Crown in Candlelight (2 page)

‘They were talking about Madame our mother,’ said Michelle uneasily. Katherine’s eyes dilated, and she dropped the half-eaten fruit on the dirty floor.

‘I wish we were with Marie at Poissy,’ said Michelle, trembling. ‘The nuns there are kind. Dame Alphonse said I had an angel’s face, and that she would pray for our safety.’

‘Why?’ said Katherine.

‘I’m not sure … and she promised a novena for our poor father’s malady.’ She began to cry. ‘I wish he were well again!’ Katherine wept too. They were greeted suddenly by the Dauphin Louis, who thrust into the room with all the swagger of his eight years.

‘Ho!’ he cried. ‘Why are you grizzling? Look! He’s almost tamed!’ From his threadbare bosom he hauled a small brown rat, holding it expertly by the tail. Fascinated, the little girls stopped crying. The rat arched and snapped impotently.

‘I shall call him Bosredon,’ Louis announced. ‘After mother’s paramour.’ His pointed face with its small stubborn mouth and Valois nose was bland with hatred. ‘And I shall train him to go for people’s throats. And when I am king I shall have Bosredon—and my uncle of Orléans—strangled. Up there!’ He waved to where the scaffold of Montfaucon showed black against the dying day. Katherine sidled close and touched the rat’s back, jumping back as the animal writhed.

‘He’s soft, like Beppo.’ The fluffy white dog had lain beside her gilded chestnut-wood cradle, long since broken for kindling against the chill of St Paul. He was dead or abandoned, gone anyway like all beautiful things. Like Belle, who had returned from England what seemed so long ago, who had adored her and disappeared again. Joanna was married and in Brittany, Marie a postulant nun. But Belle, wherever she now was, seemed to have existed only in Katherine’s heart.

Louis gathered the rat up and thrust it back inside his shirt. He was in good spirits. He had been in the stables, learning new swear words, and in the kitchen, where Jeanette, the pantry-maid whose sometime favourite he was, turned a blind eye to his pilfering. Not that there was much to pilfer; the palace was as bereft as a long-besieged castle, its few servants as thin and threadbare as the royal children.

‘There, Monsieur Bosredon!’ Louis patted the writhing bulge. ‘You shall tear out their throats … when I am king! Aiee! he has sharp teeth! Shall I cut off his head? For his great treachery?’

The sisters were silent as the small figure, warlike, mouthed oaths and accusations, legacy of the ear at the door, the witness of awful scenes between his elders. He swore, spat on the floor, declaimed the fate of whoremongers and traitors. Once I am king, when I am king. All kings raved; he roared louder until Michelle put her hands to her ears.

‘Oh, Louis! What if you are never king?’

She had broken the spell. The Dauphin paled.

‘I say you will never be king,’ Michelle said.

Louis moved forward and struck his sister in her meagre chest. She fell back; he wrenched the rat from his bosom and held, it, chittering and squirming, near her face. He cursed her, often-heard and barely-understood words. Whore, wanton, thief, beggar. She slapped his mouth and he screamed in temper. Weirdly answering from the adjoining turret came a dreadful gurgling groan of terror and grief. Louis’s face looked suddenly like that of a little old man. The rat jumped from his hand and skittered to safety. Michelle covered her face. And Katherine began to run dementedly about the room. The quarrel might never have been; Michelle and Louis crept close.

‘Will they come for us?’

‘It is only our poor father,’ said Louis bravely.

Katherine reached the door, which opened suddenly. She fell against the greasy apron of a servant; a woman whose lustreless eyes looked at her disagreeably.

‘You must come, it’s time.’ Roughly uncaring that she addressed the Valois blood royal, and truculent from the lack of wages for the past three months. She thought: mad Charles’s litter, all of them, his and that bitch’s whose capers leave me with scarcely a crust or a thread. Rancour sharpened her voice.

‘Come, all of you! To say goodnight!’

She chivvied them into the passage outside. Louis went bravely ahead, whispering: ‘Only to say goodnight …’ like a charm to ward off devils. They went in dusk through a stone bay, past pillars warted with treacherously smiling gargoyles to the turret of despair. There were two columns built into an ogee-shaped arch surrounding the great oak door, and these were decorated with stone carvings: fish, fruit, a hippopotamus devouring grapes. From a column’s lowest abutment a stone eagle jutted, with spread wings. As another frightful groan shuddered through the closed door, Katherine darted from the woman’s side. She threw her arms about the cold stone bird, and clung.

‘Come!’ Hands, hurting, prised at her fingers. Katherine gripped. fast, while the woman’s impatience became wrath.

