Read Catherine: One Love is Enough (Catherine Series Book 1) Online
Authors: Juliette Benzoni
He shortened his horse’s step to fit in with the mule’s, and tried to pursue the conversation that had got off to such a good start. But Catherine seemed suddenly to have been struck dumb. She replied in monosyllables to all his overtures, keeping her eyes downcast and her face expressionless. Jacques de Roussay soon grew resigned to travelling in silence, and had to content himself with admiring her ravishing profile, framed by its sumptuous fur hood.
Reassured by his armed escort, Mathieu Gautherin fell quietly asleep in the saddle, rocked by his mule’s rhythmic gait. The grooms and soldiers followed behind. Catherine, locked in her silence and her thoughts, was trying to remember Arnaud’s glowing face when he had spoken to her of his love. It had all been so sudden. She felt as giddy as if she had been drinking too much rough wine. She would need the domestic tranquillity of her home and the calm, familiar presence of her mother and sister and Sara before she could get back to normal. Especially Sara. She always understood everything, and could read what was going on in Catherine’s mind as clearly as if it were an open book. She could always explain everything too, because there wasn’t a woman alive who understood men as well as she did. A violent desire to see her again took hold of Catherine. She would have liked to spur on her mule and ride off ahead of the others, without stopping till she saw the walls of Dijon.
But in front of them the Flanders road stretched on interminably.
Messire Garin
Early Mass was just ending in the church of Notre-Dame in Dijon. Outside, the hot July sun was already flashing off the many spires of the ducal city. But inside it was so dark that it was hard to see. Dark at the best of times, the large Gothic church was made darker still that day by heavy black draperies hung across all the arches. There were black draperies hung in all the churches and in front of many of the private houses at that time, because for the past week Burgundy had been mourning its Duchess. On 8 July Michelle de France had died suddenly in her palace in Ghent – so suddenly that there was talk of poisoning, though veiled talk to be sure.
People whispered that the young Duchess had been doing everything in her power to bring about a settlement between her husband and the Dauphin Charles, and that the Queen Isabeau, her terrible mother, had not approved of the idea of this reconciliation between her son-in-law and a son she loathed. It was she who had introduced into her daughter’s retinue the Dame de Viesville – the lady everyone secretly accused of having brought about Michelle’s untimely departure from this life. The Duke Philippe had departed hurriedly for Ghent, leaving Dijon in the care of his mother, the Dowager Duchess Marguerite of Bavaria, Isabeau’s cousin – and enemy.
Catherine thought about all this as she knelt beside Loyse and waited for her to finish saying her usual interminable prayers. Since she had been living in Dijon, Loyse had been seized by a profound devotion to Notre-Dame’s strange black statue of the Virgin. It was carved of dark wood, was so old that no-one seemed to know how long it had been there, and was known variously as Our Lady of Succour or Our Lady of Good Hope. Loyse would spend long hours knelt in the chapel’s south transept, contemplating this stiff little figure with its long, sad Roman Virgin’s face and rigid little Child Jesus, barely visible among the scintillating gold ornaments and the brilliance of a forest of tapers. Catherine also venerated the ancient Madonna, but she found it hard to get used to these long periods of kneeling. It was only to please Loyse, and to avoid incurring acrimonious recriminations herself, that she complied.
Loyse was dreadfully altered since the flight from Paris. In this withered spinster, who seemed much older than her 26 years, Catherine had difficulty in recognising the gentle young girl of the Pont-au-Change, the one whom their father had used to refer to tenderly as ‘my little nun’. The first days after they had rescued her from Caboche had been the worst. Loyse had avoided her family, huddling in a corner and refusing to let anyone touch her. She had not even answered when she was spoken to. She had torn the clothes they dressed her in and thrown handfuls of ashes into the food she was given; when, that is, she had not been living off brackish water and mildewed bread. Under her wretched dresses she had worn a horsehair belt studded with little steel points, which had lacerated her tender skin.
Jacquette Legoix had been in despair, envisaging the day when Loyse, in her fanatical desire to expiate her sin, would demand to be walled up forever, like Agnès du Rocher of the St Opportune Recluse to whom she had so frequently taken bread and milk in the old days. The poor woman had spent night after night praying and weeping. When she had slept badly, her slumber had been disturbed by frightful dreams. They were always the same ones. She saw her daughter knelt in a coarse woollen dress, surrounded by bricklayers who were gradually building a wall around her – a wall that was to separate her forever from the rest of humanity, burying her alive in the midst of her fellow men. There she would be no more than a suffering body at the bottom of a filthy hole, exposed to cold, frost and the suffocating summer heat, in a cell barely large enough to allow her to lie full length and ventilated by no more than a narrow slit.
