The Agincourt Bride

by Joanna Hickson

  25

  Catherine’s absence did not bring the peace conference to an end. It stuttered on through a gloriously sunny June while she waited impatiently at Pontoise, nursing a flicker of hope for a return visit because she thought it inconceivable that a man like King Henry would waste his time talking unless he felt there was some point in it.

  During these balmy days she resumed her practice of taking regular rides along the river to escape some of the heat trapped within the castle walls. Her old sparring-partner, Guy de Mussy, was still entrusted with command of her security, so it was he who arranged for the horses to be saddled and the escort assembled. On the last day of June, Agnes had begged to be excused from the excursion, and took to her bed in the Constable’s House suffering one of her recurring sick headaches. However, over recent weeks Catherine had managed to form a working relationship with the two youngest of her ‘Flanders mares’, and they were more than willing to take fresh air and exercise.

  Although Catherine felt safer living in the royal apartments, there was only one (admittedly quite large) chamber, in which she was obliged both to sleep and entertain and the afternoons when she and her ladies rode out were the only chance I had to get the tire-women in to clean the place. Time was when the actual scrubbing and sweeping would have been my job, but I had progressed from such drudgery, I am happy to say.

  On this particular day, once I had supervised the cleaners’ work and shooed them out, I began to arrange Catherine’s change of clothes for the evening meal, taking the previous night’s weighty court gown from its hook in the guarderobe and hauling it up a narrow stair to the attic chamber which contained both the queen’s and her daughter’s wardrobes. It was a long, low-beamed room packed with chests and boxes in which the royal ladies’ many gowns and mantles, hats and headdresses, veils and shoes were stored, layered in lavender-scented linen; a quiet place with a distinctive smell that was part moth-repelling spices and part stale sweat. To my alarm I found Alys there alone and weeping. Her eyes were swollen, as if she had been crying for some time, and I rushed to comfort her. For my self-contained daughter to give way to tears meant something must be seriously wrong. ‘Alys, my Alys. Come on now, my little girl. It is quiet here. There is no one except me. Whatever it is, I am sure I can help.’ I pulled a kerchief from the sleeve of my bodice and gave it to her, which inspired a new bout of weeping and she buried her face in it, turning away.

  ‘Is it Jacques?’ I asked finally, in as mild a tone as I could muster.

  ‘I think I am pregnant,’ she said abruptly.

  ‘Ah.’ I stared back at her, unable for a moment to gauge my own reaction. Then I felt a great surge of warmth and sympathy. How could I have felt anything else? I leaned over to take her hand. ‘And you are frightened, yes?’ She nodded mutely and I saw tears spring afresh in her eyes. ‘But not of me, surely? You know that I have been in the same position as you. It is not so uncommon. Are you frightened of what Jacques will say? The baby is his, I suppose?’

  Her chin jutted and she glared at me indignantly, as if I had suggested that the Virgin was a whore. ‘Yes, of course it is!’ she retorted. ‘I have never been with anyone else.’ Then she blushed and slumped, shaking her head miserably. A tear fell onto her restless hands. ‘I am so far away from him,’ she whispered.

  ‘Yes.’ I frowned and did some quick mental calculation. ‘And you are sure you are pregnant? It is not long since we left Troyes.’

  ‘I have just missed another of my courses. The first time I thought it could just be a mistake, the second time I am sure.’

  I felt a pang of guilt that I had not noticed, as I certainly would have if Catherine had missed her monthly cycle. ‘Well, you are not far on at least. It will not show for a while yet.’

  ‘But the princess may not go back to Troyes,’ wailed Alys. ‘And I must go there, Ma. I must.’

  I put my arms around her, hugging her tightly. She was so young and small and I hoped fervently that she had not misjudged Jacques.

  ‘You shall, Alys. I promise. We will find some way. How do you think Jacques will react when you tell him?

  Alys shook her head and whispered. ‘I do not know.’

  ‘Does he have any family?’ I asked, remembering how my father had reacted when I fell pregnant as an unmarried girl and realising how lucky I had been to have him on my side, despite his initial anger. My little girl did not have a father to take her part. I would have to be both mother and father.

