Catherine: One Love is Enough (Catherine Series Book 1) (21 page)

‘Exactly. Well, if you still want them, they are yours.’

‘Mine?’

Had Uncle Mathieu gone mad all of a sudden? Why should a man as important as Garin de Brazey suddenly take it into his head to make such a costly gift to the niece of one of his tradesmen? Catherine looked from her uncle to her mother and glanced rapidly about the familiar room as if to reassure herself that this was not all a dream. Both of them were watching closely for her reactions.

‘But … why?’ Catherine asked. Mathieu turned and walked across to the window, looked out, pulled a leaf off the basil that was planted in a pot on the windowsill and then walked back to his niece.

‘Because Messire Garin has done us the honour of asking for your hand in marriage. I went to see him yesterday and he outlined his proposition to me. I must say I cannot see anything against it. It is a great honour, as I told him. A little unexpected, perhaps, but still a great honour!’

‘Now, now,’ Jacquette interrupted. ‘Don’t try to influence the child.’

‘I am not trying to influence her,’ Mathieu said impatiently. ‘I am by no means certain myself that this marriage is altogether desirable. I find it a bit worrying, as a matter of fact. All I said was that it is a great honour, and that’s neither more nor less than the truth. What do you think, my child?’

The girl was dumbstruck. After all, it was a pretty astonishing piece of news! All of a sudden, since the day before, de Brazey seemed absolutely determined to enter her life. She was too fond of getting to the bottom of things not to put some more questions to Mathieu.

‘Why does Messire Garin wish to marry me?’ she asked.

‘He loves you, apparently,’ said Mathieu, shrugging his shoulders. ‘There’s nothing strange in that. He told me he had never seen a more beautiful girl, and I know there’s more than one man of a like mind. Well, what shall I tell him?’

Once more Jacquette interrupted.

‘You are going too fast, Mathieu! All this must have come as a complete surprise, and a shock to the poor child! You must give her time to get used to the idea …’

Get used to it? Oh yes, it would certainly take some getting used to! In the mirror of her memory, Catherine saw Garin de Brazey’s reflection; his cold face, single eye and impressive, almost frigid manner. He was like a figure in a tapestry suddenly come to life. One cannot marry a figure in a tapestry.

‘I appreciate the honour he has done me,’ said Catherine quickly, ‘but I would like Messire de Brazey to know that I have no wish to get married. I don’t love him, you see … but there is no need to tell him that.’

‘You refuse him?’ Mathieu was flabbergasted. He had been expecting surprise, disbelief, perhaps even a little excitement. A proposal of marriage from such a rich, powerful man would surely overwhelm a shy young maiden with surprise and delight. But that such an offer should be rejected so positively and spiritedly was enough to appal anyone.

Catherine, who was now sat by her mother, holding her hand, seemed neither overwhelmed nor particularly moved. Her lovely, candid eyes were quite untroubled and clear, and her voice was quiet, even as she replied, gently:

‘Of course I refuse! I have always refused all the other people who wanted to marry me, because I didn’t love them. I don’t love Messire de Brazey any more than them, so naturally I shall refuse him too.’

This faultless logic did not seem to impress Mathieu, whose face darkened. The deep line between his brows grew deeper still. He paused for a moment, then added:

‘Has it occurred to you that you would be the richest, most beautifully-dressed woman in Dijon? You would live in a magnificent house, you would have any number of those fine clothes you dream of, jewels fit for a queen, servants, you would go to Court –’

‘– and,’ Catherine interrupted, ‘I would have to sleep every night beside a man I don’t love, who repels me even. No, Uncle, I can’t accept such an offer. The answer is no.’

‘Unfortunately,’ said Mathieu, not looking at his niece, ‘you have no choice in the matter. You must marry Garin de Brazey. It is an order.’

At these words, Catherine’s admirable composure vanished. She leapt up to face her Uncle, bursting with a rage that made her eyes flash and her cheeks pink.

‘An order? And from whom, may I ask?’

