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

by Rozsa Gaston

  “I will go to my husband!” she screamed at them.

  “My lady, wait for the horse—” Their words were interrupted by Guillaume’s steed galloping up behind them, running amok. As the men turned to chase it, Marie ran onto the field toward where her husband lay.

  The second she reached his side, she sank to the ground.

  Guillaume’s body, in its full suite of armor, laid still, one leg turned out in the wrong direction. His helmet remained on, his squire trying to remove it.

  Marie pushed him out of the way, throwing herself onto the heavy steel hauberk covering her husband’s torso.

  “Guillaume!” she shrieked.

  “My lady, he is—he is—”

  “Shut up!” she screamed. She pulled herself up at her husband’s side and flicked open the steel helmet. His eyes were shut, his face white.

  “My love!” she cried.

  Nothing.

  “Get up!”

  A thick silence descended upon the men surrounding them. Hands reached down to Marie’s shoulders to pull her back.

  She resisted. “I need you!”

  Nicole’s heart hurt, thinking of her friend, of all their rivalries and moments good and bad, their shared secrets, their shared sacrifices. Both of them had married men different from the ones they had loved. Yet it seemed Marie had grown to love Guillaume de Montforet. A husband was a good thing; better than none at all.

  “My lady, let me help you,” one of the men said, as another removed the stricken man’s helmet.

  “Get away,” Marie shook him off. “Guillaume!” she screamed. “I am with child. Get up!”

  Nicole gasped. A low murmur rose from the men surrounding them. She pushed away the one in front of her to reach her friend. She would not allow them to touch her. Not at that moment. None of them could know her pain. Not one.

  As she reached out to comfort her, Marie screamed again.

  “Guillaume!” This time her voice sounded different, almost commanding.

  Nicole winced in pain for her friend.Placing her hand on Marie’s shoulder, she peered over it at the still figure on the ground.

  Come back for our child!” Marie cried out, as if summoning her husband’s soul to return to his body.

  It was heartbreaking to hear. A rustle went up behind them, the men moving and attending to the rider-less horse and scattered equipment on the field.

  Nicole stared at Marie’s husband’s face, thinking how sad it would be for him never to see his child by his beautiful, young wife.

  “Get up, husband!” Marie roared. “I’m pregnant!”

  Nicole gave her friend a gaze with all her heart in it, then looked at Guillaume again. Startled, she noted the color of the fallen man’s face. It was different than when she had glanced at it seconds earlier.

  As she stared, Marie put her head down next to her husband’s and covered his face with kisses.

  Nicole turned away to give her friend some privacy. When she turned back, she gasped.

  Guillaume de Montforet’s eyes had opened. Instead of staring at Heaven, they flickered open and shut, then opened again.

  “It’s high time you told me,” he murmured weakly.

  “Guillaume!” Marie shouted joyfully, throwing herself on him again.

  “He lives!” a cry went up. Immediately the men moved in to attend to him.

  Nicole backed away, spent with relief. It was a miracle. She thanked God for her friend’s good fortune. Then she heard a roar go up behind her and turned.

  Guillaume’s horse had kicked someone to the ground. The body lay motionless next to the lists. Nicole craned her neck to see.

  A yellow coudière fluttered in the breeze from the breastplate of the man on the ground.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Princess Claude

  In the weeks that followed, it was the queen herself who comforted her, just as Nicole had comforted her sovereign so many times.

  “My dear, he went quickly to a better place. He gave you good memories. Gather up what you have and live life. Live again, Nicole. Live for your daughter. You are young enough that God may grant you a son, too.”

  “Your Majesty, I need no son. I need nothing more than you as my example.” Her sovereign had lost four sons: three born alive, one stillborn. Anne of Brittany knew loss, yet she wished for Nicole what she herself had had snatched from her countless times. Nicole couldn’t pull herself together for herself, but for her queen she would do almost anything.