‘God’s life, Amélie! Can’t you see she’s terrified?’

From shadows a figure stepped, a tall woman with a round peasant face unskilfully painted. Beneath plucked brows her light eyes were dispassionate. She had attempted finery; full breasts swelled the bodice of a worn red velvet gown. A tawdry necklace of amber was wound about her short neck. Odette de Champdivers had been the King’s mistress longer than she could remember, his consort both in splendour and present grief Like all the others at St Paul, she was depleted and downcast, yet she remained with him, resigned, sometimes hopeful. She came between Katherine and the raging servant.

‘Leave her,’ she said. ‘Come,
princesse
, it’s your duty.’

She did not speak kindly but her nonchalance was reassuring. Katherine let go the pillar.

‘Only for a moment,’ said Odette. ‘Seeing you may do your father good.’

As she spoke, four men, ragged, bearded, came running along the passage. On their heads they bore a large tin tub. They were grinning. ‘Bath night!’ they cried, and rushed at the great oak door. They went in, the last remaining body-servants of King Charles, picked and paid for by the malice of Queen Isabeau, men for whom torment of others was sport. Odette said reflectively: ‘We have chosen a bad moment!’ and looked down at Katherine, without tenderness but as one might contemplate the last chattel of value in a ransacked town.

‘The Devil have my soul if I’m not sick of all this,’ said the serving-woman.

‘Leave here, then,’ said Odette.

‘And you, Demoiselle? Will you do likewise?’

‘Perhaps.’ And perhaps not, she thought, for he has been cured before, by bleeding, by clysters. Why not again? And should that monstrous Queen return and find him well … I would stay if only to witness that!

‘Go on,’ she said, and followed the children into the King’s chamber. A choking stench assailed them, the product of a body and mind vilely sick. On a decrepit bed in the centre of the bare room the King clutched a filthy sheet to his naked body. He had not been shaved for days and the stubble on his pale face looked like grime. His large dark eyes were filled with unspeakable horrors. Yet there was still the evanescent youthful beauty that had been wildly squandered during his life with Isabeau and their shared debaucheries. Charles had been instilled with the
credo
that he came of a line of saints. Depravity made a bad bedfellow to these maxims. Sinner and saint battled in him; the price was paid with madness. The serving-men gathered about his bed. Rearing wildly, the King cried out and soiled himself. He saw their broken-toothed faces, the bath, now brimming. The water looked cold, sinister, like his wife’s last smile before she rode away leaving him raving and weeping. He saw in the doorway Odette and Amélie and the children, all elongated, wavering, as if he saw them through a mullion pane. He began to shiver; with difficulty he raised his hands close to his eyes. It was as he had feared; they were crystal, the long curved fingernails fragile mirrors, and his limbs …
Sacré Dieu!
the same … He shrank from the men.

‘Do not touch me! I am made of glass!’

‘Come on, monsieur,’ they said, winking at one another. ‘We must make you pretty again. Your lady wife commands it.’

‘I have no wife! I am Georges Dubois! He has neither wife nor children!’

Georges Dubois, long dead, was a sin remembered; the young gypsy brought by Isabeau to seduce him. How she had laughed, watching them together! Georges identity remained, a fitting token of guilt, of remorse.

One of the men took his arm, and he screamed. Into his vision, small and apparently menacing, came his youngest daughter..

‘Kiss your father,’ someone said.

Katherine was held aloft in air thick with the reek of ordure and agony. She slid downward towards the pallor and the staring eyes. She took the glacial hand with its talons and. set her lips to it. Unknowingly she drew upon her all his sorrows; they merged with her own unaccomplished years. Then in Odette’s arms she was borne away, while Louis and Michelle knelt before the King. The servants were handling him. Over and over he cried: ‘I am made of glass!’

The stolen revenues of France clothed her. Her throat wore a diamond serpent, her fingers flashed with jewels. Isabeau of Bavaria was proud, greedy and reckless, and completely without scruple. She laughed at life and sneered at death. She wore expensive Holland cloth. Two torch-bearers accompanied her and a diadem sparkled blue and green on her dark hair. She had dined well at the Louvre; her steps had an extra flaunt and her face was flushed. On her right came her brother, Louis of Bavaria, strong and swarthy. At her left was a man fair as a Rhineland maiden with a weak gentle mouth, and bringing up the rear was a small tousled man. As the quartet entered, Odette remained standing passively by the King’s bed. Isabeau spoke, laughing.

‘This, gentlemen, is the pigsty! Is it not the finest? My dear Orléans, what do you say?’

The fair man drew a muskball from his sleeve and held it to his nose.

‘My queen, I’m impressed. And this is the pig?’

