“Let me sit with Madame,” she said. “I can read.”
Blanche had the impression that this offer did not sit well with the other women: their faces stiffened almost imperceptibly, their eyes were hostile. The young woman who stood before her was hardly more than a child; tall and slender, with white, almost translucent skin. She kept her eyes lowered modestly and her hands folded over her breast in the manner prescribed by etiquette, the upper part of her body bent slightly backwards and her head held a little to one side. The Queen was pleasantly impressed by the voice and appearance of this girl, whom she had not seen before among Valentine’s retinue.
“Good. Go then, Mademoiselle,” she said, “and take the Histories of Troy with you.”
The young woman curtsied; before she arose she looked directly at Blanche, a flashing glance, green as clear deep spring water. Those wonderful eyes struck the Dowager-Queen particularly — they reminded her of an old, half-forgotten love song which described the leaves of an early spring. She felt for a moment as though she stood in the cool spring wind in the meadows near Neauphle-le-Chateau.
“Who is that?” she asked, staring after the newcomer. The women exchanged significant looks — her own women as well as those of the Duchess of Orléans. But their silence lasted so long that it impinged on the respect due to the Dowager-Queen. A lady of the court hastened to reply in the subdued, expressionless tones of a subordinate.
“Madame, that is the Demoiselle d’Enghien.”
Servants in short jackets, with napkins slung over their shoulders, jostled past each other on the spiral staircase leading down from the dining hall to the kitchens. They carried great platters on their heads and some smaller ones at the same time on their widely outstretched arms. A double curtain of worked leather, weighted on the bottom with lead, hung at the entrance to the hall, from which rose the talk and laughter of the guests, the clatter of tableware and the sounds of music. Those servants who carried fowl took them first to the carving tables which stood at the entrance; those who had fruit, pastry and wine brought them directly to the guests.
The feast celebrating the christening of Orléans’ youngest son was being held in a long narrow hall made even narrower by the existence of two rows of flecked marble pillars. At the end of the hall opposite the servants’ entrance stood a dais where, against a background of tapestries, the royal guests sat at table.
Above the colonnades were galleries where the musicians and a few courtiers were. A great number of torches were burning; pages ran back and forth continually tending to these sources of light. Several of the Duke’s house dogs lay on the mosaic floor, gnawing bones and growling whenever the servants came too close to them. The musicians in the gallery played without pause on their wind and brass instruments. A dwarf squatted behind the grating of the balcony, his face pressed against the opening between two bars, gazing down at the company on the dais below him, and especially at Orléans, who was chatting politely with his neighbor, the young wife of the Duke of Berry. Later in the evening, to honor her and Queen Isabeau, the dwarf would be brought to the table in a pastry to recite a couplet composed by Louis.
The Duke wore a crimson garment with voluminous sleeves, so densely stitched with series of his favorite emblem, the crossbow, that from a distance one could not tell whether the background of the cloth was red or gold. The Duke was in an exuberant mood; the Duchess of Berry, who was easily amused, shouted almost unceasingly with laughter.
On Orléans’ other side sat the Queen, silent and lost in thought. Dull fatigue weighed more heavily upon her than her crown and necklaces. She smiled mechanically whenever her brother-in-law spoke to her, replying with automatic motions of head and hand. She looked often at the King who sat next to her, but as far away from her as possible, in a corner of the bench under the royal canopy. He was pulling at the threads of the tapestry with his knife and muttering unintelligibly. He had been brought to the table despite the physicians’ advice. At the beginning of the meal, diverted by the bustle and stir around him, he had sat motionless and attentive, without a glance or a word for Isabeau.
Because he toyed with his food like a child, his sleeves and tunic were soon spotted with bread crumbs, grease and wine. Finally he became restless. He could not get up from the table and walk around when he wanted to, as he did in his own rooms. The Queen bit her lip. It seemed to her that everyone was staring at the royal seat as if it were a stage framed by tapestries and festive garlands.
Charles overturned his goblet; wine sopped onto the freshly baked white bread which nobles, kneeling respectfully before him, had put upon his plate. He bit his nails, scratched his thinning grey-blond hair. Because of the long confinement in Creil, his face was as pale as wax; his nose was sharp, deep grooves ran from his nostrils to his mouth, which looked sunken and old, because he had recently lost some teeth. He was only a few years older than the Duke of Orléans, but the disparity between them appeared to be one between a very young and a very old man. The softness of Charles’ faded, enflamed eyes made his appearance all the sadder; they were the windows through which his spirit looked out, the captive in his cage, forever isolated from the world. From time to time the involuntary contractions of his cheek muscles caused his face to contort into a grimace.
He listened at last to the whispered entreaties of Burgundy, who sat beside him, and leaned back into the shadow of the canopy. He seemed to have lost all interest in food and festivities. He mumbled and poked the point of his knife between the brightly colored threads of the tapestry beside him. Burgundy, soberly dressed in a garment of black Flemish cloth which had cost a fortune, and with his hat glinting red with rubies, sat eating with a cold smile, as though he noticed nothing. Only the censoriously compressed lips of his wife Margaretha betrayed disapproval.
The Duke of Bourbon, however, could not conceal his displeasure; he was still upset by the dispute with Berry. He was deeply offended by the accusation that he would work exclusively for his own interests now that he was once more a regent. Naturally, like Berry, Anjou and Burgundy, he had not hesitated, in the period before Charles came of age, to take advantage of any opportunity for profit that came his way. But he was no longer particularly interested in worldly affairs. He stood, he believed, at the brink of the grave; his health was failing. Moreover, he was extremely fond of the King, in whom he had always seen a resemblance to his sister, the late Queen Jeanne. Was it guilt that made him eager now to set himself up as a protector of the royal family? That was what Berry had the audacity to assume.
Bourbon saw him sitting at the other end of the table, looking all but ridiculous in a garment of flowered brocade trimmed with ornaments, like a heathen Turk. From Berry his glance shifted to Isabeau, whose forced smile he did not see through. He blamed her for the stupid decision to allow the King to come to the table and expose his scandalous behavior to the derision of the court. Bourbon listened without interest to the remarks of his neighbor, the Duchess of Burgundy, whose mind he found as cold and materialistic as her Flemish estates.
Berry followed their conversation from a distance; he knew Bourbon’s antipathy to Philippe’s wife and secretly rejoiced that protocol had made them neighbors at table. He himself was seated between two comely, flirtatious princesses, his own wife Jeanne and the young wife of Jean de Nevers, Marguerite, of whom it was whispered that she had received Louis d’Orléans in her bower, although there was no proof of that.