In a Dark Wood Wandering (16 page)

“Yes,” said the Duchess of Orléans softly, but without conviction; she turned her head away to conceal the anxiety in her eyes. “God knows that I pray every day for his recovery—whatever else they may say about me …” Her voice quivered with suppressed tears. Louis looked up quickly.

“Madame,” he said, almost sternly, “you must rise above gossip. I would be very sorry if your self-esteem were to be jolted by the idle chatter which travels round from time to time …”

“Alas, it is no idle chatter,” said Valentine; her voice still shook. She made an effort to restrain her tears, the treacherous, embarrassing tears which threatened to overwhelm her in times of physical weakness. “It is not gossip, my lord, you know that as well as I. It is a bulwark of hatred and slander, which is being constructed stone by stone. Don't think that I am blind and deaf,” she continued, in a vehement whisper, clasping her hands tighter. “In the streets of Paris they are saying I wish to kill the King …”

“Hush, hush, Valentine,” Louis interrupted, reaching for her hand across the coverlet. The fact that she was aware of all this upset him greatly. He had not expected it.

Valentine continued to speak swiftly and angrily.

“They say that at my departure, before I left for France, my father said to me, ‘Farewell, daughter; see to it that when we meet again you have become the Queen.' But, my God, that is … Surely everyone knows that I left without saying goodbye to my father, who was then in Padua. It grieved him enough that we could not bid each other farewell.”

“Hush, hush,” repeated Louis, angry at the suffering she had borne because of the malice of stupid people. But Valentine went on.

“They see sufficient proof in my coat of arms, I'm sure. Yes, it sounds foolish, but it is true … You know what people are like, they even create the evidence they wish to believe.”

Involuntarily, Louis' eyes glided to the coat of arms stitched in gold on the bed curtain behind his wife's head: a field, divided in two, displaying a lily of Valois on the left, and on the right the adder which symbolized Milan, a viper about to devour a child at play. Who could deny that it was an image which inspired little confidence? Louis felt the throbbing of his wife's pulse under his hand; he was overwhelmed by deep compassion.

“I don't know,” he said, withdrawing his hand from hers. “This is becoming a most painful situation. Most likely I shall have to dissuade you from visiting the King more often than is strictly necessary.”

“That is impossible,” said Valentine in a dead voice. “I do not
go to him, he comes here—and against that I am helpless. It does him good. With me he is often more cheerful and placid than anywhere else; it is wonderful to see how at times he is completely his old self again; he talks sensibly about all sorts of things—even though it lasts only a few moments,” she concluded, with a sad smile.

The couple gazed at each other in silence, each lost in thought. They were, thought Valentine, like solitary trees which sometimes take root in the stony soil of mountain tops. Exposed to rain and lightning they stand; clouds drift past them, by degrees wind and weather polish them to stumps as barren as the rocks around them. When, as a bride she had crossed the Italian Alps, Valentine had seen such trees on steep crags, hanging over precipices, pressed obliquely by the wind, scorched black by bolts of lightning. Everything which still bore foliage at that altitude seemed fated to come to a frightful end.

A door opened and two women entered the lying-in chamber: the Dame de Maucouvent and the nurse with the baby in her arms. They were followed, as protocol required, by two rows of demoiselles from Valentine's retinue. Mariette d'Enghien was one of the last pair; as soon as she saw Orléans, she pulled back as though she wished to leave, but her companion held her hand. Louis, who rose when the women entered, greeted the Dame de Maucouvent and lifted the veil which partly covered the small Charles; nothing more was visible of the sleeping child than a pink face as large as a fist. Smiling, the Duke walked past the curtseying maidens; the glance which he cast upon the bent head of Mariette d'Enghien did not escape Valentine's notice; stretched out under the coverlet she watched her husband while the pounding of her heart almost suffocated her.

Je suis celuy au cueur vestu de noir.
I am he whose heart is dressed in black.

— Charles d'Orléans

Se j'ay aimé et on m'amé, ce a faict amours; je l'en mercie, je m'en répute bien heureux.

If I have loved and have been loved, it was Love that made it so. I am grateful to Love, I am fortunate.

— Louis d'Orléans, in a letter.

n a July day in the year 1395, the King sat in the open veranda which bordered his rooms on the garden side of Saint-Pol. A green canopy had been set up over him to protect him from the blazing sun; on both sides of it tapestries hung down to the floor. Inside this tent, the King had been playing for a considerable time with oversized, gaily colored cards; he arranged them on the table before him, built tottering towers, and now and then swept them all together with trembling fingers. The court physician, Renaud Freron, personally appointed by Isabeau after de Harselly's dismissal, walked back and forth over the red and white tiles of the gallery, his hands behind his back. A few courtiers stood, bored and weary, in the shade under the archways.

