Sense of Touch: Love and Duty at Anne of Brittany's Court

by Rozsa Gaston

  It had not been a marriage of love, but soon it became one. Within weeks, Anne was pregnant. Charles Orland, heir to the throne of France, was born October 11, 1492, one day before the Genoese Christophe Colomb arrived in the mysterious new lands on the other side of the great ocean. Anne was young, but no one could say that she was naive. She was energetic, clever, and courageous; instead of allowing the king of France to capture one of Brittany’s most important cities, she had saved her lands by capturing the heart of the king.

  As Nicole pretended not to notice the man watching her from the doorway, the shadow of a black horse galloped across her heart, a youth with gray-green eyes riding on its back.

  “Smile, please,” the artist instructed her.

  Nicole tried, but didn’t succeed. How could she smile when her future was being decided at this very moment? Had Anne of Brittany smiled at Charles in that fateful first glance? Nicole doubted it. Anne had been born to rule, first as a duchess, then because of her skill in statesmanship and the careful handling of her own charms and beauty, as queen. A smile would not do to capture a man’s heart. It was only after capturing it, with terms clearly defined, that a betrothed woman might venture a tiny smile; at most, perhaps a small show of affection, quickly withdrawn . . . if the man pleased her, that is.

  It was important for the smile to disappear soon so a man might labor to restore it to his lady, Nicole mused. She had grown up in her father’s household, her older, ambitious uncle a frequent presence. Men were born to strive, from what she had seen. Why not give them something to strive for?

  “Like this, Mademoiselle.” The artist stood alongside her now, taking her chin in his hands and turning it up a tad. He smiled faintly to show her what he meant.

  She imitated him, feeling self-conscious.

  Cocking his head, he studied her.”That isn’t what I meant, but it will do,” he finally said, then grunted.

  It will more than do. This is what you get, so be happy with it. She was no ninny to be directed like a servant; especially in the presence of the man she might one day direct herself. Inside, her heart fell at the thought of it. She would so much more like to direct the likes of Philippe de Bois, with his taut young muscles and changeable eyes. Could she direct the colors of his eyes to change as she pleased?

  She smiled at the thought . . . Gray for stormy moments, green for desire, then blue for reconciliation, whatever form that might take. A shiver ran up the back of her neck.

  “Hmm. Yes. That will do nicely. Hold your position, Mademoiselle.” The artist had gone back to his sketching board a few paces away.

  Hold your orders, servant to my uncle. Yet they were all servants. Even the king and queen were servants to duty. The queen had yet to fulfill hers: to provide an heir. Still, Nicole felt like Petard, wanting to chafe and whinny under the saddle of her heavy gown, however gorgeous it might be. She could hardly wait to get back to the horse and see what progress Philippe was making with him. Her knees twitched as her mind wandered over the brownish-blond-haired youth with undecided eyes.

  Then her heart sank. Would she be allowed to go to the stables once she was betrothed? And what about when she was married? Would she even have time?

  The men in the doorway had begun to talk amongst themselves, too low for Nicole to hear. If ever a woman was on inspection, she was. Holding her chin in exactly the position the artist had indicated, she told herself to ignore them, especially the one in the middle.

  Still, she couldn’t help taking a peek. Out of the corner of her eye, she noted the man’s long, angular face with deep vertical furrows down each of his cheeks. She couldn’t make out the color of his eyes from across the room.

  Focusing on her queen, she thought of how Anne must have held herself at that first meeting with Charles, her captor and future husband. The young duchess of Brittany had known how to play the cards she had been dealt. Nicole vowed she would do the same.

  She stole another glance at the stranger at the door. He wasn’t young, but neither was he horribly old, as the last one had been. His posture was erect, his height medium, with a medium to slim build. His face wasn’t young and handsome like Philippe’s, but it wasn’t loathsome either. She wished she could get closer to see what kind of smell hung about him, but whatever it was, she had no choice in the matter. Perhaps it was better, since whatever scent he had would not be the bracingly fresh one of Philippe de Bois.

