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The day before the king and his enormous army were to march off to Italy, Charles arranged a final, private dinner in his apartments in the Governor’s Palace. As if it were a formal dinner, he had disposed the seating in a single row at the table in the anti-chamber of his suite, Anne discovered when she arrived. She thought it odd when they were only four. Madame la Grande sat to her left, Anne sat to Charles’s left, Charles sat in the centre, and Duke Pierre sat to Charles’s right. It meant each person could converse easily with only the person on either side.
Butlers stood at the entrance handing the many dishes to the pages who passed before them at the table offering the dishes to each according to their rank while others kept their goblets filled with wine, well-watered for the ladies, to Anne’s relief. The governor’s chefs had insisted on preparing dozens of dishes. After the first remove, Charles ordered his Maître d'hôtel to place the dishes for the second remove on the table and leave them alone. Anne eyed the platters of savoury pasties, baskets of apples, grapes, and pears, plates of sticky-sweet dates, figs, Turkish delight and peppermint candies placed within easy reach. After all the wine Charles had consumed, he would leave Grenoble with a terrible headache if he ate many.
As soon as the door closed behind the servants, Charles pulled his chair past the two ladies to the end of the table, screeching its feet along the marble floor.
“That is better. Now I can see all of you at once.” He frowned and pointed. “Still, it would be better if—Pierre, take your chair and move to this side beside me.” He gestured to his left side. Now he sat between his sister and brother-in-law. Anne was left straggling at the end, or that was how it seemed to her.
He was not finished organizing. “Now hand me that plate of Turkish Delight and those pears. There, that is excellent. Now we can get on with it.”
He took a deep breath. “First I must tell you about everything I have done.” He stuffed a Turkish Delight into his mouth and chewed, then peeled a pear. “I have ordered all officers of government to bring their reports and the taxes they collect to you, Sister.” He paused to gulp a mouthful of wine, “For the treasury will travel with you, of course.”
Anne looked down. He was not an enjoyable sight, for he did not wait to finish his portions before speaking. After her exhausting Entrée and public reception by the city notables that day, Anne found her stomach sensitive. The heavy reek of boar still lingered in the room. Watching gobs of half-masticated fruit form lumps in his throat when he swallowed made her want to gag. She covered her mouth, spit the date she had started into her hand and dropped to the dogs crowding her feet, certain they would enjoy it more than she would. The dogs growled and wrestled for the treat but no one else noticed.
Charles carried on. “Of course, you will all return to Moulins. Duke Pierre, you issued the orders today that the court would leave by the end of the week, did you not?” He gave the Duke a wide smile as he rubbed his hands. “You must move fast if you are to arrive there by the time you hear we are across the Alps.”
Despite her misgivings, Anne feared this was her last chance to demur. Circumstance had frustrated her every attempt to speak to Charles alone. His casual assumption that she would return to Moulins distressed her.
Leaning back to appear relaxed, she forced a tone of quiet confidence. “Yes, dear husband, let us speak of our living arrangements. I shall travel on to Amboise after resting a few days in Moulins. I am so looking forward to spending the time you are on campaign with our son.” She picked up her goblet.
For the first time since the servants had left, Charles seemed to remember her presence. Looking astonished, he stared at her. “What can you be thinking about, Anne? You are aware of the arrangements I have made for the dauphin. A company of one hundred Scots Guards1 under the direct authority of the Dauphin’s Gouverneur guards the gates of the town and mans the ramparts, towers and gates of the Château. My son is living in the furthest wing at Amboise, and I permit no one, not even Friar Francis, to approach him. It has been so since we departed.”
Anne took a sip and replaced her goblet on the table. With a soft smile, she said, her voice gentle. “Of course, my dear. Such wise orders. They protect our son well. But you cannot mean to exclude me, his mother? We do not wish him to grow up not knowing either of his parents. Do we?”
She reached out and held Madame la Grande’s arm, saying, “You would not want to be separated from Suzanne for so long, would you, Sister? Is not to be with her an important part of the reason we return to Moulins? Is that not true, Duke Pierre?”
All three of her auditors squirmed and avoided one another’s eyes. Finally, her husband replied, his voice conciliating.
