Catherine: One Love is Enough (Catherine Series Book 1) (23 page)

‘They sound like an excellent bodyguard,’ Barnaby approved. ‘I’ll tell them to see you home again. Don’t worry, you can trust them now that it is I who am appointing them your guardian angels.’

Sure enough, a few minutes later Catherine left Jacquot’s tavern with the same pair of ruffians as companions, one on either side of her. She left Sara asleep on the stairs. Her return was as peaceful as her journey there had been eventful. Whenever a frightening shadow appeared, one or other of them would murmur a few words in the beggars’ incomprehensible argot, and the shadow would melt back into the darkness.

The wind was rising, and a storm seemed to be in the offing by the time the two beggars took their leave of their protégée at the top of the Rue de Griffon. Mathieu’s house was visible from there and Catherine no longer felt afraid. Besides, she was now on such good terms with her ferocious mentors that she was able to bid them farewell sweetly. Jehan des Écus spoke up on behalf of them both. He seemed to be the brains of that odd team, while Dimanche provided the brute strength.

‘I generally beg outside the door of St Benigne,’ he said. ‘You will always find me there should you need me. You are Barnaby’s friend already, and you shall be mine too if you so wish.’

His hoarse, creaking voice took on strangely gentle modulations during this little speech, and this finished the job of wiping away any bad memories of their first encounter that evening. She knew that an offer of friendship from a beggar is always sincere, since nothing obliges him to make it, just as a threat from him should never be taken lightly.

The front door barely squeaked as Catherine pushed it open. She ran upstairs without making a sound and got into bed. Uncle Mathieu was still snoring.

What remained of the night was too short for Catherine to get her full ration of sleep. She did not hear Notre-Dame ring out the end of the curfew and she ignored Loyse’s brusque shaking, intended to get her up in time for Mass. Loyse finally departed alone in a fury, vanquished by her sister’s profound weariness and predicting her eternal damnation.

Catherine, oblivious of everything but the downy comfort of her pillow, dropped straight off to sleep again.

It was close on nine o’clock when she finally went downstairs to the kitchen. The atmosphere in there was stormy. Jacquette was ironing the family’s clothes on a trestle table by the hearth, using a hollow flat-iron in which from time to time she put a shovelful of glowing embers. There were beads of sweat on her brow under her white linen coif, and she pursed her lips in a way Catherine knew well. Something must have displeased her. She was obviously raging inwardly. The way she attacked the linen sheet with her iron pointed to a temper kept barely under control. Loyse sat by the window with her back turned to her. She was winding thread onto a spindle, also without speaking a word. Her thin fingers twisted the flax quickly, and the thread wound around the spindle that stood beside her. Studying the expression on her face, Catherine came to the conclusion that she and her mother must have had words.

To her great astonishment she saw that Sara had returned home. The gypsy woman must have returned at daybreak. Dressed in her usual dark-blue fustian dress with a big white apron wrapped round her waist, she was busily peeling a huge basket of Brussels sprouts for soup. She was the only one who turned round when Catherine entered the room, and she winked at her knowingly. The passionate girl of the previous night slept once more deep within this strange woman, and there was not a trace of her to be seen on that familiar face. But Loyse too had seen her sister enter the room, and she whispered maliciously:

‘Bow down, slaves, here comes the high and mighty Dame de Brazey, who deigns to leave her chamber to inspect her scullions.’

‘Hold your tongue, Loyse,’ said Jacquette coldly. ‘Leave your sister alone.’

But it took more than that to silence Loyse when she had something on her mind. Dropping her spindle, she jumped up and stood in front of her sister, hands on hips and mouth twisted unpleasantly.

‘Too grand to get up at dawn now, are we? The dirty chores, the early morning Mass are for humble people like me and your mother! While you swan about putting on airs like a princess, imagining yourself already married to your one-eyed Treasurer.’

Jacquette threw her iron angrily down on the hearth. She had gone red to the roots of her still-blonde hair. But Catherine intervened before she could launch into a tirade.

‘I slept badly,’ she said with a slight shrug. ‘I stayed a little longer in bed than usual, that’s all. It isn’t a crime, and I shall work a little later tonight to make up for it.’

Turning her back on Loyse, whose contorted face distressed her, Catherine quickly embraced her mother and bent over to pick up the flat-iron she had dropped. She was just about to fill it with hot embers when Jacquette spoke up.

‘No, Catherine, you mustn’t do these chores anymore. Your fiancé doesn’t wish you to. You must start learning how to behave in your new station in life, and there isn’t too much time left as it is.’

