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

by Rozsa Gaston

  He grabbed her hand, bringing it to his lips.

  “And did you find a wife there as well?” She steeled herself for his reply.

  He shook his head. “No.” His eyes remained steady on hers.

  “Why not?” Relief coursed through her, chased by a dawning hope.

  “My sweet—my lady, can you not guess?” he asked again, his expression softening.

  “Because of me?” she asked in wonderment. She had never thought of re-routing her life for the sake of a sentimental attachment. It wasn’t in her to do so. Her example was her queen, and always would be. Queen Anne was practical and sensible; she had taught Nicole to make the right decision for the right moment. It was what women did. Had they any choice about who they would marry, when to have children, or how many they would have? All were life events beyond their control. Better not to question, but to accept with grace, and squeeze what happiness one could out of what fate served.

  But Philippe was different. Not just because he was a man, but because his character was as immutable as his eyes were not. It had been his eyes that she had first noticed about him. But it had been his character that had made her unable to forget him.

  “Yes, because of you,” he breathed softly. His hand reached up and stroked her cheek.

  She grabbed his wrist. It had broadened from the last time she had touched it. The image came to her of washing his hair in the horse trough. Philippe had raised his arm in protest and she had smacked it down, bidding him to be still. Thinking of it, a giggle escaped her.

  “My story makes you laugh?”

  “Remember when I washed your hair?”

  “How could I forget?” He laughed too, a low, murmuring sound that resonated below her stomach in a place deeper and wilder than where her heart was located.

  She reached up and touched a lock of his hair again. This time, she pulled slightly.

  The back of his warm neck shuddered against her hand. Gold flecks shot through his eyes as they bore into hers.

  At that moment, Madame de Laval entered the room.

  “Monsieur?” she addressed Philippe, her glance flickering between him and Nicole.

  “Yes, Madame?”

  “You are needed in the nursery.”

  “The princess?” Nicole asked, alarmed.

  “Come now,” was all she said, her lips in a straight, unreadable line. Nicole had seen that expression before. It was never good.

  Philippe hurried after her without looking again at Nicole.

  She followed them to the nursery, praying silently that the child wasn’t ill or fevered. Twice it had happened that the queen had lost a child in the fall. It was all too thinkable that the same could happen again: all too thinkable, yet all too unbearable to think.

  At the door to the nursery, Madame de Laval stopped, pointing to the wet nurse walking to and fro, with the queen’s year-old daughter in her arms. The child whimpered weakly.

  Philippe went to the nurse, quickly assessed the babe, then asked the nurse a few questions.

  Returning to the doorway where Nicole stood, he frowned. “She is fevered,” he said in a low voice.

  “What will you do?” Nicole whispered.

  “Cool her down with wet cloths. Beyond that, I am not sure.”

  “Then let me help you,” she said with authority. Instantly she felt herself transported to their days at the stables three years earlier, nursing Petard back to health.

  “What do you suggest?” he asked.

  “We will make a potion for her.”

  “What kind?”

  “Do you not remember?” she asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “When Petard had the gash in his hoof,” she reminded him.

  “Ahhh, yes.” His eyes lit up.

  “You bound it, and it healed,” she said, her heart full of memories. Those days seemed so long ago, before marriage and motherhood; yet it had only been three years.

  “You made a poultice for the bandage,” he recalled. “With spider’s web and the parts that grow blue and green on old bread.”

  Nicole nodded. “Weeks-old bread,” she specified.

  “We don’t have weeks to spare,” he murmured, so no one else would hear. “Not even days.”

  She stared at him. Not another child lost to the queen. She couldn’t bear it. “I’ll find some in the pantry and make it into a drink.”

  “And what if the babe refuses to take it?” he asked, practically.

  “We will give it to her nurse to drink, and the ingredients will go into her milk.”

  “The child still takes the breast?” Philippe asked, his voice low.

  “The queen has been very careful with this one,” Nicole whispered back. “After what happened with the dauphin. . .”

