The Strangled Queen

by Maurice Druon

  From her husband’s appearance, Madame de Marigny knew at once that something was wrong.

  ‘Enguerrand, my dear, what has happened?’ she asked.

  Jeanne de Saint-Martin, goddaughter of the late Queen Jeanne, wife of Philip the Fair, lived in a state of perpetual admiration for the man she had married, and her devotion to him was the centre of her life.

  ‘What has happened,’ replied Marigny, ‘is that, now the master is no longer there to hold them in check, the hounds have attacked me.’

  ‘Is there anything I can do?’

  He replied that he could well look after himself so harshly that Madame de Marigny’s eyes filled with tears. Enguerrand was immediately remorseful. He took her by the shoulders, kissed her forehead at the edge of her ash-blonde hair and said, ‘I know very well, Jeanne, that I have no one to love me but you!’

  Then he went to his study, and threw his documents on a chest. His hands were trembling, and he very nearly dropped a candelabra he wanted to move. He swore, and then walked up and down between the window and the fire, giving his anger a chance to simmer down.

  ‘You have taken the Treasury from me, but you have forgotten the rest. Just wait a little; you won’t break me as easily as that.’

  He rang a handbell.

  ‘Send me four guards at once,’ he said to the servant who answered.

  The men came running from the guardroom, holding their belilied staves in their hands. Marigny gave them their orders.

  ‘You go and find me Messire Alain de Pareilles, who should be at the Louvre. You, find my brother, the Archbishop, at the Episcopal Palace. You, Messires Guillaume Dubois and Raoul de Presles, and you, Messire le Loquetier. Find them wherever they may be. I shall await them here.’

  The messengers departed and Enguerrand opened the door of the room in which his secretaries worked. ‘I want to dictate,’ he said.

  A clerk came to him, carrying his tablet and his pens.

  ‘Sire,’ began Marigny, standing with his back to the fire, ‘in the condition in which I am, now that God has called to Himself the greatest King France has ever known …’

  He was writing to Edward II, King of England, and son-in-law of Philip the Fair by his marriage to Isabella. Since 1308, the date of the union he had taken a hand in bringing about, Marigny had had numerous opportunities of rendering Edward political and private services. The marriage was not going well, and Isabella complained of her husband’s abnormalities. The situation in Guyenne was still serious … Marigny, together with his enemy, Charles of Valois, had been selected to represent the King of France at the coronation at Westminster. In 1313 the English King, on a visit to France, had thanked the Coadjutor with a life-pension of a thousand pounds a year.

  Now Marigny needed King Edward’s help and was writing to ask him to intervene in his favour. He managed to convey in his letter the benefits that would accrue to him provided the policy of France should not change direction. Those who had worked together for the peace of empires should remain united.

  The clerk hastened to dry the parchment and present it for signature.

  ‘Am I to send it by the couriers, Monseigneur?’ he asked.

  ‘No. This will be taken to its destination by my son. Send one of your underlings for him, if he is not in the house.’

  The secretary went out, and Marigny unclasped the collar of his robe; he felt his neck swelling at the thought of action.

  ‘How sad for the kingdom,’ he said to himself. ‘What a state they will bring it to, if they are not opposed. Have I done so much only to see all my efforts brought to nothing?’

  Like all men who have exercised power for a long time, he had come to identify himself with the country, and to consider every attack made upon him personally as a direct attack upon the interests of the State.

  As things were, he was not far wrong; but he was nevertheless prepared to act against the interests of the kingdom as soon as its direction was taken out of his own hands.

  It was in this state of mind that he received his brother Jean de Marigny. The Archbishop, his thin body clothed in a clinging violet gown, had a studied manner which the Coadjutor disliked. He wanted to say to his younger brother, ‘You can give yourself airs with your canons if you like, but don’t do it with me who has seen you slobbering your soup and blowing your nose in your fingers.’

  In a very few words he summed up what had happened at the Council he had just left, and without hesitation gave him his orders in the same unanswerable tone of voice he used to his secretaries.

