The Iron King (27 page)
He did not appear to be of this world. Was he not, in fulfilling his terrible function, brought up as he had been upon the precepts of his grandfather, Saint Louis, the representative of divine justice?
Isabella, Enguerrand de Marigny, Monseigneur of Valois and Monseigneur of Evreux were seated, as were the three Princes and some of the greater barons. Before the platform three young monks, their shaven heads bent low, were kneeling upon the flagstones. Alain de Pareilles, the man charged with every execution, was standing somewhat in the background, at the sovereign’s feet. ‘God be praised,’ thought Mahaut, ‘I have arrived in time. Some matter of sorcery or sodomy is being tried.’
And she hurried forward to reach the platform, where in the nature of things she should take her place, since she was a Peer of the Realm. Suddenly she felt her legs give way beneath her; one of the kneeling penitents had raised his head; she saw that it was her daughter Blanche. The three young ‘monks’ were the three Princesses who had been shaven and clothed in rough fustian. With a low cry Mahaut staggered under the shock, as if she had been hit in the stomach. Automatically, she clutched at her nephew’s arm, because it was the first arm within her reach.
‘Too late, Aunt; alas, we have arrived too late,’ Robert of Artois said simply, savouring his vengeance to the full.
The King made a sign to the Keeper of the Seals who continued his reading.
A succession of degrading scenes passed through the shaven heads of the Princesses of Burgundy at the sound of Nogaret’s hard voice. Mahaut was also affected by their shame, as were the three Princes, the deceived husbands, who, sitting beside their father, lowered their heads as if they themselves were culprits.
‘… in consequence of which and by right of the above evidence and confessions of the above-mentioned Gautier and Philippe d’Aunay, having been proved adultresses, the said Ladies Marguerite and Blanche of Burgundy shall be imprisoned in the fortress of Castle Gaillard, and this for the whole of those days which it may please God shall remain to them.’
‘For life,’ murmured Mahaut; ‘they are condemned to prison for life.’
‘Lady Jeanne, Countess Palatine of Burgundy and Countess of Poitiers,’ continued Nogaret, ‘in respect of the fact that she has not been convicted of having offended the state of matrimony and that this crime cannot in justice be imputed to her, but as it is established that she has been guilty of complicity and culpable complacence, she shall be imprisoned in the Castle of Dourdan for as long as shall be necessary to effect her repentance and during the King’s pleasure.’
There was a moment’s silence during which Mahaut thought, as she looked at Nogaret, ‘He has done it, he’s the dog who has done it all, with his passion for spying, informing and torturing. He’ll pay for this. He’ll pay for it with his life.’ But the Keeper of the Seals had not yet finished reading.
‘The Sieurs Gautier and Philippe d’Aunay, having committed a crime against honour and betrayed their feudal ties upon persons of the Royal Majesty shall be flayed alive, broken upon the wheel, drawn, decapitated and hung from the public gibbet, this upon the morning of the day following today. This is the judgment of our gracious, most powerful and most beloved King.’
The Princesses’ shoulders were seen to quiver at the terrible words announcing the tortures which awaited their lovers. Nogaret rolled up his parchment, and the King rose. The Hall began to empty amid a continuous murmuring within walls more accustomed to echo prayers. People shunned Mahaut, and took care not to catch her eye. She felt all about her the cowardice of human nature. She wished to go to her daughters, but Alain de Pareilles barred the way. ‘No, Madam,’ he said. ‘The King will only permit his sons, should they so desire, to receive the farewells and repentance of their wives.’
She then tried to turn to the King, but he had already left, with Louis of Navarre behind him, choking with rage and humiliation, while Philippe of Poitiers, in the same condition, left without even glancing towards his wife.
‘Mother!’ cried Blanche, seeing Mahaut moving away supported by her Chancellor and Beatrice. Alone of the three deceived husbands, Charles had remained behind. He went up to Blanche, but could do no more than murmur, ‘How could you do this, how could you?’
Blanche trembled all over and shook her shaven head upon which the razor had left red patches. She looked like a bird in moult.
‘I didn’t know … I didn’t want to … Charles,’ she said, bursting into tears.
At that moment Isabella said in a hard voice, ‘No weakness, Charles. Remember you are a Prince.’
Upright beneath her narrow crown, she too had remained, like a guard, a line of contempt about her lips.
At this moment the long-contained fury of Marguerite of Burgundy was released.
‘No weakness, Charles! No pity!’ she cried. ‘Copy your sister, Isabella, who runs no risk of understanding the weaknesses of love. She has nothing but hatred and gall in her heart. But for her, you would never have known. But she hates me, she hates you, she hates us all.’
Isabella crossed her hands upon her breast and gazed at Marguerite with cold anger.
‘May God forgive you your crime,’ she said.
‘He will forgive me my crime more readily than He will make you a happy woman.’
‘I am a Queen,’ replied Isabella. ‘Even if I lack happiness, I have at least a sceptre and a kingdom.’
‘And I, even if I have not had happiness, at least I have known pleasure, which is worth all the crowns of the world, and I regret nothing.’
Face to face with the Queen of England, this woman with her shaven head, her face furrowed with fatigue and tears, had still the strength to insult, wound, and plead for her bodily rights.
‘It was springtime,’ she said in a hurried, breathless voice, ‘there was the love of a man, the warmth and strength of a man, the joy of taking and of being taken, everything of which you know nothing, which you would give your life to know and which you never will. Ah! you can’t be very good in bed since your husband prefers boys!’
Ghastly pale, but incapable of reply, Isabella made a sign to Alain de Pareilles.
‘No,’ cried Marguerite, ‘you can have nothing to say to Messire de Pareilles. He has been at my orders in the past, and perhaps one day will be at my orders again. He will not refuse to go at my orders this once more.’
