The Iron King (29 page)
E
IGHT DAYS AFTER THE
execution of the Aunay brothers and the sentence pronounced upon the Princesses, the people of Paris had already adopted a story in which cruelty, shame and love each played their part. By an unconscious simplification, the whole story centred upon Marguerite of Navarre. No longer was a single lover attributed to her, but ten, fifty. People looked at the Tower of Nesle with terror. And there, when night had fallen, guards watched at the foot of the walls, pike in hand, ready to drive off anyone so rashly curious as to be attracted to the accursed spot. For the affair was not over yet. There was murmuring of strange things in the streets. Too many corpses had been recovered from the river in that locality during the last few days, and it was said that Monseigneur Louis le Hutin, shut up in his Palace, was torturing those of his servants who might have been privy to his wife’s adultery, and that he threw their bodies into the Seine.
That morning, beautiful Beatrice d’Hirson left the Countess Mahaut’s house at an early hour. It was the beginning of May and the sun played upon the windows of the houses. Beatrice went on her way unhurriedly, delighted to feel the warm breeze upon her face. Her body loved warmth; she savoured the scent of early spring and took pleasure in attracting the glances of men, particularly those of lowly condition. ‘If they but knew what I was doing! If they but knew what I carry in my purse!’ she thought amusedly.
She reached the Saint-Eustache quarter and soon came to the rue des Bourdonnais. It was a strange place with a secret life of its own. The public scribes had their shops there, as had the wax-merchants, for these manufactured the writing-tablets, as well as tapers, candles and polishes. But a strange traffic was carried on in many of the back rooms of the rue des Bourdonnais. With infinite precautions the mysterious ingredients needed by those who practised sorcery could be bought here for gold: powdered snakes, ground toads, cats’ brains, tongues of the hanged, bawds’ hairs, and all kinds of plants from which love-philtres were made or the poisons with which enemies could be destroyed. This all gave excellent reason to those who called this narrow street, where the Devil bought and sold wax, the prime material for casting spells, the ‘street of the sorcerers’.
Casually, unhurriedly, looking about her, Beatrice d’Hirson entered a shop whose painted sign bore the following inscription:
ENGELBERT
FURNISHES TAPERS AND CANDLES
TO THE ROYAL COURT
AND MANY CHURCHES AND CHAPELS
The shop, wedged between two houses, was long, low and dark. From the ceiling hung every size of taper and, upon large shelves fixed to the wall, lay bundles of candles tied in dozens as well as cakes of the brown, red and green wax used for seals. The air was heavy with the smell of wax and everything felt rather greasy to the touch.
The shopkeeper, a little old man wearing a large bonnet of brown holland, was poking the embers of a furnace and attending to his moulds. As soon as he saw Beatrice, his face crumpled into a wide toothless smile.
‘Master Engelbert,’ said Beatrice, ‘I have come at once to pay you the bill from the Hôtel d’Artois.’
‘That is very kind of you, my beautiful young lady, because business is very bad. Purchase tax,
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that invention of the Devil, is killing us. Indeed, I really don’t know whether I shall be able to keep my shop open much longer!’ said Master Engelbert, wiping his dirty hands on his apron.
He went to a corner of the room and came back with a tablet which he consulted with a frown. ‘Let us see if we agree the figure!’
‘I am sure that we shall agree upon it,’ said Beatrice softly, placing several pieces of silver in the shopkeeper’s hand.
‘Well, well, that’s the way to go about things; I only wish more people would do likewise!’ said the fellow, laughing as he counted the money.
Then he added, with an air of complicity, ‘I shall call your protégé. I am well pleased with him, because he works willingly and talks little. Master Everard!’
The man who came in from the back of the shop was about thirty years old, thin but solidly built. His face was bony, his eyes dark and sunken, his lips thin. He limped and his limping made him grimace nervously from time to time.
He was an ex-Knight Templar of the Commandery of Artois. Having been tortured for twelve hours, he had escaped from his executioners, but that one night of inhuman suffering, of which his crushed foot was a constant reminder, had left him slightly crazy. He had lost his faith; and had learnt to hate. He lived only for the vision of revenge. Without the tic which from time to time suddenly twisted his face, and without the disquieting wildness of his eyes, he would not have been lacking in a certain rough charm. He had come one day to take refuge, like a hunted animal, in the stables of the Hôtel d’Artois. Beatrice had placed him with Engelbert, who fed him, gave him a bed to lie upon and, above all, provided him with an alibi for the agents of the Provost; in exchange for this, the ex-Knight, besides doing the rough work, kept the accounts and sent out the bills.
As he did each time Beatrice came to the shop, Master Engelbert pretended that he had an urgent appointment and went out. He went without anxiety. Other clients might come; Everard would never hand over goods without payment. As for the traffic in wax for casting spells, Engelbert preferred that it should take place out of his sight and that somebody else should be responsible for it. He wished to know nothing of it, and was content merely to put the money in his pocket.
As soon as they were alone, the ex-Templar seized Beatrice by the hands and said, ‘Come.’
The young woman followed him, passed through a curtain which he raised for her, and found herself in the store where Master Engelbert kept the cakes of raw wax, casks of tallow, and parcels of wicks. This was where Everard slept, lying on a narrow pallet squeezed between an old chest and the leprous wall.
‘My castle, my domain, the Commandery of the Chevalier Everard,’ he said with bitter irony, indicating with a wild gesture of his hand the dark and sordid habitation. ‘All the same it is better than death,’ he added.
Then, taking Beatrice by her shoulders, he pulled her to him.
‘And you,’ he murmured, ‘are better than eternity.’
The more Beatrice’s voice grew slow and calm, so Everard’s became excited.
