The King's Women

by Deryn Lake

  She doubted that the man had even heard her, so intent was he on his victim. For having knocked her to the ground he was now kneeling over the girl, tearing brutally at her clothing. Thus with his back turned and attention distracted he did not see Yolande approaching like a fury. Not till the point of a dagger pricked the nape of his neck was the attacker even aware that anybody so much as stood behind him.

  He made to thrust backwards to wrench his assailant’s arm but was stopped by the blade delicately entering his flesh and his own warm blood gushing thickly.

  “If you move again I will kill you, have no doubt of that,” said a hissing voice, which trebled in strength as it added, “Guard, guard! Come at once in the name of the Regent of Anjou.”

  Then there were running feet and heavy-fisted hands and soldiers who did not care how they handled a man in order to drag him upright. Ever afterwards the attacker remembered a tall woman, white-faced with rage, casting upon him a pair of eyes that smouldered in her face like molten emeralds.

  “Take him to the dungeons and send for the Seneschal. The man is a worthless wretch,” Yolande ordered furiously, then, very gently, put down a hand to help the hapless victim to stand.

  “Why did he do it?” the Duchess asked in a much quieter voice.

  “He wanted me there and then, my Lady,” whispered the girl. “He said the trees would hide us from view and tried to rape me when I refused. He is a trader like myself, a pork butcher, and is far more base than the beasts he slaughters. He has been pestering me for weeks.”

  “I see. And you are…?”

  “Alison du May, Madame. My father is a vegetable vendor in the town.”

  “And you had come to sell your wares here at the castle?”

  Quick as a flash and with a glint of her usual mettle, the chit answered, “My vegetables, aye. But not the goods he wanted. I would need a higher bidder than he.” And a wink fluttered and went like the flight of a butterfly before her glittering silver eye vanished behind a bruise.

  Despite the girl’s cheekiness, the Regent laughed. “Indeed? Now you’d best come with me. I think my physician must look to those cuts and grazes before you go home.”

  “Your physician?” exclaimed Madamoiselle du May, staring and astonished. “I thought you were somebody important when you called out the guard. And I’m obviously right!”

  Again Yolande smiled. “I am the Duchess of Anjou.”

  The girl fell on one cut and bleeding knee and raised the Regent’s hand to her bruised lips. “And you risked yourself to rescue me? Then you are a very great lady indeed. I offer you my life, Madame.” And with that the girl solemnly made the sign of the cross over her heart and kissed Yolande’s hand three times to represent the Trinity.

  Those bringing petitions to the House of Anjou were given audience in a large chamber in the King’s Lodging, situated exactly a floor below Yolande’s private apartments. Here, views of the sparkling river could be glimpsed through the leaded windows and in the brightness of this particular morning the room was full of little lights and quivers which danced over the walls and lit the Regent’s bony face with interesting planes of shadow. In such a dazzle her profile looked dark and imposing, her eyes full of glinting reflections and enigmatical depths. So much so that Yolande’s private secretary, Roger de Machet, old now and fading into a delightful shade of grey rather than growing wrinkled, swept into the room and stopped short, the academic gown which he always affected to wear rippling behind him like a stream.

  “Majesty, you are as beautiful and fine as an angel this morning,” he said in wonderment.

  “Thank you,” answered Yolande, without a hint of annoyance or vanity. “How good of you to tell me.” She looked down at the list that already lay on the desk before her. “Now, who have I to see today?”

  “The Abbess of Ronceray is here to report to you on the foundlings, Madame, and Brother Xavier is come to bring greeting from the Abbot of St. Nicolas. Prior Paul is also in attendance to speak about the hospital. Other than that we have the usual petitioners — neighbours’ grievances, a suit for breach of promise, all things that can be referred to the courts. But there are two boys here…”

  “Boys?” repeated Yolande, raising a dark brow.

  “Yes, ma Reine. They arrived at the Country Gate at daybreak and said they were looking for Monsieur de Giac. They told the guard they had been given to him as a gift from Queen Isabeau.”

