The Agincourt Bride (32 page)

Catherine’s face was pinched with fear as she confessed, ‘I will not feel safe there, I know, as I do here in Beauvais, and hope to feel in the royal domains of St Denis and Vincennes …’ Then, as though to put off a rising panic, she changed the subject. ‘The queen is fuming because we cannot go to Melun – here …’ Catherine’s finger stabbed down at the point on the map where a little tower, delicately drawn, commanded a bend of the meandering middle reaches of the Seine ‘… because it has been overrun by Charles’ forces.’ I saw a tear come to her eye. ‘Charles might be there himself – so close by and yet I cannot visit him!’

From Catherine of France to Charles, Dauphin of Viennois,

Dearly beloved brother,

This night we stay in the Duke of Burgundy’s castle of Brie Comte Robert, less than a day’s ride from Melun. I feel certain that you are there, so close, but I cannot come to you to beg your help.

Surely God cannot expect me to bear this!

He came to my chamber again, the devil duke in his most evil guise. He enters my bedchamber like a black spectre, mouthing filth, even though there should be guards at my door. How many people does he threaten and compel to look the other way? Why does my own mother not intervene? I cannot believe she knows what is happening, but still sings Burgundy’s praises and sits him at her right hand where our father should be seated.

Nor do I know what devilish schemes are being hatched between Burgundy and the queen, although I have heard that couriers are still coming and going from Normandy, despite the English occupation. Are they dealing with King Henry again? Are you, Charles? Why do none of you raise an army and throw him out of France? Is everyone frightened of the victor of Agincourt?

I often ponder what manner of man this Henry is. Louis said he was a libertine, but even if there is any truth in this I am certain he would spurn me if he knew what has been done to me, as any man would. But, truly, I cannot think of Henry as the enemy when my real foe is right here in our midst, using me as his whore. I struggle to find faith in God when Beelzebub has stolen my true self.

I am forever your loving sister,

Catherine

Written at the castle of Brie Comte Robert at dawn this day, Wednesday February 8
^th
1419.

There were three occasions while we were in Brie Comte Robert when Catherine sent me, Alys and Agnes away from her chamber after we had made her ready for bed and Alys and I shivered in the freezing attic room where the travelling chests were stored, praying for a miracle that might keep the duke away from her but knowing all the time that she was suffering the violence of his lust. After the first time I gathered that she had written another of her letters because ink had been spilled over one of the tables in her chamber, leaving an indelible stain and there were black marks on her fingers which we had to scrub to remove. However, she did not tell me what it was she wrote or to whom it was addressed. Sometimes I was tempted to offer to find a way to get these letters delivered, but I thought better of it, knowing that there was only Luc who might be trusted to smuggle them out and not wishing to put him in danger.

Being lodged in the devil’s castle meant that we were severely restricted in the service we could obtain from the Burgundian household. More than once we were refused hot water for bathing and Catherine had to cleanse herself in freezing water, straight from the well. To my surprise she actually welcomed the discomfort.

‘It is like a penance, Mette,’ she confessed, ‘as if I am being tested, just as Christ was in the wilderness, and I must pray that God will release me from my suffering when He is pleased with me. If I did not believe that, I should run mad like my father.’

As it was, instead of losing her mind, she began to lose her looks. She grew thinner by the day and her hair began to come out in handfuls when I brushed it. With every brush stroke I cursed the Duke of Burgundy. At least communications with the English, which Luc learned of through the stable grooms, began to bear fruit. Instead of laying siege to Paris, King Henry apparently wanted to parley with the king’s council and proposed sending his most trusted general, the Earl of Warwick, to Troyes for an Easter meeting. After two weeks at Brie Comte Robert, the great royal procession set out again and the queen finally got her wish to travel into the lush pastures and neat vineyards of Champagne.

The undulating upper valley of the Seine could not have been more different from the river’s lower reaches, where marching feet and iron-shod hooves had trampled the life out of the land and the heart out of the people. Here an early spring sun shone down on verdant fields with well-fed peasants busy raising crops and tending flocks. From the high seat of a baggage cart, I viewed sights I had never thought to see. Prosperous villages rang with the sound of the blacksmith’s hammer and the laughter of carefree children and boasted decent little timbered cottages, well-pruned orchards and a nice clear pattern of strip-fields clustered around churches built of stone with leaded roofs. I firmly believe that Paradise must be just like that well-watered vale; a land studded with sprouting crops and well-stocked farm-yards, where the advent of spring did not signal the onset of hostilities, but marked the beginning of a season of warmth and plenty.

W
alking the streets of Troyes was like going back to the Paris of old, before the ‘Terrors’ had rendered it mean and vicious. For in many ways Troyes was a smaller version of its downstream sister-city, but without the domineering guilds and rival gangs. Unlike the sprawl of Paris over both banks of the Seine, Troyes neatly occupied one loop of a meander on the west bank of the river, its protective stone curtain studded with gates leading to trade routes in all directions. Ingeniously, some of the fast-flowing water had been diverted into a series of canals which pierced the curtain wall under portcullises and wound through the town, enabling heavy goods to be carried in and out by barge. One of the first things I noticed was that the main hazards to pedestrians were horses and hand-carts, not the huge ox-wagons which had daily claimed lives and limbs in Paris. The canals also carried away waste, causing some of the backwaters to smell like latrines. However, the April downpours, which had frequently drenched the royal progress, had also washed away most of the winter filth and refreshed the canals.

