The Queen's Lover (21 page)

Charles nodded. He turned to Catherine. She quailed at the look in his eye.

"What is that man's name?" he said; and there was ice in his voice.

She muttered: "Bosredon." Then, putting a hand pleadingly on his arm, "But, Charles, he meant no harm..." Then, when
Charles looked at her with the full bleakness of midwinter in his gaze, "...it was wrong...I know...I'll make sure he's disciplined."

Charles wasn't listening. He moved a step away, turning his shoulder to her, so her hand fell off his arm. He beckoned to Armagnac's guards. Four of them trotted up, bareheaded, blank-faced, bowing.

"Arrest those men," he said.

There was a terrible inevitability about everything that followed. The initial exchange between Charles and his mother had Isabeau, from her nest of blankets, fixing her son with her most baleful, terrifying look, and hissing, "You impudent boy--you haven't changed a bit--call them off
at once--how dare you
lay a finger on my guard!" Charles had looked a scared boy again for a moment. But then he'd glanced at the immobile figures of Yolande and Bernard. Seeming to draw comfort from them, he'd advanced on her, taut as a whiplash, until he was standing right over her, leaning on the back of her bench, with his eyes glaring so wide that the rims stood out pink and hateful all around, his voice grinding out:

"It's all true, isn't it? You vile, vicious old whore. You..."

He stopped himself. Shaking his head, he turned his back on all of them and walked after his guardsmen into the castle.

Catherine could see his head, going on shaking until he was far away; as if he were continuing a furious row with his mother in his mind.

Nestling into her blankets, Isabeau was shaking her head too, but enjoyably, with the gloating look on her face that Catherine remembered of old. It was a look that suggested that, now she'd goaded one of her children into behaving badly, she would take pleasure in dissecting his misbehavior and bad character with her friends, and soliciting the sympathetic remarks about how much she'd suffered bringing up the ungrateful wretch, which she would then, later, repeat to the misbehaving child in question, as part of his punishment.

Catherine closed her eyes, feeling the old dread seep through her, and a new dread too.

Her mother didn't even seem to have noticed the closed faces and stillness of the southerners watching her, as she opened her mouth and began, in significant, sepulchral tones, "
Well
...nothing changes, does it...the same old evil temper as ever...the troubles we've had with that boy--"

"Madame," Bernard of Armagnac interrupted brusquely. Catherine opened her eyes again. The Count was all puffed up and ginger and angry himself. For the first time she saw the brute as well as the buffoon in him, the strength and pent-up rage in those bulging limbs; and she was frightened.

But all Armagnac said was: "We'll hunt later; we must attend our master now. Sire..."

And, bowing to the King, he turned his horse and walked it, with dignity, back to the stables, with Yolande of Aragon picking her way behind him, and the remainder of the guard following in pairs.

Catherine didn't know what to do. For a long moment she did nothing--just felt the sun on her back, and thought of the daisy chains she'd been going to make, and felt paralyzed.

But then she caught sight of her father's bewildered face. She pulled herself together. She smiled, too big and false a smile; the kind that would make your face ache if you kept it up for too long. "Don't worry, Papa," she said, too brightly; "you go inside with Maman; she's got a new card game she wants to teach you. You can hunt in the afternoon. I'll go and find Charles now." And, giving her mother a fierce warning look--mouthing,
Don't upset him
, when she thought her father wouldn't see, and trying not to be alarmed by the truculence in her mother's answering glance--she followed the southerners, on foot, over the grass and flags to the stables.

His face was all crusting blood and puff and angry blue-red swellings. One eye was closed. There was fresh blood trickling out of his mouth. Even when Catherine's eyes had adjusted to the hay-barn dusk, it took her a moment to understand what she was seeing.

They'd put a leather strap round Bosredon's neck and half
hung him from a hook on the wall. He could hardly stand, in the state he was in, but a precarious foothold on a broken cartwheel was all that was keeping him from strangling. Strange gurgling noises were coming from him.

There was no sign of Yolande of Aragon. But Bernard of Armagnac was striding up and down, up and down, very fast, very angry, in front of the four motionless men-at-arms. He was disheveled; so were they; but they were still correct.

