The Strangled Queen

by Maurice Druon

  ‘No, they know nothing,’ he thought. ‘It will make my mission the easier.’

  He did not reply and turned upon his heel.

  ‘Bersumée,’ he said, ‘is there no fire here?’

  ‘No, Monseigneur; the orders I received …’

  ‘Light one! And is there no furniture?’

  ‘No, Monseigneur, but I …’

  ‘Bring furniture! Take away this pallet! Bring a bed, chairs to sit on, hangings, torches. Don’t tell me you haven’t them! I saw everything necessary in your lodging. Fetch them at once!’

  He took the Captain of the Fortress by the arm and pushed him out of the room as if he were a servant.

  ‘And something to eat,’ said Marguerite. ‘You might also tell our good gaoler, who daily gives us food that pigs would leave at the bottom of their trough, to give us a proper meal for once.’

  ‘And food, of course, Madam!’ said Artois. ‘Bring pastries and roasts. Fresh vegetables. Good winter pears and preserves. And wine, Bersumée, plenty of wine!’

  ‘But, Monseigneur …’ groaned the Captain.

  ‘Don’t you dare talk to me,’ shouted Artois. ‘Your breath stinks like a horse!’

  He threw him out, and banged the door shut with a kick of his boot.

  ‘My good Cousins,’ went on Artois, ‘I was expecting the worst indeed; but I see with relief that this sad time has not marked the two most beautiful faces in France.’

  It was only now that he took off his hat and bowed low.

  ‘We still manage to wash,’ said Marguerite. ‘Provided we break the ice on the basins they bring us, we have sufficient water.’

  Artois sat down on the bench and continued to gaze at them. ‘Well, my girls,’ he murmured to himself, ‘that’s what comes of trying to carve yourselves the destinies of queens from the inheritance of Robert of Artois!’ He tried to guess whether beneath the rough serge of their dresses, the two young women’s bodies had lost the soft curves of the past. He was like a great cat making ready to play with caged mice.

  ‘How is your hair, Marguerite?’ he asked. ‘Has it grown properly?’

  Marguerite of Burgundy started as if she had been pricked with a needle. Her cheeks grew pale.

  ‘Get up, Monseigneur of Artois!’ she cried furiously. ‘However reduced you may find me here, I will still not tolerate that a man should be seated in my presence when I am standing!’

  He leapt to his feet, and for a moment their eyes confronted each other. She did not flinch.

  In the pale light from the window he was better able to see this new face of Marguerite’s, the face of a prisoner. The features had preserved their beauty, but all their sweetness had gone. The nose was sharper, the eyes more sunken. The dimples, which only last spring had shown at the corners of her amber cheeks, had become little wrinkles. ‘So,’ Artois said to himself, ‘she can still defend herself. All the better, it will be the more amusing.’ He liked a battle, having to fight to gain his ends.

  ‘Cousin,’ he said to Marguerite with feigned good-humour, ‘I had no intention of insulting you; you have misunderstood me. I merely wanted to know if your hair had grown sufficiently to allow of your appearing in public.’

  Distrustful as she was, Marguerite could not prevent herself giving a start of joy.

  Appear in public? This must mean that she was to go free. Had she been pardoned? Was he bringing her a throne? No, it could not be that, he would have announced it at once.

  Her thoughts raced on. She felt herself weakening. She could not prevent tears coming to her eyes.

  ‘Robert,’ she said, ‘don’t keep me in suspense. I know it’s a characteristic of yours. But don’t be cruel. What have you come to say to me?’

  ‘Cousin, I have come to deliver you …’

  Blanche uttered a cry and Robert thought that she was going to swoon. He had left his sentence suspended; he was playing the two women like a couple of fish at the end of a line.

  ‘… a message,’ he finished.

  It pleased him to see their shoulders sag, to hear their sighs of disappointment.

  ‘A message from whom?’ asked Marguerite.

  ‘From Louis, your husband, our King from now on. And from our good cousin Monseigneur of Valois. But I may only speak to you alone. Perhaps Blanche would leave us?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Blanche submissively, ‘I will retire. But before I go, Cousin, tell me: what of Charles, my husband?’

  ‘He has been much distressed by his father’s death.’

