THE IRON
KING

Book One of The Accursed Kings

Maurice Druon

Translated from French by

Humphrey Hare

Copyright

HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Rupert Hart-Davis 1956

Century edition 1985

Arrow edition 1987

Published by HarperVoyager

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 2013

1

Copyright © Maurice Druon 1955

Maurice Druon asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Source ISBN: 9780007491254

Ebook Edition © 2013 ISBN: 9780007492213

Version: 2016-10-14

‘History is a novel that has been lived’

E. & J. DE GONCOURT

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Epigraph

Foreword: George R.R. Martin

The Characters in this Book

Map

Family Tree

The Iron King

Prologue

Part One: A Curse

1. The Loveless Queen

2. The Prisoners in the Temple

3. The Royal Daughters-in-law

4. At the Great Door of Notre-Dame

5. Marguerite of Burgundy, Queen of Navarre

6. What Happened at the King’s Council

7. The Tower of Love

8. ‘I summon to the Tribunal of Heaven …’

9. The Cut-throats

Part Two: The Adulterous Princesses

1. The Tolomei Bank

2. The Road to London

3. At Westminster

4. The Debt

5. The Road to Neauphle

6. The Road to Clermont

7. Like Father, Like Daughter

8. Mahaut of Burgundy

9. The Blood Royal

10. The Judgment

11. The Place du Martrai

12. The Horseman in the Dusk

Part Three: The Hand of God

1. The Rue des Bourdonnais

2. The Tribunal of the Shadows

3. The Documents of a Reign

4. The King’s Summer

5. Power and Money

6. Tolomei Wins

7. Guccio’s Secrets

8. The Meet at Pont-Sainte-Maxence

9. A Great Shadow over the Kingdom

The Strangled Queen,Book Two

Footnote

Author’s Acknowledgements

Historical Notes

Also by Maurice Druon

About the Publisher

Foreword
GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

Over the years, more than one reviewer has described my fantasy series, A Song of Ice and Fire, as historical fiction about history that never happened, flavoured with a dash of sorcery and spiced with dragons. I take that as a compliment. I have always regarded historical fiction and fantasy as sisters under the skin, two genres separated at birth. My own series draws on both traditions … and while I undoubtedly drew much of my inspiration from Tolkien, Vance, Howard, and the other fantasists who came before me, A Game of Thrones and its sequels were also influenced by the works of great historical novelists like Thomas B. Costain, Mika Waltari, Howard Pyle … and Maurice Druon, the amazing French writer who gave us the The Accursed Kings, seven splendid novels that chronicle the downfall of the Capetian kings and the beginnings of the Hundred Years War.

Druon’s novels have not been easy to find, especially in English translation (and the seventh and final volume was never translated into English at all). The series has twice been made into a television series in France, and both versions are available on DVD … but only in French, undubbed, and without English subtitles. Very frustrating for English-speaking Druon fans like me.

The Accursed Kings has it all. Iron kings and strangled queens, battles and betrayals, lies and lust, deception, family rivalries, the curse of the Templars, babies switched at birth, she-wolves, sin, and swords, the doom of a great dynasty … and all of it (well, most of it) straight from the pages of history. And believe me, the Starks and the Lannisters have nothing on the Capets and Plantagenets.

Whether you’re a history buff or a fantasy fan, Druon’s epic will keep you turning pages. This was the original game of thrones. If you like A Song of Ice and Fire, you will love The Accursed Kings.

George R.R. Martin

The Characters in this Book

THE KING OF FRANCE:

PHILIP IV, called Philip the Fair, aged 46, grandson of Saint Louis.

HIS BROTHERS:

MONSEIGNEUR CHARLES, Count of Valois, Titular Emperor of Constantinople, Count of Romagna, aged 44.

MONSEIGNEUR LOUIS, Count of Evreux, about 40 years old.

HIS SONS:

LOUIS, King of Navarre, aged 25.

PHILIPPE, COUNT of Poitiers, aged 21.

CHARLES, aged 20.

HIS DAUGHTER:

ISABELLA, Queen of England, aged 22, wife of King Edward II.

HIS DAUGHTERS-IN-LAW:

MARGUERITE OF BURGUNDY, aged about 21, wife of Louis, daughter of the Duke of Burgundy, granddaughter of Saint Louis.

JEANNE OF BURGUNDY, aged about 21, daughter of the Count Palatine of Burgundy, wife to Philippe.

BLANCHE OF BURGUNDY, her sister, aged about 18, wife to Charles.

HIS MINISTERS AND JUSTICIARS:

ENGUERRAND LE PORTIER DE MARIGNY, aged 52, Coadjutor and Rector of the Kingdom.

GUILLAUME DE NOGARET, aged 54, Keeper of the Seals and Secretary-General of the Kingdom.

HUGUES DE BOUVILLE, Grand Chamberlain.

THE ARTOIS BRANCH, DESCENDED FROM A BROTHER OF SAINT LOUIS:

ROBERT III OF ARTOIS, Lord of Conches, Count of Beaumont-le-Roger, aged 27.

MAHAUT, his aunt, aged about 40, widow of the Count Palatine of Burgundy, Countess of Artois, a peer of France, mother of Jeanne and Blanche of Burgundy and cousin of Marguerite of Burgundy.

THE TEMPLARS:

JACQUES DE MOLAY, aged 71, Grand Master of the Order of Knights Templar.

GEOFFROY DE CHARNEY, Preceptor of Normandy.

EVERARD, one-time Knight of the Order of Templars.

THE LOMBARDS:

SPINELLO TOLOMEI, a Siennese banker living in Paris.

GUCCIO BAGLIONI, his nephew, aged about 18.

THE BROTHERS AUNAY:

GAUTIER, son of the Chevalier d’Aunay, aged about 23, Equerry to the Count of Poitiers.

PHILIPPE, his brother, aged about 21, Equerry to the Count of Valois.

THE CRESSAY FAMILY:

DAME ELIABEL, widow of the Squire of Cressay, aged about 40.

PIERRE AND JEAN, her sons, aged 20 and 22.

MARIE, her daughter, aged 16.

AND THESE:

JEAN DE MARIGNY, Archbishop of Sens, younger brother of Enguerrand de Marigny.

BEATRICE D’HIRSON, first lady-in-waiting to the Countess Mahaut, aged about 20.

The Iron King

The Grand Master felt surging within him one of those half-crazy rages which had so often come upon him in his prison, making him shout aloud and beat the walls. He felt that he was upon the point of committing some violent and terrible act – he did not know exactly what – but he felt the impulse to do something.

He accepted death almost as a deliverance, but he could not accept an unjust death, nor dying dishonoured. Accustomed through long years to war, he felt it stir for the last time in his old veins. He longed to die fighting.

He sought the hand of Geoffroy de Charnay, his old companion in arms, the last strong man still standing at his side, and clasped it tightly.

Raising his eyes, the Preceptor saw the arteries beating upon the sunken temples of the Grand Master. They quivered like blue snakes.

The procession reached the Bridge of Notre-Dame.

Prologue

At the beginning of the fourteenth century, Philip IV, a king of legendary personal beauty, reigned over France as absolute master. He had defeated the warrior pride of the great barons, the rebellious Flemings, the English in Aquitaine, and even the Papacy which he had proceeded to install at Avignon. Parliaments obeyed his orders and councils were in his pay.

He had three adult sons to ensure his line. His daughter was married to King Edward II of England. He numbered six other kings among his vassals, and the web of his alliances extended as far as Russia.

He left no source of wealth untapped. He had in turn taxed the riches of the Church, despoiled the Jews, and made extortionate demands from the community of Lombard bankers. To meet the needs of the Treasury he debased the coinage. From day to day the gold piece weighed less and was worth more. Taxes were crushing: the police multiplied. Economic crises led to ruin and famine which, in turn, caused uprisings which were bloodily put down. Rioting ended upon the forks of the gibbet. Everyone must accept the royal authority and obey it or be broken by it.

This cruel and dispassionate prince was concerned with the ideal of the nation. Under his reign France was great and the French wretched.

One power alone had dared stand up to him: the Sovereign Order of the Knights Templar. This huge organisation, at once military, religious and commercial, had acquired its fame and its wealth from the Crusades.

Philip the Fair was concerned at the Templars’ independence, while their immense wealth excited his greed. He brought against them the greatest prosecution in recorded history, since there were nearly fifteen thousand accused. It lasted seven years, and during its course every possible infamy was committed.

This story begins at the end of the seventh year.

PART ONE
A CURSE

1
The Loveless Queen

A HUGE LOG, LYING UPON a bed of red-hot embers, flamed in the fireplace. The green, leaded panes of the windows permitted the pale light of a March day to filter into the room.

Sitting upon a high oaken chair, its back surmounted by the three lions of England, her chin cupped in her hand, her feet resting upon a red cushion, Queen Isabella, wife of Edward II, gazed vaguely, unseeingly, at the glow in the hearth.

She was twenty-two years old, her complexion clear, pretty and without blemish. She wore her golden hair coiled in two long tresses upon each side of her face like the handles of an amphora.

She was listening to one of her French Ladies reading a poem of Duke William of Aquitaine.

D’amour ne dois-je plus dire de bien

Car je n’en ai ni peu ni rien,

Car je n’en ai qui me convient …

The sing-song voice of the reader was lost in this room which was too large for women to be able to live in happily.

Bientôt m’en irai en exil,

En grande peur, en grand péril …

The loveless Queen sighed.

‘How beautiful those words are,’ she said. ‘One might think that they had been written for me. Ah! the time has gone when great lords were as practised in poetry as in war. When did you say he lived? Two hundred years ago! One could swear that it had been written yesterday.’

And she repeated to herself:

D’amour ne dois-je plus dire de bien

Car je n’en ai ni peu ni rien …

For a moment she was lost in thought.

‘Shall I go on, Madam?’ asked the reader, her finger poised on the illuminated page.

‘No, my dear,’ replied the Queen. ‘My heart has wept enough for today.’

She sat up straight in her chair, and in an altered voice said, ‘My cousin, Robert of Artois, has announced his coming. See that he is shewn in to me as soon as he arrives.’

‘Is he coming from France? Then you’ll be happy to see him, Madam.’

‘I hope to be … if the news he brings is good.’

The door opened and another French lady entered, breathless, her skirts raised the better to run. She had been born Jeanne de Joinville and was the wife of Sir Roger Mortimer.

‘Madam, Madam,’ she cried, ‘he has talked.’

Really?’ the Queen replied. ‘And what did he say?’

‘He banged the table, Madam, and said: “Want!”’

A look of pride crossed Isabella’s beautiful face.

‘Bring him to me,’ she said.

Lady Mortimer ran out and came back an instant later carrying a plump, round, rosy infant of fifteen months whom she deposited at the Queen’s feet. He was clothed in a red robe embroidered with gold, which weighed more than he did.

‘Well, Messire my son, so you have said: “Want”,’ said Isabella, leaning down to stroke his cheek. ‘I’m pleased that it should have been the first word you uttered: it’s the speech of a king.’

The infant smiled at her, nodding his head.

‘And why did he say it?’ the Queen went on.

‘Because I refused him a piece of the cake we were eating,’ Lady Mortimer replied.

Isabella gave a brief smile, quickly gone.

‘Since he has begun to talk,’ she said, ‘I insist that he be not encouraged to lisp nonsense, as children so often are. I’m not concerned that he should be able to say “Papa” and “Mamma”. I should prefer him to know the words “King” and “Queen”.’

There was great natural authority in her voice.

‘You know, my dear,’ she said, ‘the reasons that induced me to select you as my son’s governess. You are the great-niece of the great Joinville who went to the crusades with my great-grandfather, Monsieur Saint Louis. You will know how to teach the child that he belongs to France as much as to England.’¹ fn1

Lady Mortimer bowed. At this moment the first French lady returned, announcing Monseigneur Count Robert of Artois.

The Queen sat up very straight in her chair, crossing her white hands upon her breast in the attitude of an idol. Though her perpetual concern was to appear royal, it did not age her.

A sixteen-stone step shook the floor-boards.

The man who entered was six feet tall, had thighs like the trunks of oak-trees, and hands like maces. His red boots of Cordoba leather were ill-brushed, still stained with mud; the cloak hanging from his shoulders was large enough to cover a bed. With the dagger at his side, he looked as if he were going to the wars. Wherever he might be, everything about him seemed fragile, feeble, and weak. His chin was round, his nose short, his jaw powerful and his stomach strong. He needed more air to breathe than the common run of men. This giant of a man was twenty-seven years old, but his age was difficult to determine beneath the muscle, and he might well have been thirty-five.

He took his gloves off as he approached the Queen, went down on one knee with surprising nimbleness in one so large, then stood erect again without even allowing time to be invited to do so.

‘Well, Messire, my Cousin,’ said Isabella, ‘did you have a good crossing?’