‘From the Duke himself. Read this …’

From a casket on the table, Mathieu Gautherin took a large parchment scroll with the ducal arms on it, and handed it to the girl.

‘Garin de Brazey gave me this at the same time as he formally asked for your hand in marriage. You will be the Dame de Brazey before the summer is out.’

Catherine spent the rest of the day locked in her room. No-one disturbed her there. Uncle Mathieu had given orders for her to be left alone, after the wild and furious outburst with which she had greeted the news of the ducal edict. Even Sara had disappeared to the mysterious place where she went from time to time, without warning or explanation. Catherine sat on her bed, her hands clasped in her lap, and thought over what had happened, with only Gedeon to keep her company. The parrot, possibly realising instinctively that his mistress was going through some crisis or other, was silent. Head on his breast, eyes half closed, the bird seemed to be asleep on his perch, and made a brilliant splash of colour against the bare wall of the room.

The fury she had felt a few hours earlier had abated somewhat, but Catherine still seethed with rebellious thoughts. She had believed that the Duke thought well of her and wished to be kind to her, but then he did an extraordinary, incomprehensible thing like this: marrying her off to Garin de Brazey, a man whom she not only did not love, but barely knew. And the way he had gone about it disgusted her. Did Philippe think she was some chattel of which he could dispose at will? She was not even a subject of his, and she had said as much to Mathieu.

‘Monseigneur Philippe is not my liege lord. I don’t have to obey him, and I shan’t!’

‘That would mean ruin and prison for all of us … or perhaps worse. You forget that I am a subject of the Duke’s, and a loyal one. You are my niece and you live under my roof. Therefore you are a vassal of his, whether you like it or not …’

It was unanswerable. Catherine, angry as she was, was well aware of this, but she could not resign herself to being delivered, bound hand and foot as it were, into the Treasurer’s hands – she, Catherine, the girl who till then had always managed to keep out of men’s clutches, and who had sworn to continue doing so. There had been Arnaud, of course, and her bittersweet encounter with him. But, given that happiness with him was denied to her forever, she had made a vow on the journey back from Flanders: she would never belong to anyone but that fiercely tender man who had so swiftly ravished her heart, and so nearly her body too.

Other men’s faces flashed through Catherine’s fevered mind: Garin, with the sombre black bandage over his eye; the young Captain de Roussay, so desperately in love with her that he might, at a pinch, be prepared to risk a rash enterprise on her behalf. For a moment Catherine considered eloping with the young soldier. Jacques, she was sure, would snatch at the chance, even at the risk of incurring the Duke’s anger. That would be an infallible way of escaping de Brazey. But, once in de Roussay’s power, she would be obliged to grant him the reward that he would be expecting and that was already consuming him with hopeless desire. Catherine had no more wish to belong to de Roussay than to de Brazey. In either case it would mean yielding to a man other than Arnaud.

Then another face rose up before her – Barnaby’s! The cleverest man in the world at getting out of difficult situations! Had he not smuggled her out of a besieged Paris, rescued Loyse from Caboche, and escorted them safely to Dijon across country devastated by war and swarming with ferocious gangs of mercenaries and bandits? He was a man who could perform miracles.

The upshot of her long, solitary hours of thought was that Catherine decided to pay Barnaby a visit. It was no use waiting till he decided to call on his respectable bourgeois friends. There was no time to lose.

They did not see much of Barnaby at the quiet house in the Rue de Griffon, mainly because it
was
so quiet. Despite his advancing years, the elderly vendor of fake relics still liked to live as dangerously as he always had. He would not consider leaving his own strange, disturbing, but vivid and colourful world. He would put in an appearance from time to time, shambling, sarcastic, nonchalant, carrying off his filthy rags with kingly arrogance. He would stretch out his long legs first in front of the blazing fire and then, later on, under Mathieu’s abundantly-stocked table. Mathieu, who was fond of him without quite knowing why, never failed to invite him to stay for a meal.