The aviaries had been brought outside to amuse the King; birds of all sizes and colors hopped twittering about the gilded cage. The hot white light quivered above the slate roofs of the palace; for more than a week the sun had shone from a cloudless sky—the heat grew from day to day, scorching grass and shrubs. The streets of Paris lay deserted as though the city had been struck by plague: the stench of garbage hung over the squares and along the banks of the Seine. Under the bridges the river water flowed sluggishly, turbid, full of
silt and filthy. Only in the fields outside the walls of Paris work continued without interruption, despite the scorching heat. The farmers wanted to get the grain inside the barns before the storms began. From the windows of Saint-Pol and the oudying castles, the mowers could be seen moving over the fields like tiny specks; the sun flashed on sickles and scythes. Half-naked, dripping with sweat, the men cut row after row of stalks of grain. The women came behind them, with cloths bound around their heads and shoulders, stooping and squatting, binding the sheaves. Blinded by sun and sweat, swarming with flies, they gathered the bread for the city of Paris, fodder for the beasts.

The King, who had stacked the cards neady, pushed them to one end of the table and sat quiet, with downcast eyes, waiting for his brother Louis d'Orléans and the Provost of Paris, whose presence he had requested. The haze in which his mind had been enveloped continually since the previous year, had lifted. He recognized the people in his suite, was aware of events and joined in the festivities honoring the delegation which had arrived from England to make a formal request for the hand of the child Isabelle.

Although the physician Freron had, on the Queen's insistence, advised him to rest and avoid state affairs, the King wished to take advantage of the brief respite between periods of insanity. He knew only too well that the calm clarity, the comfortable feeling of being free, would not last long; that he would be overcome again by mortal fear, fierce pain in his head, darkness filled with hellish visions—but when? How? He saw with despair how much time had passed since he had last been sane. He could still remember hazily a few of the things which had happened afterward; a conversation with his sister-in-law, the Duchess of Orléans, who lay in bed—why? When? And the birth in January of his youngest daughter, Michelle. Charles shook his head slowly, and pensively bit his nails. He had a strong desire to see Valentine; he had wanted to send her a message but he gathered from what the courtiers said that she was no longer in Saint-Pol. Shame and pride prevented him from asking questions of the gentlemen of his retinue who sneered at him haughtily, or smiled at him with compassion. Only from his intimates could he learn about those things which interested him deeply. He considered himself fortunate that his brother was nearby and that the Provost was an able, honest and upright man, who knew how to hold his ground in the face of all opposition.

The King was secretly relieved that the pressure of business prevented Isabeau from coming to see him. The full responsibility of receiving the English legation rested upon her shoulders. Above all else, he feared an interview with his wife; although no one alluded in his presence to the affronts which he, blinded by madness, had offered the Queen, he knew enough. He remembered Isabeau's tears and reproaches, her nocturnal revelations; frozen with horror at his own unwitting cruelty, he had lain listening to her whispers.

That had been in the spring of the previous year. What have I said or done since then, he thought uneasily. He looked quickly and diffidently at the courtiers who chatted under the arched entrance. Before him on a table stood a silver tray heaped with fruit; he removed the peaches one by one and raised the tray before his face. He did not yet have the courage to complain about the absence of mirrors from his rooms, because he surmised, with considerable anguish, the reason for this absence.

Now, partially concealed within the tapestries, he looked at himself in the polished bottom of the tray, touching his cheeks and forehead with clammy fingers; his lips parted involuntarily in disbelief and horror. The sound of footsteps and voices reached him from the adjoining corridors; the birds twittered loudly and beat their wings against the bars. Hastily, the King set the tray back on the table. He saw his brother approaching; Louis' lips trembled with emotion.

“Sire, my King,” he said, kneeling before the King without taking his eyes from his brother's face. “Are you well again?”

The King patted the cushioned bench. “Come sit beside me,” he said in a low voice, “and tell the others to leave us alone.”

Gentlemen and pages retired to the end of the gallery; Renaud Freron, annoyed, continued his pacing back and forth. The King was receiving against his advice; he feared Isabeau's displeasure. The brothers sat side by side under the canopy: Louis, tanned from frequent exercise in the open air, his posture that of a man who knew how to control every muscle of his body; and Charles, pale, drab, huddled together like an old man.

“Tell me, how goes it with you, brother?” said Louis, laying his hand on the King's. “Are you free from pain now? Is your head clearer? Nothing has made me so happy in a long time as this—that we can speak together in good health.”

“I am like someone who has temporarily exchanged hell for
purgatory,” replied the King with a melancholy smile. “No, I feel no pain, but I suffer even more from uncertainty.” He looked at his brother timidly, from the corner of his eye. “I cannot remember anything,” he whispered, with a sigh.