In a Dark Wood Wandering (42 page)

Toward dawn Charles could not bear it; it was impossible for him to distract himself any longer with the tales on the parchment. He took up the candlestick and tiptoed from the room through a side door. Etiquette prevented a husband from coming near the lying-in chamber during his wife's labor; if he wanted to inquire he sent a messenger. Charles had never doubted the wisdom of this custom—now all this secrecy seemed irksome and stupid to him. The first apartment was empty. In the second, Isabelle's court maidens and servant girls knelt, praying aloud for aid and succour for their mistress. The Dame de Travercin, Isabelle's companion, frightened, came swiftly to Charles; her eyes were red from weeping.

“In God's name, Monseigneur,” she whispered, “you cannot come here.”

“I want to know how it goes with my wife,” replied Charles; he had no intention of being sent away without information. It was not necessary for the lady to tell Charles anything now: suddenly, from behind the closed doors of the lying-in chamber came a hoarse shrieking which filled Charles with deep horror. Even in that awful sound he recognized Isabelle's voice.

“Monseigneur, Monseigneur, will you be good enough to go away?” The Dame de Travercin was at her wits' end. “The master of the council and the physicians are with the Duchess. They are doing what they can, Monseigneur, but Madame d'Orléans is having a most difficult time. We do not know how it will end.”

Her words echoed in Charles' ears long after he had returned to his own room. He could not sit still; he paced back and forth, pushed open a window shutter, looked outside: a grey line was visible on the horizon, a harbinger of dawn; cocks crowed around Blois and farther away on the farms. A bell began to peal somewhere; the sound brought the young man to awareness of the reality of what was happening behind the closed door. He fled to the chapel in the inner court of the castle.

In the gilded candlesticks on the altar tapers were burning. The lighted altar seemed an island of peace and safety in the gloom of the early morning. He remained kneeling even after the sun had long risen. Philippe joined him.

“What news is there?” Charles whispered; but his brother shook his head without replying. Why must she suffer so? thought Charles, while he murmured mechanically all the prayers he thought appropriate. As the day went on he felt more and more beset by doubt: was this a punishment because he had not kept the promise that he had made to his mother? Must Isabelle do penance for his irresolution, his reluctance to attack his hereditary enemy with fire and sword? Was God's finger pointing at him: could he perhaps free Isabelle from her suffering by swearing anew, this time by all that was holy, that he would not shrink from the destiny that had been laid out for him?

“Vota meaDomine reddarn”
prayed Charles more loudly. “I shall fulfill my vows unto the Lord.” Philippe looked up in fright and astonishment and tapped him on the arm, but Charles wiped the sweat from his face and walked quickly from the chapel. In the
courtyard he found one of the doctors, who told him that the progress of the labor showed little change. However Monseigneur must not despair; it might take a few more hours.

It lasted another twenty-four hours; on the afternoon of September twelfth 1409, Madame Isabelle at long last brought a child into the world, a daughter. The baby was healthy and well-formed, but the birth cost the young mother her life. Physicians and nursing women had to stand helplessly by while the Duchess of Orléans bled to death under their hands.

By candlelight and amid the tolling of church bells Isabelle was laid to rest in the church of Saint-Sauveur, beside the spot where Valentine had been buried not quite a year earlier. Tearless, silent and motionless, Charles attended all ceremonies. Then he returned to the castle; in the great hall he accepted condolences, and gave necessary orders: he requested de Braquemont to dispatch couriers to Saint-Pol and to his royal kinsmen in all parts of France. Later he went into the lying-in chamber for a moment; the beautiful state bed stood made up, unused, in the middle of the apartment. The women showed him his little daughter, Jeanne, the name Charles and Isabelle had chosen in the sunny meadow near Olivet: it was in memory of their mutual grandmother, the wife of Charles the Wise.

Silent and surprised, Charles looked at the infant; he felt nothing at all for this little creature, red, naked and helpless as the young earthworms which appear when spring rains disturb the earth. The Dame de Travercin led Charles to a corner of the chamber where some garments were spread out on a chest: the beautifully embroidered mantles which Isabelle had planned to wear after her confinement.

“What do you wish me to do with these, Monseigneur?” whispered the lady. Charles looked at the finery, now so meaningless: gold on green, silver on violet.