He extended a slim hand as if to prod, and Charles cringed.

‘I see there’s a sow here also,’ said Louis of Bavaria with stolid wit. ‘Do they mate, I wonder?’

Odette’s eyes stared past them all.

‘Not any more,’ said Isabeau. ‘The poor pig is past his prime.’

‘Bah! he stinks!’ observed her brother.

‘I had ordered him cleansed. Perhaps we should wash him now … Monsieur de Laon!’

The small man came forward. He held an unstoppered leather flask.

‘Excellent,’ said Isabeau. ‘The red wine of Champagne … I bathe all my swine in it. Monsieur de Laon! Will you paint a pretty pattern on the King of France?’

The King whimpered. His eyes rolled.

‘Charles!’ said Isabeau. ‘Attend me! See, here’s my dear brother’ (Louis of Bavaria bowed, a jerky insult) ‘and your own brother’ (Louis of Orléans smiled his depraved maiden’s stale). ‘And Monsieur Colard de Laon. My protégé. He paints
à l’italienne
. Receive us, Charles!’

‘I am not Charles. Leave me in peace.’

She turned in rage to Colard de Laon. ‘Anoint him! Mock him! Paint him!’

Shrugging, the artist stepped up to the bed. He poured wine over the King’s head.

Charles said faintly: ‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.
In nomine Patris
…’

The Queen was irritated. The object of her torment was immune, far away. She leaned forward, her jewels irradiating the King’s wan face.

‘Charles! Don’t you know me?’

‘No,’ he said sadly. ‘You are fair, and cruel, but I do not know you.’

She stepped back. Louis of Orléans said softly: ‘He looks on the point of death.’

‘He will not die.’ Odette’s voice drifted to them, almost sepulchral. ‘He will recover, and be avenged.’

Isabeau whirled on her. ‘Silence! Beggar! Harlot!’ And Odette’s mouth curved and she looked at her feet.

‘Enough,’ said Isabeau. Her malicious gaiety had given way to temper. ‘Come, messires. I will see my children now.’

Her fury found a target in Orléans. She glared at him. ‘
You
know all about my children, seigneur! My boys, Charles, Jean are still in your household!’

‘At your request,’ said the Duke. He saw she was feeling the effects of wine and was becoming irrational.

‘And what of my eldest daughter—where is Isabelle?’

‘Probably with my son.’ He smiled.

‘I fear,’ said Isabeau dangerously, ‘that my children grow away from me. My sons …’

‘Two of them are safe at Blois,’ he said carefully. ‘But the Dauphin Louise … he is here, I assume?’

He despised her, his sister-in-law, feared her, and lusted for her constantly. She was devious. Often he suspected her collusion with his rivals, the powerful Dukes of Burgundy. For Burgundy and Orléans were the two swords of unrest fixed over the throne of France. Isabeau was the spider at the nucleus of a web; her threads stretched God knew where. To the hands of Burgundy’s mightiest peer, John the Fearless? Jean sans Peur was the King’s cousin, and his sole aim was to hold the regency of France, just as Louis of Orléans did not. He turned placatingly to Isabeau, taking her hand.

‘Come below, let us drink and play a little, my queen!’

‘Yes,’ she said, her mouth slackening, so that for a moment the years peeped through the jewels and cosmetics. ‘And we’ll talk more of Isabelle … she shall marry Henry of England. According to England’s wish and mine.’

Louis of Bavaria spoke gruffly. ‘That I doubt, sister …’

She was looking scornfully again at the figure on the bed. Charles was quiet. Beside him Odette rested her fingers lightly on his bare shoulder.

‘Farewell, my lord,’ said the Queen. She blessed him, blaspheming, hateful. ‘God and St Denis protect my pig!’

For a blind instant the air between them shivered with strange intent. Then Charles sat up suddenly. A Lazarus-figure, clear-eyed and composed.

‘Farewell, Queen Isabeau,’ he said, in a completely rational way. ‘I thank you for your blessing.’

Odette drew her breath. Her fingers tightened on the King’s shoulder, and his own came up to cover them.

‘I feel so weak,’ he said to her, ignoring the others. ‘I must eat. I feel so dirty. Help me, my dear …’

She bent close to hide excitement. She prayed: Let this not be one of those freakish miracles, seen before and defeated by the recurrence of his delirium. The Queen and her chevaliers were withdrawing, their apprehension far from concealed. Odette’s heart skipped with joy as Charles whispered calmly to her, speaking of Jean sans Peur, Duke of Burgundy, bidding her follow his enemies and listen and be vigilant, calling her his good girl, as in the old days when she had first given him her body and her heart.