“The alliance with Savona is not insignificant,” said Valentine. “It will make both Genoa and Florence uneasy.”
Louis laughed shortly.
“I don’t trust any of them,” he said. He smoothed the velvet with his hand. “In the course of years I have finally come to see what they understand over there by the word ‘negotiation’. While the city fathers come to offer the keys and a long list of conditions, their ambassadors slip out through a back door to reach an agreement with our bitterest enemies. In any case, victories in Italy don’t mean much to me, as long as I do not have the support of the Church; this alliance with Gian Galeazzo alone is no recommendation — quite the contrary. I hope you won’t mind, ma mie, if I speak frankly. If I were to take up residence in those vanquished lands, I would live as safely as a lost sheep among wolves — although perhaps that image doesn’t fit me too well because I am neither guileless nor helpless. And besides …” He leaned sideways against the edge of the bed, crossing his arms under the cover of his long green sleeves. “… why should I pursue conquests in distant lands when God knows I can well serve my country here even if it is only as a pot watcher? I have repeatedly been able to accomplish things, either directly or through the exercise of influence — which I suppose is the same thing — things that I knew the King would approve of if he were able to understand them. The Dukes will never take my brother’s wishes into account, insofar as they do not agree with their own plans. In those moments when the King’s head is clearer he often tells me how he approves of the way I have handled this or that matter — you know that yourself, my dear. I hope that my brother’s illness is only temporary …”
“Yes,” said the Duchess of Orléans softly, but without conviction; she turned her head away to conceal the anxiety in her eyes. “God knows that I pray every day for his recovery — whatever else they may say about me …” Her voice quivered with suppressed tears. Louis looked up quickly.
“Madame,” he said, almost sternly, “you must rise above gossip. I would be very sorry if your self-esteem were to be jolted by the idle chatter which travels round from time to time …”
“Alas, it is no idle chatter,” said Valentine; her voice still shook. She made an effort to restrain her tears, the treacherous, embarrassing tears which threatened to overwhelm her in times of physical weakness. “It is not gossip, my lord, you know that as well as I. It is a bulwark of hatred and slander, which is being constructed stone by stone. Don’t think that I am blind and deaf,” she continued, in a vehement whisper, clasping her hands tighter. “In the streets of Paris they are saying I wish to kill the King …”
“Hush, hush, Valentine,” Louis interrupted, reaching for her hand across the coverlet. The fact that she was aware of all this upset him greatly. He had not expected it.
Valentine continued to speak swiftly and angrily.
“They say that at my departure, before I left for France, my father said to me, ‘Farewell, daughter; see to it that when we meet again you have become the Queen.’ But, my God, that is … Surely everyone knows that I left without saying goodbye to my father, who was then in Padua. It grieved him enough that we could not bid each other farewell.”
“Hush, hush,” repeated Louis, angry at the suffering she had borne because of the malice of stupid people. But Valentine went on.
“They see sufficient proof in my coat of arms, I’m sure. Yes, it sounds foolish, but it is true … You know what people are like, they even create the evidence they wish to believe.”
Involuntarily, Louis’ eyes glided to the coat of arms stitched in gold on the bed curtain behind his wife’s head: a field, divided in two, displaying a lily of Valois on the left, and on the right the adder which symbolized Milan, a viper about to devour a child at play. Who could deny that it was an image which inspired little confidence? Louis felt the throbbing of his wife’s pulse under his hand; he was overwhelmed by deep compassion.
“I don’t know,” he said, withdrawing his hand from hers. “This is becoming a most painful situation. Most likely I shall have to dissuade you from visiting the King more often than is strictly necessary.”
“That is impossible,” said Valentine in a dead voice. “I do not go to him, he comes here — and against that I am helpless. It does him good. With me he is often more cheerful and placid than anywhere else; it is wonderful to see how at times he is completely his old self again; he talks sensibly about all sorts of things — even though it lasts only a few moments,” she concluded, with a sad smile.
The couple gazed at each other in silence, each lost in thought. They were, thought Valentine, like solitary trees which sometimes take root in the stony soil of mountain tops. Exposed to rain and lightning they stand; clouds drift past them, by degrees wind and weather polish them to stumps as barren as the rocks around them. When, as a bride she had crossed the Italian Alps, Valentine had seen such trees on steep crags, hanging over precipices, pressed obliquely by the wind, scorched black by bolts of lightning. Everything which still bore foliage at that altitude seemed fated to come to a frightful end.
A door opened and two women entered the lying-in chamber: the Dame de Maucouvent and the nurse with the baby in her arms. They were followed, as protocol required, by two rows of demoiselles from Valentine’s retinue. Mariette d’Enghien was one of the last pair; as soon as she saw Orléans, she pulled back as though she wished to leave, but her companion held her hand. Louis, who rose when the women entered, greeted the Dame de Maucouvent and lifted the veil which partly covered the small Charles; nothing more was visible of the sleeping child than a pink face as large as a fist. Smiling, the Duke walked past the curtseying maidens; the glance which he cast upon the bent head of Mariette d’Enghien did not escape Valentine’s notice; stretched out under the coverlet she watched her husband while the pounding of her heart almost suffocated her.
FIRST BOOK: Youth
Je suis celuy au cueur vestu de noir.
I am he whose heart is dressed in black.
I. LOUIS D’ORLÉANS, THE FATHER
Se j’ay aimé et on m’amé, ce a faict amours; je l’en mercie, je m’en répute bien heureux.
If I have loved and have been loved, it was Love that made it so. I am grateful to Love, I am fortunate.
n a July day in the year 1395, the King sat in the open veranda which bordered his rooms on the garden side of Saint-Pol. A green canopy had been set up over him to protect him from the blazing sun; on both sides of it tapestries hung down to the floor. Inside this tent, the King had been playing for a considerable time with oversized, gaily colored cards; he arranged them on the table before him, built tottering towers, and now and then swept them all together with trembling fingers. The court physician, Renaud Freron, personally appointed by Isabeau after de Harselly’s dismissal, walked back and forth over the red and white tiles of the gallery, his hands behind his back. A few courtiers stood, bored and weary, in the shade under the archways.
The aviaries had been brought outside to amuse the King; birds of all sizes and colors hopped twittering about the gilded cage. The hot white light quivered above the slate roofs of the palace; for more than a week the sun had shone from a cloudless sky — the heat grew from day to day, scorching grass and shrubs. The streets of Paris lay deserted as though the city had been struck by plague: the stench of garbage hung over the squares and along the banks of the Seine. Under the bridges the river water flowed sluggishly, turbid, full of silt and filthy. Only in the fields outside the walls of Paris work continued without interruption, despite the scorching heat. The farmers wanted to get the grain inside the barns before the storms began. From the windows of Saint-Pol and the oudying castles, the mowers could be seen moving over the fields like tiny specks; the sun flashed on sickles and scythes. Half-naked, dripping with sweat, the men cut row after row of stalks of grain. The women came behind them, with cloths bound around their heads and shoulders, stooping and squatting, binding the sheaves. Blinded by sun and sweat, swarming with flies, they gathered the bread for the city of Paris, fodder for the beasts.