Catherine: One Love is Enough (Catherine Series Book 1) (12 page)

‘Now, my lads,’ cried the beggar king, ‘forward!’

Barnaby pulled Catherine into the porch of a baker’s shop. The baker himself must have been at the execution, because his shutters were all down. Mâchefer’s two dozen picked men rushed at the door. In a flash Mère Caboche was swept under the impetus of the attack into the far depths of her shop, while Sara, knocked off balance herself, rolled out into the alley, where Barnaby helped her to her feet. She was laughing heartily.

‘You aren’t hurt?’ Barnaby asked.

‘No. Except that the blow Mâchefer intended for Mère Caboche missed its target and hit me in the eye. I shall have a fine black eye tomorrow. He has a blow like a battering-ram, that one. I thought he would knock my head off!’

Sara’s left eye was already turning a ripe and alarming shade of blue, but it did not seem to affect her good humour. Meanwhile the beggars had overrun the Caboche household, and the victim’s screams were barely audible in the uproar. It seemed likely that the invaders had not contented themselves with merely hunting for Loyse.

A few minutes later Mâchefer reappeared carrying a young woman dressed only in a white chemise, her blonde hair flowing over her shoulders.

‘Is this what you were looking for?’ he asked.

‘Loyse! Loyse!’ Catherine cried, seizing the prisoner’s limp hand. ‘Heavens! She is dead!’ A flood of tears poured down her face.

Barnaby started to laugh. ‘No, she is alive, little one. Just unconscious. But we must hurry. We can bring her round when we get to the warehouse.’

The girl remained quite inert, eyes closed and nostrils pinched. She was deathly pale, with great violet shadows round her eyes. Her breathing was almost imperceptible.

Sara frowned. ‘You had better run then. She is too pale … I don’t like it.’

Mâchefer needed no urging. He started off, running through the city streets, leaving his men to loot the tripe-seller’s house as they pleased. The three others raced after him. It was a headlong journey, but Catherine, who during her stay in Barnaby’s cellar had dreamed so long of running about the streets, enjoyed it immensely. Besides, Loyse had been rescued, and they were all going away on a boat to see new places and meet new people.

A great new adventure seemed to beckon. Already some of the scars of those recent tragedies seemed to be fading a little. Her flying feet took her rapidly past houses and crossroads, each with their fountain and votive cross. They crossed the Seine with one bound. Mâchefer, despite the slight but noticeable weight of Loyse, seemed to fly across it, and the other three had some difficulty keeping up. At last they reached the banks of yellow sand kindled by the sun. The doors of the watermen’s warehouse closed behind them and they were safely hidden in the warm darkness within. Jacquette, who had been keeping watch for them, fell sobbing on Loyse, who was still unconscious. But Sara pushed her roughly aside.

‘She needs care, not tears. Leave this to me …’

Catherine, quite winded but full of a deep contentment, flopped down on the sand to get her breath back.

An hour later, sat beside Barnaby in the prow of the barge, Catherine watched Paris unfold on either side. The tears that had flowed as she said farewell to Landry were still rolling down her cheeks. It had grieved her much more than she had expected. The girl realised for the first time just how large a place he had occupied in her life. As for Landry himself, he had been so moved that a great tear had fallen on to Catherine’s cheek as they had hugged each other for the first and last time. She had felt as if her throat were being squeezed. Then Landry had vowed: ‘One day I will come and see you. I promise. I want to be a soldier and I shall take service under Milord of Burgundy. We shall meet again, I know we shall.’

He had smiled and tried to brazen it out, but had his heart had not been in it. The corners of his mouth, which he had struggled so valiantly to turn upwards, had kept drooping again. At this point Barnaby had decided to cut short the farewells and hauled Catherine aboard, seizing her under both arms. He had carried her along like a parcel, as she wept copiously and called out repeated ‘Au revoirs’, interrupted by bursts of sobbing.