  Philippe’s brow knit together. “That may not be enough and may take too much time.”

  “Then I will put it in the babe’s mouth from my own,” Nicole said firmly. She would do whatever she had to do. She always had and she always would, following her queen’s example.

  “That would heal anyone,” Philippe said with a smile.

  “I will check the kitchen,” she told him. “Maybe there’s some bread lying around from God knows when.”

  “Hurry. We don’t have much time,” Philippe whispered gravely.

  “Monsieur, what do you recommend?” Madame de Laval came up to them, her gaze lingering on Philippe.

  Nicole struggled to remember if Jeanne de Laval had met him. She had known of him, certainly.

  “We will prepare a drink,” he told the older woman, his tone businesslike, as if to chase away any thoughts she might have of having seen him before in another capacity. “Meanwhile, we will bathe the child to bring down her fever.”

  “But what if she catches cold?” Madame de Laval asked doubtfully.

  “We will keep her away from drafts and wrap her in clean linens once we have cooled her down,” Philippe answered firmly. He clapped his hands twice. “A basin of cool water,” he commanded the servants. “And clean cloths. Quickly.”

  The attendants ran to do his bidding.

  Nicole shivered despite Philippe’s confident tone, a deeper, more authoritative one than the one that had belonged to a nineteen-year-old youth commanding the stallion Petard. She feared for the little princess as well as for her mother. Another child lost to her sovereign would break Anne of Brittany’s heart. And if the heart broke of the woman she loved most, then so would her own.

  She would do whatever she could to ensure that Claude lived.

  “Cook, can you find some old bread for me?” Nicole cried as she rushed into the kitchen.

  “God save us, is the princess ill?” Cook knew why Nicole needed the bread. She had taught her young assistant all she knew of herbs and potions, but Nicole, in turn, had taught her what she had learned from her mother.

  Nicole nodded, saying nothing. The grim look she gave Cook said it all.

  Cook barked orders, and after a search by the entire kitchen staff, some moldy days-old bread was found. Quickly, Nicole scraped the blue and green bits from it and ground it with a pestle into fine dust. Rushing back to the nursery, she gestured to the wet nurse to come to her.

  “I am just about to feed the princess, my lady. Could you give me a minute?”

  “Even better,” Nicole replied. “Don’t feed her yet and come here.”

  Philippe stepped to her side, motioning to the attendant to bring the bowl of water.

  “Before you begin, wash,” he told Nicole. “You, too,” he said to the wet nurse.

  Nicole dipped her hands in the basin and Philippe rinsed them thoroughly, causing shivers to run up and down her spine. Then he repeated the process with the wet nurse, who looked disgruntled at getting her hands wet. The mid-October weather was cool, and the castle interior chilly. Motioning for the clean cloths, he gave one to each woman to dry her hands.

  “There. Now go about your task,” he exclaimed.

 
“Turn your back, then. This is women’s business here,” Nicole shooed him away. It felt good to be ordering him around again; almost as good as it had felt to surrender to his hands and let him give the orders. She pushed away the thought.

  Philippe bowed, and complied, turning and stepping a few paces away.

  “My lady?” The wet nurse looked baffled.

  Below the woman’s throat, a telltale wet stain spread in two spots on her tunic. She was engorged. Perfect, Nicole thought.

  “Good woman, express your milk into this bowl here, and we will mix it with the medicine,” Nicole instructed her.

  “But the princess will not drink, save from my breasts.”

  “Will she not take a cup?” Nicole asked.

  “She stopped taking her cup yesterday. I can barely get her to suck now.”

  “We will mix it in and coat your nipples with the solution. We’ll coat your finger, too.”

  The wet nurse nodded. Leaning over the bowl, she unlaced her bodice and exposed one heavy-laden breast. Squeezing, she pressed out a thin stream of almost-clear milk. Quickly, Nicole mixed it with the ground-up bread mold. It was messy business, as was everything to do with producing and maintaining life as well as creating it. Would she ever again engage in messy business with Philippe, God willing? She vowed she would save the queen’s child then lose herself with alacrity to Philippe de Bois.

