Catherine: One Love is Enough (Catherine Series Book 1) (15 page)

Proud as a queen in her sables, Catherine, ignoring the mild weather, took her seat on her mule. The merchant’s little baggage-train followed behind de Roussay’s charger as far as the city walls. At St Catherine’s Gate, which de Roussay had commanded be opened in the name of the Duke, he parted with Catherine with a brief word of farewell. But as he bowed to the girl, he murmured a hasty ‘Till we meet again.’ This made her smile, but she did not reply. It would have been pointless. Now that he knew she came from Dijon, de Roussay seemed to be in a walking dream.

It was not to look at him again that Catherine turned round before passing through the heavily fortified gate. It was just to conjure up for a second the tall, thin, black silhouette of Philippe, and his pale face and burning eyes as he had bent to kiss her neck. For the first time in her life, Catherine had to admit that a man might have power over her. He intrigued and disturbed her all at once. The love of such a man should give some value to one’s life – enough to make it worth living, perhaps …

Once they had gone through the St Catherine Gate she did not turn back. She adjusted her mule’s step to that of Mathieu’s and let herself be lulled by its trotting motion. On either side, flat pasturelands, intersected by canals, stretched to the horizon, interrupted here and there by clumps of trees or the weird silhouette of a windmill. Some sea birds, attracted by the brilliant moonlight, so bright that it seemed almost like day, streaked across the starry sky.

Catherine gleefully inhaled the salt air that a sea wind brought to her nostrils. She threw the hood back on her shoulders and unfastened her coat. It was a familiar horizon to which this road, deeply rutted by cartwheels, led, but lately it seemed to have taken on new colours.

As dawn broke, Courtrai steeple rose from the flat countryside.

‘We will stop at the Crock of Gold inn,’ said Mathieu, who had not opened his mouth once till then, for the good reason that he had been sound asleep on his mule. ‘I am exhausted. We can stay till tomorrow. I have business to do with the merchants of this town.’

Catherine was sleepy. She saw nothing against this plan.

On leaving Courtrai, Mathieu Gautherin decided to progress their journey with all speed. He felt that they had wasted enough time, and he was eager to see the walls of Dijon again, with the towers of St Benigne and the slopes of Marsannay where he had a vineyard. Not that he had any fears for his house, which remained in the care of his sister, Jacquette, his niece, Loyse, and that Sara whom they had brought with them from Paris and whom Mathieu could not get used to even after all these years. Catherine, who was highly amused by this attitude of her uncle’s, insisted that he was not only afraid of Sara, but secretly in love with her, and it was this that he could not forgive.

He kicked his mule, pulled his hood well down and set off as though the Devil himself were at his heels. Catherine trotted along beside him, and the three valets rode behind them, two side by side and the third guarding the rear of the caravan. They had now left the estates of the Duke of Burgundy. Soon they would pass through those belonging to the Bishop of Cambrai and enter the property of the Comte de Vermandois, a fervent partisan of the Dauphin Charles. It would be as well not to delay at that point. It was the good merchant’s eagerness to get that part of the journey behind him that explained his urgency.

They were at present travelling beside the upper reaches of the Escaut river toward Saint-Quentin. The road, winding along beside the water, was a pleasant one between green hills, their soft curves dotted with white sheep. A scene that made it hard even to think of war.

Yet from time to time they passed through a ravaged village, burnt to its foundations and with only a few tormented beams left standing on the charred earth in eloquent testimony that this was not a peaceful country. And sometimes Catherine would have to look away as they passed a tree on which a corpse hung, like a monstrous fruit, among the tender new leaves.

The day was drawing to a close, and with the coming of twilight, great clouds, dark as ink, were massing above the grassy summits. Catherine was suddenly struck by the chill in the air and shivered.

‘There is going to be a storm,’ said Uncle Mathieu, who had been studying the horizon for a moment. ‘The best thing would be to put up at the next inn. Let us hurry. If my memory serves me right, there is one where this road crosses the one to Peronne.’