Catherine’s temper rose instantly. ‘What do you mean? My fiancé? I haven’t accepted his proposal yet. Anyway, if he wants to marry me that much, he must take me as I am.’

‘You have absolutely no choice in the matter, my dear. A page came from the Dowager Duchess only this morning. Until your marriage you must leave this house and go and live with the Dame de Champdivers, who is married to the Duke’s Chamberlain. She will educate you to take your place in Court life, and teach you fine manners and courtly ways.’

As her mother spoke, Catherine’s rage grew. Jacquette’s red eyes betrayed her distress, and the flat tone of her mother’s voice added fuel to her fury.

‘Not another word, Maman! If Messire de Brazey wishes to marry me I can’t stop him, since it is an order from Monseigneur Philippe. But nothing will ever make me leave my own family to go and live with other people, or leave this house for a place where I shan’t feel at home and where people will look down on me. I absolutely refuse!’

Loyse’s sarcastic chuckle was the last straw for Catherine. She whipped round and confronted her furiously.

‘Stop laughing like an idiot! If you must know, the idea of this marriage makes me feel ill, and the only reason I am accepting is to spare you the consequences of a refusal. If I had only myself to think of, I should have crossed the frontier of Burgundy by now, on my way back to Paris – to our own home!’

The two sisters would probably have come to blows, as Loyse was still laughing unpleasantly, if Sara had not slipped between them. She took Catherine by the shoulders and steered her well away from her sister.

‘Calm down! You must listen to what your mother says, child. She is quite right. You only make things worse for her by taking it all so badly.’

Jacquette had in fact collapsed on the hearthstone and was sobbing with her head in her apron. Catherine could not endure seeing her mother cry, and she ran toward her.

‘Don’t cry, Maman, please! I’ll do what you want. But you can’t ask me to leave home and go and live with a lot of strangers …’

The last remark was both an entreaty and a question. Large tears rolled down Catherine’s cheeks as she buried her face in her mother’s neck. Jacquette wiped her eyes and gently stroked her younger daughter’s blonde plaits.

‘You will go to the Dame de Champdivers for my sake, Catherine. Don’t you see – Messire de Brazey will want to visit you every day, once your banns have been published, to pay his court. He can’t come here! The house isn’t worthy of him. He would be embarrassed.’

‘Too bad,’ said Catherine bitterly. ‘He can always stay at home!’

‘Now, now. He would be embarrassed, as I said, but I would be even more so! The Dame de Champdivers is elderly, and kind from what I hear, and you will not be unhappy with her. You will learn suitable manners. And besides,’ Jacquette added sadly, forcing a smile, ‘you will soon have to leave this house for your husband’s in any case. This will act as a transitional stage, and then, when you move to Garin de Brazey’s house, you won’t feel quite so lost. Anyway, there is nothing to stop you from coming here as often as you like.’

Catherine listened in despair as her mother recited what appeared to be a well-learnt lesson. Uncle Mathieu must have harangued her for hours to reduce her to this state of hopeless resignation. But it was pointless arguing with Jacquette in her present condition. And if Barnaby came to her assistance, as she hoped he would, all this would soon be no more than a bad dream. She capitulated.

‘Very well then, I’ll go to the Dame de Champdivers. On one condition …’

‘What is that?’ asked Jacquette, who couldn’t decide whether she should rejoice at her daughter’s submission or lament that it had come about so rapidly.

‘That Sara comes with me.’

When she finally found herself alone with Sara that night in the family’s communal room, Catherine decided that the moment had come to put words into action. It was no longer the time for secrets and reticence, because they would have to leave the very next day for the beautiful townhouse where their future hostess lived.

Without wasting a moment, Catherine told Sara about her expedition of the previous night. Sara did not even raise an eyebrow on learning that the secret of her disappearances had been found out. She even smiled faintly, because she understood, from the tone of the girl’s voice, that she not only did not blame her, but actually rather sympathised with her.

‘Why are you telling me this now?’ she asked.

‘Because I want you to go back to Jacquot’s tonight and take a letter from me to Barnaby.’

Sara was not a woman to argue or show astonishment. Her only reaction was to take a dark cloak from her coffer and wrap it round herself.

‘Goodness!’ she exclaimed.

Catherine scribbled a few hurried words. She ended her message to Barnaby:

You must act swiftly. You are the only one who can help me, and you know how much I hate the man we spoke of.

She read the note through carefully and then, satisfied, sanded the wet ink and handed the folded paper to Sara.

