Catherine: One Love is Enough (Catherine Series Book 1) (33 page)

Seizing Catherine in his arms, he stumbled across to the bed and flung her down on the velvet bedcover. Then he threw himself on top of her. He moved with such violence that Catherine had to suppress a scream. She shivered fearfully as she felt herself swept and bruised by a hurricane of passionate, savage caresses. Garin’s hands mauled her rather than caressed her, and his mouth covered her with hungry kisses from her knees up to her throat. He grunted like a famished beast as his fingers kneaded her soft, female flesh. Gradually, as the girl abandoned herself to the frenzy of the man’s caresses, she felt the stirring of desire and pleasure in her own body. At first she moaned softly under Garin’s exploring, impatient hands, but then her body relaxed, yielding itself expectantly to the promise of still greater delight. Her groping hands unfastened Garin’s doublet and lingered caressingly on his chest, which was lean, hairy and hard as oak. The canopy of the bed seemed to be spinning above her head … Suddenly she gave a cry of pain; Garin, almost beside himself with desire, had bitten the soft skin below her right breast.

Her cry had much the same effect on her husband as a jet of icy water might have done. He released her abruptly, stood up and then sprang to the end of the bed, where he stood looking at her, wild-eyed. He was panting, his face was scarlet and there was a ferocious brilliance in his gaze.

‘You made me lose … my head. Now go! You must leave me!’

She held out her arms to him, trying to bring him back to her. She felt angry and dismayed that he should still be trying to elude her.

‘No, Garin! Come to me, please! For the love of heaven forget about the Duke. Come back to me! We could be happy together. I know we could!’

But he gently pushed away her outstretched arms and began fastening his doublet with trembling hands. He shook his head. His face was regaining its accustomed pallor.

Catherine was suddenly convulsed by sobs. Angry tears sprang from her eyes. ‘But why? Tell me why. You find me desirable. I know – you have just proved that you want me. So why, why?’

Garin sat slowly down on the edge of the bed. He stroked her lovely, tearful face with infinite gentleness and then laid his hand on her golden head. Catherine heard him sigh. She cried out brokenly:

‘You can’t make me believe that this cruel, inhuman restraint you have imposed upon yourself doesn’t make you suffer too! You can’t make me believe that! I know you are unhappy. And yet you go on stupidly and obstinately making us lead this absurd, unnatural life …’

Garin suddenly looked away. Leaving the rosy figure stretched out upon the bed, he walked over to a shadowy corner of the room. She heard him sigh once more. His voice took on a strange gentleness in which the note of suffering sounded all the more poignant for being restrained and held in check.

‘There is such sorrow in my heart!’ he murmured.

‘Life was once so beautiful!

‘Such sorrow that my laughter has turned to tears!

‘Even the birds of the forest are moved by my lament, and mourn!

‘O love so wondrous fair that you rob me of my resolve!

‘But what am I saying, poor fool, in the heat of my rancour?

‘He who seeks happiness in this life must lose it in the next, alas!

‘Forever, alas!’

Catherine listened, astonished, as he spoke these lines. She wondered at their meaning. ‘What is that?’ she asked.

Garin gave her a pale smile. ‘Oh, nothing. Forgive me. A few lines by a German poet who went on the Crusades, and whom the Emperor Frederick II made his protégé. He was called Walther von der Vogelweide. You see, I am like our friend Abou-al-Khayr. I love poetry too. Now I must leave you, Catherine. Sleep here, if you wish to …’

Before Catherine could stop him, he had crossed the room and vanished into the darkness of the long gallery. She heard his footsteps grow fainter. She was suddenly consumed with rage. Slipping to the foot of the bed, she seized her coat and slippers. Then she wrapped the coat around her and ran back to her own room. As she slammed the door behind her, Sara, who had been dozing on a stool near the fire, gave a jump and then, recognising Catherine, stood up and looked enquiringly at her.

‘Well?’

Catherine tore the necklace off and threw it angrily across the room, as far as she could. Then she stamped on her silk coat. There were angry tears in her eyes.