  Yolande stared in astonishment. “What?”

  “They did have a letter with them, Madame. It lies on the desk before you.”

  Yolande looked down, identified the parchment, then ripped the seal open without hesitation.

  “Well, well,” she exclaimed, but did not read aloud, leaving Machet to study her mobile features in silence, lit by the swift gleams of the river light as they were. Eventually, Yolande said, “Bring the children in. I will see them first.”

  Machet bowed. “Certainly, ma Reine.”

  A moment later he re-entered the room leading the two boys by the hand, and as Yolande rose to greet them she gasped at the fact they were identical, though one sadly misshapen and lame.

  “How did you get here?” she asked at once, her businesslike manner hiding her pity for the poor wretches, clearly doomed to a life of degradation if Isabeau and de Giac had their sordid way.

  “We have come from Paris, Madame,” answered the whole one, obviously a beautiful child beneath his layers of grime. “We were bought by the Queen as a gift for her friend, Monsieur de Giac, and she sent us here to Angers to join his household.”

  “But while we were travelling,” put in the hunchback, “the man who was escorting us vanished, horse and all, so we walked the rest of the way. It was not always easy because there are bands of soldiers everywhere.”

  The Regent nodded silently. The ferocity of the civil war had grown worse and though she still had not officially taken sides, her sympathies were leaning more and more towards the Orleanist cause. And Yolande well knew that the time was fast approaching when she must declare her intent as to which faction the house of Anjou would follow. With an effort, she focused her attention on the twins.

  “You walked, you say? It must have been a long journey.”

  “It was,” the boys chorused together, and the Duchess saw that both had bleeding feet bound up by tattered rags.

  “Well, you have arrived now,” she said, and smiled. “So, tell me your names.”

  “I am Guy,” answered the hunchback, “and this is Jacques. We have no other name because we were born in a ditch and left for dead by our mother.”

  “At least that is what the mountebank told us.”

  “The mountebank?” repeated the Regent, frowning.

  “We were working for him in the streets of Paris. That is where Queen Isabeau saw us. We amused her, I think, and she thought we would be suitable to enter the household of Monsieur de Giac.”

  “Yes, I’m sure she did,” murmured Yolande with a small and bitter smile.

  “We can sing,” Jacques went on, “and I can dance, and Guy can juggle really well.”

  “Good,” answered the Duchess, “that is very good. Now you must go with Monsieur de Machet who will see to it that you are scrubbed down and given clothes and food and that your feet are tended to. Then I will decide what is to be done with you.”

  “But what about our new master?”

  Yolande straightened her long back. “He is not here and I do not believe you would suit him after all. You will remain in my protection for the moment.”

  “Are you a Queen as well?” asked Guy, round-eyed.

  “Amongst other things. But I have two boys of my own, though younger than you are, so I do not lack understanding. I will make sure your future is a good one.”

  They smiled simultaneously, those two sweet faces, and Yolande found herself thinking that this must indeed be a day of miracles and that, perhaps, she was acting as guardian angel to both them and to Alison du May.


  Since the building of the hospital in Angers, the Hotel-Dieu St. Jean, in 1175, the scope of its services to the people had continued to increase and be delegated. Originally run by laymen, it was now administered by the Augustinians, and patients of every country and every religion were given welcome, except for incurables, lepers and foundlings. The orphans, the bastards, and the unwanted were the responsibility of the Abbey of Ronceray, where the children were fed and clothed by the sisters, many staying behind to take the veil. Though some of the boys went straight to the monastery, others were sent out into the world to learn a trade or go into service. Similarly, the incurably ill and the lepers were housed in the leper hospital of St. Lazarus, which lay midway between the Abbey of St. Nicolas and the hospital, outside the walls of the Doutre, the nickname given to the populated quarter on the right bank, its name simply meaning ‘the other side’.

