The King's Women

by Deryn Lake

  Richemont smiled. “I loved her all my life and still do. That is why I came back here. To see the places where she used to walk and talk.”

  “You are a good man, Richemont,” said Marie. “I wish you well for the rest of your days.”

  “As I do you, ma Reine,” answered the Earl, and kissed the Queen’s hand.

  Charles declared war on the English on 31st July 1449, and a few days later set off with his army for Normandy. He was too old now to heed advisers who told him not to put himself at risk, and besides there were the Dauphin and young Charles of France to succeed him. With the gleaming smile he reserved for ceremonial occasions, the King excitedly put on armour and rode at the head of his troops, the Constable of France beside him.

  In September Coutances, St. Lô and Carentan capitulated to the royal armies, followed next month by Gavray. But in November came the greatest triumph of all when Fougères, Chateau-Gaillard, Harfleur and the much prized Rouen fell into French hands. December saw Charles capturing Bellême and then, as usual, the winter put paid to fighting and the King’s army, well advanced into Normandy, decided to make camp in Rouen and the surrounding area in order to keep their Christmas.

  Charles himself chose to stay outside the city in Jumièges, built between the forest and the Seine. For a whim, a caprice, for the sheer novelty of the thing, the monarch elected not to lodge in the nearby mansion house but instead remained in his pavilion. Dressed like an ordinary soldier, enjoying the challenge of living outdoors the King could not remember a time when he had felt more content or in better health, for now he had reached the pinnacle of his entire life.

  Inspired by his leadership, his army had marched to the northernmost part of his kingdom to play out the ultimate challenge of his destiny. The prediction of Nicolas Flamel was at long last to be fulfilled; the English were crumbling before his advance, the final confrontation was shortly to take place.

  Charles knew now with absolute certainty that he would be remembered for ever as the King who drove the foreign invader from French shores and brought a beleaguered country out of the darkness into the shining light of a thousand new hopes.

  *

  On 5th January, which was Christmas Eve, it snowed, the northern climate of Normandy being so much colder. The forest sparkled, covered with a fine powder like icing sugar, the serpentine loops of the Seine shone like frosted glass, while the distant hills hung white as pearls in the misty morning. And into this wintry scene, into this glistening January day, came a sudden cavalcade of riders, the bells on the horses ringing clearly in the thin air, the blues and scarlets of the company like splashes, of paint against the whiteness, the wonderful furs of the horsemen lustrous and shining in the clear light.

  A sledge was in the middle of this extraordinary entourage and Charles could hardly believe his eyes when he saw who sat there. Covered with pelts, beautiful as ever but absolutely huge with child, was Agnès.

  “Mon Dieu,” he exclaimed in pure astonishment. “I can scarcely credit it. My very dear girl, what are you doing here?”

  La Dame was obviously none too pleased by the shocked expression on the King’s face for a frown crossed the exquisite features.

  “Aren’t you pleased to see me?” she said crossly.

  “Of course I am, but frankly bowled over. What induced you to make such a hazardous journey in your condition?”

  “Loneliness frankly,” Agnès replied acidly. “I was bored to sobs at Loches, sitting on my own wondering what you were up to. So I have come to bring you Christmas cheer, gifts and food and wine.” And she indicated another sleigh loaded with all kinds of good things.

  In a way it was embarrassing. He had wanted to spend a soldier’s Christmas, a man among men, and now here was his mistress, enormous, obviously due to drop her child at any moment. The place would not only be swamped by her prolific presence but overrun with all her chattering retinue, who even now were jumping up and down, blowing their nails, and making a general commotion.

  It was Richemont who sorted it out, commandeering the manor house of Mesnil-la-Belle for Agnès’s use, making sure that everyone had a bed for the night, pouring the King a swift glass of brandy wine.

  “Women!” he whispered. “Such unpredictable creatures.”

  And Charles had turned on him a look of gratitude that the Earl never forgot.