‘Well – nothing!’ she sobbed. ‘Absolutely nothing!’

‘It isn’t possible!’

‘Yes it is, I’m telling you!’

Catherine’s nerves finally cracked. She sobbed on Sara’s shoulder without even bothering to put her clothes on again.

Sara waited till she had grown a little calmer, her brows knitted in a worried frown. When her sobs were quietening a little she lightly touched the spot where Garin’s bite had broken the skin and a little drop of blood could be seen.

Now quite exhausted, Catherine let herself be put to bed like a child. Then, while Sara attended to the tiny abrasion, she revealed exactly what had passed between Garin and herself, ending with a despairing cry:

‘He is so much stronger than we thought, Sara! And so much in control of himself! Nothing in the world will make him break the promise he has made to the Duke!’

But Sara shook her head. ‘It isn’t that. I am sure that he was on the point of breaking that promise, and that you almost won the day. I suspect there must be something else, but what can it be?’

‘Well, how can we find out? What can I do now?’

‘Nothing. Wait. Time will tell, perhaps …’

‘Anyway,’ said Catherine, snuggling into her pillows, ‘don’t expect me to go through another experience like that!’

Sara bent over and kissed her. Then she drew the curtains round the bed and smiled.

‘Shall I go and fetch the whip for that punishment you promised me?’

It was Catherine’s turn to laugh now, and the laugh did her a great deal of good. The humiliation she had suffered that night began to seem less grievous as her body relaxed and revelled in the comfort of her bed. It had been an interesting experience, but perhaps it had not ended so badly after all – seeing that she didn’t love Garin.

These comforting reflections did not prevent her having bizarre dreams that night in which Garin and his exasperating secret played by far the largest part.

Catherine was not wearing the turquoise necklace – to which she had in any case taken a violent dislike – when, with her hand on her husband’s, she was ushered into the room in the Ducal Palace where the Dowager Duchess was waiting. Garin knew too much about Marguerite of Bavaria, mother of Philippe le Bon, to allow his wife to wear anything more elaborate on this occasion than a simple grey velvet dress over a silver underdress that matched her tall, pointed headdress. The headdress was so tall that Catherine had to bend her head to pass through the door. She wore only one jewel, but an exceedingly beautiful one. It was a superb amethyst, framed by three magnificent and lustrous pear-shaped pearls, and Catherine wore it on a fine gold chain round her neck.

The reception room, which formed part of the Duchess’s private suite, was not particularly large, and it was furnished chiefly with some carved chests and a group of chairs near the window, where the Duchess herself was sat in a tall chair emblazoned with her personal coat of arms. Some black velvet cushions were scattered about on the flagged floor for the maids-of-honour to sit on.

Though she was aged over fifty, Marguerite of Bavaria still retained many traces of the beauty that had once been famous. The carriage of her graceful head was still superb, and it helped to give her not-particularly-long neck a positively swan-like appearance. Her cheeks no longer had the roundness of youth, and her blue eyes had faded a little, but their expression remained direct and imperious. The fold of her slightly thick lips indicated a stubborn, forceful character. Her nose was long but finely-chiselled. She had beautiful hands and a tall, stately figure.

Marguerite of Bavaria had been in mourning ever since her husband’s death. She wore unrelieved, but sumptuous, black. Her black velvet dress and headdress were banded with sables. A magnificent gold necklace, in the shape of a garland of acanthus leaves, gleamed under the black veil that hung from the headdress and covered the Duchess’s neck. This strict observance of mourning by the tall, haughty woman was inspired not so much by grief for her dead husband as by a ceaseless preoccupation with the prerogatives of her own high rank. Marguerite had found the cheery, charming Duke d’Orléans a great deal more attractive than the surly Jean-sans-Peur, and the French court had always rumoured that he had been her lover. It was common gossip in well-informed circles that it had been jealousy still more than ambition that had driven Jean-sans-Peur to assassinate the Duke. But, be that as it might, Marguerite’s tight-shut lips had never disclosed their secret. She was an excellent mother to her son Philippe, and a devoted and disinterested collaborator in matters of state. Burgundy was safe and thriving in her firm, capable hands, and Philippe could devote himself to the northern provinces without a moment’s unease.