  She blew her nose on the kerchief. ‘His parents both died last year in an epidemic of spotted fever. It used to be his father’s shop in the Rue de l’Aiguille.’

  While I was genuinely sorry for Jacques’ sudden loss of his parents, at the same time I recognised a promising situation. The young man had inherited a flourishing business and had the talent and training to pursue it successfully. This baby need suffer neither the stain of bastardy nor the privations of poverty. I must find a way for Alys to return to Jacques as soon as possible.

  ‘He said I reminded him of his mother,’ she whispered.

  ‘I have a good feeling about this, little one. You must not worry any more. It is bad for the child . . .’

  How could I have known that while I was busy comforting Alys, Catherine was riding into danger? Not that there was anything I could have done to stop it. Of course she confided in me later – how could she not? – but the full depth of her distress was only revealed to me many years afterwards in one of her undelivered letters to her brother.

  Catherine, ruined daughter of France to Charles, ‘bastard’ Dauphin of Viennois,

  Greetings brother, as one victim to another.

  Now the devil duke has done everything he can to ruin us both. You are labelled bastard and I can no longer call myself virgin. As I write this I feel distraught and on the verge of madness. Shame and dishonour have been visited on me by the brute force of Jean, Duke of Burgundy.

  Yesterday, during my exercise ride outside the walls of Pontoise, he waylaid me in the forest, dismissed the vile creatures who were supposed to be protecting me and raped me. The words seem so simple to write, but the deed is so terrible to record!

  The nuns at Poissy instilled in me a deep reverence for the Virgin Mary. Having found no honour in my own mother, She has always been for me the purity of the Church. She brought her virginity to Her contract with God, just as I should bring mine to my contract with my husband. But now that can never be and I must either begin any marriage I make with a lie or else retire into the religious life for which I know I was never made. My virginity is gone and the loss is unbearable.

  Equally terrible is the fact that the people I was riding with, the treacherous Guy de Mussy and two of my Flemish ladies-in-waiting, could each have prevented it if they had not been cowards and traitors. They turned away when I told them to stay. Burgundy actually gloated about it. ‘De Mussy wears my badge, Princesse. He is my squire. None of them will obey you. They are all my creatures.’

  Even the women – for I can no longer call them ladies – must have suspected his wicked intention, but they were too cowed. There is no doubt that the devil is among us.

  If you wonder why he chose to destroy the virginity he had so perversely preserved until now, I can tell you, for he took unnatural pleasure in telling me.

  ‘You may be surprised to hear,’ he said, ‘that this morning your precious Harry Monmouth abandoned the peace conference in a fit of pique, declaring that he will have you and all the territories he claims, even if he has to drive me, King Charles and your bastard brother out of France.’ Then he bent my arm cruelly up my back and snarled, ‘There is as much chance of you becoming his wife now as there is of your baseborn brother becoming king. But he lusted after you like a rutting ram, I could see that. The arrogant fool really thought that he, the scar-faced son of a usurping dog, was worthy to couple with a royal daughter of France!’

  That was when he forced me down to the ground and pushed his face into mine with
words that made my blood run cold. ‘And I saw that you lusted for him. Despite your prayers and delicate airs, beneath your skirts you throb with heat. You are just like your mother, panting for a man between your legs. Well, now you shall have one.’

  I screamed then, but I knew it was pointless and he raped me, Charles. There in the dirt beneath the trees he pulled up my skirts and forced himself into my virgin flesh, as he must have done a hundred times to helpless girls across the land, as if it was nothing – just one of the spoils of war.

  Afterwards, he told me that it was my own doing, that I wanted it as much as he did and will welcome him again whenever it pleases him to pleasure me! Ah, dear God, I shudder when I write it but I must, for I want it clearly understood, whenever it may be made known, that I was not willing, that I loathe and detest the beast that is Burgundy and I would be a virgin still if he were not the very devil incarnate.

  How I wish I could tell you of all this face to face, then you could see my distress and know my true innocence of the horrible things he accused me of. But I am so completely at his mercy that I cannot even find a way to get this letter to you!

