The Queen's Secret

POISSY

Life was different at Poissy—more quiet and orderly. The nuns were severe, but kind; we were fed and clothed adequately and our education, which had hitherto been somewhat neglected, received immediate and assiduous attention. Marie was very happy. She was in her natural element. She was one to whom life would bring exactly what she wanted, and she knew then that she wanted to become a nun. It was different for Michelle and me. Michelle was already betrothed to the eldest son of the Duke of Burgundy; for me, nothing had so far been arranged.

We rose early—about five in the morning—and the rules of the convent were that every one of the hours between that time and darkness, when we retired, must be spent in some useful occupation. For Michelle, Marie and myself it was mostly lessons. We learned Latin, and English and music lessons were given every day. We had to learn to converse intelligently, and great stress was laid on good manners at table…and elsewhere, of course. The Mother Superior was a deified figure. She was benign yet aloof and we all were in great awe of her. We would walk in the gardens where we learned the names of flowers and herbs and their uses, and were allowed to grow some of our own, and when we wandered through the sequestered paths of the gardens we could chatter a little.

It was a very different life from that which we had lived in the Hôtel de St.-Paul. Here we were shut away. In the Hôtel there had been a smattering of gossip to give us ideas—if vague ones—of what was happening. To the uncertainty of life there had been added a whiff of excitement. We had never known when our father was going to recover and our lifestyle change for a while. Then his lapses into madness had been equally unpredictable. Now life in the convent fell into an ordered routine. One knew what one would be doing at any moment of the day.

Occasionally visitors were allowed, and Isabelle came to see us.

She had now been married to our young cousin Charles who, on the death of his father, had become the Duke of Orléans. He was younger than she, and I could see, merely by looking at her, that she was not exactly unhappy in the marriage, so that that which she had so much dreaded had turned out to be tolerable after all.

“Charles is very gentle and sweet-natured,” she told me. “Of course he is very young, but he loves me. Isn’t that wonderful, Katherine…for he was forced into this marriage…even as I was. He writes poetry. It’s really very good. It is not only I who says so. I think I have been fortunate in having two good, kind husbands.”

I knew all would be well with her now because, although she referred to Richard, she did not look downcast as she had before.

I said to Michelle later: “I believe she is quite happy. She seems different.” And Michelle agreed.

It was from Isabelle that I learned something of what was happening outside the convent walls.

She told me that Burgundy had remained in Paris, imposing his rule on the city. He had been there for four months and would still be there but for a revolt in Liège.

“He sent troops to suppress it, but they could not do so, and he had to go himself. When he was gone, our mother came back to Paris. Louis was with her. Poor Louis. It is all rather bewildering for him. I think he rather wishes he was not the Dauphin. He’s such a boy really and always so nervous because he is afraid he will do—or even say—the wrong thing. Who would be born royal? I often think, Katherine, how much happier we might be if we were just simple people. We should perhaps be able to lead our own lives. Well, our mother came back with Louis, and Berry and Bourbon are with her. They are against Burgundy. And what do you think our father has done? He recovered a little, but he is always afraid that his madness is going to break out. He has said that he cannot go on like this and he thinks it would be wise to pass on the government of the country to the Queen, our mother! You can imagine what consternation that caused.”

“Our poor father, he must be completely mad.”

“Louis is quite alarmed, wondering what this is going to mean to him. And Valentine Visconti upset him terribly by coming to him, kneeling at his feet and asking for justice for her murdered husband.”

“What did Louis do?”

“He said he would give her a speedy reply. Poor little Louis, it will not be for him to decide what shall be done. And in the midst of all this came the news that Burgundy had completely subdued the people of Liège and was preparing, with a victorious army, to return to Paris.”

“Were they all alarmed?”

“I am sure they were. In any case, they all left without delay. They have gone to Tours. Our mother has taken the King and the Dauphin with her. What will happen next I do not know, but I can see that it will take a long time to heal this rift between the houses of Burgundy and Orléans. It worries me, Katherine. I wonder how my Charles will react. He is not a fighter. He is not like his father either. He will never be an unfaithful husband. I know it.”

I smiled at her and held her hand tightly. I was so pleased that she had ceased to mourn for the long-since-dead Richard of England, and life had turned out well for her after all. She had been given a chance of happiness and I was sure that, with her sweet and gentle disposition, she would attain it.

I began to notice a serenity about her. It was some weeks before she told me.

“Katherine, what I have always wanted is to come to pass. I am going to have a child.”

I embraced her and we both shed a few tears. They were tears of happiness. I was thinking how wonderful it was that in the midst of all this turmoil there could be this joy. And who deserved it better than my sweet sister Isabelle?

One of the saddest events of my childhood happened during my Poissy days.