She turned her back upon the Queen and Charles, and made a sign that she was ready. The three prisoners went out, crossed the corridors and the courtyard under escort, and returned to the room which served as their prison.
When Alain de Pareilles had closed the door upon them, Marguerite ran to the bed and threw herself upon it, biting the sheets.
‘My hair, my beautiful hair,’ sobbed Blanche.
D
AWN CAME SLOWLY FOR
those who had spent the night without rest and without hope, without forgetfulness and without illusion.
In a cell in the prison of Pontoise two men, lying side by side on a heap of straw, were awaiting death. Upon the order of Guillaume de Nogaret, the brothers Aunay had been solicitously cared for. Thus, their wounds no longer bled, their hearts beat more strongly, and some particle of strength had returned to their torn muscles and crushed flesh, the better to suffer and experience the horror of the sentence to which they were condemned.
Neither the condemned Princesses, nor Mahaut, nor the King’s three sons, nor indeed the King himself, slept that night. Nor was Isabella able to sleep; the words of her sister-in-law Marguerite throbbed in her head. Only two men had fallen asleep without difficulty: Nogaret, because he had accomplished his duty, and Robert of Artois because, in order to satisfy his vengeance, he had ridden sixty miles.
A little before prime,
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heavy footsteps sounded on the stones of the corridor; the archers of Messire Alain de Pareilles were come to fetch the Princesses. In the courtyard, three carts draped in black awaited them with an escort of sixty horsemen clothed in leather jerkins, coats of mail and steel helmets. Alain de Pareilles bade the Princesses get on to the carts, gave the signal for departure, and the punitive procession set itself in motion in the clear rose of the morning.
At a window in the castle, the Countess Mahaut stood with her forehead pressed against the pane, her wide shoulders shaking with sobs.
‘Are you weeping, Madam?’ asked Beatrice d’Hirson.
‘It can happen to me too,’ answered Mahaut in a hoarse voice.
Beatrice was dressed to go out.
‘Are you going out?’ said Mahaut.
‘Yes, Madam; I am going to see … if you permit me.’
The Place du Martrai at Pontoise, where the execution of the Aunay brothers was to take place, was already crowded. Townsmen, peasants and soldiers had been flowing into it since dawn. The landlords of the houses giving on to the Place had let their windows at advantageous prices; people could be seen at every opening. The fact that the condemned were noble, that they were young and, above all, that they were lords of that region exacerbated curiosity. And the very nature of their crime, this huge sexual scandal, excited all imaginations.
The scaffold had been built during the night. It was raised six feet above the ground, and the two gibbets rising above it attracted every eye.
The two executioners arrived, their red caps and jerkins heralding their approach from afar. Behind them, their assistants carried the black chests containing their tools. The executioners mounted the scaffold and a sudden silence fell upon the crowd. Then one of the executioners turned one of the wheels with a creak. The crowd laughed as if at a mountebank’s trick. They made jokes, nudged each other, a jug of wine was passed from hand to hand up to the executioners. The crowd applauded as they drank.
As the tumbril containing the brothers Aunay appeared, a great clamour arose, becoming louder as the crowd distinguished the two young men. Neither Gautier nor Philippe was able to move. Without the ropes that bound them to the tumbril’s rail, they would have been unable to remain upright.
A priest had visited their prison to receive their mumbled confessions and the last words to be sent to their family.
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Exhausted, gasping, half-insensible, they were incapable of making any stand against their fate, they had but little realisation of what was happening to them, and wished only for a rapid end to their nightmare and annihilation.
The executioners hoisted them on to the scaffold and stripped them naked.
Seeing them thus, like two huge rose-coloured puppets, the crowd shouted as if at a fair. As the two men were being tied to the wheels, their faces turned towards the sky, a flood of gross and obscene remarks spread across the crowd. Everyone waited. The executioners were leaning against the poles of the gibbets, their arms crossed. Several minutes went by. The crowd began to grow impatient, to ask questions, to become turbulent. Suddenly, the reason for the delay became evident. Three carts draped in black arrived at the entrance to the Place. Nogaret, in agreement with the King, and through a superb refinement of punishment, had ordered that the Princesses should be present at the execution.
Blanche fainted when she saw the two naked bodies tied in the form of crosses to the wheels.
Jeanne, in tears, clutching the side of her cart, screamed to the crowd, ‘Tell my husband, tell Monseigneur Philippe that I am innocent.’
Until that moment she had been able to control herself, but now her nerves gave way, and the crowd laughed at her despair.
Marguerite of Burgundy, alone, had the courage to look at the scaffold, and those about her wondered for a moment if she did not feel an appalling, an atrocious pleasure at seeing, exposed to every eye, rosy under the sun, the man who was about to die for having possessed her.
As the executioners raised their maces to break the bones of the condemned, she cried, ‘Philippe!’ in a voice that seemed far removed from anguish.
Then the maces fell; there was a cracking of bones, and for the brothers Aunay the sky above them went out. With iron hooks, the executioners tore the skin from the insensible bodies; blood flowed down from the scaffold.
The crowd was moved to a sort of hysteria when the two master executioners, with long butchers’ knives, mutilated the two culprit lovers and, at one and the same time, with the precision of jugglers, threw the offending parts high in the air.
The crowd jostled forward the better to see. Women cried to their husbands, ‘This doesn’t mean you can do the same thing, you lecherous old man!’
‘You see what will happen to you!’
‘You deserve as much!’
The bodies were taken down from the wheels and the axes glinted in the sunlight as the heads were cut off. Then, what remained of Gautier and Philippe d’Aunay, those two fair equerries who but a day or two ago were still riding upon the road to Clermont, was hoisted, shapeless bloody masses, on to the forks of the gibbets. And the crows from the neighbouring churches began already to circle about them.