“Give them as gifts in my name to the priests of Saint-Saveur,” he said after a pause, turning away. “Let them make chausables and dalmatics from them. Perhaps you will be so good as to give me in the near future the names of all the women and maidens who have served Madame d'Orléans. I shall have pensions and annuities paid to them.”

The Dame de Travercin curtsied; she would have liked to utter objections, suggest alternatives, but the tone of Monseigneur's voice,
the look on his face, imposed silence upon her. Charles left the lying-in chamber. His little daughter began to wail in a thin but penetrating voice; he quickened his step, his head drooping in deadly exhaustion.

In the month of February of the year 1410, Charles set out with a great entourage of armed soldiers for the castle of Gien-sur-Loire; he had chosen the place for a rendezvous with all the great lords and their vassals who had pledged to serve the cause of Orléans. The environs of the castle looked like an army camp; countless tents stood in the fields. Farmsteads and houses were cleared out to serve as lodging for the warriors and stalls for their horses. The peasants who lived there had fled or been driven away from garden and farmyard; the cattle and stores of wine and grain which they had left behind served the always-hungry soldiers as food and drink. The tents and camps swarmed with Gascons, Bretons and Provencals—for the most part rough, brutal men, difficult to control, unreliable, fond of looting and arson and, in battie, truly ferocious cruelty.

When on the bitter cold, misty morning of the twenty-fourth of February, Charles rode through the fields to Gien, he had ample time to review these troops; he knew that the majority of men assembled here were in the service of his new ally, the Count d'Ar-magnac, with whom he had negotiated since October of the previous year by means of letters and couriers. De Braquemont and de Villars were wont to say that one could know a general by the appearance and conduct of his soldiers; if this were true, thought Charles, he could hope for littie good to come from this meeting with Bernard d'Armagnac.

The soldiers who lined the way to watch Orléans' men enter Gien were filthy and unkempt. They were singularly arrayed in parts of old armor, worn-out leather, mantles and coats of mail raggedly pulled together. As they lounged before the houses they had taken over, their demeanor was insolent or indifferent; some wandered in groups over the fields, trying to see what poultry they could catch; others squatted around the great fires which burned here and there among the tents and huts.

The road to Gien was nearly impassable; the horses hurt their legs on sharp crusts of frozen mud, or slipped on ice-covered pools. A stinging cold mist hovered over the land, making it difficult to
see. Charles, at the head of his slowly riding, silent escort, saw himself as a traveler in Virgil's underworld—the dark, misty borderland of Hell, filled with faint spectres whom it was wise to leave undisturbed. Charles closed his eyes and hunched his shoulders; the edge of his mantle touched the bottom of his bonnet, giving him the illusion, at least, of shelter against the penetrating damp cold.

Since Isabelle's death he had made no more effort to evade the fate which had apparently been reserved for him. He had resumed operations. His captains de Braquemont and de Villars had at first been suspicious of his air of grim resignation, but later they observed his resumption of operations with growing satisfaction: the garrisons were strengthened, the vassals and their men who had started for home had been recalled, messages had been sent to the allies, the Dukes of Brittany and Alençon. Now that Isabelle's retinue, her maidens and servants, had left the castle, now that her clothes had been given as gifts, her jewels and trinkets put away, and the morning slippers which still stood under the marriage bed had been quickly removed, so that the sight of the small red shoes would not cause Monseigneur sorrow—now that all reminders of the short existence of the young Duchess had vanished, Blois looked more than ever like a fortress, a barracks, with the inner courts and outbuildings filled with archers and foot soldiers. A few women still occupied the series of apartments on the south side of the castle: the old Dame de Maucouvent and some maidservants who looked after the two little girls, Mademoiselle Marguerite, Charles' three-year-old sister, and his daughter Mademoiselle Jeanne. They lived there in a world of their own with scarcely any attention paid to them: two little maidens who could not play a role of any significance in this drama of hatred and revenge.

Charles had reacted to Isabelle's death more with bitter amazement than with grief. Gloomily he asked himself if this were to be his life then: a long journey with no resting places except those of mourning and catastrophe. He had found some verses among the papers which had belonged to his father; he remembered when Herbelin the minstrel had set these words to music: “En la forest de Longue Attente, Chevauchant par divers senders… In the forest of Long Awaiting, Biding along its many paths…” When he was a child, Charles had not understood the imagery; now he was struck by the metaphor and he found the verses harmonious; they awoke a feeling in him which he could not name: they gave him comfort
but also profound pain and uneasiness. He often repeated the beginning of the song in his thoughts, or in an undertone. He did not know why he did this; it gave him a feeling of peculiar gratification.