Barnaby would stay for several hours, chatting with Mathieu about this and that. He invariably knew what was happening throughout the length and breadth of the duchy and was often able to give the merchant information that proved of considerable use to him in his business – such as news of the arrival of a Genoese or Venetian boat at Damme, or of a caravan of Russian fur-dealers at Chalons. He also knew all the court gossip, the names of the Duke Philippe’s mistresses and exactly how many times the Dowager Duchess had lost her temper that week. Then he would take his leave, pinch Catherine’s cheek, gravely salute Jacquette and Loyse, and return to his nocturnal way of life. Both Mathieu and Catherine were well aware that Barnaby was one of the right-hand men of the sinister Jacquot-de-la-Mer, the Cockleshell King, but neither of them mentioned the fact in public, and when, as sometimes happened, Loyse’s sharp tongue let slip some reference to their friend’s rather undesirable profession, they would both hurriedly tell her to keep quiet.

Toward evening, Jacquette, worried by Catherine’s silence and long seclusion in her room, brought her up a bowl of soup, some slices of cold beef and a pitcher of milk. The girl had eaten nothing since morning. She thanked her mother sweetly, and to please her took a little soup, ate a slice of beef and drank a sip of milk, although she had absolutely no appetite. But it did her good. Almost at once she felt her spirits reviving, her mind seemed clearer and her body more relaxed.

‘You mustn’t take it so hard, sweetheart,’ said Jacquette, smiling at her. ‘This offer of marriage is really rather a good thing when you think about it. A lot of girls will envy you, and not a few grand ladies too. And you may find that Messire Garin improves on closer acquaintance. He is not bad-looking. You may well grow to love him, and whatever happens you will be spoiled and pampered …’

The good woman’s eyes strayed toward the bundle of shimmering cloth that Mathieu had ordered be taken to his niece as a tempting reminder of the good fortune that awaited her. Catherine had tossed it contemptuously onto a chest in the farthest, darkest corner of the room. Jacquette’s tone, both humble and tremulous, upset the girl, and she jumped up and embraced her mother.

‘Don’t worry about me, Maman … It will all be all right, and, as you say, everything may come right of its own accord.’

Completely misunderstanding the drift of Catherine’s remarks, Jacquette went back to the kitchen feeling greatly comforted, and reported to her brother that the child was growing more amenable and no longer refused quite so emphatically and categorically.

Nothing, however, was farther from Catherine’s mind than surrender. She had simply wished to allay her mother’s fears and give herself more scope for action. When she had eaten her light meal, she went and lay down on her bed to wait for it to get dark. She heard her uncle Mathieu go out, as he did every evening, to hand over the keys of the St Nicholas Gate, which it was his responsibility to guard and maintain, to the Vicomte-Mayeur or Mayor of the town.

Soon afterwards she heard him come in and lock and bolt his own doors, and shortly after that the bell-ringers of St Jean sounded the curfew. From then on, the streets were given over to prostitution, theft, carousing and every kind of villainy.

Catherine still lay motionless on her bed. She heard the stairs creak as her uncle went up to bed, then Loyse scolding the servant girl and old Pierre humming to himself as he climbed up to his attic. Little by little silence settled over the house. Sara still had not come in. Catherine knew she would not be back before dawn, assuming she came back the next day at all.

When the only sound to be heard was Uncle Mathieu’s smothered snoring, Catherine slipped out of bed, pulled on a brown dress she had chosen specially for the purpose, braided her hair tightly and covered it with a close-fitting hood. Then, throwing round herself a loose cape that completely hid her figure, she crept down the stairs. She knew from long experience how to descend them without making the steps creak, and also how to slip the bolts and turn the keys in the locks without making a sound, thanks partly to Sara’s careful oiling of them from time to time. A few minutes later she was out in the street.

6

The Tavern Of Jacquot-De-La-Mer

Catherine was not easily frightened, and besides, it was a brilliantly clear night. The sky was velvety black and sprinkled with stars that sparkled as brightly as the diamonds on the Black Madonna’s coat. Nevertheless, it took some courage to walk deliberately into the town’s most disreputable district, where even the Watch dared not go.

