The Iron King (26 page)
‘The Templars …’ he said distractedly.
‘What are you talking about?’ said Philip the Fair, frowning.
He disliked this reference to an all-too-recent memory. Because indeed the same thought was present in everyone’s mind. ‘Accursed to the thirteenth generation of your lines.’
But Charles was not thinking of the curse.
‘That night,’ he muttered, ‘that night, they were together.’
‘Charles,’ said the King, ‘you have been a very weak husband; at least try to appear a strong Prince.’
And that was the only word of comfort the young man got from his father.
Monseigneur of Valois had as yet said nothing, and to remain so long silent was a considerable hardship to him. He took advantage of the moment to explode.
‘By God’s blood,’ he cried, ‘there are strange things happening in the kingdom, even under the King’s roof! Chivalry is dying, Sire, my brother, and all honour is dying with it!’
Thereupon he went off into a long diatribe which, beneath an appearance of exaggerated blundering, contained, in fact, a good deal of special pleading. For Valois everything hung together; the King’s counsellors (he did not mention Marigny by name, but his attack was meant for him) were destroying the orders of chivalry, and public morals were foundering for that reason. Jumped-up lawyers kept on inventing God knows what new laws drawn from Roman law, to replace the good old feudal laws which had so well served their ancestors. The result could be seen by all. At the time of the Crusades, wives could be left for years; they knew how to protect their honour and no vassal would have dared ravish them. Nowadays, there was nothing but shame and licence. To think that two equerries …
‘One of those equerries belongs to your household, Brother,’ said the King drily.
‘As the other belongs to your son’s,’ replied Valois, pointing to the Count of Poitiers.
The latter spread out his long hands.
‘Anyone,’ he said, ‘may be deceived by someone in whom he has placed his trust.’
‘That is precisely what I’m saying,’ cried Valois, for whom everything was grist to his mill; ‘that is what I am saying: there is no worse crime a vassal can commit than to seduce and betray the honour of his suzerain’s wife, particularly if she be the wife or daughter of a member of the Royal Family. These two Aunay equerries have almost …’
‘You may consider them dead, Brother,’ interrupted the King with a little gesture of his hand, at once casual and precise, which indicated the most severe of all sentences and destroyed two lives without appeal. ‘They are of no importance. We must decide upon the future of the adulterous Princesses. Permit me, Brother,’ he continued, interrupting Valois, who was about to speak again, ‘permit me, for this once, to ask my sons a few questions first. Louis, speak.’
As he was about to speak, Louis of Navarre was overcome with a bout of coughing and two red patches appeared on his cheeks. He was overwhelmed by shock and anger. His choking was taken in good part.
‘It will be said that my daughter is a bastard,’ he said, when he had regained his breath. ‘That is what they’ll say! A bastard!’
‘If you are the first to say it, Louis,’ remarked the King, much displeased, ‘other people will most certainly not fail to repeat it.’
‘Of course, of course,’ said Charles of Valois, who had not thought of it till that moment, his large blue eyes suddenly shining with a strange light.
‘And why should it not be said, if it is true?’ went on Louis, losing all control.
‘Be quiet, Louis,’ said the King of France, hitting the table with his fist. ‘Will you limit yourself to giving us your advice on the subject of your wife’s punishment.’
‘Let her die!’ replied the King of Navarre. ‘She and the two others. All three of them. Death, death, death to them!’
He repeated ‘death’, his teeth clenched and his hand apparently cutting off heads in the void.
Then Philippe of Poitiers, having asked his father’s permission to speak with a glance, said, ‘You are distracted with pain, Louis. Jeanne has not such a great sin upon her conscience as either Marguerite or Blanche. She is undoubtedly very culpable for having assisted their follies instead of denouncing them to me, and she has lost much in my estimation. But Messire de Nogaret, who generally obtains all the information there is to be got, has been unable to find any evidence that she has betrayed her marriage.’
‘Let her be tortured and you’ll see if she doesn’t confess!’ cried Louis. ‘She has helped to sully my honour and that of Charles, and if you pretend to love us, you will see that she is punished in the same degree as the other two bawds.’
Philippe of Poitiers then made an astonishing reply. It was most revealing of his character. ‘Your honour is dear to me, Louis; but Franche-Comté is no less so.’
All those present looked at each other; and Philippe went on, ‘You, Louis, own Navarre by direct inheritance, which came to you from our mother, and you will have, God willing a long time hence, France. As far as I am concerned, I have but Poitiers, which our father graciously gave me, and I am not even a Peer of France. But, through Jeanne, I am Count Palatine of Burgundy, Lord of Salins, from whose mines I derive the greater part of my revenues, and at Mahaut’s death I shall have the whole county. That’s all. May Jeanne be shut up in a convent for as long as is necessary for all this to be forgotten, even for ever, if it is essential to the honour of the Crown, but let her life be spared.’
Monseigneur Louis of Evreux, who had said nothing until now, agreed with Philippe.
‘My nephew is right, both before God and before the kingdom,’ he said. ‘Death is a grave matter, which will be a great distress for each one of us, and we should not decide upon it for others while in anger.’
Louis of Navarre gave him a nasty look.
There were two clans in the family dating from long before. Uncle Valois had the affection of his two nephews, Louis and Charles, who were weak and malleable, lost in admiration of his loquacity, the prestige of his adventurous life, and the thrones he had lost and conquered. Philippe of Poitiers, on the other hand, was on the side of his uncle of Evreux, a calm, honest, reflective man who, if fate had willed it, would have made a good king of whom no one would ever have heard. He was without ambition and remained perfectly contented with the estates he administered so intelligently. The salient characteristic of his nature was that he was easily obsessed with the idea of death.