  ‘And what does he think of me? Does he speak of me?’

  ‘I think he regrets you, in spite of the suffering you have caused him. Since Pontoise he has never been seen to show his old gaiety.’

  Blanche burst into tears.

  ‘Do you think,’ she asked, ‘that he has forgiven me?’

  ‘That depends a great deal upon your cousin,’ replied Artois mysteriously, indicating Marguerite.

  And he led Blanche to the door, closing it behind her.

  Then, returning to Marguerite, he said, ‘To start with, my dear, there are a few things I must tell you. During these last days, when King Philip was dying, Louis your husband has seemed utterly confused. To wake up King, when one went to sleep a prince, is a matter for some surprise. He occupied his throne of Navarre only in name, and had no hand in governing. You will remember that he is twenty-five years old, and at that age one is able to reign; but you know as well as I do that, without being unkind, judgement is not his most outstanding quality. Thus, in these first days, Monseigneur of Valois, his uncle, stands behind him in everything, directing affairs with Monseigneur de Marigny. The trouble is that these two powerful minds dislike each other because they are too similar, hardly listening to what they say to each other. It is even thought that very soon they will no longer listen to each other at all, which, if it continued, would be most unfortunate, since a kingdom cannot be governed by two deaf men.’

  Artois had completely changed his tone. He was speaking with sense and precision, giving the impression that his turbulent entrances were largely made for effect.

  ‘As far as I am concerned, as you know very well,’ he went on, ‘I don’t care at all for Messire de Marigny, who has so often stood in my way, and I hope with all my heart that my cousin Valois, whose friend and ally I am, will come out on top.’

  Marguerite did her best to understand the intrigues which were everyday matters to Artois, and into which he was so abruptly plunging her once more. She was no longer in touch with affairs, and it seemed to her that she was awakening from a long slumber of the mind.

  From the courtyard, blanketed to some extent by the walls, came the shouts of Bersumée, who was busy having his lodging emptied by the soldiers.

  ‘Louis still hates me, doesn’t he?’ she said.

  ‘Oh, as for that, I won’t conceal from you that he hates you very well! You must admit that he has reason to,’ replied Artois. ‘To have decorated him with a cuckold’s horns is an embarrassment when they must be worn above the crown of France! Had you done as much to me, Cousin, I should not have made such a clamour throughout the kingdom. I should have given you such a beating that you would never have desired to do the like again, or else …’

  He looked so steadily at Marguerite that she was frightened.

  ‘… or else I should have acted in such a way that I could feign the preservation of my honour. However, the late King, your father-in-law, clearly judged otherwise and things are as they are.’

  He certainly possessed a fine assurance in deploring a scandal he had done everything in his power to set alight. He went on, ‘Louis’s first thought, after witnessing his father’s death, indeed the only thought he has in mind at present, since I believe him incapable of entertaining more than one at a time, is to extricate himself from the embarrassment in which you have placed him and to live down the shame you have caused him.’

  ‘What does Louis want?’ asked Marguerite.

  For
a moment Artois swung his monumental leg backwards and forwards as if he were about to kick a stone.

  ‘He intends asking for the annulment of your marriage,’ he answered, ‘and you can see, from the fact that he has sent me to you at once, that he wants to put it through as quickly as possible.’

  ‘So I shall never be Queen of France,’ thought Marguerite. The foolish dreams of the day before were already proved vain. A single day of dreaming to set against seven months of imprisonment, against the whole of time!

  At this moment two men came in carrying wood and kindling. They lit the fire. Marguerite waited till they had gone again.

  ‘Very well,’ she said wearily, ‘let him ask for an annulment. What can I do?’

  She went over to the fireplace and held her hands out to the flames which were beginning to catch.

  ‘Well, Cousin, there is much you can do, and indeed you can be the recipient of a certain gratitude if you will take a course that will cost you nothing. It happens that adultery is no ground for annulment; it’s absurd, but so it is. You could have had a hundred lovers instead of one, pleasured every man in the kingdom, and you would be no less indissolubly married to the man to whom you were joined before God. Ask the chaplain or anyone else you like; so it is. I have taken the best advice upon it, because I know very little of church matters: a marriage cannot be broken, and if one wishes to break it, it must be proved that there was some impediment to its taking place, or that it has not been consummated, so that it might never have been. You’re listening to me?’

