by Rozsa Gaston
Nicole silently agreed. Not that she was ready to be wed, but to imagine a fourteen-year-old boy being married off was ludicrous. Even thinking of Philippe marrying at age twenty seemed absurd. “So when he met our queen, how old was he?”
“He was . . .” Cook counted on her fingers. “He was about twenty-two.”
“Oh . . .” Nicole drifted off, imagining her queen as a seven-year-old duchess meeting the tall, handsome Louis d’Orléans at age twenty-two.
“Oh, indeed. Think on it.”
“I am.” She sipped the cool elderflower drink Cook had put in front of her, feeling as light as the summer breeze wafting in through the open double doors next to her. With almost no supervision and Cook’s chatty remarks to absorb, Nicole was having a carefree summer. If only she could share it with the one she loved. Under the table, her leg tingled as she thought of Philippe’s own leg next to hers as they had lain on the hillside overlooking the stables the fall before.
“The duchess was besotted with him. And he was taken with her. Already she was a fine lady; well-educated and giving orders all around like the born ruler she was,” Cook continued.
“Did her parents encourage her?” Nicole asked.
“The Duke and the Lady Margaret worshipped the ground she walked on; none of that nonsense about boys only inheriting the family fortune where I come from.” Cook smacked the tabletop for emphasis.
“As it should be,” Nicole agreed.
“As it should be, indeed. And because the Duchess Anne was raised that way, she isn’t going to let anyone or anything stand in her way to get the Crown of France back on her head.”
“But what if the Pope won’t grant the annulment?” Nicole asked worriedly.
“Mark my words, the Pope will grant it.” Cook smiled knowingly.
“How do you know?”
“I know the queen. I’ve known her all my life. And I had a good enough look at the new king when he was a young man to know what he’s all about. They’re peas in a pod,” she observed.
“How so?” Nicole pressed.
“They both go after what they want. Did you see how fast Louis got here when the king died?”
“’Twas about three days, wasn’t it?”
“It would have been sooner if he hadn’t had to come all the way from the North.”
“And our queen?”
“Both you and I know what the queen’s been through these past years.” Cook’s face darkened as she dipped one meaty hand into the bowl of dough she had set out to make bread and scooped out a large handful.
“A happy marriage, no?”
“And seven pregnancies with seven dead children to show for it.” She slapped the dough ball smartly then flattened it on the table into a squashed pancake.
“God comfort her.” Nicole crossed herself, silently praying that nothing similar would happen to her on the path laid out ahead. Yet who was she to ask fate to serve her better than the queen herself had been served?
“And always carrying herself well and caring about others around her,” Cook continued.
“Like bringing me to court.”
“Exactly so. Bringing me here, too. Our queen knows what she’s about. Once the king had his accident, what did she have left?”
“Brittany, no? She is still the duchess of her own lands, is she not?”
“That’s not good enough for a woman who’s been queen,” Cook snorted and crossed her arms. “She remains the duchess, but she wishes also to remain queen. She will make sure the annulment goes through.”
“But how can a woman influence a pope?” Nicole asked.
“Silly girl!” Cook snorted again, this time louder. “The same way a woman influences any man.” Her smile was full of secrets: women’s secrets, deep and not to be denied. “By being clever, of course.”
“What does that mean?” Nicole had a clue but from conversations with her father about his business. She wanted to learn from a woman’s point of view.
“Back-channels, my lady, back channels.” She rolled the flattened dough into a perfect rectangular shape. “She knows how to work them, as does the new king.”
“Back-channels?”
“Learn how to work them, too, my lady. Then the world will serve you closer to the way you wish it to, if you’re smart.” Cook nodded her head, as if approving her own plan.
“Do you think I can?” Could she apply such advice to herself and Philippe? If so, how?
“You admire your queen, no?” Cook eyed her.
“I adore her!” Nicole cried. As indeed she did. Everything about Anne of Brittany spoke to her, even her cunning. But the loss of her children spoke to her heart, and for that reason she loved her even more deeply.
“Then you will try to be like her. Watch carefully and learn from her,” Cook advised. She placed the bread onto the cooking tray and slid it onto the rack over the giant stone hearth.
“That’s what I do already.” Cook had put her finger on Nicole’s exact method for finding her way at court. From the moment she had caught sight of her queen limping in the privacy of her bedchamber, and realized that her trick of gliding when she walked had been a method to conceal that one leg was shorter than the other, Nicole’s heart had swelled with admiration for her sovereign. Anne of Brittany was not one to give in to whatever bad cards fate had dealt her.
“So you will work with what fate gives you, but make the most of it; just as our queen does,” Cook read her mind. She patted her on the arm.
“But her children . . .”
“That may change with the new king,” the older woman said thoughtfully.
“How so?”
“Perhaps the combination of her with the old king didn’t work for making strong children.”
“How can you say that?” Nicole was shocked. Cook’s words sounded like blasphemy. Then she remembered King Charles was dead and the queen was no longer queen. What would have been blasphemy a few months earlier no longer was. How quickly the world around her had changed.
