The Dream Maker (31 page)

That first evening at the castle we dined in near silence. The last leg of the journey had been long. This place—so rich in royal intimacy, these rooms which had witnessed death and love, defeat and renewal—made us uneasy. In spite of the small dimensions of the room and the tapestries that stifled noise, we felt strangely intimidated, as if we were dining beneath high, echoing vaults.

After supper, we wished each other good night and withdrew to our separate chambers. I had Marc bring up some water and I spent a long time washing, to remove from my skin the dust of the road and the mingled odors of sweat and horse. I could hear footsteps coming and going across the hall, which told me that Agnès was doing the same. Then the servants went down to their floor. Agnès's lady-in-waiting let out a laugh in the stairway, a probable sign that Marc had not waited to be all the way downstairs to intercept her.

At last the castle fell silent.

Fatigue came, and with it, sleep. However, once I had stretched out on my bed, I stroked the linen sheet pensively, and could not bring myself to snuff out the candle. I revisited all the details of the voyage, and Agnès's expressions. I wondered how I should interpret this voyage, the trust she was showing me by accommodating me so near. Her position as the king's mistress, the attraction I felt to her, the idea that my feeling might be shared, and the fear of breaking the spell if I were to go further all formed in my mind a tight knot of contradictory and disturbing thoughts that Agnès alone could have unraveled.

Which she did, somewhat later during the night, by coming into my room.

 

*

 

Ten years have passed since that night, seven without her. I have never spoken of that moment with anyone. And yet everything is etched on my mind with perfect clarity. I remember every gesture, every word we exchanged. To bring it all back to life now in writing is causing me a curious mixture of extreme delight and pain. It is a bit like reliving those moments with her but also, and forever, in her absence.

I was hardly surprised when she opened the door. Without knowing it, I was waiting for her. And everything happened in a similar fashion, through an unspoken agreement, barely conscious but total. She was holding a copper candlestick. Her face was golden in the light, and her forehead seemed bigger than ever. She had let her blonde hair loose and I was surprised to see it fell almost to her shoulders. She did not say a word on entering, but smiled and came over to my bed. She sat on the edge and put the candle down on the night table. Matching her boldness with my own, I lifted the sheets and she slipped in beside me. Her body suddenly seemed very small, like that of a child, perhaps because she curled up against my shoulder. Her feet were icy and she was shivering.

We stayed like that for a long time. Everything was silent outside. We could hear a shutter banging in the wind on the floor above. I felt as if I had rescued a hunted doe who was slowly recovering her calm after a long pursuit in which her life had been at stake. She seemed so vulnerable, so fragile that, despite her sweetness, the exquisite smell of her hair, the feminine lightness with which her body embraced mine, I felt my desire ebbing. The urge to protect her was too great. It crushed any urge to possess her, as if taking anything from her, let alone her entire self, would have been an unbearable betrayal.

Finally she sat up, took hold of a pillow for support, and, holding herself at a slight remove, she looked at me.

“I immediately knew I could trust you,” she said.

Her eyes were open wide, staring at me and studying my face for the slightest expression. I smiled. She remained grave.

“And why?” I asked. “I am a man, after all. A man like any other.”

She laughed suddenly, with a clear laugh that showed me her flawless white teeth. Then she regained her composure and with a tender gesture arranged a lock of hair falling on my brow.

“No, no. You're not a man, in any case not a man like any other.”

I did not know whether I should take offense at this remark. Was she mistaken as to the respect I showed her? Perhaps she believed I was incapable of desiring her. I had no time to act offended or prepare any denials: she suddenly held out her arms and, with a smile, looked straight ahead into the darkness of the room.

“I had heard about the Argentine. That is a very serious title, and I imagined that the man with such a title would be an austere gentleman. And then . . . I saw you.”

She turned back to me and began to laugh again.

“Instead of an austere gentleman, I found an angel. A stray angel. That is truly what you are: a creature who has fallen from the moon, on whom fate has played a curious trick by placing him in high office. And you make a great effort to make others believe you are where you should be.”

“Is that how you see me?”

“Am I mistaken?”

I protested as a matter of form, arguing that I had worked hard to obtain what I had acquired, trying to convince her that I was in earnest. But I did not bother to argue for long; she had seen me as I was. No one had grasped more quickly or more deeply the discrepancy between my official role and the world of my desires and my dreams.

“I'm afraid,” she cried out all of a sudden. “Do you know how afraid I am?”

She leaned toward me, put her arm around my neck and placed her head on my shoulder.

“It is good to be able to tell someone. I have no one, do you understand? No one I can trust.”

“The king?” I ventured.

She sat up abruptly.

“Even less than anyone else!”

“Do you not love him?”

This was not exactly our subject, but the urge to ask the question was stronger than anything. Agnès shrugged.

“How could I?”

Terrible, unknown images blurred her gaze for a moment. Then she regained her composure and went on in a more confident voice.

“I have to fight everyone all the time. That's the way it is. You cannot imagine how good it is for me to be able to lower my guard for a moment and speak freely. With an angel.”

She gave me a mischievous look and we began to laugh. I felt incredibly at ease with her, as if I were in the presence of a sister. I told myself that she, too, was a stray angel, and no doubt we came from the same planet, somewhere in the ether.

Then Agnès began to explain her plans. Everything was perfectly coherent and she had thought it through. Behind the young courtier who gave the impression she could not see the hostility she provoked, behind the mistress who showed admiration and tenderness for the king, behind the fragile creature from the Anjou clan, there hid a lucid, determined woman who had a powerful instinct for survival and was exceptionally intelligent when it came to inventing the means to defend her interests.