  Though the Abbot of St. Nicolas had not been visiting the Regent personally, his representative Brother Xavier, who supervised the musical life of the monastery, had gladly carried back a letter from the Duchess asking that the twin boys who had so unexpectedly arrived into her care should be accepted as pupils at the abbey school. And as the sun had dipped behind the hills sheltering St. Nicolas in their comfortable folds, one of the boats used by the monks had drawn up to the castle’s landing-stage to take them away.

  Yolande had personally gone down to see them off, her heart anxious for them as they climbed fearfully into the craft waiting to take them on the first stage of their new life. Fortunately Brother Michel, who had been in the world a husband and father, had come to fetch them.

  “I hear you both sing,” he had said cheerfully. “Is that right?”

  “We did,” Guy had answered, “but not monks’ songs.” Michel had grinned in amusement, an old soldier before he had taken the cloth. “Well, never mind that. They say that a man who can sing a street song can sing any song in the world. Brother Xavier will soon have you sounding like angels.”

  “I can juggle too,” Guy went on, leaning his hunched back against Michel’s stout arm.

  “Will that be of any use?”

  “Certainly,” the soldier monk answered gravely. “Do you not know the story of the Tombeur de Notre-Dame?”

  “No,” chorused the twins, unaware that the boat had cast off and was heading gently up river.

  “Well, about two hundred years ago in the monastery at Clairvaux, an acrobat became a monk…”

  The boat had reached midstream and was gliding out into the golden mellowness of that September evening.

  “Yes?” Their voices were growing slightly distant.

  “He wasn’t very good at book learning this monk, coming to it rather late, unlike your good selves, so he did not know what service to render Our Lady.”

  “What happened?” This from Jacques, his voice almost fading away. Yolande strained her ears to hear Brother Michel’s reply.

  “He went into the chapel at night and secretly performed his best tricks before her altar … “

  “Yes?” Their voices were a whisper on the breath of the evening.

  “And the monks who had gone to spy on him saw the Virgin herself come down from where she stood and mop his brow with the edge of her mantle. Now what do you think of that?”

  They were gone, it was dusk, the soft late summer day had slipped into twilight. From the right bank where lay the Doutre, the Abbey of St. Nicolas, the leprosarium of St. Lazarus, the Hotel-Dieu St. Jean and the fishing village of Reculée came the sounds of evening: voices raised in song, the splash of oars as boats pulled into the riverbank moorings, a distant bell breaking through the mist that had started to rise like swansdown.

  Yolande had turned on her way back, half-way up the steep path, and looked across the river at the undulating countryside, the water meadows, the sweep of plum-coloured hills beyond. The lake, on the banks of which St. Nicolas was built, glittered and flashed in the dying rays of the sun, then subsided, dark and silvery as a sleeping serpent. Just for a moment, caught up in the glow of that dying September day, the Duchess of Anjou had felt at peace with herself — and then her unborn child had leapt within. Unable to control her tears, Yolande had sunk down on one of the stone seats built at intervals along the steep path, and put her head in her hands.

  She had not seen the limping figure of Alison du May coming painfully towards her, was not aware of her presence until the girl’s voice said, “Please don’t cry, ma Reine,” and the Regent felt someone kneel at her feet.

  “I could not come to see you earlier,” the girl’s voice went on. “I had dinner in the kitchen as you ordered and then I fell asleep. But I could not leave the castle without thanking you. You saved my life, Madame, and once again I offer you mine in return. I swear to be your liege woman of life and of limb.”

  It was such a strange version of the oath of allegiance that Yolande laughed despite everything.

  “I mean it,” Alison persisted. “I would die for you. Let me serve you, however humbly.”

  Yolande had looked at the swollen face, the tangle of flaming hair, the bruised eyes and sore limbs. “You’re in earnest, I think, though it is difficult to read your expression when it is somewhat concealed.”

  Alison had smiled at that and just for a second there had been a flash of the amusing redheaded beauty which lay beneath her temporary disfigurement.

  “I swear I mean it. I want nothing more than to be your servant.”