‘Horrible, Madam, quite appalling,’ replied Robert of Artois. ‘There was a storm to make you bring up your guts and your soul. I thought my last hour had come and began to confess my sins to God. Fortunately, there were so many that we’d arrived before I’d had time to recite the half of them. I’ve still got sufficient for the return journey.’

He burst out laughing and the windows shook.

‘And, by God,’ he went on, ‘I’m more suited to travelling upon dry land than crossing salt water. And if it weren’t for the love of you, Madam, my Cousin, and for the urgent tidings I have for you …’

‘Do you mind if I finish with him, cousin,’ said Isabella, interrupting him.

She pointed to the child.

‘My son has begun to talk today.’

Then to Lady Mortimer: ‘I want him to get accustomed to the names of his relatives and he should know, as soon as possible, that his grandfather, Philip the Fair, is King of France. Start repeating to him the Pater and the Ave, and also the prayer to Monsieur Saint Louis. These are things that must be instilled into his heart even before he can understand them with his reason.’

She was not displeased to be able to show one of her French relations, himself a descendant of a brother of Saint Louis, how she watched over her son’s education.

‘That’s sound teaching you’re giving the young man,’ said Robert of Artois.

‘One can never learn to reign too soon,’ replied Isabella.

Unaware that they were talking of him, the child was amusing himself by walking with that careful, uncertain step peculiar to infants.

‘To think that we were once like that!’ said Artois.

‘It is certainly difficult to believe it when looking at you, Cousin,’ said the Queen smiling.

For a moment she thought of what the woman must feel who had given birth to this human fortress and of what she herself would feel when her son became a man.

The child went over to the hearth as if he wished to seize a flame in his tiny fist. Extending a red boot, Robert of Artois barred the road. Quite unafraid, the little Prince seized the leg in arms which could barely encircle it and, sitting astride the giant’s foot, he was lifted three or four times into the air. Delighted with the game, the little Prince laughed aloud.

‘Ah! Messire Edward,’ said Robert of Artois, ‘later on, when you’re a powerful prince, shall I dare remind you that I gave you a ride on my boot?’

‘Yes, Cousin,’ replied Isabella, ‘if you always show yourself to be our loyal friend. You may leave us now,’ she added.

The French ladies went, taking with them the infant, who, if fate pursued its normal course, would one day become Edward III of England.

Robert of Artois waited till the door was closed.

‘Well, Madam,’ he said, ‘to complete the admirable lessons you have given your son, you will soon be able to inform him that Marguerite of Burgundy, Queen of Navarre, future Queen of France, granddaughter of Saint Louis, is qualifying to be called by her people Marguerite the Whore.’

‘Really?’ asked Isabella. ‘Is what we suspected true then?’

‘Yes, Cousin. And not only in respect of Marguerite. It’s true for your two sisters-in-law as well.’

‘What? Both Jeanne and Blanche?’

‘As regards Blanche, I’m sure of it. Jeanne …’

Robert of Artois sketched a gesture of uncertainty with his hand.

‘She’s cleverer than the others,’ he added; ‘but I’ve every reason to believe that she’s as much of a whore.’

He paced up and down the room and then sat down again saying, ‘Your three brothers are cuckolds, Madam, as cuckold as any clodhopper!’

The Queen rose to her feet. Her cheeks showed signs of blushing.

‘If what you’re saying is sure, I won’t stand it,’ she said. ‘I won’t tolerate the shame, and that my family should become an object of derision.’

‘The barons of France won’t tolerate it either,’ said Artois.

‘Have you their names, the proof?’

Artois sighed heavily.

‘When you came to France last summer with your husband, to attend the festivities at which I had the honour to be dubbed knight with your brothers – for you know,’ he said, laughing, ‘they don’t stint me of honours that cost nothing – I told you of my suspicions and you told me yours. You asked me to watch and keep you informed. I’m your ally; I’ve done the one and I’ve come here to accomplish the other.’

‘Well, what have you discovered?’ Isabella asked impatiently.

‘In the first place that certain jewels have disappeared from the casket of your sweet, worthy and virtuous sister-in-law, Marguerite. Now, when a woman secretly parts with her jewels, it’s either to make presents to her lover or to bribe accomplices. That’s clear enough, don’t you agree?’

‘She can pretend to have given alms to the Church.’

‘Not always. Not, for instance, if a certain brooch has been exchanged with a Lombard merchant for a Damascus dagger.’

‘And have you discovered at whose belt that dagger hangs?’

‘Alas, no,’ Artois replied. ‘I’ve searched, but I’ve lost the scent. They’re clever bitches, as I’ve told you. I’ve never hunted stags in my forest of Conches that knew better how to conceal their line and take evasive action.’

Isabella looked disappointed. Stretching wide his arms Robert of Artois anticipated what she was going to say.

‘Wait, wait,’ he cried. ‘That is not all. The true, pure, chaste Marguerite has had an apartment furnished in the old tower of the Hôtel-de-Nesle, in order, so she says, to retire there to say her prayers. Curiously enough, however, she prays there on precisely those nights your brother Louis is away. The lights shine there pretty late. Her cousin Blanche, sometimes her cousin Jeanne, joins her there. Clever wenches! If either of them were questioned, she’s merely to reply, “What’s that? Of what are you accusing me? But I was with the other.” One woman at fault finds it difficult to defend herself. Three wicked harlots are a fortress. But listen; on those very nights Louis is away, on the nights the Tower of Nesle is lit up, there has been movement seen on that usually deserted stretch of river bank at the tower’s foot. Men have been seen coming from it, men who were certainly not dressed as monks and who, if they had been saying evensong, would have left by another door. The Court is silent, but the populace is beginning to chatter, since servants always start gossiping before their masters do.’

He spoke excitedly, gesticulating, walking up and down, shaking the floor, beating the air with great swirls of his cloak. Robert of Artois paraded his superabundant strength as a means of persuasion. He sought to convince with his muscles as well as with his words; he enclosed his interlocutor in a whirlwind; and the coarseness of his language, so much in keeping with his appearance, seemed proof of a rude good faith. Nevertheless, upon looking closer, one might well wonder whether all this commotion was not perhaps the showing-off of a mountebank, the playing of a part. A calculated, unremitting hatred glowed in the giant’s grey eyes; and the young Queen concentrated upon remaining mistress of herself.

‘Have you spoken of this to my father?’ she asked.

‘My good Cousin, you know King Philip better than I. He believes so firmly in the virtue of women that one would have to show him your sisters-in-law in bed with their lovers before he’d be willing to listen. Besides, I’m not in such good favour at Court since I lost my lawsuit.’

‘I know that you’ve been wronged, Cousin, and if it were in my power that wrong would be righted.’

Robert of Artois seized the Queen’s hand and placed his lips upon it in a surge of gratitude.

‘But precisely because of this lawsuit,’ Isabella said gently, ‘might one not think that your present actions are due to a desire for revenge?’

The giant bounded to his feet.

‘But of course I’m acting out of revenge, Madam!’

How disarming this big Robert was! You thought to lay a trap for him, to take him at a disadvantage, and he was as wide open with you as a window.

‘My inheritance of my County of Artois has been stolen from me,’ he cried, ‘that it might be given to my aunt, Mahaut of Burgundy – the bitch, the sow, may she die! May leprosy rot her mouth, and her breasts turn to carrion! And why did they do it? Because through trickery and intrigue, through oiling the palms of your father’s counsellors with hard cash, she succeeded in marrying off to your brothers her two sluts of daughters and that other slut, her cousin.’

He began mimicking an imaginary conversation between his aunt Mahaut, Countess of Burgundy and Artois, and King Philip the Fair.

‘My dear lord, my cousin, my gossip, supposing you married my dear little Jeanne to your son Louis? What, he doesn’t want her? He finds her rather sickly-looking? Well then, give him Margot, and Philip, he can have Jeanne, and my sweet Blanchette can marry your fine Charles. How delightful that they should all love each other! And then, if I’m given Artois which belonged to my late brother, my Franche-Comté of Burgundy will go to those girls. My nephew Robert? Give that dog some bone or other! The Castle of Conches and the County of Beaumont will do well enough for that boor! And I whisper malice in Nogaret’s ear, and send a thousand presents to Marigny … and then I marry one off, and then two, and then three. And no sooner are they married than the little bitches start plotting, sending each other notes, taking lovers, and set about betraying the throne of France. … Oh! if they were irreproachable, Madam, I’d hold my peace. But to behave so basely after having injured me so much, those Burgundy girls are going to learn what it costs, and I shall avenge myself on them for what their mother did to me.’²

Isabella remained thoughtful during this outpouring. Artois went close to her and, lowering his voice, said, ‘They hate you.’

‘Though I don’t know why, it is true that as far as I am concerned, I never liked them from the start,’ Isabella replied.

‘You didn’t like them because they’re false, because they think of nothing but pleasure and have no sense of duty. But they hate you because they’re jealous of you.’

‘And yet my position is not a very enviable one,’ said Isabella sighing; ‘their lot seems to me far pleasanter than my own.’

‘You are a Queen, Madam; you are a Queen in heart and soul; your sisters-in-law may well wear crowns but they will never be queens. That is why they will always be your enemies.’

Isabella raised her beautiful blue eyes to her cousin and Artois sensed that this time he had struck the right note. Isabella was on his side once and for all.

‘Have you the names of the men with whom my sisters-in-law …?’ she asked.

She lacked the crudeness of her cousin and could not bring herself to utter certain words.

‘Do you not know them?’ she said. ‘Without their names I can do nothing. Get them, and I promise you that I shall come to Paris at once upon some pretext or other, and put an end to this disorder. How can I help you? Have you told my uncle Valois?’

She was once more decisive, precise and authoritative.

‘I took care not to,’ answered Artois. ‘Monseigneur of Valois is my most loyal patron and my greatest friend; but he is the exact opposite of your father. He’d go gossiping all over the place about what we want to keep quiet, he’d put them on their guard, and when the moment came when we were ready to catch the bawds out, we should find them as pure as nuns.’

‘Well, what do you suggest?’

‘Two courses of action,’ said Artois. ‘The first is to appoint to Madam Marguerite’s household a new lady-in-waiting who will be in our confidence and who will report to us. I have thought of Mme de Comminges for the post. She has recently been widowed and deserves some consideration. And in that your uncle Valois can help us. Write him a letter expressing your wish, and pretending to interest on the widow’s behalf. Monseigneur has great influence over your brother Louis and, merely in order to exercise it, will at once place Mme de Comminges in the Hôtel-de-Nesle. Thus we shall have a creature of ours on the spot, and as we say in military parlance, a spy within the walls is worth an army outside.’

‘I’ll write the letter and you shall take it back with you,’ said Isabella. ‘And what more?’

‘You must allay your sisters-in-law’s distrust of you; you must make yourself amiable by sending them nice presents,’ Artois went on. ‘Presents that would do as well for men as women. You can send them secretly, a little private friendly transaction between you, which neither father nor husbands need know anything about. Marguerite despoils her casket for a good-looking unknown; it would really be bad luck if, having a present she need not account for, we don’t find it upon the gallant in question. Let’s give them opportunities for imprudence.’

Isabella thought for a moment, then went to the door and clapped her hands.

The first French lady entered.

‘My dear,’ said the Queen, ‘please bring me the golden almspurse that the Merchant Albizzi brought me this morning on approval.’

During the short wait Robert of Artois for the first time ceased to be concerned with his plots and preoccupations and looked round the room, at the religious frescoes painted on the walls, at the huge, beamed roof that looked like the hull of a ship. It was all rather new, gloomy and cold. The furniture was fine but sparse.

‘Your home is not very gay, Cousin,’ he said. ‘One might think one was in a cathedral rather than a palace.’

‘I hope to God,’ Isabella said in a low voice, ‘that it does not become my prison. How much I miss France!’

He was struck by her tone of voice as much as by her words. He realised that there were two Isabellas: on the one hand the young sovereign, conscious of her role and trying to live up to the majesty of her part; and on the other, behind this outward mask, an unhappy woman.

The French lady-in-waiting returned, bringing a purse of interwoven gold thread, lined with silk and fastened with three precious stones as large as thumbnails.

‘Splendid!’ Artois cried. ‘This is exactly what we want. A little heavy for a woman to wear; but exactly what a young man at Court dreams of fastening to his belt in order to show off.’

‘You’ll order two similar purses from the merchant Albizzi,’ said Isabella to her lady-in-waiting, ‘and tell him to make them at once.’

Then, when the Frenchwoman had gone out, she added for Robert’s ear, ‘You’ll be able to take them back to France with you.’

‘No one will know that they passed through my hands,’ he said.

There was a noise outside, shouts and laughter. Robert of Artois went over to the window. In the courtyard a company of masons were hoisting to the summit of an arch an ornamental stone engraved in relief with the lions of England. Some were hauling on pulley-ropes; others, perched on a scaffolding, were making ready to seize hold of the block of stone, and the whole business seemed to be carried out amid extraordinary good humour.