  ‘Yes, yes, I see what you mean,’ said Marguerite.

  It was no longer a question of the affairs of the kingdom, but of her own fate; and she was registering each word in her mind that she might not forget it.

  ‘Well,’ went on her visitor, ‘this is what Monseigneur Valois has devised to get his nephew out of his difficulty.’

  He paused and cleared his throat.

  ‘You will admit that your daughter, the Princess Jeanne, is not Louis’s child; you will admit that you have never slept with your husband and that there has therefore never been a true marriage. You will declare this voluntarily in the presence of myself and your chaplain as supporting witnesses. Among your previous servants and household there will be no difficulty in finding witnesses to testify that this is the truth. Thus the marriage will have no defence and the annulment will be automatic.’

  ‘And what am I offered in exchange for this lie?’ asked Marguerite.

  ‘In exchange for your cooperation,’ replied Artois, ‘you are offered safe passage to the Duchy of Burgundy, where you will be placed in a convent until the annulment has been pronounced, and thereafter to live as you please or as your family may desire.’

  On first hearing, Marguerite very nearly answered, ‘Yes, I accept; I declare all that is desired of me; I will sign no matter what, on condition that I may leave this place.’ But she saw Artois watching her from under lowered lids, a gaze ill-matched with his good-natured air; and intuitively she knew that he was tricking her. ‘I shall sign,’ she thought, ‘and then they will continue to keep me here.’

  Duplicity in the heart is catching. But in fact Artois was for once telling the truth; he was the bearer of an honest proposal; he even had the order with him for Marguerite’s removal, should she consent to the declaration required of her.

  ‘It is asking me to commit a grave sin,’ she said.

  Artois burst out laughing.

  ‘Good God, Marguerite,’ he cried, ‘it seems to me you have committed others with less scruple!’

  ‘Perhaps I have altered and repented. I must think the matter over before deciding.’

  The giant made a wry face, twisting his lips from side to side.

  ‘Very well, Cousin, but think quickly,’ he said, ‘because I must be back in Paris tomorrow for the funeral mass at Notre-Dame. With fifty-eight miles in the saddle, even by the shortest way, and roads a couple of inches deep in mud, and daylight fading early and dawning late, and the delay for a relay of horses at Nantes, I have no time to dawdle and would much prefer not to have come all this way for nothing. Goodbye; I shall go and sleep an hour and come back to eat with you. It must not be said that I left you alone, Cousin, the first day upon which you fare well. I am sure you will have reached the right decision.’

  He left like a whirlwind, as he had arrived, for he paid as much attention to his exits as his entrances, and nearly upset Private Gros-Guillaume in the staircase, as he came up bending and sweating under a huge coffer.

  Then he disappeared into the Captain’s denuded lodging and threw himself upon the one couch that still remained.

  ‘Bersumée, my friend, see that dinner is ready in an hour’s time,’ he said. ‘And call my valet Lormet, who must be with the horsemen. Tell him to come and watch over me while I sleep.’

  For this Hercules feared nothing but to be found defenceless by his numerous enemies while he slept. And he preferred to any squire or equerry the guardianship of this short, squat, greying servant who followed him everywhere for the apparent purpose of handing him his coat or cloak.

  Unusually vigorous for his fifty years, all the more dangerous for his mild appearance, capable of anything in the service of ‘Monseigneur Robert’, and above all of obliterating noiselessly in a few seconds people who were an embarrassment to his master, Lormet, purveyor of girls on occasion and a great recruiter of roughs, was a rogue less by nature than from devotion; a killer, he had the affection of a wet-nurse for his master.

  Shy, and a clever deceiver of fools, he was an able spy. Not the least of his exploits was to have led the brothers Aunay into a trap, so that they might be taken by Robert of Artois almost in flagrante delicto at the foot of the Tower of Nesle.

  When Lormet was asked why he was so attached to the Count of Artois, he shrugged his shoulders and replied grumblingly, ‘Because from each of his old coats I can make two for myself.’