Catherine remembered the heartbroken cries her mother used to give in the middle of the night. She would wake with a start, and even the neighbours would cross themselves in their beds. But Loyse would listen without so much as a muscle moving in her expressionless face. The girl seemed to have lost her soul. She had behaved like a social leper. Her self-loathing had reached such a pitch that she had not dared go to a church to confess and be absolved of that sin of the flesh that she dragged about with her like a ball and chain. This state of affairs had gone on for about a year …
Then, one autumn day in 1414, a peddler had passed through the town. He had come from the north, and had stopped off for a while at Mathieu’s to sell the women some needles. He had sat himself down for a bit of a rest, and to pass the time had began to describe how Caboche had taken refuge with some of his men in Bapaume. Unfortunately for them, the town had fallen into the hands of the Armagnacs shortly afterwards, and Simon the Skinner and his lieutenants had been strung up by the enemy without more ado.
The peddler would never understand why, at the end of his tale, the tall, pale, blonde girl who had been listening to it so intently had burst out laughing – such a laugh as he hoped never to hear again from mortal lips.
From that day on Loyse had changed. She had agreed to dress properly, though still all in black like a widow; and though she still wore her spiked belt, there had been no more talk of becoming a recluse. The following Friday she had fasted all day, and then had gone alone to Notre-Dame, where she had prayed for a long time to the Black Madonna before finding a priest and asking him to hear her confession. After that she had taken up a normal life again – if a life that was one long series of penances and mortifications could be called normal.
‘She will go into a nunnery one of these days,’ Sara had said, nodding wisely. ‘She will return to her old ambition.’
But she had been wrong. Loyse no longer wished to enter a convent, because she had lost the virginity she had wanted to offer the Lord. She was once again within the fold of the Church, but she still thought herself unworthy to live among women who were completely dedicated to God. Unfortunately, Loyse had extended her self-loathing over the rest of humanity, and in the neighbourhood where they lived, her sour disposition was feared as much as her virtue and exemplary piety were admired.
While Loyse finished her prayers, Catherine yawned slightly and gazed round the church. Her abstracted glance fell upon a long, masculine form stood not far from her in the same pew. The man was praying with a touch of arrogance, holding himself erect, his arms folded across his chest. With his head thrown back and his eyes fixed on the sparkling altar, he gave the impression of speaking to God as an equal. He seemed far from humble. In fact there was even something a bit challenging about his bearing. Catherine was surprised to see him there, especially at so early an hour on a weekday morning. Messire Garin de Brazey, Lord Treasurer of Burgundy, Keeper of the Ducal Crown Jewels, and also, into the bargain, Squire to Monseigneur Philippe – a purely honorary title, but one that added great lustre to this prominent bourgeois. One of the richest men in Dijon, he generally went to Mass only on Sundays and feast days, and then always with a certain pomp and splendour.
Catherine knew him by sight through having passed him in the street several times, and having met him in her uncle’s shop when he came to buy materials there. He was a man of about forty, tall and thin, but solidly built. His face, with features as clear-cut as those on an antique coin, would have been handsome but for the unattractively sardonic grimace that lifted the corners of his thin lips. His mouth was like a sabre slash across his smooth, close-shaven face. His large black hood, part of which passed under his chin, was fastened with a beautiful gold brooch in the shape of St George. It not only hid his hair but also cast a dark shadow across his pale face. It found a sinister echo in the black kerchief that hid Messire Garin’s left eye. This eye had not seen long service. The Keeper of the Jewels had lost it at the age of 16, at the battle of Nicopolis, during the foolhardy crusade against the Turks on which he had accompanied Jean-sans-Peur, then the Comte de Nevers. The young squire had been captured along with his lord, and his loyalty at that hour of great danger had led to his subsequent wealth and ennoblement.
Garin de Brazey was an enigma as far as the women of Dijon were concerned. An apparently confirmed bachelor, he ignored them all, despite their many and brazen advances. Rich, not unattractive, in good standing at Court and generally considered as something of a wit, he would have been received with open arms by any bourgeois family or member of the lesser nobility. But he appeared not to notice the smiles showered upon him and continued to live alone in his magnificent mansion in the town, surrounded by his servants and valuable collections of
objets d’art
.