  “Thank you, dear. But you also need to get up and give your daughter love and attention.” The queen leaned in closer to her and whispered in her ear. “And I need your help.”

  “What do you mean, Your Majesty?” Nicole stared at her, forgetting her loss for the first time since the accident.

  The queen smiled slyly and slipped her hand onto her belly; the gesture was unmistakable.

  “My lady, good news on the way?” Nicole whispered.

  “In the fall. I will need you to keep me amused. You are not amusing when you are sad.”

  That did it. After the queen left the room, Nicole got up and called for a bath to be drawn. Gerard was gone, but her daughter Blanche was alive; a ruddy, healthy child on the verge of taking her first steps. She needed her mother. Besides, the queen was pregnant. Nicole wished to offer her the love and support that the queen had shown her in so many ways during her time at court. Anne of Brittany could be brutally practical, expedient, some said, in her decision-making, but Nicole respected her ability to make decisions efficiently and without regret. On her face, the queen never revealed any sign of the hand she had been dealt. To Nicole’s eyes, her monarch’s marriage seemed a loving one, and with the possible arrival of a second child in the fall, she prayed that this one would cling to life, as only Princess Claude had managed to do thus far. She would do whatever she could to aid the queen in bringing her child to full term, and keeping the babe alive once born.

  The next few months passed in a haze. Nicole was grateful for the queen’s charge to amuse her. It distracted her from the loss of Gerard. Again and again, reliving the afternoon of the accident, she thanked God for taking her husband quickly, without suffering a lingering death. Blanche occupied her hours, along with her duties to the queen. The days passed quickly, and Nicole tried not to ask for anything more.

  Yet as had happened each summer of her life for the past few years, her thoughts turned to Philippe. Memories of the two summers they had spent together played over her the way the breeze played over her hair on certain evenings. Nicole had been a child; then she had become a wife and mother. In that brief period in between, her heart had awakened to love.

  On the morning of Nicole’s eighteenth birthday, in early August, the queen summoned her to her rooms.

  “I am not well today,” the queen told her, her face pale, in stunning contrast to the afternoon before. They had taken a long walk in the gardens; the queen had been joyful and glowing.

  “Your Majesty, what can I do for you?” Nicole cried, rushing to her side.

  “Help me keep my babe,” the queen said, her voice faint.

  “Do you—are you?—”

  The queen lifted her eyes to Nicole. Suddenly she squeezed them shut, clutching her stomach with one hand.

  “I will bring a potion for you.” Nicole took a cloth and wiped the sheen of sweat from her sovereign’s brow.

  The queen nodded. “Hurry.”

  “Shall I call the doctor?” Nicole asked.

  “A pox on doctors! Did they save a single one of my sons?” Queen Anne looked away, mindful of bearing her losses alone as befit her royal position.” Now go!”

  “I will be right back, Your Majesty. Breathe deeply—”

  “Go!” the queen cut her off and threw her head back, her face white with pain. Or was it loss of blood?

  Trembling, Nicole rushed to the kitchen. As she ran, her thoughts turned to her own mother. What would she have done in a case like this? Trying to order her
thoughts in time to her steps, she prayed the queen would hold on to her babe inside.

  “Cook, where are you?” Nicole cried as she ran into the kitchen.

  “Here. In the storeroom,” Cook called to her.

  “The queen is in trouble!” Nicole blurted out.

  Cook’s ample form emerged from the cool interior room off the kitchen, where she kept the dried herbs and bottled vials she and Nicole prepared together.

  “Don’t tell me it’s the babe,” Cook said, her face darkening.

  Nicole nodded. “Can we give her something to keep it in place?”

  “When a babe stops clinging to life, there’s a reason for it,” Cook muttered.

  “Maybe it’s something she ate,” Nicole protested.

  Cook grunted in response. Moving to a cupboard, she took out a few bottles. Pointing, she directed Nicole to the olive-wood mortar and pestle she used to grind herbs into powder. “What signs?” she asked.