  With a silent sigh, she willed her raging thoughts to be as still as her body was. Soon her life would change. She would comply with the changes, following the example of her queen, the woman she admired above all others.

  The image of Madame de Laval came to her, her hand lightly touching the key at her waist. Perhaps there were pleasures to look forward to shortly. She hoped the man with whom she would one day share her marriage bed knew how to provide them. She stamped one foot, as if to blot out the image of Philippe that stubbornly refused to leave her head.

  “That will be all for today, Mademoiselle,” the sketch artist said. Relieved, Nicole turned to join her father and uncle and to catch a closer glimpse of the man with them.

  But the doorway stood empty. She rushed toward it to find them. Instead, she bumped into Madame de Laval coming down the corridor.

  “Madame, where is my father? Who was that man with him?” Nicole cried.

  “Your father has just left with his guest, Monsieur de St. Bonnet. He said you did a very good job posing today.”

  “Who said that; my father or his guest?”

  Madame de Laval cleared her throat. “You are too old sometimes, for someone so young. Do not rush your youth, ma chère; it flees from us all too soon as it is.”

  “So it was the guest. What did he say?” She tried to remember the features of the long-faced man but they blurred into generalities best described as old-ish and uninteresting. Instead, greenish-gray eyes flashed before her, along with a slashing, broad smile that lit up her heart.

  “As I passed, I heard him say to your father that you had done a noble job posing and that the expression on your face that you wore before the artist corrected you had been far more interesting than the one he forced you to wear.”

  “Really?” Nicole felt confused. “Who is this man?”

  “He is the cousin to Hubert de St. Bonnet, the king’s close advisor, ma petite.”

  “What does he do? Where is he from?” If he was from the family of one of the king’s closest advisors, she knew her Uncle Benoit meant business. Uncle Benoit didn’t choose his friends for good company alone. He was a man with a mission; one that her father shared. The mission was to get the St. Sylvain family onto the rolls of France’s noble families. Nicole understood it well; it was a worthy goal, and one of which her mother also would have approved, had she lived. Sighing, she buttoned up her feelings inside. There was no escape, either within or without.

  “You will find out all in good time,” Madame de Laval told her. “Your father will dine with him this evening. You may ask him about him tomorrow.”

  “My lady, you know men do not say anything, just the bare bones. I want to know something about this man. What is his first name?” Nicole wished madly that her mother were still alive at that moment. She had died giving birth to Nicole’s younger brother, who had followed their chère maman to Heaven a day later. The thought of that time made Nicole’s blood turn to ice. She didn’t know what she wanted out of life exactly, but she knew what she didn’t want: neither to die in childbirth, nor for any child of hers to die.

  There was only one way to ensure that didn’t happen. Yet, the path of never bearing a child wasn’t open to her; not if her father and uncle had their way. What more was she on this Earth than a pawn to advance the social standing of her family? And who was she to think she might be anything more?

  Angrily, she pulled at the bejeweled neckline of her bodice. It was tight; she was uncomfortable. How in the world did the queen manage to dress in such cumbersome clothing every day, no
matter how magnificent?

  “Let your father talk with you first. Then, when whatever is to be decided is done, I will tell you what I know,” Madame de Laval said.

  “Madame—tell me this, then,” Nicole put her hand on her arm and sought her eyes with her own.

  “Yes, dear?” The older woman’s eyes twinkled, despite her stern expression.

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “Yes. Your choice is to choose.”

  “But what if I don’t?” She knew the answer already.

  Madame de Laval shook her head gently. “Your father will decide for you.” She straightened the bejeweled circlet on Nicole’s head. “Think, ma chère,” she continued in a lower voice. “Did our queen have a choice? Did our king’s cousin Duke Louis?”

  Nicole remained silent a moment, trying to calm the raging waves of her rebellious will. She wasn’t sure what she wanted, other than more time with Philippe de Bois; to train Petard together and to feel the mystery of new sensations sprouting inside as he worked alongside her. Finally, she spoke.