  It was not the sort of Christmas that any one of them had envisaged but for all that went well, Agnès indomitably organising a banquet and ball in her temporary residence. Yet her condition worried Charles. She was now too big to move round comfortably and seemed somehow feverish and overbright, her beautiful creamy skin slightly flushed and damp-looking.

  “You will be careful, won’t you,” he admonished.

  “Oh, shush. This is my fourth child. Believe me I am much happier here than twiddling my thumbs waiting for you to come home. Besides this war was partly my idea, I had to see how it was going.”

  But then, and most strangely on St. Agnès Day, 21st January, when the sun entered the House of Aquarius, la Dame de Beauté went into labour and aided by Catherine de Richemont, who had accompanied her husband to war, produced a tiny daughter, a scrap of a thing weighing only a few pounds but which none the less survived the birth and lay in its cradle with hands like minute starfish, gazing at the world from sad and solemn eyes. Seeing how weak she was, potions were brought by the monks from the Abbey infirmary to strengthen la belle Agnès after her ordeal, but inevitably there was a certain amount of head shaking.

  “She was utterly foolish to undertake such a journey in this weather and in her state. There can be no doubt that la Dame has drained herself of energy.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Charles, overhearing one of these comments. “What are you saying? She is going to get better, isn’t she?”

  “Of course, Monsieur.”

  But for some reason Agnès seemed unable to rally after this fourth birth, though she had borne her other three babies with no difficulty at all.

  “Poison,” whispered someone, and the rumour was round in a moment that somehow the Dauphin had managed to introduce a deadly substance into Agnès’s food.

  “That’s nonsense,” the King’s physician assured him. “La Dame has that fever which sometimes affects women after childbirth.”

  “But the Dauphin swore to strike down all those who had contrived to have him thrown out of his home.”

  “But how could he have done it? Monsieur is miles away.”

  “Be that as it may, I still don’t trust him. But can she be saved?”

  “They are praying for her at the Abbey.”

  “I didn’t bloody well ask that,” said Charles, suddenly at breaking point. “I asked if she was going to die. Is she?”

  “If you want the truth I will tell it to you. She has a fifty-fifty chance, Monsieur. I have attended women with this condition before and those who have been strong enough have fought it off. But, alas, Madame is weak from that ridiculous journey.”

  “Oh, Christ,” said the King, “oh, Christ and His precious Mother. I can’t bear it. She is my great love, my joy in living, please don’t let her go.”

  “Majesty, calm yourself,” Poitevin answered gently.

  But Charles was beyond listening and rushed to Agnès through the snow, finding her white as a Christmas rose, no life left in her.

  “Oh, my darling, my darling,” cried the King and threw himself down on the bed beside her and would not leave until the physician and those attending her begged him to give them a few moments alone with la Dame de Beauté. But after they had gone, Charles de Valois crept back into the chamber and stood looking at her. She was completely white and utterly lovely, a marble statue now, a sleeping Beauty.

  “Agnès,” he whispered, and she opened her glorious lids and looked at him for the last time.

  “Au revoir,” she whispered, and her voice was light as a flute’s.

  “Agnès,” sobbed the King, “Agnès, don’t. I ca
n’t live without you. There is no life for the King without you. I beg you not to leave me.”

  But it was no use. She had gone on her great adventure and the perfect thing whose hand he now ardently kissed was simply her mortal shell, all that was left of the glorious being who once had so delighted the hearts of men.

  Epilogue

  He had lived on, of course he had. He had taught himself too well, trained himself too hard to be an exceptional King, a King who would lead France out of the dark ages into the Renaissance. But it had never been the same again for Charles with la Dame de Beauté gone. Emptiness everywhere. In his many splendid homes, in his bed, in his life.

  There had been other little diversions, he couldn’t say there had not, but they hadn’t amounted to much, a physical dalliance to prove he was still virile, no more. But Marie had never come back to him, even with her rival dead and laid in grave she had considered their marriage over and done, and had stayed away, keeping her own house and her own counsel.

