Crown in Candlelight (32 page)

The negotiations had failed through the fault of Jean sans Peur, now for ever silent. He had been afraid of those in his own party who resented Henry’s terms, and dared not risk losing partisans to the Dauphin and Armagnac. So the tents at Pontoise were dismantled, the French royal family resumed their river journey and Henry, when he returned a month later expecting a final settlement, found an empty field. That was when he had sent the jewels. And after that he began a further campaign, throwing a force from Nantes against Pontoise itself, the stronghold of the Burgundians. Now Pontoise was fallen, the trenches overgrown with grass, the scars where the bright pavilions had stood healed by a year.

She could well have married him. He was pleasant enough, she could not imagine him wine-flushed and raging like her mother, or gibbering insanely like her father. He had an appealing stability. Meanwhile, there was this limbo of unknowing. She would sit for ever, cooked by clothes, in the bower at Troyes, a virgin in her nineteenth year. Her sisters, perhaps even Marie the nun, must have seen more of life. Dear lovely Belle had had love and death for bedfellows. Briefly she thought of Charles of Orléans, held for five years since Agincourt. Still Henry’s captive, still writing his sad songs in the Tower of London.

And then a messenger scratched urgently upon the door, and the nightingale, without warning, began to sing.

A paperchase of seabirds, flying downriver, followed the cavalcade as it approached the spires and turrets of Troyes. Flanked by horsemen and followed by hundreds of footsoldiers, Henry rode beside Philip, the new Duke of Burgundy. They rode so close that the sleek quarters of their mounts jostled together. Philip leaned slightly towards the English king as if in physical token of his complete amity. The young Duke wore a large black hat, the fold of its chaperon trailing over one shoulder. Over a black woollen tunic, a mantle of the same stuff enveloped him down to his spurs. The only relief in this gloom came from a gold crucifix and an enamelled collar across his chest from which hung his emblem, a small gold ram. His face was as hollow and serious as Henry’s. Beneath delicate brows his black Valois eyes were tragic. He had mourned his father, Jean sans Peur, for a year. The murder had utterly dislocated his life and his intentions. Neither warrior nor strategist himself, he had found himself waking nightly, weeping, crying
Death to Armagnac!
Death in particular to the Dauphin Charles, death or ruin. Innocent of how to achieve this, pious and gentle and nicknamed ‘The Good’, he had turned in desperation to the English king, armed with treaties and concessions. In Henry’s strength he saw a weapon for his vengeance. And like most Frenchmen, the fate and eventual suzerainty over his own country took a second place to his personal desires. When they had met at Christmas for the preliminaries of the vast treaty which now travelled with them, he had practically promised Henry the earth.

‘If you will fight against the Dauphin, my father’s assassin—’ his voice almost strangled with longing—‘Cousin, my own fair cousin Katherine shall be yours. You shall have all that you desire.’

Henry had not been surprised. Carefully conscious that he was now not only the conqueror but also the prime arbiter in this internecine strife, he had weighed the Treaty in terms of its acceptance by those towns he had so far left unbesieged. Paris was not one such, for he had it virtually surrounded, but when he passed by from Rouen to Troyes he saw the walls crowded with a throng obviously delighted by the prospect of a peaceful settlement. Seven masters from the University of Paris had helped to draw up the Treaty. Seven French envoys had addressed the Parlement’s chamber of representatives, whose reaction had been unequivocal assent. Paris itself, though near starvation, sent four cartloads of wine to Henry, a gesture of friendship. These he received sombrely gracious, accepting them as his due.

Wine was the conversation now as they rode. Against Philip’s mourning dress, Henry’s scarlet gown, worn over full armour, had a bloody gaiety. Before him a page bore his tilting helm from which, instead of a panache, a fox’s brush moved glossily in the wind. This quirk of fashion set him apart, as a man savage and vulpine in combat rather than one enamoured of silk fripperies.

‘Some of the Loire yield I found much to my taste,’ Henry said. ‘There’s one with a flinty pleasing palate of which I took a little.’

‘The area is rich in minerals. Did your armies appreciate the wine?’

‘I forbade them to drink unless each cup was mixed with three parts water. I do not brook intemperance.’

Philip glanced behind at the lined barbarous faces of young men grown old in service, who had triumphed in the clashing maw of Agincourt and returned for further conquests. He looked at Henry with even greater respect for his discipline of such men.

‘I am ever grateful to you, my liege,’ he said, ‘for the letter you sent in sympathy of my father’s death.’

