Queen Of Four Kingdoms, The (20 page)

And my poor dear Louis.
Yolande feels his overwhelming distress through his carefully worded letter and she bleeds for him. What is this illness that debilitates him so? Certainly their defeat will not help him recover. Her anxiety for him mingles with the crushing horror of their defeat. News arrives of many of their workers who have been killed or wounded, as well as a large number of the men of their household staff. René searches for Tiphane everywhere and finds her hiding in the laundry, crying her eyes out. Slowly she gasps out between sobs that her own dear brother has died. It is then that René begins to realize that war is not the glamorous exercise he has imagined from story books. The household continues with the daily routines like puppets, numb in mind and body.

Apart from the children and the servants, Yolande is alone at Angers. All the able-bodied men went to help with the war effort in some way, and most of the women remained at home awaiting their return, to rejoice in their survival, tend to the wounded or bury their dead. But there is no victory to ease the pain of loss; just the thought of the dead and wounded, and their own broken hearts.

None of Yolande’s contemporaries is with her to share her grief, and she must be strong in front of the young ones and her household. How she misses her dear friend Valentina at this moment. They could have cried out their grief together and comforted one another. But perhaps it is better she is not there to suffer for her eldest son, Charles d’Orléans. What will happen to him now? To be a prisoner of the English does not bode well.

Although the English losses are few, Henry V’s army is too depleted to retain any more garrisons than he has already established within France. He will keep what he can maintain and leave for England – which he does three weeks after the battle. No one has any doubt he will soon return to win further victories and claim more of their country.

The Armagnacs have lost their leaders – Charles d’Orléans is captured, and Alençon is dead. The king’s uncle, Jean of Berry, is too old and frail to be of much practical use. The Count d’Armagnac himself did not leave his own territory. He waited, as instructed, with his army at Troyes to cut off the English retreat, but they had no need of escape and he waited in vain. Neither the Duke of Burgundy, the king’s greatest soldier but also his most untrustworthy, nor his son Philippe took part in the battle – on the king’s orders, it was said, though Yolande hears whispers that the duke and his son withheld their support. True or not, Jean-sans-Peur must feel the loss of his two brothers keenly, and of so many of his men of Burgundy.

1415, the year of France’s catastrophic defeat at Agincourt, becomes the year of her greatest shame. Does the Queen of Sicily weep? Yes, and from the depths of her inner being, a shaking to her very core, a silent scream, alone. She steals away from her older children, who are doing the same in their own rooms, comforted at least by their nurses and attendants, who are crying as much as their charges. Everyone has lost someone – there is nobody unaffected. Nor can anyone tell how it will end. When will the English return with reinforcements and repeat their murderous victory all over France? Will Burgundy side with them? They have always leaned towards the English, not least because of their trade with Flanders. But without the support of mighty Burgundy, the French have little hope of repelling their enemies.

If only she could share the pain with her dear Louis, thinks Yolande. When will he come so they can comfort one another? They exchange daily messages by courier, but none mentions his return or his well-being; only more tragic news. The waiting is so hard – trying to keep a brave face for everyone around her, riding into the villages to console the bereaved, making false promises that imprisoned husbands and sons will return, just as she prays her Louis will. Yolande and the children spend long hours in her chapel on their knees, and none of them has ever prayed so earnestly.

A
t last there is news. A courier arrives from Louis. He is coming home. The household is alerted and everyone rushes about – Yolande, children, servants.
He is on his way home to Angers. Oh, for the relief of his comforting arms. Dearest Lord,
prays Yolande,
I beg you, bring him back so that I can mend his heart, his body and his soul
.

He arrives, painfully and slowly, as if carrying the weight of his country’s losses. He stands with his arms open and Yolande runs to him. As he holds her, she is instantly aware how thin he has become. Where is her towering giant? He seems shrunken in body as well as spirit, his face so aged, and in those eyes that speak volumes, she can see everything she fears most.