‘If you ever need me,’ Barnaby had once secretly confided to her, ‘you can find me at the bawdy house. It belongs to one Jacquot-de-la-Mer, who is a Sergeant of the Mairie. He is also the chief of all us beggars and vagabonds. I am telling you this because I know you are no chatterbox and because I believe the day may come when you will need help. If I am not there, you can send someone to find me at the hostelry of the Porte d’Ouche, where I also go from time to time, though not so often.’

Catherine had no idea what a bawdy house was until she mentioned the subject to Sara one day. The gypsy woman believed in calling a spade a spade and maintained that truth is a hundred times better than hypocrisy in the education of young girls.

‘A bawdy house,’ she explained, ‘is a house where silly girls sell their bodies to men for money.’

At the time, Catherine had felt that this told her everything she needed to know about the matter, but now she thought of Sara’s words again as she skirted along as close as possible to the double-gabled houses of the Rue de Griffon, trying to conceal herself in the dark shadows under the eaves and to avoid the centre of the narrow, twisting street where there was more light.

When she reached the Place de la Sainte Chapelle she plucked up her courage and ran straight across it as far as the Cross that stood in the middle, where she paused for breath. The Cross flung a long shadow across the square, flanked on one side by St John and on the other by Mary Magdalene, their stone faces set in eternal contemplation of the Divine Agony. Having got her breath back, Catherine edged round the bastions of the ducal palace. It was reassuringly dark in the shadow of its towers, but she had to be on the lookout for the archers on watch, whom she could just distinguish by the faint gleam of their helmets. Starting to run again, she darted down the Rue des Forges, where the blacksmiths’ wretched hovels still gave out a smell of burning wood, scorched leather and armour grease. This street was extraordinarily narrow, and it was famous for the number of fires that began there, started by the blazing fires in the forges.

On the doorstep in front of each house stood a large leather bucket that was used to fetch water up in case of fire. Catherine knew this, but in her hurry and anxiety she forgot about the buckets, tripped over one, crashed down on the ground and swore like a trooper. Swearing was not a habit of hers, but this once she found it really eased the pain.

At the spot where the narrow alley joined the Bourg, the town’s largest and busiest commercial street, it widened out to form a little square, just big enough to accommodate a pillory comfortably. There was no-one in it at the moment, but it was not an agreeable sight. Catherine looked the other way and was about to hurry on when she felt someone grab her by the corner of her cape and screamed. A shapeless shadow emerged from a dark corner, grunted and then burst out laughing, while a pair of hands grabbed her round the waist under her cape.

Catherine was almost paralysed by fright, but she had a reflex of self-defence. Twisting her supple waist, she wriggled like an eel right out of the clumsy hands that were trying to hang on to her. Leaving her cape behind, she ran blindly on as fast as she could, trying to master her terror and keep her head. She must reach the Beggar King’s tavern!

But she could not help hearing that someone was after her. Close behind she heard the dull thud of running bare feet and the panting of the man in pursuit. The night was growing blacker, and the labyrinth of streets through which she ran seemed to have become impenetrably dark. She choked on the stench of open sewers, old rubbish and bad meat that rose up and almost made her sick. In those days no-one troubled to remove slops and rubbish until there was so much that it got in the way of passers-by. Then they would throw whatever the cats and dogs rejected into the Ouche or the Suzon.

In the shadow of a doorway a bundle of rags moved and stirred, and Catherine was horrified to see another shadow fling itself after her with a crazy giggle. A nameless horror invaded her. She forbade herself to turn back and tried desperately to run faster, but in her blind haste she did not look where she was going. She tripped against a pile of rubbish from which a smell of rotten fish rose up, flung up her hands to support herself, felt the damp stones of a wall in front and leant against it, faint with fear, breathless, eyes closed. Her pursuers were upon her …

She felt the same hands that had seized her before grab her once more round the waist. They began to squeeze and feel her eagerly. A sour smell reached her nostrils. The man must have been very tall, because he blocked out the sky behind.