“Pretend I said nothing,” Cook slipped her forefinger across her mouth, as if to take back her words. “But everyone thinks it. As do you. What else could anyone think? Even the humblest peasant woman has at least one or two children to show for seven seeds planted.”
“And you think things might go differently with the new king?” Nicole asked.
“It’s possible.” Cook shrugged as she scrubbed at a spot on the large wooden table where they sat.
“I wish there was something I could do to help, if she is to get her chance to become a mother again,” Nicole remarked.
“Perhaps there is, my lady. You might put your mind to learning things now, so that when her time comes next you can help her carry a child to life.”
“What things? How can I learn them?”
“I heard you were good with healing the queen’s horse last summer.”
“I tried.” What else had Cook heard? Nothing of how closely she and Philippe had worked together, she hoped.
Cook cocked her head, evaluating Nicole for a moment.
“What? What are you thinking?” Nicole asked, willing herself not to color. Cook wasn’t about to bring up Philippe, was she? Had that little Marie de Volonté spread stories in the kitchen about them? Carefully, Nicole looked down at her lap and crossed her hands, as if to put them over Marie’s mouth.
“Do you want to learn more?” Cook asked hesitantly.
“Yes!”
“Nothing to do with courtly ways, you understand . . .”
“I understand. What things? How?”
“Come to the herb garden after breakfast tomorrow morning. I will show you some things.”
“Oh, Cook, thank you!”
“Little one, you are a lady of the court. I’m a cook. But we both want the same happiness for our queen.”
“So we do!”
“So let’s work on it together.”
“Oh yes, Cook; what a good idea.” The last time Nicole had lear
ned about herbs had been with her mother. Her heart swelled at the memory.
“Go now. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Forgetting her higher rank for the moment, Nicole threw her arms around Cook and felt her heart fill with joy as the kind Breton woman hugged her back.
For the next week, Nicole came to the herb garden behind the kitchen every morning. The summer was hot and dry but the garden faced west, so in the morning hours they were able to work in the shade from the fruit trees that lined the walkway outside the kitchen walls.
Working alongside Cook, Nicole was reminded of happy times spent alongside her mother in the gardens of her childhood home. As head of her household, Blanche St. Sylvain had been responsible for tending to the sick or injured who worked within her house or on her lands. She had known much about herbs, and had gained a reputation as a healer. But what Nicole most remembered was the way her mother had gained her patients’ trust, with her gentle, sensitive manner. Nicole thought back to when Petard’s ankle had been hurt. Slowly she had worked to earn the stallion’s trust until he let her put her hands on his leg. Then she had used her sense of touch to find where the infection was. As she probed, she had thought of how her mother would have handled a similar situation and tried to do the same.
“Now, that’s celery root there,” Cook pointed to a pile of bushy greens with bulbous white balls attached. “Take heed. That one’s good for keeping the babe in when mixed with mint.”
“There’s plenty of mint over there. But what was the one Marie was holding in the garden that day,” Nicole asked. “Did you say it was called pennyroyal?”
“You want to be careful with that one, my lady. ’Tis only to be used in small amounts and certainly not to keep a babe in.”
“And in larger amounts?”
Cook shuddered. “’Twill most certainly kill the babe, if not the mother too.”
“What does it look like?” Nicole pressed.
“Small, white or purple and not very pretty, like the nasty weed that it is.” Cook wrinkled her nose and turned down the corners of her mouth.
“And where does it grow?”
“Mostly in damp places. Down along the river below the chateau.”
“Will you show it to me one day?”
“Aye, we can go weed-hunting down there one of these days. That one’s to be carefully handled. I know women who drank a potion made from it to rid themselves of a babe and lost their own lives, too.”
Nicole shuddered. She was getting a solid education with Cook’s unguarded conversation and Madame de Laval away in Paris. Already she had learned of as many potions to stop a babe from growing in the womb as to encourage one to stay inside. Cook was an invaluable source of information.
One quiet Friday morning, Nicole and Cook slipped out to gather flowers down by the river. Not only did they pick pennyroyal, but they also found nettles and other flowers that Cook said they might use for potions to cure a wide variety of ailments.
On their way back to the chateau, they spotted dust on the road below. Men on horseback approached, perhaps with news of the queen’s latest doings in Paris. It didn’t look like a large party, two or three at most. Nicole shuddered to think it might be her father and uncle with the new marriage candidate they had arranged for her. If negotiations went well, her wedding would take place by the end of September. Her father and uncle were overjoyed to cement an alliance with the house of Orléans, the family from which Louis XII came, although some said the king’s father had not sired him. Who knew? Another mystery Cook was filling her in on in the garden as they worked was that not all babies who arrived were necessarily sired by their mother’s husbands. But Cook pointed out that it served no good purpose for either the child or the head of household to know such details, and if the mothers were clever, neither ever did.
Nicole sighed and thought of what lay before her. Nothing she could do or say would change the inevitable. If not Gilles de St. Bonnet as her husband, then it would be another who wasn’t Philippe. At least she would be sixteen by the time she embarked on married life.
Within fifteen minutes, Cook and Nicole were at the outside gate to the chateau. The men on horseback were nowhere in sight.