  They worked in silence for the next few minutes until the milk from both breasts was fully expelled.

  “Bring the child,” Nicole instructed the attendant now holding Claude. When the woman came over, Nicole took a quick look at the princess. She was listless and whimpering, not at all the ruddy girl she had seen two days earlier at her birthday celebration, laughing and playing peek-a-boo with Blanche. She shivered, thinking of how fast the course of Charles Orland’s only illness had been.

  “Nurse her,” she told the wet nurse.

  The woman put the princess to her breast, but the child wouldn’t take it. She turned her head away, whimpering

  “She’s too weak to suck, my lady,” the nurse said.

  “Try your finger,” Nicole commanded.

  The nurse dipped her finger in the solution and put it inside Claude’s mouth. Although the infant didn’t suck, she didn’t resist. Painstakingly they worked, but the amount of milk they got into her was meager.

  Despair began to gnaw at Nicole. The magic of the bread mold couldn’t tae effect unless they could get it into the child’s stomach to spread through her body.

  Wordlessly, Philippe handed her a cup.

  Picking up the bowl, she poured the rest of the bread mold and milk solution into it, careful to capture every drop. Then she held it out to the wet nurse. “Drink it and hold it in your mouth then spit it into her mouth.”

  “My lady?” the wet nurse balked. She looked at the mug with distaste then back at Nicole.

  “Do it, or I will,” Nicole told her curtly.

  The nurse remained motionless, her mouth firmly shut.

  Taking a deep breath, Nicole lifted the mug to her lips and drank its contents, without swallowing. She motioned for Claude to be turned toward her.

  Like a mother bird, she kissed the princess’s tiny rosebud lips and slowly expelled the mixture into her mouth. The child was too weak to resist; for the first time, Nicole was glad. With her thumb and index finger, she stroked down the sides of the little one’s throat as her mother had done with children in her household who had been reluctant to take their medicine. After a few seconds of soft stroking, she saw the gulp of the child’s throat and she knew she had swallowed. The medicine would reach its mark. Careful not to swallow the liquid herself, she dribbled more of it into Claude’s mouth. Again she stroked. Again, a swallow.

  Finally, the milk was gone. The princess, after being rocked and burped, fell fast asleep.

  Nicole righted herself and sighed.

  “Where did you get the idea to do that?” Madame de Laval asked.

  “From the birds,” Nicole answered. They feed their babes that way, no?”

  “You have the gift of inspiration, my lady,” Philippe said, bowing deeply as Madame de Laval went to Claude’s crib to ready it for the child to lay in. “I have always known that,” he added softly so that only Nicole could hear.

  “We shall see. I need more bread mold fast. Let us get back to the kitchen and tell Cook to put the oldest bread she can find in a warm, damp place right away,” she answered curtly. Inside, her heart was opening to Philippe like spring leaves unfurling on a vine. She prayed no frost would kill them before they fully opened. If the princess died, so would her hopes for a future with the man she loved. Only if Claude lived could she feel comfortable reuniting with the man who had re-entered her life because he was summoned to oversee the princess’s health at her birth.

  Philippe exited the room, motioning Nicole to follow. Wordlessly, they made their way to the scullery.

  There Cook helped Nicole find some old loaves of moldy bread, and set out fresh bread near the fireplace under damp cloths so that it would go bad as quickly as possible.

  Nicole wasn’t sure how it worked or why, but she had gotten the idea as a young girl from watching her own mother, whose healing skills had been legend in the countryside surrounding their own lands. Although Cook had been skeptical, Nicole had proven herself to her over the years; first by healing Petard’s hoof with her poultice, then by using it countless other times on members of the royal court’s household.

