In a Dark Wood Wandering

by Hella S. Haasse

  Those who knew him well were amazed that Burgundy would enter into such an agreement, but most of the witnesses of the ceremony were delighted that the feud between the two kinsmen seemed to have ended.

  After the ceremony, the Queen and Council returned to Paris; Burgundy departed with his entourage for Flanders and Louis d’Or-leans brought his son and Isabelle to Chateau-Thierry where Valentine received her daughter-in-law festively. At first Isabelle had thought that it would be extremely difficult to live in amity with a woman she had been taught from her childhood to despise. But her hatred of her own mother made her feel close to the Duchess of Orléans—were they not both the victims of Isabeau’s lust for power?

  The girl noticed with admiration Valentine’s dignified and forbearing attitude toward her husband; but after Louis departed, Isabelle, purely by accident, saw the collapse of Valentine’s defenses against her pent-up misery. For one whole night the two women wept in each other’s arms, each for herself and for the other. Both profited from this: Valentine was able to articulate her grief; Isabelle was no longer surly.

  While this went on Charles slept unaware in his childhood room; within the green curtains of his familiar bed the fears which he had brought home with him from Compiegne faded into half-forgotten dreams. As he had done before, he listened attentively to the lessons taught by Maitre Garbet, and as he had done before, he immersed himself with pleasure in his books while Philippe, Jean and Dunois, strong, agile and cheerful children playing around him, treated their older brother with a mixture of respect and good-natured derision.

  “If you had a tonsure now, brother,” Philippe called from the door during Charles’ lesson, “I could not tell you from a monk. And you are married, too.”

  Yes, surely he was married. At first he often forgot to show Isabelle the chivalrous deference that was her due at table or when they were entering or leaving church or chapel. But gradually he came to look upon her as a member of the family and to regard her also as his mother’s trusted friend and relative. Isabelle lived and slept near Valentine; together they sat embroidering or reading and together they went hunting or tended the flowers in the castle garden.

  The Duchess of Orléans thought it was time that her oldest son learned something about his father’s affairs. She talked to him about everything that had happened in the past, explained the governance of the varied domains both inside and outside France, and gave him all the news which she received regularly from Paris. Thanks to the discussions in Compiégne, Charles understood something of the political situation; he knew now too that his father with an army of 6,000 men was besieging the city of Bourg, which was occupied by English invaders, and that the Duke of Burgundy was mustering men and weapons at Saint-Omer so that he could advance upon Calais. Although Charles did not share his younger brothers’ fierce fascination with military exploits, he followed the development of these events attentively.

  He was disappointed to learn that his father had been forced after three months to lift the siege of Bourg; the city seemed impregnable and a plague had broken out among Orléans’ men. But he was completely astonished by the news that the King and Council, who from the outset had given Burgundy every conceivable encouragement, had suddenly declared that the preparations at Saint-Omer must cease, and had gone so far as to send threats and warning letters to Burgundy’s vassals to stop them from participation. Valentine smiled oddly when she heard these tidings; she and Isabelle exchanged an understanding glance. Charles was indignant; he was certain that Burgundy would be deeply offended by these actions. “Monseigneur of Burgundy sits in Saint-Omer with a whole army,” he said. “Much time and money have been spent to gather men and weapons. That order from the King and Council is senseless; what will happen in the city of Calais now?”

  “Hush, boy,” Valentine replied with unusual tartness. “It is not proper for you to blame the King. I think there is a good reason for these measures; we shall learn soon enough why the Duke of Burgundy was prevented from laying siege to Calais.”

  The residents of Chateau-Thierry were to learn these reasons; but not until much later, and in deeply tragic circumstances.