  ‘I don’t want a Pope just yet, because as long as there is no Pope I have the King in my power. There must be no managed conclave prepared to obey Bouville’s orders. There must be no peace for the cardinals at Avignon. Let them fight and argue; you arrange it, Jean, till I give you further orders.’

  Jean de Marigny, who had begun by sharing his brother’s anger, looked gloomy when the conclave was mentioned. He thought for a moment, contemplating his handsome bishop’s ring.

  ‘Well, what are you thinking about?’ Enguerrand asked.

  ‘Brother,’ said the Archbishop, ‘I find your plans somewhat against the grain. In sowing further discord in the conclave than there is already, I run the risk of alienating the friendship of a certain candidate who, very well placed at this moment to win election to the Papacy, would give me, as soon as elected, a cardinal’s hat.’

  Enguerrand burst out, ‘Your hat! This is a fine time to speak of it! If you ever do get a hat, my poor Jean, it is I who will give it you, as I gave you your mitre. But if you propose joining my enemies against me, you will soon be going, not only without a hat, but without shoes, a mere miserable monk, exiled to some monastery. You seem to have forgotten rather too quickly what you owe me, for instance, that unfortunate situation concerning the embezzlement of the Templars’ possessions, from which I rescued you two months ago. And, by the way, have you succeeded in laying your hands upon that unfortunate receipt you gave the banker Tolomei, by means of which the Lombards made me climb down when I wanted to raise their taxes?’

  ‘Of course, Brother,’ replied the Archbishop untruthfully.

  But he immediately hauled down his flag.

  ‘What must I do?’ he asked.

  ‘You must send messengers whom you can trust beyond question, I mean people who are in your power for one reason or another and are so placed as to be afraid of my displeasure. They must spread two contradictory rumours; on the one hand, pretending to the French that the new King proposes to allow the Holy See to return to Rome; on the other, telling the Italians that he intends imprisoning the next Pope in the neighbourhood of Paris. Let them sow all the discord of which clerics are capable among themselves. Our good Bouville will lose himself in a vacuum. Bertrand de Got shook the cardinals a little too much; but we shall try a different tactic upon them: the fear of what does not exist. They don’t care for each other now, I want them to hate each other, and blame each other for their mutual faults. Let me know how things go week by week, if I cannot be informed of a situation day by day. Does our young Louis X want a Pope? He shall have one, when the time comes, but certainly not just any Pope through whom we might lose at a single blow all that King Philip and I have taken so long to extract from two previous Pontiffs. If you can, arrange matters so that your envoys do not know each other.’

  Thereupon he dismissed his brother so as to see his son who was waiting outside the door. Louis de Marigny, as so often happens in families, resembled the Archbishop more than he did his father. He was slender, much too concerned with his personal appearance, and rather too elaborately dressed.

  Son of a personage before whom the whole kingdom bowed down, godson moreover of Louis The Hutin, he did not know what it was to have to struggle to satisfy his wants. He was shallow and liked to affect that appearance of nobility which is more commonly assumed in the second generation than the tenth; and if he greatly admired his father, to whom he owed everything and who dominated h
im from such a height, he still blamed him for a certain coarseness of manner. The young man had but one quality, or rather but one vocation: he loved horses, and knew how to manage them as if chivalry had been in his blood for two centuries.

  ‘Go and get ready, Louis,’ said Enguerrand. ‘You are leaving at once for London to deliver a letter.’

  The young man’s face expressed annoyance.

  ‘Cannot my departure be put off till tomorrow, Father, or couldn’t a courier go instead? I am due to hunt tomorrow in the Bois de Boulogne, only a small occasion of course because of Court mourning, but …’

  ‘Hunting! It’s about time you began thinking of something else but hunting,’ cried Marigny. ‘Can I never ask my family, who owe me everything, to do the least thing without their looking sulky? You may as well know that I am being hunted at this moment! And if you don’t help me, I shall be skinned alive and you too. If a courier would have done, I could have thought of it myself! I am sending you to the King of England, and I have things to say to him which I cannot put in writing. Does that sufficiently flatter your vanity to persuade you to give up a day’s hunting?’