‘Now then,’ came a hoarse whisper in her ear, ‘what’s all the hurry about? Where are we rushing off to in such a state? A lover’s tryst?’

As soon as the man spoke he lost his terrifying ghostly quality, and this rallied Catherine’s spirits a little.

‘Yes,’ she stammered faintly. ‘That’s it – a tryst!’

‘Your tryst can wait – I can’t. You smell young, and clean … You must be a dainty morsel indeed! Mmm! Your skin is soft!’

Feeling sick with revulsion, Catherine stood helpless as the man’s hands fumbled about her bodice, pausing when they reached her throat and shoulders just at the point where her tucked collar ended. The man’s breath stank obscenely of cheap, rancid wine and decaying teeth, and his skin felt as hard as if it had been burned. His hands groped for the neckline of her dress, caught hold of it, and were just about to rip it open when a squeaky voice, which appeared to issue from the earth beneath them, piped up nasally:

‘Slowly there, my friend! I saw her too, remember! Fair’s fair!’

The giant who had hold of Catherine relaxed his grasp slightly in his astonishment and turned round. The bundle of rags that Catherine had seen moving in the doorway now stood behind him, a short, squat, tattered shape in the darkness, hung with fluttering rags. Catherine felt her assailant’s muscles tighten ominously. He was just about to strike out when the other man added:

‘Come now, Dimanche-l’Assommeur, don’t be nasty! You know what sort of reception you would get from Jacquot-de-la-Mer if he found you had beaten up his best friend. Let’s share the girl. I’ll wager she is a rare … morsel! As you know, I can see in the dark like a cat!’

The beggar grunted again, but did not protest. Instead he held his captive all the tighter and said:

‘Oh, it’s you, is it? Be on your way, Jehan des Écus! Girls are not for the likes of you!’

The bundle of rags did not seem to find this argument convincing. His laugh sounded again, grating and sinister, reminding the girl irresistibly of the noise made by a gibbet’s creaking, rusty chains.

‘That’s what you think! I may have boils and a hump back, but I’m as good as the next man in bed. Take the girl to the house with the gable and we’ll strip her clothes under the porch. Jacquot-de-la-Mer always says you can’t tell what a girl’s like while she has a stitch on her back … Come on now!’

His voice had to it the authoritative ring of a man who is accustomed to being obeyed. And the man called Dimanche-l’Assommeur would probably not take long to be persuaded.

But, luckily, Jehan des Écus had referred to the Beggar King twice over, and the familiar name had roused Catherine out of her terror. She decided to play her trump card. In any event, nothing could be worse than the fate that awaited her at the hands of these two monsters.

‘You speak of Jacquot-de-la-Mer,’ she said in a voice that she tried to keep steady. ‘It is he whom I am on my way to see, and you are … keeping me waiting.’

Instantly the giant’s paw loosened its hold, and the other man came closer for a better look. With an astonishingly powerful grasp for such a twisted fellow, he pulled her free of Dimanche’s hands.

‘What do you want with Jacquot? You aren’t one of his usual girls. They are all at work now!’

‘I have to see him,’ Catherine cried, almost in tears. ‘It’s very important! If you are his men you must take me to him, please!’ There was a moment’s silence. Then Jehan des Écus drew a sigh of real regret.

‘That puts things in quite a different light,’ he said. ‘We can’t stop you if you are on your way to see Jacquot. But it’s a bloody shame! Come on, Dimanche, pull yourself together. We’ve got to escort this little virgin … You are a virgin, ain’t you? You can always tell … If you weren’t you wouldn’t have made such a fuss about giving two lusty beggars a bit of fun.’

Too shaken to speak as yet, Catherine started off again, walking between the two men who were still faceless shadows to her. She was no longer afraid. She realised obscurely that she was quite safe as far as the chief’s house, and that these two bandits constituted a sort of bodyguard. The giant’s huge shadow kept her company on one side, while the other man limped painfully along, stumbling over the uneven cobbles, on the other.