The mules, vigorously kicked in the sides, started to gallop just as the first drops of rain fell on the travellers. A moment later Catherine stopped dead, obliging her uncle to follow suit.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ he scolded.

The girl calmly got off her mule, folded her coat and walked over to the baggage-mule carrying her travelling coffer.

‘I don’t want my coat to get spoilt. The rain would ruin it.’

‘You would rather we all got a soaking then? If you had listened to me … but you always do just what you like! Night is falling, and so is the rain. I detest this sort of thing, it plays havoc with my rheumatism!’

Helped by Pierre, the oldest valet, who had always had a soft spot for her, Catherine implacably folded her coat away and took out another, the coarse, thick, black material of which was sufficient protection against the heaviest downpour. She wrapped it round her and went back to her mule.

It was then that she noticed something out of the ordinary. At this point along the riverbank the reeds were particularly thick, and together with three large, gnarled willows formed a sort of clearing or thicket protected still further by brambles. Something seemed to gleam strangely in the centre of this clearing, something black. Catherine ran down the riverbank toward the clearing.

‘Well, what is it now?’ Mathieu complained loudly. ‘The rain is coming down with a vengeance. I don’t know if you have noticed …’

But Catherine wasn’t listening. When she parted the reeds and leaves she discovered a man’s body, motionless and showing no signs of life, lying face down among the brambles. It was by no means unusual to find a body by the wayside in those troubled times, but the odd thing about this one was that it was not some humble peasant or other, but clearly a man of rank, a knight no less. This was evident from the black steel armour that covered him from head to foot, and that was now streaming with water, and from the sparrow-hawk emblem on his helmet. The man must have dragged himself out of the water. This was indicated by a greasy mark on the bank and the way his bare hands clutched at a bramble he must have used to pull himself up.

Catherine did not dare touch anything, but stood looking disconcertedly at the large body lying at her feet. How had the knight met his death? There was no sign of a struggle or of a horse’s hoof-marks. His armour covered him so completely that the only part of him that was visible was his bleeding hands, both long and strong, with fine brown skin. But what struck Catherine about them was that the blood was still flowing. It occurred to her suddenly that he might not be dead after all. She knelt beside him and tried to turn him over, but he was much too heavy for her.

She was just about to call for help when Mathieu, who had got tired of wasting his breath scolding her, climbed off his mule and came to find out what was happening.

‘By the Holy Virgin, what have we here?’ he cried, amazed by the sight that met his eyes.

‘A knight-at-arms, as you see. Help me turn him over. I think he is still alive …’

As if to prove it, the man in armour groaned faintly. She gave a triumphant cry.

‘He’s alive! Hey there, Pierre! Petitjean and Amiel! Come here!’

The three valets came running. Between them they made short work of lifting up the wounded knight, despite his considerable stature and the weight of his steel carapace, and a moment later they had him stretched out in the soft grass by the side of the road. Pierre went off to look for Catherine’s box of ointments, and Amiel struck a flint to light a torch with. Night had almost fallen and it was becoming impossible to see anything.

The rain was not falling very heavily, but still sufficiently so to give the valet some trouble lighting the torch. To complicate matters, a wind was rising, but at last the torch took fire, reflecting redly off the wet armour. Stretched out thus on the grass, with his hands the only pale things visible, the dark knight looked like a giant carved out of basalt. Uncle Mathieu, forgetting his rheumatism, sat on the grass and took the helmeted head on his lap to try to prise open the visor. This proved difficult, because it had evidently been struck repeatedly and the hinge had jammed shut. Leaning over him, Catherine grew more impatient every moment, particularly as the wounded man was now groaning almost incessantly.

‘Hurry,’ she whispered. ‘He must be suffocating in that steel cage.’

‘I’m doing what I can. It isn’t all that easy …’

The visor did seem to be firmly stuck. Mathieu was sweating with effort. Seeing this, old Pierre drew his knife and with infinite care inserted the point into the rivet that acted as a hinge. He bore down on the knife handle, the rivet gave, and the visor opened.