  “Then tell me, Madame, will I be happy?”

  Jeanne de Laval laughed; a tender, reassuring sound that warmed Nicole. “You yourself decide whether you will be happy or not.”

  “Because of him or because of me?” Nicole implored the elegant older woman. She made a good role model for the daughters from noble families invited to Queen Anne’s court. Following the queen’s and Madame de Laval’s example, they would all end up as married noblewomen, running their own households and lands one day.

  “Because of you, darling; you will be the one to decide. And like your queen, if I know you at all, you will choose to be happy.” Madame de Laval gave Nicole a playful pinch on her chin, and then smoothed her long golden hair.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Treating the

  Stallion

  “What’s wrong with him?” Nicole cried. Petard stood with his head down, his right hoof off the ground, tightly bound with a bedraggled cloth. He looked miserable, so unlike the noble horse she had grown to love.

  “He has a gash in his right hoof,” Philippe told her, his brows knit together. “I found blood on the floor of his stall this morning.” He shook his head, looking worried.

  “What did he step on?” she asked as she gently approached the horse.

  “This, I think.” Philippe held up a rusty hook used in the barns for hanging tools. The tip was sharp, rusted.

  “It’s dirty!” Nicole wailed. Like her queen, she had a distaste for dirty things. It was a wonder she ever wandered down to the stables at all, but her love of horses trumped her loathing for dirt. Plus, Philippe was there. That final autumn of freedom, before winter closed in along with her father’s and uncle’s plans for her, she wanted to feel her oats. The stables seemed a fitting choice.

  “Not a surprise,” Philippe remarked, “but not good for our boy.”

  “He’ll get a fever if the dirt works its way inside,” she observed.

  “I have cleaned it out, but he keeps getting the cloth dirty.” Philippe looked worried. He squatted and tried to brush some dirt from the bandage covering Petard’s hoof. The stallion nervously moved away, whinnying in pain.

  “We need to put something on the cloth to heal the wound,” Nicole said. Gently, she laid her hand on Petard’s flank, feeling the stallion quiver beneath her touch. She stroked his warm side firmly to reassure him. The horse continued to tremble, but didn’t move away.

  “What do you mean?” Philippe asked. He scratched his head, looking puzzled.

  “A poultice,” she specified.

  “What kind of poultice?” he pressed.

  “There is one I watched my mother make before she—she left us.” As a young girl, she had watched her mother prepare poultices for sick people in their household. Nicole had sometimes accompanied her to the woods to gather herbs and seeds with which to make them. There had been one in particular her mother had used that had seemed to have powerful properties. Nicole wished Blanche St. Sylvain was alive now to help them, but she had died in childbirth under the hands of a physician. No wonder the queen didn’t trust doctors. Best to rely on wise women who knew their way around forests and herb gardens, as well as sick, frightened patients.

  She closed her eyes and saw the image of her graceful, practical mother in the kitchen, mixing ingredients and stirring them in a pot over the fire. What ingredients should I use on Petard, chère Maman? Blinking rapidly, she fought back the tears that welled up at the thought of her beautiful mother, so serene and dignified, yet so aware of the needs of her household. Her nature had been as noble as her lineage, manifesting itself in her concern for the needs of those under her charge.

  “Do you remember what it had in it?” he asked.

  “Spider webs to stop the bleeding.”

  “There’re plenty of them around here. The barn is full of them,” he observed. “What else?”

  “The blue and green part of old bread when it’s been left somewhere damp,” she described. Vaguely, she remembered her mother using moldy bread in potions for household members who had been feverish, either from illness or from a wound.

  “Ugh,” Philippe wrinkled his nose.”Isn’t that something like poison?”

  “Do you think I know what I am talking about or not?” It was important to her that he trusted her. Why, she didn’t know.

  He studied her for a moment, his gray-green eyes a lush impenetrable forest. “I do,” he finally said.

