The Iron King

by Maurice Druon

  ‘Gautier,’ he murmured, ‘I’m happy tonight. Are you?’

  ‘I’m well content, Philippe.’

  Thus spoke the two brothers Aunay, Gautier and Philippe, as they went to the meeting Blanche and Marguerite had arranged as soon as they knew their husbands would be detained by the King. And it was the Countess of Poitiers who, once more a go-between, had delivered the message.

  Philippe d’Aunay found it difficult to keep his happiness and impatience under control. His distress of the morning had disappeared, all his suspicions seemed unjust and vain. Marguerite had sent for him; for him Marguerite was running every risk; in a few moments he would be holding her in his arms and he swore that he would be the most tender, gay and ardent lover in the world.

  The boat grounded on the bank over which rose the high wall of the tower. The last spate had left a shoal of mud.

  The ferryman lent his arm to assist the two young men ashore.

  ‘You understand what you’ve got to do, fellow?’ said Gautier. ‘You’ll wait for us close by and don’t be seen.’

  ‘I’ll wait for the rest of my life, young sir, if you’ll pay me for it,’ said the ferryman.

  ‘Half the night will be enough,’ said Gautier.

  He gave him a silver groat, twelve times what the journey was worth, and promised him another upon their return. The ferryman bowed low.

  Taking care not to slip or get too muddy, the two brothers crossed the short distance to a postern and knocked a prearranged signal. The door was silently opened.

  ‘Good evening, Sirs,’ said the maid whom Marguerite had brought from Burgundy.

  She carried a lantern and, having barricaded the door behind them, led the way into a turret staircase.

  She showed them into the big room of the tower on the first floor. Its only light was a huge fire of logs on an open hearth. The glow rose and was lost among the tops of the twelve arches supporting the barrel roof.

  Like Marguerite’s, this room too was scented with jasmin; the furnishings seemed impregnated with it, the gold-embroidered hangings on the walls, the carpets, the furs of wild beasts spread about on low beds in the oriental manner.

  The princesses were not there. The maid went out, saying that she would inform them of their arrival.

  The two young men, having taken off their cloaks, went over to the fire and automatically held out their hands to the warmth.

  Gautier d’Aunay was two years older than his brother, whom he very much resembled, though he was shorter, more solidly built and fairer. He had a thick neck, pink cheeks and laughed at life. He was not, as was his brother, a prey to passion. He was married – and well married – to a Montmorency by whom he already had three children.

  ‘I always wonder,’ he said, as he warmed his hands, ‘why Blanche took me for a lover and, indeed, why she has a lover at all. As for Marguerite, it’s obvious. One’s only got to look at Louis of Navarre, with his downcast eyes, his gawky walk and hollow chest, and then compare him with you, to understand. And then, of course, there are other reasons of which we know.’

  He was alluding to certain secrets of the alcove, to the King of Navarre’s lack of sexual vigour and to the disharmony existing between husband and wife.

  ‘But I don’t understand Blanche,’ Gautier d’Aunay went on. ‘She’s got a good-looking husband, much better-looking than I am. Of course he is, Philippe, don’t protest. He looks exactly like his father the King. He loves her and, I believe, whatever she may say, that she loves him. Then why does she do it? Every time I see her I wonder why such a piece of luck should have come my way.’

  ‘Because she wants to do the same as her cousin,’ Philippe replied.

  There were light steps and whisperings in the passage that led from the tower to the house, and the two princesses came in.

  Philippe moved quickly towards Marguerite but suddenly stopped short. He had caught sight, at his mistress’s belt, of the gold purse with the precious stones that had so much angered him in the morning.

  ‘What’s the matter with you, Philippe darling?’ Marguerite asked, her arms extended towards him, her face raised to receive a kiss. ‘Aren’t you happy this evening?’

  ‘Perfectly,’ he answered coldly.

  ‘What’s happened? What are you angry about now?’

  ‘Have you put that on merely to annoy me?’ asked Philippe, pointing to the purse.

  She laughed loudly and happily.