‘There,’ she said. ‘And hurry.’

‘Barnaby will have your letter in a quarter of an hour. Keep the door open for me.’

Sara slipped out of the room as soundlessly as a shadow, and although Catherine strained her ears, she could not hear the lightest footstep or the faintest creak of the door. Sara seemed able to vanish into thin air at will.

Gedeon dozed on his perch with his head buried in his chest, one eye closed and the other open, watching his mistress occupying herself in an unusual fashion for this time of night. She was rummaging in chests and taking out piles of dresses. She held them up to her for a moment, then threw some on the ground and laid others on the bed.

This unexpected bustling about encouraged the bird to go through its tricks, since it was clearly not yet time to sleep. He shook himself, fluffed out his gleaming plumage, stretched out his neck and squawked:

‘God save the Duke!’

He did not get a chance to repeat the cry. One of Catherine’s discarded dresses, thrown by an unerring hand, landed on top of him, completely blinding him and half suffocating him into the bargain.

‘I hope the Duke goes to the devil – and you with him!’ the girl shouted angrily.

Sara returned toward midnight. Catherine sat up in bed waiting for her, having snuffed out all the candles.

‘Well?’ she asked.

‘Barnaby says all goes well. He will let you know at the Hôtel des Champdivers what he has decided to do … and what you will have to do too.’

7

Mother Of A Royal Favourite

A ray of blue and red sunlight flecked with gold streamed from a high stained-glass window representing St Cecilia holding a harp. It enveloped Catherine, who stood motionless in the middle of the huge room with a seamstress crouched at her feet, her mouth bristling with pins. It barely lit up the sombre garments of an elderly lady, who despite the heat of the day was dressed entirely in heavy brown velvet trimmed with marmot. She was sat bolt upright in a high-backed oak chair, supervising the fitting. Marie de Champdivers had a gentle face with delicate features, and a faded blue gaze that her double-pointed headdress of priceless Flemish lace softened prettily. But the most striking thing about her was the look of profound sadness that seemed to belie her indulgent smile. In Marie de Champdivers one sensed a woman consumed by a secret grief.

In the hands of the best seamstress in the town, the pink and silver brocade Garin de Brazey had chosen had become a queenly garment in which Catherine’s beauty blazed so brightly that her hostess felt quite uneasy. Like Barnaby, the old lady felt that such physical perfection carried more seeds of destruction with it than promises of happiness. But Catherine was looking at herself in the mirror of polished silver with such childlike delight that Madame de Champdivers took good care to keep her sombre reflections to herself. The shimmering, supple cloth that flashed like a river at sunrise fell in graceful folds from her slim waist and fanned out behind her in a short train. The dress was extremely simple. Catherine had refused even the slightest ornament, claiming that the cloth itself was ornament enough. The deeply cut neckline, in a wide V-shape, descended as far as the sash that was placed just below the bosom. The neckline revealed the silver cloth of an under-dress, on which a flower pin of pink pearls, each one perfectly round, glowed softly. This was the first costly gift from Garin to his fiancée. There were more pearls twined round Catherine’s silver cone-shaped headdress, with its swathing of pink gauze, and round her slender neck. The dress was cut low behind as well, showing her shoulder-blades. The long sleeves, however, fitted her arms closely to halfway down her hands.

Marie de Champdivers spoke up in her measured tones:

‘That fold on the right needs to be raised a bit – there, under her arm, it doesn’t hang right. That’s much better! You look dazzling, child, but one glance in the mirror must have convinced you of that!’

‘Thank you, madame,’ said Catherine, smiling and pleased despite herself.

During the month she had been living at the Champdivers’ she had felt her fears and prejudices melt away one by one. Her aristocratic mentor treated her with neither haughtiness nor sarcasm. She had received her like a young lady of noble birth, without in any way making her feel conscious of her humble origins, and Catherine for her part had found in this good and gentle woman a friend and true counsellor.

She was much less taken with the master of the house. Guillaume de Champdivers, Chamberlain to the Duke Philippe and Member of his Privy Council, was a dry, abrupt old man. His look made Catherine feel uneasy. The expression was like a horse dealer’s sizing up the points of a good filly. There was something of the trafficker in human flesh about this self-controlled, silent old man who never raised his voice and who stepped so noiselessly that he always appeared at one’s side without warning. Through Sara, Catherine had learnt of the strange origins of his considerable fortune, and how the onetime stable master to Jean-sans-Peur had risen to the position of Chamberlain and Counsellor of State. Some 15 years earlier, Guillaume de Champdivers had handed over his ravishing 15-year-old only daughter, Odette, to his master, Duke Jean. She was not destined for the Duke himself, but to become the mistress, keeper, ever-vigilant companion and also, it must be admitted, spy, to the unfortunate King Charles VI, who was ravaged by insanity. Thus, in a scandalous piece of horse-trading, quite devoid of pity or shame, the chaste, gentle girl had been delivered to an unhappy lunatic whose former good looks had been gradually disintegrating in filth and vermin. For as long as his bouts of madness lasted, sometimes for weeks or even months on end, no-one could persuade him even to let himself be washed.

