The King's Women

by Deryn Lake

“I glimpsed them once in the moonlight,” he said dreamily, his voice close to her ear. “And have been enthralled by the sight ever since. They are the most perfect things I have ever seen.”

  It was his words, his voice, that were seducing her. He had not even kissed or laid a finger on her, yet already she was experiencing thrills of pleasure throughout her entire body. Very slowly, Agnès turned round to face the King.

  “They are yours,” she said, “as am I, to do with as you wish.”

  Then in one movement she loosened her laces and her dress cascaded down like a waterfall and lay rippling at her feet like a pool of water. She was naked beneath as was customary, undergarments only being worn by hired women and street walkers, and she heard Charles de Valois’s rapid intake of breath as he gazed in wonderment.

  “I had expected beauty,” he said, “but nothing, nothing, like this.”

  It was the most erotic coupling Agnès had ever known, heightened by the fact that he was her King, that she wore nothing but the great diamond, that he for all his forty years was unbelievably virile and well made, and that the feel of his strong member within brought her to completion so quickly, so satisfyingly, that she could only beg him to repeat what he had done over and over again.

  “You were magnificent, mon Roi,” she breathed when it was finally ended.

  “I satisfy you?”

  “Completely.”

  He did not refer to his son, neither did she, but in the heat of that most exciting night, Charles the King learned that he had nothing to fear from any younger man, that he had become over the years a highly accomplished indeed an inspirational lover, fit for even the most beautiful woman in France.

  Thirty-Nine

  The twilight was as fine as the diamond hung round the neck of Agnès Sorel, glimmering with soft resplendent colours, glorious as that magnificent jewel which rested, animated and alive, a sparkling drop from a fountain caught for ever in microcosm, next to the flawless skin of the most beautiful of the beautiful, as the King now lovingly called his new mistress.

  A mist was rising from the Marne when they finally came to anchor, dimming the green woods that swept down to the river’s shores. The chateau on the banks above was a reflection shimmering in the water, its image cut by the prow of their barge, hung with vivid blue, white and vermilion, at odds with the peaceful shades of the dying day. It was hard to think at this quiet hour that the great river so near Paris was the highway of kings and princes, usually covered with merchants’ boats, fishermen’s craft, single boats plied with one oar. For now the Marne was deserted, the people who lived along its banks gone into their houses, leaving behind them the reflection of the chateau, its white towers gleaming in the darkening waters.

  They went ashore, climbing a hill covered with wild daffodils and vivid clumps of crocus, approaching the fairy-tale building that rose gracefully above them, seemingly as quiet and deserted as the sleeping river.

  “What is this place?” asked Agnès, puzzled, just a little nervous.

  “Wait and see,” answered Charles, laughing to himself, the lines of his face softened by the delicate light of sunset, his youth returned to him by the love he felt for la belle Agnès, his bearing, as proud as once it had been when the glittering boy had ridden to war at the head of his army. But now the King’s pride was in her, this perfect woman who had been given to him in his middle years, so that he had finally become the envy of every red-blooded man in France.

  It was twelve months almost to the day since she had first come to Charles’s court, for now it was the end of April 1444, Agnès’s birthday month, born as she was beneath the sign of the great bull, Taurus. It had been a year in which so much had happened, in which her life had changed so dramatically, from damoiselle to the King’s mistress, that even thinking about it made her breathless. And yet there were aspects of that year on which she did not like to dwell too greatly; the fact that she had gone from son to father with only the merest struggle of conscience, that Pierre de Brézé — now promoted Seneschal of Anjou and Poitou for services rendered to the Crown — still remained in the background of her life, that she had not cast her lover out as she should have done, that she loved luxury and jewellery, beautiful clothes and furs, that power was beginning to dominate her life.

  “This chateau looks empty,” she said now, smiling her special smile. “Look Monsieur, there are no lights on anywhere.”

  “There’ll be enough daylight left for us to see around it.”

