The Agincourt Bride (18 page)

At this point the herald’s voice broke and he passed a shaking hand over his eyes as if to brush away the nightmare vision. Blinking back tears, Catherine hastily signalled me to bring the man a cup of wine.

‘I am sure it is extremely painful to recall, Monseigneur,’ she sympathised, ‘but it is important that I understand exactly what occurred on that bloody field. If the queen were here, she would require it too.’

The herald took a gulp from the cup I handed him, cleared his throat and nodded. ‘I understand, Madame. I beg you to excuse my weakness. I am ready to continue.’

However, his flowing language seemed to desert him at this time and his narrative continued in jerky gasps.

‘English archers shoot fifteen arrows every minute and their shafts can pierce steel plate. Many of our knights were killed or wounded in the volleys and, in their heavy armour, unseated riders could not get to their feet in the mud. Loose and wounded horses panicked and trampled them. Bodies lay writhing and others fell on top of them. The pile was shoulder high and ever-growing and soon the English archers stopped firing and moved in to pick them off with their daggers and maces, dancing over the mud and bodies in their light leather jackets and bare feet, agile as goats. The English king fought his ground on foot among his retinue, somehow keeping his footing. One by one, our hand-picked knights attacked him and he fought them off. I saw him battle for several minutes over his wounded brother, the Duke of Gloucester, until squires managed to carry the duke to safety. I can only say, Madame, that he wields his broadsword like an avenging angel; he is a fearsome knight.’

Catherine could not let that pass without comment. ‘But a stranger to the laws of chivalry, according to the dauphin,’ she observed. ‘Did he not order prisoners killed?’

‘Some who had surrendered were put to the sword,’ agreed the herald dolefully. ‘The Duke of Brabant galloped late into the field and French prisoners began to break their oaths and pick up captured weapons to fight again. Henry of England is an implacable enemy and he quickly realised that the prisoners outnumbered his army. It seems that chivalry bows to necessity in such circumstances.’

‘When will the names of the dead be known?’ It was Agnes who spoke, in a voice hoarse with anxiety. ‘My home of Blagny is not far from Agincourt. I am sure my father would have fought on the day.’

Montjoy Herald raised his shoulders and spread his hands. ‘I do not know when, Mademoiselle. The list is long – very long.’ He stood up, putting down his empty wine cup. ‘I should return to the field, Madame,’ he added, bowing low to Catherine. ‘There is much for a king of arms to do.’

She nodded sadly and, not forgetting her royal obligation to reward good service, reached out to pick up the cup. It was fashioned of gilt and set with precious stones. ‘The cup is yours, Monseigneur de Montjoy. We thank you for your dreadful duty. None of us will ever forget your account of the field of Agincourt. Although the battle is over, I fear our woes have just begun.’

T
he Count of Armagnac won the race for Paris, galloping in at the head of a horde of tough Gascon horsemen only hours before Burgundy and his Flemish thugs arrived. Behind him, as the dauphin had ordered, the city gates were slammed shut, leaving Burgundy to kick his heels fuming under the ramparts. Both Catherine and I sent up heartfelt prayers of thanks, for although we had no reason to trust Armagnac, time had not reduced our mutual fear of the black Duke.

The palace, Paris, the whole of France, was in a state of shock. When heralds delivered the list of Agincourt casualties, their recitation filled the three hours between the holy Offices of Tierce and Sext. The names of the dead were inscribed on fifty rolls of vellum. Hardly a noble family had escaped loss. Poor Agnes, who had been fretting about her father ever since the battle, discovered in the most heartless possible way that he was listed among the dead. No more than that, just a name read out in the formal, dispassionate tones of Bon Espoir Pursuivant, one of the junior royal heralds, but in that instant Agnes discovered she was an orphan. Most of us listening had become mesmerised by the seemingly endless recitation of names and, being unaware of his Christian name and rank, had not even noticed the inclusion of Percival, sire de Blagny. But Catherine had and caused a pause in proceedings as she left her place on the royal dais to comfort her school-friend, who had slumped back against the wall of the great hall, her hands covering her face.