The sailors started pushing on the long poles that propelled them over the slimy riverbed, and the barge slowly drew away from the bank, gliding over the yellow water swollen with sand and alluvial mud. Taxed to the uttermost by the effort of poling the barge upstream, the crew kept close by the riverbanks instead of heading out into the middle of the river, where the current was strongest.

Another shadow hung over Catherine. This was Loyse’s strange behaviour. On first recovering consciousness the girl had stared at the known and unknown faces leaning over her. She had seen her mother in tears, her sister smiling at her. But instead of surrendering herself to the joy of finding them again and throwing her arms round her loved ones, she had shaken herself free of Jacquette’s embrace and hidden herself in a corner of the warehouse among the barrels, bales of hides, pottery, piles of wood and grain.

‘Don’t touch me!’ she had cried. It had been a cry so fierce that it had cut her sister to the quick. Jacquette had held out her arms in despair.

‘My darling, my Loyse! It’s I, your mother… Don’t you recognise your mother anymore? Don’t you love me?’

Huddled into her corner, Loyse had looked like some small trapped animal. Her face had seemed to be swallowed up by her huge, pale, terrified eyes and her hands had been clenched so tightly over her breast that the knuckles had shown white. A sob had shaken her voice.

‘Don’t touch me. I am unclean and vile … I am but dirt and filth, and I can only disgust all virtuous women. I am no longer your daughter, Maman, but a slut, a fallen woman, the mistress of Caboche the Skinner! Go away, leave me alone!’

Jacquette had tried to get closer to her, but Loyse had shrunk back, flattened herself against the dusty ground as if her mother’s hand had been a red-hot iron.

Sara had intervened. She had leapt on Loyse like a cat and held her firm between her long, supple arms. There had been no time to lose.

‘I can touch you, child. It is a long time since I first made the acquaintance of this filth of which you speak. You are not to torment your poor mother like this. It has only touched your body. Your soul is still clean, since you did not want it to happen.’

‘No!’ Loyse had screamed. ‘I didn’t want it to happen, but sometimes I found pleasure in his caresses. When his hands stroked my body, and he took me, I used to cry out in ecstasy. I used to desire him too. I, the girl who lived only for God, and wanted only God …’

‘How can you be sure you want only God till you have known earthly love, my child?’ Barnaby had said, shrugging. ‘Now we have rescued you from all that, and we are going to take you away with us. The boat is about to leave. Unless you want us to take you back to Caboche?’

Loyse had made a horrified gesture.

‘No, oh no! I want only to die!’

‘To kill yourself is a graver sin in the eyes of God than to submit to a man … even if you did enjoy it sometimes!’

‘I want to destroy this shameful, vile body!’

‘All you are doing is making us miss the boat …’

And, quite calmly, Barnaby had clenched his fist and struck Loyse on the chin, not too hard, but just hard enough to knock her out temporarily. Jacquette’s indignant cry had left him unmoved.

‘We have lost too much time already. Dress her quickly and take her to the boat. Once under way we shall have all the time in the world to reason with her. But we must all keep a close watch on her to see she doesn’t try to jump overboard.’

His orders had been carried out to the letter. Now, more suitably attired, Loyse’s unconscious form was placed at the back of the barge in a sort of cabin that afforded shelter for the sailors. Sara and Jacquette lavished their attentions on her. The journey could now begin.

Seated on a coil of rope with his long legs stretched out before him, Barnaby contemplated Catherine. She sat looking straight ahead of her, her hands clasped round her skinny knees, tears rolling down her cheeks. She was greatly upset by what she had just heard. It reminded her of what she had seen in the Cour des Miracles. But Barnaby had used the word ‘love’. Surely that couldn’t be love, the thing she had seen in the Cour des Miracles, the thing Loyse spoke of with such loathing? Love was what she had felt the moment she had seen Michel. A sweet constriction of the heart, a desire to be gentle and tender and say nice things. But Loyse screamed as if she had undergone torture, and seemed quite deranged.

Barnaby put his arm round her shoulders.