  Our poor father cannot help me, for when he is not raving under some terrible delusion he is little more than a child in adult clothing. One does not have to look very far to determine the source of his bewitchment. As for our mother, I would prefer to think that she, too, is under some form of enchantment rather than believe, as I am afraid I do, that she knowingly and voluntarily turns a blind eye to what is happening to me. She may do it from her own necessity, but that does not make it excusable in my eyes. I feel as much at her mercy as I am at his. I believe that the deaths of Louis and Jean can ever more certainly be laid at the door of these two devilish conspirators and that when you escaped from Paris you narrowly avoided a similar fate.

  May God and the Blessed Virgin deliver me from this living hell! I never thought there would come a time when I would feel murder in my heart, but I cannot deny that I want him dead. Do you think it possible that God would forgive anyone who revenged the ravishment of the ill-used creature that is your sister?

  Catherine

  Written at Chateau Pontoise in the dark morning hours of the first day of July, 1419.

  Just as I had forced myself to my feet and run from the scene of my violation, Catherine had forced herself to rise from the forest floor and walk away from the devil duke. Somehow she had ridden home. When she entered her chamber I was alone there, laying out her apparel for the evening, and with a cry of anguish she collapsed in my arms.

  I suppose every woman or girl feels differently about virginity. I admit that before I lost it I never gave much thought to mine. I follow the teachings of the Church more from expediency than belief and, looking back, I can see that I was lucky not to suffer the possible consequences of my rather devil-may-care attitudes, both to chastity and the Church. I was not publicly denounced by the priest or disowned by my family and thrown onto the streets, although some might say that the stillbirth of my first child was a pretty severe form of divine retribution, if that is what it was.

  For Catherine however, virginity held a mystical significance. Reared by the nuns with an intense reverence for the Virgin Mother of God, the notion of her own purity was of great importance to her, not only because in a young royal princess the assumption of pre-marital chastity was an essential element of any marriage-contract, but also because of her personal belief in the Church’s teachings on the sanctity of the human body. She had been able to withstand the Duke of Burgundy’s earlier assaults because they had left her with a fragile thread to cling to; the belief that she could still consider herself both spiritually and physically intact. However the brutal destruction of her virginity was severely testing her previously unshakeable faith in God.

  After she had soaked long and gratefully in a hastily summoned hot tub and was lying white-faced in her bed, one of my first tentative suggestions was that I provide a herbal poultice. ‘It will heal the wounds and ease the bruising, Mademoiselle, and also, God willing, prevent any more serious consequence of your ordeal.’

  Her frown deepened and her dull eyes sought mine. ‘What do you mean, more serious consequence …? Oh!’ As realisation of the possibility of pregnancy dawned, she made the sign of the cross and clasped her hands together at her breast, clutching the sheets around herself like a protective cocoon and shivering, despite the late afternoon heat and the recent warmth of the bath. Then she suddenly reared up from the pillows and glared at me where I stood at the bedside.

  ‘I want him dead!’ she exclaimed. ‘If God will answer my prayers, he will strike down Jean of Burgundy and send no spark to ignite his devil spawn,’ she cried and then turned once more to me. ‘But, just as I cannot kill the duke, neither can I poison his seed. Make your poultice for my wounds, Mette, but no more.’

  Muttering my own curses against Burgundy, I prepared the poultice and also a soothing draught and watched for a good while until the tense lines in her brow smoothed away in sleep.

  A little later, a message came in response to one I had sent in Catherine’s stead, excusing her from dining in the great hall due to a sudden rheum. The queen declared her hope that her daughter would quickly recover and her intention to visit her the following day if she had not.

  The Compline bell woke Catherine an hour or so later, its plaintive note echoing from the chapel beside the castle keep. The light of the setting sun tinged the shadows in the room blood red. Hastily I lit candles to dispel the gathering gloom.

  ‘I cannot prevent the queen visiting,’ said Catherine with resignation, when I relayed the message, ‘but I cannot guarantee that she will like what she hears when she does.’