  ‘How silly you are, how jealous and how sweet! Didn’t you realise that I was teasing you? Just to calm you down, I’ll give you the purse. You’ll know then that it was no present from a lover.’

  She took the purse from her waist and attached it to Philippe’s belt. He was bewildered and made a gesture of protest.

  ‘Yes, yes, I want you to have it,’ she said. ‘Now it really is a love-gauge for you. No, don’t refuse. Nothing is too fine for my beautiful Philippe. But don’t ask me again where the purse came from, or I shall have to take it back. I can only swear to you that it was not given me by a man. Besides, Blanche has got one too. Blanche,’ she said, turning to her cousin, ‘show your purse to Philippe. I have given him mine.’

  Blanche was lying on one of the beds in the darkest part of the room. Gautier was beside her, kneeling on one knee and covering her throat and hands with kisses.

  ‘I’ll wager,’ Marguerite murmured in Philippe’s ear, ‘that within a minute your brother will have received a similar present.’

  Blanche raised herself on an elbow and said, ‘Isn’t it very rash, Marguerite, and have we the right to do it?’

  ‘Of course,’ Marguerite answered. ‘No one but Jeanne has seen them or even knows that we have received them.’

  ‘All right,’ cried Blanche; ‘I don’t want my beautiful lover to be less loved and less adorned than yours.’

  And she took off her purse which Gautier accepted with an easy grace since his brother had already done so.

  Marguerite gave Philippe a look which said, ‘Didn’t I tell you so?’

  Philippe smiled at her. ‘How astonishing Marguerite is,’ he thought.

  He could never make her out or understand her. Was she the same woman who that morning had been cruel, teasing, perfidious, who had played with him as she might have turned a pheasant on a spit, and who now, having given him a present worth a hundred and fifty pounds, lay in his arms, submissive, tender, almost quivering?

  ‘I believe the reason I love you so much,’ he murmured, ‘is because I don’t understand you.’

  No compliment could have given Marguerite greater pleasure. She thanked Philippe by burying her lips in his neck. Suddenly she disengaged herself and stood listening. Then she cried, ‘Do you hear them? The Templars. They’re being led out to the stake.’

  Bright-eyed, her face alive with a sinister curiosity, she dragged Philippe to the window, a high funnel-shaped loophole built in the thickness of the wall, and opened the casement.

  The loud murmuring of the crowd flowed into the room.

  ‘Blanche, Gautier, come and look!’ said Marguerite.

  But Blanche replied in a happy, quavering voice, ‘Oh! no, I’m much too happy where I am.’

  Between the two princesses and their lovers all shame had long since vanished. It was their custom to enjoy all the pleasures of love in each other’s presence. If Blanche on occasion turned her eyes away, and hid her nakedness in the shadowy corners of the room, Marguerite derived an added pleasure from watching others making love, as she did from being watched herself.

  But at the moment, glued to the window, she was spellbound by the spectacle of what was taking place in the middle of the Seine. There, on the Island of the Jews, a hundred archers, drawn up in a circle, held lighted torches in their hands; and the flames of the torches, flaring in the wind, formed a central pool of light in which could clearly be seen the huge pile of faggots and the assistant-executioners clambering over it and stacking heaps of logs. On the near side of the archers, the i
sland, which normally was nothing but a field where cows and goats grazed, was covered with people; while a fleet of boats upon the river carried others who wished to watch the execution.

  Coming from the right bank, a larger boat than the rest, carrying standing men-at-arms, had just come alongside the island. Two tall grey figures disembarked from it. They wore curious hats and were preceded by a monk bearing a cross. The murmuring of the crowd became a clamour. Almost at the same instant lights went on in the great loggia in the water-tower which stood on the point of the palace garden. Shadows emerged from the darkness of the loggia, and suddenly the clamouring of the crowd ceased. The King and his Council had taken their places.

  Marguerite burst out laughing, a long, piercing, endless laugh.

  ‘Why are you laughing?’ Philippe asked.

  ‘Because Louis is over there,’ she said. ‘And if it were daylight, he would be able to see me.’