‘Loyse will recover, little one. She is not the first person to undergo an experience like this since God created the world. But it will take her a long time, because she is narrowly pious and unbending in character. It will need a great deal of patience from everyone around her, but one day she will regain her appetite for life. As for Landry, I am sure you will see him again one day. He knows what he wants in life, and he is one of those who forge a path for themselves regardless of obstacles and difficulties. If he wants to be a soldier with the Burgundian army, he will be – believe me.’

Gratitude shone in the look Catherine turned on him. Barnaby’s affection for her was such that it instinctively understood and answered the questions she could not bring herself to ask. She suddenly felt safe and contented. Barnaby leant forward, pointing.

‘Look how beautiful Paris is. The largest and fairest city in the world. But Dijon is not too bad either, as you will see …’

The barge had passed under the Pont-aux-Moulins by now and was gliding toward the great arches of the next bridge along, the Pont-au-Change. They passed directly below the house where the Legoix family used to live, and Catherine cast a last look at the skylight through which Michel had tried to escape, and then turned her head away. A little farther upstream a forest of pointed poles showed above the water. These marked the foundations of the future Notre-Dame bridge. Three weeks earlier, in one of his rare periods of mental lucidity, the King himself had driven the first pole into place with a mallet, and his sons after him. Some faded wreaths of flowers still hung from that pole.

All about them the towers and steeples of Paris soared up into the sky. Bold, arrow-like church steeples stood out sharply against the lacier outlines of bell-towers, the great roof of the House of Pillars and the fine houses of noblemen whose gardens stretched down to the river. Opposite the quay where the gibbet and wheel stood empty of occupants, the square towers of Notre-Dame stood out against a sky of molten gold. Farther along came the St Pol harbour, where grain was unloaded from flat-bottomed boats; and after that the King’s Palace and gardens, and the slender turrets of the Hôtel owned by the Archbishop of Sens. On the other side came the islands, the Île-aux-Vaches and the Île-Notre-Dame, flat and green with pastureland fringed by silvery willows. Catherine’s gaze fell next on the stout walls of the Celestins monastery, separated by a narrow canal from the sandy little island called the Île Louviaux. This was the outer boundary of Paris, marked by the squat bulk of the Tour Barbeau. Grey and menacing under its pointed roof, the tower had been built in earlier times by Philip II, known as Auguste. A rampart connected the tower to the Bastille, and at night the great chain attached to it was fastened across the Seine … A sunny July day and tall green trees relieved the scene of some of its military grimness, however. Even the stones seemed soft and friendly. Barnaby began to recite softly:

‘She is crowned the Queen of Cities

‘Wellspring of religion and learning

‘Stood on the River Seine.

‘Vineyard, woods, lands and meadows,

‘All the goodly things of this mortal life

‘Has she more than other cities do.

‘All strangers now and evermore shall love her.

‘For loveliness and jollity There is no city to rival her

‘None can compare with Paris …’
[1]

‘How pretty!’ said Catherine, her drowsy head leant against Barnaby’s shoulder. Behind her the boatmen struck up a song, to which they poled along rhythmically. There was nothing to do but let oneself be carried along toward a new destiny, leaving behind old memories and old griefs. All Catherine wanted to take with her of her old life was the image of Michel de Montsalvy, graven forever on her heart, an image she knew time would never rub away.

The green banks of the Seine slipped steadily by. Catherine felt herself drifting off to sleep …

PART ONE

The Road From Flanders, 1422

3

The Procession Of

The Precious Blood

The Inn at the Sign of the Flowering Mulberry was one of the most popular and crowded in Bruges. It stood on the Wollestraat, or Wool Street, between the Grande Place and the Quai du Rosaire, and thus catered to a large clientele of cloth and wool merchants, and merchants of all sorts from many countries. Its prosperity was clearly visible in the tall, sculpted and crenellated gable, in the gleam of its leaded windows of bull’s-eye glass, in the tantalising aromas that escaped from its immense kitchen resplendent with copper, tin and pottery, in the fresh dresses and winged caps worn by the servants, and above all in the round belly of the happy proprietor Maître Gaspard Cornelis.