  When they returned from the kitchen, Queen Anne was there, her face drawn, masking the despair that lurked nearby in the form of the ghosts of eight souls: one miscarriage, three stillborn children, two carried away within a day of birth, one within a month, and, the most heartrending of all, the dauphin Charles Orland, two months past his third birthday.

  “Can you save her?” the queen asked, glancing from Nicole to Philippe, her face ashen.

  Nicole knew well Anne of Brittany had a dim view of physicians, who hadn’t managed to save her other children.

  “Your Majesty, we will do our utmost.” Claude was the queen’s only living child. Nicole would not let the princess’s soul fly away if there was anything she could do to prevent it from escaping its mortal shell.

  “And what exactly is it you will do that will make this outcome any different than—” the queen’s face tightened, “than the others?”

  “We are using a potion that will bring down the fever if we can get the princess to take it,” Philippe told her.

  “Why should not she take it?” the queen snapped.

  “She should, and she will,” Nicole broke in.

  “My lady has found a special way to feed it to your daughter,” Philippe answered.

  “Pray, what is that?”

  “She feeds her as a mother bird feeds her chicks,” Philippe explained.

  “Then, this mother prays you save her as one of your own,” Queen Anne said, giving Nicole an anguished look.

  “Your Majesty, I will do my best,” Nicole said, dipping her head to her queen then moving to the child’s bed. Laying her hand on the princess’s forehead, it seemed cooler than before. Thank God.

  Over the afternoon and into the evening, Nicole gave Claude her medicine every time she awoke, roughly every two and a half hours. She instructed the kitchen staff to prepare another solution of the bread mold mixed with ale, for the little girl’s nurse to drink.

  This combination the wet nurse accepted. Now even more of the healing properties of the bread mold would find their way to the princess’s tummy through the milk the wet nurse produced when the child took the breast again.

  In the third hour after midnight, the princess’s fever burned hotter than it had before. Philippe slapped a wet cloth on the little one’s forehead, and Nicole hugged the girl to her chest, putting another cool wet linen on the child’s back. Meanwhile, she overheard Madame de Laval quietly order the priest to be called, as well as the king and queen.

&n
bsp; “Give me the cup,” Nicole hissed. It was now or never. The fever needed to break now, or the child would succumb.

  Philippe handed it to her and she took a full mouthful of the concoction then closed her eyes and clamped her mouth upon Claude’s, laboring to get the maximum amount of liquid into the babe’s mouth and then stomach. Each time she followed with a gentle stroke of her finger from under the little one’s chin to the base of her throat.

  Little by little, the princess accepted the mouthfuls, unconscious and swallowing reflexively. After the last of the cup was gone, Nicole gave Claude to the wet nurse to suck, but the child refused. She had had enough and was now on her way to oblivion, either temporarily or forever. Nicole stared at Philippe as she took Claude back from the nurse.

  “Is there anything else we can do?” she asked, trying to ignore the lump forming in the back of her throat.

  Philippe looked at her. “There’s something you can do.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Sing to her the way you once sang to Petard. Do you remember?”

  “That was nonsense.” How could he mention such a lighthearted memory at such a grave moment?

  “You got the horse to come to you,” he pointed out. “Get the child to come back to us now. She is wandering in her sleep. Make her wander back to you before she wanders away for good.”

  Nicole nodded. They had nothing to lose, so why not try?

  She began to hum. Soft and low she hummed. As she did, she put her mouth up to the little one’s ear and tickled it with the vibrations of her lips. She blew around the rim of Claude’s ear, then behind it. As she rocked the little girl, she sang to her, and soon enough the deep resonant hum of Philippe’s voice joined hers. She felt cocooned in love; she hoped the little one in her arms did, too.

  As the king and queen quietly slipped into the room, Nicole put up her finger to her mouth, indicating to the queen to join in.

  The queen’s hum was surprisingly melodious. She came up next to Nicole and put her hand on her daughter’s head. Then King Louis himself moved closer and reached out for his daughter, touching her back. Together, the four of them clustered around the sleeping child, humming and stroking her.