Wife to Henry V: A Novel

by Hilda Lewis

  The poor creatures rose. There was dignity upon them; the dignity of good men about to die. Now they asked one only thing; last sight of beloved faces before they went down into darkness.

  Had Henry staged the scene it could not have been more to his purpose. All firing ceased; and, in the strange silence, the doomed men knelt; and on the battlements, the soldiers moved aside for the sad procession—men and women old and young; mothers suckling or big with child; and children stretching out their arms in the last farewell.

  Henry rode singing to Bray.

  It was the poor mad King who wept when he heard the tale—he alone. From Catherine no word. “It is not for you to be busy about men's work,” Isabeau had said. “And talking of men's work, what about women's work? Don't gape at me, girl; it doesn't take two weeks to get yourself with child.”

  * * *

  “Let no man blame me for the bloodshed,” Henry said a week later. “Montereau has fallen and I have kept my word.”

  Catherine said nothing.

  “Justice has been done,” Isabeau said quickly, filling the uncomfortable silence.

  “Justice?” Charles said in a low, thin voice. One thought him far away; and then, suddenly, he spoke. “Eleven innocents, what of them?”

  “Let no man blame me for those, either. Blame, rather, that fool of a captain who kept me besieging a fortress he knew he couldn't hold.”

  He was careless, humming, as he tested the fine edge of his sword. But Charles seemed not to understand the logic of it and could not stay his weeping.

  CHAPTER XV

  She was afraid of him. She had, she supposed, been a little afraid all her life—of her father with his disgusting madness; of her mother with her harsh angers, of old Burgundy with his rough tongue and young Burgundy with his smooth one. She had never crept and cowered like Michelle, like young Charles, yet still she had been afraid.

  But she had never thought to be afraid of her husband...the charming princess. Now she knew her mistake; he was not to be taken by any charms. It was not that he was unkind; he was lavish with gifts, careful of her dignity as his Queen, scrupulous for her comfort, proud of her prettiness. Kind, even in his way; but it was a cold way, impatient, impersonal. He was a just man, so they said. But she found it hard to forget those fits of rage that swept all justice aside—his hanging of the innocents at Montereau; and the poor gunners at Louviers. And his harshness at Rouen when he had ordered the unhappy refugees to be driven from wall to ditch in the bitter wind, caring nothing for the sick and the dying, not even for the live child sucking still at the dead breast.

  Once she had not cared overmuch about these things. She had said, There is always war. Now she was sickened with eternal fighting. She could not suppose it would stop; did not even wish it to stop; but she longed to get away from the sight, the smell of slaughter; she wanted to laugh and to sing, to ride and to hunt; she wanted to make love gently, kindly.

  If her husband could come to her in a quiet place with a quiet mind! First they would make music and then they would make love. He would be gentled with the music and she would not be afraid. Love, she was beginning to think, was less a pleasure than an art, an art that, properly mastered, would bring her the longed-for child. She did not need her mother to point out that Henry might suddenly die—he had narrowly escaped death at Louviers. And there was sickness enough in the English camp—sickness, as she knew well enough, was no respecter of princes. If Henry should die without an heir, then she would be nothing. Nothing in England, nothing in France; without his heir, nothing.

  She wished Jacqueline were here. Jacqueline knew all about love-making; there were herbs, Jacqueline said, to overcome fear, to release desire. But Jacqueline was in Brabant leading an army against that disgusting husband of hers—his own city as well as his own wife was sick of him.

  When she thought of Jacqueline and her half-man, she was, in spite of everything, glad to be Henry's wife. She had always meant to marry him. She loved him...surely she loved him. It was just that she was a little afraid of him, that was all. If only she could make him see her as a person with a heart and mind as well as a body! But there was never any time. Except for his hurried love-taking he had no use for her; he found her too young, too ignorant.

  Her husband enjoyed her body but he did not love her; it was a thing she must face. Well, it was, at least, something to build on. Give her a little time and she would win him; yes, and keep him, too.