Catherine was accustomed to the luxury of the Flowering Mulberry from other, earlier journeys. Just now all her attention was fixed on the bustle in the street below. Since early morning the whole town had been parading there in its holiday best.

Half dressed, her hair flowing untidily down her back, the young girl leant out of her window as far as she could, comb in hand, deaf to the recriminations of Uncle Mathieu, who had been grumbling away in the next room since daybreak. The cloth merchant, having finished his business in the town, had originally intended to leave for Dijon at dawn, but Catherine, after much argument, had finally persuaded him to stay over till that evening so that she could take part in the famous Procession of the Precious Blood, which was the most important feast day in the town.

She had not really had too much difficulty in persuading her Uncle Mathieu. He had grumbled for hours, insisted that feast days were there simply to make good people throw away their hard-earned gold by the shovelful, reminded her that there was business in Burgundy that would brook no delay, but finally allowed himself to be convinced – as indeed he always did, finding it impossible to refuse his ravishing niece anything. The good man had gallantly admitted defeat by making his pretty conqueror a present of a delightful white lace headdress and some gold pins to fasten it with.

Tired of shouting through the wall, and of leaning out of his window scolding the valets who were loading his latest acquisitions onto the mules, Mathieu Gautherin entered his niece’s room. When he found her still only half dressed, and half out of the window into the bargain, he burst out:

‘What! Still not dressed? The procession will be leaving the basilica in a minute and you haven’t even done your hair!’

Catherine turned toward her uncle. Finding him stood there with folded arms, legs akimbo and cap askew above his fat, red, indignant face, she ran to fling her arms round his neck and cover his cheeks with little kisses – which was the sort of thing Maître Mathieu adored, though he would rather have lost an arm than admit it.

‘I won’t be a minute, Uncle. It’s just that everything looks so lovely this morning!’

‘Pah! One would think you had never seen a procession before.’

‘I have never seen this one. And I’ve never seen so many beautiful clothes before! There isn’t one woman who isn’t wearing velvet or satin or brocade. They all have lace caps and jewels, even the ones who were selling fish yesterday in the Watermarket.’

While she spoke, Catherine hurriedly finished dressing. She pulled on a long dress of pale blue taffeta, slashed in front to display a white skirt finely striped with silver, the same material that made the bodice under the dress’s deep-pointed neckline. Then, hastily, she plaited and pinned up her hair and adjusted the crescent-shaped lace coif, one end of which went below her chin, accentuating the oval shape of her face. She turned to her uncle:

‘How do I look?’

The question was unnecessary. Mathieu’s affectionate glance reflected Catherine’s beauty like a mirror. Sara’s prophecy had come true. At 21, the girl was as ravishing a creature as one could imagine. Her huge eyes, with their changing colour, lit up a face in which freckles had given way to a lovely velvety skin, pink and gold, and reminiscent of the petals of a tea rose. Her long golden hair was still the admiration of all. Catherine was not very tall, but her figure was perfect. Her proportions, grace and curves, at once full and delicate, would have set the most exacting painter reaching for his brush. But to the great despair of Mathieu Gautherin, of his sister Jacquette and of the rest of the family, Catherine, who had been besieged by a veritable army of suitors since the age of 16, still obstinately refused to marry. Her power over men seemed to amuse her, even to annoy her a little.

‘You are youth and springtime incarnate,’ said Mathieu sincerely. ‘It seems a pity that no nice young man can look forward to the day when it will all be his …’

‘I don’t see how I should gain by the arrangement. After a woman marries, her beauty fades and loses its sparkle.’

Mathieu raised up his arms. ‘What a way to talk! But my child –’

‘Uncle,’ Catherine interrupted gently, ‘we shall be late.’