This was a blessing because the palace of the old counts of Champagne where we were to stay was located on a canal at the centre of the town. It was built to an old-fashioned plan, consisting of a long great hall with royal apartments at one end, reached by a curving stone staircase. I had become quite used to adapting Catherine’s furnishings to a variety of apartments that were cramped or difficult of access, but I was pleasantly surprised by the large and comfortable quarters she was given in the great gothic palace. Once again her ladies were to be housed in a separate building but, to her intense relief, we learned that the Duke of Burgundy had a mansion of his own in Troyes and would not be lodging with the royal family.

‘What is more, he will not be alone,’ Catherine announced with an air of triumph. ‘His duchess has travelled from Dijon to act as hostess to the English embassy. The blessed Virgin has answered my prayers again.’

As a result of all this, the tension in our little household eased considerably. Catherine recovered her appetite and with it some of her zest for life. But Lenten meals were meagre, consisting of pottage, vegetables, bread and a little fish, designed to chasten the body rather than build its strength. So, anxious to put some flesh on her bones, I went daily to market, looking for tasty tit-bits to tempt her with. Basket on arm, I watched the town shake off its winter hibernation. With the great Easter festival approaching, amulet-sellers had set up stalls in the cathedral square offering everything from icons and relics to potions and pardons. Peddlers roamed the streets crying their wares in loud, musical calls which echoed among the timber-framed, step-gabled houses. These crazily-overhanging gables were brightly painted or decorated with tiles and pargeting and the wooden shutters which secured the ground-floor shops at night were lowered by day to form tables laid out with colourful arrays of food and household necessities. This alone was something to marvel at, for in thief-ridden Paris such tempting goods would have been snatched in the blink of an eye.

Although the Duke of Burgundy had sent the Earl of Warwick a letter of free-passage for his journey to Troyes, it only gave protection in royal and Burgundian territory and when the cavalcade of two hundred English knights and men-at-arms strayed uncomfortably close to Prince Charles’ new garrison in Melun, an eager troop of dauphinists galloped out to ambush them. They were easily driven off however, and during the banquet held by the Duke and Duchess of Burgundy to welcome him to Troyes, the Earl of Warwick gleefully regaled the high table with a description of the incident. Seated at the earl’s right hand, Catherine was well placed to absorb every detail of his amusing account and returned full of indignation which, to my surprise, was directed more at Prince Charles’ supporters than at Warwick.

They were laughing at Charles at dinner and it is not a pretty sound to my ears,’ she said angrily to Agnes and me, as I helped her take off her headdress. ‘I think he cannot be at Melun after all, because he would never have agreed to such an ill-advised attack on an English troop as was launched from there two days ago, not if he has Tanneguy du Chastel by his side. The attack was a fiasco! To send out only fifty against two hundred does seem foolish, to put it politely. The earl was full of glee as he described how he sent his rearguard to take the little troop of dauphinists from behind before they could even draw swords. I imagine Charles can ill-afford to lose the ten men who fell before the rest fled.’

But her indignation did not last long for she was bubbling with excitement about Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick. From her description he was a knight of the kind that the Troubadour of Troyes must have pictured when he wrote his poems of Camelot and the Court of King Arthur – tall and russet-blond, a true Norman, broad-shouldered and straight-backed, with muscular arms and legs and eyes like a hawk.

‘And he dances!’ Catherine added breathlessly. ‘Well, enough not to step on my toes. But I think his best asset is his conversation. He is fluent in Latin and Greek as well as English and French, as is King Henry, apparently. So, of course, I had to ask him what King Henry is like and he told me that he is an übermensch
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I asked him what that meant and he said it was German for a super-man. So he speaks German as well! When I asked if his king is good-looking, he laughed and said he could not be a judge of that, but I should rather ask if he was a good leader. So I did and he replied: “A good leader creates followers, a great leader creates leaders. Henry is a great leader.”

‘I think I am becoming a little frightened of Henry of England, but then I think Richard of Warwick intends that I should be; that we all should be. It is a good tactic, is it not? And I would rather be frightened of a great leader than of a disciple of the devil like Jean of Burgundy.’

At this, Agnes put a finger to her lips as a sign of caution, and the subject reverted to the entertainments the evening had provided …

Easter came and the streets of Troyes were decked with green boughs and crowded with people following the statues of patron saints and their relics as they were carried out of their churches and paraded through the town. In their wake, young men and girls paired off to sing and dance in the squares. With a lump in my throat I watched Alys set off to meet her new beau, a tailor named Jacques, whom I knew by sight having secretly been witness to Alys’ first meeting with the young man when we went marketing together one day. Though she still had not admitted to any assignation, the care with which she fashioned a rosette of lace and coloured ribbons and pinned it to the bodice of her Sunday gown, told me all I needed to know. She left the palace with a group of fellow servants, but I suspected she would slip away from them at the first opportunity and I whispered a little prayer to St Agnes, asking the patron of young girls to protect my little daughter and give her a happy day.