The Strangled Queen

He bent low enough over her to brush her hair with his lips.

‘I am very fond of you, Marguerite; I always have been very fond of you, as you know very well. And now our interests are bound up together. You must succeed in regaining your freedom. And I must give Louis cause for satisfaction, so that I may enjoy his favour. You can see very well that we must be allies.’

While speaking he had put his hand deep into the collar of the Queen of France’s shirt and was stroking her bosom. She made no resistance. On the contrary, she leant her head against her cousin’s heavy wrist and seemed to abandon herself to him.

‘Is it not a pity,’ went on Robert, ‘that so beautiful a body, so soft and comely, should be deprived of the pleasures of the flesh? Accept, Marguerite, and I will take you far from this prison this very day; I shall lead you first to some well-endowed convent where I can visit you frequently and watch over you. What can it really matter to you to declare that your daughter is not Louis’s, since you have never loved the child?’

She raised wary eyes to him and said these appalling words: ‘If I don’t love her, is not that certain proof that she is my husband’s daughter?’

For a moment she seemed to be dreaming, her eyes gazing upwards. The logs shifted on the hearth, lighting up the room with a great fountain of sparks. And Marguerite suddenly began to laugh, revealing her little white teeth; her mouth was all pink inside like a cat’s.

‘Why are you laughing?’ asked Robert.

‘Because of the ceiling,’ she replied, ‘I have just noticed that it is like the ceiling of the Tower of Nesle.’

Artois rose in stupefaction. He couldn’t help feeling a certain admiration for so much cynicism joined to so much cunning. ‘My God, what a woman!’ he thought.

She watched him as he stood enormous in front of the fire, planted on his legs solid as trunks of trees. The flames shone on his red boots, glinted on the gold of his spurs and the silver of his belt. If his capacity for desire were in proportion to the rest of him, there would be enough to atone for all the regrets of seven months’ seclusion!

He raised her up and pulled her to him.

‘Ah, Cousin,’ he said, ‘if only you had married me, or had chosen me as your lover instead of that young fool of an equerry, things would not have turned out for you as they have, and we would have been very happy.’

‘Of course,’ she murmured.

He held her by the waist, and he had the impression that the moment was near when she would cease to be able to think.

‘It is not too late, Marguerite,’ he said softly.

‘Perhaps not,’ she replied in a hoarse, consenting voice.

‘Let’s get rid of this letter now, so that we need have no concern but ourselves. Let’s tell the Chaplain, who is waiting below, to come up.’

She started away from him.

‘Waiting below, did you say?’ she cried, her eyes bright with anger. ‘Oh, Cousin, do you think I am such a fool as all that? You have behaved towards me as whores normally do towards men, arousing their sensuality the better to bend them to their will. But you forget that in that line women are better than men, and you are no more than an apprentice.’

Angry, tensely upright, she defied him and re-knotted the collar of her shirt.

He tried to persuade her that she had misunderstood him, that he wanted nothing but her good, that their conversation had taken an unexpected turn, that he had suddenly remembered the poor priest freezing at the bottom of the staircase.

She looked at him with scorn and irony. He picked her up, though she did her best to defend herself, and carried her roughly to the bed.

‘No, I shall not sign,’ she cried, fighting against him. ‘You can rape me if you like, because you are too strong for me to be able to resist you, but I shall tell the Chaplain, I shall tell Bersumée, I shall let Marigny know what sort of ambassador you are and how you have taken advantage of me.’

Furiously angry, he let her go, restraining himself from slapping her face as he felt inclined to do.

‘Never, do you see,’ she went on, ‘will you get me to admit that my daughter is not Louis’s, for should Louis die, which I hope he does with all my heart, my daughter would become Queen of France and then people would have to take some account of me as Queen Mother.’

For a moment Artois remained silent in astonishment. ‘What she says makes sense, the clever bitch,’ he said to himself, ‘and if by chance fate should prove her right …’ He was checkmated.

‘It’s an unlikely chance,’ he replied all the same.

‘I have no other, so I shall hang on to it.’

‘As you will, Cousin,’ he said, going to the door.

His double failure made him extremely angry. He went down the stairs, found the Chaplain waiting for him, chilled to the bone, a bunch of goose-quills in his hand.

‘Monseigneur,’ said the Priest, ‘you won’t forget to say to Brother Renaud …’

‘Yes,’ shouted Artois, ‘I’ll tell him that you’re an ass, my fine fellow; I don’t know where the hell you manage to find weaknesses in your penitents!’

Then he called, ‘Escort! To horse!’

Bersumée arrived, still wearing the helmet which had not left his head since morning.

‘What are my orders, Monseigneur?’ he asked.

‘What, your orders? Obey those you already have.’

‘And my furniture?’

‘I don’t care a damn about your furniture.’

Artois’s great Norman horse was already being led out to him, and Lormet held the stirrup ready.

‘And who will pay for the food, Monseigneur?’ asked Bersumée.

‘You will get it from Messire de Marigny! Go and lower the drawbridge!’

Artois hoisted himself athletically into the saddle and set off at a mad gallop, followed by his whole escort.

Soon in the falling darkness nothing was to be seen upon the slopes of Château-Gaillard but the sparks struck by the horses’ shoes.

4

Long Live the King!

THE FLAMES OF THOUSANDS of tapers, arranged in clusters against the pillars, threw their wavering light upon the effigies of the Kings of France; ever and again the long stone faces seemed to assume the mobile expressiveness of a dream world, and one might have thought that an army of knights was sleeping an enchanted sleep in the middle of a flaming forest.

In the basilica of Saint-Denis, the royal necropolis, the Court was attending the burial of Philip the Fair.

Drawn side by side in the central nave, facing the new tomb, the whole Capet tribe were present in sombre and sumptuous mourning: the princes of the blood, the lay peers, the ecclesiastical peers, the members of the Inner Council, the Grand Almoners, the High Constable, indeed all the principal dignitaries of the Crown.

The Lord Chamberlain, followed by five officers of the household,

advanced with solemn tread to the edge of the open vault into which the body had already been lowered, threw into the cavity the carved wand which was the insignia of his office, and pronounced the formula which officially marked the change of reign: ‘The King is dead! Long live the King!’