“Dear wife, I understand it is difficult for you. It is for your safety and that of our beloved son that this is necessary.” As Anne gazed at him, her eyes filling with tears, he floundered on. “He is the heir to France and his life is precious. What if he sickened from an infection you—or someone in your entourage—carried to Amboise?” when she raised her eyebrows, he became more rattled. “I did not mean your health is less important. You are my queen, and I must protect your health. You carry the next heir to France.”
Teardrops trembling on Anne’s eyelashes slipped down her cheeks. She dashed them away with the back of one hand. “I understand that to you I am important only as a vessel for your heirs,” she said, her voice harsh. “But I love my son. His health is as important to me as it is to you. I am prepared to delay approaching him until Charles-Orland’s Gouverneur is assured that I and my ladies are free of all infection, and he gives his permission.”
“Please forgive me, Anne.”
She persisted. “I will not go near Charles-Orland if there is the least chance that I or anyone close to me be ill. Or anyone in or near Amboise. What if I promise not to see him until after this baby is born, and I have been churched?” She wanted to fall to her knees and beg. In her hurry to plead her case, she lurched to her feet, bumping Madame la Grande’s chair, and stumbled to his side where she clutched his arm.
Charles pushed his chair back and rose, forcing Anne to release her fingers. Then he took her hands in his. “Anne, I do not mean to be cruel. But I cannot agree. Both your lives are too precious. I cannot allow you both to be in the same place. What if one of my enemies captures the castle? I could not bear it.” He ran his fingers through his hair, rumpling it into a tangle. “Please ask no more. I can never agree. You must wait until I return. Then we shall hurry to our son together.”
Anne bowed her head to hide the slow anger that was building inside her. “Do not agitate yourself so, Charles. I shall say no more.”
She doubted he believed her, but he chose to, for he heaved a sigh of relief, leaned over and kissed her cheek. Then he led her to her place and lifted one of her hands to his lips.
After seeing her seated, he spoke to Duke Pierre as he returned to his spot. “Have you ensured my wife will be housed in the royal wing of your Château at Moulins?” Anne knew he was trying to placate her. Although she smiled and nodded to appear to listen, she paid no further attention. As a burning rage more intense than any she had felt previously grew inside her, she needed all the self-discipline she had learned in her life to sit quietly and act as if all were well.
That night, consumed with rage at all his arbitrary decisions—his deceit over maintaining Breton rights, his incessant whoring, his insistence she come to Lyon although he rarely saw her, his refusal to allow her to administer her estates, his greater trust in his sister than her, and now his refusal to allow her to see her son—she sent her ladies from her room and alternately prayed and paced for hours. It did not help.
Late in the night, the rosary he had given her that hung on her wall caught her eye. She stood staring at it, breathing hard from her nose. Snatching it from the wall, she spit on it wishing it were a dagger she could use to stab Charles and all Frenchmen. It no longer represented love to her. It was nothing but a golden chain imprisoning her and Brittany just as he had imprisoned Duke Louis. She would throw it away in the worst place she could, just as he tossed away her love as if it was worth nothing. As she strode toward the garderobe, she paused. It was a holy object. It took but a moment to rip off the crystal reliquary and cross, which she flung toward her prie-dieu. Continuing across her room, she flung open the garderobe door, lifted the lid of the hole and flung Charles’s jewelled gift down into the cesspit, waiting until she heard the faint splat. Stepping back, she felt no remorse.
* * *
NEXT MORNING, THE QUEEN, the regents, the court and the high officials of the city celebrated mass to bless the army setting off to conquer Naples. While Grenoble’s citizens crowded the narrow sidewalks to wave as the military band drummed past, followed by the king, his principal generals and then the soldiers, Anne watched from the balcony of the Governor’s Palace.
Charles blew Anne a kiss as he rode past. He wore her ermine device on the breast of the gold-embroidered, white-satin tunic lined with silk that covered his golden half-armour. The tunic was bordered with scarlet cloth of gold and fringed with finger-length twisted gold threads. On his head, he wore a helmet adorned with twenty-four tall, white, bejewelled feathers. His sword, its hilt jewel-encrusted, hung from a silver link belt a hands-width across.
He is dressed as if he is setting off to a masquerade, not a deadly military endeavour that has already drained the treasury, Anne thought. Behind him rode his principal generals—Marshal de Gié, Marshal de Rieux, Viscount de Rohan, and General de la Trémoïlle among them. All of them her enemies, men who had fought against her in Brittany. Although they smiled and bowed to her now, as she was polite to them, she did not make the mistake of thinking that they were her friends. She resented that they were off to make their fortune at the expense of the innocent citizens of Italy and would have access to the king’s ear.