‘Queen Isabeau wrote me in equal cordiality,’ said Henry. He thought how blatantly she too had shown readiness to come to terms. Now he could dare to be generous. The death of Jean sans Peur could be the final solution to the vacillations and feuds which continued even while France fell at Henry’s command. His own letter to Philip had been warm yet stern. There could be no reneging on promises or oaths as Jean sans Peur had done. Meanwhile Philip’s grieving mother fanned the flame, writing in complaint to the Pope, harassing the University of Paris, whose patron Jean sans Peur had been, to rise in arms against the Dauphin. And the campaign of vengeance had already begun; Philip and Henry’s combined forces had launched a successful attack on Tremblay, an Armagnac
château-fort
, their armies fighting well together, with only a little friendly rivalry. And now, although this expedition to Troyes was one of diplomacy, it had been thought prudent to arm the men in case of a Dauphinist ambush on the road.

‘Queen Isabeau will be glad to see you,’ said Philip.

‘So will
our dear father
, the King.’ The ghost of a smile brushed Henry’s thin cheek.

‘Ah. The King,’ Philip said less happily. Then: ‘I trust you found the Princess pleasing. She is a good maid, most devout and modest.’

‘That is what I thought.’

The heralds on the walls of Troyes raised their trumpets. Banners rippled, azure and scarlet and gold. Henry spoke honestly; he had been impressed with Katherine and by a letter she had sent him, doubtless written under dictation but sweetly and simply penned. He could not recall her face, save that it was nothing like the portrait which he had scarcely had chance to study. He wished she had written in English, little knowing that she had wanted to but had feared errors; Henry’s own letters were exemplary, with all the prepositions spelled right.

The dignitaries of Troyes came out to do them homage. Prominent among the vested prelates was the old Archbishop of Sens. Pale-faced, he looked at Henry with unmistakable supplication. As they rode on towards their royal lodging in the Hôtel de Ville, Philip said:

‘The Archbishop is greatly troubled. The Armagnacs have turned him out of his diocese,’ and Henry answered firmly: ‘If he’s the one who will join me to the Princess Katherine, he shall see an end to trouble!’ His eyes flicked over the crowd of nobles travelling with them through the cobbled streets. In a chariot drawn by two pale horses sat a lady, leaning outwards with a kind of desperate confined energy. Exceptionally blonde, glittering braids fell to her waist from beneath a towering crescent of white veiling. Young and rosy, her small mouth was twisted with discontent. Henry knew her: Jacqueline, Princess of Hainault, widow of the second Dauphin, Jean of Touraine, and niece of Jean sans Peur. Now another husband, the new Duke of Brabant, rode before her on a prancer, and her eyes, set upon him, matched the distaste on her lips.

‘All’s not well between my cousins Dame Jacqueline and Brabant,’ Philip said softly.

Young Brabant bowed to Henry without enmity. He was rather an ugly young man. He gripped his restless horse with skinny legs, while his wife’s beautiful eyes bored like basilisks into his unknowing back.

I had hoped, thought Henry, to marry Dame Jake to my brother of Bedford. A useful link with Burgundy, and more, she is heiress to Hainault, Zeeland and Holland. Then, suddenly aware, he watched acutely where the lady’s eyes went next, although at the same time managing to ride on and bow and converse. Humphrey of Gloucester had spurred up to ride beside Jacqueline’s litter, and her eyes were no longer bored or cross. When Humphrey, resplendent in sapphire silk, doffed his hat to her, her eyelids dropped as though scalded. So, thought Henry. He has the good looks—he can make ladies fall in love … he might have done better than I with Katherine but he could not have bested me in the field. He filed away the knowledge of Jacqueline’s coy longing, and rode on.

The citizens, sensible that the forthcoming treaty might mean an end to looting, ransoms and ruin, had prepared a welcome. Burgundian poets and chroniclers from all the noble households edged the streets. A frenzied spate of minstrelsy flowed from wagons, courtyards and balconies. The song changed from street to street, the tail of one tune merging into another key and then another. A song would be left behind in minutes, drowned by the hollow tabor of hooves, to be replaced discordantly by the next, diffused, dying then emerging changed in the next square or swallowed by trumpets.

