The queens apprenticeshi.., p.22
The Queen's Apprenticeship, page 22
‘Dead?’ Louise asked. ‘How dead? He died a valiant servant of my son …?’
‘My lord Bonnivet wished no man to capture nor blame him, Madame – he fell upon his sword.’
Louise gasped. ‘Others are captured then, with my son?’
‘Yes, among them Montmorency, Chabot de Brion, Fleuranges, and the young King of Navarre. I myself was captured, and the King paid my ransom so I could be his envoy. Your half-brother René the Bastard of Savoy is also prisoner, and badly wounded. But many men of quality are dead, Madame – so many I can barely tell their names … ‘ And here he stopped, as Louise shook her head and sobbed.
Marguerite whispered, ‘But not my husband?’
‘No, my lady Duchess, but —’
Adrian interrupted. ‘Your husband escaped. I imagine he is on his way home.’
Through all her sobs and gasps, Louise did not miss a thing. ‘Escaped! How can that be, when so many were killed and taken? Why is he then not prisoner along with his King?’
‘The Duke brought the last men to safety, Madame, when it was clear —’
‘You mean he fled! He turned on his heels to save himself !’
Marguerite stepped in. ‘My lady mother, it is too much. You need to sit and calm down. We must pray – we must give thanks that the King lives. We have to plan.’
Madame,
To let you know how the rest of my misfortune stands, of all things there remain to me only honour and life, which is safe.
And so that, in your adversity, this news may bring you a little comfort, I requested to be allowed to write you this letter: which was readily allowed me, begging you not to go to extremity yourself, using your accustomed prudence; for I have hope that at the end God will not abandon me, commending to you your grandchildren who are my children, and begging you to allow passage to this bearer to go to and from Spain, for he goes toward the emperor, in order to know how he will wish me to be treated.
And upon this goes very humbly recommended to your good grace,
Your most humble and most obedient son,
Within days Louise was again her normal self. They wrote at once to François, to buoy him up with hope and love, while scheming how to get him back. Louise sought urgently to make peace with England, knowing Henry VIII would be delighted at her son’s captivity. England must not be allowed to take advantage …
Little by little, the remnant from the battle of Pavia – laying waste in their disorder, attacking and setting fire as they travelled – made their way home to France. After some weeks, well into Lent, Charles of Alençon finally turned up in Lyon.
Marguerite was first to meet him inside the gates. Exhausted and haggard, he was otherwise intact and whole. Though winter had given way to spring, he seemed to carry its chill and darkness upon him.
Dismissing her ladies, she welcomed him stiffly, uncertainly, and led him into a quiet parlour. ‘My lord and husband, I am at a loss for words. Thanks be to God you are not harmed.’
Charles slumped into a seat. ‘I wish to God I were a prisoner with the King!’
‘I understand. I do understand. But my lady mother —’
‘I can well imagine what the Régente will have to say. I had no choice but to come here. That doesn’t mean I am keen to see her.’
‘Sir, you cannot blame her – the stories we have heard! The songs the people sing among the returning soldiers!’
‘About those of us who abandoned the King,’ Charles said, his mouth twisting so his words barely emerged. ‘Madame, if I had not told my men to retreat, how many more thousands …? It was no longer possible.’
Marguerite put her finger to his lips; so long since she had touched him, it seemed to burn – yet he had no fever. ‘I suppose nobody who was not there will fully understand,’ she said. ‘I myself cannot understand! I cannot believe you would turn your back on my brother and your king! But it is wiser that you don’t recount things in that manner. Believe me, it will be better for us if you show you are disconsolate. Show us – that you would rather have died than seen your king taken! I know I would have!’
She gave him refreshment despite her horror; she ensured he was fit to stand, and then – she could delay it no longer – she must announce his arrival.
He stood then for an hour in Louise’s presence to receive her reproach. There was no shouting or crying this time, but Louise’s words were keener than any soldier’s blade.