As the endless procession of troops marched on, with its well-accoutred major-generals, lieutenant-generals, colonels, majors, captains and blaring bands, she wilted under the glaring sun. Nothing about the costly martial display cheered her. How many of these well-equipped, well-shod, fit and healthy men would return? It took all her training to stand and smile as she forced the memories of the moaning injured, the stench of death, and the pleas of hungry Breton women and children from her mind. She clutched her mother’s rosary, hidden in the folds of her gown, concentrating on silently repeating the holy words of the decades over and over to hold herself together until the interminable parade finally passed from sight.
* * *
ONCE ANNE WOKE FROM a nap that afternoon, she could not sit idle. A restless energy invaded her body, filling her with dark emotions. Deciding she needed to take her troubles to the Holy Virgin, Anne returned to the cathedral despite Madame la Grande’s objections.
Inside the building, recently embellished with an exquisite tabernacle created in Padua, she found a simple side chapel with an image of Mary gazing at her son with an expression of tender love. Anne lit all the votive candles and knelt, bathed in tears. The future looked as bleak to her as the battered Breton coast after a winter storm had destroyed her people’s simple huts and fishing boats, drowning them and their scrawny chickens and goats. She did not know how long Charles would be gone. It could be years before he carried out his dream and sailed from Sicily to conquer Jerusalem. He wanted to emulate Sainted King Louis IX. But Jerusalem was notorious as the graveyard of Frenchmen.
Even if he did not go so far, who knew how long his campaign in the Italian peninsula would take. She knew that already the Duke of Milan regretted he had encouraged her husband. Even Florence, traditionally France’s ally, was no longer reliable, since its influential leader, Lorenzo de Medici, had died earlier in the year. His son was proving himself not nearly as popular or effective. Besides, war was chancy. Even if the French proved wildly successful, a stray ball or an unlucky illness could take her husband from her before she knew he was ailing. And then, although she was still furious with him, what would happen to her?
Her grievances of the night before returned full force. Despite her experience and her right to the regency, Charles had not included her in the regency council. From her court ladies she had learned that his father had excluded Charles’s mother when he chose Charles’s regent. It was likely, therefore, that Charles would not include her in their son’s regency council, if he were to die before their son came of age.
Madame la Grande had been regent for Charles. It was she who had pursued the war that had wrested Brittany from Anne and her father. She was the person who had forced Anne’s marriage to Charles. Because of her, Anne was now alone in France without her husband, unable to live with her son, and condemned to live under the regent’s rule until Charles returned—if ever.
What shall I do, Holy Mother? You love your son as I love mine. I wish to hold him as you hold yours. She focused her eyes on the compassionate gaze of the Virgin. My thoughts leave me without hope. Too bleak even to pray, she sank back until she rested her buttocks on her heels. In the background, she heard muffled sobs. They sounded so much the way she felt that for some time she was not aware of them as separate from her own grief. By and by, she recognized that the echoes of misery were not her own but came from nearby.
It was happening again. She scrambled to her feet, her legs burning with pins and needles, and limped from the chapel. Her eyes adjusting to the dim interior, she spied what resembled a large black cloak heaped on the stone bench beside the ambulatory wall. It was quivering as she drew near it, and the soft sounds of woe grew louder. Taking a seat on the bench, she placed a hand where she thought the head must be.
“Hush,” she said. “You are no longer alone. How can I help you?” She felt a tremor pass through the unknown person’s body.
“Who are you? What do you want?” The weeping stopped though the breath still hitched, and the wary voice was husky.
Anne was uncertain from the voice whether she spoke to a woman or a youth. “Will you not sit up, uncover your face and tell me to whom I speak? I wish to help you and you may be assured that I will do so.”
Another sob wracked the form. “No one can help me, not really. T-t-hat is why I came here. For s-s-solace from the Holy Mother.”
Tears sprang to Anne’s eyes. She brushed them away resolutely and gripped her hands together. “I, too, came for solace. If you tell me what troubles you, perchance it will ease you.”
The person did not move or answer. Anne leaned back against the bench and waited.
“You sound kind,” the voice sighed, finally. With a rustle, the person sat up and pushed back the hood of the thick, concealing cloak. The blotched face of a young woman appeared. Without looking at Anne, she rubbed her hands, which poked through her cape, over her still covered arms.