But then, just as Jean-sans-Peur was congratulating himself on having got the King’s weak mind firmly under his control, he found that he had in fact brought him the one thing that could soften and sweeten the royal sufferings: a woman’s tenderness. Odette had loved her unfortunate prince and had become a guardian angel to him, the gentle, patient, loving fairy whom nothing could dishearten. A little girl was born of this strange love affair. The King had recognised her as his daughter. She was given the name de Valois. And the people of Paris, who hated their unworthy ruler, the fat Isabeau, were not mistaken, in their simple common sense, in their summing-up of Odette. Spontaneously, and tenderly, they had christened her ‘The Little Queen’.

Nevertheless, deep in the heart of Marie de Champdivers, bereft of her only child for 15 years, a wound remained that had never healed, though she never displayed it in any way, and hid beneath a smile the bitterness she felt toward her husband.

Thus, enlightened by Sara, Catherine had spontaneously found a place in her heart for the old lady without in the least suspecting what deep compassion she inspired in return. Marie de Champdivers knew too much about Court life and about men in general not to have understood, the moment she first laid eyes on Catherine, that her task was to form not so much a fitting wife for Garin de Brazey as a worthy mistress for Philippe of Burgundy.

As Sara entered the room, with a tray balanced on one arm, the seamstress got to her feet and stood back some distance to admire her handiwork better.

‘If Maître Garin isn’t satisfied,’ she said with a broad smile, ‘then he must truly be a hard man to please! By the Holy Mother of God, did anyone ever see a lovelier bride? I will wager that Messire Garin, who got back from Ghent just this morning, will be hurrying round to kneel before his future lady and –’

Marie de Champdivers with a single gesture cut short the good woman’s flow of chatter, knowing full well that it would be hard to stop her if once she got going.

‘You have done very well, my good Gauberte, very well indeed! I will let you know if Messire Garin is pleased in due course. Now please leave us.’

At a glance from the old lady, Sara accompanied the seamstress to the stairs. Catherine and her hostess were left alone. With a pretty, graceful movement Catherine sat down on a velvet cushion at the old lady’s feet. Her smile had vanished and was replaced by a frown so melancholy that Marie de Champdivers stroked her forehead with a finger as if to smooth it away.

‘The news of your betrothed’s return does not appear to fill you with excitement and pleasure, my dear. Does Garin displease you? Don’t you love him?’

Catherine shrugged. ‘How can I be expected to love him? I hardly know him; apart from the morning he helped me to my feet in Notre-Dame, I have seen him only once, and that was here, the evening I first arrived here. Since then he has been in Ghent with the Duke to attend the Duchess’s funeral. And besides …’

She stopped, stumbling for a moment over the difficult admission she was on the point of making, then plunging on regardless, ‘… besides, he frightens me!’

Marie de Champdivers did not answer at once. Her hand lingered on the girl’s forehead and her gaze lost itself in contemplation of the coloured reflections made by the stained-glass window, as if she hoped to find an answer there to this unformulated but unanswerable question.

‘And … what about the Duke?’ she asked, after a barely perceptible pause. ‘What do you think of him?’

Catherine raised her pensive face abruptly. A sparkle of girlish malice flashed in her eyes.

‘A very attractive young man,’ she said with a smile, ‘but a little too conscious of the fact. A fine gentleman, well spoken, gallant with the ladies and skilled in the little games of love and courtship … or so rumour has it, at least. In short, an accomplished prince. But –’

‘But?’

‘But,’ Catherine finished, laughing gaily, ‘if, as they say, he is marrying me off only to get me all the quicker into his bed, he is making a mistake!’

Astonishment brought Marie de Champdivers back sharply from the melancholy regions where her imagination had been wandering. She looked at the girl with comical surprise. So Catherine knew what awaited her? And not only that, but she was actually planning to send the Duke packing like any ordinary suitor, after he had staked his all to win her?