Four of the Duchess’s six daughters were seated round their mother, forming a little inner circle amid the maids-of-honour. They were working with her on the same piece of embroidery, a huge battle standard in red silk embroidered with a white St Andrew’s cross. Catherine instantly recognised the Duke de Guyenne’s young widow, Marguerite, among them, and derived a sort of pleasure from the thought that the girl who had tried to save Michel de Montsalvy during the riots in the Hôtel de Saint Pol should be there. She attached a sort of superstitious importance to this encounter. Now 29 years old, the young Duchess had not greatly changed. She was a little stouter, but her white skin was perhaps more dazzling than before. She was three years older than her brother Philippe and the oldest of the family.

Beside Marguerite’s full-blown beauty, her sister Catherine seemed oddly colourless. She was so slender as to be almost transparent and always dressed soberly, like a nun, in dark dresses and plain wimples that left visible only her narrow ferret’s face with its timid, anxious eyes. Catherine was the unlucky one of the family. Her first betrothal at the age of ten, to the Comte Philippe de Vertus, had come to an abrupt end six years later when she had learnt, just before the marriage should have taken place, of her fiancé’s heroic death in the muddy field of Agincourt. Another match, this time with the heir to the Duke d’Anjou, had been contemplated, but then Duke Jean’s violent death at Montereau had thrown the pair into opposite camps and put an end to the projected marriage. Since then Catherine of Burgundy had refused all her suitors.

The two other Princesses, Anne and Agnes, respectively 19 and 16 years old, were still young girls, and did not aspire to be anything more than pretty, fresh and carefree, though the poor folk of Dijon were already singing the praises of Anne, whom they reverently described as an angel dropped from heaven. They both greeted Catherine’s curtsey with an open smile that went straight to the young woman’s heart.

‘So this is your wife, Messire Garin,’ said the Duchess in her deep voice. ‘We must compliment you on your choice. She is indeed beautiful, and yet she retains the modesty and decorum suited to such a young woman. Come here, my dear.’

Catherine, her heart beating fast, went up to the Duchess’s chair and knelt beside it with her head modestly bowed. Marguerite smiled, noting with an approving eye the details of the her dress, particularly its modest neckline, and above it the young woman’s blushing face. She was aware of the rather special regard in which her son held this girl, and this did not displease her. It was normal for a prince to have mistresses; and, though her pride had at first flinched from the prospect of such an honour being bestowed upon a girl of humble birth, still she now noted approvingly that this young bourgeoise had all the bearing and elegance of a great lady, and was undeniably a peerless beauty.

‘We shall be pleased to number you henceforth among our ladies-in-waiting,’ she said graciously. ‘The Mistress of the Robes, the Dame de Châteauvillain, to whom we will introduce you presently, will explain your duties to you. Now, curtsey to our daughters and then take your seat on this cushion by our feet, next to Mademoiselle de Vaugrigneuse.’

She indicated a young girl with a mean face, who was richly dressed in blue and silver brocade that did not flatter her yellow, liverish complexion. The girl assumed a disdainful little curl of the lip as she moved away from the cushion assigned to Catherine, which did not escape the Duchess’s sharp eyes.

‘We would like it to be remembered,’ she added, without raising her voice, but in such a cutting tone that the girl in question flushed to the roots of her hair, ‘that birth is not the only thing that counts in this sinful world of ours and that our favour can easily replace it. It is the prerogative of princes to elevate modesty to whatever rank they please, just as it is within their power to raze the proud and arrogant to the ground.’

Marie de Vaugrigneuse allowed the rebuke to sink in, and even managed a smile in response to Catherine’s timid one.

Pleased with the way she had dealt with this situation, the Duchess now turned toward Garin. ‘You may leave us now, messire. We wish to discuss certain domestic and feminine matters with your young wife, which we know are not diverting to a man’s ears.’