‘Well!’ said Robert of Artois. ‘It appears that King Edward still likes masonry.’

Among the workmen he had just recognised Edward II, Isabella’s husband, a good-looking man of thirty, with curly hair, wide shoulders and strong thighs. His velvet clothes were dusty with plaster.³

‘They’ve been rebuilding Westminster for more than fifteen years!’ said Isabella angrily. (She pronounced it Vestmoustiers, in the French manner.) ‘For the whole six years I’ve been married I’ve lived among trowels and mortar. They’re always pulling down what they built the month before. It’s not masonry he likes, it’s his masons! Do you imagine they even bother to say “Sire” to him? They call him Edward, and laugh at him, and he loves it. Just look at him.’

In the courtyard, Edward II was giving orders, leaning on a young workman, his arm round the boy’s neck. About him was an air of suspect familiarity. The lions of England had been lowered back to earth, doubtless because it was thought that their proposed site was unsuitable.

‘I thought,’ Isabella went on, ‘that I had known the worst with Sir Piers Gaveston. That insolent, boastful Béarnais ruled my husband so successfully that he ruled the country too. Edward gave him all the jewels in my marriage casket. In one way or another it seems to be a family custom for the women’s jewels to end up on men!’

Having beside her a relation and a friend, Isabella at last allowed herself to express her sorrows and humiliations. The morals of Edward II were known throughout Europe.

‘A year or so ago the barons and I succeeded in bringing Gaveston down; his head was cut off, and now his body lies rotting in the ground at Oxford,’ the young Queen said with satisfaction.

Robert of Artois did not appear surprised to hear these cruel words uttered by a beautiful woman. It must be admitted that such things were the common coin of the period. Kingdoms were often handed over to adolescents, whose absolute power fascinated them as might a game. Hardly grown out of the age in which it is fun to tear the wings from flies, they might now amuse themselves by tearing the heads from men. Too young to fear or even imagine death, they would not hesitate to distribute it around them.

Isabella had ascended the throne at sixteen; she had come a long way in six years.

‘Well! I’ve reached the point, Cousin, when I regret Gaveston,’ she went on. ‘Since then, as if to avenge himself upon me, Edward brings the lowest and most infamous men to the palace. He visits the low dens of the Port of London, sits with tramps, wrestles with lightermen, races against grooms. Fine tournaments, these, for our delectation! He has no care who runs the kingdom, provided his pleasures are organised and shared. At the moment it’s the Barons Despenser; the father’s worth no more than the son, who serves my husband for a wife. As for myself, Edward no longer approaches me, and if by chance he does, I am so ashamed that I remain cold to his advances.’

She lowered her head.

‘If her husband does not love her, a queen is the most miserable of the subjects of a kingdom. It is enough that she should have assured the succession; after that her life is of no account. What baron’s wife, what merchant’s or serf’s would tolerate what I have to bear … because I am Queen? The least washerwoman in the kingdom has greater rights than I: she can come and ask my protection.’

Robert of Artois knew – as indeed who did not? – that Isabella’s marriage was unhappy; but he had had no idea of the seriousness of the situation, nor how profoundly she was affected by it.

‘Cousin, sweet Cousin, I will protect you!’ he said warmly.

She sadly shrugged her shoulders as if to say: ‘What can you do for me?’ They were face to face. He put out his hands and took her by the elbows as gently as he could, murmuring at the same time, ‘Isabella …’

She placed her hands on the giant’s arms and said, ‘Robert …’

They gazed at each other with an emotional disturbance they had not foreseen. Artois had the impression that Isabella was making him some mute appeal. He suddenly found that he was curiously moved, oppressed, a prey to a force he feared to use ill.

Seen close to, Isabella’s blue eyes, under the fair arches of her eyebrows, were more beautiful still, her cheeks of a yet softer bloom. Her mouth was half open and the tips of her white teeth showed between her lips.

Artois suddenly longed to devote his days, his life, his body and soul to that mouth, to those eyes, to this delicate Queen who, at this moment, became once more the young girl which indeed she still was; quite simply, he desired her with a sort of robust immediacy he did not know how to express. In the ordinary way his tastes were not for women of rank and his nature was unsuited to the graces of gallantry.

‘Why have I confided all this to you?’ said Isabella.

They were still looking into each other’s eyes.

‘What a king disdains, because he is unable to recognise its perfection,’ said Robert, ‘many other men would thank heaven for upon their bended knees. Can it be true that at your age, fresh and beautiful as you are, you are deprived of natural joys? Can it be true that your lips are never kissed? That your arms … your body … Oh! take a man, Isabella, and let that man be me.’

Certainly he said what he wanted to say roughly enough. His eloquence bore little resemblance to the poems of Duke William of Aquitaine. But Isabella hardly heard him. He dominated her, crushed her with his mere size; he smelt of the forest, of leather, of horses and armour; he had neither the voice nor the appearance of a seducer, yet she was charmed. He was a man, a real man, a rugged and violent male, who breathed deep. Isabella felt her will-power dissolve, and had but one desire: to rest her head upon that leathern breast and abandon herself to him … slake her great thirst … She was trembling a little.

Suddenly she broke away from him.

‘No, Robert,’ she cried, ‘I am not going to do that for which I so much blame my sisters-in-law. I cannot, I must not. But when I think of what I am denying myself, what I am giving up, then I know how lucky they are to have husbands who love them. Oh, no! They must be punished, properly punished!’

In default of allowing herself to sin, her thoughts were obstinately bent upon the sinners. She sat down once more in the great oak chair. Robert came and stood by her.

‘No, Robert,’ she said again, spreading out her hands. ‘Don’t take advantage of my weakness; you will anger me.’

Extreme beauty inspires as much respect as majesty, and the giant obeyed.

But what had happened would never be effaced from their memories. For an instant the barriers between them had been lowered. They found it difficult not to gaze into each other’s eyes. ‘So I can be loved after all,’ thought Isabella, and she was almost grateful to the man who had given her this certainty.

‘Is that all you have to tell me, Cousin? Have you brought me no other news?’ she said, trying hard to regain control of herself.

Robert of Artois, who was wondering whether he was right not to pursue his advantage, took some time to answer.

He breathed deeply and his thoughts seemed to return from a long way off.

‘Yes, Madam,’ he said, ‘I have also a message from your uncle Valois.’

There was now a new link between them, and each word that they uttered seemed to have strange reverberations.

‘The dignitaries of the Temple are soon to come up for judgment,’ went on Artois, ‘and there is a fear that your godfather, the Grand Master Jacques de Molay, will be condemned to death. Your uncle Valois asks you to write to the King to ask his clemency.’

Isabella did not reply. Once more her chin was resting in the palm of her hand.

‘How like him you are, when you sit like that!’ said Artois.

‘Like whom?’

‘King Philip, your father.’

‘What the King, my father, decides, is rightly decided,’ Isabella replied slowly. ‘I can intervene upon matters that touch the family honour; I have nothing to do with the government of the Kingdom of France.’

‘Jacques de Molay is an old man. He was noble and great. If he committed faults, he has sufficiently expiated them. Remember that he held you at the baptismal font. Believe me, a great wrong is about to be done, and we owe it once more to Nogaret and Marigny! In attacking the Templars, these men, risen from nothing, are attacking the great barons and the Chivalry of France.’

The Queen was perplexed; the whole business was beyond her.

‘I cannot judge,’ she said, ‘I cannot judge.’

‘You know I owe a great debt to your uncle Valois, and he would be very grateful if I could get a letter from you. Moreover, compassion never ill-becomes a queen; it’s a feminine trait for which you can but be praised. There are some who reproach you with hardness of heart: this will be your answer to them. Do it for yourself, Isabella, and do it for me.’

He said ‘Isabella’ in the same tone of voice that he had used earlier by the window.

She smiled at him.

‘You’re clever, Robert, beneath your boorish air. All right, I’ll write the letter you want and you can take everything away together. I’ll try to get the King of England to write to the King of France, too. When are you leaving?’

‘When you command me, Cousin.’

‘The purses will be ready tomorrow, I think; it’s very soon.’

There was regret in the Queen’s voice. He gazed into her eyes and she was troubled once more.

‘I’ll await a messenger from you to know when I must leave for France. Good-bye, Cousin. We shall meet again at supper.’

He took his leave and, when he had gone out, the room seemed to the Queen to have become strangely quiet, like a valley after a storm. Isabella closed her eyes and for a long moment remained still.

‘He is a man who has grown wicked because he has been wronged,’ she thought. ‘But, if one loves him, he must be capable of love.’

Those called upon to play a decisive part in the history of nations are more often than not unaware of the destinies they embody. These two people who had had this long interview upon a March afternoon of 1314, in the Palace of Westminster, could not know that, as a result of their actions, they would, almost alone, become the artisans of a war between the kingdoms of France and England which would last more than a hundred years.

2
The Prisoners in the Temple

THE WALL WAS COVERED with a damp mould. A smoky, yellow light began to filter down into the vaulted, underground room.

The prisoner was dozing, his arms crossed beneath his beard. Suddenly he shivered and sat up, haggard, his heart beating. For a moment he remained still, gazing at the morning mist which was blowing in through the little window. He was listening. Quite distinctly, though the sound was necessarily somewhat softened by the thickness of the walls, he could hear the pealing of the bells of Paris announcing the first Mass: the bells of Saint-Martin, of Saint-Merry, of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois, of Saint-Eustache and of Notre-Dame; the country bells of the nearby villages of La Courtille, of Clignancourt and of Mont-Martre.

The prisoner heard no particularly arresting sound. It was distress alone that made him start awake, the distress he suffered at each awakening, as he suffered nightmares whenever he slept.

He pulled a big wooden bowl of water to him and drank largely to allay the fever from which he had now suffered for days and days. Having drunk, he allowed the water in the bowl to subside into stillness and leaned over it as if it were a mirror or the depths of a well. The reflection he saw, though shadowy and indistinct, was that of a centenarian. He remained thus for some moments, searching for some likeness to his old appearance in the floating face with its ancestral beard, the lips sunken in a toothless mouth, the long, thin nose, the shadowed, deep-set eyes.

He put the bowl on one side, got up, then took a few steps till he felt the tautening of the chain that bound him to the wall. Suddenly, he began to scream: ‘Jacques de Molay! Jacques de Molay! I am Jacques de Molay!’

There was no answer; he knew there was no one to answer him, not even an echo.

But he needed to scream his own name, to hurl it at the stone columns, at the vaults, at the oak door, to prevent his mind dissolving into madness, to remind himself that he was sixty-two years old, that he had commanded armies, governed provinces, that he had possessed power equal to sovereigns, and that as long as he still drew breath he would continue to be, even in this dungeon, the Grand Master of the Order of Knights Templar.

From a refinement of cruelty, or perhaps contempt, he and the principal dignitaries of the Order had been imprisoned in the cellars, now transformed into dungeons, of the great tower of the Hôtel-du-Temple, their own building, their Mother House.

‘To think that it was I who had this tower repaired!’ the Grand Master murmured angrily, hitting the wall with his fist.

The blow made him cry out, it renewed an appalling pain in his hand, whose crushed thumb was no more than a stump of half-healed flesh. But indeed, what part of his body was neither an open sore nor the seat of some internal agony? Since he had suffered the torture of the boot, he had been a victim to bad circulation in the legs and abominable cramps. His legs strapped between boards, he had undergone the sharp anguish of oaken wedges tapped into place by the executioners’ mallets, while Guillaume de Nogaret, Keeper of the Seals of the Kingdom, asked him questions, trying to persuade him to confess. To confess what? He had fainted.

Dirt, damp and lack of food had had their effect upon his torn and lacerated body.

And more recently he had undergone the torture by stretching, the most appalling perhaps of all those to which he had been subjected. A weight of two hundred pounds had been tied to his right foot while he, old as he was, had been hoisted to the ceiling by a rope and pulley. And all the time Guillaume de Nogaret’s sinister voice kept repeating, ‘Confess, Messire, why don’t you confess?’ And since he still obstinately refused, they had hauled him from floor to ceiling more hurriedly, more jerkily. He had felt his limbs becoming disjointed, the articulations parting, his whole body seemed to be bursting, and he had begun to scream that he would confess everything, admit every crime, all the crimes of the world. Yes, the Templars practised sodomy among themselves; yes, to gain entrance to the Order, it was necessary to spit upon the Cross; yes, they worshipped an idol with the head of a cat; yes, they practised magic, and sorcery, and had a cult for the Devil; yes, they embezzled the funds confided to their care; yes, they had fomented a plot against the Pope and the King … And what more besides?