After he has embraced the children – almost silently – husband and wife sit by the fire and eat a little, Louis taking only a few mouthfuls of broth. With his face a mask to hide his grief, he gives her more details of the battle and its aftermath – at least eight thousand French killed and fewer than three hundred of the English; of the reaction of the king and the queen and the court; how it seems as if a great black cloud has descended on them, Paris and all the country.

While Yolande is sitting with Louis by the fire, rubbing her poor husband’s swollen feet, a royal messenger arrives in great haste. He has ridden in a fast relay from Paris with an urgent missive from the court.

The news is shocking and totally unexpected: the dauphin is dead. Louis and Yolande sit bewildered with disbelief. He has just told her how he left this promising prince in Paris a few days earlier – and in perfect health. The message says the dauphin died of dysentery so violent that poison is suspected.
And to whose benefit?
she asks herself. Why, surely who else but the Duke of Burgundy’s! For a number of years the dauphin has bravely, repeatedly and openly opposed his disloyal and traitorous father-in-law. Now he has paid for his defiance in the traditional way.

This news adds to the general misery in the household, not least for Charles, the dauphin’s brother. Christmas will bring no joy to the nursery at all.

It crosses Yolande’s mind to wonder whether Louis is somehow being poisoned too. She does not dare suggest it to him, but what is his illness, this slow, debilitating daily weakening and wasting of a strong and energetic man? She has the best doctors tending to him and nothing seems to help restore his strength.
Or am I jumping at ghosts and imagining assassins around every corner?
The land is full of disease, the army rife with dysentery; plague follows in the aftermath of battles – the rotting carcasses of animals are often left lying exposed for the crows, even if the dead soldiers are buried, and that is not always done immediately.

One would think that Agincourt had been sufficiently terrible to bring an end to the conflict between France’s warring factions; but no, both the Burgundians and the Armagnacs have managed to raise another fighting force from the countryside. The avowed intention of each is to rescue the king and his son, the second dauphin, from the ‘tyranny’ of the other side. The two groups have become so inflammatory that legislation pending before Agincourt has now been quickly passed, decreeing that should anyone be heard uttering the words ‘Armagnac’ or ‘Burgundian’, such a person is to have a hole bored through his tongue with a red-hot poker!

Louis shakes his head as he stretches out on his usual deep bank of cushions by the fire, Hector and Ajax by his side, his hand caressing whichever comes nearest.

‘I just don’t understand it. At the very time when the focus of both parties should be on preventing the English making further moves into French territory, the squabbling between the dukes’ partisans continues, although they never actually come to exchanging blows. What stupidity is this?’ he cries. And then answers himself: ‘Power, my darling, it is all just a power struggle, and as pointless as two fighting dogs snarling and circling one another with no intention of engaging.’

And what is Henry V doing while the Armagnacs and the Burgundians exercise in skirmishes of no particular significance? Louis’ spies are good, and they know the English king is preparing for a renewed campaign, which they never doubted he would.

By the end of January, after little more than a month at home, Louis cannot stand doing nothing any longer while daily receiving word of the troubles at court. He has decided, despite his illness, to return to Paris to take up his place at the King’s Council, where his astuteness is needed. Yolande cannot dissuade him, but nor can she bear for him to travel alone in his fragile condition and in winter. She must go with him and take care of him. She fears that in Louis’ present state of health, without her in Paris he will not survive. Yolande both needs and wants to be with him at the seat of power at this important time, not only to support him but because he is a part of history in the making, and she cannot resist observing, even taking part. And yet to leave the children in time of war is an agonizing decision. At least at Angers she knows Louis’ trusted people will defend them to the death, and theirs is an almost impregnable stronghold.

Despite her confidence in their Angevins taking excellent care of them, the parting is hard. Yolande waves from the carriage until their little faces, smiling and crying simultaneously, are out of sight. She knows Louis senses her fears, but he says nothing, just holds her hand. He has always been a man of few words, but his eyes speak for him.