They left the room together. In the inn courtyard, where servants laden with plates and poultry raced to and fro, their caps fluttering, Mathieu gave some last instructions to his grooms. He ordered them to keep an eye on his packs and not go off drinking in some tavern, threatening the most brutal punishments if they disobeyed. Then, ushered out by a low and respectful bow from Maître Cornelis, uncle and niece stepped into the street.

The crowd was biggest in the Place du Bourg, in front of the basilica of the Precious Blood.

As they drew nearer to the marketplace, Mathieu and his niece had difficulty making headway through the crowd. Oblivious of the buzz of interest her beauty excited in the onlookers, Catherine walked with her nose in the air, craning her head to see everything that was going on.

Around the square, the great houses, painted and decorated like pictures in a missal, were almost hidden under cascades of multicoloured silken adornments and costly tapestries woven of gold and silver thread, which had been brought out for the occasion from the sombre interiors to flash and gleam in the sunny street outside.

Garlands of flowers were looped between house and house, and the processional route was strewn with a thick carpet of fresh grass, red roses and white violets over the uneven paving stones. In front of the houses, huge dressers, draped with coloured brocades and velvets, displayed the family treasures. Goblets and vases, gold and silver plates, richly chased and studded with precious stones, testified to the wealth of each family and solicited the admiration of passers-by, heavily guarded meanwhile by muscular-looking valets.

Despite her efforts, Catherine was unable to catch so much as a glimpse of the old Roman basilica where the celebrated relic was kept. A mass of banners like flames of embroidered silk and multicoloured pennants fluttering on the lances of the Flemish nobility looked like a field of flowers swaying in the wind and effectively hid the church from sight. Through the church’s wide-open doors, however, great floods of music poured, psalms chanted by stout Flemish throats against a background of pealing organ music. She would have to make do with that!

After valiant efforts, uncle and niece managed to find a place for themselves in one of the best positions, at the corner of the marketplace. This corner faced the Ducal Palace and commanded a wide view over the vast marketplace and the central square of the town. Two women who were vigorously disputing over some old grievance of a coif lent but not returned had had to be separated by some archers, thus leaving a gap in the crowd of which Mathieu had quickly taken advantage. He had thereby got access to the cornerstone of the market building, which would allow them, when the time came, to climb a little above the sea of heads and see the Precious Blood carried past.

The remaining tenant of the stone, a tall figure dressed in saffron velvet and blessed with a doleful countenance, all vertical lines, was quite agreeable to moving up a little to make room for the young girl. He even twisted his lips into what might, at a pinch, be taken for a smile.

His clothes, edged with sables and lightly embroidered in silver thread, were of a certain elegance, but they gave off an unpleasant sweaty smell, and Catherine felt obliged to move a little so as to put some distance between herself and the obliging burgess. Mathieu was not so fastidious. He soon struck up an animated conversation with his neighbour. It seemed he was a furrier from Ghent who had come to stock up in Russian and Bulgarian furs at the German trading post in the Hanseatic League. His conversation lacked coherence, however. It seemed as though he found the young girl’s presence distracting. He stared at her continually.

Catherine found this stare disagreeable and decided to ignore it. There was plenty to look at in the colourful crowd that packed the market square. Representatives of all the 17 nations with trading posts in this great trading city rubbed shoulders there. Russians in grimy kaftans bordered with priceless furs brushed against Byzantines in garments stiff with embroidery. The richly but discreetly dressed English rubbed shoulders with the cut velvets and shimmering brocades worn by the merchants of Venice and Florence, whose opulence had a touch of nouveau riche about it and attracted thieves and pickpockets the way honey attracts flies. A huge yellow satin turban, round as a pumpkin and adorned in front with a white aigrette, towered above the heads of the crowd, announcing the presence of a Turk. Finally, toward the far end of the market square, a skinny boy in a tight red costume walked nonchalantly to and fro on a tightrope high above the heads of the crowd, a long balancing pole in his hands.