It was Charles, with the wooden stick in his hand, who wasn't. Charles, in a rage she'd never seen, with flared nostrils and narrowed eyes and the white of hate burning in him like pale fire. Charles had blood and snot all down him. Charles had his doublet off and was stripped down to his linen shirt. Charles was administering the blows; vicious, regular blows to elbow and knee and foot, at the end of every question; as if the questions themselves weren't an assault.

"They take off their clothes..."
whack
--arm--silence.

"They get on the table tops..."
whack
--leg--silence.

"They dance for you..."
whack
--ankle--groan.

"Wiggle their tits..."
whack
--other ankle--howl.

"Undress you..."
whack
--leg--groan.

"Suck you..."
whack
--right between the legs--screams; so bloodcurdling a scream that everything stopped for a few minutes, except the frantic scrabbling of the feet, trying to maintain their place on the wheel. Then Charles took up his stick again; thrusting his face right up against the bloody hanging mask.

"My mother's there, watching..."
whack
--left foot--shriek; scrabble; sob.

"Isn't she?"

Blessedly, no whack. Silence.

"Isn't she?"

A blubbering cry came out of the face: "Ye--"

"Grinning away..."
prod
--belly--silence.

"Cheering the mon..."
prod
--side--silence.

Bernard of Armagnac stopped his furious pacing, as if he'd been distracted by the diminishing pain of the torture being administered by his young master. He turned and gave the poor
vain guard's ruined beauty a look of indescribable malevolence.

"Come on, admit it," he grated, hands on hips; all bulk and threat; a voice like rust on iron, taunting. "She's doing it too, the old slut. We all know. Those black teeth and gums; disgusting; you should be ashamed. A special pleasure, is it? Mmmmmmm...Queue up for it, do you?"

His voice brought a frenzy on Charles. He groaned; then he rushed forward again, whacking and flailing at Bosredon like a madman. As Catherine closed her eyes in terror and moved silently out of the doorway, back into the safety of the morning, she heard a new set of sounds--the gasps and snuffles of strangulation that meant Bosredon had slipped off the wheel at last.

She sat for a while in the picnic spot under the east tower; listening to the birds, feeling the warmth on her hands as her fingers pierced each daisy's stalk and linked them together, but feeling as dead inside as her father always said he felt on his worst days.

She wasn't going to be joyfully reunited with her brother, and make her family into a source of strength and love. It wasn't going to happen, after all. Charles had been suppressing the fury she'd just seen ever since he'd got here. She realized that now. He couldn't bear the fate that had brought him back north. He couldn't bear his mother. Perhaps he couldn't bear his father or his sister either.

Her fingers shredded the next daisy. She'd never be able to look at Charles again and not see him attacking that poor trussed-up prisoner; never be able to shut out Armagnac's repulsive gloating. They made her soul shrink. How could they say--think--such things, of the woman who was Charles' and Catherine's mother? Charles' new family were supposed to be the King's closest allies. But it must be their fault. What had they done to Charles to fill him with so much rage?

She'd have to go back inside in a minute.

Her parents were playing cards in her mother's parlor; her
mother giggling and offering her father violet sweets and patting his hand. There was a little pile of coins on her side of the table. She was in good spirits. She'd taken off her headdress and left it carelessly on the floor. Catherine saw her hair had got thin and wiry and gray, with patches of skin showing. They didn't notice Catherine, pausing in the doorway, gathering her thoughts, drinking in the sight of them.

All at once, Catherine wanted nothing more than to protect these two aging, fragile people from the cruelty of the world; to make it possible for them to go on sitting like this, away from pain, eating sweets and laughing together like young lovers.

But, at the same time, she knew they would have to be moved. Now. Charles was too angry. The grotesque things he'd been saying...He'd been turned against all of them. It was dangerous to stay, when he was here, in that mood, with that man and that woman at his side. She should hurry them both back to Paris. She paused, trying to focus her mind on the detail of horses and carriages; on how to overcome her parents' dithery slowness; feeling dizzy with the urgency of it all.

