Catherine: One Love is Enough (Catherine Series Book 1) (2 page)

Caboche scowled. ‘I am not Sir Satan, my beauty, that you should greet me thus. You would be better employed in trying to persuade your father to join forces with us.’

Without raising her eyes from her shoes, Loyse murmured, ‘I could not do that. It is not a daughter’s place to give her father advice. What he does is right.’

Her fingers closed furtively on her rosary in her apron pocket. She turned aside to poke the logs in the hearth, thus indicating clearly that Caboche’s interview with her was at an end. A gleam of anger flashed in the Skinner’s pale eyes.

‘You may pipe a very different tune tomorrow night, my pretty, when my men take you from your bed and tumble you. But don’t worry, I shall be the first among them –’

Suddenly he staggered back. Gaucher Legoix had seized him by the collar and was about to throw him out. Legoix was white with fury, and his anger lent him new strength. Caboche faltered in the grip of his thin hand.

‘Get out!’ Gaucher cried in a voice trembling with rage and indignation. ‘Get out, you filthy swine! And don’t let me catch you sniffing round my daughter again!’

‘Your daughter!’ Caboche sneered. ‘You will be sorry you ever had a daughter, by the time I and a few others have finished with her … if you haven’t come to your senses by then.’

Catherine watched in horror as Gaucher hurled himself in a fury at Caboche. He was just about to strike him when Cauchon intervened. He stepped between the two men and separated them with his long, skinny arms.

‘Enough,’ he said coldly. ‘This is not the time for such disputes. Caboche has let his tongue rim away with him, and Legoix is both obstinate and impulsive. I suggest we take our leave now. Night will no doubt bring wise counsel to both of you. I hope that you, Gaucher Legoix, will listen to the voice of reason.’

Landry sat on a cornerstone and listened to Catherine without interrupting. Her story gave him food for thought. He ardently admired Caboche, but equally he valued Gaucher’s good opinion. Besides, the threats against the Legoix family disgusted him.

A dry, rending, splitting sound, followed almost immediately by a loud crash, broke into his thoughts. The palace gate had given way at last and, with a triumphant yell, the crowd poured into the breach like a river bursting its banks. In a second, Landry and Catherine were left alone in a great empty space. Empty, that is, save for the dead and wounded and the dogs that sniffed and licked at the patches of bloodstained earth. The white banner still flapped where Caboche had planted it near the gate. Everyone else had vanished into the palace gardens. Landry grabbed the terrified Catherine by the hand.

‘Come on then. They have gone in …’

The little girl recoiled a step. Her eyes, dark with foreboding, gazed fearfully at the splintered gate.

‘I don’t think I want to now,’ she said in a small voice.

‘Don’t be silly. What are you afraid of? You will never get another chance like this. Come on!’

Landry was flushed with excitement, all agog to follow the crowd and take a share in the looting and pillaging. The irrepressible curiosity of the Parisian urchin, together with a certain innate delight in violence, was proving too much for him. If she refused to follow him, Catherine realised, he was quite capable of abandoning her there in the street. She decided to go with him.

The Rue Saint-Antoine was by no means deserted. Some distance beyond the palace another crowd, packed to overflowing in the space left between the Hôtel des Tournelles, Porte Saint-Antoine, the Hôtel du Petit-Musc and the crenellated mass of the Bastille, was getting ready to lay siege to the newly-built fortress, the white walls of which rose sheer above their heads.

News had reached them that Pierre des Essarts, former Provost of Paris, accused by the people of treason, had taken refuge there with five hundred men-at-arms, with the intention of keeping the townspeople at bay. A steadily growing mob, armed with every conceivable sort of weapon, was making its way there determined to capture des Essarts, even if it meant taking the Bastille apart stone by stone. People arrived running from the other end of the street, by the Palace de Grève. Some went into the palace and others ran on to help in the attack on the fortress.

One of the palace windows opened and a chest came hurtling out with a metallic crash of pots and pans. The sight helped Catherine make up her mind. Curiosity got the better of fright. Seizing Landry’s hand, she ran through the gate, the shattered doors of which still creaked and swung from their massive hinges. Her eyes were round with excitement at the thought of what she was about to see.

