The King's Women

by Deryn Lake

  The royal bodyguard of Scots archers — the Lord of Barbazan having gone, taken prisoner at Melun — behaved like true Scotsmen at the extraordinary sight of the Dauphin’s affianced bride, clad only in her nightclothes, making her way into her bridegroom’s bedchamber, an expression of fierce determination on her face. There was a simultaneous whistle from every one of them and then they shut their eyes, all together, as if they had been rehearsed. But as the inner door closed softly behind her there was a flurry of winks and, naughtily, one or two lewd gestures.

  But inside all was sweetness. Charles woke to feel the warmth of a body beside his and bent to kiss its owner’s mouth, believing it to be Bonne. It was only when the girl tensed slightly as he brushed her breast with his lips that he became suspicious and put a tinder to the candle that always stood beside his bed.

  “Marie!” he exclaimed in horrified astonishment. “What are you doing here? This is all wrong. You must return to your room at once.”

  For answer she snuggled nearer, putting her hands on either side of his face and once more drawing his reluctant lips to hers, and a miracle took place. The very closeness of her, her very eagerness and longing, conveyed itself to him, and Charles’s dread of his bride instantly vanished. The most natural response took place and the Dauphin found himself actually wanting Marie at long last.

  “Oh, I love you so very much,” she said. “Please take me for your own.”

  “But we are not married. Such a thing would not be honourable.”

  Yet the gentleness of her, the sweet smell and touch of her silk soft skin, were weakening his resolve even as Charles paid lip service to acts of integrity. Unable to help himself he drew her close to him — and then came magic! They were wonderful together, like practised lovers of many years’ standing, even the loss of her innocence calm and without distress. In sheer delight at the unexpectedness of such a thing, Charles found unbelievable happiness in the arms of a plain little girl who had obviously been born for love.

  “How extraordinary everything is,” he said, lost in amazement at the complexities of life. “Oh, Marie, I am truly going to enjoy being married to you.”

  “And you will pay your respects to the Dauphine regularly?”

  “Of course I shall.”

  “I know you don’t love me,” Marie whispered softly. “But I have enough for the two of us. It will be a perfect marriage. I shall keep out of the way during the day and we can meet in bed at night.”

  “It sounds delightful.”

  “And you won’t let Madame de Giac spoil it for us?”

  “I don’t think she would be capable of it,” answered the Dauphin, and kissed his future bride with all the wonderment and joyfulness of new-found love.

  In May 1422, Meaux finally surrendered and Henry of England was able, skeletal though he had become, to make his tortured way to Paris to be re-united with his Queen. The King was glad when he saw his Catherine that he had managed to sire her son when he did, for now he was too weak for any such joys. Yet still, like a machine, Henry donned armour once more and marched to Senlis to assist Philippe of Burgundy. How he got as far as Melun nobody ever knew. It was an unbelievable feat of strength and determination.

  And then it was over. He was carried back in a litter to the castle of Vincennes, where a girl not yet twenty and a lumbering colossus in a wheelchair awaited him. A few days later the victor of Azincourt slipped into the shadows at the age of thirty-five, and with him went his dreams of conquering the world. The chain-mail fist relinquished its grip and France shuddered with relief. Now things would be different. Now it was up to a babe-in-arms and Henry’s brothers, John, Duke of Bedford, the Regent of France, and Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, Regent of England, to subdue a nation already beginning to take stock of itself.

  In the splendour of autumn, the gilded firefly hues heavy on the land, the death of the year starting to show its scarlet signs, Charles the Dauphin, married to Marie that spring, made his way to the great sea port of La Rochelle. And with him, shy, demure, and always in the background, went his new Dauphine.

  In the eyes of the world the union was mediocre, run of the mill, but in actuality it was a triumph, exactly what Charles needed. Nervous with people, with no ambition at all to push herself or her point of view, Marie d’Anjou disappeared during the daylight hours to either embroider or sew, but was always ready in her husband’s bed at night to share their extraordinary magic. Bonne was furious, the beautiful Eleanor gave up, but the Dauphin’s bride, seeking nothing, remained a constant factor in his turbulent life.

