Never had Charles felt so uncertain, so melancholy and so burdened with guilt. He knew that his mother’s advisors and assistants were privately contemptuous of him for his inclination to remain aloof; they did not show it, but he sensed their criticisms of him: they thought he was a bad son, unworthy to hold the title. Attempting to win their friendship and approval — one can be extremely lonely when one is fourteen years old and without support — he painstakingly performed the tasks in which he had the least interest: he practised with weapons, rode out to inspect the troops, studied the art of war. At night he sought refuge in Maitre Garbefs apartment; he tried to find comfort and oblivion in the books which he had loved. But the adventures of Perceval and Arthur now suddenly seemed dull and far-fetched to him; the stately Latin sentences of the classic writers sounded labored in his ears; the holy legends and the stories of miracles were not convincing. How could he immerse himself by candlelight in things which had never happened or had occurred long ago, while his mother pined away from grief, while Burgundy the murderer went his way unpunished, while disaster threatened everywhere and the November wind, like a harbinger of winter’s cold, blew its litany along the shutters? For the first time Maitre Garbet also seemed like a stranger to him; the little old man, bent day after day over the vellum sheets which he filled with essays on theology and history, seemed very far removed from what disturbed Charles.
Isabelle was confusing too. He did not see her often, because she stayed for the most part in the sickroom, but occasionally she came to him unexpectedly when he sat in the library with maps of roads and rivers and plans of fortresses before him. At first he really believed that she sought him out to bring him special news about his mother; he could not imagine why she tarried, giving him sidelong glances which made him more uneasy than her previous cutting arrogance. She did not say much, nor did she make any effort to draw him into conversation — it was precisely this expectant silence which he found so oppressive. Charles, who could not sit until she requested him to, stood beside her, overcome by shyness and slight irritation. He and she were about the same height; when he glanced at her profile he saw close by the roundness of her pale cheek, her large, grey, slightly protuberant eyes, her slender neck. He was old enough to know that the marriage between them was a marriage in name only; the worldly ladies and gentlemen of Valentine’s retinue had not hesitated to tease him continually since the wedding in Compiègne about his neglect of his duties to his wife.
Charles was no longer ignorant, but what seemed perfectly natural and obvious in conversations with pages and grooms in the stables, and in daily business with dogs and house animals, could not somehow be associated with Isabelle and himself. Over the years he had grown accustomed to her constant presence; she belonged in the household and had therefore, despite her sharp tongue and impatient outbursts, the right to respect and affection. The alteration in her manner toward him he found terrifying.
Once when he had offered her his hand to lead her to the door, with a quick gesture she had pressed his fingers against her breast; he felt the restless throbbing of her heart. As a child he had once caught a field mouse. The creature sat in his closed hand, petrified with fear; the tiny body trembled with violent heartbeats. Seized by the same feelings of horror and compassion that he had felt then, he allowed his fingertips to be held against the cloth of Isabelle’s bodice; her grip on his wrist did not slacken for an instant. He was forced to remain standing in that position whether he wished to or not. He had retained an unpleasant memory of that incident. Thereafter, he avoided Isabelle.
On the twenty-third of November — the anniversary of the death of Louis d’Orléans — Valentine ordered a mass to be read in her bedroom. Hardly had the odor of incense dispelled, when the Governor de Mornay, who had accompanied the royal procession through the domains of Orléans as far as the city of Tours, urgently requested an audience with the Duchess. He was finally allowed to enter her chamber. The intellligence which he brought confirmed Valentine’s worst fears: the Duke of Hainault was in Tours to negotiate with the King in Burgundy’s name; both sides seemed equally anxious to re-establish good relations. Isabelle and Charles, who were present at the mass, feared that this news would do great harm to Valentine. However, to their surprise, it seemed to stimulate the Duchess to a final effort.
She was roused from her dull indifference; in spite of pain and fever, weakness and exhaustion, she tried to take measures to protect her children’s futures. In the last days of November she gave orders: de Braquemont received instructions to divide the standing army in Blois into special troops and to send these, well supplied with weapons, gunpowder and food, to key positions in Orléans’ territory. Once more she wanted it explicidy recorded that Charles would be Duke of Orléans; Philippe, Count de Vertus; Jean, Count of Angoulême and Jean, bastard of Orléans, surnamed Dunois, lord of Chateau-Dun. At last — December had already made its entrance with storms and bleak rain — she called her children to her.
Philippe, Jean and Dunois, who had not seen her since she left Blois for Paris, did not dare come near the black-hung bed; they could not believe that this emaciated woman was their mother. The skin of her face was tightly drawn over nose and jawbones, her chin protruded sharply — she already looked like a corpse.
“Charles,” Valentine said with an effort, while she motioned him with her eyes to come closer. “Charles, kneel down and swear by the Holy Body of Christ, who died for our sins, that you will protect and defend your brothers and your sister, and everything that belongs to them and to you, to the best of your honor, conscience and ability. Swear that you will not rest until you have avenged your father’s death, that you will watch and work without ceasing until Burgundy has paid for his crime.” She paused, gasping for breath.
“I swear it,” said Charles with bowed head.
“Promise me, then,” continued Valentine, “that you will keep the memory of your father sacred — you know in what way I mean. Let my body be buried in Blois, but bring my heart to Paris and set it in the tomb near Monseigneur my husband, in the chapel of the Celestines. Promise me,” she tried to sit up but could not, “promise me that you will be good… to the children here … and to Isabelle your wife. And forgive me, you, Charles, and you two children, forgive me for whatever harm I may have done to you. Now come here one by one and say that you forgive me.”
They knelt by the bed — Charles, Philippe, Jean and Isabelle; Dunois remained standing a considerable distance away from the others, because the Dame de Maucouvent, who carried littie Marguerite in her arms, held him back by the sleeve. But Valentine asked: “Where are you, child?” and stretched her thin hand for him. Dunois knelt close against the edge of the bed and looked at his foster mother with his bright, grey-green eyes; he alone did not weep.
“You will bear the heaviest burden of all, lad,” said Valentine; on her lips appeared the old sad, gentle smile. “The inheritance which awaits you is that you will have to fend for yourself. If Monseigneur your father had not been taken from us so suddenly, he would undoubtedly have provided well for your future. I am leaving you some money, child, but it is not much — we of Orléans have become poor. But I am not worried about you — less worried than about my own sons. You are more equal to the task of avenging your father than any of your half-brothers … Alas, child, I could not have loved you more if you had been mine. Say that you forgive me, Dunois.”