The King's Women

by Deryn Lake

  “Truly?” she said, casually regarding her nails.

  “Truly,” answered Louis, very serious.

  “Then it is I who have pleased you most?”

  “More than any of them.”

  They were at peace, as near to being in love as was possible for two such debauched beings. And because of their high spirits and frivolity — their dead son already forgotten — the supper party went well, the musicians playing bravely, the food sumptuous, the wine fine and clear, the spices thrown on the brazier heady and intoxicating.

  Throughout, Isabeau, her breasts bound tightly to stop her milk flow but her bosom bedecked with jewels to make up for the lack, lay on her great couch, clapping her hands for her servants, flashing her dark eyes at her lover, masterminding the proceedings perfectly though only thirteen days from her travail. Yet finally even this glutton grew tired and with a further clap of hands announced that she was ready to retire for the night. But still the last to leave her side was the Duke of Orleans, bending over to kiss her first on the fingers, then full on the lips.

  “Recover soon,” he said, fondling her, then bowed impressively before making his way to the antechamber where his equerries and servants waited to escort him home.

  “It is freezing hard, your Grace,” said one, holding open a fur-lined mantle which he had been warming by the fire.

  “Then we had better return at speed,” answered the Duke, pulling on a stout hat and thick gloves. “Cold round my extreme parts has never favoured me.”

  His Gentlemen laughed automatically, each of them chosen for his discretion and humour, then the party made its way out into the bitter night.

  In the palace courtyard the horses sparked their hooves on the cobbles while d’Orleans’s torchbearers came running round from the kitchens, their flares already ablaze.

  “Are we ready?” he called to them carelessly.

  “Yes, your Grace.”

  “Then let’s away.”

  The little troop, small this evening as the Duke had been dining incognito, turned out of the great wooden gates of the Hotel Barbette, which creaked closed and were bolted behind them, into the dark rat-infested streets of Paris. Here narrow alleys led one from the next in a confusing labyrinth, and the gables of the houses leaned towards one another, shutting out even the smallest glimpse of moonlight. In the doorways of the churches bundles of rags moved and heaved where the beggars slept, only the occasional whiteness of a rolling eye revealing that a living creature lay there.

  D’Orleans raised a scented handkerchief to his nostrils, loathing the stench of the filthy streets. And so it was, with his face almost buried in fine linen, that he did not see a company of twelve horsemen detach themselves from the shadows and follow him into the Rue du Vieil Temple, nor did Louis hear them for the sacking tied on the hooves of their mounts. In this way the Duke of Orleans came face to face with his murderers at the very last second, and both he and his small band of riders were taken completely by surprise.

  “God’s mother!” he called out. “Who are you?”

  But there was no answer as one of the masked men swiftly raised a club and crashed it down on the Duke’s unprotected head. Without a sound Louis d’Orleans fell into the gutter where he lay among the filth he detested so much.

  “You lecherous prick,” hissed an anonymous voice, “now it’s your turn.”

  Then the Duke vanished beneath a welter of men who rained blow after blow on him, hacking off his right hand at the wrist and cleaving his skull open with a cut that ran from one ear to the other.

  His servants, hopelessly outnumbered, fled into the night with no more than a second’s hesitation, leaving that most elegant of princes, the great lover of his day, to die alone, coughing blood, his brains mingling with the slime of the cobbles and no priest to ease his passing.

  In the charming confines of the Hotel Barbette his mistress, Queen Isabeau, stirred in her sleep as she dreamed of him, unaware that he was gone and that nothing would ever be the same again for herself and her pathetic brood of hapless children.

  Two

  The April storm rolling up the river Maine was signalled for almost an hour before it reached the castle. First the sky darkened to slate, matching the colour of the seventeen huge and looming towers which were the fortress’s main defences, then it deepened even further to a shade like that of the wild plums which grew in profusion on the clustered fruit trees of Anjou. Finally, as night fell and the sky took on a dusky hue that would last till dawn, the tempest arrived overhead and crashed into life above the winding streets of the walled city of Angers, lying beneath the castle’s foot.