  On the twenty-second of November in the year 1407, Louis of Orléans and Jean of Burgundy met once more in the house of the Duke of Berry, the Hotel de Nesle. This banquet concluded a ceremonial rapprochement between the two cousins. Since the aborted expedition against the English the previous year, they had quarrelled incessantly in private, in the presence of kinsmen, at Council meetings, in writing and through the words of couriers. Burgundy charged Louis with having prompted the King to forbid his laying siege to Calais out of sheer jealousy because his own enterprise had come to nothing. Orléans denied this with the same stubborn conviction. Their behavior caused the kinsmen to fear a fresh outbreak of hostilities.

  Berry allowed himself to be persuaded to act as peacemaker; with reluctance he took leave of Bicetre and his beloved collection for a while and set out for the Hotel de Nesle, where his young wife usually resided. After long discussions, many admonitions and much advice, Berry finally brought his nephews to the point of declaring themselves ready to conclude a new treaty of peace and friendship, and this time forever. Once more they stood together before the altar, swore an oath and took communion. Berry, not a little relieved to have acquitted himself well of a painful charge, invited Orléans and Burgundy to a banquet; they drank from the same goblet and sat side by side in the seat of honor, Burgundy wearing Orléans’ emblems and Orléans in the colors of Burgundy. At the end of the feast Louis invited his cousin to be his guest the following Sunday, and Jean accepted with courtesy.

  Orléans saluted his kinsmen now and set out, accompanied by a small retinue, for the Hotel Barbette, which belonged to Isabeau, and where in recent years she had stayed more and more frequently. She had ordered it rebuilt and redecorated; new gardens were laid out around the house. It was within easy reach of Saint-Pol. The Queen had lived there uninterruptedly since spring; the court interpreted this as a sign that Isabeau wanted her new pregnancy to be considered her own affair, without concern for state or Crown. Orléans visited her regularly, treating her with a concerned courtesy for which the reason seemed all too apparent.

  About the middle of November, Isabeau had given birth to a child who lived only a few days. The Queen lay in her bed, weak and listless; she believed the child’s death was a punishment for her adultery. In addition, she was uncertain about her political behavior; now that the first intoxication of her passion for Louis was over, she did not feel inclined to support his plans in every way. When Louis entered her chamber she raised herself slightly and greeted him, but for the first time in a long time there was no trace of softness in her eyes.

  “I hear everything has gone extremely well,” she remarked, gesturing to a chair that stood beside her bed. Louis sat down. “Will peace remain now between you and Burgundy?” Isabeau continued, somewhat maliciously. “Or do you propose to continue indefinitely this little game of fighting and reconciliation? So much time has been lost. During the Council sessions little is discussed except this quarrel between the two of you.”

  Orléans shrugged; he looked tired—he had not yet completely recovered from an illness he had suffered at the siege of Bourg.

  “If I knew for certain that my cousin was a man of good will,” he began hesitantly, but he did not finish the sentence. Isabeau leaned back against the pillows and stretched her fleshy arms in a langorous gesture over the bed cover. “Are you not inclined too quickly to believe the opposite, Monseigneur?” she asked, yawning.

  “Burgundy is playing a double game,” Louis said wearily, slumping forward with his hand pressed against his eyes. “How could it be otherwise? It’s to his advantage. He does what his father did before him—and I don’t deny that they both conducted these policies with skill. But that means our downfall.” He raised his head and looked at Isabeau who lay eating candied fruit without taking her cold, searching eyes from him. “How can
anyone who has witnessed the events of the last few years doubt Burgundy’s purpose? Calais lies well-situated near Flanders. He who has Calais and Flanders in his power has little to fear. If Burgundy should wrest Calais from the English—well, I for one refuse to believe that he would ever restore it to the Crown.”

  Isabeau made a doubting sound; she was in a strangely irritable mood. Although she did not think Orléans was wrong, she wanted to contradict him. Louis looked with pensive resignation at this woman whom, out of calculation and ambition, he had made his own. The relationship had undeniably been advantageous for him; but he despised himself immeasurably for his betrayal of his brother and Valentine—and of Isabeau herself, whose passion, at any rate, had been genuine. Alas, one did not need to have particularly sharp eyes to see that it was all over between the two of them. The death of their child, the fruit of an exceedingly strange relationship, had caused a chill, and disenchantment. Orléans gazed around the small bedchamber in which he had so frequently been a guest; he was filled with bitter melancholy at his own failure. The silk hangings painted with coats of arms stirred gently on the walls; often at night he had lain, restless and discontented, and stared at the lions, falcons and lilies.

