The Agincourt Bride Page 19

  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 speake
r. 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.

  ‘Let her go. The woman has been badly abused and her wits are addled. We will get no sense from her and we are wasting valuable time.’

  Intent on fleeing, as much from myself as from the Burgundian knight, I blundered on, bumping into corners and tripping over uneven flagstones until, when I finally took my hands from my face, I found myself in the kitchen courtyard, without really knowing how I got there.

  Returning awareness brought an agonising resurgence of pain, both physical and mental. My whole body throbbed and the flesh between my legs seemed to sizzle and burn. All I could think about was quenching the fire and with that in mind my eyes fixed on the huge stone cistern which collected the rainwater from the palace roof, where scullions dipped their pails to replenish the kitchen water-barrels. Whimpering, I hobbled across the yard and heaved myself recklessly over the edge of the tank, lowering my legs into its dark, blessed depths. My skirts blossomed around me, lifted by trapped air, and the cold water brought instant sweet relief to my burning private parts. For many minutes I stood waist deep, while the chill numbed my ravaged flesh until I could no longer feel any sensation. But it could not still the whirling of my mind. Fear and self-disgust spun into a maelstrom of rage and humiliation, crystallising as an all-consuming hatred. The identities of my individual attackers I might never know, but the core of my loathing centered not on them but on another; the man who had seared his name on my mind the day he scarred the flesh of my face and who I knew was truly responsible for the evil that had descended upon us. Jean the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy.

  16

  In the king’s great hall the royal party made its way onto the dais and a loud cheer rose up from the assembled crowd of onlookers. Standing silent among them, I felt my stomach clench; for the first time since his mailed fist had scarred my face fifteen years before, there before me stood the devil duke. He was garbed all in black as I remembered him but, instead of armour, he wore a magnificent flowing houppelande gown edged with sable and liberally patterned with the bizarre personal emblem that so eloquently declared his vaunting ambition – a carpenter’s plane. Here was a man determined to shape the world to his own design.

  Working themselves up to a frenzy of excitement, the crowd began to chant his battle-cry – ‘Jean sans Peur! Jean sans Peur!’ – and he raised an arm in salute like a victorious general. An elaborate turban-hat added inches to his stature so that he dwarfed the shrunken figure of the king, who scuttled into the hall a fraction ahead of him wearing a gold coronet slightly askew and a blue ermine-trimmed gown, which seemed to have been made for someone much larger. I noticed the duke’s hand go to the king’s elbow, a gesture which appeared to offer deferential support, but actually ensured that the feeble-minded monarch did not stray from his new protector’s side. Behind this ill-matched pair came the queen, as flamboyant and glittering as ever, followed by Catherine, graceful but ghostly pale, swaying in her heavy court robes like a willow-wand hampered by the weight of its leaves.

  As they took their seats at the board, the triumphant smiles of the queen and the duke reflected the brilliance of the gleaming gold plate displayed on the fine damask cloth. The King perched between them, corralled in his high-backed throne, twitching like a trapped coney and Catherine sat on the duke’s left, isolated at the end of the table where the resplendent new Burgundian grand master of the king’s household stood directing proceedings with his silver staff. For this was no ordin-ary repast. It was a public banquet, an occasion when the people of Paris were allowed into the king’s great hall to watch their monarch dine and, on this occasion, to witness the advent of a new regime.

  I stood with Alys, jostled and pushed by the crowd, mostly of men who alternated between cheering their hero and quarrelling over the best vantage points. Judging by the roars of adulation, there were few among them whose skin crawled as mine did at the sight of the new regent of France, as Jean the Fearless now styled himself. To a man they welcomed him, hoping for the restoration of order and the end of anarchy and shortage.

  I saw the duke incline his head towards Catherine to make a remark and noticed her flush deep red in response, but whether from anger or embarrassment I could not tell. Burgundy’s expression was unreadable.

  ‘Keep calm, my sweet girl, keep calm,’ I willed her silently.

  I kept my own feelings well hidden these days. Inside I had become a wobbling mass of hatred and disgust but during the blood-soaked weeks since the palace gates had opened to Burgundy’s thugs, I had perfected the art of deception, had even managed to conceal all evidence of the bodily harm and the loathsome horror inflicted on me by the two predatory butchers. It was the only way I felt able to hold my head up and survive. It is a sad commentary on our skewed society that nothing but disdain and disparagement is offered a woman known to have been violated. I had been unlucky but I was not dead and I did not wish to be disparaged. I considered that my secret was safe with me and me alone. Anyway, to describe it to anyone would have been to release the dreadful demons that threatened to overcome me every time I had a flash of recall and I feared that if I let them loose I would succumb completely, like the poor, mad king. Mercifully, only a few days after the attack I was blessed with Eve’s curse, for I think to have found myself with child to a nameless thug would have been a burden impossible to bear.

  At the time, after the freezing water in the kitchen cistern had sufficiently numbed my battered body, I had dragged myself to my quarters and made liberal applications of a witch-hazel salve and changed into dry clothes. Then, scared by the sudden and very raucous s
ounds of looting in Catherine’s apartments below, I had scurried out onto the wall-walk, praying it would be deserted, and forced myself to brave the perils of stairway and cloister, ducking out of sight from every possible encounter until I reached the king’s great hall. There, to my intense relief, I found Catherine and Alys huddled among a frightened group of court ladies on the steps of the royal dais, claiming whatever sanctuary was to be found in the shadow of the anointed monarch, who sat bewildered on his throne, uneasy but defiantly wearing his crown and court mantle. Whoever had dressed the king in these potent symbols of his sovereignty had shown great foresight for they gave him a much-needed air of regal authority over the Burgundian commander of the insurgency, who had placed hand-picked guards on the entrance to the great hall, insisting that the rabble be excluded and the king and his daughter be treated with due deference.

  ‘Thank God you are safe, Ma!’ Alys had exclaimed, hugging me fiercely and too overcome with joy at my arrival to notice me wince with pain. ‘Did you have any trouble?’

  ‘No,’ I lied. ‘But there have been looters in your chambers, Mademoiselle. I heard noises there but I did not investigate.’

  ‘Nor should you have done!’ Catherine whispered indignantly. ‘May God reward you for your courage tonight, Mette. Were you successful in your chief endeavour?’

  I nodded briefly but emphatically and was rewarded by a squeeze of the hand and a triumphant little smile. It was at that moment that I resolved to consign my own nightmare experience to the deep recesses of my mind, where it kept company with the faint hope that one day Jean-Michel would walk back into my life. Only later, when I woke from deep sleep, sweating and kicking and desperately gasping for breath was it brought forcibly home to me that I had as little hope of erasing those terrible memories as I had of celebrating the return of my husband.

  The next day, God be thanked, Luc managed to make his way to my tower-top quarters and I quickly learned that his first concern had been for his canine charges.