  They had beaten the English completely. By the end of 1450, the year in which Agnès had died, they had thrown them out of Normandy, and by the end of 1453, English resistance in Guyenne had totally collapsed. The rats had fled to Calais, the only place they had left in the entire kingdom of France, and he had become Charles, the Very Victorious, the most successful king France had ever known.

  It had been the death of Richemont, his old companion and faithful Constable, that had finally made Charles give in to the bouts of ill health which had struck him from time to time now that peace had come again. He had first been attacked by sickness in 1455 and then, four years later, his leg had become swollen and ulcerated, to say nothing of his mouth. But these inconveniences hadn’t stopped him moving about his beautiful chateaux and territories and it was only in the year of 1461 that he had come to Mehun-sur-Yèvre with no further inclination to move on.

  ‘I’m dying,’ thought Charles, staring up at the ceiling. ‘That is why I am remembering all this, because I’m dying.’

  He had had a tooth out two weeks earlier, his jaw and gum terribly inflamed by an abscess and the tooth removed to let it drain. But his mouth had become acutely tender and his digestive tract painful, so much so that he had stopped eating altogether.

  “Are you afraid the Dauphin is trying to poison you?” his physician had asked him. “Because I can assure you all this food has been tasted first.”

  “No,” the King had scrawled on a piece of paper, it being far too difficult to talk. “It is just that everything hurts so much.”

  They had left him alone then, knowing that if he couldn’t swallow it would be only a matter of time before he slipped away and now, with the dirge-like prayers of a priest in the background, he supposed he was doing just that.

  Louis had not come to visit him, treacherous little toad, and Marie was at Chinon, not forgiving him even in these dire circumstances, though Bonne was in the room, he could see her standing in the comer, small, dark and nervous as usual, and Jehanne had elbowed the priest to one side and was coming to have a closer stare at him.

  He shook his head and mimed, ‘Please don’t, I look awful,’ but La Pucelle merely smiled and stood aside to let la Dame de Beauté get closer.

  It was then that Charles had realised what was happening. They had come from whatever extraordinary place they had all gone to and were here to escort him there too. But now they were standing respectfully aside as the Queen of Sicily, Yolande, his good mother, came to join their throng. And, unbelievably, sitting in her wheelchair, Catherine bravely pushing it, Charles saw Isabeau looking quite affable, even winking at him with one of her glittering black eyes.

  Before Charles stretched a tunnel, two great fish leaping and playing in the ocean that lay beyond, the sparkle of their silver scales blindingly bright in the brilliant sunshine.

  “Come Piscean,” they called. “Come back to your element.” And how wonderful it was to take Yolande’s hand, Isabeau and Catherine only a step behind, the three younger people running on ahead, then plunge down and down, knowing they were there beside him, into the fathomless blue ocean that so calmly awaited beyond.

  Historical Note

  It was in the summer of 1988, when visiting the Loire Valley for the first time, that I initially became aware of Charles VU as a person and realised with a certain surprise that he who had possessed, supposedly, the most beautiful woman in the world for a mistress had also been associated with Joan of Arc, or Jehanne as I later came to think of her. The contrast between the voluptuary and the virgin was enough to set me thinking, but when I came to research the King more closely and the rest of the dazzling women in his life were revealed, a book was born.

  Yet Charles remains a mystery, an enigma; his two modem biographers, Philippe Erlanger and Malcolm Vale, in direct disagreement as to the character of the man. Erlanger follows the more traditional line put forward by Bernard Shaw in St. Joan. The dauphin is at Chinon, like a rat in a comer, except that he won’t fight. We don’t even know that he is the dauphin: his mother says he isn’t; and she ought to know…’

  But Professor Vale sees Charles not as a craven coward but a complex creature, planning and scheming, manipulating his courtiers to suit his own purpose, letting them ‘entangle themselves in the webs that they spun.’ And, ‘playing for the very highest stakes — his own survival.’ And survive the King did to see the English driven back to Calais, an achievement indeed. However history judges Charles de Valois and his extraordinary career it must never be forgotten that it was he who led France out of the Dark Ages towards the Renaissance.