  * * *

  Henry and his armies lay before Melun, the great stronghold of the Dauphin. He must take it. Melun fallen, half of the enemy's strength would be gone.

  But the town had no intention of being taken; here too, Burgundy's murderers skulked behind its walls. Besides, it was not only evil-doers who feared Henry of England these days; even among his own men the hanging of the eleven innocents had left a nasty taste.

  If Henry knew he gave no sign; he showed nothing but a most savage determination. Even when he lay with Catherine his mind, she knew, harped upon Melun.

  Melun might hold out bitter and obstinate, but Paris was in English hands, every garrison and castle; the Bastille, the Louvre, St. Vincennes and St. Pol. All France rang with Henry's triumphs. Courtiers were riding north and south and east and west with the King of France's orders. Catherine savoured them in her mind.

  Obedience to the high and mighty Henry of England. Honour htm as your true King. Swear to obey no other excepting King Charles now upon the throne. Soon Melun must fall; and then—to Paris.

  Paris. Entering Paris riding beside her King, the envied of all women.

  Paris. Entering Paris in triumph, Regent and heir to France.

  But Melun did not fall.

  July. August.

  It was going to be a long siege. Henry, disturbed because Catherine had not yet conceived, thought she might be the better for a little gaiety. He had a small house built for her six miles away at Corbeil; a charming house. He sent for the great ladies of England to pay their respects to the Queen. Clarence's gentle wife came to meet her new sister-in-law. There were feasts and hunting parties -Isabeau saw to it; and English minstrels played sweet music at sunrise and sunset to raise the sad spirits of the King of France. Catherine sent for her lute; her touch was light, her ear true, her voice small and sweet as a fairy's. Sometimes, now, when he rode over Henry would pick up the lute and play himself. Then she would see the years of struggle wiped from his face; then he was again the debonair boy whose praises minstrels had sung.

  September. October.

  Catherine had not conceived nor the town surrendered.

  Isabeau rallied her openly. Four months and no sign of pregnancy! Henry would call off his bargain if his wife were so slow! Once she made the mistake of baiting the girl before her husband He was furious with a cold and deadly fury, his pride—both royal and male-deeply offended. “The Queen of England will conceive and bear my child in England,” he said. Isabeau the fearless, trembled.

  Catherine felt her failure. Though she longed for a child to give her authority both now and in the future, she knew herself rigid beneath his love-making. She blamed herself-and remained powerless against her fear, her resentment. Jacqueline would have told her that it was not her fault alone; the man himself was weary with constant endurance; Michelle, too, might have warned her. Isabeau had no intention of making things easier with excuses.

  Melun did not fall nor Catherine conceive.

  Henry admitted his failure with the town to Clarence.

  “I am weary to the bone. If only I could trust—trust my allies, trust my friends. But—” he shrugged. “The good Philip, for instance. No trusting him...”

  “...except to seek his own advantage first and always. You can certainly trust him for that!”

  “You're right there, Tom. Let me but turn my back and he'd sell me to the Dauphin if he got the chance.”

  “There'll be no chance.”

  “No,” Henry said. “No. Not while I have my brothe
rs to stand by me. Brothers. A man's shield breast and back, our father used to say. But it isn't only our allies, Tom; it's our own captains—Warwick and Huntingdon and the rest. While I examine gates and walls, they're agog for the attack. While I count men and arms, while I calculate the food, they cannot contain themselves. Mad for the fighting!”

  Tom would have spoken then, but Henry went on. “And there is. Madam Isabeau. Even she begins to think she's backed the wrong side. Nothing would stop her from selling us to the enemy—except fear of her precious son. She knows she'll get nothing out of him, except a cooling in prison.”

  “You think too much,” Tom said slowly. “You have forgotten to sit back and rest. It's a fault in a soldier.”

  “Rest? With men short and sickness on the camp; with my captains uncertain and my allies only waiting to sell me?”

  “The more reason to rest while you can. Go and make music with Catherine; I'll watch our friends for you.”