Those present were not surprised when, in this family matter, they saw him supporting the position his favourite nephew had taken up; their affinity was well known.
More astonishing was Valois’s attitude, who, after his wild diatribe, now changed front and, for once leaving his dear Louis of Navarre without support, announced that he too was against the death penalty for the Princesses. A convent, certainly, was too light a punishment, but a prison, a fortress for life (he was very positive about this: for life), that was what he advised.
Forbearance was not part of the titular Emperor of Constantinople’s disposition. It was always the result of calculation; and, indeed, this particular calculation had occurred to him when Louis of Navarre mentioned the word bastard. Indeed … indeed, the three sons of Philip the Fair had no male heirs. Louis and Philippe had each a daughter; but now, already, here was the little Jeanne under the grave suspicion of illegitimacy, which might prove an obstacle to her eventual succession to the throne. Charles had had two still-born daughters. If the guilty wives were executed, the three Princes would quickly marry again and have good chances of achieving sons. Whereas, if the Princesses were shut up for
life
, they would still be married and prevented from contracting new unions, and would remain without much posterity. There was of course such a thing as annulment – but adultery was no ground for an annulment. All this passed very rapidly through the imaginative Prince’s head. As certain officers who, going to war, dream of the possibility of all their seniors being killed, and already see themselves promoted to command the army, Uncle Valois, looking at his nephew Louis’s hollow chest, the thin body of his nephew Philippe, thought that disease might well make unexpected ravages. There were, too, such things as hunting accidents, lances that broke accidentally in tournaments, and horses that came down; and, indeed, one knew of many uncles who had survived their nephews.
‘Charles!’ said the man with the unblinking eyes, who for the moment was the one and only true King of France.
Valois started as if he feared that his thoughts had been read.
But Philip the Fair was not speaking to him but to his youngest son. The young Prince took his hands from his face. He had been in tears all the time.
‘Blanche, Blanche, how can she have done it, Father, how can she have done this?’ he groaned. ‘She always said how much she loved me, and showed it so well.’
Isabella felt a wave of impatience and contempt. ‘This love men have for the bodies they have possessed,’ she thought, ‘and the ease with which they swallow lies, provided that they have the physical satisfactions they desire! Is this act, which disgusts me, really so important to them?’
‘Charles,’ insisted the King, as if he were talking to a half-wit, ‘what do you advise should be done with your wife?’
‘I don’t know, Father, I don’t know. I want to hide myself, go away, enter a monastery.
It seemed as if he was on the point of asking to be punished because his wife had deceived him.
Philip the Fair realised that he would get nothing out of him. He looked at his children as if he had never seen them before, and wondered about the value of primogeniture; he thought that nature often served the law of the throne extremely ill. What absurdities might not Louis, his unreflecting, impulsive, cruel eldest son commit as head of the kingdom? And what support to him would be the youngest, this mere rag of a man, who collapsed at the first crisis? The most qualified to reign was undoubtedly the second, Philippe. But it was clear that Louis would never listen to him.
‘What do you advise, Isabella?’ he asked his daughter in a low voice, leaning towards her.
‘A woman who has sinned,’ she replied, ‘should be prevented for ever from transmitting the blood of kings. And the punishment should be known to the people, so that they may realise that the wife or daughter of a king is punished more severely than would be the wife of a serf.’
‘That is sound,’ said the King.
Of all his children, it was undoubtedly she who would have made the best ruler. It was a great pity that she was not a man and born the eldest.
‘Justice will be done before vespers,’ said the King rising.
And he retired to take his final decision, as always, in the company of Marigny and Nogaret.
D
URING THE JOURNEY FROM
Paris to Pontoise, the Countess Mahaut, in her litter, had thought of nothing but of how she was going to attempt to make the King relent, but she found it difficult to think coherently. She was assailed by too many thoughts, too many fears, too great an anger at the folly of her daughters and her cousin, at the stupidity of their husbands, the imprudence of their lovers, against all those who, through frivolity, blindness or sensuality, ran such grave risks of ruining the whole edifice of her power. As the mother of repudiated Princesses, what would Mahaut be? She decided to accuse Marguerite in order to save the other two. After all, Marguerite was not her daughter. Moreover, she was the eldest and one might be able to place the blame on her easily enough for having led the younger ones astray.
Robert of Artois had led the cavalcade at a good pace, as if he wished to demonstrate his zeal. He took pleasure in watching Beatrice d’Hirson’s exquisite bosom moving to the rhythm of their progress; but he enjoyed still more the spectacle of the ex-Canon shaken up and down in the saddle, and above all in listening to the groans of his aunt. Whenever he heard a complaint, as her fat body was shaken by the jolting, Robert increased the pace as if by chance. The Countess sighed with relief when at last the towers of Maubuisson appeared above a line of trees.
Soon the Countess’s cavalcade entered the courtyard of the Castle. Only the sound of the archers’ feet broke the deep silence that reigned over it.
Mahaut got out of her litter and, addressing the Commander of the Guard, asked, ‘Where is the King?’
‘He is distributing justice in the Chapter Hall.’
Followed by Robert, Thierry d’Hirson and Beatrice, Mahaut went rapidly towards the Abbey. She walked quickly and with a firm tread in spite of her fatigue.
The Chapter Hall that day was an unusual spectacle; between the grey pillars, beneath the huge cold vault, there were no nuns at prayer; the whole Court of France was standing motionless and silent before their King.
As Countess Mahaut entered, a few heads turned, and a low murmuring was heard. A voice which was Nogaret’s stopped reading, and the King exchanged a glance with his austere counsellor.
Mahaut found no difficulty in making her way through the crowd; it opened before her. She saw the King, seated upon his throne, his crown upon his head, his sceptre in his hand, his face even colder than usual, his eyes more staring.