The alley began sloping downhill, plunged between two houses and became a sort of tunnel between two high-walled gardens. At the far end of the lane, a fantastic-looking construction came into sight, which proved, when they drew closer, to be formed by two tumbledown houses. A light shone behind one of the shutters in defiance of the curfew. They could hear a woman’s voice singing, or rather chanting, a strange dirge in a foreign tongue.

As they drew nearer to the house the song became more distinct. At times the singer’s voice soared up to an almost unbearably high note, and held it for a moment before once more taking up the strange, harsh melody. At her side, Catherine heard Jehan des Écus give his peculiar creaking laugh.

‘Ha, ha! Jacquot is having a party. Good, good!’

When they reached the house, a shadow emerged from the doorway. Catherine saw an axe-blade gleam.

‘The password?’ said a rough voice.

‘Hard and fast!’ said Jehan des Écus.

‘All right. You may go in.’

The door swung open, revealing the interior of Jacquot-de-la-Mer’s famous tavern, meeting-place for the underworld of Dijon. The good citizens of the town spoke of it only in hushed voices, crossing themselves with pious horror. It was hard to understand at first just why the Vicomte-Mayeur should allow such a den of iniquity to survive. Any of the respectable ladies of Dijon would have fainted on the spot had they known that their worthy husbands sometimes sneaked off to the forbidden house to purchase the charms of some fine-looking wench. But Jacquot knew how to pick his girls, and his house could stand comparison with the most celebrated stews of the day. As a good businessman, he believed before everything in keeping his clients happy …

At first glance Catherine registered only a kaleidoscopic pattern of vivid colours. A babble of voices, laughter and music rose up to meet her, but this soon died away as the patrons gazed open-mouthed at the strange spectacle presented by the beautiful young woman, white-faced and hair flowing untidily, and her two sinister companions, posted one on either side. Meanwhile Catherine took a closer look round this huge, low-vaulted chamber, accessed via a short flight of descending steps. At the far end of the room there was a huge chimney in which three whole sheep at once were slowly rotating on spits. There were benches and large tables of grease-stained wood stood about, all crowded. A wooden staircase spiralled up to the roof at the far end of the room. The drinkers were a motley collection. There were drunken soldiers, and round-eyed youths, students or apprentices who had come to the tavern to see a bit of low life. Two old crones supervised the food cooking on the hearth. And all round the room, on the benches, on the clients’ laps, or even sat on the tables amidst the pools of spilt wine and the pewter mugs, there were scores of girls, most of them with their bodices half unlaced, some of them completely naked. Their bodies made pale highlights in the dark, smoky atmosphere. The light from tapers and the blazing fire flickered over pale skins, satiny-textured dark ones, and then over the red, flushed faces of the drunken men, glowing as richly as rubies in the sun.

The momentary astonishment caused by their sudden entrance passed. The bacchanal was in full swing again before Catherine and her escort had reached the bottom of the steps. The dancing and shouting started up again. A girl with a brown body and large breasts climbed up onto a table and danced there, writhing and twisting suggestively in the midst of a forest of outstretched hands. For a horrified moment Catherine thought she must have stumbled into hell, and closed her eyes.

Memories of similar scenes, dredged up from the depths of her mind, paraded before her. They were of the orgies she had witnessed in the Grande Cour des Miracles, when she had hidden in a corner of Barnaby’s old shack and peeped out of a skylight. Such sights had merely surprised and vaguely disturbed the child she was then. But now she was amazed and disgusted to find that they excited a strange, dubious pleasure in her.

The woman who had been singing a little earlier on now began another song, and at the harsh, low, nostalgic sound of her voice Catherine’s eyes flew open again. This woman, wearing a flame-coloured satin dress and gold spangles in her hair, sat on the stairs at the far end of the room with a group of men around her. A lute player accompanied her, leaning toward her as she sang. She sang with her eyes closed, her hands clasped about her knees, and Catherine gave a barely perceptible start of surprise as she recognised her. This was indeed a night of discoveries. The woman was Sara …