  “A baby would be nice,” she said one day, comfortably, cosily, as one old friend to another. So Charles stopped using his primitive methods of birth control, learned from his friend the Bastard of Orleans, and set about becoming a family man. There was something amazingly sweet about such a thing, and he found this whole new concept of chatting to a reassuring sister figure with whom he could at the same time share sublime sexual experiences, the forbidden feel of them uniquely exciting, quite the most fulfilling of his entire life.

  “I suppose I can’t compete,” said Madame de Giac angrily, looking at her lovely face with its complementary halo of midnight hair in the mirror, and wondering what on earth her lover could see in such a booby of a wife.

  ‘There is no contest,” answered Charles lovingly. “You are my mistress, my divine darling. Marie is my friend, a jolly little thing from my childhood.”

  “Then if that is the case why do you attend her so often in her bedchamber?”

  “A husband must perform his conjugal duties,” Charles had answered enigmatically, and would be drawn no further.

  But everything — his heart, his mind, his body — assured him that his marriage was a good one and though he was not in the least in love with Marie, whatever those words might mean, he would not change his situation for the world.

  La Rochelle in the autumn was formidable, the sea a swirling mist until midday then, when the vapours finally rolled away, the expanse of water revealed grey and queasy, a monstrous ocean, yet one that it was the Dauphin’s duty to visit. For this was his only great seaport left, the only place where troops from Scotland could land, where the navy of Castille, another friend and ally, could patrol the waves. If this harbour fell into Anglo-Burgundian hands, the cause of the Armagnacs would be finished. But this particular visit seemed worse than usual and Charles had to admit that if it had not been for the nights when he snuggled in Marie’s comforting arms, he would have hated every second.

  On the 10th October, two months after the death of Henry of England, the Dauphin, gorgeously arrayed in a velvet robe bearing the fleur-de-lis picked out in gold thread, sitting in a high chair on a raised dais, presided over a meeting, held on the first floor of the civic assembly house, of the lawyers, clergy and laymen of La Rochelle. Ranged in front of him in stalls awaited his attentive audience and Charles, rising to address them, became suddenly aware of the dignity of his position.

  “My Lords, both temporal and spiritual, it gives me great joy to tell you that our mortal foe…” he began, then stopped abruptly.

  As if some mighty justice were being wrought on him, as if heaven itself were interceding on behalf of his dead enemy, the entire building began to shake and Charles, with immense horror, watched as very slowly, like a mummer acting out a slow dance, all movements twice the length of normal speed, the floor caved in, giving way beneath his very feet. Person after person, screaming horribly, fell through the abyss which suddenly yawned, and the chair of state, tottering on the very edge, swung crazily.

  “Christ’s mercy,” shrieked the Dauphin, “what’s happening?”

  But there was nobody left to answer as the commotion beneath, the screams of the injured and dying, swelled to bursting point.

  Trapped as he was, Charles did not know what to do. He could go neither forward nor back and the only solution seemed to be to stay motionless, balanced in his chair, peering down into the smoking black h
ole beneath him where body was piled upon body, those at the bottom of all lying so horribly still that their fate was obvious even to his untrained eye.

  And then the Dauphin must have leaned forward too far, for the unthinkable happened. His chair swayed, then overbalanced, and both it and its occupant fell through the crater, landing with a bone-breaking thud on the squirming mass of people who wriggled below like worms in a fisherman’s pot.

  Fortunately, help was soon at hand and Charles escaped with only cuts and bruises to his face and limbs. Yet in his mind he suffered an irreversible scar. The memory of that strange event, of the sudden swallowing up of people to whom he had been speaking only a moment before, haunting him for the rest of his life.