Marguerite stood stern, aloof, as his head sank. Her mother would not hear any plea on his behalf – and besides, though trying to be a good wife to him, she herself felt bitterly let down.
Then Louise ordered him out of her sight. He was to take his meals apart from them and not bother her when all her attention must be on the kingdom – and her son’s release.
Marguerite nodded and was about to leave also, when her mother beckoned her back. ‘What a pity he did not take the noblest way out, like our poor dear Bonnivet!’ ‘Poor’ and ‘dear’, now that he was gone.
Bonnivet, her would-be ravisher! She could never pronounce that word. She had once wished him dead in revenge but could have howled for him now in shock and pity. He was never, never to appear again. Yet even now, she could not expose him …
Bonnivet would live on in people’s praise, once his ‘error’ at Pavia was forgotten; once the blame fell somehow on her husband instead.
Her pulse raced, but before she could protest, Louise went on. ‘I’m not surprised Alençon was weak under pressure. He has never been the hearty sort, as you have noted only too well. Not much of a man – and his bodily weakness is clearly visible now.’
Louise sat down and began to sort through matters she would need to bring before the Council. There would be challenges, she said, people in Paris who disliked a woman ruling while the King was captive. She had no time or energy to spare for the useless, nor even to mourn her half-brother René, at first a prisoner with the King and now dead of his wounds, a month after battle.
Marguerite sat opposite her. ‘Bodily weakness?’
‘Anyone can see your husband is not a well man. Perhaps he has some sort of internal wound or has been exposed to foul air. Don’t be surprised if he suddenly worsens.’ Louise would not meet Marguerite’s eyes.
‘God forbid. We have seen enough disaster already – and we cannot afford that! We must focus on François.’
‘Exactly. Alençon was never central to anything, really. He would scarcely be missed.’
‘That is not what I meant,’ Marguerite whispered, frightened at her mother’s callousness. ‘It’s just that we have to move forward – nothing else will aid the King.’
Louise smiled coldly. ‘Well, all of us are in God’s hands, as you so often like to remind me.’
Not much later, Charles of Alençon began to complain of chest pains. A day after that, he took to his bed. Marguerite brought in the doctors, despite her mother’s dismissive contempt. They were unsure; they called it pleurisy, perhaps brought on by the dampness and strain he had endured in Italy and on the return journey.
‘But it is all regret for himself!’ Louise said, when the doctors left the room. ‘Let him wallow.’ Her face was set hard as the monastery walls around her.
‘He is my husband,’ Marguerite protested. ‘As a wife —’
‘As a wife you are much less use to me – to your brother – than you would be once free.’
Marguerite’s breath tightened. Already her mother was plotting how she could be used in remarriage! ‘I cannot think like that. I must do everything I can to help Charles, to save him.’
‘Not to help and save François …?’
‘Why can’t I do both?’ The colder her mother was, the more protective Marguerite felt toward her ailing husband.
But Louise was full of plans – they were like barbs in Marguerite’s flesh. ‘If you were free, we could offer you to Bourbon in marriage! Then half the problem would be solved – Burgundy would be his while remaining ours. Or else offer you to the Emperor himself, vile as he is. You see how this could serve our poor captive Caesar! What a gift you would prove to be.’
‘I have a husband living!’ Marguerite turned her face and would not listen. God forgive me and forgive my mother, she thought.
Night and day she sat at Charles’s bedside, wiping his sweats, soothing him and reading to him – at his request – from the Bible. Louise kept well away: ‘I cannot risk disease with the regency on my shoulders!’ She sent attendants with various elaborate medicines she had concocted.
The medicines had a curious effect. Once or twice over the next days, Charles appeared to rally; he even got up and ate with Marguerite. But he soon returned to his bed, and one day he said suddenly – on her very birthday, as it happened – ‘Death is in my breast.’
‘Charles, no. Please!’ She wished he had not swallowed Louise’s medicines.
He asked for Louise to grant her forgiveness, and at last she came. He kissed her hand, but she stood wordless and watching, having ushered Marguerite out of the room.
