In another moment the Duke was beaten off his mule on to the frozen paving-stones. Seventeen axes were aimed at him; blow after blow fell heavily; his head was cloven, his brains gushed out into the street. His servants had all fled and left him there, save one of his squires who had been his page (a German, says Monstrelet; a Fleming, says the Monk), who, more constant than Orleans’ compatriots, flung himself upon the body of his master, and was pierced and slaughtered there. When both were murdered the assassins dragged the body of Orleans across the street, propped it up against a heap of mud that was standing frozen there, and lighting a torch of straw, they looked to see if he were really dead. A woman, a cobbler’s wife, looking from a garret window, saw it all, and set up a shriek of “Murder, murder!” “Peace, harlot,” cried the armed men in the street, and began to shoot their arrows at the open casement. At that moment a man with a scarlet hood drawn well over his face, came out of the house opposite, and struck the dead body with his club. “Put out the light. He’s dead. Let us go.” The eighteen assassins rode away in great merriment, sowing caltrops after them; but before they left they set fire to the house where, for the last fortnight, Jean-sans-Peur had kept them hidden. The flames of the burning Hôtel de l’Image streamed up through the darkness of the night, awakening the city, and shedding a strange light on the murdered body of Orleans, still propped up in a sitting posture, his wounded head hanging on one side. Just then a nephew of Maréchal de Rieulx, whose great Hôtel stood opposite, a young man, one of Orleans’ squires, rode up as he left his uncle’s house, and saw his master sitting thus dead, the left hand off, the right arm hanging by a thread. A little distance off, on the stones of the street, lay the page, dying in his faithful youth, murmuring still in his German language, “Ach, my master!” At his side, on the ground, was a white hand severed from the wrist. Close by there lay a fallen glove. The young squire gave the alarm and the dead bodies were carried into the Hôtel de Rieulx.
There was wailing and mourning in the house of Orleans, grief and horror in the house of the King. The deed was soon known, though as yet it was only surmised that one Raoul d’Actonville, a dismissed steward, had wreaked in this ghastly fashion his spite against his master. The next day the royal princes, all in black, with a great multitude of the people of Paris, brought the murdered Duke to the church of St. Guillaume, close at hand. He who had ever loved the good through all his wickedness, lay now among the watching friars, who sang psalms and repeated vigils day and night for his soul; there he lay until they took him to be buried in his own chapel of the Celestines, which is called the Blancs-Manteaux to-day. The people followed him with torches, remembering only his gay and gracious qualities, his capricious generosity, his gentle raillery, his rhetoric and eloquence, how he had loved learning, and that he had often lived as a monk for days among the Celestines. All Paris wept, those also who had prayed Jesus Christ in heaven to deliver them from Orleans; even Burgundy went in the funeral procession, all in black, weeping also. But when the funeral was over Jean-sans-Peur took Berri and the King of Sicily aside: “I had it done. I slew him. It was an inspiration of the demon’s.”
XIII.
There were two women, who were not at the burial, to whom the death of Orleans came nearer than to any mourner there. When Isabel heard that Orleans was slain she went in terror of her life. Ill as she was, she had herself carried in a litter to St. Paul’s, taking shelter there in the arms of her mad husband, and so soon as she was fit for travel the poor, light, beautiful, little Queen went out of Paris, far away from Burgundy, far, too, from that maimed and slaughtered body lying in the chapel of the Celestines. Terrified, indifferent, she could think of nothing but her own imaginary danger.
The mistress and the wife took the matter in a very different spirit. At first, in her transports of sorrow, Valentine could not act. She tore out her hair and shred her garments; she sobbed so much, that for weeks afterwards her voice was hoarse. But when the first paroxysm was over her strong Italian character centred itself upon one fixed idea—justice, vengeance for her murdered husband. Valentine had no thought of her own safety. She sent her two elder sons and her girl into Blois, and then, with the Princess Isabel and little John, her youngest child, on either hand, the Duchess of Orleans set out from Château-Thierry for Paris.
Travelling was slow that terrible winter. It was not till the 10th of December that Valentine entered the capital. She, her children, her servants, were all dressed very plainly and roughly, and, of course, in black. The King of Sicily and the Duke of Berri came out to meet them. When they reached the palace Valentine threw herself upon her knees before the King, demanding justice. The poor Charles (azzez subtil pour lors) raised her up and kissed her, while they both wept together. He promised strict justice upon Burgundy. Again, ten days later, he declared, “What is done to my only brother is done to me.” Valentine and her children, satisfied of vengeance, retired to their great hotel in the Marais.
The King fell ill again so soon as Valentine had left him. “They say,... but I affirm nothing,” suggests the Monk. Valentine the witch stayed on, however, among the people who had murdered her husband. One thing that we learn of Valentine at this moment shows us how profound, how selfless was her love of Orleans. She sought out his bastard—the little John, afterwards Count of Dunois, the son of Mariette de Canny—and brought him up with her own children. It even seemed as though she loved him more than the others. Glancing from the poetic Charles, the delicate Philip, the child John, to his determined and eager little face, she exclaimed, “None of your brothers is more fit than you to avenge your father. Nature has cheated me of you!”
To avenge your father! This had become the unique preoccupation of Valentine. But that promised vengeance tarried long. On the 8th of March a learned doctor of theology, the chosen advocate of Burgundy, a certain Maître Jean Petit, excused the murder of Orleans before the King. “Il est licite d’occire un Tyran.”
It was not only of tyranny that the Burgundians accused their victim. The tremendous accusation of Jean Petit (which every student of the past has read in Monstrelet) enumerates attempted regicide, and secret poisoning, sorcery, necromancy, charms, incantations. “Sorcery, high treason against God, and regicide, high treason against the King. There is also tyranny,” says Maître Jean Petit. It was of course for this third cause, treason against the people, that Orleans’ murder was condoned in Paris.
For the people never hid their support of Jean-sans-Peur. Those who had wept at the funeral of Orleans were ready now to cry again the cry of Burgundy. The King, whose mind was again overcast, although he was not actually mad, the King himself on the 9th of April, 1408, signed letters patent granting pardon to Jean-sans-Peur. “Our very dear and well-beloved cousin of Burgundy, who for the public good and out of faith and loyalty to us, has caused to be put out of this world our said brother of Orleans.” This was the last insult to his memory. Valentine would not brook it; she rallied to the charge. Though she herself had been seriously implicated in the tissue of villainy which his murderers had woven about the memory of her husband, Valentine had no thoughts to spare for her own safety. All through July and August she kept agitating against Burgundy. Bringing her children with her she sought the King and cried on her knees for justice. Twenty years’ exile for Burgundy! Her two advocates, Sérisi and Cousinet pleaded eloquently for her; refuting the vile accusations of poison and sorcery with a candour, a logic, a fine and modern spirit worthy of the intellect of the dead man they defended. It was all no use. “The Parisians,” says Monstrelet, “loved so well this Duke of Burgundy; because they believed that if he undertook the government, he would put down throughout the kingdom all salt taxes, imposts, dues, and subsidies which were to the prejudice of the people.” Though nearly all the royal Princes were openly on the side of Valentine, the King did not dare avenge his brother. The Court was impotent against the people.