  Lightning splintered the sky like cuts from a knife and accompanying thunder snarled, the noise echoing through the fortress’s many courtyards and shaking the timbered houses of the town. Citizens who were still abroad on such a menacing night hurried home, their clothes kilted above their knees, avoiding the unpleasant debris which coursed over the cobbles as torrents of rain set the narrow streets awash.

  On the battlements of the castle, looking out to where the river foamed far below, dark and frantic in the wind and rain, a cloaked figure pulled up its hood for protection but remained silently standing despite the driving bolts of water. For several minutes it stayed like this, then drew back its head in exultation, obviously enjoying the elemental thrill of such a superb display of nature’s savagery. A laugh rang out, light yet deep, an exciting sound, then the woman tipped her face upwards to bathe it in fresh cool rainwater. Yolande, Duchess of Anjou and Queen of Sicily, was allowing herself to get soaked through, and relishing every moment.

  The Duchess was not truly beautiful in the accepted sense but possessed a powerful attraction which transcended conventional prettiness. Tall, supple as a bow, enjoying an athlete’s body with slight hips and a taut slender waist, only her breasts, neat and firm, surprisingly well-shaped and not in the least small, saved Yolande d’Anjou from having a mannish and somehow daunting frame.

  But her face was a different matter, for here an array of features combined to make her so arresting that people mistakenly believed her to be one of the loveliest women in France. A hawkish nose was the one flaw in a fine-boned countenance dominated by a pair of magnificent eyes. Green was their colour, the green of a cave’s shallow water, of tigers’ orbs, of jade from Cathay, of ripe and succulent gooseberries. All these shades were there and more, for her pupils were surrounded by a sunburst of one green, and her irises another, darker. And dark, too, were the lashes that protected these brilliant eyes, darker than the cinnamon hair which waved about her head and shoulders, curling and full, speaking of the Spanish blood that flowed so densely in the Duchess’s veins.

  But though her nose might be masculine, Yolande’s mouth was assertively female, full-lipped and red, even without the rouge she applied. An interesting mouth, both proud and passionate, with an underlying air of determination and purpose. Yet there was something sensual in the way she held it now, slightly open, drinking in the rain, and laughing to herself at her own strange behaviour. A fascinating woman at all times and even more so at this moment of total privacy.

  Or that was how it seemed to the one other person eccentric enough to be out in such a storm, enjoying it almost as much as the Duchess herself. Walking along the battlements in his soft close boots, playing a boy’s game in the raindrops, Arthur de Richemont nearly fell over the edge as his eyes alighted on the Suzeraine, the lieutenant-general, the thirty-one-year-old acting head of the house of Anjou, standing with her eyes closed, revelling in the rain as if she were half her actual age. Just for a moment he stood watching her, his lively face lit by a sudden smile, before he cleared his throat and said, “Pardon me, ma Reine. It did not occur to me that anyone would be out here on such an evil night.”

  Yolande jumped visibly and just for a second the youth saw her hand move swiftly towards her capacious sleeve.

  ‘So she carries a dagger when she is alone.’ he thought, half amuse
d, half respectful. ‘A wise precaution in these troubled times.’

  “Who is it?” the Duchess hissed angrily, and Richemont was subjected to a furious glance guaranteed to wither a man where he stood, from a pair of eyes hard as emeralds.

  “Arthur of Brittany, Earl of Richmond,” he replied formally, fighting her fire with a little of his own.

  “Oh, Richemont,” she said, relieved, then laughed, adding, “I should have guessed.”

  “Why, Madame?”

  “Because only you could be so foolish as to walk about in thunderstorms.”

  “But in good company,” Richemont answered without malice, and made her a small bow.

  They stood staring at one another, assessing each other’s qualities and faults. In the seventeen-year-old Earl, Yolande saw a boy whose pedigree was, to say the least, both varied and exciting, a fact which, in her view, accounted for his somewhat erratic behaviour. For there were signs about him already of political opportunism, of running with the hare and hunting with the hounds, not admirable characteristics admittedly but greatly mitigated by his enormous charm.