I was loath to leave the recitation and take a weeping Agnes to the Church of St Pol for comfort and prayer, because I knew there would be no mention of the fate of servants and commoners; even had there been there was no knowing how many names would have been on it for no one knew how many ordinary men had died. Across the land thousands of families like mine could do nothing but wait and pray for news of their husbands, fathers, sons and brothers who had followed their lords and masters to an unknown fate in Picardy. Since Jean-Michel’s brief stop-over before the battle, it was as if he had vanished from our world. Each day I went to the stables to enquire after him, but the visits gave me little solace. A score of royal drivers were missing and the occasional straggler who fought his way through continual rain and hock-deep mud told frightening tales of narrow escapes from bloodthirsty outlaws.

Then, a fortnight after the battle, Luc came to me in tears. A convoy of six battered wagons had just returned from Picardy and one of the drivers had at last brought news of Jean-Michel. ‘Pa’s been injured,’ Luc sobbed. ‘H-he was hit by an-an arrow and he’s in some monastery somewhere. I must go to him, Ma!’

I hugged my distraught son and shuddered at the thought of losing him as well. ‘Oh my brave Luc! Much as you love your father, you are too young to face the terrors of the road. Come, let us find Alys and you can take us to the man who brought the news.’

The bearer of these terrible tidings was one of Jean-Michel’s fellow charettiers, a sturdy man from Brittany called Yves. His story did not make easy listening.

‘After the battle we were heading for Abbeville with carts full of wounded when a few opportunist outlaws attacked us, looking for loot, and unfortunately Jean-Michel took a crossbow bolt in the thigh. We managed to fight them off, but the wound quickly turned putrid. Most of those bandits’ weapons are rusty and I am sorry to say that Jean-Michel was raving by the time we got to Abbeville. He must have tremendous strength because many of the battle-wounded died en route. The monks have much skill with healing so we thought it best to leave him there, but I am afraid you may have to wait some time for further news. It is too dangerous to go back at present. Burgundy’s army is swarming all over Picardy and gangs of those outlaw cutthroats are in every forest. Besides, anyone leaving Paris now has no guarantee that Armagnac’s guards will let them back in. Even with our royal passes we had difficulty in gaining entry to the city.’

I had no heart to hear more at that moment and thanked him weakly. Almost without thinking, I found myself steering the children towards the familiar refuge of the stable hayloft, seeking comfort in its scented peace. As a couple Jean-Michel and I did not always see eye to eye, but I was nevertheless greatly fond of my stalwart husband. He may have been a man of few refinements, compared with the liveried pages and mannered men-servants I encountered in the royal apartments, but he was as straight as an arrow and as plucky as a buck hare and he still had the power to make my pulses race. Also, although he was quicker to laughter than endearment, I was aware that he loved me and our children, which Heaven knew was a rare thing in these violent, godless times. Teeth clenched, I did not allow the tears to come, telling myself that I would weep only when I knew he was dead.

Being young, Alys and Luc were not as stoical as I. They wept freely and I tried to comfort them with my own belief that he still lived and would come back to us, but my encouragement lacked total conviction. The loss of ten thousand on the field of Agincourt had barely moved me; I could feel no horror at the ‘Death of Chivalry’ as the nobles called it. To my mind the only thing that truly mattered was the life of one insignificant charettier whose life hung by a thread and so, there in the hayloft where they had been conceived, I hugged my son and daughter and prayed for God to lend His strength to their absent father. I did not voice my doubt but in my inmost thoughts there was no denying the truth. Yves had said the wound was putrid – and putrid flesh was a killer.

As the days passed without further news, I made enquiries about getting to Abbeville myself but Yves informed me that there were presently no supply convoys leaving the palace and even if I survived the journey, I would gain no admittance to the monastery.

‘No females allowed in there,’ he said flatly, ‘and the road is no place for woman or man. We call the forest outlaws
les Écorcheurs
– the Flayers – because even if you have nothing to steal they will flay the skin off your back and sell it to the tanners for leather. Take it from me – Jean-Michel is safe in Abbeville and you are safe in Paris. When he recovers he will find his way home.’

His use of the word ‘when’ was kind, for the look in his eyes said ‘if’.