I remember it well. A nun came into the room where we were doing our lessons with other daughters of the nobility. She went straight to the one who was teaching us, and a whispered conversation ensued. I was glad of a little respite from the tedious task of translating a passage in Latin, when the nun who was taking the class said: “Will the Princesses Marie, Michelle and Katherine please step up here to me.”

We obeyed at once.

“The Mother Superior wishes to see you,” we were told. “You may go to her now.”

Michelle and I exchanged glances, wondering what sin we had committed, for it was not often that the Mother Superior wanted to see pupils, and when she did, it usually meant they were in deep disgrace.

But it was not for that purpose that we had been summoned. How I wished it had been!

The Mother Superior smiled at us in a kindly fashion when we entered her sanctum. She said: “You may sit.” And we did.

“I have some bad news for you,” she went on. “It will be a shock, I fear. It concerns your sister, the Duchess of Orléans.”

“Isabelle …” We murmured her name.

“It is God’s will,” said the Mother Superior. “We must always remember that. And she has gone to a happier place.”

I sat there, numb, realizing the significance of what she was saying. I thought: the baby. It is the baby.

None of us could speak. We were too shocked.

“Your sister is now with God and His angels,” said the Mother Superior. “We must not grieve. We must rejoice in her happiness. She is beyond all earthly pain.”

I sat there thinking of her…all her unhappiness since the loss of Richard…the hopelessness she had experienced, and then had come her marriage to Charles and she had shown signs of being happy again. And the baby…how she had wanted the baby!

Life was cruel. To have dealt such blows and then to give a glimpse of happiness before snatching it away.

The Mother Superior came to us and laid a hand on each of our heads.

“Bless you, my children,” she said. “I think you may want to be alone.”

So we went out, Michelle and I not looking at each other, Marie accepting the blow with quiet resignation as the will of God.

I ran to our dormitory and flung myself on my bed. My throat was dry. I was still numb with shock and misery. It was not until I was in bed that night that I began to weep. And then I could not stop.

How we missed her! We had so looked forward to her visits. For so many years we had not known our beautiful sister. Then she had come into our lives, only to be snatched away. If they had not forced her to marry; if she had not become pregnant, she would still be with us!

I was angry with Fate and filled with apprehension as well as sorrow. We were moved around as the men of power wished to move us, and if we died, that was an end of our usefulness and they ceased to think of us, for we were then no longer a means of patching up a quarrel, no longer a bargaining counter in a treaty.

Isabelle herself had said how lucky were those who were not born royal and could lead lives which they themselves had some power to arrange.

Moreover, I knew little of what was going on outside the convent walls, for we had depended on Isabelle to inform us. Nuns do not gossip; and in any case they are shut away from the world even more securely than their pupils. I did not know that the quarrels between the houses of Orléans and Burgundy were growing to menacing proportions which were to have a dire effect on the state of our country. There could be few situations fraught with more danger: a mad king who longed to be good and wise as his father had been and whose periodic lapses into madness had loosened his grip on the helm of state; a powerful, sex-crazed wife who was ready to plot treacherously against anyone who stood in her way; rival princes—ambitious men all of them—seeking to grasp the power which seemed there for the taking when the King was mad; and the Dauphin was only a boy.

The strongest man in the country was the Duke of Burgundy. I believe many were of the opinion that, if the King could not govern them, Burgundy should take his place. Burgundy certainly thought it, and there was open hostility between the houses of Burgundy and Orléans.

I did not know this at the time, but my mother, realizing that Burgundy was the stronger man, was attempting to throw in her lot with him…against my father and her own son.

The Treaty of Chartres had been devised and everyone was delighted because it was meant to establish peace between the princes. But at the very time the treaty was signed, a man of great ambition and energy stepped into the forefront of events. It could not have happened if Isabelle had lived.

This man was Count Bernard of Armagnac. He had a daughter, Bonne, and he saw a way to power through a marriage between her and Charles of Orléans, the widower of my sister Isabelle.

I cannot guess what Charles felt about this. I was sure, from what Isabelle had told us, that he had been devoted to her. To marry so quickly after her death must seem like faithlessness. But he, no less than Isabelle, must do what he was told to do, and because it was believed by his ambitious uncles that the Count of Armagnac could be a useful ally the marriage took place.

No sooner was he connected with the royal family than Armagnac made his presence felt. With Berry and Brittany he placed himself at the head of the anti-Burgundy faction, and so powerful did he almost immediately become that from then on, instead of being called the Orléanist party, it was known as the Armagnacs.

What was tantamount to civil war was raging throughout France.

I was oblivious to this strife and my convent life went on in its peaceful way. It was sad when Michelle went away to marry the son of the Duke of Burgundy, and for a long time I felt very lonely. There was only Marie now at Poissy with me, and she was so immersed in preparing herself for her vocation that I saw very little of her.

There were no ways of learning what was happening outside. Each day was ordered by the bells. Lessons…reading…walking…prayers at regular intervals. I had my friends…girls like myself, highborn and therefore knowing that one day they would be presented with a fate which they would be forced to accept.