‘Bring your torch,’ Catherine ordered.

No sooner had the flickering light fallen on the face, with its closed eyes, than Catherine fell back with a scream, dropping the box of ointments.

‘It can’t be,’ she stammered, suddenly white to the lips. ‘It can’t be!’

‘What’s the matter with you?’ Mathieu asked her in surprise.

Catherine cast a desperate look at her uncle. The emotion that gripped her was so powerful that it left her almost bereft of speech.

‘Yes! No! … I don’t know!’

‘Are you mad? What’s all the mystery about? You would do better to help me get this helmet off instead of half passing out like that. He’s bleeding.’

‘I can’t – not just yet! Help my uncle, Pierre!’

The old servitor, looking anxiously from the girl to the wounded man, hastened to do so. Catherine sat down close by, pressing her trembling hands together. Huge-eyed, she watched her uncle and Pierre trying to uncover the head and face that was the very face of Michel de Montsalvy.

Shivering, huddling deeper into the coat that was already sodden with rain, the girl saw the years melt away. The scenes that had brought her to death’s door all those years before in Paris now rose again before her with appalling clarity. Michel struggling with the butchers in the sumptuous apartments of the Hôtel de Guyenne. Michel, hands tied behind his back, proudly treading his way to the gallows amid the insults of the mob. Michel lying in the dark cellar gently describing his native region of France to an avidly listening little girl … Michel had closed his eyes at one point, as though to remember it more clearly, and the wounded man’s face, as it appeared framed in the black helmet, was strikingly reminiscent of his at that precise moment … With all her might Catherine struggled to ward off the hideous images that crowded in on her, especially that of Michel’s handsome face battered, swollen and smeared with blood and dust. The knight’s resemblance to him was extraordinary. The girl leant forward to get a better look and convince herself that she was not dreaming. But no, the face was identical; pale, impassive, the darkened eyelids with their thick fringe of lashes tight closed over the unknown eyes. A thin trickle of blood ran down his forehead and over his cheek as far as the corner of his tightly closed lips. From time to time his features tightened in a spasm of pain.

‘Michel,’ Catherine murmured in spite of herself. ‘It isn’t you … It can’t be you …’

It was not he. But the resemblance was so exact that she was not convinced until Mathieu and Pierre finally got the helmet off. Instead of the golden locks that Catherine remembered so clearly, the hair that finally appeared was black as night, thick, straight and untidy. This reassured her, though in fact the different coloured hair did not in any way lessen the resemblance. Except perhaps that this face was, if anything, even more beautiful than Michel’s. And harder.

‘We can’t leave him here,’ said Pierre. ‘We are all wet through, and the young mistress is not too well either, by the sound of things.’ He had noticed Catherine’s teeth chattering – something of which she herself seemed oblivious. ‘We can carry him between the four of us as far as the inn.’

‘He is far too heavy with all this weight of armour,’ said Mathieu.

They rapidly removed the armour. Then they wrapped the young man in coats, and using poles and rope constructed a sort of stretcher, on which they laid him. Catherine had recovered somewhat from the shock she had received, and now she stanched the blood, which was flowing from a scalp wound, and placed a dressing over it, held in place by a scarf.

While this was going on, the wounded man did not once open his eyes, but he groaned when they took off his armour, and again when they lifted him onto the improvised stretcher.

‘One of his legs must be broken,’ said Pierre, probing the swollen limb with his skilful old fingers.

When they set off once more, Catherine refused to climb back onto her mule. She wanted to walk beside the stretcher. One of the man’s hands lay on his breast, outside the covers. It drew her like a magnet, and it was not long before she succumbed to the temptation to hold it in her own. It was cold and damp, and drops of blood still stood out along the deep scratches. Catherine carefully wiped it with her handkerchief and then kept it in hers. Between her soft palms the large masculine hand soon grew warm again.