Jacques de Molay wondered how he had managed to survive it all. Doubtless because the tortures had been exactly calculated, never pushed to the point where there was a risk of his dying, and because, too, the constitution of an old knight, trained to arms and war, had greater resistance than he himself could have believed.

He knelt down, his eyes turned towards the beam of light that entered by the little window.

‘Oh, Lord my God,’ he cried, ‘why hast Thou given me greater strength of body than of mind? Was I worthy to command the Order? Thou hast not prevented my falling into cowardice; spare me, Lord God, from falling into folly. I cannot hold out much longer, no, not for much longer.’

He had been in chains for seven years, only leaving his dungeon to be dragged before the commission of inquiry, and to be submitted to all the pressures and threats that the theologians and lawyers could devise.

In the circumstances one might well fear madness. Often the Grand Master lost all sense of time. As a distraction, he had attempted to tame a couple of rats that came every night to eat the remains of his bread. He passed quickly from anger to tears, from crises of religious devotion to a longing for violence, from idiocy to fury.

‘They’ll die of it, they’ll die of it,’ he kept repeating to himself.

Who would? Clement, Guillaume, Philip. … The Pope, the Keeper of the Seals and the King. They would die. Molay did not know how, but it would certainly be amid appalling suffering and in expiation of their crimes. He unceasingly chewed over these three hated names.

Still upon his knees, his beard raised towards the narrow window, the Grand Master murmured, ‘I thank thee, Lord God, for leaving me hatred. It is the sole force that sustains me now.’

He got painfully to his feet and went back to the stone bench which, cemented to the wall, served both for seat and bed.

Who could ever have thought that he would come to this? His mind constantly returned to his youth, to the boy he had been fifty years before, as he came down the slopes of his native Jura in search of adventure.

Like all the younger sons of the nobility of the time, he had dreamed of wearing the long white mantle with the black cross, the uniform of the Order of the Knights Templar. In those days, the mere name of Templar evoked the epic and the exotic, ships with bellying sails scudding towards the Orient, lands where the skies were always blue, charges at the gallop across the desert sands, treasures of Arabia, ransomed prisoners, captured and pillaged cities, fortresses with huge staircases, built beside the sea. It was even said that the Templars had secret ports from which they embarked for unknown continents.⁴

And Jacques de Molay had achieved his dream; he had marched proudly through distant cities, clothed in the superb mantle whose folds hung down to his golden spurs.

He had risen in the Order’s hierarchy, higher than he had ever dared hope, achieving every dignity in turn, at last to be elected by the brothers to the supreme function of Grand Master of France and Overseas, and to the command of fifteen thousand knights.

And all this had but led to a dungeon, horror and destitution. Surely few people’s lives could show such prodigious success followed by so great a fall.

Jacques de Molay was idly tracing lines with one of the links in his chain upon the damp mould on the wall, lines which reminded him of the plan of some fortress, when he heard heavy footsteps and the noise of arms upon the staircase that led down to his cell.

Once more he was seized with a feeling of pain, but this time it was precise and definite.

The heavy door creaked open and, behind the gaoler, Molay saw four archers dressed in leather tunics and carrying pikes. Their breath spread out in a thin cloud before their faces.

Their chief said, ‘We have come to fetch you, Messire.’

Molay rose silently to his feet.

The gaoler came forward and with cold chisel and heavy blows of a hammer broke the rivet that fastened the chain to the heavy iron anklets. Each weighed four pounds.

He clasped his great, illustrious mantle, now no more than a grey rag, its black cross in tatters at the breast, about his emaciated shoulders.

They left the dungeon. And in that reeling exhausted old man, his feet weighed down with fetters as he mounted the tower’s steps, there could still be seen something of the commander who had recaptured Jerusalem from the Saracens for the last time.

‘Oh, Lord my God,’ he murmured to himself, ‘give me strength, give me a little strength.’ And to help himself find it, he repeated the names of his three enemies: Clement, Guillaume, Philip.

Fog lay thick upon the huge court of the Temple, cloaked the turrets of the enclosing wall, flowed through the crenellations, and obscured the spire of the great church on the right of the tower.

A hundred soldiers were standing at ease, talking quietly among themselves, as they stood round a big, square, uncovered wagon.

From beyond the walls he could hear the murmur of Paris and the occasional neigh of a horse, sounds that moved him with an ineffable sadness.

Messire Alain de Pareilles, Captain of the King’s Archers, the man who attended every execution, who accompanied the condemned to sentence and torture, was walking up and down the centre of the yard, his face impassive, his expression bored. He was forty years old and his steel-coloured hair fell in a short fringe across his square forehead. He wore a coat of mail, had a sword at his side, and carried his helmet in the crook of his arm.

He turned as he heard the Grand Master’s approach, and the latter, seeing him, turned pale, if it were possible for his pallor to increase.

Merely for interrogations there was not, as a rule, so much display; there were neither wagon nor men-at-arms. A few royal agents came to escort the accused, generally at nightfall, by boat across the Seine.

The presence of Alain de Pareilles was alone significant enough.

‘Has judgment been pronounced?’ Molay asked the Captain of the Archers.

‘It has, Messire,’ he replied.

‘And do you know, my son,’ Molay asked after a moment’s hesitation, ‘what that judgment contains.’

‘I do not, Messire. My orders are to conduct you to Notre-Dame to hear it read.’

There was a silence, then Jacques de Molay asked, ‘What day is it?’

‘The Monday after the feast of Saint Gregory.’

This corresponded to the 18th March, the 18th March 1314.⁵

‘Am I being taken out to die?’ Molay wondered.

The door of the tower opened again, and three other dignitaries appeared in their turn, escorted by guards, the Visitor General, the Preceptor of Normandy and the Commander of Aquitaine.

They had white hair, and white unkempt beards, their deep-sunken eyes blinked in the light, their bodies seemed to float in their ragged mantles; for a moment they stood still, like great night-birds unable to see in the light. Moreover, the Commander of Aquitaine had a white film over his left eye which gave him something of the appearance of an owl. He seemed completely stupefied. The semi-bald Visitor General had horribly swollen hands and feet.

It was Geoffroy de Charnay, the Preceptor of Normandy, who first, though hampered by his irons, rushed up to the Grand Master and embraced him. There was a long friendship between the two men. Indeed, it was Jacques de Molay who had helped Charnay in his career. Ten years younger than himself, he had looked upon Charnay as his successor.

Charnay’s forehead was furrowed by a deep scar, the legacy of an old battle in which a sword-cut had also given him a crooked nose. This rugged man, his face marked by war, leant his forehead against the Grand Master’s shoulder to hide his tears.

‘Have courage, Brother, have courage,’ said the Grand Master, clasping him in his arms. ‘And you, too, my Brothers, have courage,’ he went on, embracing the other dignitaries in turn.

Seeing each other, they were able to judge of their own appearance.

A gaoler came up.

‘You have the right to have your irons removed, Messires,’ he said.

The Grand Master spread wide his arms in a bitter, hopeless gesture.

‘I have not the money,’ he replied.

For each time they left their prison, in order to have their irons removed and replaced, the Templars had to pay a denier out of the dozen they were allowed for their wretched food, the straw in their dungeons and the laundering of their single shirt. Another of Nogaret’s subtle cruelties! They were accused, but not condemned. They had the right to a maintenance allowance. What was the use of twelve deniers, when a small joint of meat cost forty? It meant starving four days in eight, sleeping on the hard stone, rotting in squalor.

The Preceptor of Normandy took the last two deniers from the old leather purse attached to his belt and threw them on the ground, one for his own irons and one for those of the Grand Master.

‘My Brother!’ said Jacques de Molay with a gesture of refusal.

‘For all the use they are likely to be to me now,’ replied Charnay. ‘Accept them, Brother; there is not even merit in the giving.’

As the iron pins were removed, they felt the hammer-blows resounding in their bones. But they felt the blood pounding in their chests more strongly still.

‘This time, we’ve come to the end,’ Molay murmured.

They wondered what kind of death had been reserved for them, whether they would be subjected to ultimate tortures.

‘It is perhaps a good sign that our irons are being removed,’ said the Visitor General, shaking his swollen hands. ‘Perhaps the Pope has decided upon clemency.’

There were still a few broken teeth in the front of his mouth and these made him lisp, while the dungeon had turned his mind childish.

The Grand Master shrugged his shoulders and pointed to the phalanx of a hundred archers.

‘We must prepare to die, Brother,’ he said.

‘Look, look what they have done to me,’ cried the Visitor, pulling up his sleeve to show his swollen arm.

‘We have all been tortured,’ said the Grand Master.

He looked away, as he always did when someone spoke of torture. He had yielded, he had signed false confessions and could not forgive himself.

He looked round upon the huge group of buildings which had been the seat and symbol of their power.

‘For the last time,’ he thought.

For the last time he gazed upon the vast assembly of tower and church, palace and houses, courts and gardens, a fortified town within Paris itself.⁶

Here it was that for two centuries the Templars had lived, prayed, slept, given judgment, transacted business, and decided upon their expeditions to distant lands. In this very tower the treasure of the Kingdom of France had been deposited, confided to their care and guardianship.

It was here, after the disastrous expeditions of Saint Louis, in which Palestine and Cyprus had been lost, that they had come, bringing with them in their train their esquires, their mules laden with gold, their stud of Arabian horses and their negro slaves.

Jacques de Molay saw in his mind’s eye this return of the vanquished. Even so, it had something of an epic quality.

‘We had become useless, and we did not know it,’ thought the Grand Master. ‘We were always talking of reconquest and new crusades. Perhaps we showed too much arrogance, and enjoyed too many privileges while no longer doing anything to justify them.’

From being the permanent militia of the Christian world, they had become the permanent bankers of Church and King. To have many debtors is to have many enemies.

Oh, the plot had been well conceived! The drama had begun upon the day when Philip the Fair had asked to join the Order that he might become its Grand Master. The Chapter had replied with a curt and definite refusal.

‘Was I wrong?’ Jacques de Molay asked himself for the hundredth time. ‘Was I too jealous of my authority? But no; I could not have acted otherwise; our rule is binding: no sovereign princes in our ranks.’

King Philip had never forgotten the repulse and the insult. He had begun by dissimulating, lavishing favours and kindnesses upon Jacques de Molay. Was not the Grand Master godfather to his daughter, Isabella? Was not the Grand Master the prop and stay of the kingdom?

Yet the royal treasure had been transferred from the Temple to the Louvre. At the same time a low, venomous campaign of obloquy had begun against the Templars. It was said that they speculated in corn and were responsible for famines, that they thought more of increasing their fortune than of capturing the Holy Sepulchre from the heathen. They were accused of blasphemy merely because they spoke the rough language of the camp. ‘To swear like a Templar’ became the current saying. From blasphemy to heresy was but a step. It was said that they practised unnatural vice and that their black slaves were sorcerers.

‘True it is that all our Brothers were not saints and that inaction was bad for many of them.’

Above all, it was said that during the ceremonies of initiation the neophytes were compelled to deny Christ and spit upon the Cross, that they were subjected to obscene practices.

Under the pretext of putting an end to these rumours, Philip had suggested to the Grand Master, for the sake of the honour and interest of the Order, that an inquiry should be opened.

‘And I accepted,’ thought Molay; ‘I was abominably duped and deceived.’

For, upon a certain day in October 1307 … oh, how well Molay remembered that day! ‘Upon its eve, he was still embracing me, and calling me brother, indeed giving me the place of honour at the funeral of his sister-in-law, the Countess of Valois.’

To be precise it was upon a Friday the thirteenth, an unlucky day if ever there was one, that King Philip, by means of a widespread police net, prepared long before, had arrested all the Templars of France at dawn upon a charge of heresy in the name of the Inquisition.

And Nogaret himself had come to seize Jacques de Molay and the hundred and forty knights of the Mother House.

Suddenly an order rang out. It startled the Grand Master and interrupted the flow of his thoughts, those thoughts in which he sifted yet once more the cause of the disaster. Messire Alain de Pareilles was drawing up his archers. He had put on his helmet. A soldier had his horse by the head and was holding his stirrup.

‘Let us go,’ said the Grand Master.

The prisoners were hustled towards the wagon. Molay climbed into it first. The Commander of Aquitaine, the man with the white film over his eye, who had defeated the Turks at Acre, still appeared utterly stupefied. He had to be hoisted up. The Brother Visitor was moving his lips in ceaseless, silent muttering. When Geoffroy de Charnay’s turn came to climb onto the wagon, an unseen dog began howling from somewhere in the neighbourhood of the stables, and the scar upon the Preceptor of Normandy’s forehead puckered deeply.

Drawn by four horses in tandem, the heavy wagon began to move forward.

As the huge gates opened, the crowd set up a great clamouring. Several thousand people, all the inhabitants of that district and the neighbouring ones, were crowding against the walls. The leading archers had to force a passage through the howling mob with blows of their pike-shafts.

‘Make way for the King’s men!’ cried the archers.