When the Bishop arrived, he hurried in and gave Charles extreme unction. Marguerite strained to listen from the hallway.
‘Since I could not die in battle nor be taken prisoner with my king,’ Charles murmured to Louise, ‘there is nothing more to keep me here below. Only your daughter, whom I beg you to take care of when I am gone. Oh – Marguerite!’ he called. ‘Do not leave me.’
She rushed back through the door. ‘I will not leave you.’
Louise shook her head at Marguerite, trying to steer her out again. ‘Away, away,’ she muttered, ‘it is no use.’
But Marguerite would not go. She watched as the Bishop held a wooden cross for Charles to kiss. Then she reached down to her husband, kissed him herself and wrapped her arms around him, whispering comfort. Within a few moments, she felt the last strength go out of him and saw that he was dead.
IV. How Bradamante becomes Josse once more, and of God’s gift to the people of Paris
WE ROAMED THEN a long time across the varied lands of France, down toward the south where the mountains were, through fine weather and sometimes foul, good fortune and ill, meeting friend and more often defrauder among our fellow travellers. These I pass over, as being commonplace and not of interest.
Exactly where I left and lost Isotta, where we reached the edge of other kingdoms, I will not tell for her safety’s sake. My reader will already know the diverse ways one may take to enter Castile and Aragon from France and Navarre – and I would sooner cover Isotta’s tracks than see her forcibly returned to the great household she had fled. Having betrayed her once already, as I now realise, I would not compromise her further: God speed her in her hopes. How I left and lost her, I recount only quickly, because it is painful.
Near the end of our journey together, we fell in with a band of pilgrims. Should there be guards or a watch as we arrived at the Emperor’s lands, we might pass through among this group and be accepted.
I was still not sure – this far on – that I wanted to leave France. I was even less sure that I wanted to share Isotta with more strangers. My fear and jealousy had grown no less. The men of the pilgrim band loved to walk beside Isotta, too close for my taste, and to consult with her on religious questions – more for the sound of her voice and the glow of her eyes than out of any true zeal, I was sure.
In the evenings they asked her to sing. I admired her voice but not when she sang for them. There was one who seemed fondest of her, who played his rebec as she sang, and another who gave her a little pilgrim mirror he had got from his father before him. He said it had once caught the power of a holy relic and could beam it onto you.
‘If it is so precious, then why does he give it away?’ I muttered sourly to Isotta. ‘You are too indulgent of these fellows.’
‘Brad, I believe you have a jealous streak! You know I do not care much for their pilgrim ideas. Does not our Lord tell us we may find him in any place? For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them. Thus I have heard new thinkers say such pilgrimage is superstition.’
‘But we don’t have to be real pilgrims,’ I said.
‘No, we just have to pass. And we are safer in numbers throughout these border regions, since the roads are beset with thieves and ruffians – not to mention the Emperor’s men!’
We divided our food with the wayfarers, and they gave us good things also, and we heard their tales, and slept the night in pilgrim shelters, and stopped with them in places along the route where they desired to pray or see the sights.
In one of the last French villages, the group entered a small church – but I did not go in. Instead, I stood on the front steps in surprise. ‘Look, Isotta, what can this mean?’
It was engraved into the outer stone of the church wall.
Isotta exclaimed and traced her finger in each of the hollows. Again I felt a pang of jealousy, for while I could read, Isotta could both read and write, as this tracing movement reminded me. ‘It is a kind of Latin,’ she said, ‘but it is mysterious. See how it reads the same in every direction? I have seen this before in my travels, even in Italy. Some say it is a charm for protection, and for outcast children. A duchess told me it was for safe confinement – you know, when babies are born. Well, it can’t hurt, anyway.’
‘It makes me shiver, like a thing unholy.’ I was put out, petulant, still smarting over the attention the men had paid to her. ‘And as for babies, who wants them!’ I picked up a small flat stone, flipped it this way and that, then tossed it away, then another.
