Виктория Холт: The Italian Woman

In her apartments at the castle of Plessis-les-Tours a little girl knelt on a window seat and looked disconsolately out on the sunlit grounds. The sunshine out there, she felt, made the castle itself more gloomy by contrast. She hated the place.

‘What am I,’ she said aloud, ‘but a prisoner?’

The lady who was stitching industriously at her embroidery, her back to the window and to the little girl, that the best of the light might fall on her work, clicked her tongue in answer. She had no wish to enter into a discussion of her wrongs with Jeanne, for although the child was only twelve years old, her tongue was so quick that even her tutor had learned not to enter lightly into wordy battles with her, since, with her logic and quick wits, Jeanne had a way of coming out of such encounters victorious. As for Madame de Silly, the Baillive of Caen and governess of Jeanne, she knew herself no match for the child when it came to an argument.

‘I hear the wind howling through the trees in the forest sometimes at night,’ went on Jeanne. ‘Then I think that perhaps it is the souls of those who died in torment before they could make their peace with God. Do you think that is what we hear, Aymée?’

‘Nonsense!’ cried Aymée de Silly. ‘You have just said it was the wind in the trees.’

‘It is a prison, Aymée. Can you not feel it? Too much misery has been suffered in this place for me to be happy here. Think of those prisoners of my ancestor. Think of the iron cages in which he kept them … so small that they could not move; and there they remained for years. Think of the men who have been tortured in this dark and miserable place. Look out there at the lovely river. Men have been cruelly drowned in that river. When I go out at dusk, I seem to see the bodies of men hanging on the trees, as they did all those years ago.’

‘You think too much,’ said Aymée.

‘How can one think too much?’ demanded Jeanne scornfully. ‘I am determined not to stay here. I shall run away and join my mother and father. Why should I be kept from them?’

‘Because it is the will of the King of France. And what do you think would happen were you to run away? If – which, seems hardly likely – you were to have the good fortune to arrive at your father’s court of Navarre, what do you think would happen? I can tell you. You would be sent back here.’

‘That might not be,’ said Jeanne. ‘If my father, the King of Navarre, were there, he would hide me, since he at least wishes me to be with him. I know it.’

‘But it is the will of your uncle that you should stay here. And have you forgotten that your uncle is the King of France?’

‘That is something Uncle Francis never lets anyone forget.’ Jeanne smiled, for in spite of her grievances against him, she loved her uncle. He was handsome and charming and always delightful to her; he was amused rather than angry when she pleaded to be allowed to join her parents, even though she knew it was his wish that she should remain where she was.

‘When I see the little peasant children with their mothers, I envy them,’ she said.

‘You do nothing of the sort!’ retorted Aymée. ‘You only fancy you do. Imagine your feelings, my child, if you were told tomorrow that you were stripped of your rank! How would you like that?’

‘Not at all. But all the same, I long to see my mother. Tell me of her, Aymée.’

‘She is very beautiful; she is respected and loved by her husband, the King of Navarre …’

‘And adored by her brother the King of France,’ interrupted Jeanne. ‘Do you remember that when I was very small, I used to make you repeat over and over again the story of how, when Uncle Francis was a prisoner in Spain, it was my mother who went to his prison in Madrid and nursed him back to health?’

‘I remember clearly,’ said Aymée, smiling.

‘But,’ went on Jeanne, ‘do you think that a woman should love her brother more than she loves her husband and her own child?’

Aymée’s face was pink suddenly; she pursed her lips as she frequently did when challenged with a question she was going to refuse to answer. ‘Your mother is a great queen,’ she said. ‘She is the noblest woman in France …’

‘I know, dear Aymée, but that was not the point we were discussing. Should a woman love her brother more than her husband and her child? That was what I said. And you dare not answer it. My mother could have had me with her, had she insisted. Uncle Francis would have given way had she pleaded, for he can deny her nothing. But she loves him, and because she wishes to please him more than anything in the world, when he says: It is my wish that your daughter should be kept a prisoner at that most hateful, that most gloomy, that most miserable of all my castles … my mother answers: “Thy will be done.” She has no will but his. You yourself have said so.’

‘It is very right and proper that all his subjects should obey the King, and even the Queen of Navarre is a subject of the King of France.’

Jeanne jumped down from the window-seat in exasperation. There were times when Aymée’s method of skirting round a difficult subject infuriated her. Jeanne was vehement by nature; her temper rose quickly and subsided at the same speed. But how absurd it was to pretend things were not as one knew them to be!

‘How I hate all insincerity!’ she cried.

‘And, Mademoiselle,’ said her governess sternly, ‘how I abhor such precocity! You know a good deal more than it is good for you to know.’

‘How can that be when all knowledge is good to have? Aymée, you make me angry when you keep up this pretence. I am loved by my father and mother; my uncle has nothing but my good at heart. And yet, all these years when I have longed to be with my parents, I am kept from them. Now you will try to pretend, will you not, that my uncle, the King of France, and my father, the King of Navarre, are the greatest of friends. Let us have the truth. They hate each other. They are suspicious of each other; and it is because the King of France suspects my father of trying to arrange a match between me and Philip of Spain that he insists on my being kept here, so that he himself may be sure that I am not given to his enemy.’ She laughed to see the dismay in the eyes of her governess. ‘Oh, Aymée, it is not your fault. You have done all you can to keep these facts from me. But you know how I hate pretence. And I will not have it here.’

Aymée shrugged her shoulders and went on with her embroidery. ‘Jeanne,’ she said, ‘why not forget all this? You are young. You keep good state here. You have nothing with which to worry yourself. You are happy; and one day you will be able to join your parents.’

‘Listen!’ cried Jeanne. ‘I hear the sound of a horn.’

Aymée rose and came to the window. Her heart was beating uncomfortably fast. It was a habit of King Francis when he was staying at Amboise to ride over to Plessis-les-Tours. Sometimes he came with just a few of his followers – a brief, informal call on his little niece. At such times Aymée was terrified, for Jeanne never seemed to remember that this magnificent and charming man, besides being her uncle, was also the King of France. She could be pert, disrespectful, and at times resentful. If the King were in a good mood he might be amused; but if he were not, who could know what might happen?

‘Is the court at Amboise?’ asked Jeanne.

‘That I do not know.’

They stood for some seconds looking beyond the grass slopes to the trees of the forest; and then, as a group of riders emerged and came straight towards the castle, Jeanne turned to her governess. ‘The King’s court is at Amboise; and here comes the King to visit me.’