The immense gardens, as they discovered once they were through the gate, had been flattened by the mob in its rush for the palace. What had been formal beds of roses and violets edged by clipped yew borders were now no more than trampled earth, leafless stalks and crushed, muddy petals. Lilies and roses lay trodden into the mud.

Beyond, Catherine had her first glimpse of that town-within-a-town that was the Saint-Pol Palace. It consisted of a huge sprawl of buildings. There were chapels, sheds for livestock, stables and small buildings designed to house an army of servants. All around lay gardens, vineyards and small thickets, intersected by cloisters and galleries and courtyards. There were menageries of lions, hunting leopards, bears and other strange beasts, and also aviaries full of exotic birds. The Royal Residence was composed of three separate buildings: the King’s Palace, which faced the gardens along the Seine; the Queen’s, which fronted on the little Rue Saint-Pol; and the Dauphin’s, usually known as the Hôtel de Guyenne, which opened on to the Rue Saint-Antoine.

It was toward this latter building that the crowd directed its fury. Men-at-arms encircled the palace with the idea of blocking any attack on the dwellings of the King or Queen. But the crowd gave them no trouble. It had other things in mind.

The courtyards and staircases of the Hôtel de Guyenne were packed with people. The din that rose from them, intensified by the stone-vaulted ceilings and huge size of the apartments, was deafening. Catherine had to cover her ears with her hands. Bodies of royal servants, in their violet silk tunics, lay about the floor. Costly glazed windows were being wantonly smashed. Tapestries hung in tatters from the white stone walls of the main staircase, and there were great holes in the painted frescoes where they had been slashed with axes or with the great iron hammers used to stun animals in the slaughterhouse. The looters had swarmed into the dining-hall, a vast apartment in which the long central table was laid out for a banquet. They slipped and skidded in puddles of wine, blood and greasy sauces, fought like dogs over the pastries and roast meats and stumbled over a litter of weapons and metal plates and vessels that had been thrown aside because they were neither gold nor silver. There was barely room to breathe. But Catherine and Landry were both agile and nimble on their feet, and they managed to push their way up the stairs to the floor above without too much difficulty. Catherine got through with no more than a scratched cheek and a few wrenched-out hairs. Landry even succeeded in snatching up a few little marzipan cakes on his way past the table, and he shared these with his young friend. They were welcome. Catherine felt quite faint with hunger.

As they were wolfing down this unexpected treat, they found themselves being pushed forward with the crowd toward a large chamber, from which angry cries and shouts were audible. As they went in, Catherine looked about her, dazzled by the magnificence of the scene. She had never seen anything comparable to the colourful tapestries, woven of silk shot with gold thread, that adorned the walls. They showed beautiful ladies, gorgeously dressed, walking white hounds through meadows starred with flowers, or listening to music sat under a canopy hung with gold tassels. The far end of the apartment was entirely taken up by a huge, white marble chimneypiece, carved as intricately as a piece of lace, and an immense bed that stood on a raised dais and was curtained with purple velvet fringed with gold. The arms of Guyenne and Burgundy were carved at the head of the bed. The walls of the room were lined with settles and dressers displaying vases and goblets of precious metals encrusted with gems and fantastically-shaped Venetian goblets, the rainbow-hued glass of which outshone the brightest jewels. Catherine’s rapt, starry-eyed survey of her surroundings did not continue for long, however. Her attention was soon drawn to the dramatic scene being played out in this sumptuous setting.

Catherine recognised the two men stood by the chimneypiece as the Duke of Burgundy and his son Philippe de Charolais. The latter she had often seen passing in front of her parents’ house on his way over the bridge. But she had never seen the formidable Jean-sans-Peur at such close quarters before. The Duke, planted squarely on short, sturdy legs, prominent eyes taking in everything around him, seemed to dominate the room. There was something implacable about this man that struck everyone who saw him, something as implacable as fate itself.

