “Do you really find them beautiful, my friend?” he asked happily. “That pleases me. I too find them excellent. I painted them.”

  “You have great skill,” said Charles, surprised. “These are real works of art.”

  King René bent over the table so that his face almost touched the paintings; carefully he caressed the wood with his fingertips.

  “Yes, they are beautiful, they are good,” he repeated a few times in a pleased voice. “The colors are well-mixed. Look at how lovely that blue is—that cost me a fortune in lapis lazuli. But it’s worth the cost, this beauty is worth it. I taught myself to paint when I sat in Flanders as a prisoner,” he went on, looking at Charles. “That was a pastime for me, just as poetry was for you in England.”

  “Apparently you still derive much pleasure from it.” Charles smiled and pointed to the dozens of paints, the reading desk, the brushes and jars for mixing the paints. “Unfortunately, the world claims too much of my attention; I cannot dedicate myself to the thing I love.”

  “The world, the world?” For the first time a shadow crossed King René’s childishly good-natured face. “What do you call the world? Conferences, affairs of state, war, diplomatic maneuvering, money worries, obli
gations to all the world and his wife? Do you know what the world is?” He gripped Charles’ arm and directed him to look once more at the panels: with his broad brown forefinger he pointed at the paintings: holy pictures, scenes from mythology, emblematic figures. “That is the world; there is the world for me,” he said, his voice filled with affection. “During the hours I spent on that, I felt like a completely fulfilled man for the first time in my entire life. I am never so contented, so deeply happy, so filled with gratitude to God who created me, as when I sit here with my brushes and my colors and create little creatures, small worlds, on the wood. This is the world, Monseigneur my friend, and all things outside it are only dreams and illusions, lighter than smoke. Don’t tell me that you don’t know this already.”

  “I have often thought almost the same thing,” said Charles thoughtfully, still smiling. “But I was never able to express the idea so clearly as you, Monseigneur. I have never dared to suppose that poetry could constitute the meaning and the purpose of my life. I thought that I had … and have … many other responsibilities to perform. My time does not belong to me alone.”

  “Friend, friend!” King René raised his hands and shook his head. His eyes began to twinkle once more. “You still have much to learn. You don’t know yourself, esteemed friend. Be honest, confess that you really only live when you are thinking of poetry, or poetically thinking. I have had the privilege of reading a few of the verses which you sent some time ago to your wife in Rodez. Ah, let us not fall into comparisons, let’s not name names, or mention Virgil or Horace whom we have learned to love and respect as great poets. The blackbird and the skylark know how to sing as well as the nightingale, and the fact that God has created them shows there must be room in the world for their song. Monseigneur, worthy friend, your songs are not the conventional rhymes which we all learn to compose at one time or another. Your heart is in them, they are warm and true as … as …” he waved his large hands back and forth, searching for the right word. Charles, still smiling, shrugged.

  “It’s certainly true that if one is touched to the heart, he will write good verse,” he said lightly. He felt that he could never be able to speak so enthusiastically, so openly, as King René did.

  “And what prevents you from loving with all your heart, from being overcome with delight or even with grief, if that’s the way you feel?”

  Charles followed his host out of the pavilion into the blinding sunlight; they were met by the intoxicating, bittersweet fragrance of roses and oleanders.

  “When Madame Bonne d’Armagnac died, I asked in verse to be dismissed from the service of Love,” Charles said, in his usual tone of jocular melancholy. “Since then I have hardly ever taken up the pen. I live under the protection of Nonchaloir—philosophical resignation, calm cool acquiescence … in that state one cannot be incessantly inspired to write verse. Although …”

  He stopped and stretched his hand toward a cluster of flowers.

  “In your enchanted court, my lord, I could almost imagine myself young and in love again. Yes, if I thought about that possibility long enough, I am afraid that rhymes and images would shoot up in profusion in my heart, like the flowers in his garden. I would need only to pluck them.”

  “And what stops you?” René’s face was radiant with happiness. He seemed on the point of saying more, but suddenly he put his finger to his lips and nodded his head toward a flowering thicket. Out of the foliage came two white peacocks walking regally as queens; they moved their plume-crowned heads haughtily from left to right, letting their long, folded tail feathers trail behind them over the grass. When they perceived that they were being watched, they stood still and slowly opened their great snow-white fans.

  “Monseigneur my friend,” whispered King René, “don’t our knights hold fast to the beautiful old custom of swearing especially solemn oaths on noble birds—herons, swans, peacocks? It seems to me that everything is conspiring to lure you away from your promise. Swear that you will not disavow the deepest desires of your heart, that you will no longer resist the muse who is our truest friend and mistress. Swear that you will no longer give yourself up to the sin of unhappiness.”