  ‘The Flemish ladies came too while you slept, Mademoiselle, but I sent them away.’

  ‘Tell them to stay away!’ she exclaimed, ‘ugly, traitorous wretches that they are.’ Flinging back the covers she winced as she swung her legs over the edge of the bed, but I was gratified to see that no more blood stained the linen. ‘Bring my gown please, Mette. I want to talk to you. Let us sit together.’

  She perched in her canopied chair, the folds of her velvet chamber-robe pulled tightly around her and I brought a bowl of the warm broth Alys had fetched and set it on a table close by.

  ‘Please sup a little before you begin, Mademoiselle,’ I said. ‘It will restore your strength.’

  Obediently she lifted the bowl and took several sips, regarding me solemnly over the rim while I pulled up a stool and settled myself beside her. Then she set the bowl down and said, ‘With regard to my mother’s visit, I have a plan. It concerns you.’

  As I listened to her plan, I was torn with violently conflicting emotions. So much had happened in the last few hours that my mind was already reeling and Catherine’s expressed intentions only added to the confusion. I could see that her plan was ingenious and would undoubtedly relieve her own deplorable situation, but in conjunction with my other concerns it put me in a quandary, which I pondered through the long sleepless night as I listened to the scratching of her quill.

  By dawn Catherine had returned to bed and fallen into a deep sleep. Alys and I crept into the little turret oratory off the bedchamber to talk privately. Once again I did not tell her of Burgundy’s attack on Catherine, but I did explain that there would be changes in the princess’ life that would enable us to make a journey to Troyes very soon.

  She gave me a troubled look. ‘You are not leaving the princess’ service for my sake, Ma?!’ she exclaimed. ‘You must not do that!’

  I laid a warning finger on my lips. ‘Ssh, we do not want to wake her. She was up half the night praying and writing. No, I am not leaving her; it is she who is leaving us, but only temporarily. I will explain everything later today, but what I need to ask you now is your permission to tell her about your baby. You can be there when I do and, of course, we will swear her to secrecy, but I think we owe it to her to tell the truth. What do you say?’

  Al
ys thought about it for a minute then nodded. ‘Very well, but do you think she will disapprove? Tell me to confess my sins and do a penance? She is much more saintly than you or I.’

  I laughed. ‘No, Alys, she will be happy for you, believe me. Hard though you tried to hide it from us, she knew about your friendship with Jacques and you know she likes him. She will wish you good luck and offer to pray for you.’

  Alys shrugged. ‘Yes, you are right, she will. That is what I mean about being more saintly.’

  When Agnes knocked at the chamber door at the usual time, she was greeted by an emotional Catherine, who recounted her ordeal to her horrified friend. The headache which had plagued Agnes the previous day had retreated, but her brow was now knitted with deep concern, especially after Catherine revealed her plan to outwit Burgundy. The bell rang to summon them to Mass, which Catherine usually attended, but she made no move to go and instead bade us array her in one of her most ornate gowns and headdresses and a full set of jewels in prepar-ation for the queen’s visit.

  ‘She will come after Mass, I have no doubt,’ Catherine said, nervously pacing the floor, the strain of anticipation drawn in the tight set of her jaw and the thin line of her mouth. ‘I must rehearse what I am going to say.’

  Queen Isabeau did arrive direct from the chapel as expected, accompanied by her faithful German lady companion, Baroness Hochfeld.

  ‘You were not at Mass, Catherine, so I thought you would be in bed, but I see you are not,’ she said accusingly as she swept across the room, barely acknowledging the curtsies of its two visible occupants. The Flanders mares had put in an appearance again earlier but Catherine had told Agnes to send them away, refusing even to lay eyes on them. So it was apparently only Agnes who supported Catherine, as I was well hidden behind the curtains of the big bed. Nevertheless, out of habit, I still dropped to my knees at Queen Isabeau’s arrival. The Queen seated herself comfortably in Catherine’s canopied chair, signalling that Catherine, Agnes and the Baroness Hochfeld should dispose themselves on stools, which they did.