‘But I am in my chemise,’ Charles protested. ‘Surely there is time for me to dress!’
Tanneguy shook his head. ‘No, your grace. You must come at once. Better to be naked and free than clothed and in chains.’
To his credit, Charles did not argue but asked one pertinent question. ‘If the enemy is at the gate, Tanneguy, how do we leave?’
‘Over the roof,’ replied his mentor. ‘I have established a secret route whereby we can get all the way to the Bastille, where the captain is a loyal friend.’ By now he stood impatiently at the door, motioning the young prince forward. ‘Come, highness. At once! I will show you.’
In the doorway Charles looked back at his hounds and then at me. His expression was anguished. ‘Look after Clovis and Cloud for me, Mette. I will send for them when I can. Take them to your son Luc. Please!’
‘Please’ from a royal prince! His expression of desperate entreaty coloured my last impression of the dauphin – a tousled, frightened lad in a billowing chemise, his bare legs and feet showing white and vulnerable in the flickering lamplight. And then he was gone.
I stared around at the abandoned chattels of a princely life. A portable altar bearing a carved and gilded crucifix, a pile of leather-bound books clasped and hinged in gold and a jewel-encrusted harp with ivory keys but in the midst of all these lay Charles’ most treasured possessions – the two long-nosed, lean-flanked white hounds, which he had consigned so urgently to my care. They crouched like heraldic beasts, regarding me intently as if I might be their next meal.
It was then that I heard the sound of conflict grow nearer and louder than before, so loud that it had to be coming from the very entrance to the Dauphin’s House and I guessed the insurgents must have penetrated the main gate. My thoughts turned anxiously to Catherine and Alys. Were they safe? Surely Burgundy would not allow his men to harm defenceless girls? I felt sick with apprehension, knowing that the opposite was probably the truth.
Trying to appear calm so as not to alarm the hounds, I scanned the room for their leashes and spied them hanging from a hook beside the hearth, the jewelled thongs glinting in the glow of dying embers. Gingerly I crossed the chamber to collect them, half expecting the animals to make any movement an excuse to pounce. However, perhaps the sudden departure of their constant companion had subdued them for, to my surprise, they became quite docile, allowing me to fasten the leashes to their gem-studded collars. I even felt a moist lick of submission as I tugged them gently to their feet.
With the two white dogs trotting obediently beside me, their noses nudging my elbows, I set out to leave by the route I had come. When I reached the main stair the sound of irregular thumping indicated that the invaders had resorted to some sort of ram to batter down the main door. Strangely the hounds seemed unperturbed, but it scared me into a scurrying run. I had no wish to be found in the vicinity of the dauphin’s empty chamber when the assailants inevitably managed to break through. The guard had abandoned the door in the undercroft but, after a brief struggle, I managed to remove the heavy bar and drag it open. I could not secure it after me, but since the bird had already flown there seemed no need. Pulling the dogs through the narrow doorway, I allowed myself a brief smile, perceiving the irony of the Burgundians battering away at the front entrance while a door stood wide open at the back. To my shame I never gave a thought to little Marie of Anjou in her apartments above, by then probably terrified by all the banging and shouting. Nor, I realised later, had her husband, racing for his freedom along the battlements and rooftops of St Pol. He had expressed concern only for his dogs.
The cloister leading along the rear of the building stretched away empty and quiet, oddly striped along its length due to the pattern of shadows cast by the bright moonlight slicing between its pillared arches. I was still intensely aware of possible danger but, emboldened by the company of the hounds, I let them lead me off down the flagged passage, praying that at the other end I would find Catherine and my little Alys safe in the king’s hall.
We had taken no more than a dozen paces when the dogs suddenly stopped dead. In the moon’s glare I could see the hackles rising on their necks. A duet of deep, angry growls swelled from their throats as, a few yards ahead, two burly figures stepped out of a black shadow into the white moonlight. Their faces were hidden under dark hoods but moonbeams glinted wickedly off the broad blade that each held in his right hand. My blood froze and I let forth a strangled cry, my gaze fixed on these glimmering shafts of evil. There was no mistaking their purpose. They were meat cleavers, crafted to hack through flesh and bone at a stroke. So there was no mistaking their owners either. Butchers – members of the trade guild which only five years before had been almost entirely responsible for ‘The Terror’ which had stalked the streets of Paris.