  Richemont’s father had been Jean the Valiant, Duke of Brittany, old when he had married the boy’s mother, Jehanne of Navarre, but still capable of siring the seven children which she had borne him in rapid succession. None the less, on his death Jehanne did not mourn him long, but seduced and won the King of England, the widowed Henry IV of Lancaster. Then, having entrusted her sons to the care of the Duke of Burgundy, Jehanne had set off for England with her two baby daughters, several nursemaids, and a large train of other attendants.

  Thinking of this as she looked at one of the Queen

  of England’s sons, Yolande d’Anjou smiled in admiration. Richemont’s mother personified the very type of woman that Yolande admired above all other: a woman capable of taking hold of her own destiny and bringing it round to advantage, a woman in control not only of her own fate but also that of others.

  Almost exactly a year to the day after her marriage to Henry of England in 1403, Jehanne had sent for her second son, Arthur, and persuaded his stepfather to invest him with the title Earl of Richmond. In this way the likeable boy had begun his practice of having a foot in both camps, swearing on oath to his liegelord, Henry IV, while remaining a true Breton.

  Yolande smiled again, “I’m beginning to get wet,” she said.

  Richemont shook his head. “Just one moment before you go in, Madame. It is so rare to catch you alone.”

  Before she could frown, the young man went on one knee before the Duchess, splashing into a huge puddle and thoroughly soaking his hose. A lesser woman might have laughed but Yolande stood still, calmly letting Richemont pay her homage, her face unreadable in the gloom.

  ‘What an incredible creature,’ thought the Earl. ‘Not only wife and mother but also in complete control of her husband’s domain while he fights abroad.’

  A wicked idea occurred to him and he bent his head to hide his scampish face. But it was a fact that Duke Louis II of Anjou had spent so much time overseas, battling to regain his kingdoms of Naples and Sicily, that he had scarcely had more than a handful of years at his wife’s side, scant time to be a husband, let alone father children. And Yolande only had three offspring, two sons and a daughter, in marked contrast to the productive Isabeau who had at one time produced babies at almost yearly intervals.

  Yet it was not in the traditional female roles alone that the Duchess of Anjou excelled, for she was also the powerful leader of a mighty province of France, a strong administrator whose every action and thought was for the good of her duchy, yet a clever woman who disguised the fact of her total control by wisely taking counsel with her husband’s advisers, so contriving to make some of her ideas appear to come from others.

  “You are remarkable, ma Reine,” Richemont burst out in a moment of youthful enthusiasm. “Beautiful and clever, a powerful combination of assets.”

  Yolande put up the dark wing of an eyebrow, the only clue to being lost in thought that keen observers had ever noticed, and regarded Richemont in silence. Finally she said, “Do you play chess, Lord Earl?”

  “It was His Majesty your husband who taught me, Madame.”

  The Duchess of Anjou looked genuinely surprised. “Was it? I had forgotten that. When did he do so?”

  “Not long after I returned from England, ma Reine. When I made my way here from Paris.”

  “About the time that Orleans was assassinated?”

  “Yes.”

  They were both silent, thinking of the terrible consequences of the violent death of Louis d’Orleans, crushed in the gutter, his severed hand tossed carelessly down beside him. Nearly three and a half years had passed since that night but despite the mad king’s forgiveness of Burgundy, who had freely admitted being behind the killing, it now seemed as if France was on the brink of civil war. Count Bernard of Armagnac’s eleven-year-old daughter had married Charles of Orleans, the dead Duke’s son. His only wish to avenge the murder of his lifelong friend, Armagnac constantly urged his elegant and poetic son-in-law to challenge the Duke of Burgundy to a fight.

  In the midst of this uncertainty the royal children, abandoned by their lunatic father and dissipated mother, continued their life in Paris, a Paris now preparing itself to be tom by conflict. Isabeau, wavering between fear and greed, frequently changed sides between Burgundy and Armagnac, the place in her bed once occupied by Orleans now filled by a series of foppish young men, the periods when her husband was lucid, less and less frequent.