  As soon as Lormet entered the Captain’s lodging, Robert closed his eyes and fell asleep upon the instant, his arms and legs stretched wide, his chest rising and falling with the deep breathing of an ogre.

  An hour later he awoke of his own accord, stretched himself like a huge tiger, stood upright, his muscles and his mind refreshed.

  Lormet was sitting on a bench, his dagger on his knees. Round-headed and narrow-eyed, he looked tenderly upon his master’s awakening.

  ‘Now it’s your turn to go and sleep, my good Lormet,’ said Artois; ‘but before you do, go and find me the Chaplain.’

  3

  Shall She be Queen?

  THE DISGRACED DOMINICAN CAME at once, much agitated at being sent for personally by so important a lord.

  ‘Brother,’ Artois said to him, ‘you must know Madame Marguerite well, since you are her confessor. In what lies the weakness of her character?’

  ‘The flesh, Monseigneur,’ replied the Chaplain, modestly lowering his eyes.

  ‘We know that already! But in what else? Has her nature no emotional facet, no side upon which we can bring pressure to bear to force her to accept a certain course, which is not only to her own interest but to that of the kingdom?’

  ‘I can see nothing, Monseigneur. I can see no weakness in her except upon the one point I have already mentioned. The Princess’s spirit is as hard as a sword and even prison has not blunted its edge. Oh, believe me, she is no easy penitent!’

  His hands in his sleeves, his broad brow bent, he was trying to appear both pious and clever at once. His tonsure had not been renewed for some time, and the skin of his skull showed blue above the thin circle of black hair.

  Artois remained thoughtful for a moment, scratching his cheek because the Chaplain’s skull made him think of his beard which was beginning to grow.

  ‘As to the subject you have mentioned,’ he went on, ‘what has she found here in satisfaction of her particular weakness, since that appears to be the term you use for that form of vitality.’

  ‘As far as I
know, none, Monseigneur.’

  ‘Bersumée? Does he ever visit her for rather over-long periods?’

  ‘Never, Monseigneur, I can vouch for that.’

  ‘And what about yourself?’

  ‘Oh! Monseigneur!’ cried the Chaplain, crossing himself.

  ‘All right, all right!’ said Artois. ‘It would not be the first time that such things have been known to happen, one is acquainted with more than one member of your cloth who, his soutane removed, feels himself to be a man like another. For my part I see nothing wrong in it: indeed, to tell you the truth, I see in it matter for praise rather. What of her cousin? Do the two women console each other from time to time?’

  ‘Oh! Monseigneur!’ said the Chaplain, pretending to be more and more horrified. ‘What you are asking me could only be a secret of the confessional.’

  Artois gave the Chaplain’s shoulder a little friendly slap which nearly sent him staggering to the wall for support.

  ‘Now, now, Messire Chaplain, don’t be ridiculous,’ he cried. ‘If you have been sent to a prison as officiating priest, it is not in order that you should keep such secrets, but that you should repeat them to those authorized to hear them.’

  ‘Neither Madame Marguerite, nor Madame Blanche,’ said the Chaplain in a low voice, ‘have ever confessed to me of being culpable of anything of the kind, except in dreams.’

  ‘Which does not prove that they are innocent, but merely that they are secretive. Can you write?’

  ‘Certainly, Monseigneur.’

  ‘Well, well!’ said Artois with an air of astonishment. ‘Apparently all monks are not so damned ignorant as is generally supposed! Very well, Messire Chaplain, you will take parchment, pens, and everything you need to scratch down words, and you will wait at the base of the Princesses’ tower, ready to come up when I call you. You will make as much haste as you can.’

  The Chaplain bowed; he seemed to have something more to say, but Artois had already donned his great scarlet cloak and was on his way out. The Chaplain hurried out behind him.

  ‘Monseigneur! Monseigneur!’ he said in a very obsequious voice. ‘Would you have the very great kindness, if I am not offending you by making such a request, would you have the immense kindness to say to Brother Renaud, the Grand Inquisitor, if it should so happen that you should see him, that I am still his obedient son, and ask him not to forget me in this fortress for too long, where indeed I do my duty as best I may since God has placed me here, but I have certain capacities, Monseigneur, as you have seen, and I much desire that they should be found other employment.’