He was reminded of his triumphal entry into London five years ago with his war-weary armies. There had been singing boys and girls, blessings and the roar of the
Deo Gratias
anthem. While he, still sick from the melancholy that follows great triumph as it sometimes follows love, had endured it all like one dead. All he could think of, under the waving banners and the showered coins and flowers, was that his conquest was left unfinished, and that, in further holy settlement he must find and burn Oldcastle, the Lollard. And this he had done …

In London little birds, their feathers painted gold, had been freed to flutter about him, settling on his shoulders as he rode over London Bridge. They fell on him like small soft missiles, choked and dying from the paint. On the Bridge two almost pagan giant figures held the keys of the City and an immense laurel wreath of silver and gold. Inside a brocade pavilion was a twenty-feet-high effigy of St George, his helmet covered with more laurel and studded with pearls. Men and boys with laurel in their hair had sung and, as now, the singing had risen and faded and become diffuse, garbled, competitive, its beauty overwhelmed by zeal. One tune in unison would have been enough. But that singing, like this singing, was like the tune of life itself, the clashes and uncertainties, the pains and joys, the facets of the spirit ever at war, ever seeking the one true music.

On Cornhill, old men dressed as the prophets had sung, bowing down:
Cantate Domino canticum novum, Alleluia!
Well, they should sing a new song again, he thought, dismounting with Philip at the Hôtel de Ville. Upon his next return home he would glory in it all, this time he would not fast through all the banquets that had been prepared for him. The way was open, and achievement within his hand.

Owen ap Meredyth ap Tydier rode among the train, a rightful and experienced member of the King’s Household. He did not sing; his talent was too precious for streetbawling. He had been present at the robing of the King for this journey, had helped Henry with his long scarlet boots, and he had given the tilting helm a rub, although it already had a glassy sheen. He had touched the fox’s brush, soft as a girl’s hair, and full of strange crisp lights.

And touching it, seeing it now bouncing in the wind, he thought of Madog. With Madog came Hywelis. He had thought of neither for over five years. But the feel of the brush was the feel of Madog, and it woke in him a long memory like an unfashionable caress, one that he quickly put aside.

Charles of France did not rise from his dais as Henry strode through the crowded hall towards him. He watched the red-mantled figure vaguely. Somewhere in him was the notion that the gaunt man who came with such purpose was important. The idea swam about in his consciousness, then evaporated, becoming part of the inconsequential greyness that hid memory and anticipation alike. The figure came on. Not dangerous, so long as it did not touch him, for he was precious today, his limbs and eyes and hands made of finest spun crystal, the whole enclosed in a brittle egg of glass … Two women knelt on either side of him. The tall stoutish one, well-nosed and flushed, was smiling. The younger one was very still but her vibrations made him uneasy; she could crack his delicate shell. Her heavy gold robe too looked sharp, it was stiff enough to stand in points about her as she knelt. He shifted an inch away. The man was at his feet now, on one knee, and behind him another dressed in black did likewise, and there were so many people … Charles gazed down the packed hall blindly. Drool ran down his chin.

Henry looked at his Princess. For a fleeting second he saw the image of her father in her and was filled with doubt. Then he assessed the two pairs of dark eyes and the shielding look common to them both, and was reassured. In Charles it hid true madness; in Katherine, only innocence and a discreet detachment. Then Queen Isabeau’s hands, wine-hot and with the grip of a man, reached out to him. He bent to kiss her on both cheeks and she rose, nearly pulling him off balance with the weight of clothes and flesh.

‘Welcome, great sovereign lord.’

‘My dear mother,’ said Henry. ‘Greetings.’

‘Our dear son,’ Isabeau said.

Katherine stumbled slightly on her robe as she got up and Henry caught her. Her soft breast met the steel cuirass under his mantle as they stood and he kissed her formally. Her cheeks were peach-soft; she smelled of honey and lilies. She was long and lissom and strong, with wide slender shoulders and a vibrancy apparent even to his politic abstracted mind. He felt the unique potential flouncing within her. Beneath the dresses and overdresses and the heated
ennui
, beneath all the stressful longings was – Katherine. And Henry, the anxious victor, racked by old guilts and conquests, was suddenly lightened, filled with hope. This was better than that first meeting. She was new, promising, far more than a figurehead of the Treaty that would, God willing, be signed tomorrow. She was the virgin of legend, chained to the rock of circumstance, and he the hero who would unfetter her. She was the white maiden that Owen ap Tydier had sung to him about. He thought: I’ll have him sing this day, to charm that poor tortured soul, her father, whom devils have by the heart … it would be an act of grace. He kissed the Princess again, spontaneously, and a little sigh of pleasure rose from the courtiers.