The Hôtel de St Pol had become a place of sadness and gloom to everyone save the king. Locked for many months now in a delusion of childhood, King Charles remained blissfully unaware of France’s disastrous defeat and traipsed about the policies with his guardians, playing ‘blind man’s bluff’ in the cloisters or ‘seek me’ in the gardens. In other circumstances it might have been a comic sight to see tough, muscular men dodging between pillars or hiding behind bushes while the king ran to and fro giggling, but observers did not smile, for his terrible malady was recognised as the original and chief cause of France’s woes. Catherine still occasionally had vivid flashbacks to her terrifying childhood encounter with her father’s man-of-glass delusion, but she nevertheless regularly shared Mass with the king, determined to establish some form of relationship with him and hoping that he might, on his better days, show some shadowy awareness of her love and loyalty.

As he had promised, the dauphin made Armagnac Constable of France and Count Bernard more or less took over the government, gathering Orleans’ supporters around him at the Hôtel St Antoine while Louis shut himself away in his St Pol apartments and avoided affairs of state as much as possible. Whenever Catherine went to visit him she either found him, comatose or incoherent, surrounded by equally drunken acolytes.

‘There is only one sober person there, Mette; a strange new secretary who is permanently at Louis’ side, no matter what his state. Louis must have brought him back from Picardy. His name is Tanneguy du Chastel and he dresses like a lawyer, but he wears a sword. He tells me that Louis is ill but it seems to me that he is simply drowning in strong drink.’ Catherine made an exasperated sign of the cross. ‘Mother of God! France is falling apart and the dauphin is falling-down drunk. Any moment now, the queen will come back and start double-dealing again.’

And that is exactly what happened. The queen returned to Paris, bringing Marguerite of Burgundy with her, an event which drove Louis even further into his reclusive ways, to the extent that he refused to attend council or meet with any of its members, especially the queen.

Although of course she did not decline into drunkenness, Catherine shared her brother’s deep depression and Agnes’ mourning for her father. The two friends began behaving more like nuns than girls of fourteen, spending hours at prayer and refusing all suggestions of exercise or entertainment, preferring to immerse themselves in a series of dusty books, sent from the Louvre library. I almost wished that the queen would summon Catherine to her court, as she had previously done on a daily basis, but it seemed that ‘the most beautiful of my daughters’ was still severely out of favour.

‘She now prefers Burgundy’s daughter to her own,’ Catherine observed sourly. ‘What does that tell us?’

I could do nothing to cheer her, being sadly down-hearted myself, hovering between hope and despair over Jean-Michel. I confess that when I told Catherine of his desperate circumstances, I found her reaction disappointing. She offered no words of comfort, listlessly expressing relief that he was still alive but failing to show any appreciation of his mortal danger. As I went about my duties we exchanged only commonplace remarks and despite my initial fondness for Agnes I found myself experiencing stirrings of jealousy as she became the focus of all Catherine’s compassion. For soon after hearing of her father’s death, Agnes’s woes were compounded by a letter received from a lawyer acting for her father’s second wife, a stepmother she had never met.

‘Agnes has been dispossessed, Mette,’ Catherine told me indignantly. ‘She was not aware that this new wife had recently given birth to a son who is now heir to her father’s whole estate. The lawyer wrote to inform Agnes that she could no longer consider the manor of Blagny her home and that all the dowry money due to her had been paid to Poissy Abbey for her care and education. Poor Agnes is not only an orphan, Mette, but apart from what she receives from the royal purse for her services to me, she is destitute. Surely this cannot be fair!’

Listening to gossip among the ladies of Catherine’s household had taught me that Agnes’ story was not uncommon. If a girl of gentle birth found herself with no family support and no dowry she was indeed destitute unless she could find a husband, but even among the lesser nobility no man would take a wife without a dowry and so, more often than not, the only escape from penury was to become someone’s mistress. I did not think Agnes possessed either the looks or the inclination to make this her route to salvation, but she did have an advantage over many of her fellow sufferers.

Perhaps with a touch of sour grapes, I took the pragmatic view. ‘At least she has your friendship, Mademoiselle,’ I pointed out. ‘So I imagine that, barring the unlikely possibility that a besotted suitor may emerge who would make no demand for a dowry, you can safely assume that you have a companion for life.’