  It was like walking into a dream. White battlemented towers, dark pinnacled roofs and high gleaming skylights stood out against the dark forest lands of the Bois de Vincennes, giving the house a secret and protected air. Below ran the gleaming river, above loomed the trees, while, beyond the battlements, the poppy sky was laced with fine dark fingers of cinnamon.

  “It’s glorious,” said Agnès, “the most beautiful place I have ever seen.” And, no longer afraid, she went in through the huge front door which hung, dark and open, awaiting her.

  By the time she had walked through the state rooms, seeing herself reflected in a hundred ornate and expensive mirrors, and come again to the bottom of the superbly carved stone staircase, she had guessed the mansion’s secret. It was a gift for her, her special birthday present, the personal château she had always wanted to have.

  “Oh, Monsieur,” she said, and flung herself in gratitude into the King’s arms, kissing the sensuous mouth so near to hers.

  “You like it?”

  “You know I do.”

  “And now you are its new and totally lovely owner. So can you guess the château’s name?”

  “I shan’t even try.”

  “It’s Beauté. The château de Beauté. And, therefore, as its chatelaine, you will be known henceforth as the Dame de Beauté.”

  And Charles laughed with pure pleasure at the fact he had been able to create such a wondrous and imaginative pun.

  There was a second’s silence before Agnès said, “I am so glad to have Beauté to myself. In fact I cannot think of a better gift. Not just for somewhere for us to be alone together but for another reason as well.”

  “And what is that?”

  She snuggled closer to him. “I don’t know whether you will be pleased or angry but the truth is, Monsieur, that I find myself with child. It must have happened during the first few months we were together because I am told the babe will be born this autumn. Your seed has taken root within me. Are you very annoyed?”

  She need hardly have bothered to ask. Before her eyes la belle Agnès saw Charles de Valois bask in the glory of fathering a child by this most exquisite of creatures.

  “Annoyed? I am delighted. For you to bear my baby is the highest compliment you could pay me.”

  She rubbed against him like a stropping cat. “Oh, Monsieur, you are so kind to me.”

  He was under her spell instantly, besotted by Agnès’s youth and beauty and his own regeneration, as if by osmosis, through being in her company.

  “Let me show you the bedroom,” he said softly. “I chose the furnishings myself.”

  “Even the bed?”

  “Particularly the bed, which is up there waiting for us.”

  She ran ahead of him and drew an ecstatic breath as she saw the room, a huge chamber with windows overlooking both the river and the forest, furnished throughout in green and gold, expensive tapestries on the walls, beautiful paintings everywhere, rich silk hangings draping the enormous couch. With the abandonment that Charles so adored in her, arousing him as it did, Agnès flung herself onto the bed and raised her skirts.

  “Pretend I am a street girl,” she said.

  “Oh, you pretty slut,” the King answered, as he threw himself down beside her.

  Together they travelled straight from Beauté to Paris, the King now having refurbished the Hotel St. Pol, modernising and beautifying it, erasing all traces of his hated parents.

  When all this building work had been originally undertaken, Agnès
Sorel had never been heard of, but since the winter of 1443 further work had been done on the Hotel, providing the King’s mistress with her own spacious apartments. The secrecy and care with which Charles had treated the relationship at first had gone, caution thrown to the winds. It was glaringly obvious from these spacious apartments alone that he was now in the thick of a love affair and that the object of his affections was to be both spoiled and pampered.

  Walking into her suite, throwing off her furs, for the April evenings were still sharp and cold, Agnès saw to her astonishment that there were tapestries piled everywhere, thrown over chairs, spread on the rush-covered floor, one particularly enormous work, depicting a hunting scene, even draped over her bed.

  “What is this?” she called out, and a second later almost fainted with shock as Louis the Dauphin stepped out from behind an arras, twisting his battered hat in his hands, flushing like a schoolboy.

  “Do you like them?”

  “Yes, but what are they? Why are you here? What’s going on?”