‘Do you really intend to?’ she asked at length. ‘Intend to refuse the Duke, I mean?’

‘Why not? When I marry I intend to remain faithful to my husband as well as to my marriage vows. Therefore I shall not become Monseigneur’s mistress. Let him seek his consolation somewhere else.’

Marie de Champdivers smiled this time, though a little sadly. If only her Odette had shown a little of this quiet, cheerful courage, a little of this sturdy resolution, when she had been handed over to Charles, so many things might have turned out differently! But then, she had been so young. No more than 15, whereas Catherine was more than twenty.

‘Messire Garin is a lucky man,’ the old lady said, with a sigh. ‘Beauty, virtue, faithfulness. He will have all that the most exacting man could ask.’

Catherine bowed her head and became serious all of a sudden. ‘I wouldn’t envy him too soon. Who knows what the future may have in store for him.’

She kept her own counsel about the little scribbled note that Sara had brought to her that morning with her breakfast. The note had been from Barnaby. The Cockleshell Man had informed her both that Garin was returning and that everything was ready for that evening.

‘You must try to keep the person in question with you until after the curfew,’ Barnaby had written. ‘That should not be too difficult for you.’

The day was drawing in by the time Garin de Brazey crossed the threshold of the Hôtel des Champdivers. From behind the little leaded windowpanes of her bedchamber, Catherine watched him leap from his black horse with a strange, tight feeling round her heart. As always he was dressed entirely in black, impassive, chilly, but rich-looking, thanks to a heavy gold chain set with rubies that hung round his neck and a huge blood-red gemstone that flashed in his hood. A valet followed behind, carrying a chest with a cover of purple cloth fringed with gold.

As soon as she had seen the tall black figure disappear into the house, Catherine left the window and sat down on the bed to wait till she was summoned. It was hot, in spite of the thick walls that kept the place cooler than most. But the girl shivered in her silver embroidered dress. She felt a sudden terror seize her now that the moment had come for her to confront the man whom she had already condemned to death. Her hands were icy, and she shivered all over in a sudden panic. With chattering teeth but burning cheeks she looked about her, wildly seeking some refuge or way of escape, because the mere idea of seeing Garin again, of touching his hand perhaps, left her feeling suddenly drained of strength, weak to the point of fainting.

Muffled but ominous noises throughout the building reached her ears. With a great effort she dragged herself from her bed toward the door, where she stood leaning against the wall to steady herself. She was no longer capable of sane thought. She was nothing but animal terror. Her hand tightened over the elaborately-wrought door-handle so convulsively that the metal edges bit into her forefinger and a drop of blood stood out. But her hand was shaking so violently that she was unable to open the door. It opened nevertheless, and Sara appeared. She gave a little cry when she caught sight of Catherine stood there, white to the lips.

‘What are you doing there? Come! They have sent for you.’

‘I … I can’t,’ the girl stammered. ‘I can’t go down there.’

Sara gripped her by both shoulders and shook her like a rag doll. The features of her brown face hardened till they looked like a tribal mask, carved from some rare and exotic wood.

‘When one has the courage to wish for a certain thing, one must then have the courage to face up to it,’ she declared roundly. ‘Messire Garin awaits you.’

She softened a little when she saw tears well up in the large violet eyes. Letting go of Catherine, she walked across to the dressing-table, shrugging, and damped a linen cloth in the silver pitcher stood there. Then she mopped the girl’s face vigorously. Soon Catherine’s natural colour returned to her cheeks. She took a deep breath. Sara did likewise.

‘That’s better! Now come along with me and try to put a good face on things,’ she advised, taking Catherine by the arm and steering her toward the stairs. Incapable of showing any reaction by now, the girl let herself be escorted docilely.

The table had been laid for dinner in the large apartment on the first floor and stood against the chimney-place, where there was no fire at present. As she went in, Catherine saw Marie de Champdivers sitting in her accustomed chair, and in the window embrasure she caught sight of her husband conversing quietly with Garin de Brazey.

It was the second time she had met the Lord Treasurer under the Champdivers’ roof, but the first time she had felt the shock of finding his single eye fixed appreciatively upon her. When he had come to the Hôtel in the Rue Tatepoire the night of Catherine’s arrival he had been too preoccupied to pay her any attention. He had spoken just a few trivial words, so banal that Catherine could no longer remember what they had been. He had spent almost the entire evening arguing with Guillaume de Champdivers, leaving his future wife to her own devices and to the kindly solicitude of Marie. Catherine had been grateful for this indifference, because it had dispelled any lingering scruples she might have felt on his account.