  As if they shared a thought, Yolande said, “It was fortunate you left when you did,” while Richemont started to say, “I must rejoin my brother soon. He will require my services if there is going to be a war.”

  The Duchess smiled ironically. “Your brother of Brittany? Or your stepbrother of England?”

  “I am a Breton first and foremost, Madame,” Richemont replied hotly. “And it is there that my loyalty lies.”

  Yolande did not answer, merely straightening even further her long lean back. Eventually she said, “Loyalties will come and loyalties, I fear, will go, if the threatened bloody conflict takes place.”

  “I hope I’ll be no turncoat,” the Earl stated solemnly.

  The winged black brow rose again. “Who knows? Now I am going in. Goodnight, Richemont.”

  “Goodnight, ma Reine.”

  He bent to kiss the thin hand suddenly extended towards his and could not help noticing how strong the bony fingers were beneath his lips.

  “Madame…”

  The Duchess turned in the arched doorway leading to her apartments. “Yes?”

  “May I accept your challenge to chess before I leave Angers?”

  There was a second’s pause before Yolande answered, “I did not realise I had challenged you. But yes, we shall play tomorrow. You may join me after I have dined.”

  Richemont bowed low. “I count the hours.”

  Yolande laughed, and the husky exciting sound haunted the young Earl constantly for the rest of that night.

  The people of Paris suffered an epidemic of plague during that warm spring of 1411, the stench of death from the streets almost equalling the smell coming from the King’s apartments in the Hotel St. Pol, for he had once more sunk into deep depression and lay in the dark amongst his own droppings, disease-carrying flies continuously buzzing round his filthy, matted head.

  To keep his children quiet and calm in these appalling circumstances was a nightmare that came daily to haunt Lady du Mesnil, these days bringing up Charles almost single-handed and, in looking after him, having to care for Catherine at the same time. For the two children clung to one another pathetically, crying a great deal if they were separated. The young princess mothered her brother in a way that wrung Jeanne du Mesnil’s heart, and the governess would wonder in her bleaker moments whether it might not be better for the young couple if they were to contract the fatal disease now raging, and slip peacefully out of such a tortured world.

>   Life at court had not been made easier for anyone by the fact that the Dauphin Louis, now aged fourteen and married to Marguerite, daughter of the Duke of Burgundy, Jean the Fearless, had discovered not only marital sex but extra marital as well. With a profligacy clearly inherited from his mother, the boy, frequently inebriated, could think of nothing but pleasure and indulged himself in every variety. No woman was safe with him and age did not deter him from trying to seduce any female with whom he came into contact. Only the extremely old, the extremely young, and the hideous, were exempt from his hot-eyed pursuit. As to his brother, Jean, the Duke of Touraine, only a year younger and also recently wed, it would seem that he was very little better.

  All this made the task of keeping Catherine and Charles out of trouble more difficult, as it was both Louis’s and Jean’s delight to make the little ones drunk, then roar with laughter as they staggered and fell over. And an appeal to Isabeau was out of the question. She had taken herself off to the Hotel Barbette where she literally locked the troubles of the world out and a string of youthful lovers in. In a plethora of increasing sexual adventure and drinking, the Queen of France passed her days pleasurably enough.

  Despite all this intrigue lessons for the youngest royal children had to go on. As was the custom, it differed widely between the sexes. For though both Charles and Catherine were learning to form their characters, it was he who already owned a Latin grammar, not very well thumbed, and a book of psalms. Catherine, on the other hand, was being given instruction on how to sew and embroider, spin, sing and accompany herself on the harp, and develop a beautiful expression, looking straight in front of her and neither frowning nor laughing over much. Both of them, however, were learning to play chess, and Charles’s teaching also extended to backgammon. And today they sat poring over the chessboard while Jeanne du Mesnil engaged Marie de Barrois in conversation.

  “Will this threatened civil war take place, do you think?” Lady du Mesnil whispered anxiously.

  “Oh, it will come all right,” Marie murmured in return. “I know so — and I’ll tell you how. Ma chérie listen, I came across the Tarot cards belonging to Valentine Visconti the other day — quite by accident you understand — and —”