Beatrice smiled with that air she always wore and which seemed vaguely to mock both men and things; she gazed at the ex-Templar’s forehead. She felt a perverse joy in knowing that people were in her power. Indeed, this man was doubly at her mercy, in the first place because he was a secret fugitive and she could give him up at any moment; and also because he had an erotic obsession for her. While he feverishly passed his hands over her body, which she suffered with her usual placidity, she said, ‘You must be pleased. The Pope is dead.’
‘Yes … yes …’ said Everard, a savage joy lighting up his eyes. ‘His doctors made him eat powdered emeralds. An excellent remedy which pierces the bowels. Whoever they are, those doctors are friends of mine. The curse begins to work out, Beatrice. One of them is dead already. The hand of God strikes swiftly, particularly when assisted by the hand of man.’
‘And the Devil’s too,’ she said smiling.
She did not appear to notice that he had raised her skirt. The ex-Templar’s wax-covered fingers caressed her fine, smooth, warm thigh.
‘Do you want to help the curse to work again?’ she went on.
‘Upon whom?’
‘The man to whom you owe your crushed foot.’
‘Nogaret,’ murmured Everard.
He stepped back a pace, and three times his face twitched with the tic.
She went close to him.
‘You can avenge yourself if you will,’ she said. ‘Doesn’t he buy his lights here?’
Everard looked at her without understanding what she meant.
‘Don’t you make his candles?’ she went on.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘they are the same as those we deliver for the King’s apartment.’
‘What sort of candles are they?’
‘Long candles of white wax with specially treated wicks which give very little smoke. He also uses long yellow tapers in his house. But he only uses these particular candles when he sits up to work late and he needs no more than two dozen a week.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I know it from his concierge who comes to fetch them by the gross. For we do not deliver them ourselves; it is not so easy to gain admittance to his house. The dog is suspicious and guards himself well.’
He pointed to some parcels on a shelf.
‘Look, his next consignment is already prepared and also the King’s which is beside it … and to think that it is I,’ he added in sudden anger, beating his breast, ‘that it is I who have to prepare the candles with which he lights all the crimes his mind conceives. Whenever I see those parcels going to him, I long to spit upon them with the devil’s poison.’
Beatrice still smiled.
‘I can tell you a better one than that,’ she said. ‘There is no need to come face to face with Nogaret if you wish to strike him down. I know how to poison a candle.’
‘Is it possible?’ asked Everard.
‘He who breathes its flame for an hour never sees another unless it be the flames of Hell. It is a method which leaves no trace and has no remedy.’
‘How do you know of it?’
‘Oh … well!’ said Beatrice shrugging her shoulders and lowering her eyes, as if it were a matter of coquetry. ‘It is only a question of mixing a powder with the wax.’
‘And why should you wish … ?’ said Everard.
She pulled him by the shoulder, placing her mouth close to his ear as if about to kiss him.
‘Because there are other people besides yourself,’ she whispered, ‘who wish to avenge themselves. Believe me, you risk nothing.’
Everard thought for a moment. He was breathing quickly and harshly. His eyes grew brighter, more intelligent.
‘Then we must hurry,’ he said, the words falling over each other. ‘I may have to leave here soon. Don’t tell anyone of this, but the nephew of the Grand Master, Messire Jean de Longwy, has begun to take account of us. He has also sworn to avenge Messire de Molay. We are not all dead, in spite of that dog’s hounding us. The other day, I saw one of my old brothers, Jean Dupré, who brought me a message, telling me to prepare to go to Langres. It would be a fine thing to be able to take to Messire de Longwy the soul of Nogaret as a present. When can you give me the powder?’
‘Here it is,’ said Beatrice, opening her purse.
She handed Everard a little bag which he opened cautiously. The bag contained two ill-mixed materials, one grey, the other white and crystalline.
‘That is ash,’ said Everard, pointing to the grey powder.
‘Yes,’ she replied, ‘the ash of the tongue of a man who was killed by Nogaret – to bring the Devil upon him and make no mistake about it.’ She pointed to the white powder, ‘That is Pharaoh’s Serpent.
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Don’t be afraid. It can kill only when burning. When will you make the candle?’
‘At once,’ said Everard.
‘Have you time? Won’t Engelbert come back?’
‘Not before a good hour is out. You will keep watch in case a customer should come.’
He went and fetched the brazier, bringing it into the storeroom, and poked the embers. Then he took a candle which had been prepared for the Keeper of the Seals, placed it in a mould and set it to melt. Then he slit it down its length with a knife and tipped the contents of the bag into it.
Beatrice, in the shop, looked like a customer who was waiting to be attended to, but through a chink in the curtain she watched Everard, his face lit up by the embers, limping busily about the brazier. In the meantime she muttered the words of a spell in which the Christian name of Guillaume was repeated three times. Everard went and cooled the candle in a vat of water.
‘There,’ he said, ‘it is done. You can come back.’
The candle had been remade and showed no trace whatever of the operation.
‘For a man who is more accustomed to handle a sword, it is a pretty good piece of work,’ said Everard with a cruel, self-satisfied air.
And he went to replace the candle where he had taken it from.
‘Let us hope that it is a good harbinger of eternity.’
The poisoned candle, in the middle of the packet and indistinguishable from the others, was like the winning prize in a lottery. Upon which day would the servant whose duty it was to furnish the candelabras of the Keeper of the Seals pull that particular one out? Seeing the King’s candles next to them, Beatrice laughed lightly, but already Everard had come back to her and taken her in his arms.
‘It is perhaps the last time I shall see you.’
‘It may be … or it may not,’ she said, screwing up her eyes.
He carried her, utterly unresisting, to the pallet.
‘How did you manage to remain chaste when you were a Templar?’ she asked.
‘I never could remain so,’ he replied in a low voice.