“Now that I have come this far,” she said, “I have no choice. I have to remain the mistress of the king and exert undivided authority over him. The women he had before me were not on the same level. In their time, the king was timid and his liaisons were, if not secret, at least discreet. Now he has changed. He has placed me too high, and I am too visible to survive any repudiation. If he puts another in my place, my enemies will find me without protection and they will kill me.”

“But why would he put another woman in your place?” I said to reassure her.

That was indeed my conviction: the joy of having such a woman as one's mistress must surely fulfill a man. At the same time, the thought that anyone but I had that good fortune filled my heart with bitterness.

“I do not trust him at all in that regard,” she said curtly. “And I know that Charles of Anjou, who is constantly seeking to ingratiate himself with the king, will not fail to introduce other women in order to supplant me.”

“It would be an error of judgment on his part. Are you not, in a way, a member of his house?”

“Less and less. The king's passion for me makes me independent. I have my own means, my own land now, so I am no longer subjected to the house of Anjou. They did what they wanted with me long ago. That is over now.”

This evocation of her troubles seemed to distress her, and her tenderness faded. Then she sat up and said, “I'm hungry. Come with me to the dining room.”

“Do you think they've left anything?”

“My lady-in-waiting knows that I get up every night to eat something, and she always leaves me a bowl of fruit or some cakes.”

She stood up and I followed. We were in our nightshirts, and walked cautiously through the dark rooms like children. Agnès held me by the hand. We opened the door to the small dining room. And indeed, on a sideboard, a pewter bowl was waiting, full of Pippin apples. She bit into one and I did likewise. We pulled up two chairs so that we could sit side by side. With one elbow on the table, Agnès pivoted and rested her legs on my thighs.

“I am pregnant,” she said distractedly, reaching for another apple.

“That's a fine thing. It should attach you even more to the king.”

She shrugged.

“On the contrary. He has the queen to give him children. My condition will only make things awkward, and I must hide it from him as long as possible. The only consequence at the moment is that I must take action sooner than ever.”

“Take action?”

She tossed the apple core onto the table and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. With her hair down and her throat uncovered, sitting sideways with her elbows on the rough table, she looked like a tavern wench, a raw and sensual little savage. Her courtly restraint had totally vanished. Far from being horrified by this transformation, I was delighted. It made me aware that I was in the presence of the real Agnès, the one she hid from the rest of the world. She confided in me as she would to herself. And although I, too, was accustomed to dissimulation and solitude, I had the strangest certainty that I could tell her everything and reveal to her the truth of my soul.

“Yes, take action. Everything is ready, my Cœur.”

She laughed suddenly and took my face in her palms.

“Well, that is how I shall call you. I do not like Jacques. You will be ‘my Cœur.'”

She came closer and kissed me on the lips. A chaste kiss.

“You were saying, you must take action?”

She stood up and went to open the door to a cupboard in the wall behind us. She took out a jug of water and two glasses.

“It is time to restrain the influence of the Anjou clan,” she said, like a judge peremptorily handing down a sentence.

Then she added, “And besides, Pierre de Brézé agrees with me on this matter.”

I knew she was on good terms with the seneschal. I felt a sudden sting of intense jealousy. Did she share the same intimacy with him? While her intimacy with the king only caused me sadness, a relationship with Brézé would have filled me with rage. She smiled and, guessing my thoughts, she sat down again next to me and stroked my hand.

“No, my Cœur! Pierre is a friend but I have not recognized him as a brother, like you. That's because there is nothing of the stray angel in him. He is a fine, upstanding man, but he is a man all the same, no more. He can be brutal, as he has proved in the past. Our friendship is sincere, but it is his fervor as a soldier I must restrain. That does not prevent us from being in agreement. My own interests and Brézé's regarding the well-being of the king and of the realm are in accord. Charles has defeated the English, and subjected the princes. One final obstacle remains for him to be completely free, and a great king: he must remove the Anjou clan who are reigning in his place.”

“But Brézé owes everything to the Angevins.”

“He shows more loyalty to the king than to anyone. His opinion is that the House of Anjou has become dangerously powerful. They are weaving their web, and when they remove their veils it will be too late.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“I am leaving it up to Pierre to choose the time and the manner. It is he who a few years ago rid the king of that dreadful La Trémoille. He is clever at this sort of brilliant maneuvering, and the king fears him.”

“And when will he lead the offensive?”

“He's waiting for the right moment, and it will come soon. In the meantime, each of us must encourage the king's mistrust of the Anjou family. Our best ally is poor René. The more he displays his wealth and struts about, the more he annoys Charles and gives him reason to fear him.”

I was fairly convinced by Agnès's arguments, and knew myself that the influence of the princes, even when limited to one family, must be curbed at any cost. Nothing shocked me about Agnès and Brézé's change of heart. The Anjou clan had used them unscrupulously and would not hesitate to do away with them if need be. They acted only to protect themselves. But one thing did bother me, with regard to the trust I wanted to show Agnès: how could she betray Isabelle of Lorraine so callously, a woman to whom she owed everything? So I asked her quite openly. She reacted vigorously, like an animal being forced.

“When the men of that family introduced me to the king,” she spat, “when they sold me to him like an animal, and I was still innocent, Isabelle tried to defend me. There were terrible scenes between her and her brother-in-law. But her husband was a weak man, and he disowned her, forcing her to yield. We wept all that night. She held me to her and made me swear to obtain my revenge some day. At the time I did not know what she meant, but I swore. And now, the time has come. Not only am I
not
betraying her but, in fact, I am obeying her!”

On these words she stood up and took me by the hand. We went back to my room. Once again she nestled close to me.

“When did they introduce you to the king?”

“Over two years ago. I was nineteen when I saw Charles for the first time, in Toulouse. I was very different then. I have learned a great deal in two years.”

A silence fell, and I sensed she was getting drowsy. But before she fell asleep I wanted to ask her one more question.