  He looked at Isabeau, sitting in the large, purple-curtained bed, extremely corpulent in her loose clothing, with a towel wound carelessly around her head. She licked her lower lip as she took the candy from the dish. Orléans lowered his eyes. From the adjoining room came the sound of impatient barking. There, with Femmette and the Queen’s ladies, Doucet was waiting, the little white dog which Isabelle had refused to accept. Louis kept the animal near him; it was very attached to him.

  “I hope, Madame, that you will speedily recover your health,” Louis said, standing up.

  From the corner of her eye, Isabeau gave him a long look. “You don’t mourn your son, do you?” she asked finally in a muffled voice.

  “He needs no mourning,” replied Louis calmly, “for he committed no sin and owes God no account of his short life. I consider that he was lucky—what would his place have been among the King’s children, Madame?”

  Isabeau laughed, a dry, fierce laugh without mirth.

  “Why should the King be less generous toward a bastard than your wife has been to the boy—what do you call him? … The son of Mariette de Cany?”

  Her sharp, malicious words stayed with Louis as he walked through the anterooms, followed by Doucet. He thought for the first time in years of the lovely but austere Maret, who had atoned for her guilt by giving up her most precious possession—her life. He had desired her not only for her youth and beauty, but particularly for that other indescribable quality which lay concealed in her like a precious jewel in a casket. During all the years that he had vainly sought her favor, he had never been able to understand precisely what that captivating and at the same time impalpable element could be. Long after he had conquered her and carried her off, when she lay stretched out, smiling, between candles—only then did he realize what she had represented in his life: a cool purity, chastity, fidelity to an inner law, the power of self-discipline, self-sacrifice and resignation to the inevitable—she embodied all these attributes which he had always aspired to, but had never been able to achieve. Because she could see no possibility of preserving that purity inviolate, she had died.

  Not without deep shame could Louis think of Dunois who was stained with his guilt. Isabeau’s words called up a number of half-forgotten images and a feeling of strong self-loathing. As so often before, Louis hid this dark mood behind a mask of joviality. No one must see that he walked on knives. He set out for the hall where an evening meal would be served up for him and his entourage, but before he could sit down at the table he was told that a messenger had arrived from Saint-Pol—one of the King’s servants wished to speak with him.

  The man stood in an antechamber, still out of breath, which surprised Louis slightly; he had been told that the messenger had been waiting for some time.

  “My lord,” said the man, bowing deeply, “the King entreats you to come to him without delay—he must speak to you at once about a matter which is of deep concern to both you and him.”

  “I am about to go to table,” replied Louis, but the servant continued breathlessly, “You must go immediately, Monseigneur—there is not a moment to lose.”

  Louis thought that the King had suddenly become seriously ill; he prepared to leave at once, urging the gentlemen of his suite to sit down and eat without him. He left the Hotel Barbette accompanied by only a few nobles on horseback and Jacques van Hersen, who had once been his squire but who for the last several years had been his personal attendant.

  Louis rode a mule, a beautiful beast which he had had sent from Lombardy. He sat carelessly in the saddle and let the reins hang loose. To conceal his annoyance and anxiety he hummed a tune and toyed with a glove. The dog Doucet leaped forward exuberantly beside the mule; the torchbearers ran ahead. Thus the small procession left Isabeau’s residence. Without undue haste the lord and his retinue rode through the Barbette gate and entered the dark alley which led to the rue Vieille du Temple.

  It was a mild, humid November evening; it was not raining but a fine vapor hovered in the air. Louis coughed and pulled his cloak closer about him. He saw on his right, by the light of the torches, the building which was called the House of the Effigy of Our Lady, because a statue of the Virgin Mary stood in a niche in its façade. Louis never passed the spot without lifting his eyes to the brightly painted, stiffly smiling image. Now as always he glanced at the old house, which had been empty for years.

