The Accursed Kings Series Books 1-3: The Iron King, the Strangled Queen, the Poisoned Crown

by Maurice Druon

  ‘Blanche!’ she cried. ‘Blanche! Here they are!’

  Locks, bolts, and the hinges of doors were creaking in reality at the bottom of the tower; numerous footsteps sounded on the stone treads of the stairs.

  ‘Blanche! Do you hear them?’

  But Marguerite’s weakened voice could not reach her cousin through the heavy door which, at night, separated the two storeys of their prison.

  The light of a single candle dazzled the imprisoned Queen. Men were crowding through the doorway in numbers Marguerite could not compute; she saw only the giant in the red cloak, his clear eyes and his silver dagger, as he came towards her.

  ‘Robert!’ she murmured. ‘Robert, you have come at last!’

  Behind the Count of Artois a soldier was carrying a chair on his head which he placed by Marguerite’s bed.

  ‘Well, well, Cousin,’ said Robert, sitting down. ‘You do not appear to be in a very good state of health, and from what I can see and hear you are suffering from …’

  ‘From everything,’ said Marguerite. ‘I no longer know whether I am dead or alive.’

  ‘It was time I came. Everything will soon be over; you’ll see. I have good news for you: your enemies are destroyed. Are you strong enough to write?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Marguerite.

  Artois, telling them to bring the light nearer, gazed attentively at the ravaged, haggard face, with its thin lips, its sunken, too-bright dark eyes, the hair plastered by fever across the prominent brow.

  ‘Perhaps you can at least manage to dictate the letter the King wants. Chaplain!’ he called, snapping his fingers.

  A white robe with above it a blue, shaven crown came out of the shadows.

  ‘Has my marriage been annulled?’ asked Marguerite.

  ‘How can it have been, Cousin, since you refused to do what you were asked?’

  ‘I have not refused,’ she said. ‘I accepted … I accepted everything. I don’t understand you any more. I don’t know what you are talking about.’

  ‘Fetch a jug of wine to give her strength,’ said Artois, turning his head.

  Someone left the room and his steps could be heard upon the stairs.

  ‘You must make an effort, Cousin,’ went on Artois. ‘This is the moment when you must accept what I am going to say.’

  ‘But I wrote to you, Robert; I wrote to you so that you might tell Louis everything you asked, that my daughter was not his …’

  The world seemed to spin round her.

  ‘When?’ asked Robert.

  ‘Ten weeks ago, ten weeks in which I have waited for you to free me.’

  ‘To whom did you give the letter?’

  ‘To Bersumée, of course.’

  And suddenly Marguerite thought, panic-stricken, ‘Did I really write? It’s appalling, I can no longer remember. I can no longer remember anything.’

  ‘Ask Blanche,’ she murmured.

  But at that moment there was a great noise at her side; Robert of Artois had risen to his feet, he had seized someone and was shaking him by the collar, shouting at the top of his voice. How his shouts reverberated in Marguerite’s ears and echoed in her head!

  ‘But I took it, Monseigneur. I took it myself,’ replied Bersumée in a terrified voice.

  ‘Where did you take it? To whom did you give it?’

  ‘Let me go, Monseigneur, let me go, you’re throttling me. I gave the letter to Monseigneur de Marigny. That was the order I received.’

  There was the dull sound of a body hitting the wall.

  ‘Is my name Marigny? When you are given a letter for me, must you give it to someone else?’

  ‘He promised me, Monseigneur, that he would send it to you.’

  ‘Fellow, I’ll settle your account later,’ said Artois. Then, turning back to Marguerite, he said, ‘I never received your letter, Cousin. Marigny must have kept it.’

  ‘Oh, well!’ she said.

  She was almost reassured. At least she knew now that she had written the letter.

  At that moment Sergeant Lalaine came in, carrying the jug of wine. Robert of Artois watched Marguerite drink it.

  ‘It might, really, have been easier if I had brought poison,’ he thought; ‘it was stupid not to have thought of it … she could have taken it in this … it’s a pity, a pity I didn’t know. Now it’s too late; moreover, in her present state she cannot in any case have many days to live.’

  He felt detached, almost sad. There was no battle to fight any more. There he sat, massive, his hands on his thighs, surrounded by soldiers armed to the teeth, before the pallet upon which a young woman lay in a state of exhaustion. Had he been able to hate her enough when she was Queen of Navarre and heiress to the throne of France? Had he not done everything he could to destroy her, travelling here and there, intriguing, spending money, combining against her in the English Court as well as the Court of France? He had hated her when she was powerful; he had desired her when she was beautiful. Even last winter, powerful baron that he was, she had still dominated him though she was no more than a miserable prisoner. Now the Count of Artois found that his triumph had led him further than he wished to go. The mission with which he had been charged by Valois, because he could trust no one else, was somewhat against the grain. He felt no pity, only the indifference of disgust, and a bitter weariness. So much force brought against a sick, defenceless, wasted body! Hate died in Robert because it no longer had an object which could measure up to his strength.

  And indeed he sincerely regretted that the letter abstracted by Marigny had never reached him. Marguerite would have been shut up in a convent. It couldn’t be helped; it was too late; the dice were thrown and things must be as they must.

  ‘You see, Cousin,’ he said, ‘to what extent Marigny is your enemy and how he has plotted everything from the start. If it were not for him, you would never have been accused, nor would your husband, Louis, have treated you in this fashion. Marigny has done everything he could, since Louis became King, to keep you here, as he has done everything to bring about the destruction of the kingdom. But today, as you have heard, the wicked man has been arrested and I have come to hear your grievances against him so that both the King’s justice and your pardon may be hastened on.’