  Of the many women involved with the King, the most terrible by far was Charles’s mother, Isabeau. A monster in every way, her profligacy knew no bounds. She was the most immoral woman of an immoral age and none of her actions have been exaggerated in this book. Yet if Isabeau lacked any kind of discipline, Yolande d’Anjou was quite the opposite. My admiration is boundless for this remarkable, clever Spanish princess who virtually ruled Anjou single-handed and whose enormous influence over Charles is agreed upon by all who have studied him.

  But there can be no doubt that the most interesting of all the King’s women was Joan of Arc who signed herself Jehanne and, indeed, is referred to as such in several of the older reference books. As I went from place to place, trying to gain insight into her character, I became convinced that what she did was actually impossible, that no teenager from the backwoods could have ridden the great French war horses, let alone covered the enormous distances that she did every day, nor handled the powerful weapons used by the army at that particular phase of history. Inspired though the girl obviously was this could not, for me, explain her enormous physical strength.

  Throughout that research trip I felt there was some hidden thing which would explain all this and I believe I finally found it. A stroke of luck in Saumur, where I was looking for the Chateau of the Queen of Sicily, led me into the Auberge Reine de Sicile and into conversation with the owner, Monsieur Bernard Juguet. He showed me some original documents, gathered by a Saumur historian, in which is expounded the theory that Jehanne and Yolande d’Anjou had been working together throughout and that Jehanne had actually gone to the Chateau of the Queen of Sicily in order to be briefed before leaving for Chinon. This historian, too, raised the question of Jehanne’s feat of arms but could not explain it.

  It was the remarkable book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail which gave me my eventual lead. In this work, the authors prove quite conclusively the existence of a secret society known as the Priory of Sion. This society had close links with the Knights Templar and at the time that Jehanne first appeared on the scene René d’Anjou, Yolande’s son, was Grand Master. The connection became apparent. Somebody, somewhere, heard of the visionary virgin and had her specially trained for what lay ahead. The Knights Templar had gone underground but were far from finished. The piece of evidence which finally convinced me was the fact that Jehanne herself raised the standard of the Templars
and vowed that their work must continue. Why should a simple rustic from Domrémy do this if she were not, in fact, a member of their order?

  Obviously, my researches into Jehanne led me to the ‘bastardy’ theory. Several French historians believe that La Pucelle was not a peasant but a royal bastard, the child of Isabeau and Duke Louis d’Orleans, taken to the country to be brought up for its own safety. The argument is flawed in many ways and the thing I found impossible to believe was that a bright being like Jehanne could have emerged from two such terrible people. If she was anybody’s bastard it was far more likely that she came from the house of Anjou, with whom she was always so closely linked, but even this is sheer supposition and cannot be supported by any reasonable evidence, the very nature of the relationship between Yolande and Richemont never having been properly explained. The only odd fact is the complete disappearance of Alison du May, leaving no trace, at the time of Jehanne’s trial. Was she removed because she knew too much?

  Most of La Pucelle’s biographers mention the fact that according to her squire, Jean d’Aulon, the girl never menstruated. This would explain a great deal about how she coped with living amongst and fighting alongside the French army. Dr. Delachambre, who attended Jehanne during the trial, gave more precise medical details which appear to have been the basis for a description given of her by the Abbé Villaret. “Rustic life had fortified her naturally robust body even more. She had only the exterior of her sex, without suffering from any of the infirmities which are characteristic of its weakness. This disposition of the organs would necessarily have made her imagination more active.” The author Pierre de Sermoise has concluded from this ambiguous remark that Jehanne suffered from gynandromorphism, a partial pseudo-hermaphroditism in a woman with secondary male sexual characteristics. If he is right many of the unanswered questions about Jehanne would be solved.