  Her eyes were bright; her black curls danced above the curve of her brow. With a rapid movement she pulled her dress from her beautiful amber shoulders, and let her clothes fall to the ground, standing quite naked, as if she wished to set at defiance the husband she detested across the intervening distance of the night. She took Philippe’s hands and drew them to her hips.

  At the far end of the room Blanche and Gautier were lying close in a confused embrace. Blanche’s body had a pearly lustre.

  Away in the centre of the river the clamour had begun again. The Templars were being bound to the pyre which was soon to be set alight.

  Marguerite shivered in the night air and drew nearer the fire. For a moment she gazed into the hearth, exposing herself to the heat of the burning wood till its caress became intolerable. The flames threw dancing lights upon her skin.

  ‘They’re going to burn, they’re going to be grilled,’ she said in a hoarse, breathless voice, ‘while we …’

  Her eye sought in the heart of the fire infernal visions to excite her pleasure.

  Abruptly she turned to face Philippe and gave herself to him, standing, as the nymphs in the legend gave themselves to the fauns.

  The fire cast their huge shadow across the wall and up to the beams in the roof.

  8

  ‘I Summon to the Tribunal of Heaven …’

  ONLY A NARROW CHANNEL separated the palace garden from the Island of Jews. The pyre had been arranged so as to face the royal loggia; from his place Philip the Fair had a perfect view.

  Spectators were still arriving in great numbers upon both banks of the river, and the island itself had almost disappeared beneath the crowd. The ferrymen had made a fortune tonight.

  But the archers had been well disposed, and police agents mingled with the crowd. Pickets of men-at-arms had been posted on the bridges and upon all the roads leading to the Seine. There was nothing to fear.

  ‘Marigny, you may compliment the Provost,’ said the King to the Coadjutor who was standing by him.

  The excitement, which in the morning had given rise to fears of revolution, had turned to holiday mood, a sort of outlandish gaiety, a tragic show offered by the King to his capital. There was an atmosphere of the fair-ground over all. Tramps mingled with townsfolk who had brought their families with them, painted and powdered prostitutes had come from the alleys behind Notre-Dame where they exercised their profession. Guttersnipes wove their way between people’s legs to the front rows. A few Jews, standing in close, fearful groups, yellow badges upon their coats, had come to watch the execution which, for once, was not of one of their number.

  Beautiful ladies in furred surcoats, in search of violent emotion, clung to their gallants, uttering little nervous cries.

  It was turning chilly, and the wind blew in short gusts. The glow of the torches threw red lights upon the rippling surface of the river.

  Messire Alain de Pareilles, the visor of his helmet raised, sat his horse in front of his archers, looking as bored as ever.

  The pyre stood higher than a man’s head; the chief executioner and his assistants, clothed in red and wearing hoods, were busying themselves about the pyre, aligning logs, preparing reserve faggots, with the precision of careful professionals.

  Upon the summit of the pyre the Grand Master of the Templars and the Preceptor of Normandy were bound to stakes, side by side, facing the royal loggia. Upon their heads had been placed the infamous paper mitres which marked them as heretics. The wind played in their beards.

  A monk, the same that Marguerite had seen from the Tower of Nesle, held up to them a great Cross while making the last exhortations. The crowd about him fell silent to hear what he said.

  ‘In a moment you will appear before God,’ cried the monk. ‘There is still time to confess your faults and to repent. I adjure you to do so for the last time.’

  Above him, the condemned men, motionless between earth and sky, as if already detached from life, answered nothing. Their eyes, gazing down upon him, reflected utter contempt.

  ‘They refuse to confess; they have not repented,’ the crowd could be heard muttering.

  The silence grew more profound, more dense. The monk had fallen to his knees and was murmuring prayers. The chief executioner took a glowing brand of tow from the hand of one of his assistants and waved it several times in a circle to encourage the flame.

  A child sneezed and there was the sound of a slap.

  Captain Alain de Pareilles turned towards the royal loggia as if awaiting an order, and all eyes, all heads were turned in the same direction. It was as if the whole crowd were holding its breath.