  “You don't say make love,” Henry said, grim. “Well, you're right at that! The girl's too young—frightened of me. As for myself, I'm too tired a man, so it seems, for begetting a son.”

  “To be young is no fault in a wife. She's gentle…”

  “You're wrong there—she's a hard piece beneath her softness; she's very much Madam Isabeau's daughter.”

  “She's in love with you—or was. You may still make of her what you please. Send her away, Harry; away from France and the fighting and the famine. Send her to England; but give her a child first.”

  “To beget sons an Englishman needs English air. When this town falls we go to Paris; and then—for England.”

  “It's time for England,” Tom said. “The people keep asking for you; they ask again and again. Don't let their love go stale, Harry.” He caught the King's surprised look. “It could happen; not easily, perhaps, but still it could happen.”

  As Clarence went out, Burgundy strode in. “We must storm the walls, make the assault—and at once.” His face was puckered in imitation of his father's frown. “My allies are melting away—Orange gone home already and he isn't the only one. As for my own fellows, I can't keep them. They're sick to the guts of this sit-down fighting.”

  “If you can't keep your men, the worse captain you! And, as tor the fighting, what's more certain to win a town in the end than a sit-down siege? If you need more men send for Luxemburg's archers—they'll soon make these townsfolk sing a different song.”

  “Wait for the archers, wait for this, wait for that! And while we wait...” .

  “Our best ally is at work. So it was at Rouen; so it will be now.

  “Ally? I know of none but what we have.”

  “Famine.” Henry was holding himself in to patience. “Famine. There's our ally. As always she has the last word.”

  Isabeau nagged at Catherine with the same tale—the need to attack. It was clear who had been egging Burgundy on.

  “This Henry! He sits patient outside the walls while Philip's allies go home and the English captains grumble and gamble. As for his men—half of them are bursting their guts with sickness; and the rest of them yawn their heads off and long to get drunk to forget their troubles, and cannot get drunk because this man of yours has watered the wine and the beer casks. And all the time he counts his flour bags, counts his cannon stones, counts his arrows even—so Philip says.”

  “Philip says!” And was her mother, too, Catherine wondered, playing with the notion of striking a bargain with the enemy? “It isn't what Philip says—it's what Philip does! He's always to be found on the winning side. That's why, for all his talk, he'll stay where he is.”

  “Well said, good and dutiful wife!” Isabeau mocked. “You think you're very clever with your little politics. Let me tell you this. Don't think, my girl, that all the swearing at Troyes will keep our French faithful to your English. No, nor yet all the proclamations your father is forced to make. Your Henry is a fool to think it. And so are you. That treaty went sore against the grain. Our people will keep it only if they're made to keep it.”

  “They will keep it,” Catherine said.

  * * *

  The trees had shed their leaves; they shushed along the paths where Catherine walked.

  And still Melun remained untaken.

  It was the longest, the most exhausting of sieges; Rouen had been nothing to it. But Henry with his terrible patience had been right.

  Now his last ally had spoken.

  In the snug house at Corbeil, Catherine heard that the townsfolk were eating their dogs, eating their cats, eating rats and mice, no vermin too hateful to command its fantastic price, too repulsive to thrust into a sick and empty belly.

  For the first time in her young life she looked at the fine white bread wondering whether she, too, would have sold her honour for it; and, as she carried the savoury venison to her lips, her imagination, so little concerned with others, transformed it to rats' flesh so that she sickened and put it down quickly.

  Isabeau, eyeing her, wondered whether she had begun to breed.

  * * *

  Mid October. When one put one's nose out-of-doors the wind was sharp enough to cut it off. Through the house at Corbeil, for all its great fires, the draught swept and froze one's feet in the fur-lined shoes. Stretching her hands towards the flames Catherine wondered what it was like in the besieged city now. Sometimes she would remember that the people in Melun were her own people—French flesh, French blood. Why should they die miserably between two masters?

  They died because they chose to die. Always she answered her own question. How could they hesitate between their masters—her brother the sly weather-cock; and her husband, who, for all his harshness, made just laws? Their sufferings were upon their own head.