Erect upon his horse, his expression still impassively bored, Alain de Pareilles dominated the tumult.

But when the Templars appeared, the clamour was suddenly stilled. At the spectacle of these four emaciated old men, whom the jolting of the unsprung wheels jostled against each other, the people of Paris suffered a moment of dumb stupefaction, of spontaneous compassion.

But then cries arose of ‘Death! Death to the heretics!’ from royal agents mingling with the crowd. And then the people, always prepared to shout on the side of power and to make a noise when it costs them nothing, began to yell in concert, ‘Death to them!’

‘Thieves!’

‘Heretics!’

‘Look at them! They’re no longer so proud today, heathens that they are! Death to them!’

Insults, gibes, threats rose along the whole length of the grim procession. But the frenzy was sporadic. A whole section of the crowd remained silent, and its silence, though prudent, was none the less significant.

For things had changed in the seven years that had elapsed. The way the case had been conducted was known. People had seen Templars at the church doors showing the public the bones fallen from their feet as the result of the tortures they had suffered. It was known that in many of the towns of France the Knights had been burned by hundreds at the stake. It was known, too, that certain Ecclesiastical Commissions had refused to condemn them, and that new bishops had had to be appointed to undertake the task, and that one of them was the brother of the First Minister, Enguerrand de Marigny. It was said that Pope Clement V himself had only yielded against his will because he was in the power of the King and feared to suffer the same fate as Pope Boniface, his predecessor. And, moreover, during these seven years, corn had become no more abundant, while the price of bread had risen still further, proof that it could no longer be the fault of the Templars.

Twenty-five archers, their bows slung, their pikes upon their shoulders, marched in front of the wagon, twenty-five on each flank, and as many more brought up the rear of the procession.

‘Oh, if we only still had a little bodily strength!’ thought the Grand Master. At twenty, he would have leapt upon an archer, seized his pike and tried to escape, or fought there to the death. And now he could hardly have climbed over the wagon’s side.

Behind him, the Brother Visitor was muttering through his broken teeth, ‘They won’t condemn us. I cannot believe that they’ll condemn us. We’re no longer dangerous.’

And the old Templar with the film across his eye had at last emerged sufficiently from his prostration to murmur, ‘It’s good to be out of doors! It’s good to breathe the fresh air again. Isn’t that so, Brother?’

‘They’re not even conscious of where we’re being taken,’ thought the Grand Master.

The Preceptor of Normandy placed a hand upon his arm.

‘Messire, my Brother,’ he said in a low voice, ‘I can see two people among the crowd weeping and others making the sign of the Cross. We are not alone upon our Calvary.’

‘Those people may be sorry for us, but they can do nothing to save us,’ replied Jacques de Molay. ‘I am looking for other faces.’

The Preceptor understood to whose faces the Grand Master referred, and to what supreme, incredible hope he clung. In spite of himself, he also began searching the crowd. For, among the Knights Templars, a certain number had escaped the net drawn about them in 1307. Some had taken refuge in monasteries, others had renounced their order and lived secretly in town or countryside; others again had reached Spain where the King of Aragon, refusing to obey the injunctions of the King of France and the Pope, had left the Templars their commanderies and founded a new Order for them. And then, still others, having appeared before more merciful tribunals, had been handed over to the guardianship of the Knights Hospitaler. All these veteran knights had kept in as close touch as they were able, forming a sort of secret society among themselves.

And Jacques de Molay told himself that perhaps …

Perhaps a plot had been made. Perhaps, from the corner of a street, from the corner of the rue des Blancs-Manteau, or the corner of the rue de la Bretonnerie, or from the cloister of Saint-Merry, would surge a group of men who, drawing their swords from beneath their cloaks, would fall upon the archers while others, posted at windows, would let fly their bolts. A cart moved into place at the gallop would block the street and complete the panic.

‘And yet, why should our late brothers do this?’ thought Molay. ‘Merely to rescue their Grand Master who has betrayed them, forsworn the Order, yielded to torture.’

Nevertheless, his eyes searched the crowd, but he saw nothing but fathers of families who had hoisted their young children upon their shoulders, that they might miss nothing of the spectacle, children who, in later years, when they heard mention of the Templars, would remember nothing but the sight of four bearded, shivering old men surrounded, like common criminals, by men-at-arms.

In the meantime, the Visitor General went on spitting through his teeth, and the hero of Acre merely kept repeating that it was nice to be out of doors this fine morning.

The Grand Master felt surging within him one of those half-crazy rages which had so often come upon him in his prison, making him shout aloud and beat the walls. He felt that he was upon the point of committing some violent and terrible act – he did not know exactly what – but he felt the impulse to do something.

He accepted death almost as a deliverance, but he could not accept an unjust death, nor dying dishonoured. Accustomed through long years to war, he felt it stir for the last time in his old veins. He longed to die fighting.

He sought the hand of Geoffroy de Charnay, his old companion in arms, the last strong man still standing at his side, and clasped it tightly.

Raising his eyes, the Preceptor saw the arteries beating upon the sunken temples of the Grand Master. They quivered like blue snakes.

The procession reached the Bridge of Notre-Dame.

3
The Royal Daughters-in-law

THE BASKET PERFUMED the air about it with a delicious odour of hot flour, butter and honey.

‘Hot, hot pancakes! There won’t be enough to go round! Come on, citizens, eat up! Hot pancakes!’ cried the merchant, busy behind his open-air stove.

He seemed to be doing a great many things at the same time, rolling out his paste, removing the cooked pancakes from the fire, giving change, and keeping an eye on the street urchins to see they did not rob his stove.

‘Hot pancakes!’

He was so busy that he paid no particular attention to the customer who, extending a white hand, placed a denier on the board in payment for a small pancake. He only saw the left hand put the wafer, from which but a single bite had been taken, down again.

‘Well, he’s a fussy one,’ he said, poking his fire. ‘To hell with him; it’s pure wheaten flour and butter from Vaugirard …’

At that moment he looked up and was startled out of his wits. On seeing who the customer was, his words were stifled in his throat. He saw a very tall man with huge unblinking eyes, wearing a white hood and a half-length tunic.

Before even the merchant could manage a bow or stammer out an excuse, the man in the white hood had already moved away. The confectioner, with hanging arms, watched him disappear into the crowd, while his latest batch of pancakes began to burn.

The business streets of the city, according to travellers in Africa and the Orient, were at that time very similar to the souks of an Arab town. The same incessant din, little stalls touching one another, odours of frying-fat, spices and leather, the same slow promenading of shoppers and loungers, the same difficulty in forcing a way through the crowd. Each street, each alley, had its own special brand of goods, its own particular trade; here, in back shops, weavers’ shuttles went to and fro upon the looms; there, cobblers sat at their lasts; farther on, saddlers tugged at their awls; and beyond again, carpenters turned the legs of stools.

There was a street of birds, a street of herbs and vegetables, a street of smiths whose hammers resounded upon their anvils while their braziers glowed at the back of their workshops. The goldsmiths, working at their crucibles, were gathered along the quay that bore their name.

There were thin ribbons of sky between the houses which were built of wood or mud, their gables so close together that one could shake hands from window to window across the street. Almost everywhere the ground was covered with a stinking film of mud in which people walked, either barefoot, in wooden clogs, or in leather shoes, according to their condition.

The man with the tall shoulders and the white hood walked slowly on through the mob, his hands clasped behind his back, apparently careless of being jostled. Many, indeed, made way for him and saluted him. He responded with a curt nod. He had the appearance of an athlete; fair silky hair, almost auburn in colour and curling at the ends, fell nearly to his collar, framing regular features which were at once impassive and singularly beautiful.

Three royal sergeants-at-arms, in blue coats and carrying in the crooks of their arms the staves surmounted with lilies that were the insignia of their office,⁷ followed the stroller at a distance, but without ever losing sight of him, stopping when he stopped, moving on again as soon as he did.

Suddenly a young man in a tight-fitting tunic, dragged along by three fine greyhounds on a leash, debouched from an alley, jostling the stroller and very nearly knocking him over. The hounds became entangled about his feet and began barking.

‘You scoundrel!’ the young man cried in a noticeably Italian accent. ‘You nearly trod on my hounds. I wouldn’t have cared a damn if they’d bitten you.’

No more than eighteen, short and good-looking, with dark eyes and finely chiselled features, the young man stood his ground in the middle of the street, raising his voice in simulated manliness. Someone took him by the arm and whispered a word in his ear. At once the young man removed his cap, bowing respectfully though without servility.

‘Those are fine hounds; whose are they?’ asked the stroller, gazing at the boy out of huge, cold eyes.

‘They belong to my uncle, Tolomei, the banker, at your service,’ replied the young man.

Without another word, the man in the white hood went on his way. As soon as he and the sergeants-at-arms who followed him were out of sight, the people standing round the young Italian guffawed. The latter stood still, apparently having some difficulty in recovering himself after his mistake; even the hounds were still.

‘Well, well! He’s not so proud now!’ they said, laughing.

‘Look at him! He nearly knocks the King down and then adds insult to injury.’

‘You can count on spending the night in prison, my boy, with thirty strokes of the whip into the bargain.’

The Italian turned upon the bystanders.

‘Damn it! I’d never seen him before; how could I be expected to recognise him? And what’s more, citizens, I come from a country where there’s no king for whom one has to make way. In my city of Sienna every citizen can be king in turn. And if anyone feels like mocking Guccio Baglioni, he need only say the word.’

He uttered his name like a challenge. The quick pride of Tuscany shone in his eyes. A carved dagger hung at his side. No one persisted; and the young man flicked his fingers to put the hounds in motion again. He went on his way with more apparent assurance than he felt, wondering whether his stupidity would have unpleasant consequences.

For it was indeed King Philip the Fair whom he had jostled. This sovereign, whom none other equalled in power, liked to stroll through his city like a simple citizen, informing himself upon prices, tasting foodstuffs, examining cloth, listening to people talking. He was taking the pulse of his people. Strangers, ignorant of who he was, asked him the way. One day a soldier had stopped him to ask for his pay. As mean with words as he was with money, it was rare that in a whole outing he said more than three sentences or spent more than three pence.

The King was passing through the meat-market when the great bell of Notre-Dame began ringing and a loud clamour arose.

‘There they are! There they are!’ people were shouting.

The clamour drew nearer; the crowd became excited, people began to run.

A fat butcher came out from behind his stall, knife in hand, and yelled, ‘Death to the heretics!’

His wife caught him by the sleeve.

‘Heretics? They’re no more heretics than you are,’ she said. ‘You’d do better to stay here and serve the shop, you idler, you.’

They began quarrelling. A crowd gathered at once.

‘They’ve confessed before the judges!’ the butcher went on.

‘The judges?’ someone replied. ‘They’ve always been the same ones. They judge as they’re told to by those who pay them, and they’re afraid of a kick up the arse.’

Then everyone began to talk at once.

‘The Templars are saintly men. They’ve always given a lot to charity.’

‘It was a good thing to take their money away, but not to torture them.’

‘It was the King who owed them most, that’s why it was.’

‘The King did the right thing.’

‘The King or the Templars,’ said an apprentice, ‘they’re one and the same thing. Let the wolves eat each other and then they won’t eat us.’

At that moment a woman happened to turn round, grew suddenly pale, and made a sign to the others to be quiet. Philip the Fair was standing behind them, gazing at them with his unwinking, icy stare. The sergeants-at-arms had drawn a little closer to him, ready to intervene. In an instant the crowd had dispersed; those who had composed it ran off shouting at the tops of their voices, ‘Long live the King! Death to the heretics!’

The King’s expression remained perfectly impassive. One might have thought that he had heard nothing. If he took pleasure in taking people by surprise, it was a secret pleasure.

The clamour was growing louder. The procession of the Templars was passing the end of the street. Through a gap between the houses, the King saw for an instant the Grand Master standing in the wagon surrounded by his three companions. The Grand Master stood upright; in the King’s eyes this was an irritation; he looked like a martyr, but undefeated.

Leaving the crowd to rush towards the spectacle, Philip the Fair passed through the suddenly empty streets at his usual slow pace, and returned to his palace.

The people might well grumble a bit, and the Grand Master hold his old and broken body upright. In an hour the whole thing would be over, and the sentence, so the King believed, would be generally well received. In an hour’s time the work of seven years would be finished and completed. The Episcopal Tribunal had issued their decree; the archers were numerous; the sergeants-at-arms patrolled the streets. In an hour the case of the Templars would be erased from the list of public cares, and from every point of view the royal power would come out of the affair enhanced and reinforced.

‘Even my daughter Isabella will be satisfied. I shall have acceded to her plea, and so contented everyone. But it was time to put an end to it,’ Philip the Fair told himself as he thought of the words he had just heard.

He went home by the Mercers’ Hall.