“What are you called, child?” Anne asked again, “and why are you alone here and so sad?”
She sighed again. “My name is Mme de Saubonne. I am here alone because. . .” her mouth quivered, and she pursed her lips, obviously to keep from crying.
“Cry if you need to, my dear,” Anne said.
Still pressing her lips together, Madame shook her head. “I am a married woman and grown up. I must behave like one. It is just, just that . . . my husband left w-with the army today. So, I am alone.” She sniffed. Then she sniffed again. And again.
Anne pulled the cloth she always carried from her sleeve and gave it to the stranger.
“How old are you? And when you say alone, where is your mother? Or who are you with?” She kept her voice calm, aiming for the same quiet, reassuring tone her confessor used.
Michelle leaned back against the bench. “I am a-almost fifteen. I had been staying with my husband at the king’s c-court.” She sighed again. “He has arranged for m-me to return to Lyon with a p-party of Cistercian sisters who t-travel in the royal entourage.”
Anne could see young Mme de Saubonne’s profile, her frown, her furrowed brow. Her shoulders hunched as she slumped over. Every curve of her body spoke of sorrow, yet nothing she had said so far matched the sense of tragedy she exuded.
“Will you remain in Lyon? With whom will you stay?” Anne was dissatisfied with her questions. She reached forward and took the girl’s arm. “Tell me, my dear, why you are so very sorrowful.”
The young woman dropped her head until it almost touched her chest. Anne could see tears dripping. Her voice was thick when she spoke. “My m-mother died in L-l-yon just before the army moved to Grenoble. W-w-we were going to stay in Lyon together at the convent there until my husband returned. Her sister—my aunt—is the Abbess there.” She blew her nose, the blast like the honk of an angry goose.
The blare startled Anne, who barked a laugh, then cried, “I am so sorry! You surprised me is all.”
Mme de Saubonne, waving her hands helplessly, fell into giggles. In the next moment, they were holding onto each other, tears of laughter pouring down their faces. It was not truly humorous, but it was the spark they each needed to lighten the tragedies weighing them down. When they finally gasped to a stop, they had formed a bond. It was a new experience for Anne, this sudden flare of recognition, the call of a kindred spirit. To find a true friend only four years younger than herself, in this unexpected place at this dark moment in both their lives lightened the heavy load that had been making her feel like a Methuselah. She said a short prayer of gratitude to the Holy Mother.
Before they finished, Anne pulled Mme Michelle’s whole sad story from her. And she had a sad tale to tell. Russet-haired Mme Michelle and her young Breton husband, a close cousin, married in haste when King Charles announced levies for Breton brigades from Anne’s lands. The Saubonne owed feudal service. As a younger son, he offered to go, believing he would make his fortune and her parents arranged their marriage. Immediately afterwards, her father, who had been ailing, died. Mme Michelle had not intended to join her new husband, but her mother wanted to travel, so she offered to accompany them and care for Mme Michelle in Lyon. They would stay with her sister, the Abbess. It suited everyone. They had travelled with Anne’s court, although it had grown so large, she did not remember them.
“Of course not, Madame la Reine,” Mme Michelle said. “We were among dozens of Breton ladies travelling under your protection.”
Once Anne realized she was Breton, it settled everything. Mme Michelle was orphaned and the wife of one of her Breton soldiers. Anne would not hear of her staying alone in a convent in Lyon. Both her duty and preference led Anne to decide that the young auburn-haired Mme Michelle must become one of her ladies with a court position and a small stipend. Then Anne would have someone who could become a friend like Pernette had been, someone she thought she could trust.
“Let us return to my chambers.” Anne rose. “I shall send a page to your aunt, informing her of my decision.” She took Mme Michelle’s arm to hurry her along. “I will ask her to send your trunks and to attend me tomorrow to assure herself you are in my care. How is that?”
Mme Michelle said, “It is a like a dream, Madame la Reine. Grâce à la Sainte Mère, you have rescued me, when a few hours ago I saw no hope nor light.”
Anne patted her arm. Mme Michelle was speaking for her, too.
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1 Scots Guards—an elite Scottish military unit founded in 1418 to be personal bodyguards to the French monarchy. They were assimilated into the King’s Household and later formed the first company of the Royal Bodyguard. They survived until the end of the Bourbon monarchy.