  Henry rode over. He was elated in that cold way of his. The archers from Picardy had come. “As in Rouen, so now,” he said. “The story repeats itself. There were the foolish wretches on the wall watching the army draw nearer...nearer...my army; and telling each other the Dauphin had remembered them at last; forgetting, poor fools, how he has betrayed them again and again. Standing there and staring and all their bells ringing. And then the bells dropping off one by one; and silence.”

  “The fortunes of war,” Isabeau said. “And a good thing for Melun—though they won't believe it just yet. A good thing for France, too. Let everyone understand how good a master is my son who leaves them to stew in their own juice. Now Melun must surrender.”

  But Melun did not surrender.

  Mid November. A month, a whole month since the archers had marched from Picardy. The roads crackled with ice; sleet continually fell. Now in the city firing as well as food was exhausted. And still the terrible siege dragged on. In Corbeil Catherine longed for Paris; she was weary of the little house where she could never escape from sight of her father, nor the sound of her mother's tongue. She was weary of the English ladies, yes, even of Clarence's gentle wife. She was weary of the minstrels with their eternal music morning and evening; weariest of all of the distant sounds of battle. Sometimes it seemed to her that the sighing through the trees at Corbeil was the sighing of sad Melun. If we don't leave this place soon, she thought sometimes, I shall grow like my father; and shook at the thought. .

  “Patience,” Isabeau advised hearing the long-drawn sighs, watching the drumming fingers. “Any day now the town must surrender. Surely you must long to see your husband's triumph.

  Yes, she wanted his triumph...but she did not want to see it. She did not understand herself these days. Once she had had spirit enough to match her mother's, to match Henry's; now she did not want to look on slaughter again.

  * * *

  It was worse even than she had feared.

  She had not wanted to see the actual capitulation, but Isabeau would have no such nonsense. “It's your husband's hour and you must match it!” And surprisingly reminded Catherine of that Hebrew King whose wife had spoiled his triumph with a mean spirit.

  Warm in her furs, her horse snu
gly blanketed, she saw the prisoners march out...hundreds, and then hundreds. And not only the defenders, but old men and women; and—those she pitied most—ladies of birth who should have been spared. Grey all of them with starvation, shaking with fever and with cold, hardly able to set one foot before the other.

  “Half of them will be dead before they get to Paris,” Isabeau said, brisk. “As for the rest—if they can't find a ransom, prison will finish them!”

  Justice, Catherine thought. The King's pardon!

  She was all confused with her thoughts, pulled this way and that. Surely it was justice to avenge Burgundy's murder however bloodstained the murdered man. But then, surely that murder had already been fully avenged—the spilt blood at Montereau could testify! And these people were, for the most part, innocent; what had the new horrors to do with it?

  Now, her own face whipped rosy by the winter wind, she watched the grey prisoners crawl out; she wanted to ask mercy for them—but she was afraid. She could not endure that they should go unknowing to an undeserved death. She turned in the saddle, implored Isabeau to intercede.

  “I am not a fool to ask for what will never be granted. Why should I risk Henry's anger?”

  “But the King's pardon; they were promised the King's pardon. And now if they are to die on the journey or to rot in prison—what pardon?”

  “Your husband is very subtle and you are very childish. Take care, my girl, how you offend him.”

  * * *

  She made herself beautiful for him. She said the things he desired to hear. A great hero, first knight in Christendom and God's Own Soldier...And you stooped to this!

  Her heart was not in her smiling and he knew it; she was too young, too ignorant to hide her heart. He took her smiles and her praises; later he took her body.

  But he remembered it against her.

  CHAPTER XVI

  Through the winter countryside rode Henry; on his one hand, Charles the mad King whom his people loved; on the other, Philip of Burgundy in his crow's black, dreaming of rule in France. At Henry's heels rode his captains—Clarence and Bedford and Exeter and Warwick; behind, the chivalry of both lands led the armies with banners.