  In the days following this tragic accident, in which several members of the Dauphin’s entourage were killed, Marie d’Anjou’s triumph became absolute. She may have inherited nothing of her mother’s beauty or brilliance but, being a poor conversationalist herself, had long ago mastered the art of being a good listener. And now she not only listened but ministered to Charles’s cuts and bruises, standing behind him when the physicians had gone and massaging the Dauphin’s neck and shoulders to ease the tensions which came upon him whenever he thought of the disaster. Suddenly, Bonne de Giac, whose sad existence had placed her in the position of taker rather than giver, was nowhere to be seen.

  “And to think I dreaded marrying you,” Charles would say with cruel honesty. “And now I can’t think how I managed before you came.”

  “You had Bonne,” Marie would answer calmly, coming the closest to spite that a kind girl could.

  “I still love her.”

  “She satisfies your need for beauty, that is all.”

  “She does indeed. But yet this family feeling is so nice. Oh, Marie, what must I do?”

  “Continue as you are. You can still see her occasionally.” But the Dauphin knew something that Marie did not, namely that Bonne was beside herself with jealous despair. Charles and his love had become her linchpin, her reason for living, and now that another woman shared his bed she felt unable to endure the personal and public humiliation. For it was the talk of the court that the Dauphin slept in the Dauphine’s chamber, a thing unheard of in polite society. Going to disturb his master one night on a matter of some urgency, Tanneguy de Chastel had found Charles’s room empty, proof to Bonne if it were needed that her place had been usurped. So beauty alone was not enough it seemed. Yet what mental resources could the wife of a man like Pierre de Giac possibly draw on in order to make her triumph?

  All this and more was in poor Bonne’s mind as she roamed the corridors of the château at Mehun-sur-Yèvre, not far from Bourges, one wet and wind-blown day in late October, winding her pale thin fingers round and round despairingly. To say that the sight of her was distressing was to understate. Madame de Giac looked pitiful, bleached of colour and wan, only those who did not like her failing to suffer a stir of pity. Yet, unfortunately for her, it was that very set of people she came across as she turned a comer. The Dauphine and her Ladies were on their way to the sewing room, talking and laughing softly as they went.

  “Madame,” said Bonne, suddenly rigid, and made a stiff curtsy, back like a rod, as Marie drew close to her.

  At the same time the older girl searched the face of the younger for a clue to her power over Charles, but could only see homely features, an incipient double chin, and a pair of limpid brown eyes, not particularly well set and rather short of eyelashes.

  Realising that she was being scrutinised, the Dauphine looked annoyed. “I was always taught that it is rude to stare, Madame de Giac,” she whispered, her cheeks flushing.

  Bonne said nothing but dropped her gaze to the floor, a solitary tear running down the side of her nose and falling onto her knees, still respectfully bent.

  Marie hesitated, frowning, then called, “Ladies, go to your sewing room ahead of me if you would. I shall be delayed a few minutes.”

  A frisson ran through the maids-of-honour as they guessed that confrontation between the Dauphin’s two ladies was imminent, and they went on their way slowly, lingering as long as they could to see if they might overhear anything of the exchange.

  But Marie was prepared. “If you would step into my antechamber, Madame de Giac,” she said smoothly. “I have such an interesting bale of silk I would like to show you.”

  Bonne hesitated, almost afraid of the plain little girl who stood so erect in front of her, just for a second having an uncanny resemblance to her mother.

  “No, I…” she faltered.

  “You will like it very much,” Marie answered firmly and propelled her victim out of earshot, holding her tightly by the arm.

  In the Dauphine’s apartments more Ladies loitered and were dismissed, all looking suitably intrigued and excited. And it was only when she had made certain that there was nobody within earshot that the Dauphine finally drew Bonne into a window embrasure, instructing her to be seated on the cushioned sill.

  “Now, Madame,” Marie began, “let there be no beating about the bush. I think it is high time you and I had a little chat.”

  Bonne remained mute, wishing that Charles would walk through the door and retrieve the situation. And as if she could read her mind, the Dauphine said, “Monsieur le Dauphin is resting, Madame. There is no fear that he will disturb us.”

  “What is it you require of me?” Madame de Giac managed at last.