Philip the Fair had entirely renovated and rebuilt the Palace, preserving only such ancient structures as the Sainte-Chapelle, which dated from the time of his grandfather, Saint Louis. It was a period of building and embellishment. Princes rivalled each other; what had been done in Westminster had been done in Paris too. The mass of the Cité with its great white towers dominating the Seine was brand-new, imposing and, perhaps, a little ostentatious.

Philip, if he watched the pennies, never hesitated to spend largely when it was a question of demonstrating his power. But, since he never neglected an opportunity of profit, he had conceded to the mercers, in consideration of an enormous rent, the privilege of transacting business in the great gallery which ran the length of the palace, and which from this fact was known as the Mercers’ Hall, before it became known as the Merchants’ Hall.⁸

It was a huge place with something of the appearance of a cathedral with two naves. Its size was the admiration of travellers. At the summits of the pillars were the forty statues of the kings who, from Pharamond and Mérovée, had succeeded each other at the head of the Frankish kingdom. Opposite the statue of Philip the Fair was that of Enguerrand de Marigny, Coadjutor and Rector of the Kingdom, who had inspired and directed the building.

Round the pillars were stalls containing articles of dress, there were baskets of trinkets, and sellers of ornaments, embroidery and lace. About them were gathered the pretty Parisian women and the ladies of the Court. Open to all comers, the hall had became a place for a stroll, a meeting-place for transacting business and exchanging gallantries. It resounded with laughter, conversation and gossip, with the claptrap of the salesmen over all. There were many foreign accents, particularly those of Italy and Flanders.

A raw-boned fellow, who had determined to make his fortune out of spreading the use of handkerchiefs, was demonstrating the articles to a group of fat women, shaking out his squares of ornamented linen.

‘Ah, my dear ladies,’ he cried, ‘what a pity to blow one’s nose in one’s fingers or upon one’s sleeve, when such pretty handkerchiefs as these have been invented for the purpose? Are not such elegant things precisely made for your ladyships’ noses?’

A little farther on, an old gentleman was being pressed to buy a wench some English lace.

Philip the Fair crossed the Hall. The courtiers bowed to the ground. The women curtsied as he passed. Without seeming to do so, the King liked the liveliness of the scene, the laughter, as well as the marks of respect which gave him assurance of his power. Here, because of the tumult of voices, the great bell of Notre-Dame seemed distant, lighter in tone, more benign.

The King caught sight of a group whose youth and magnificence were the cynosure of every eye: it consisted of two quite young women and a tall, fair, good-looking young man. The young women were two of the King’s daughters-in-law, those known as the ‘sisters of Burgundy’, Jeanne, the Countess of Poitiers, married to the King’s second son, and Blanche, her younger sister, married to the youngest son. The young man with them was dressed like an officer of a princely household.

They were whispering together with restrained excitement. Philip the Fair slowed his pace the better to observe his daughters-in-law.

‘My sons have no reason to complain of me,’ thought Philip the Fair. ‘As well as making alliances useful to the Crown, I gave them very pretty wives.’

The two sisters were very little alike. Jeanne, the elder, the wife of Philippe of Poitiers, was twenty-one years old. She was tall and slender, her hair somewhere between blond and chestnut, and something in the way she held herself, something formal about the line of the neck and the slant of the eye, reminded the King of the fine greyhounds in his kennels. She dressed with a simplicity and sobriety that was almost an affectation. This particular day she was wearing a long dress of grey velvet with tight sleeves; over it she wore a surcoat edged with ermine, reaching to the waist.

Her sister Blanche was smaller, rounder, rosier, with greater spontaneity. Though she was only three years younger than Jeanne, she still had childish dimples in her cheeks and, doubtless, they would remain there for some time yet. Her hair was of a bright blond and her eyes, and this is rare, were of a clear and brilliant brown; she had small transluscent teeth. Dress was more to her than a game, it was a passion. She devoted herself to it with an extravagance that was not always in the best of taste. She wore enormous pleated coifs and hung as many jewels as she could upon her collar, sleeves and belt. Her dresses were embroidered with pearls and gold thread. But she was so graceful that everything could be forgiven her, and appeared so pleased with herself that it was a pleasure to see.

The little group was talking of a matter of five days. ‘Is it reasonable to be so concerned about a mere five days?’ said the Countess of Poitiers, at the moment the King emerged from behind a pillar masking his approach.

‘Good morning, my daughters,’ he said.

The three young people fell suddenly silent. The good-looking boy bowed low and moved a pace or two aside with his eyes upon the ground as befitted his rank. The two young women, having made their curtsies, became tongue-tied, blushing and a little embarrassed. They looked as if they had been caught out.

‘Well, my daughters,’ the King went on, ‘one might well think that I had arrived at an inappropriate moment? What were you saying to each other?’

He was not surprised at his reception. He was accustomed to the fact that everyone, even his greatest friends, even his closest relations, were intimidated by his presence. He was often surprised by the wall of ice that fell between him and everyone who came near him – all, that is, except Marigny and Nogaret – and he found it difficult to explain away the terror that seized strangers whom he happened to meet. Indeed, he believed he did everything possible to appear pleasant and amiable. He wanted to be loved and feared at the same time. And it was asking too much.

Blanche was the first to recover her assurance.

‘You must forgive us, Sire,’ she said, ‘but it is not an easy thing to repeat!’

‘Why not?’ asked Philip the Fair.

‘Because … we were saying unkind things about you,’ Blanche replied.

‘Really?’ said Philip, uncertain whether she was teasing, astonished that anyone should dare tease him.

He glanced at the young man, standing a little apart, who seemed very ill at ease. Jerking his chin towards him, he said, ‘Who is he?’

‘Messire Philippe d’Aunay, equerry to our uncle Valois who has lent him to me as escort,’ replied the Countess of Poitiers.

The young man bowed once again.

For an instant the idea crossed the King’s mind that his sons were wrong to permit their wives to go abroad accompanied by such good-looking equerries, and that the old-fashioned custom, which insisted that princesses should be accompanied by ladies-in-waiting, had undoubtedly a good deal of sense to it.

‘Haven’t you a brother?’ he asked the equerry.

‘Yes, Sire, my brother is in the service of Monseigneur of Poitiers,’ answered young Aunay, bearing the King’s gaze with some discomfort.

‘That’s it; I always confuse you,’ said the King.

Then, turning back to Blanche, he said, ‘Well, then, what unkind things were you saying of me, my girl?’

‘Jeanne and I are in complete agreement that we owe you a grudge, Father. For five consecutive nights we have not had our husbands at our service because you keep them in council or send them far away on affairs of state.’

‘My dear daughters, these are not matters to be spoken of out loud,’ said the King.

He was a prude by nature, and it was said had remained chaste for all the nine years that he had been a widower. But he could not be severe with Blanche. Her liveliness, her gaiety, her daring, to say the least, disarmed him. He was at once amused and shocked. He smiled, which was a thing that hardly happened to him once a month.

‘And what does the third one say?’ he added.

By the third one, he meant Marguerite of Burgundy, the cousin of Jeanne and Blanche, who was married to his eldest son, Louis, King of Navarre.

‘Marguerite?’ cried Blanche. ‘She’s shut herself up, she’s sulking, and she says that you’re as wicked as you’re good-looking.’

Once more the King found himself in uncertainty; wondering how he should interpret the last phrase. But Blanche’s expression was so limpid, so candid! She was the only person who dared tease him, the only person who did not tremble in his presence.

‘Well, you can reassure her, and reassure yourself, Blanche; Louis and Charles can keep you company tonight. Today is a good day for the kingdom,’ said Philip the Fair. ‘There will be no Council tonight. As for your husband, Jeanne, I can tell you that he’ll be home tomorrow and that he has forwarded our affairs in Flanders. I am pleased with him.’

‘Then I shall make him doubly welcome,’ said Jeanne, inclining her beautiful neck.

This conversation was a peculiarly long one for King Philip. He turned quickly away without saying good-bye, and went towards the grand staircase which led to his apartments.

‘Ouf!’ said Blanche, her hand on her heart as she watched him disappear. ‘We were lucky to get away with it that time.’

‘I thought I should faint with terror,’ said Jeanne.

Philippe d’Aunay was blushing to the roots of his hair, not from embarassment as a moment ago, but from anger.

‘Thank you,’ he said drily to Blanche. ‘What you’ve just said made nice hearing.’

‘What did you expect me to do?’ Blanche cried. ‘Did you think of anything better yourself? You stood there like a stuck pig. He came upon us without warning. He’s got the sharpest pair of ears in the kingdom. If by any chance he heard our last words, it was the only way to put him off the scent. And instead of blaming me, Philippe, you’d do better to congratulate me.’

‘Don’t begin again,’ said Jeanne. ‘Let’s walk towards the stalls and stop looking as if we were plotting.’

They moved forward, looking unconcerned, and acknowledging the bows in their honour.

‘Messire,’ said Jeanne in a low voice, ‘I must tell you that it’s you and your ridiculous jealousy that cause all the trouble. If you hadn’t started groaning here about what you suffer at the Queen of Navarre’s hands, we wouldn’t have run the risk of the King hearing too much.’

Philippe went on looking gloomy.

‘Really,’ Blanche said, ‘your brother is much more agreeable than you are.’

‘Doubtless he’s better treated, and I’m glad of it for his sake,’ answered Philippe. ‘No doubt I’m a fool, a fool to allow myself to be humiliated by a woman who treats me as a servant, who summons me to her bed when she feels inclined, who sends me about my business when the inclination has passed, who leaves me whole days without a sign, and pretends not to recognise me when we meet. After all, what game is she playing?’

Philippe d’Aunay, equerry to Monseigneur the Count of Valois, the King’s brother, had been for three years the lover of Marguerite, the eldest of Philip the Fair’s daughters-in-law. And he dared to speak thus to Blanche of Burgundy, the wife of Charles, Philip the Fair’s third son, because Blanche was the mistress of his brother, Gautier d’Aunay, equerry to the Count of Poitiers. And if he dared to speak thus to Jeanne, Countess of Poitiers, it was because Jeanne, no one’s mistress as yet, nevertheless was a party, partly from weakness, partly because it amused her, to the intrigues of the other two royal daughters-in-law. She arranged meetings and interviews.

Thus it was that in the early spring of 1314, upon the very day that the Templars came up for judgment, the very day this serious matter was the Crown’s main concern, of the three royal sons of France, the eldest, Louis, and the youngest, Charles, were cuckolded by two equerries, one of whom was in their uncle’s household and the other in their brother’s, and all this was taking place under the auspices of their sister-in-law, Jeanne, who, though faithful as a wife, was a benevolent go-between, finding a pleasurable excitement in living the loves of others.

The report that had been given the Queen of England a few days earlier was thus very far from false.

‘In any case, there’ll be no Tower of Nesle tonight,’ said Blanche.

‘As far as I’m concerned, it won’t be any different from previous nights,’ replied Philippe d’Aunay. ‘But what makes me absolutely furious is the thought that tonight, in the arms of Louis of Navarre, Marguerite will say the very same words that she has so often said to me.’

‘That’s going too far, my friend,’ said Jeanne with considerable haughtiness. ‘A little while ago you were accusing Marguerite, quite unreasonably, of having other lovers. Now you wish to prevent her having a husband. The favours she gives you have made you forget your place. Tomorrow I think I shall advise our uncle to send you into his county of Valois for several months. Your estates lie there and it will be good for your nerves.’

At once, good-looking young Philippe calmed down.

‘Oh, Madam!’ he murmured. ‘I think I should die of it.’

He was much more attractive in this mood than when angry. It was a pleasure to frighten him, merely to see him lower his long silken eyelashes and watch the slight trembling of his white chin. He was suddenly so unhappy, so pathetic, that the two young women, forgetting their alarm, could do no other than smile.

‘You must tell your brother, Gautier, that I shall sigh for him tonight,’ said Blanche in the kindest possible way.

Once again, it was impossible to tell whether she was lying or telling the truth.

‘Oughtn’t Marguerite to be warned of what we’ve just learnt?’ said Aunay hesitatingly. ‘In case she intended tonight …’

‘Blanche can do what she likes; I won’t undertake anything more,’ said Jeanne. ‘I was too frightened. I don’t want to have anything more to do with your affairs. It’ll all end badly one day, and I’m really compromising myself for nothing at all.’

‘It’s quite true,’ said Blanche; ‘you get nothing out of our good fortune. And of us all, it’s your husband who’s away most often. If only Marguerite and I had your luck.’

‘But I’ve no taste for it,’ Jeanne answered.

‘Or no courage,’ said Blanche gently.

‘It’s quite true that even if I did want it, I haven’t your facility for lying, Sister, and I’m sure that I should betray myself at once.’

Having said so much, Jeanne was pensive for a moment or two. No, certainly, she had no wish to deceive Philippe of Poitiers; but she was tired of appearing to be a prude.