  “She was holding her stomach.” She handed the mortar and pestle to Cook.

  “And?”

  “Her face was white.” Nicole’s heart hurt to think of the helpless expression she had seen on the queen’s face before she had turned away.

  “Bleeding?”

  “She didn’t say.”

  “Her face told you already,” Cook guessed, looking grim.

  “No, Cook. It’s not possible. Didn’t you say she might make healthier babes with the new king than she did with the old one?”

  “I hoped.” Cook turned from her, intent on her task.

  “Then keep hoping. And make something strong to keep the babe inside!” Nicole cried.

  Cook said nothing, but worked away. In a minute she handed Nicole a vial with a brown, cloudy liquid in it.

  “Have her drink this. Then she should lie down and sleep. If she stays still, the babe may stay inside.” Cook looked at her skeptically.

  “I hope so, Cook. Let us pray that it does.” She wouldn’t say “he.” It might bring bad luck to make such assumptions. The queen had had so little luck with sons thus far. None at all.

  “Let us pray that the babe is healthy. And if it is not, let us pray that Nature takes its course,” Cook muttered.

  “Don’t say that,” Nicole hissed. As she exited the kitchen, over her shoulder she heard Cook’s parting words.

  “What will be will be, my lady. You’re a mother yourself now; you know that.” The resigned tone of her voice told her what she already sensed.

  Back in the queen’s chamber, Madame de Laval blocked Nicole’s way.

  “I have something for her, Madame. You must let me give it to her before it’s too late,” she blurted out.

  “It already is,” the older woman said curtly. “The midwife is with her now.”

  “Where is she?” She looked around Madame de Laval at the empty chair where the queen had been seated before. A dark color staining the cushion told her what Cook had already guessed. Nicole’s throat closed. She mustn’t cry. She needed to be strong.

  “Shhh. She is in the other room. Get some linens from the housekeeper, and cold water from the kitchen. Don’t say anything when you see her.”

  “Is she—did she—?”

  “You see for yourself. We will find out more in a minute,” Madame de Laval kept her tone low, her mouth a grim line. “Now go and come back quickly before they return.”

  Nicole hurried from the room. Quickly finding the head housekeeper, she instructed her to bring linens, then dashed to the kitchen again.

  “A pitcher of cold water, Cook. Hurry!”

  “If it’s cold water they need, what’s the rush?” Cook asked.

  “Madame said cold water, not warm.”

  “To wash out the blood stains, I’ll wager,” Cook commented.

  “How did you know?” She felt numb to her fingertips at the thought of what had just happened. All of the queen’s wealth and position couldn’t solve the mystery of what went on inside her when a babe was being formed. No amount of power and riches could assist the queen in the workings of her body, inescapably subject to the same mysteries every woman underwent.

  The Cook filled a large pitcher with water kept cool in the storeroom. “Because after awhile you know these things.”

  “I have known the queen to give birth to stillborns.”

  “And now you know the queen to have miscarried,” Cook said softly.

  “Oh, God, no.”

  “Praise God, yes. Better to lose it now than to bring it to full-term, then deliver another dead child.”

  Nicole opened her mouth to say something then shut it again. Cook was right. Already the queen had delivered three stillborn children, all to her previous husband. Best not to deliver another born dead to the new king. At least they had the comfort of their daughter, the princess Claude. She shuddered, thinking of what had happened to Charles Orland: healthy, rollicking, ruddy one moment, and dead the next.

  “Now get back to our queen and be with her when she needs you.” The woman reached out with one capable large hand, and gave Nicole a firm shove toward the door. “Don’t give her any sad looks either,” she barked after her.

  Putting on her courtier’s face, Nicole hurried back to the queen’s chamber, hoping she could offer the queen whatever she needed, although she knew it wouldn’t be enough.