Isotta laughed at me. ‘I may well have babies one day! I would never exclude that. It has always been part of the future I imagine … You can’t say no in advance, Bradamante, to anything good life has to offer.’
My hand closed hard against the next stone, clutching it till it felt hot. ‘You may have babies. How will you have babies?’
She turned to me in sudden irritation. ‘Why should I not?’
I fell silent for a while then, because the answer was obvious and too horrible to contemplate: she meant one day to marry. I had never before understood this. Had I thought she would spend her whole life with me, just as we were?
I took up my bag and bound it to me. I was so wounded, so shocked, so unreasonable, that I lashed out. ‘Well, Spain has never been part of the future I imagined.’
Fool that I was, I wondered which of the pilgrim men had caught her heart. Was it the tiny mirror or the sweet rebec? We had bickered before, usually by my own doing, but neither of us had ever walked off. Now I began to do so.
I would not this time sneak away by night, as I had once pictured on that last night in the region of Clermont, when we were in our homely little hovel. That seemed a lifetime ago.
‘Bradamante, don’t be silly.’
Isotta grew smaller behind me, though I tried not to look back as she called.
‘The pilgrims will move on soon, and we must too – come on, forget this quarrel!’
But it was no use, I told myself. The blood burned in my head. However far down the track, Isotta would become somebody’s bride and bear him children – and how could I begrudge her that, if it was what she really wanted? Yet at the same time, I could not watch it happen. There was no place for me anywhere – I must keep moving.
‘You think I will wait here till you cool down?’ Isotta called.
She was right to say cool down, for the unshed tears were scorching my eyesight, and my breath was hot as I strode on, heedless of the flowers in my path: the bright blue bell-shaped ones, and the delicate star-like purple blooms she had picked and picked when we first reached this region. Everywhere I retraced my steps would be memories of Isotta and our walking these trails. When I try now to recall her face, I see her hands full of flowers …
I do not know whether she waited for my return at the church with the strange square of words that went in every direction. I resolved never to turn back. It had been a mistake, I told myself, to think that linking my life with another’s would work. Even the best of people – and Isotta was the best I had known, I realised, as I grew calmer and thought back over my flight – even the best had better aims in mind than to be my companion. What worthless contribution could I have made? How vain and misguided had I been, to expect any central place in her plans?
So: I set my jaw, shut my heart and went north, a little way.
When I woke the next dawn, what I had done came crashing upon me as if the sky were a roof fallen from too much rain, and I would have to bear its weight. I should have told her my feelings! I should have given her the chance to reassure me, to show indeed whether she wanted me with her or saw some other story for her life to come.
With great sickness in my gut, I turned again toward that last French village where the pilgrims had stopped. I travelled faster than ever I had before, rehearsing in my head the things I would explain to her.
But of course, Isotta was no longer there. Hadn’t she warned me?
I grew hard and angry. Wasn’t this proof that I mattered not to her, as I had seen? All I had achieved was wasting another day. So I turned and went north again; I pushed on with my first goal, that notion of finding my father’s people just as Isotta was seeking hers.
It was harder to find my way alone, and more dangerous. But the flush of shame that came over me remembering her words – that babies had always been part of the future she imagined – kept me firm. I would not attach myself where I was not needed; where I was, in fact, an obstacle. Nevertheless, I felt as if a part of myself had been cut away, and the soul bled out of me.
I passed through valleys and over strange craggy hills; I wended my way around forest edges. A town called Brive-the-Brave was good to me, but the uplands beyond it were full of bogland and rivers, and at times I thought I was lost, unable to see anything in the morning mists.
It was nearing the dark part of the year again when finally I approached my long-desired town of Nevers. At last I set eyes again on the great river Loire! There were islands between me and the town. Boats bobbed along the waters, just as they had in Roanne further south when I was there with Isotta. But I would push that time out of my mind, having left it far behind and resumed my plan. Fret though I sometimes did, it was too late and distant to regret having gone my own way.