However, he had little time to indulge himself in these kinds of thoughts. He worked together with his captains to raise the army which had been called together after his father's death. And he had many letters to write to the Lords of Coucy and Luxembourg to remind them of their vows of fealty and immediate support in case of need. In January he received assistance from an unexpected source: the Dukes of Berry and Bourbon wrote to him in detail, informing him that they had severed all ties with Burgundy and were disposed to help Orléans' cause. Now that they had publicly proclaimed their withdrawal from the Council and affairs of state, they felt they could justifiably offer Charles their counsel. Burgundy's indifference and insults had driven both old Dukes to frenzy; however, they had had to give way to him. Berry especially was stimulated to renewed activity by the jeers leveled at him. He had initiated the idea of approaching young Charles, who could not oppose Burgundy without experienced assistance.

“He is too young and we are too old to raise and lead armies,” said Berry to Bourbon during one of the numerous discussions they held after their resignation. Wrapped in furs and velvet, they sat, two gouty, corpulent old men, facing each other by the hearthfire in one of the halls of the Hotel de Nesle. Bourbon, who was a trifle dazed and lax, said little; Berry talked a great deal. His small, piercing eyes sparkled; his hands, loaded with jewels, did not rest for a second.

“We have the experience and the ability to open negotiations with the people whom we will need most. He has the name of Orléans and full reason to go to war. What we need now are a few fellows who can fight and a list of ringing names to give substance to the whole undertaking.”

Berry was not satisfied with words alone; thanks to his efforts, Bourbon's son, the Count de Clermont, and the Constable d'Albret declared themselves ready to support Orléans in the struggle against Burgundy. Berry's son-in-law, Bernard d'Armagnac, seemed an even more valuable acquisition. Berry congratulated himself on his cleverness in winning over the Gascon to his nephew's side. The counts of Armagnac and their troops were known, and for good reason, far and wide: for more than half a century they had served as mercenaries,
both at home and abroad, to anyone who paid them well and did not look too closely at their methods. The Gascons had fought for Florence twenty years before; without scruple they had afterward deserted to the troops of Gian Galeazzo and Louis d'Orléans. Under the leadership of their captain, de Chassenage, they had finally forced Savona and a number of other cities to surrender to France.

Bernard d'Armagnac lent a willing ear to Berry's summons; he was attracted for a number of reasons by the offer to become a pivotal force in Orléans' army. Although he belonged to the oldest and once most powerful family in the Kingdom, the Count d'Ar-magnac enjoyed little respect; the princes and members of the royal family looked upon him as a brigand, an adventurer, the leader of a pack of plundering brutes. He had never appeared at court; his peers avoided him. When he was not fighting abroad, he was to be found in one of his fortresses in Armagnac, everywhere and always surrounded by troops of soldiers. Although he frequently and loudly proclaimed that a good understanding with his peers did not interest him, Armagnac secretly felt himself to be an outcast. Berry's proposal gave him the chance to get his foot firmly into circles which until that moment had been closed to him. He wanted to nestle perma-nendy into the world of powerful men.

When, therefore, young Orléans, in a personal letter, requested that he come to Gien-sur-Loire, he did not hesitate for a moment. At the head of a constantly expanding army, he rode to the meeting place. In the ranks which followed him there were well-equipped horsemen, many heavily armed, pugnacious battlers who for the most part had been in the service of Armagnac for twenty years or more—but there were also bands of adventurers eager for plunder and murder; vagrants, escaped criminals and half-grown young fellows who would do anything rather than run behind a plow. Like one of the plagues of Egypt they moved through the land, leaving a trail behind them of demolished farms, barns stripped bare and carcasses of slaughtered cattle. So Bernard d'Armagnac came to Gien, where he found the Dukes of Berry, Bourbon, Brittany and Alençon and the Count of Clermont. They awaited only Charles d'Orléans. On the morning of the twenty-seventh of February, a messenger rode into Gien with the news that Monseigneur was approaching; he would reach the castle before the midday meal.