S
trange as it may seem, in the many years of their marriage, Yolande and Louis have never actually lived together for any long period of time. He has either been on the Italian peninsula or with the king, but now, weak and ill as he is, the time has come for Yolande to learn how to do a man’s work – his work – and she remains by his side learning from him while he takes up the reins of government in Paris.

For the first time, these two strong personalities are together in the capital without the distraction of a family around them. Is there any friction? Yes, at times; they discuss and disagree on some political issues, but Yolande always bows to his position and experience, even when sure she is in the right. It is the way she has been brought up.

‘The council is full of fools,’ he announces angrily on his return most evenings. ‘I have always said it and I will say it again. They are donkeys, and just as stubborn and stupid.’

He recounts the absurdities of the day’s session while she calms him by rubbing his shoulders or massaging his feet by the fire – despite the comfort of their Parisian home, Louis has begun to feel the cold badly.

‘My bones ache, dearest, do light a fire,’ he will beg, and she changes into a light silk shift to survive the heat he needs in the room.

‘Tell me about the council; why are they fools?’ she asks, trying to quieten his agitation with questions.

‘They think the rise of our cousin of Burgundy to run the country is inevitable, perhaps even desirable! Idiots! If he has the run of the council of state, then he will make himself king quick enough. But they just do not see it coming!’ he fumes.

One evening, Louis arrives home from his council meeting ashen-faced, and tells her of a Burgundian plot that has been discovered.

‘The two of us, together with my uncle Jean of Berry, the excellent provost Tanneguy du Chastel, and possibly even the queen, were to have been abducted and put to death. The details were prised out of the captured perpetrators in the usual gruesome ways.’ But for her husband’s calm courage in the telling, Yolande thinks she might have fainted. ‘The plot was planned for Easter Sunday, a day when we would have been either leaving for Mass together or returning – and easy prey for our enemies to catch us all together.’

Yolande thanks God then, and even more so when they do get to Mass, that they were saved in time and most of the villains caught.

‘Despite his frail health and his age, Uncle Jean of Berry has taken command and appointed Armagnac as Constable of France. He is a wise choice, since he has brought with him to Paris his fierce Gascon mercenaries, six thousand of them – a considerable force for imposing peace,’ says Louis, almost with a chuckle.

As soon as the new Armagnac constable arrives in Paris, he wastes no time in executing the plotters, and imposing stringent security measures on the populace.

Two months later in mid June when Louis returns from his session at the council, husband and wife are beside the fire in their sitting room, sharing the warmth with the dogs, when Louis says sadly:

‘I have news that will grieve you, my darling. It has all been too much for our dear uncle Jean of Berry. He died some days ago at home in Bourges, mercifully in his sleep.’

Yolande drops her stitching.
Another death.
Uncle Jean is the last of his generation to go, and she loved him dearly.

‘This
is
sad news. Such a dear man, and kind. He told me how he looked after you when you were small and fatherless, and gave you advice on how to rule. We shall miss him.’ She ponders. ‘I am truly saddened by his loss. He was always so good to us, and wise.’

‘I am told that in his wisdom, he has designated our Prince Charles as his sole heir,’ Louis tells her, ‘and not the dauphin.’

‘How strange’ thinks Yolande, and remembering the insight of this dear man, perhaps he had an idea that Charles might need his fortune in the future.

For Charles, this inheritance will be an incredible bonus at a difficult time. Louis and Yolande have willingly borne the burden of financing him to date, but now the strain on their coffers will be eased, at least for a while. But the Duke of Berry’s death leaves another major gap in the ranks of the Armagnacs.

Later the same evening, Louis turns to Yolande:

‘I have been thinking – I believe the moment has come to promote our young royal charge into a useful role.’

A slight raising of her eyebrows at this, but she continues with her stitching, waiting to hear her husband’s plan.

‘We know that Charles has observed how his family members have vied for the right to govern when his father could not. He has watched his royal uncles, and realized how a position of power can be exploited in the granting of pensions, promotions, offices, liberties and immunities, not to mention all the tangible gains that can be meted out to favourites, worthy or not.