  At that moment a young woman was standing at the window of her house opposite the House of the Effigy. Her name was Jacquette and she was the wife of a ropemaker, Jean Griffart; she had gone to the window to see if her husband was coming and to take in some washing which she had hung out to dry at noon. The torches in the street belonged to a distinguished company; a gentleman on horseback, attended by a groom and followed at some distance by five or six horsemen, came riding from the direction of the Barbette gate—a small white dog leaped in front of its master. Jacquette Griffart looked down at the procession for a moment—then she turned, intending to put her child to bed. But before she had taken three steps, a loud cry sounded from the alley: “Kill him! Kill him!” With the child in her arms, she hurried back to the window. The nobleman had fallen from his mount—he had slumped to his knees in the middle of the street, bareheaded, the blood streaming from his face.

  “Who is that? Who is doing that?” he said weakly, raising his arms as though to ward off a blow. Now armed men swarmed upon him from all sides—they struck home with sticks, knives, axes. The blows echoed in Jacquette’s ears; it sounded as though they were beating a mattress, a lifeless thing.

  She regained her voice and shrieked, “Murder!”, pushing the window open. A stone hissed past her cheek and a man who stood in the shadows under the window shrieked, “Shut up, woman!”

  More torchbearers appeared from the House of the Effigy of Our Lady; by the flickering red glow the woman, softly wailing with terror, saw something formless and unrecognizable lying on the ground. The mule had galloped off in fright; the little dog yelped from a distance away. Jacquette heard the shouts of hurrying men coming from adjacent streets—there was nothing at all to be seen of the riders who had followed many paces behind the distinguished horseman. The squire, however, who had been wounded trying in vain to defend his master during the attack, now began to creep toward him. At the command of a long-haired, emaciated man in a monk’s habit, they gave him the death blow; he lay sprawled partially over the body of his lord. Out of the House of the Effigy of Our Lady, followed by a youth leading a horse by the reins, came a tall man, his head covered by a red bonnet. He held a lappet of the bonnet before his nose and mouth, but Jacquette saw the glitter of very dark eyes above the concealing cloth.

  “Douse the torches,” he said. “Let’s get out; he’s dead. Come on, don’t make any mistakes!”
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  The man in the red bonnet leaped onto his horse and galloped off down a side street. The armed men followed him as quickly as they could; they hurled their torches away or extinguished them in the mud. Soon the street was plunged into darkness except where a torch still smouldered on the ground beside the dead man.

  “Murder, murder!” Jacquette screamed again. She heard her cry taken up in the rue Vieille du Temple and in the rue des Rosiers. From the direction of the Barbette gate, many people came running with torches; before long the street was filled with people. A nobleman in silk clothes flung himself down in the mud beside the two bodies.

  “Monseigneur!” he cried desperately. “Monseigneur! Messire van Hersen!”

  The squire was still alive; they laid him down on a cloak under the arched doorway of a house. The dying man moaned words unintelligible to the onlookers. “My lord … both of us … in the Celestine monastery … The omen … the omen …”

  The body of the distinguished lord lay in a pool of blood and mud; his skull was cloven in two places so that the brains protruded; someone had lopped off the left arm between elbow and wrist. The hand was found some distance away in a gutter, and placed on a litter with the rest of the corpse. Even before the dead man was borne away, a new calamity struck: flames burst through the ground floor windows of the House of the Effigy of Our Lady. “Fire, fire!” screamed the excited crowd; pails of water were dragged over to quench the blaze.

  “In God’s name, what was that?” cried Jacquette, who still stood at the open window, trembling with cold and horror; without knowing what she did, she rocked the desperately screaming baby. “Whom have they killed there?”

  A man passed by, dragging a bag of sand; he looked up and grinned sardonically, as though he brought good news.