“News from Paris then?” Cook asked of the man nearest to them as they walked in the gate.
“No, Mistress, just a few men up from Agen to work with the horses,” the man replied.
“Did you send them to the kitchen?”
“No, Mistress. We knew you were not about, so we told them to go directly to the stables.”
“I’ll have something sent down. How many were there?”
“Three, mistress. Two men and a youth.”
Nicole picked up her ears. A youth? What youth from Agen might it be? She knew of only one who worked with the horses at Amboise. Careful to conceal her excitement, she followed Cook into the kitchen, where she laid down the flowers they had collected and began sorting them into separate piles.
“Let me see what I’ve got here to feed our visitors,” Cook mumbled, bustling about.
“Shall I store these on the cellar shelves?” Nicole asked. She would not suggest taking food and drink down to the men at the stables herself. She would wait for Cook to suggest it. Hadn’t Cook herself advised using back-channels when women needed to get something done? Was there one she could use now to get Cook to ask her to deliver the food to the stables?
“Leave them on the counter,” Cook ordered. “I know better which ones go where. And I don’t want you touching the pennyroyal. Not till I’ve shown you the way to handle it.”
“Then what can I do to help, Cook?” Nicole asked casually.
“Do you want to run this down to the stables for our guests?”
“Yes, of course.” Nicole thanked the kind fates who had befriended her for the moment. “Shall I bring ale as well?”
“It’s too much to carry all at once. You bring down the food and I’ll bring the ale behind you.”
“No, Cook, I can bring it all at once. You need to attend to the pennyroyal so no one else comes in here poking about and poisons himself by accident.”
“Hmm, perhaps you’re right.” Cook disappeared into the storeroom where the ale barrels were kept.
Nicole moved to the cupboard where she knew the silver pieces were kept for fine occasions. She pulled a silver tray out and wiped it off, glancing at her face in its reflection. Quickly she smoothed her hair down on either side, removing bits of flower and nettles that had caught in it on their excursion to the river.
“Don’t waste that tray on stable-hands. Take the basket. The big one there.” Cook had returned from the storeroom and was pointing to the corner away from Nicole, her back turned to her.
“Alright.” Nicole put back the silver tray, not before peeking again at her face; it was flushed, excited. She pursed her lips, practicing a disinterested expression. Finding the basket, she loaded it with provisions and three tankards while Cook filled a leather skin with ale. The travel-worn men from Agen would be grateful to see her, one in particular if it was the one she hoped it was.
One glance told her Philippe had grown, by two finger-lengths at least. She looked away quickly, as befitted a maiden in the company of strange men. Carefully, she busied herself with unloading the contents of the basket and pouring the ale.
She handed the tankards to the two older men, who took them gratefully, then stepped away and quaffed greedily. Immediately they resumed their discussion of the horses.
Pouring the third tankard, she kept her head down as Philippe moved toward her. The scent of him filled her senses as he neared. Fresh, virile, sweaty, too, but above all, young. Different from the hard-living scent of the older men.
“Thank you, my lady,” Philippe murmured as he took the tankard from her hand. His own brushed against hers as he grasped its handle. From under her eyelashes, she glanced up to see the same gray-green eyes from the year before staring straight into hers. Quickly she looked away.
/>
The men drained their mugs and held them out for refills. She complied, not raising her eyes. She didn’t want them to take note of her, to sully the picture in any way of her first moments of seeing Philippe again after eight months of absence.
Her eyes on the ground, she looked at his shoes. Dusty and travel-worn from the journey, still they looked a higher quality, the toes pointier than the shoes he had worn the year before. Had he come up in the world since the December before? Did marriage to a wealthy widow have anything to do with it? If so, how dare he stare so boldly at her? She tightened her body, as if to squelch the unruly thoughts jumbling inside her head at the sight of him.
Nicole held out the basket to the older of the two men, and motioned to them to sit in the shade while they ate. Then she squinted at Philippe out of the corner of her eye and turned to go to the well to draw water. She would bring some for Petard and the other horses, so the men would think she had duties there and would not be surprised to see her in the stable-yards again.
Behind her, Philippe followed, saying nothing. She understood. Best not to speak in the men’s presence. What they had to say to each other needed to be said privately. As she drew the water up from the well, she felt his voice brush her ear.
“It is good to see you again,” he breathed out as he leaned toward her to take the bucket.
She looked up, saying nothing. The lines of his face had become more defined, less boyish. The hint of a beard smudged his chin, but his eyes were the same gray-green with flecks of gold shot through them in the midday sunlight. Their gaze was direct, as if memories of the fall before danced in them.
“They will fall asleep after they eat,” he murmured. “Meet me on the hill in an hour if you can.” His eyes flicked to the hill behind the pasture where they had spent so much time the autumn before.
Nicole narrowed her eyes at him and said nothing. Then she returned to the men, who had sat down under a tree and were busily cutting bread and eating the sausage and cheese Cook had provided. Nicole refilled their tankards once again.
“My lady, we will not get much done in this heat if you keep pouring for us,” the one with reddish-brown hair joked.