  Summer turned to fall, and the queen’s grief began to heal. The princess Claude provided a great distraction, taking her first steps just short of her first birthday, encouraged by Nicole’s slightly older daughter, Blanche. The girls were inseparable, much as Nicole and the queen had become, sisters in motherhood and also in mourning.

  In the first week of October, the court hummed with excitement at the impending first birthday of the princess. The king was due to return from yet another military campaign in Milan. This time the queen had not accompanied him, but remained at Blois, intent on watching over her daughter, unlike her brief time with Charles Orland.

  Nicole had heard the whispers at court after the dauphin had died. The queen had been away for fifteen of the thirty-eight months of the young prince’s life. She had moved her court to Lyon then Grenoble, in order to be closer to the king, who had been on campaigns in Milan and Naples on the other side of the Alps.

  It was not an unusual arrangement, but had been unfortunate in light of what had happened. Royal parents were not encouraged to bond closely with their small children, given the high rate of infant mortality. Instead, they were encouraged to produce as many children as possible, as quickly as possible, to secure a direct line of succession. The queen had been no exception. She and the king had missed almost half of the dauphin’s life, arriving too late even to comfort their little boy in his final hours.

  With Claude, arrangements were different. The queen watched over her like a hawk, charging the wet nurse to continue nursing her throughout her first year. With plague having come to Blois the summer before, Queen Anne would take no chances on losing her only living child. She had lost too many already.

  The king had been informed by messenger of the queen’s miscarriage. He had replied to say he would arrive in time for the princess’s birthday, and would bring a pony with him for her.

  The following week, Nicole sat on the bench in the herb garden, daydreaming after the midday meal. Her eyes flitted to the hill behind the stables from time to time then shut as she lost herself in reveries. She had tried not to indulge herself too frequently in such moments when Gerard had been alive. Now he no longer was, and she gave herself full rein to savor every memory of those days and far too few nights she had spent with her one true love.

  At the sound of a trumpet blaring out from the direction of the ramparts behind the chapel, Nicole jumped to her feet. It’s meaning was clear: the king’s party approached.

  She hurried to the staircase leading up to the rampart and lightly ran up it. Chances were slim that Philippe was amongst the king’s party, but, with a new pony in tow, it was possible that the king
had brought him along, knowing his healing skills with both horses and humans.

  Scanning the distance on the bright late harvest day, she couldn’t make out more than a cloud of dust and the king’s pennant, the royal blue background fluttering in the breeze, with the gold of its fleur-de-lis design flashing as the sunlight caught it. Her throat closed as the group came into focus. Five men rode with the king. Nicole prayed that one in particular would be amongst them.

  “I thought you had married.”

  “It didn’t come to pass. The widow found someone wealthier.”

  “Ahhh.” Nicole’s heart leapt. There was no point in saying she was sorry. She wasn’t and Philippe knew it. Three days had passed since the king’s return for the princess’s birthday celebration. Philippe had been asked to attend to the little girl’s health, as the elderly court physician at Blois had come down with what looked like sweating sickness, and the queen didn’t want him near her daughter until it was clear he had recovered.

  They had tried to speak, but each time had found themselves soon joined by others. Finally Philippe had whispered to her to meet him in the furthermost of the queen’s chambers, within earshot of her attendants should she need either of them, but out of earshot of others.

  “I heard your husband died. I’m sorry,” Philippe continued.

  “Thank you.” She thought of Gerard. He had been a good man but her heart had been locked in a secret chamber deep inside, bound up with the man who now addressed her.

  You have a daughter,” Philippe spoke it as a statement. Who had told him? And what had they said?

  She colored. “Yes. And what about you?”

  “What about me?”

  You have a daughter, too. “You were in Milan, no?”

  “I was there almost two years.”

  “Why did you stay so long?” Away from me. So unreasonable, she knew, yet couldn’t help feeling.

  He coughed and looked at the floor. “Can you not guess?”

  Without thinking, she reached out and touched his hair.