  His radiant face dimmed a little. ‘They are a present for you. I won my campaign and took them from Armagnac’s castle of l’Isle-Jourdain. When I arrived at the palace I asked which was your room and brought them straight here.” Louis looked round appraisingly. “It’s certainly very grand. I presume that is because of me.” His voice changed. “Oh, mon Dieu, I have missed you, sweet Agnès. I’ve had no good homing for months.”

  She saw with horror that he was already beginning to undress, removing his doublet, heading for the bed in a purposeful manner.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Getting ready for a long session, that’s what.” He stared at her suspiciously. “What’s the matter with you? You haven’t even kissed me.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Agnès, sitting down, feeling very slightly sick. “I’m afraid I can’t do that. While you were away something happened and I had to end our relationship. I have met someone else and am now expecting his child.”

  Louis stared at her dumbfounded. “What did you say?”

  “I am pregnant by another man. Our affair is over. I’m sorry.”

  As if released from a trance the Dauphin ran towards her and she saw that there were traces of white saliva flecking his lips. “You filthy whore,” he screamed, and smashed her so violently round the face that every tooth in her head shook. “You filthy, filthy whore. Tell me his name. Tell me what evil prick has done this to me.”

  “I can’t,” she said, flinging up her hands to protect herself. “I can’t.”

  “It’s de Brézé, isn’t it? The treacherous turd, I should never have trusted him. Well by God I shall seek him out and he shall answer with his life, do you hear me? I shall end his stinking rotten life.” And with that the Dauphin ran from the room, weeping uncontrollably.

  Agnès crawled to her bed, collapsing on it face down, the mark of the blow already beginning to ache and discolour.

  “Oh, God, how I dreaded the day he would return,” she murmured into her pillow. “Oh, Holy Mother, please don’t let him find out who fathered my child.”

  But the wish was forlorn and she knew it. A monumental storm was gathering of which she was the eye.

  “Let no evil befall the King,” she prayed silently, but had the feeling that God was turning a deaf ear to the pleas of such a wanton as she.

  “For the love of Christ, Monsieur,” gasped the Seneschal, “it wasn’t me.”

  “You’re lying, you son of a whore. Who else could it be? The moment my back was turned you couldn’t wait to lay her, could you?”

  “For God’s sake, no,” Pierre answered hoarsely, barely able to utter for the Dauphin’s long wiry fingers round his throat. “If you kill me you’ve got the wrong man.”

  The pressure eased very slightly. “Then who was it?”

  “If you let go I’ll tell you.”

  But Louis was in no mood for mercy having ridden from Paris to the Loire in a state bordering on madness, hardly stopping to eat or sleep, covering the distance as if he rode with Satan. Instead of releasing his grip he raised de Brézé in the air, still strangling the man, and proceeded to shake him as a cat does a rabbit. It was only when the Seneschal finally began to turn blue that Louis released him, dropping de Brézé to the ground, seeing him crunch onto the cobbles.

  “For Christ’s sake what’s going on?” said Dunois, the Bastard, coming round the comer and seeing, to his horror, the Dauphin of France doing a very good job of murdering a man. “Monsieur, control yourself, for pity’s sake.”

  Louis turned on him such a tragic face, so tear-stained, so desperately ugly and sad, that Dunois felt a genuine pang of pity.

  “She’s left me Jean. The bitch Sorel. She’s been sleeping with God knows who in my absence and now she carries a child. What am I to do? I love her so much.”

  “Tell him it wasn’t me,” gasped de Brézé from the ground. “Please Dunois, clear my name.”

  There was a horrible silence, the Bastard too afraid to utter a word.

  “Why are you both so unwilling to name the man?” asked Louis, looking from one to the other of them. “If it wasn’t de Brézé then why are you reluctant to tell me?”

  “Please,” said Dunois quietly, “let the matter rest, Monsieur. No good will come of asking too many questions.”

  “But I want to know. I have a right. She was my mistress.”

  “There are some things better left unsaid.”

  “But not in this case surely.”

  “In every case,” the Bastard answered firmly.