It was a strange life—so different from what it had been in the Hôtel de St.-Paul.

I often thought about my father. I guessed, of course, that little had changed. There would be the periods of madness, the interludes of lucidity. And my mother, what was she doing now?

But for so long I had lived in the sheltered atmosphere of Poissy that I had been lulled into acceptance of the life around me. I knew that change must come sometime, but when it did, it found me unprepared.

I was at this time twelve years old, what I suppose would be called well-educated, but unaware of much which it would have been good for me to know. My early years in the Hôtel de St.-Paul had taught me something about the unpleasant side of life, but perhaps then I had been too young to absorb it. The Hôtel where I had lived with my brothers and sisters and my mad father seemed unreal in the saintly atmosphere and rigorous routine of Poissy.

The quiet life came to an end as suddenly as it had begun.

I was coming close to an age when a princess becomes useful to those around her.

The Mother Superior sent for me, and once more, thinking that I was to be mildly reprimanded or reminded of some duty, I blithely went to her.

With her was a ruddy-faced man. I knew he was a foreigner before he spoke, but in those first moments I was too amazed at the presence of a man in the sanctum of the Mother Superior to think of anything else.

Then I heard her telling me that he had come to paint my portrait, and I was uneasy.

He was Flemish, said the Mother Superior, and a great artist.

He said in his atrocious French: “I come from Her Highness the Queen herself. She bids me paint a picture of Your Highness. Ah, but you are beautiful. That is good…It is always good to have the beautiful subject. I will make a fine portrait of you, my lady.”

“The picture is to be painted at once,” said the Mother Superior. “Those are the Queen’s orders.” She turned to the painter. “Where should the sitting take place? What about this room?”

He looked around and nodded his head. “It is good,” he said.

“Who is it wants this picture?” I asked.

“But it is the Queen, your mother, my lady.”

“But…for whom…does she want it?”

He raised his eyes to the ceiling and lifted his shoulders.

The Mother Superior said: “I will have a room made ready for you. How long do you think it will take you to paint this picture?”

Again that lifting of the shoulders and the upward glance. Then he said: “That I will tell you…soon. Once I have made my start. The Princess is very like her sister, I am told.”

“You mean the late Duchess of Orléans?”

“And Queen of England, eh?”

“There is a resemblance,” said the Mother Superior.

He nodded, smiling.

My alarm increased as the sittings progressed. There was something decidedly ominous in this need for a picture. Why had my mother, after years of neglect, suddenly remembered me and wanted a picture of me? There was one answer. It was for a suitor. That was why royal princesses had their portraits painted.

I remembered Isabelle’s telling me that she had been painted and the portrait was sent to England; as soon as Richard had seen it he had fallen in love with it.

And now it was my turn, because I was a child no longer.

There was spasmodic conversation during the sittings which took place each day—one hour in the morning and one in the afternoon.

“It is not good to sit too long,” the artist told me. “Sitters become tired…and that is not what we want to show in the painting, you understand?”

“Should you not paint people as they are…tired or not?”

He looked at me reprovingly. “No…no. I want to paint one beautiful picture. A lady at her best. That is what we want.”

“But if there are defects …?”

“It is my task to find the perfections, eh? You understand? Let us say she has beautiful eyes, so we make the observer see those eyes. She has a nose that is a little…how shall we say?…not little. Sometimes we do not see this…so I will paint the picture at a time when it is not seen.”

I laughed. It was true that my eyes were my best feature and I had always been aware that I had inherited the Valois nose. Fortunately, in my case, this was not so very noticeable…but it was there.

I discovered that he had brought with him a picture of my sister Isabelle. He set it up so that he could glance at it while he painted.

I said to him: “Why do you have my sister’s portrait there?”

He smiled secretly: “There is a likeness, you see.”

“But you are not painting her portrait.”

He shrugged his shoulders and looked at the ceiling.

I thought it was rather mysterious.

I said to him: “Do you know why my mother wants this portrait?”

“Oh…but you are her dear little daughter.”

“Is that what she told you? ‘Go and paint a picture of my dear little daughter’?”

He nodded.

“She wants it for someone.”

He smiled secretively.

“Do you know for whom?”

“Madame Princesse, I am only the painter. Kings and queens do not share their secrets with me.”

“Is there a secret, then?”

“How should I know of secrets, my Princess?”

“So you really do not know for whom this portrait is being painted?”

“Ah, Princess, I am only the painter.”

He did know, I was sure. I wondered if my mother had cautioned him against telling.

At last the picture was ready. It flattered me, I thought. He said: No. It was myself…at my best, which was what he had aimed for.

“It is more like my sister Isabelle than it is like me,” I said.

That seemed to please him.

In due course he went away, taking the picture with him.

A few days after he left, messengers from Court arrived.

I was to prepare to leave Poissy for Paris.