  ‘Forgive me, Father,’ said Louis de Marigny. ‘I did not understand.’

  Marigny took up the case which enclosed the letter.

  ‘You know King Edward from having seen him a year or so ago in Paris. You will say the following to him in person: “Monseigneur of Valois wishes to have complete authority for himself. I fear, if he succeeds in acquiring it, that he will alter the agreements the two kingdoms have come to over Guyenne. Moreover, Valois wishes to remarry the new King to a princess of Anjou-Hungary, which will align his alliances towards the south rather than the north.” That is all. Let the King of England ponder these two matters! I will keep in touch with him concerning any developments there may be.’

  Marigny gazed at his son for a moment. ‘Our royal Edward,’ he thought, ‘has a great appreciation of masculine beauty. Perhaps he will not be altogether insensible to our messenger’s appearance.’

  ‘Take with you only two equerries and such servants as are essential. Don’t have too showy a train so long as you are in France. And you may draw two hundred, no, one hundred pounds from my treasurer; that will suffice.’

  There was a double knock at the door.

  ‘Messire Alain de Pareilles has arrived,’ said a guard.

  ‘Show him in. Goodbye, Louis; a good journey to you.’

  Enguerrand de Marigny embraced his son, a thing he did but rarely. Then he turned towards Alain de Pareilles who was coming in, took him by the arm and, leading him to a seat by the hearth, said, ‘Warm yourself, Pareilles, the cold is appalling.’

  The Captain-General of the Archers had iron-grey hair, features heavily lined by time and war, and he had seen so much fighting, so many alarms and excursions, so much torture and execution that he could no longer be surprised by anything. The hanged of Montfaucon were to him an accustomed spectacle. In the last year alone he had led the Grand Master of the Templars to the pyre, the Aunay brothers to the wheel, and the royal Princesses to prison. But he was also in charge of the Corps of Archers and Sergeants-at-Arms in all the fortresses, and was thus responsible for preserving order throughout the kingdom. Marigny, who never addressed any member of his family in the familiar second person, used it to this old friend, the faultless, unyielding instrument of his power.

  ‘Alain, I’ve got two missions for you and they must be carried out without delay,’ said Marigny. ‘You will go yourself to Château-Gaillard and give the fool in command of it a good shaking up. By the way, what is his name?’

  ‘Bersumée, Robert Bersumée,’ replied Pareilles.

  ‘You will tell Bersumée that he must continue to conform to the instructions I gave him in the past with the consent of King Philip. I know that the Count of Artois has been there. This is directly contrary to orders. If he were to be sent there, he or another, it should go through me. Only the King may go there; and there’s not much risk of that. There must be no visits to Madame Marguerite, not a letter, nothing at all! You can tell the fool that I’ll have his ears cut off if he doesn’t obey me.’

  ‘What are you proposing to do with Madame Marguerite?’ asked Pareilles.

  ‘For the moment she is a hostage. She must not be allowed to communicate with anyone, and let her safety be well looked to. I need her alive, and for a long time yet. If her way of life is having a bad effect upon her health, let it be made easier. The second order I have for you is this: as soon as you come back from Normandy, you will leave for the south. You will have sent ahead of you three hundred men from the Paris reserves to await you at Orange. Arrived there, you will take command of them and install them in the fort of Villeneuve, opposite Avignon. I want you to make a considerable stir about taking possession of the place. Make your archers march six times round the ramparts. Seen from beyond the river, they will look as if they numbered two thousand. I want the cardinals to shiver in their robes, and it’s for their benefit I am organizing this masquerade. It will complement the trick I’m playing on them by other means. When you have done this, leave your men in position and return.’

  ‘By God, that suits me well, Messire Enguerrand,’ said Alain de Pareilles. ‘To go and give that fool a piece of my mind and put the fear of God into those red-clothed asses will be a pleasant change from inspecting the Palace guard; and here …’

  He stopped, hesitating to go on, and at last came out with what he had upon his mind.

  ‘… and here, to tell you the truth, Enguerrand, there is an atmosphere which I don’t care for.’

  He sadly shook his iron-grey head.