  “You’re protecting someone, that much is obvious. But who could be so important to you both that neither of you are prepared to name him?”

  And then the light of realisation dawned on his face and both men witnessed the Dauphin crease with agony, his features working in pain, tears and sweat coursing simultaneously down his cheeks.

  “By Christ’s blood, it’s him. My royal father. That disgusting old whoremonger, may he rot in hell for his crime.”

  “Please, Monsieur!” begged the Bastard, while de Brézé, feeling that he was safe at last, began shakily to get to his feet.

  “Mark this day, Dunois,” said Louis, spinning round, only a miracle of self-control keeping him from shaming himself by publicly breaking down. “Because today begins revenge, today begins hatred, today begins my curse on the King.”

  “Be silent, I implore you,” answered Jean in an agony of spirit. “Please, Monsieur, for the sake of your soul, be silent.”

  Forty

  A month after Agnès officially became la Dame de Beauté, a great tournament was held in Lorraine to celebrate the betrothal of René’s daughter, Marguerite, to Henry VI of England. Unfortunately the twenty-three-year-old bridegroom was not present, his place being represented by the Earl of Suffolk, but the royal court of France were there in strength, with the exception of the Dauphin who had found it necessary to lead another military expedition, this one to support the Habsburgs against the Swiss.

  ‘Thank God for it,” de Brézé whispered to the Bastard. “I don’t think I could have stood the strain.”

  And it was certainly a delicate situation as Agnès, now officially a damoiselle in the Queen’s household and just beginning to show her pregnancy, accompanied the royal party, much to the amusement of the cynical English.

  “No fool like an old fool,” Suffolk crowed to his wife, “why, he can hardly keep his hands off her.”

  “I wonder what the Queen has to say about it,” the Countess answered thoughtfully, putting into words what most of the women at court were thinking.

  And indeed she had made a point, for Marie, the safe harbour, the King’s good-natured mother-wife, was angrier than she had ever been in all of her life. The fact that Agnès was insultingly beautiful and that the Queen through her many pregnancies and a life devoted to child rearing had lost what looks she had, did not help the situation in the least. Furthermore, rumours that Charles had replaced Loui
s in Agnès’s bed had reached her ears once too often for them to be discounted any longer.

  “She’s a cheap whore and you should be ashamed of yourself,” she stormed. “And whose child is she carrying, that’s what I want to know?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Is it yours or our son’s?”

  “Don’t make a scene,” Charles admonished, “you’ll ruin the betrothal party.”

  “It is you who have ruined it by bringing your strumpet along, not I.”

  “She is part of your retinue, Marie, and could hardly have been left behind.”

  “I’ll give her my retinue. I shall have the bitch disposed of as soon as we return home.”

  “You’ll do no such thing. No moves will be made against Agnès, do you hear me?”

  Marie had looked at him curiously. “You’re really in love with her, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry, I simply can’t help myself. But I’m still in love with you too.”

  “Yes, like an old pet that you’ve got thoroughly used to, that’s all your love amounts to these days. Oh, God, I wish I were dead.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m pregnant and so is she. I shall be the laughing-stock of the entire court.”

  “Not if you behave with dignity, as will I,” Charles answered solemnly, but secretly he felt a surge of shaming pride that in the middle years of his life he had publicly become such an undoubted dog, an incredible achievement for such an ugly child as he had been.

  Also present with this bickering royal party was Guy, now promoted Astrologer Royal to the King himself. The death of Yolande had released him from service to the house of Anjou, though nominally he had still belonged to Rend. But the King of Sicily and Duke of Lorraine and Anjou, as Rend had become, was well staffed with astrologers and had given the hunchback to Charles for a birthday present. So, after many years, the old friends were together once more and at a time when Charles, besotted with Agnès, felt he needed all the amatory advice he could get.

  But it was not the King who sat opposite Guy now in the room he had been allocated in the Duke of Lorraine’s chateau in Nancy, but the royal bride herself. Marguerite d’Anjou had come for a consultation before she sailed for England and the unknown life that lay before her.