When, at last, Loyse had had enough, Catherine hurried after her, but she could not help noticing that the Treasurer’s single eye was fixed upon her. As they left the chapel, the two young women were swallowed up in the darkness of the church, which deepened the farther they went from the halo of light surrounding the Black Madonna. They walked behind each other, picking their way along cautiously, because in those days the floor, which was constantly being dug up for burial purposes, was dangerously uneven, and there were holes and cracks in it where people often fell or sprained an ankle.
This was precisely what happened to Catherine as she followed behind Loyse. She was just reaching out toward the holy water stoup when she tripped over a broken flagstone and fell flat on the ground with a cry of pain.
‘How clumsy you are!’ Loyse complained. ‘Can’t you look where you’re going?’
‘I can’t see anyway, it’s too dark,’ Catherine protested. She tried to get up but gave up with a slight moan. ‘I can’t get up, I must have twisted my foot. Help me.’
‘Allow me to assist you, demoiselle,’ said a grave voice that seemed to come from a long way above the girl’s head. Catherine saw a tall silhouette bend toward her. A hot, dry hand took hold of hers to pull her up to her feet, and at the same time a strong arm encircled her waist and supported her securely.
‘Lean on me as much as you want. There are some servants of mine waiting outside who will take you back to your home.’
Loyse had run on ahead and opened the great church door, letting in a dazzling ray of golden light, which was all the sunshine that filtered under the massive overhanging porch outside. Catherine could now see the face of the man who had helped her out: it was Garin de Brazey.
‘Oh messire,’ she said with some embarrassment, ‘there is no need to go to so much trouble … My foot feels a bit better already. In a few minutes I am sure I shall be able to walk perfectly well.’
‘But I thought I heard you say you had twisted it?’
‘It hurt so much at first I thought I had, but now the pain seems to be going. It really is much better. Thank you very much, messire …’
In the porch she disengaged herself from the arm that still supported her, and blushingly dropped Garin a pretty, if slightly uncertain, curtsey.
‘I beg your pardon, messire, for having interrupted your prayers,’ she said.
Something resembling a smile crossed de Brazey’s face. In the full light of day, the black bandage over his eye took on a rather melancholy air. He was dressed in black from head to foot. Altogether he was a slightly intimidating spectacle.
‘You did not disturb anything,’ he replied briefly. ‘However, a look of confusion sits charmingly on such a pretty face.’
It was not a compliment so much as a calm and sincere statement of fact. The Keeper of the Crown Jewels bowed slightly and went across to the far corner of the square, where a groom in purple and silver livery stood holding a black, spirited-looking horse. Catherine saw him vault lightly into the saddle and ride off in the direction of the Rue des Forges.
‘If you have finished simpering at strangers,’ Loyse said sarcastically, ‘perhaps we could set off home. You know Maman is waiting for us, and Uncle Mathieu needs you to help him with the accounts.’
Catherine followed her sister without a word. She craned her neck as she went out of the church to get a better view of the quaint iron figure perched high above its façade, with its elaborate and skilfully-sculpted gargoyles. His function was to strike the hours on a large bronze bell. This iron figure, known to everybody as Jacquemart, had been taken many years earlier by Duke Philippe the Bold, grandfather of the present Duke, from the steeple of the church at Cambrai, to punish the inhabitants of that town for an attempted revolt. Since then Jacquemart had become a familiar landmark in Dijon, regarded as one of the town’s most important inhabitants. Catherine never failed to give him a friendly glance up there in his little tower.
‘Are you coming or not?’ said Loyse impatiently.
‘I’m coming. I’m just behind you.’
It was not very far from the church to the house in the Rue de Griffon where Mathieu Gautherin had his home and shop. The two young women, still walking one behind the other, were now skirting the precincts of the ducal palace. As soon as she caught sight of the palace chapel spire, encircled halfway up by a crown of gold fleur-de-lys, Loyse crossed herself piously. Catherine did likewise, and then the two of them turned down into the narrow, winding Rue de la Verrerie. Loyse was striding along at a smart pace, and seemed in a worse humour than usual. Evidently the chance meeting with the Sire de Brazey had put her in a bad mood. With the sole exception of Uncle Mathieu, who did not care to inquire too deeply into what her feelings toward him might be, Loyse hated and despised men, both singly and
en masse
.