Wife to Henry V: A Novel (10 page)

“May God help me!” And it was a prayer sent up with all her heart. “He will not fail us, now. We are in God's House.” And she played for time.

“God's House! What do Burgundians care for that?” And she could hear the teeth rattle in his head.

“If we run we shall be taken,” she said. “Here is sanctuary. Stay with me, friend, and...” she sent him a sly smile, “you shall have your reward.”

He paid no attention. He was dragging at her arm, his fingers pinching into the dark stuff of her gown. And now, to the frightened worshippers, came the tread of mailed feet; the quiet church rang with it.

Burgundy stood before the Queen, bowed before the Queen.

“Praise God; and you, my lord,” she said. She nodded towards the stricken jailer. “Rid me of this vermin.”

She heard his thin high screaming as they dragged him out.

She turned to Burgundy. “Dear Cousin,” she said, “for this I shall love you as long as I live.” She reached up and kissed him full upon the mouth.

Caen had fallen, the great city.

Henry was jubilant in his cold, measured way. God had given the victory; God's Soldier had made that victory secure.

He cast a thoughtful eye upon his brother. Tom did not approve of his treatment of the city. Not the actual terms of surrender—they were fair; hard, perhaps, yet still fair. But—the savagery! Tom, bolder than most, had not hesitated over the word.

“God's Soldier,” Henry told him now, “must not jib at the sight of blood.” And why did he say this to Tom? Tom was no coward; in the heat of battle Tom counted no cost—his own heart's blood or another's. It was only afterwards that some flaw in the crystalline Lancaster hardness caused him to grieve.

“Mercy.” Henry was irritable. “You think I should have shown more mercy. Oh you say nothing; but the thoughts in your head run clear. What mercy did they show when they blew quicklime into our eyes? Ask my blinded men what mercy. Or when they poured their boiling fat upon us? Ask my men, their flesh raw, mortifying. Or when they flung their rocks upon us? Ask my men with their broken backs and their scattered brains. Mercy is good; but justice is better.”

“Justice is not enough. No, nor even the good laws you make. If you want France, it isn't only battles you must win—it's the people,” Thomas of Clarence said.

“We shall win those, too, never fear, Tom. Nature as well as God is on our side.” He grinned. “Men are more willing to serve her than to serve God, so it seems.” He threw a paper across the table. “The damsels of Caen clamouring for permission to marry our men.”

“Virgins?”

“Ask Dame Nature.” Henry laughed.

* * *

Who could doubt that God was on the side of Harry of England?

Not the English, with towns and castles of Normandy, yes, even Bayeux with its great new walls, falling like ripe plums.

Not Burgundy and Isabeau biding their time in Tours; not the Dauphin and his Armagnacs entrenched in Paris; and each one of them plotting and planning to use this victorious Harry to his own ends—the destruction of the personal enemy; not caring overmuch if in the process France were destroyed, too.

In London the joybells never ceased; bells for Trun fallen; for Argentan surrendered without a blow; for the great castles of Cahillous and Chambois; for the town of Essay and the city of Sées ; for more than a man could remember or his tongue speak. Bells for Dangeuil and Nouan and Bellême, for the whole duchy of Alençon reduced in fifteen days.

John of Burgundy marching on Paris to destroy the hated Armagnacs, turned back. Paris was strongly held. Henry of England should pull that chestnut out of the fire for him. No hurry!

John the Fearless deserving well his new name—the Laggard.

* * *

In the Palace of the Counts at Tours, Isabeau pushed aside documents all bearing the new Great Seal—her seal, admiring as she did so her portrait in wax.

She looked at Burgundy, grim, morose, and smiled. “Courage, Cousin!”

“Courage!” He almost spat. “Courage—when France falls piecemeal into England's hands?”

“No need to playact with me. Leave such talk for the fools who believe you! You care for little—except that Armagnacs shall bleed. And bleed they shall! It needs no prophet to know this outcome. On the one hand, Henry of England cool and cunning and very patient. On the other, my husband, poor fool; and my blundering wretch of a son. England shall win...win for
us
; for us, Cousin. You have your own understanding with Henry. And I have Catherine...when I can lay hands on her. So why be mealy-mouthed? Cry success to England; success to ourselves.”

