Chapter 6
6
Now we stayed upstairs, besieged. We hid in the cool mornings, and in the heat of afternoon, and as sunlight softened into dusk. Claire never stirred, and I rarely dared to venture out. In this way we avoided Nicholas, but Claire lived in fear. Who was to stop her suitor if he wished to present himself? Although he did not appear, he sent his servants almost every day. They came with gifts and books and messages. Claire refused them all—but she was caught. To admit Nicholas’s interest was to throw herself away. To refuse him was to risk offending. He might speak to his father, and he, in turn, could complain of us to Roberval. In anger, Nicholas might call Claire rude or loose—all that she was not. He might sully her good name—and how could she defend herself? Hearing ill reports, the Montforts might throw her from the house.
During this barrage, Claire prayed for help and for relief, and I prayed with her until I began to hope my guardian would take us both away. Even if my troubles multiplied with Roberval, I imagined Claire’s would cease. As I knelt, I whispered, Put me in danger, send me her pain. Let me suffer in her place.
We were prisoners of love—but not as poets would describe it. We had lost hope and equanimity, but not for any passion of our own. The lust of a young man confined us. His wealth and his position trapped us upstairs.
In the evenings, Claire played the virginal, and while it was still light, she sewed. With busy hands, she turned and remade her old clothes, and I thought of Penelope working at her loom while suitors paced below like hungry curs. My friend was virtuous as that good queen. The trouble was Claire had no husband to avenge her. She could not hope for a returning king.
She grew pale. Nicholas’s love had sickened her, but she spoke bravely. “He is idle now, and so he plays at this romance. When hunting begins, he will forget me.”
Alas, when days grew chill and the men rode out to hounds, Nicholas’s servants brought us bags of game, fresh venison and bright partridges. We returned them and ate meager rations from the kitchen, so we were hungry as well as cold.
We shivered in the mornings, but we coaxed the children to keep learning. If we had taught them once for pleasure, now we instructed them in earnest, encouraging our pupils at the virginal, guiding their small hands in copying. The girls’ maids built up our fire during lessons, and gratefully we warmed ourselves. Always, we were kind and careful with the little ones. In this way, we hoped to maintain their mother’s favor, although we did not appeal to her directly.
“I hope it will not come to that,” Madame D’Artois said.
Claire murmured, “Every season ends.”
I said, “If only we knew when.”
—
The end came on a fine October day. That morning, I stole to the east tower where I could see the sun rising over the stone court where grooms led horses out to hunt. I saw servants and pack animals laden with baskets, spears, and cudgels. I heard dogs barking, chasing, panting to begin. The men mounted, Nicholas first amongst them, and he was silver, his boots bright with spurs. He wore a velvet hat adorned with a white plume. He looked a prince—except I knew his heart.
I watched as gentlemen and grooms and servants rode away, and then I hurried back to Claire. “Come into the garden,” I said. “Nicholas is gone, and all the men are with him.”
“Are you sure?” she asked.
“They raced away on horseback and will hunt all morning.”
“But the children’s lessons,” Claire said.
“We’ll teach outdoors,” I told her.
And so, Claire and I took our charges to the walled garden where we might breathe fresh air and look at the last blooms. Gazing up, we taught the girls to find pictures in the clouds. Suzanne saw sheep and birds and queens. Then Ysabeau tilted back her head.
I asked, “What do you see?”
“Nothing,” she replied.
“No pictures at all?”
“I am looking for the angels,” she told me.
Suzanne explained, “They live above the clouds.”
“But even there,” Claire said. “You will not see them with your eyes.”
“How will I…” Ysabeau began—when suddenly we heard hoofbeats and shouting.
I opened the garden door to glimpse the court. Too soon the hunters had returned, their horses in a lather. I saw dogs howling and servants streaked with mud, and in this commotion, a casualty carried by four men. It was Nicholas with his spurs gone. His head was bare; his leg hung loose like a dead branch.
“Lift him in!” the men called to each other.
With a mouth black and twisted, Nicholas cried, “Leave me!”
All this while, Claire stood back, holding the little girls. “What happened?” Suzanne kept asking.
My eyes met Claire’s. “It’s Nicholas,” I said, even as Ysabeau begged, “What happened?”
“Close the door,” said Claire as the men bore Nicholas away, his dogs barking, half-mad with the scent of their master’s blood.
The hunters dismounted, calling the stableboys to lead away their horses. I saw Denys, Nicholas’s younger brother, and then I saw their father holding his son’s hat, plume trailing.
“Close it. Leave off!” begged Claire. She did not want the girls to see.
And now I did close the door, and we were alone, the four of us, in a place where all the trees were clipped and vines were tamed. The ground was checkered in a parterre of stone and grass.
Claire knelt, and we knelt with her to pray for the girls’ stepbrother. Claire asked for intercession from the Virgin and her angels, for she knew how to love her enemy. And I? I hoped her words would rise to heaven—but when I closed my eyes, I saw a twisted face and a black mouth, and I wondered at the young man’s fall. He, who had been so strong.
We stayed hidden in the garden, and no one sent for us, not even the girls’ nurse. We waited until the children were nearly fainting from hunger, and then led them inside.
The hall was dark, with windows shrouded, as though the house were already in mourning. In the gloom and sadness of the place, the girls did not see their mother, and they could not enter Nicholas’s rooms without leave. In passageways and on wide stairs, we found maids carrying bedclothes and the girls’ nurse running. Suzanne called, but Agnès could not stop to talk.
Ysabeau turned to us. “Is he going to live?”
Claire said, “God willing.”
We took the girls up to their chamber and tried to comfort them, but when we called for food and drink, it seemed there were no servants free. We held the children then because we could do nothing else. We clasped them in our arms.