Count Philippe de Charolais was very different from his father. He was tall for his 17 years, thin, fair-haired, with a haughty manner, finely-cut features and the sort of humorous mouth that often curves into a smile. He stood, dressed in green and silver, a little behind his father, in a very different pose. Catherine’s eyes lingered on him briefly, as she found him handsome and well-dressed. Beside him stood a fat youth of 16 or so, magnificently and richly dressed in scarlet, white and black crossed by a gold sword-belt. He addressed the Duke in a voice trembling with rage and misery, emotions reflected on his rather undistinguished features. This, Landry whispered to Catherine, was the Dauphin himself, Louis de Guyenne.

Around these three principal figures in the drama, a fierce struggle was raging between a group of rebels and several noblemen, most of whom were wounded but still desperately resisting capture. A body, stabbed to the heart, slid to the black and white marble floor, its lifeblood slowly ebbing away.

The contrast between the impassive Burgundians, the violent rebels and the tearful Dauphin, his hands outstretched in an imploring gesture, was striking and bizarre. Catherine caught sight of Caboche once more in the thick of the brawl, his white hood and sweat-soaked tunic thrown into sharp relief by the black robes, measured gestures and glacial calm of Pierre Cauchon. She found Cauchon, with his imperturbable calm, a terrifying figure.

The noise and confusion were at their height. The rebels had seized several nobles, ranging in age from youths to old men, and were now dragging them, securely bound, toward the street. Two of them were still struggling with a young man who could not have been more than 16. A young lady tried to shield him with her body, despite his repeated efforts to push her aside. She was dark and delicately pretty, still childish in appearance in spite of her elegant dress of heavy bronze damask and high, double-tiered, white muslin headdress. She clung to the young man, sobbing and imploring his assailants to spare him. Just as the rebels were about to drag her off, the Dauphin intervened in a fury. Drawing his sword, he leapt toward the two men who had had the effrontery to lay hands on his wife, and cut them down with two swift strokes. Then, pointing his bloody sword at Jean-sans-Peur, he addressed him angrily.

‘What sort of coward, cousin, stands by and lets his own daughter be handled by these rough curs before his very eyes? This riot is your doing, sire. Do not trouble to deny it. I see your men among the mob. Rest assured that I shall not forget this day. Fate may not always treat you so kindly!’

Philippe de Charolais had also automatically unsheathed his sword to go to his sister’s aid. Now, with its point, he gently turned aside the blade that threatened his father’s heart. The Duke himself had not moved. He shrugged and said, coldly, ‘There is nothing I can do at this point, Louis, contrary to what you may suppose. Things have got out of hand. I can no longer control these brutes. If it were possible I would at least have attempted to save my daughter’s retainers …’

As Catherine looked on helplessly, the young man whom the Dauphine, Marguerite, had been trying in vain to protect was at last captured. When the Dauphin had dispatched his two assailants he had run to a window, and had been just about to leap out into the garden when he had been seized and dragged back by three skinners from the slaughterhouse and a pair of terrible shrieking harpies. The young Dauphine collapsed on the bed and wept bitterly.

‘Save him, Father, I beg of you. Don’t let them take him. Not Michel. He’s my friend!’

The Duke’s reply to this appeal was an impatient gesture, which drew an indignant cry from Catherine. She was deeply impressed by Mme la Dauphine and would have liked to help her if she could. This Duke, who ignored his daughter’s tears, must be a truly evil man! The Comte de Charolais was white to the lips. He was himself married to the Dauphin’s sister, the Princess Michelle, and Marguerite’s distress was painful to him. But there was nothing he could do now. Caboche himself and his acolyte Denisot de Chaumont had hold of the young prisoner. They had snatched him from the men who were tying him up and propped him up between them. With a sudden bound the young man broke free, and Catherine gave a cry, which passed unnoticed. For his age, Michel de Montsalvy was unusually strong and powerful. Thrusting the butchers aside, he ran toward the Duke of Burgundy and stopped, panting, before him. His angry voice made itself heard above the tumult.

‘Jean de Bourgogne, I hereby proclaim you a craven coward, and a traitor to your King whose dwelling you allow to be desecrated thus! I proclaim you unfit to wear the spurs of a knight –’