“I will also have new mantles,” said the young Duchess firmly. “After the christening, shall we get out of mourning? You must order gloves, Charles, and capes. You have had nothing new for more than a year; you are growing out of your clothes.”
“Certainly.” Charles laughed at her authoritative tone; the Dame de Maucouvent had spoken to him like that when he was a child. “You must take care of these things for me. I intend to buy new horses and falcons; next spring we shall go hunting at Montils, Isabelle.”
She looked at him quickly with sparkling eyes.
“Do you mean that?” she asked softly. “Can we leave Blois? I dislike Blois, Charles. It is so gloomy and cold and we have known only suffering there. We have lived all these years as though there were a war, as though we were besieged or pursued. I won’t wear black any more, I am tired of mourning.”
“Yes, we haven’t had much opportunity for celebration,” remarked Charles; he ran his finger over the golden embroidery on Isabelle’s sleeve. “But it will be different now, I think. I have no desire to let myself be thrust into a war with Monseigneur of Burgundy — or that which he calls peace. At first I thought — trick for trick and lie for lie, but what does a man gain by that? Burgundy still does as he pleases and it makes very little difference to me — I don’t care a whit about having power abroad or about winding the government in Paris around my finger.”
“You promised your mother …” began Isabelle hesitantly. Charles sighed and rested his face in the wide pleats of her dress.
“In the end I will surely get the King to grant my demands,” he said. “It seems to me more fitting that Burgundy should be punished by the King than by me.”
“You spoke differently when you returned from Chartres.” Isabelle touched his head for a moment with her fingertips. “You change your mind quickly, I think.”
Charles laughed, embarrassed. “Are you beginning to lecture me too?” he asked, in a low voice. “Don’t think that I am too cowardly to fight. I have no desire to exercise an authority which does not belong to me. Burgundy’s punishment is a matter for the government. He wants nothing more — does Burgundy — than to get my brothers and me into trouble. You understand, I’m sure, that the easiest thing would be to give him what he wants. But I will not let him have that satisfaction. If he wants to fight me, he will have to violate the agreement which we made at Chartres. Then he will be the disturber of the peace, the spoiler, and that will cost him the King’s favor.”
“Charles,” said Isbelle suddenly, “try to maintain good relations with my mother the Queen. You will have gained much once she is on your side. And listen to me. Be wise and try to get back the land they confiscated from you — or demand compensation. That is your right.”
“True.” Charles sighed deeply and sat up. “I don’t know why,” he said, “but I have no desire to talk about these things now. It’s such beautiful weather. Look, even the season has taken off its winter cloak and decked itself in green and gold and blue.”
He paused, for Isabelle had turned her head toward him in surprise.
“That was prettily put,” she said. “Let us also take off our mourning dress — like the season — and go clad in gold and green and blue as though we were to attend a festive ball.” She began to hum again, but Charles saw that her eyes were filled with tears. He took her hand in his and looked up. The swallows skimmed through the bright sky, the sun sparkled on the wavelets of the river; moment by moment the world adorned itself with new leaves, new flowers.
Charles and Isabelle did not stay long in Melun. The King was in no condition to see them; he spent his days in a specially guarded tower of the castle, cared for by Odette de Champdivers. Isabeau was distracted; the news from Paris did not please her. Burgundy, apparently convinced that he needed again to present himself to the Parisians as their champion, had ordered an inquiry into the expenditures of money by the officers of the Crown. Isabeau knew only too well what that inquiry would bring to light. The officers of the court administration and the Audit Room were often forced to juggle figures because the Queen neglected to state accurately what she spent, or because she demanded more money than her expenses justified. In the last few years Isabeau had been on a mad spending spree: she had bought land, jewels, furniture, ornaments. The government had been distracted by other matters; nothing more was demanded of the officials concerned than an apparently balanced budget. The Queen was afraid that through Burgundy’s probing, most of these transgressions would be unearthed and be traced back to her.
She was too annoyed and uneasy to pay much attention to the visit of her daughter and son-in-law. The young couple did not mind; after a few weeks they went on to Montereau, a castle near Melun that belonged to Charles. They wanted to spend the summer there, but de Braquemont warned that the armed escort was too small to defend that castle if the necessity arose. With some reluctance, Charles and Isabelle returned to Blois in July. After the carefree happiness of the early summer, life within the walls of Blois felt doubly oppressive; although the sun burned on the roofs of the houses and on the fields around the town, Isabelle shivered in her apartments — it was always chilly inside the thick walls. Even the arrival from Paris of the state bed could not put the young Duchess in a more cheerful mood.
At noon on the tenth of September, two women from Isabelle’s retinue brought Charles the news that Madame d’Orléans felt suddenly unwell; she had been taken to the lying-in chamber. Charles waited with Philippe. Dusk fell and then night; they passed the time playing chess until midnight, after which Charles sent a page to his wife’s apartments. The young man returned quickly to say that according to the physicians the birth of the child would be delayed a few more hours. But he did not mention what he had heard the court maidens whispering — that it was not going well with the young Duchess, that she would have to fight hard for her own life and the life of her child. Unaware of this, Charles spent a sleepless night; he had sent Philippe off to bed and sat alone now, reading by candlelight. The hours crept by slowly; he heard the page speaking in an undertone with a soldier of the guard in an adjoining room — the silence of Blois was broken from time to time by the sound of a dog howling at the moon.
Toward dawn Charles could not bear it; it was impossible for him to distract himself any longer with the tales on the parchment. He took up the candlestick and tiptoed from the room through a side door. Etiquette prevented a husband from coming near the lying-in chamber during his wife’s labor; if he wanted to inquire he sent a messenger. Charles had never doubted the wisdom of this custom — now all this secrecy seemed irksome and stupid to him. The first apartment was empty. In the second, Isabelle’s court maidens and servant girls knelt, praying aloud for aid and succour for their mistress. The Dame de Travercin, Isabelle’s companion, frightened, came swiftly to Charles; her eyes were red from weeping.
“In God’s name, Monseigneur,” she whispered, “you cannot come here.”
“I want to know how it goes with my wife,” replied Charles; he had no intention of being sent away without information. It was not necessary for the lady to tell Charles anything now: suddenly, from behind the closed doors of the lying-in chamber came a hoarse shrieking which filled Charles with deep horror. Even in that awful sound he recognized Isabelle’s voice.
“Monseigneur, Monseigneur, will you be good enough to go away?” The Dame de Travercin was at her wits’ end. “The master of the council and the physicians are with the Duchess. They are doing what they can, Monseigneur, but Madame d’Orléans is having a most difficult time. We do not know how it will end.”