* * *

It was moving towards Christmas, the hard Christmas of 1417. In Paris a bitter wind screamed through the narrow streets, whistled along the stone floors of St. Pol.

Catherine looked out at the low and dirty sky. There would be snow soon! At night, lying in her bed she could hear wolves howling outside the city walls. Sometimes she dreamed of wolves, wakened screaming at the furs upon her bed. It was because she was frightened; she was frightened because she had been left in St. Pol with the madman. Oh he was kind enough; harmless, too—when he was safely locked away. But who knew when one might not encounter him wandering, dribbling, muttering? That was why she screamed in the night; why she hated to leave her chamber by day; why, both day and night, she longed for her mother and for Tours.

Paris counted for little nowadays with its mad King and its foolish Dauphin. But Tours!

She came from the window, restless.

Tours was the heart of France. Ambassadors came and went. The Queen ruled from the royal palace, she remitted taxes; she set up and cast down officers of the crown; she had even appointed a new Constable of France—Constable Armagnac vowed to have her blood for that!

Oh Tours, Tours!

Catherine beat her cold hands together.

Tours where her mother's strong will held all together, where there was no shilly-shally, no muddles, no madness...

She heard a step outside her door, a light and dragging step—Charles come to see their father. She hoped he would not pay her a visit. He talked wildly of how he would save France; but all Christendom knew that he shut himself up in the Louvre and played with his mistresses and lifted no hand to help anyone.

The steps passed her door. She sighed her relief.

Once she had asked him,
Whom would you help?
And he had answered,
Myself, myself
. She had been an untidy, plain little girl and he a selfish small boy with no thought of the crown.
A youngest son may yet wear a crown...
Did Michelle remember saying that, Michelle in faraway Ghent?

She had a sudden longing for Michelle with her sharp tongue and her good heart and the Valois nose that would never put her own prettier one out of joint.

Oh but she was bored here in Paris, bored!

She flung out her arms, tossed back the locks of her bright hair. When would she be permitted to hide them beneath the great coif of a married woman? When, when would she receive her crown?

* * *

“Falaise has fallen,” Burgundy said, sour.

Isabeau shrugged.

He said with exasperated patience, “Not the town alone—that one might have expected. But the castle, the castle on the great rock; untakeable, wouldn't you have said?”

“Nothing is untakeable where Henry of England is concerned.”

“Luck!” Burgundy said. “The man has luck!”

“He makes his own luck. He has a brain as well as an arm—and he uses both. Fighting in winter! Such a thing has never been thought of. Yet there are his men in winter quarters snug as lice in the wainscot; huts and fires and food!” She looked at him with scorn—he had disbanded his army against the cold. She could wish for a better ally than Laggard John; for an ally like the English King with the brain and the courage that matched her own.

“What next?” she said and sighed a little. “Rouen. It will be Rouen. And then...” she looked at him sideways.

“We do not wait for
then
. We do not let the cursed Armagnacs get in first. We make our treaty with England—
now
. You and I.”

“A treaty?” She pretended to surprise, as if he had not said exactly what she had meant him to say. He needed handling, this thick-witted Burgundy.

“A treaty?” she said again and wondered what part he had planned for her in this? “What of our husband?”

“A madman who thrust you into prison where you would be rotting now, but for me.”

“He is still the King,” she reminded him a little sharp. “And...there is our son—”

“—whose mischief-making sent you to rot, my dear! He's no more to be trusted than any other snake.”

“But he's the Dauphin and he must be reckoned with.”

“Then reckon with him; and add this to the reckoning. He's in the bloody hands of Armagnac—and bloody hands make bloody hands.” He thrust his own hand towards the fire. For the moment she could have sworn it ran with blood.

* * *

In the gardens of St. Pol, laburnums hung down their gold; gold for the crown of the charming princess. The may was red; red for the blood that flowed in the streets of Paris.

“Blood!” sighed Catherine walking beneath the flowering trees. “I am bored at the thought of it!” She stopped; the light wind turning brought an unmistakable smell of carrion. “But more than anything, I am bored by the smell of it!”

Guillemote said nothing. The life-blood of Paris overflowed the street-kennels and her mistress was bored!