  ‘All the same, you must stay here,’ replied Marigny. ‘I fear that the servants of King Philip will have much to suffer in the days ahead. I need you in command of the Archers. You need not warn the Constable about the movement of troops I have ordered; I’ll tell him myself. Goodbye, Alain.’

  Then he went into his study where the justiciars he had sent for and some others as well, such as Briançon and Bourgenai, who had come of their own accord at the news, had gathered. Their familiar voices fell silent at his entry. The walls of the room were furnished with carved desks equipped with ink-horns and writing-tablets from which depended weights to hold the parchments flat. Upon swivelled reading-desks lay files and documents. These furnishings made the room look like a chapel or a monastic library.

  ‘Messires,’ said Enguerrand de Marigny, gazing with emotion upon his friends, ‘you were not done the honour of being summoned to the Council which I attended this morning. We shall now hold a very private Council among ourselves.’

  ‘We shall lack only King Philip,’ said Raoul de Presles with a melancholy smile.

  ‘Let us pray that his soul will come to our aid. He did not doubt us,’ replied Marigny.

  Then with renewed anger he cried, ‘I have been asked to submit my accounts to examination, Messires, and I have had the Treasury removed from my control. I therefore wish to produce a very accurate account. Issue orders to every bailiwick and seneschalship that all accounts must be paid, beginning with the smallest debts. Let all supplies be paid for, all work in progress, everything that has been ordered in the name of the crown. Let everything be paid till there is no gold left, even where delay is possible.’

  The others had already grasped the game he was playing. Enguerrand cracked his finger-joints as if he were in process of strangling someone. ‘Monseigneur of Constantinople wishes to take over the Treasury, does he?’ he cried. ‘Much good may it do him! He’ll have to look elsewhere for the money to pay for his intrigues!’

  3

  Charles of Valois

  IF THE ATMOSPHERE WERE stormy on the left bank at Monseigneur de Marigny’s, the contrary was true on the right bank at the Count of Valois’s house.

  A conscious sense of pride lay over the whole household. The most junior equerry felt that he had ministerial authority for rebuking the footmen, the women ordered people
about more tyrannically than before, and the children screamed more loudly.

  Everyone knew, or wished to show that he knew; everyone was sharing in advance in the events that were taking place, and in his own way; there were widespread boasting, backstairs whisperings, much importunate flattery and general running to and fro; the baronial party was triumphant.

  Seeing the number of people who, on the very first morning after the dramatic Council, crowded into the rooms to show that they were faithful supporters of the winning party, one might have thought that the real Court was not at the Palace of the Cité, but at the Hôtel de Valois.

  Moreover, it was a kingly residence! There was no beam in the ceilings that was not carved, nor a hearth whose monumental chimney-piece was not decorated with the escutcheons of France and Constantinople. The stone floors were covered with oriental rugs, and the walls with Cyprian tapestries embroidered with gold. On tables and sideboards silver and carved silver-gilt stood side by side with enamels and precious stones.

  Chamberlains, newly important, gravely passed each other instructions, and there was no one down to the last writing-clerk who did not endeavour to assume a dignified air.

  The ladies-in-waiting to the Countess of Valois gossiped in a group about Canon Etienne de Mornay who, after Monseigneur of Valois, was the man of the hour. A whole following, effervescent, busy, flattering, came and went, stood in the window embrasures and discussed public affairs. Everyone was there, making pretence of having been summoned, for Monseigneur of Valois was, in fact, holding consultations in his study.

  Even the fabulous Sire de Joinville had been seen to arrive supported by a white-bearded equerry. A phantom from another age, the years had turned him into a tottering skeleton. The ancient Seneschal of Champagne, who had accompanied Saint Louis upon the crusade of 1248, had been the principal witness at the proceedings which had led to his canonization, and had recently dictated his memoirs though his memory was now beginning to fail, was ninety-one years old. Half-blind, his eyes watery, his limbs trembling, and his understanding not very clear, though still flattered that he should be remembered, he brought to the Count of Valois, by his presence alone, the moral support of the ancient chivalry and of the old feudal world.