‘Madam,’ said Aunay, ‘couldn’t you give me a message for your cousin?’

Jeanne looked covertly at the young man with a sort of tender indulgence.

‘Can’t you survive another day without seeing the beautiful Marguerite?’ she said. ‘Well then, I’ll be kind. I’ll buy a jewel for Marguerite and you shall go and give it to her on my behalf. But it’s the last time.’

They went to one of the baskets. While the two young women were making their choice, Blanche at once selecting the most expensive trinkets, Philippe d’Aunay was thinking again of the meeting with the King.

‘Each time he sees me, he asks me my name over again,’ he thought. ‘This must be the tenth time. And every time he makes some allusion to my brother.’

He felt a sort of dull apprehension and wondered why the King frightened him so much. No doubt it was because of the way he looked at you out of those over-large, unwinking eyes with their strange, indefinite colour which lay somewhere between grey and pale blue, like the ice on ponds on winter mornings, eyes that remained in the memory for hours after you had looked into them.

None of the three young people had noticed a tall man, dressed in hunting-clothes, who, from some distance off, while pretending to buy a buckle, had been watching them for some little time. This man was Count Robert of Artois.

‘Philippe, I haven’t enough money on me, do you mind paying?’

It was Jeanne who spoke, drawing Philippe out of his reflections. And Philippe responded with alacrity. Jeanne had chosen for Marguerite a girdle woven of gold thread.

‘Oh, I should like one like it!’ said Blanche.

But she had not the money either, and it was Philippe who paid.

It was always thus when he was in company with these ladies. They promised to pay him back later on, but they always forgot, and he was too much the gallant gentleman ever to remind them.

‘Take care, my son,’ Messire Gautier d’Aunay, his father, had said to him one day, ‘the richest women are always the most expensive.’

He realised it when he went over his accounts. But he did not care. The Aunays were rich and their fiefs of Vémars and of d’Aulnay-les-Bondy, between Pontoise and Luzarches, brought them in a handsome income. Philippe told himself that, later on, his brilliant friendships would put him in the way of a large fortune. And for the moment nothing cost too much for the satisfaction of his passion.

He had the pretext, an expensive pretext, to rush off to the Hôtel-de-Nesle, where lived the King and Queen of Navarre, beyond the Seine. Going by the Pont Saint-Michel, it would take him but a few minutes.

He left the two princesses and quitted the Mercers’ Hall.

Outside, the great bell of Notre-Dame had fallen silent and over all the island of the Cité lay a menacing and unaccustomed quiet. What was happening at Notre-Dame?

4
At the Great Door of Notre-Dame

THE ARCHERS HAD FORMED a cordon to keep the crowd out of the space in front of the cathedral. Heads appeared in curiosity at every window.

The mist had dissolved and a pale sunlight illumined the white stone of Notre-Dame of Paris. For the cathedral was only seventy years old, and work was still continuously in progress upon the decorations. It still had the brilliance of the new, and the light emphasised the curve of its ogival windows, pierced the lacework of its central rose and accentuated the teeming statues of its porches with rose-coloured shadows.

Already, for an hour, the sellers of chickens who, every morning, did business in front of the cathedral, had been driven back against the houses.

The crowing of a cock, stifling in its cage, split the silence, that weighty silence which had so surprised Philippe d’Aunay as he came out of the Mercers’ Hall; while feathers floated head-high in the air.

Captain Alain de Pareilles stood stiffly to attention in front of his archers.

At the top of the steps leading up from the open space, the four Templars stood, their backs to the crowd, face to face with the Ecclesiastical Tribunal which sat between the open doors of the great portico. Bishops, canons, and clerics sat in rows upon benches specially placed for them.

People looked with curiosity at the three Cardinal Legates, sent especially by the Pope to signify that the sentence was without appeal and had the final approval of the Holy See. The attention of the spectators was also particularly held by Jean de Marigny, the young Archbishop of Sens, brother of the First Minister, who had conducted the whole prosecution, and by Brother Renaud, the King’s confessor and Grand Inquisitor of France.

Some thirty monks, some in brown habits, some in white, stood behind the members of the Tribunal. The only civilian in the assembly, Jean Ployebouche, Provost of Paris, a man of some fifty years, thick-set and frowning, seemed not altogether happy in the company in which he found himself. He represented the royal power and was responsible for the maintenance of order. His eyes moved continuously from the crowd to the Captain of the Archers, from the Captain to the young Archbishop of Sens; one could imagine that he was thinking, ‘Provided everything goes off quietly.’

The sun played upon the mitres, the crosses, the purple of the cardinalatial robes, the amaranth of the bishops, the cloaks of ermine and velvet, the gold of pectoral crosses, the steel of coats of mail and of the weapons of the guard. These brilliant, scintillating colours rendered more violent yet the contrast with the accused on whose account all this pomp was gathered together. The four ragged Templars, standing shoulder to shoulder, looked as if they had been sculptured out of cinders.

The Cardinal-Archbishop of Albano rose to his feet and read the heads of the judgment. He did it slowly and with emphasis, savouring the sound of his own voice, pleased both with himself and with the opportunity of appearing before a foreign audience. Every now and then he pretended to be horrified at having even to mention the crimes he was enumerating, and at these moments his reading assumed an unctuous majesty of diction in order to relate some new transgression, some as yet unmentioned crime, and to announce yet further evidence, of an appalling nature.

‘We have heard the Brothers Géraud du Passage and Jean de Cugny, who assert with many others that they were compelled by force, upon being received into the Order, to spit upon the Cross, since, as they were told, it was only a piece of wood while the true God was in Heaven … We have heard Brother Guy Dauphin upon whom it was enjoined that, if one of his superiors were tormented by the flesh and desired to find satisfaction upon his body, he must consent to everything that was asked of him … We have heard upon this point the Sire de Molay who, under interrogation, has admitted and avowed that …’

The crowd had to listen hard to grasp the meaning of the words which were disfigured both by the Italian accent and the emphasis of their utterance. The Legate made too much of them and went on too long. The crowd began to grow impatient.

During this recital of accusation, false witness, and extorted confession, Jacques de Molay murmured to himself ‘Lies … lies … lies.’

The hoarse repetition of this word uttered in an undertone, reached his companions.

The anger the Grand Master had felt rising in him during the ride in the wagon, far from diminishing, was increasing. The blood began to beat more strongly yet behind his sunken temples.

Nothing had happened to interrupt the progress of the nightmare. No band of ex-Templars had burst out of the crowd. Fate appeared inexorable.

‘We have heard the Brother Hugues de Payraud, who admits that he obliged novices to deny Christ three times.’

Hugues de Payraud was the Brother Visitor. He turned to Jacques de Molay with an expression of horror and said in a low voice, ‘Brother, Brother, could I really have said that?’

The four dignitaries were alone, abandoned by God and man, held as in a giant vice between the soldiers and the Tribunal, between the royal power and the power of the Church. Each word pronounced by the Cardinal-Legate but screwed the vice tighter, till it was clear that the nightmare could end only in death.

How could the Commissions of Inquiry have failed to understand, for it had been explained to them a hundred times, that this test of denial had been imposed upon the novices for the sole purpose of discovering their attitude in the event of their being taken a prisoner by the Saracens and called upon to deny their religion?

The Grand Master had a wild longing to throw himself at the Prelate’s throat, beat him, throw his mitre to the ground, and strangle him; all that prevented him was the certainty of being stopped before he could ever reach him. Besides, it was not only the Legate whom he longed to attack, but the young Marigny too, the fop with the golden hair who adopted such a negligent air. But, above all, he longed to attack his three real absent enemies: the King, the Keeper of the Seals, and the Pope.

Powerless rage, heavier to bear than all his chains, impaired his vision, forming a red film before his eyes, and yet, something had to happen. … He was seized by so violent an attack of giddiness that he was afraid of falling to the ground. He did not even notice that Charnay had been seized by a similar fury and that the Preceptor of Normandy’s scar had turned white across his crimson forehead.

The Legate was taking his time about the reading, lowering the parchment in his hand, only to raise it once again to the level of his eyes. He was making the performance last as long as possible. The depositions were over; the time had come to announce the sentence. The Legate continued, ‘In consideration that the accused have avowed and recognised the above, they are condemned to solitary confinement for the term of their natural lives, that they may obtain the remission of their sins by means of their repentance. In nomine patris. …’

The Legate had finished. There was nothing left for him to do but sit down, roll up the parchment, and hand it to a priest.

At first there was no reaction from the crowd. After such a recital of crime, sentence of death had been so much expected that mere solitary confinement – that is to say, imprisonment for life, a dungeon, chains, and bread and water – appeared almost as an act of clemency.

Philip the Fair had perfectly gauged the situation. Popular opinion, taken aback, would accept without difficulty, almost disinterestedly, this ultimate resolution of a tragedy that had preoccupied it for seven years. The senior Legate and the young Archbishop of Sens exchanged an almost imperceptible smile of connivance.

‘Brothers, Brothers,’ stuttered the Brother Visitor, ‘did I hear that correctly? They aren’t going to kill us! They’re going to spare us!’

His eyes filled with tears; his swollen hands trembled and his broken teeth parted as if he were about to laugh.

It was the sight of this hideous joy that let loose the flood-gates. For one instant Jacques de Molay looked at the half-witted face of a man who had once been brave and strong.

And suddenly from the top of the steps they heard a voice shout, ‘I protest!’

And so powerful was the voice that at first they could not believe that it came from the Grand Master.

‘I protest against an iniquitous sentence and I declare that the crimes of which we are accused are wholly invented!’ cried Jacques de Molay.

A huge sigh came from the crowd. The Tribunal was thrown into confusion. The Cardinals looked at each other in stupefaction. No one had expected anything of the kind. Jean de Marigny leapt to his feet. The time for negligent airs had passed; he was pale and strained and trembling with rage.

‘You are lying!’ he shouted. ‘You confessed before the Commission.’

From instinct, the archers had closed their ranks, awaiting an order.

‘I am guilty,’ went on Jacques de Molay, ‘only of having yielded to your promises, your threats and your tortures. I protest, in the name of God who hears us, that the Order of which I am the Grand Master is innocent.’

And God indeed seemed to hear him, for the Grand Master’s voice, caught up in the interior of the cathedral, reverberating in the vaults, returned as an echo, as if another, deeper voice, were repeating his words from the far end of the nave.

‘You have confessed to sodomy!’ cried Jean de Marigny.

‘Under torture,’ replied Molay.

‘… under torture …’ came the voice which seemed to resound from the tabernacle.

‘You have admitted to heresy!’

‘Under torture!’

‘… under torture …’ came the voice.

‘I retract everything!’ cried the Grand Master.

‘… everything …’ the whole cathedral seemed loudly to respond.

A new voice was raised. It was Geoffroy de Charnay, the Preceptor of Normandy, who, in his turn, was crossing swords with the Archbishop of Sens.

‘Our weakness has been taken advantage of,’ he said. ‘We are the victims of your plotting and of your false promises. It is your hate and your vindictiveness that have brought us to this pass! But I, too, protest before God that we are innocent, and those who say otherwise are telling a damned lie.’

Then uproar broke loose. The monks, packed behind the Tribunal, began shouting, ‘Heretics! To the stake with them, to the stake with the heretics!’

But their voices were soon drowned. With that feeling of generosity the populace always has for the weak and for courage in adversity, the majority of the crowd took the part of the Templars.

Fists were shaken at the judges. Disturbances began all over the square. There were shouts from the windows.

On the order of Alain de Pareilles, half the archers had formed up with linked arms to prevent the crowd swarming on to the staircase. The rest lined up with their pikes levelled at the populace.

The royal sergeants-at-arms were blindly raining down blows upon the crowd with their be-lilied staves. The merchants’ baskets had been upset and the chickens screeched among the people’s feet.

The Tribunal had risen to its feet in consternation. Jean de Marigny was conferring with the Provost of Paris.

‘Decide anything you like, Monseigneur, anything you like,’ the Provost was saying. ‘But you can’t leave them there. We shall all be overrun. You don’t know what the people of Paris are capable of when they get out of hand.’

Jean de Marigny stretched out his hand and raised his episcopal crozier to indicate that he was about to speak. But no one wanted to listen to him any more. Insults were hurled at him.

‘Torturer! False Bishop! God will punish you!’

‘Speak, Monseigneur, speak!’ The Provost was saying to him.

He was afraid for his job and his skin; he remembered the riots of 1306 when his predecessor, Provost Barbet, had had his house pillaged.

‘I declare two of the condemned relapsed into heresy,’ cried the Archbishop, shouting vainly. ‘They have rejected the justice of the Church; the Church rejects them and remits them to the justice of the King.’

His words were lost in the hubbub. Then the whole Tribunal, like a flock of terrified guinea-fowl hurried into Notre-Dame and had the door quickly shut behind them.