  For a moment there was silence in the garden which sparkled with light and colors. The peacocks moved noiselessly over the grass, the glossy leaves and fragrant flowers of the tall shrubs hung motionless against the deep blue of the heavens. Finally, Charles raised his right hand in a gesture of avowal. It seemed to him that he had never made a more significant promise.

  Balades, chançons et complaintes

  Soot pour moy mises en oubly,

  Car ennuy et pensees maintes

  M’oot tenu long temps endormy.

  Non pour tant, pour passer soussy,

  Essaier vueil se je sauroye

  Rimer, ainsi que je souloye.

  Au meins j’en feray mon povoir,

  Combien que je congnois et sçay

  Que mon langage trouveray

  Tout enroillie de Nonchaloir.

  Ballads, chanons and laments

  Are put away from me and forgotten,

  For ennui and crowded thoughts

  Have long held me asleep.

  But yet, to pass the lonely time

  I should like to try and see

  If I can rhyme as I once did,

  Although I know, I realize

  That I shall find my phrases

  All rusted over with Nonchaloir.

  … …

  Amoureux ont parolles paintes

  Et langage frois et joly;

  Plaisance dont ilz soot accointes

  Parle pour eux; en ce party

  J’ay este, or n’est plus ainsi;

  Alors de beau parler trouvoye

  A bon marchie tant que vouloye;

  Si ay despendu mon savoir,

  Et s’un peu espargnie en ay,

  Il est, quant vendra a l’essay,

  Tout enroillie de Nonchaloir.

  Lovers paint with words

  And fresh charming language;

  They know Pleasure very well,

  It speaks for them; I was once

  One of them but am no more;

  Then sweet talk was cheap for me,

  I had all I wanted;

  And so I speot my wit,

  And if I have saved a little

  It proves when put to the test

  All rusted over with Nonchaloir.

  Mon jubile faire devoye,

  Mais on diroit que me rendroye

  Sans coup ferir, car Bon Espoir

  M’a dit que renouvelleray;

  Pour ce, mon cueur fourbir feray

  Tout enroillie de Nonchaloir.

  I should celebrate my jubilee

  But they would say I surrendered

  Without striking a blow, for Good Hope

  Has told me that I shall be renewed;

  So my heart shall be refurbished

  That is all rusted over with Nonchaloir.

  During the early part of the summer the King received the English legation at Montils. For the first time in years the court set aside its characteristic sobriety: fetes, banquets and tournaments added luster to the visit of the English lords. King René and his wife arrived; they brought their daughter Marguerite with them, a pretty girl of fifteen. Suffolk, charmed in spite of himself by the King’s bride, raised scarcely any objections when the French disagreed with Henry VI and his government about the terms of the peace treaty. The King of France was willing to give up Guyenne and Normandy as fiefs, but insisted on retaining sovereignty over these lands. After long discussions, over which Charles presided, a temporary solution was finally reached by which neither side had to give up an inch: an armistice was signed, to last for two years. Charles took advantage of this opportunity to discuss with Suffolk his own obligations to England: payment terms were set up. At the same time Charles and Suffolk signed a document which laid out the conditions, in minute detail, for the release of Jean d’Angoulême.

 
Although the embassy returned to London immediately after the discussions, Charles’ work was not over by any means. The King, now that the hostilities with England were part of the past, intended to devote his time to the total annihilation of the marauding bands of mercenaries who still roamed the countryside; accordingly he instructed Charles to take charge of all negotiations and preparations for the marriage by proxy of young Marguerite of Anjou. Charles discharged this duty as conscientiously as possible, although he had no interest in that sort of activity. He felt very tired; the incessant travel to Paris and those places where the King made successive stops, was beginning to weigh heavily upon him. He was not involved only in diplomacy. He made use of his journeys through his own cities and landed estates to get the administration of his possessions in order.

  Above all, he left no stone unturned to gather together the amount needed as an advance deposit on his brother’s ransom. Whatever he managed to collect, either as a loan or a gift, he sent in installments to Suffolk’s bankers, who would attend to further arrangements. Finally, in the spring of 1445, he received the news which he had eagerly awaited for so long: the guaranteed sum of 150,000 ecus was now complete, thanks partly to regular contributions from Dunois. Jean d’Angoulême was about to cross the Straits of Calais.

  Charles would have liked nothing better than to go at once to Calais to welcome his brother, but because of the nuptials of Marguerite of Anjou, he had to go instead to Nancy. King René had chosen the capital of his province of Lorraine as the scene of the festivities. He spared neither trouble nor expense to make his daughter’s wedding the pinnacle of the art of courtly living.

  From all parts of the country, princes and nobles streamed to Nancy to witness all the spectacles and to see the bride, in a dress strewn with silver daisies, being led by Suffolk to the altar where she swore loyalty to her lord and husband, Henry VI, King of England, in joy and sorrow, in sickness and in health, until death should them part.