“I thought my mother would be here by now,” Catherine said. “I thought they were friends again, my father and my mother. There's been enough sending backwards and forwards—two whole months of it. And then, when everything was settled, my brother must go and interfere. The fool!” She stamped the pretty foot in its great curving toe of green leather.

“Can you blame him, my lady? What future for him if the Queen and the Duke ride the high horse?”

“I'm weary of them all—my brother and his friends trembling each for his own skin. I'm weary of St. Pol with its fears and its sadness. I'm weariest of all, God forgive me, of my father. When will my cousin of Burgundy come?”

“When he has taken Paris,” Guillemote said.

“And when will that be? Last time he turned back at the very gates.”

“Patience, my lady. It's different now. The people of Paris are angry and restless. They are sick of the smell of slaughter. Old people want to warm their bones in the sun, to grow fat...”

“And young people?” Catherine stretched her arms in a yawn; she was not interested in the desires of the old.

“The young will not stay quiet much longer. They will not allow the Duke to be shut out...”

“They have allowed it all this time.”

“Times have changed, my lady; the Duke has the Queen in his pocket.”

“And so? Come, what do you know—or think you know?” She shrugged, indifferent. “What can you know more than I?”

“I'm freer, my lady, to come and go. And as I come, and as I go, I use my eyes and my ears.”

“Then you had best tell me what you've seen and what you've heard!” Catherine was suddenly sharp. “Unless you would rather confide in...my lord of Armagnac.”

Guillemote's jaw dropped; for all her thirty-odd years she was no match for this girl.

“There is a plot, my lady. But...you must never tell, swear you will never tell.”

“Why should I tell...if I like the plot? And how can I know until I hear it?”

And she had a look of her mother, implacable, behind the young brow.

Guillemote raised herself on her toes, whispered towards her mistress's ear.

“The butcher lads of Paris!” Catherine was ready to cry with disappointment. Already she had pictured the shining rescue. And now it was nothing but a sordid tale. “What can they do, the low fellows?”

“What the great cannot—go freely, unmarked. Believe me, my lady, Burgundy's captains don't despise the 'prentice lads of Paris.”

“When?” Catherine asked. Her pride crumpled suddenly. “Oh when?”

“Soon,” Guillemote promised, triumphant. “But for God's love—and for that of the lady your mother—guard your tongue.”

* * *

In the dark of morning Catherine awoke to the panic of her heart. Against the blackness of the walls dull flare of torches moved, disappeared, moved again. Hand thrust against her mouth lest she cry out, she heard the sharp splinter of glass, the dull thud of stones, the drunken bellowing, the thin screams of fear.

The mob. The mob were in St. Pol itself. For all it was nearly June she felt herself shaking. A mob drunk with victory. Who had won, Burgundian or Armagnac? In this moment of fear, it didn't matter. All mobs were evil. She hadn't forgotten, five years ago, the mob bursting into her mother's room, and the screaming as they'd dragged her friends away.

She lay there lacking the courage to move, even to reach for her bedgown lest they find her naked. She heard the pad of hurrying feet, bare, flat feet.

Guillemote, bedcover grotesque about her, burst in.

“Murder!” she cried. “Oh God, God! Can't you hear it, can't you smell it?”

“Sh!” Catherine commanded and put a hand over the woman's mouth. She crept to the window, gently pushed at the narrow casement.

Above the confusion of noises the Burgundian battle-cry sang clear. It rose, swelled, sustained itself in triumph.

“God be praised!” And now with knowledge of Burgundian victory, Catherine was herself again, exultant. “You chatter like a fool, girl. Take yourself off; but first reach me my bedgown.”

* * *

Now all Paris wore the white Cross of Burgundy—even the King himself. The Dauphin had fled. Paris was mad with blood-lust. It was enough to cry after a man
Armagnac
for him to be butchered then and there—and no questions asked. The mere sound of the word sent the mob crazy. They found Armagnac himself crouched in a hovel and dragged him out to die unspeakably in the open street. His body lay naked as when it was born; but not quite as it had been born. They had carved a great bend sinister in the dead flesh to shame him further; and did not know how they shamed themselves. The streets of Paris were piled high with corpses, mutilated, naked. A decent woman dare not raise her eyes, Guillemote said.