‘Here’s a sight to stir a man’s cock,’ growled the larger of the two faceless hulks. ‘A nice meaty heifer, ready for the bull.’
In a busy alehouse or crowded city street such lewd talk might have merited a toss of the head and an angry riposte, but at night, in a deserted place, it was fraught with ugly intent. Beside him the other man let out a long, lecherous snigger, a chilling sound crackling with bigotry, brute force and lust.
Fear flooded through me like molten metal, raising the hairs on every inch of my skin. Sensing my distress the hounds tugged their leashes free and surged forward, their snarls rising ferociously in pitch as they flung themselves at the two men with fangs bared. For one foolish moment I thought they might be my saviours.
I could not have been more wrong. Far from being daunted by a hundredweight of howling hound, both men roared with glee, swayed back on their heels and swung their cleavers with practised ease. Growls turned to yowls and then whimpers, which diminished to an unholy silence as two hairy bodies crumpled to the ground and quivered into lifelessness. Blood flowed from deep wounds in their white pelts, gathering in gleaming black pools in the moonlight. Appalled by this barbaric slaughter, at the moment when I should have turned on my heels and run for my life, my feet remained rooted to the spot and all I could do was gasp in horror, like a landed codfish.
The larger man advanced and I tensed automatically, waiting for the slashing blow that would pitch me headlong into eternity like the dauphin’s poor hounds, but instead he fixed me with a sneering grin, grabbed a fold of my skirt and calmly used it to wipe the blood from his blade. I watched the stained cloth drop from his hand, a gaping cut showing where the razor-sharp edge had sliced through the fabric. Only then did I start to move, backing away like a hind at bay.
But escape was impossible. From being frozen with fear, my mind suddenly went into full spin and I saw with awful clarity the scene I had pictured every time I heard that another village in the countryside had been plundered and another wretched batch of peasant-women raped. Now the terror and violence had come to me, in all its hideous reality.
My attacker’s hood had slipped back revealing fleshy bearded jowls, a bulbous nose and a mane of greasy hair. ‘We were hoping for a royal ride, but I see all we have here is a common drab.’ His voice was rough and harsh, laced with sneering venom.
He reached out with his free hand and grabbed my coif, pulling it roughly from my head as he pushed his face right up to mine. His breath stank like a latrine ditch. I felt my gorge rise and jerked away, but by now I was backed up against the wall of the cloister. At last I summoned up enough presence of mind to scream and let out two full-blooded shrieks before there was a clang of steel as my tormentor’s cleaver fell to the ground and a grimy hand clamped over my mouth.
‘Shut up, bitch!’ the fiend snapped, cracking my head back against the hard stone so that stars exploded behind my eyes. ‘Here, Hugh, you hold her and I will go first.’
Rolling my eyes wildly to the side I saw the second butcher put down his cleaver and move in beside his mate. ‘Get her down, man,’ he said roughly. ‘More fun.’ With a grunt he aimed a kick and his booted foot thudded into my knee, which instantly buckled. I struggled desperately but in seconds I was sprawled on the flagstones, arms flailing, trying vainly to land a few telling blows anywhere I could. Their answer to that was to pull my heavy woollen skirts up over my head and pin me down by them. Two brawny knees crushed my shoulders into the pavement, pulling the thick fabric tight over my face so that I could scarcely breathe. My senses swam, my limbs went weak and all the fight went out of me.
I do not know how long my ordeal lasted. It might have been minutes or it could have been half an hour. In my state of blind suffocation I felt as if my body was divided in two; my head and shoulders remained pinioned and paralysed as I struggled to suck air through the thick fabric of my woollen skirt and block out what was happening to the rest of me.
It felt as if a battering ram was pulverising my private parts, thudding and grinding at me like a huge pestle in a disintegrating mortar. It didn’t seem possible that my body could take such an onslaught. At its height I thought my womb must burst up through my belly, forced from its roots by an impaling force that made my guts explode in agony. On and on it went, violent thrusts accompanied by brutish grunting and hoarse yells of triumph, as if I was some age-old enemy being gloriously conquered, instead of a poor lump of female flesh being bludgeoned and pounded into a wretched pulp.