If she told them they were just going out for a ride...in the woods...it was less than an hour to Paris; they'd be all right without refreshments...they didn't really need a guard...the road was so well-traveled...they'd be unlikely to meet foot pads...they coulds end for their house holds later...

She stepped forward. They turned soft eyes on her. "Dear little girl," her father said fondly. He didn't ask whether she'd made peace with Charles. Catherine had the impression he'd forgotten the row.

They didn't protest when she told them they were going out. She thanked God quietly for their obedience, as they got up and shuffled along behind her. She almost laughed when, out of the corner of her eye, she noticed her mother furtively sweep her winnings into her purse.

But Charles found them.

She was just getting them into the hay cart--"A picnic vehicle! A rustic adventure!" she was exclaiming brightly, aware of the
songbirds chirruping drunkenly in the summer air, and rejoicing as her father nodded with apparent pleasure--when she heard the footsteps.

Charles had put his doublet back on. He'd splashed water on his face. There was no blood. But he still looked wild with barely controlled anger.

He had all his guard with him; all on foot; but now she could hear their horses milling about by the trough round the corner. Bernard of Armagnac was big and grim at his side; and her mother's secretary, Laurent du Puy, an obsequious little stick insect of a man with hunched shoulders who was, as ever, wringing his hands, but who was also looking unpleasantly excited.

Charles strode up to his mother. He ignored Catherine. He ignored their father.

He grinned spitefully at Isabeau. He said: "No picnics for you, Madame. You're going away."

Catherine could see that the Queen, canny old animal that she usually was, was too startled to understand this at once as a threat. Isabeau had got so firmly into her head that everyone was to be gentle; that peacemaking was in the air; that despite her little boy's outburst earlier that morning no one was going to allow themselves to fight, that she just fluttered her pudgy hands until the emeralds on them glittered, and said gaily, "We're going on a rustic adventure!"

Catherine could hardly breathe. Thoughts were flashing through her head: random, terrified, guilty thoughts. She thought: I should have told her what they were doing to her guardsman. I should have prepared her. She'd have known what to say if I had. Then, with pity tingeing her fear: She's got too old to fight fast enough. And then: She might have been warier if I hadn't made so much of today as our chance for the future...if I hadn't put so much faith in Charles...

Charles ground out: "No. You're going to Tours."

"Tours?" the Queen said, with a first doubt creeping into her voice. "But..." She turned to Catherine. So did the King. Their faces were full of disappointment and puzzlement. "What about our picnic?" the Queen finished lamely; but by then she'd read and understood Catherine's face.

Charles turned to Catherine. "Don't interfere," he told her, as if he feared she might somehow undermine his authority; then blushed when, for a terrible moment, his newly deep voice disobeyed him and squeaked into treble. He coughed; and looked, if possible, angrier than before.

Catherine nodded submissively. There was nothing she could do.

"There's a carriage waiting for you," Charles said, turning back to his mother. He pointed a contemptuous thumb at Laurent du Puy. "He's going too. I've told him he's in charge of you. He'll make sure you don't get up to any more mischief."

"What? What?" Isabeau spluttered; and Catherine was almost relieved to see the venom spark from her mother's eyes as Isabeau woke up, finally, fully, to the presence of danger. But there was no time for her to start spitting and shouting at her son. He must have realized that would come, as soon as she understood. He signaled to his guard. They lined up round Isabeau, with their lances gleaming, and, slowly, painfully, shuffled with her across the yard.

The Queen didn't protest. She allowed herself to be walked away. But, before she turned the corner that would take her and the men guarding her away into the unknown, she stopped and turned back to fix terrible eyes on her son. All she said, very quietly, was: "You--will--regret--this." But the cold fury in her voice and face sent shivers down Catherine's spine.

Into the awful silence that followed, broken, for a long few moments, only by birdsong and the audible breathing of Bernard of Armagnac, Charles finally said truculently to his sister: "You go back to Paris."

"Charles..." Catherine murmured pleadingly, stepping toward him, wondering if she dared take his hand; hoping even now that she could say something to turn back time. "Maman...Please..."