Catherine just had time to observe to herself that this boy was undoubtedly the best placed to see what was going on, when there was a blast of silver trumpets announcing the departure of the procession. At the same time, all the bells in Bruges began to ring out, and Catherine, laughing, clapped her hands to her ears to shut out the din of the belfry tower that seemed to be just above her head.

‘It gets more and more difficult to buy English wool at a reasonable price,’ Mathieu Gautherin was complaining. ‘The Florentines buy it all up at exorbitant rates and then come here to sell their cloth at ridiculous prices. I must admit that the cloth is good and their colours brilliant, but it’s not right! Especially since the alum from the Tolfa mine means that they can fix the dyes for next to nothing …’

‘Bah!’ his new friend agreed. ‘We furriers have problems like this too. These Novgorod people insist on being paid in Venetian ducats now. As if our good Flemish gold weren’t worth just as much …!’

‘Sssssh!’ said Catherine, bored by this mercantile talk. ‘Here comes the procession.’

The two men fell silent, and the bourgeois from Ghent made the most of the fact that the girl was absorbed in the approaching spectacle to edge a little closer to her. This meant he had to crane his head sideways to avoid having one eye put out by the lace horns of her high headdress. Catherine, her eyes like saucers, had forgotten about him. The procession was under way.

It was indeed a magnificent sight. The magistrates and all the city guilds were represented, each with their banner. Out of reverence for the relic, they all wore crowns of roses, violets and marjoram, which were in curious contrast to the well-nourished faces beneath.

A group of monks and a band of young girls in white dresses came immediately in front of the Precious Blood, the approach of which was the signal for all present to fall on their knees in the dust.

To Catherine it seemed as though the sun itself had fallen from heaven in all its dazzling brilliance. The great canopy that four deacons carried above the bishop’s head was of fretted gold. The prelate’s cope and sparkling mitre were of cloth of gold, embroidered with gold thread and diamonds. He came forward slowly, seated on the back of a white mule, its harness and bridle also of gold, and carried the reliquary between purple-gloved hands against his chest. On its cover, two kneeling angels were depicted, their enamelled wings glinting with pearls and sapphires. The crystal sides of the reliquary allowed the relic within to be seen. It was a small brownish-red phial containing the Precious Blood of Christ; a few drops that Joseph of Arimathea had collected on Golgotha long ago. Thierry, Count of Alsace and Flanders, to whom the Patriarch of Jerusalem had given it in 1149, had brought the sacred phial back from the Holy Land to Bruges.

Barely a minute after the girl had got up from her knees, she was obliged to drop down again, this time in a deep curtsey.

‘There is the Duchess,’ said someone in the crowd.

A group of young women in sumptuous dresses followed the bishop’s canopy. They all wore pale blue brocade encrusted with silver and pearls and tall pointed headdresses of silver cloth swathed in blue gauze. In their midst was a young blonde woman, slender and graceful, with a sad, gentle face. The long ermine-lined train of her gold-flowered, blue brocade dress swept the flowers and foliage beneath her feet. Her headdress, starred with sapphires, looked like an arrow of pure gold. Jewels sparkled on her bosom and covered her wrists, and her belt was formed of great nuggets of gold, almost barbaric in appearance because of the huge size of the gems with which it was studded.

It was the first time Catherine had seen the Duchess of Burgundy. She rarely came to Dijon but lived all the year round, with only her women for company, in the coldly sumptuous palace of the Counts of Flanders, in Ghent. Her husband could not bear the sight of her.

Michelle de France was the daughter of the poor mad king, Charles VI, and, more important still, sister of the Dauphin Charles, who was generally rumoured to have been responsible for the assassination of the late Duke of Burgundy, Jean-sans-Peur, three years earlier. Philippe of Burgundy had loved his father deeply and, the day he had learnt of his death, the love he had felt for his wife had been extinguished for no other reason than that she was his enemy’s sister. Since then Michelle had lived only for God and for good works. The people of Ghent adored her and resented their liege lord’s attitude toward so gentle and virtuous a woman. They considered it both unjust and excessive.