  Yolande had gently cupped the battered face in her hands. “But what about your parents? You live with them, work at your father’s trade. What would they say?”

  “They would be as honoured as I,” Alison answered quietly.

  Yolande had gazed out over the darkening river, touched by the girl’s sincerity, and then the little miracle that she needed so much took place. Alison had suddenly put a gentle hand on Yolande’s stomach, an act daring enough to earn her a whipping, and the two women had looked at each other straight in the eye.

  “I know,” Alison whispered.

  “How?”

  “That I can’t tell you. It was as if the world was suddenly clear, everything surrounded by a sharp edge of light. And in that moment I knew you were with child, Madame.”

  “Did you also know its paternity?”

  “No, but that is not important. I have been sent to help, I am certain of it. Something took me by the hand and led me to you, ma Reine. I will take care of everything.”

  “If you are going to blackmail me I shall kill you,” Yolande answered bitterly, and then regretted ever speaking so, for the girl collapsed into fierce burning tears that seemed an agony to shed.

  “I…could…never…Alison gasped, then silently wept.

  Yolande had reached the nadir other existence. Shame for her love of Richemont, despair that she had heard nothing from him, fear for her future, had combined, then, in a moment so bleak and dark that she truly wished to die.

  “Help me, Alison, help me,” she had cried, and put out her hand, the mightiest woman in France humbled and brought low at last.

  And now, Duchess Yolande knelt in her private oratory, giving thanks to God for the blessing that this strange and oddly beautiful day had brought her. She had been sent a friend in the unlikely form of a nineteen-year-old peasant girl, sworn to secrecy before leaving the castle, and gone now to ask her parents’ permission to serve the Regent of Anjou, a permission that in no circumstances could possibly be withheld.

  ‘Cast thy bread…’ thought Yolande. She had saved two boys from a lifetime of corruption and had been rewarded by the arrival of a loyal heart.

  With a contented sigh, Yolande rose to her feet and went to the window to look out at the night. On the Doutre lights glimmered and a glow to the left of the walled quarter showed that Compline was being heard in the Abbey of St. Nicolas. In the lazar house a few candles flickered as the last of the afflicted lay down to sleep.

  “I pray their peace lasts,” the Regent said a
loud. “I pray that Anjou is spared the war, I pray that France might one day be re-united as a whole. God help me, I will do all I can to bring that about.”

  As if she were going into labour, the Duchess’s body was gripped by a sudden thrilling contraction and in alarm she put a hand to her baby.

  “Be still,” she whispered, “be still.”

  But the child created by the midnight heat of herself and the Earl of Richmond refused to rest.

  Six

  November 1411, and the Eve of Martinmas, the festival of winter’s beginning. In the duchies of France, as in the capital itself, all thoughts began to turn towards the great Christian festival that lay ahead, though the people of Paris as a corporate entity anticipated no pleasure to come, for now they knew the bleak deprivation of being conquered. Jean the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, had taken over their city.

  Every night the mighty bell of Notre-Dame rang curfew at eight and most of the common folk were only too glad to get off the streets and hide in their houses. Death being the reward for not openly supporting Burgundy, the citizens wore Burgundian red favours on their hoods and caps, keeping a spare set of white hidden in readiness lest the Armagnacs should arrive unexpectedly. But in the privacy of their houses they ground these favours beneath their heel, hating Burgundian domination, only the University having struck some kind of bargain with the omnipotent Duke.

  To add to the general suffering of the populace, provisions were in short supply, the countryside now being under heavy attack from bands of armed men who had gone past the point of differentiating between friend and foe and snatched anything they could find for their own consumption. What goods there were made their way into the hands of the rich, the only people who could afford the hideously inflated prices demanded.

  But while her wretched subjects drew near to starvation, Isabeau, Queen of France, fatter than ever, recklessly organised banquets and balls, and thought of the Twelve Days of Christmas with enthusiasm, planning a Feast of

  Venus with all such an event implied, for herself and the Duke of Burgundy.