  “Very little. I do not even ask you to stop seeing Monsieur. I believe it is you in fact who want to say something to me”

  “I am not conscious of it, Madame,” Bonne answered stiffly, regaining a little dignity.

  “I am certain,” Marie went on regardless, “that you would like me to save your face by keeping away from my own husband. And that, Madame, is something I refuse to do.”

  “But I love him,” answered Bonne, her voice rising above the burst of a sob.

  The Dauphine turned on her like a fury, looking anything but the insipid creature who normally made her quiet way about the court.

  “Do you think you hold the exclusive rights in love? I also love him and have done for many years. We shared childhood together, we knew one another long before you came on the scene. Monsieur may have his beautiful mistresses, I don’t care a fig! For it is I and no other who will always be his boon companion. It is to me he will come home when he is done with his dalliance. So remember that, Madame de Giac, when next you pleasure him in your bed.”

  Not bothering to fight her tears, Bonne turned on her rival. “Why does he love you, that is what I want to know? What can you possibly offer him that I can’t?”

  “Safety,” Marie replied with certainty. “Beauty, by its very nature, is unreliable. But I, who have none, can be trusted. I am his mother, his sister, his friend, his escape. Whereas you, my dear Madame, represent only challenge and danger.”

  Again Bonne could not reply, overcome by tears.

  “He needs us both,” the Dauphine went on, more kindly. “We are the two halves of a whole. You and Eleanor de Paul along with you.”

  “It wasn’t always like that,” Madame de Giac answered brokenheartedly. “Before you came he relied on me to act as his wife.”

  “Then you must adapt to the new situation, mustn’t you?” Marie said with a sweet smile.

  It was too much, Bonne could no longer cope with the pressure. Like the leaves that whirled down beyond the window, she fell to the floor, sobbing miserably. For a moment the Dauphine stood looking at her, a plain comfortable girl in charge of a fraught situation, then she dropped to her knees and raised the weeping creature by the shoulders.

  “Hush, please, Madame. It is not right that you should grieve so much. If you play the game according to the rules no hurt will come to you.”

  “You are not married to de Giac,” Bonne spat out fiercely. “You are not in the hands of a torturer. You don’t know what it is like, Madame la Dauphine, to go in fear of your very life.”

 
Marie looked thoughtful. “No, you are right, I don’t. Tell me, Madame, if I promoted you to the rank of principal Maid-of-Honour, demanding your presence, requiring you to be at my constant beck and call, would that guarantee your safety?”

  Her husband’s mistress looked at her in disbelief. “But why should you do that? You don’t even like me?”

  “But Monsieur does and that is all that counts. Will you accept the post?”

  “I will,” answered Bonne, brushing the hair from her eyes and passing her hand over them. “You know I will. And I shall be for ever in your debt as a result.”

  The uncompromising features of Madame la Dauphine did not reveal that she had already taken into consideration and weighed up this fact.

  “Then rise to your feet, please do. It is not seemly that you should grovel.”

  “I can never thank you enough…” Bonne began, then stopped as the sound of a commotion broke out from somewhere deep in the castle’s heart. There was the scurry of hurrying feet going past the Dauphine’s apartments in the direction of her husband’s and from somewhere came the voice of Louvet, still the most important man at court, shouting, “What’s happening? What’s going on?”

  “There are riders here from Paris,” came the reply. “They have managed to get through the lines and have an urgent message for Monsieur.”

  “I must go,” said Marie practically. “Bonne, wipe your eyes and attend us. And hurry about it.”

  And with that the Dauphine sped to Charles’s bedchamber to find that he had already risen and was being helped to dress by one of his servants.

  “Who has arrived?” she asked, not bothering with ceremony.

  “I don’t know. They say messengers have come from Paris, probably from Bedford himself.”

  “Umm, perhaps,” said Marie, doubting it.

  With Henry V dead and laid in his grave, his brother, the Duke of Bedford, Regent of France, now ruled in the capital city, yet it was hard to see why he should be communicating with his deadly enemy the Dauphin.