  Philip the Fair was standing at the balustrade, the members of his Council motionless about him. The line of their faces was detached from the background by the light of the torches. They were like a bas-relief in rose-coloured marble sculptured across the flank of the tower.

  Even the condemned raised their eyes to the loggia. The King’s gaze met that of the Grand Master. They seemed to be taking each other’s measure, their glances interlocked. Who could tell what thoughts were theirs, what emotions, what memories surged within these two enemies? Instinctively the crowd felt that something grand, something terrible and superhuman had become implicit in this mute confrontation between the all-powerful prince, surrounded by the servants of his will, and the Grand Master of Chivalry bound to the stake of infamy, between these two men whom birth and the accident of history had raised above all other men.

  Would Philip the Fair, with a gesture of ultimate clemency, reprieve the condemned? Would Jacques de Molay at this final moment humiliate himself and plead for mercy?

  The King made a sign with his hand and an emerald shone upon his finger. Alain de Pareilles repeated the gesture to the executioner, who placed the lighted brand of tow under the faggots and brushwood of the pyre. A huge sigh rose from thousands of breasts, a sigh of relief and horror, excitement and dismay, a sigh made up of anguish and of revulsion and of pleasure.

  Several women screamed. Children hid their heads in their parents’ clothes. A man’s voice was heard shouting, ‘I told you not to come!’

  Smoke was rising in dense spirals which a gust of wind blew towards the loggia.

  Monseigneur of Valois began coughing with the maximum of ostentation. He took a step backwards between Nogaret and Marigny and said, ‘If this goes on, we shall all be suffocated before your Templars are burned. You might at least have seen that they used dry wood.’

  No one replied to his remark. Nogaret, with taut muscles and fiery eye, was greedily savouring his triumph. This pyre was the crown to seven years of struggle and of exhausting journeys, the result of thousands of words intended to convince, thousands of pages written to prove. ‘Go on, flame and burn,’ he thought. ‘You’ve held me at bay long enough. But I was in the right, and you’re defeated.’

  Enguerrand de Marigny, taking his attitude from the King’s, forced himself to remain impassive and to look upon the execution as one of the necessities of power. ‘It had to be, it had to be,’ he kept repeating to himself. B
ut watching men die, he could not but help thinking of death. The two condemned men before him ceased to be mere political abstractions. That they should have been declared prejudicial to public order in no way prevented their being creatures of flesh and blood, capable of thought, desire and suffering, like any one else, indeed like himself. ‘In their place, would I have been capable of such courage?’ Marigny asked himself, making no effort to restrain his admiration. The words ‘in their place’ gave him a cold shiver down the spine. He recovered himself. ‘Where the deuce do these thoughts come from?’ he thought. ‘I am as prone to illness and accident as anyone else, but nothing more. There is never a moment when my person is not guarded. I am as untouchable as the King.’

  But seven years earlier the Grand Master had been in no danger, no one had been more powerful.

  Hugues de Bouville, the good Chamberlain with the white and black hair, was secretly praying.

  The wind veered, and the smoke, growing denser and rising higher every second, enveloped the condemned, almost hiding them from the crowd.

  The two old men could be heard coughing and choking at their stakes.

  Louis of Navarre, rubbing his red eyes, laughed inanely.

  His brother Charles, the youngest of Philip the Fair’s sons, turned his face away. It was obvious that he found the spectacle painful. He was twenty years old; he was slender and had a pink and white complexion. Those who had known his father at the same age said that the resemblance was startling but that Charles had less vitality, and less authority too, a weak copy of a great original. The appearance was there, but the temper was lacking.

  ‘I’ve just seen a light in your house, in the tower,’ he said to Louis in a low voice.

  ‘It must be the guards wanting to have a look too.’

  ‘They could have my place with pleasure,’ murmured Charles.

  ‘What? Doesn’t it amuse you to see Isabella’s godfather roast?’ said Louis of Navarre.

  ‘Yes, it’s a fact that Molay was the godfather of our sister,’ murmured Charles.