When at last the ‘battle’ ended I was sightless and half-senseless and at the same time suffused with shame and pain. I felt the crushing weight leave me as the second of my self-satisfied ‘victors’ presumably stood up. ‘Better finish her off,’ I heard him say gruffly.
At first I hardly grasped his meaning, so grateful was I that the suffocating layers of cloth had loosened over my face, allowing drafts of air to reach my burning lungs. I sucked greedily at it, spitting the gagging fabric from my mouth. Then I heard the deadly ring of steel on stone as one of the men retrieved his cleaver from the cloister pavement. A sudden clear understanding stirred my cramped and battered limbs into action and I managed to raise my torso, push down my skirts and roll away from where I sensed the slashing blow would fall.
It never came. There was a warning shout from one man to the other and both my assailants suddenly scampered off down the cloister as fast as their craven legs could carry them, whilst from the other end of the passage came the thud of approaching footsteps.
Several pairs of feet stopped in my field of vision, which was confined to a small area of moonlit flagstones. I had neither the strength nor the will to lift my head and see who it might be, certain that whoever it was could only have scorn and derision for a female used as I had just been. I feared that perhaps the assault would begin again with a fresh onslaught, but I could not summon the strength to flee. Slumped into the right-angle where the wall met the floor, I fervently wished I could crawl down a crack in the mortar. The intense pain in my body’s core was matched by a burning sense of self-loathing. I felt like the slime left by a passing slug.
‘What has been going on here?’ demanded a clipped voice which sounded more used to issuing orders than emitting oaths. ‘You three – follow those men and try to apprehend them. I do not like the look of this.’
Three pairs of leather-clad feet disappeared, leaving behind two pairs more grandly clad in plated armour; a knight and his squire perhaps. I was too dazed to care.
‘Here, let me help you.’ The same voice spoke again and a hand appeared, offering me assistance to rise. I shrank away from it and tried to force my trembling legs to support my own weight by grabbing at the rough stone of the wall. Gradually I hauled myself upright but I kept my head down, refusing look at the speaker. All I could see was the yellow chevron device on his jupon and the riveted joints at his steel-plated elbows.
‘Who are you?’ he asked and to my surprise I detected a note of compassion in his voice. ‘What has happened here?’
I shook my head. Even under torture I could not have found words to describe my recent ordeal.
‘Is this yours?’ The knight’s companion had retrieved my coif and held it out so that I could see it. It was dusty and crushed, but to my addled wits it represented a desperate scrap of decency. I grabbed it gratefully and pulled it over my head but the effort nearly sent me crashing back to the ground. My skirt hid the bloodiest of the damage but my legs were juddering with shock and my shoulders still heaved with the effort of trying to force air into my starved lungs. A terrible moisture ran down the inside of my thighs.
‘Who are you?’ The knight repeated and this time a hint of impatience tainted the pity in his tone. ‘What is your name?’
I shook my head once more. My mind had cleared enough to prompt caution. I would trust no man again.
‘Do you work here at the palace? Are you a servant perhaps? Who do you work for?’
I remained silent. Now that a tiny measure of my strength was returning, I itched to be away. However chivalrous this anonymous knight might appear to be, he was a Burgundian and no good came with him.
Nevertheless he persisted, mouthing words at me slowly, as if to a dim-witted child. ‘We are looking for the dauphin. Do you know where we might find him?’
His companion had been examining the mangled corpses of the hounds. ‘Look, my lord, they are white hounds. I have heard that the dauphin possessed a pair of pure-bred deerhounds.’
Now I knew I had to get away. Being found in the proximity of these poor princely appendages definitely implied knowledge of their master’s whereabouts. I tensed against the wall, ready for flight.
‘Are these the dauphin’s hounds? What has happened to their master? You know something, do you not? Tell me!’ The knight’s voice vibrated in my ears and I shook my head violently, as much to rid myself of the questions as to refute them. Suddenly I could not take any more. Whatever the cost, I had to get away. I clapped my hands over my face, turned blindly and stumbled off down the cloister in a shambling, uncertain lope, hardly knowing which direction I took. I heard the metallic ring of armour plate as the squire made to follow me, but the knight’s next words halted him.