Upon a sign from the Provost to Alain de Pareilles, a band of archers rushed to the steps; the wagon was brought up and the prisoners were bundled into it with blows from pike-staves. They submitted with absolute docility. The Grand Master and the Preceptor of Normandy felt at once exhausted and relaxed. At last they were at peace with themselves. The other two were no longer capable of understanding anything.

The archers opened up a passage for the wagon, while Provost Ployebouche gave instructions to his sergeant-at-arms to clear the square as soon as possible. He was in a highly nervous condition, utterly beside himself.

‘Take the prisoners back to the Temple,’ he shouted to Alain de Pareilles. ‘I shall go at once to inform the King.’

He took four sergeants-at-arms with him by way of escort.

5
Marguerite of Burgundy, Queen of Navarre

WHILE ALL THIS HAD been going on, Philippe d’Aunay had reached the Hôtel-de-Nesle. He had been asked to wait in the ante-room of the Queen of Navarre’s private apartments. Time lagged. Philippe wondered whether Marguerite was detained by visitors or whether, quite simply, she was taking pleasure in keeping him waiting. It would be in character. And, quite possibly, after an hour or so, she would send to say that she could not see him. It made him furious.

Three years ago, when their liaison had begun, she would not have behaved like this. Or would she? He could no longer remember. He had succumbed to the delights of a new relationship in which vanity played as important a part as love. At that time he would have danced attendance for five hours at a stretch merely to catch sight of his mistress, to kiss her hand, and hear a whispered word promising a meeting.

But times had changed. The difficulties, which are the savour of a nascent love-affair, become intolerable after three years, and sometimes passion dies by the very thing that has brought it to birth. The continued uncertainty of meeting, appointments cancelled, the obligations of the Court, to which had to be added the eccentricities of Marguerite’s own character, had aroused in Philippe a sense of exasperation, which could find expression only in anger and in making new demands upon her.

Marguerite seemed to take things much more easily. She enjoyed the double pleasure of deceiving her husband and torturing her lover. She was one of those women who can find satisfaction in love only through the spectacle of the suffering they inflict, till even that becomes a bore.

Not a day passed but Philippe told himself that a great love could find no satisfaction in adultery, and that he did not swear to break it off.

But he was weak, cowardly, and enmeshed. Like a gambler who doubles his stake, he followed up his fantasies of the past, his vain present, all the time he had wasted, and his former happiness. He lacked the courage to rise from the table and say, ‘I’ve lost enough.’

And there he was, leaning against a window-frame, waiting to be told to come in.

To alleviate his impatience, he was watching the coming and going of the grooms in the courtyard of the house. They were leading out the horses to exercise on the little Pré-aux-Clercs near by. He watched the porters delivering sides of meat and baskets of vegetables.

The Hôtel-de-Nesle consisted of two distinct buildings: the Hôtel proper, which was of recent construction, and the tower erected under Philippe-Auguste, at the period when the town wall passed that way, in order to make a counterpart to the Tower of the Louvre on the left bank of the Seine. Six years earlier, Philip the Fair had bought the whole site from the Count Aumary de Nesle, and had granted it as a residence to his eldest son, the King of Navarre.⁹

Until then the tower had been used as a guardroom or garrison. It was Marguerite who had had it furnished as a retreat in which to meditate, or so she said, upon her Books of Hours above the flowing river. She declared that she needed solitude, and since she was known to be eccentric, Louis of Navarre had not been unduly surprised. In reality, she had desired this amenity merely for the purpose of receiving the good-looking Aunay the more easily.

For the latter, this had been a source of unparalleled pride. For him alone a Queen had turned a fortress into a love-nest.

And then, when his elder brother Gautier d’Aunay had become the lover of Blanche, the tower had also become the secret meeting-place of the new couple. The pretext had been easily conceived: Blanche merely came to visit her cousin and sister-in-law; and Marguerite had no wish but to be obliging.

But now, at this actual moment, as Philippe looked out upon the huge sombre tower, with its conical roof and high, narrow windows, overlooking the river, he could not help wondering whether other men had not shared those furtive embraces and tumultuous nights. Even to those who thought they knew her best, Marguerite was so unaccountable! And these last five days without a sign from her, when every circumstance lent itself to a meeting, were they not proof?

A door opened and a lady-in-waiting asked Philippe to follow her. His lips were dry and he felt a constriction about the heart, but he was determined not to let himself be put off this time. He walked down a long corridor and then the lady-in-waiting disappeared, while Philippe entered a low-ceilinged room, crowded with furniture, impregnated with that heady scent he knew so well, essence of jasmin brought by merchants from the Orient.

It took Philippe a moment to accustom himself to the twilight and heat of the room. A tree-trunk was smouldering above a heap of tinder-wood upon the great hearth.

‘Madam …’ he said.

A voice came from the end of the room, a rather hoarse and sleepy voice.

‘Come over here, Messire.’

Was Marguerite alone? Was she daring to receive him in her room, without witnesses, when the King of Navarre might be in the vicinity?

He felt at once relieved and disappointed: the Queen of Navarre was not alone. She was reclining upon her bed, while an elderly woman-of-the-bedchamber, half-hidden by the curtain, was engaged in polishing her toe-nails.

Philippe went forward and in a courtly tone, which was at variance with his expression, announced that the Countess of Poitiers had sent him to ask after the Queen of Navarre, remit her compliments and deliver a present.

Marguerite listened without moving. Her beautiful naked arms were folded beneath her head and her eyes were half closed.

She was small, black-haired and olive-skinned. It was said that she had the most beautiful body in the world, and she was well aware of it.

Philippe looked at her round, sensual mouth, her short chin, her half-naked throat, and her plump, elegant legs revealed by the woman-of-the-bedchamber.

‘Put the present on the table, I’ll look at it in a moment,’ said Marguerite.

She stretched and yawned. Philippe saw her pink tongue, the roof of her mouth and her little white teeth. She yawned like a cat.

As yet, she had not once turned her eyes in his direction. He made an effort to keep himself under control. The woman-of-the-bedchamber looked covertly at Philippe in curiosity. He thought that his anger must be too apparent. He had never seen this particular duenna before. Was she newly in Marguerite’s service?

‘Am I to take back a reply to the Countess?’ he asked.

‘Oh!’ cried Marguerite, sitting up, ‘you’re hurting me, woman.’

The woman murmured an excuse. Marguerite at last consented to look in Philippe’s direction. She had beautiful dark, velvety eyes, which seemed to caress everyone and everything they looked upon.

‘Tell my sister-in-law of Poitiers …’ she said.

Philippe had moved to escape being observed by the woman-of-the-bedchamber. With a quick gesture of his hand he signed to Marguerite to send the old lady away. But Marguerite appeared not to understand; she smiled, but not in Philippe’s direction; she seemed to be smiling into the void.

‘On the other hand, perhaps not,’ she went on. ‘I’ll write her a letter for you to give her.’

Then, to the woman-of-the-bedchamber, she said, ‘That will do for the present. I must dress. Go and prepare my clothes.’

The old woman went into the next room but left the door open. Philippe realised that she was watching him.

Marguerite got up and, as she passed him, whispered almost without opening her lips, ‘I love you.’

‘Why haven’t I seen you for five days?’ he asked as quietly.

‘Oh, how pretty it is,’ she cried, unpacking the girdle. ‘What good taste Jeanne has, and how I love her present!’

‘Why haven’t I seen you?’ Philippe repeated in a low voice.

‘It’s the very thing to go with my new purse,’ Marguerite went on. ‘Messire d’Aunay, can you spare the time to wait while I write a word of thanks?’

She sat down at the table, took a goose’s quill and a piece of paper¹⁰ and signalled Philippe to draw near.

She wrote so that he could read the word over her shoulder: ‘Prudence.’

Then to the woman in attendance, who could be heard in the neighbouring room, she cried: ‘Madame de Comminges, will you fetch my daughter? I haven’t given her a kiss all morning.’

The woman went out.

‘You’re lying,’ said Philippe. ‘Prudence is a good pretext for getting rid of one lover in order to receive others.’

She was not altogether lying. It is always towards the end of an affair, when lovers either begin to quarrel or get bored with each other, that they betray themselves to those about them, and that the world takes for something new what is in fact upon the point of coming to an end. Had Marguerite said something careless? Had Philippe’s ill-temper been noted beyond the narrow world of Blanche and Jeanne? She felt absolutely certain of the porter and the chambermaid of the tower. They were two servants she had brought from Burgundy and whom she terrified with threats upon the one hand, and rewarded handsomely upon the other. But could one ever be certain? She felt that she was vaguely suspected. The King of Navarre had made several allusions to her success, husband’s jokes which did not quite ring true. And then there was this new woman-of-the-bedchamber, Madame de Comminges, who had been forced upon her a few days ago in response to a recommendation from Monseigneur Charles of Valois. She was always trailing about in her widow’s weeds. Marguerite felt herself less ready to take risks than in the past.

‘You know, you’re a bore,’ she said. ‘I love you and you never stop scolding me.’

‘Well, I shall have no opportunity to be a bore tonight,’ Philippe replied. ‘The King told us himself that there was to be no Council, so you’ll have all the time in the world to reassure your husband.’

From her expression Philippe could have guessed, had he not been so angry, that from that quarter at any rate he had nothing to fear.

‘And I shall go and visit the whores!’ he said.

‘All right,’ said Marguerite. ‘I shall be delighted to know how they set about things.’

‘Bitch! Bitch! Bitch!’ thought Philippe. You never knew how to take her; she was as slippery as an eel.

She went to an open coffer, and took out a new purse of gold thread with three catches made of large precious stones. Philippe had never seen it before.

Two days earlier Marguerite had received it as a present from her sister-in-law, the Queen of England, by the hand of a discreet messenger who had brought two similar purses for Jeanne and Blanche. A note from Isabella asked them not to talk of them, for ‘my husband watches carefully over my expenditure, and it might anger him.’

The three princesses had been somewhat surprised by their sister-in-law’s unaccustomed kindness. ‘She’s having trouble at home,’ they said to each other, ‘and wants to be in our good books.’

‘They go splendidly together,’ said Marguerite, passing the girdle through the golden loops, holding it against her waist, and going to look at herself in a huge pewter mirror.

‘Who gave you that purse?’ asked Philippe.

‘It was …’

She was quite simply going to tell him the truth. But she saw him stiffen with suspicion and was unable to resist teasing him.

‘It was … someone,’ she said.

‘Who?’

‘Guess.’

‘Louis?’

‘My husband isn’t as generous as that!’

‘Then, who?’

‘Can’t you guess?’

‘I want to know. I have the right to know,’ Philippe said, losing his temper. ‘It’s a present from a man, a rich man, a man in love … and because you’ve given him reason to be so, I should think.’

Marguerite went on looking at herself in the mirror, first trying the belt on one side, then on the other, then in the middle of her waist.

‘It was Robert of Artois,’ said Philippe.

‘Oh, what bad taste you credit me with, Messire!’ she said. ‘That great lout, always smelling of game.’

Neither of them imagined how near they were to the truth, and what part Robert of Artois had played in the sending of the purse.

‘Gaucher de Châtillon, then,’ said Philippe. ‘He’s always hovering round you as he does round every woman he sees.’

Marguerite put her head on one side as if lost in thought.

‘The High Constable?’ she said. ‘I hadn’t noticed that he was interested in me, but since you tell me that he is … Thank you for drawing my attention to it.’

‘I shall find out in the end.’

‘When you’ve named everyone at the Court of France …’

She was going to add, ‘Then perhaps you’ll think of the Court of England.’ But she was interrupted by the return of Madame de Comminges, who entered, pushing before her the Princess Jeanne, still almost an infant. The little girl walked slowly, made awkward by a long velvet dress embroidered with pearls. She bore no resemblance to her mother except for her round, swelling, almost convex brow. She was fair, had a thin nose and long eyelashes which fluttered over clear eyes. She might equally have been the daughter of the King of Navarre or of Philippe d’Aunay. But on that point, too, Philippe had never been able to discover the truth, and Marguerite was much too clever ever to give herself away on so important a matter. Every time Philippe saw the little Jeanne, he asked himself, ‘Is she mine?’ And he thought that one day he would have to bow as he received the orders of a princess who was perhaps his daughter and might well succeed to two thrones. For Louis of Navarre, the heir of France, and Marguerite his wife, had so far no other children.

Marguerite picked up the little Jeanne, kissed her forehead, and commenting that she looked well, handed her back to the woman-of-the-bedchamber.

‘There, I’ve kissed her,’ she said. ‘You can take her away again.’

She became aware from Madame de Comminges’s expression that the latter perfectly understood that she had only been sent to fetch the child in order to get rid of her for a moment. ‘I must be relieved of this old woman,’ thought Marguerite.

A lady-in-waiting entered hurriedly, asking if the King of Navarre were there.

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