  “Then gather some spider webs and I will go look for old bread.” She spoke briskly, hoping he hadn’t noticed the roses that sprang into her cheeks at his gaze. She turned from him, trying to hide her thoughts. The moss of a forest floor had come into her mind. His face was over hers, and she was falling backward onto its velvet carpet.

  Throughout the day, Philippe and Nicole took turns checking on the horse and changing his bandage. Nicole had been called back to the house, but, in the early afternoon, when the household rested after the midday meal, she stole back down to the stables.

  The day was hot and the fields hummed with the low summer song of the tiny creatures that lived there. Petard rested under the shade of a large plane tree in his paddock. Philippe was nowhere to be found.

  Nicole tucked her gown up under her knees and swung her legs over the fence. Before the men of the stable-grounds came along and disturbed her time alone with Petard, she would try a few other techniques on the stallion her mother had used on injured workers on their lands.

  Slowly, she approached the horse. He stood on three legs only, the injured hoof lifted slightly off the ground. Putting her hand on the upper joint of his injured leg, she held it there, accustoming him to her touch. After a moment, she smoothed back his sleek coat. When he didn’t move, she worked her hand further down his leg, stroking then grasping his fine forelocks, until her fingers found their way to his ankle, the tips touching the dirty edge of his bandage.

  Petard snorted and reflexively moved his leg, shaking off Nicole’s hand. She waited a moment, and then placed it back in the same spot.

  “Good boy. Good boy. Let me hold you. Chère maman will hold your leg and make you better. Let maman hold you,” she whispered. Channeling her own mother, she felt a wistful comfort by imitating her. Blanche St. Sylvain had been as fine of manner as she had been of feature. Nobly born, but to parents who lost much of their fortune after her father died when she was a young girl, she had married Michel St. Sylvain, a wealthy merchant interested in obtaining a title for his family.

  Blanche St. Sylvain had known how to manage and grow everything Michel had brought to their marriage: a small fortune and a small household staff. Everything she had touched had flourished under her hand. Nicole told herself part of her mother was inside her, living on through memories of her comforting, competent touch.

  The horse started again, trying to shake off Nicole’s hand. Nicole released him, then put her hand in place again, encircling Petard’s ankle just abo
ve the wound. After a moment, the stallion calmed down and allowed her to keep her hand there.

  Slowly, she probed; first with feathery strokes of her small fingers, then with gentle squeezes. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for, but she had felt her mother touch her in a similar way when she had fallen and hurt herself. Whatever she had been looking for, her mother’s touch had comforted her, no doubt speeding her healing. She would try to do the same for Petard.

  She moved her hand down slightly lower, closer to the horse’s wounded hoof. Immediately, the horse started, almost kicking Nicole in the face.

  She turned her head, feeling the horse brush her headpiece. As she did, a movement on the other side of the fence caught her eye. She watched as Philippe de Bois lifted a tightly curved leg and vaulted over the railing as easily as a young boy skipping. Would that she was a man, to move so freely in space. Her senses sharpened, she watched him approach, his body moving gracefully with long-limbed musculature. As he got closer, his greenish eyes flashed blue at her in the bright mid-afternoon sunlight.

  “My lady, he almost kicked you. Have a care; he is a wild thing after all,” Philippe reproached her.

  “He is no such thing; he is simply skittish because of his wound,” she answered sharply.

  “How does it feel?” The youth squatted beside Nicole, the blades of his broad shoulders straining through the back of his sun-bleached brown tunic.

  “He wouldn’t let me touch the wound. I think it’s infected. But I feel no throbbing above it, so it hasn’t yet spread.”

  “It will if your remedy doesn’t stop it.” Philippe looked grave as he tried to touch the same ankle Nicole had just held. Petard snorted and moved away.

  “It will,” Nicole said with more authority than she felt. Her mother had always used a firm tone with the mothers of the sick children she had tended. It had calmed them, which had calmed their children in turn. “But let’s freshen the poultice,” she added.