  ‘What must I say?’ asked Marguerite.

  She had raised her hand to her neck, because the wine she had drunk made her heart beat still faster and she felt as if her breast were about to burst open.

  ‘I shall dictate on your behalf to the Chaplain,’ said Robert; ‘I know what you must say.’

  The Chaplain sat on the floor, the writing-tablet upon his knees, the candle beside him illuminating the three faces from below.

  ‘Sire, my Husband,’ began Robert slowly so that he would not forget any of the text composed by Charles of Valois, ‘I am dying of sorrow and sickness. I pray you to accord me your pardon, for if you do not do so quickly, I feel that I have but a little time to live and that my soul is taking wings from my body. Everything that has happened is the fault of Messire de Marigny, who wished to destroy me in your estimation and in that of the late King by a denunciation whose falsity I swear, and who by appalling treatment has …’

  ‘A moment, Monseigneur,’ said the Chaplain.

  He had taken his scraper in his hand to smooth a roughness on the parchment.

  ‘… reduced me,’ continued Robert, ‘to the miserable condition in which I now am. Everything is due to that wicked man. I pray you once again to save me from the condition in which I am, and I assure you that I have never ceased to be your obedient wife under the will of God.’

  Marguerite raised herself a little on her pallet. She could not understand by what extraordinary contradiction it was now intended, after a year in prison, to make her appear innocent.

  ‘But, Cousin,’ she asked, ‘what of the confessions that have been asked of me?’

  ‘They are no longer necessary, Cousin,’ replied Robert, ‘and what you will sign now cancels everything else
.’

  What Charles of Valois needed at this time was the multiplication of every possible false accusation against Enguerrand. This one was of that nature, and had moreover the advantage of white-washing, in appearance at least, the King’s honour, and above all of getting the Queen to announce her own death. Clearly Monseigneur of Valois was a man of considerable imagination!

  ‘And Blanche,’ she asked, ‘what is to happen to her? Has anyone thought of Blanche?’

  ‘You need have no anxiety,’ said Robert. ‘Everything possible will be done for her.’

  And Marguerite wrote her name at the bottom of the parchment.

  Robert of Artois then rose and leant over her. Upon a signal from him the others had retired to the end of the room. The giant placed his hand on Marguerite’s shoulders, close to her neck.

  At the contact of his huge hand, Marguerite felt a glowing, assuaging warmth envelop her body. She placed her emaciated hands upon Robert’s fingers as if she feared he would withdraw them too quickly.

  ‘Goodbye, Cousin,’ he said. ‘Goodbye. I wish you quiet repose.’

  ‘Robert,’ she asked in a low voice, seeking his eyes, ‘the last time you came and wished to take me, did you really desire me?’

  No man is completely bad; the Count of Artois at that moment said one of the only kind things that had ever issued from his lips, ‘Yes, my beautiful Cousin, I loved you very much.’

  He felt her relax under his hands, calm, almost happy. To be loved, to be desired, had been the one important thing in the Queen’s life, much more so than crowns and dignities.

  It was with a kind of gratitude that she saw her cousin fade before her with the light; so huge was he that there seemed to be a quality of unreality about him, making one think, as he faded into the shadows, of the invincible heroes out of the misty legends of the Round Table.

  The white robe of the Dominican and Bersumée’s steel helmet passed out before Robert, who drove everyone before him. For one moment he stopped upon the threshold, as if he were subject to an instant’s hesitation, as if he still had something more to say. Then the door closed, the room relapsed into darkness and Marguerite, wondering, heard none of the usual sounds of locks. She was no longer to be a prisoner, and this omission, the first in three hundred and fifty days, was like a promise of freedom.

  Tomorrow she would be allowed to go down and wander about Châteaud-Gaillard as she pleased; and then, soon, a litter would arrive to carry her away among trees, towns and human beings. ‘Will I be able to get up?’ she wondered. ‘Will I have the strength? Oh, yes, my strength will come back!’

  Her arms seemed to be burning, but she would get well, she knew that she would get well. She knew, too, that she would not be able to sleep again that night. But she had so much hope to keep her company till dawn broke!

  Suddenly she heard a tiny sound, hardly a sound, the sort of faint rustle in silence that is made by a release of breath by a human being. Someone was in the room.

  ‘Blanche!’ she cried. ‘Is that you?’

  Perhaps the door between the two storeys had also been unlocked. But she could remember no sound of creaking hinge. And why should her cousin have taken so much care to come to her silently? Unless … but no, Blanche had not gone suddenly as mad as that. Besides, she had seemed better these last days, since the spring had come.

  ‘Blanche!’ repeated Marguerite in an anguished voice.

  But silence fell once more, and for a moment Marguerite thought that her fever was conjuring up presences in the darkness. But, a moment later, she again heard the same sound of breathing, nearer, and a light scratching on the floor like that produced by a dog’s claws. Someone was breathing beside her. Perhaps it was really a dog. Bersumée’s dog, which had followed him in and been forgotten; or rats perhaps, rats with their almost human running to and fro, their rustling, their complicated busyness, their curious habit of working at mysterious tasks throughout the night. On several occasions there had been rats in the tower, and it was in fact Bersumée’s dog that had killed them. But you cannot hear rats breathe.

  Panic-stricken, she sat up quickly on her pallet; there was a rattle of iron against the stone of the wall. With wide despairing eyes she sought to pierce the darkness around her. It was to the left, it was coming from the left.

  ‘Who’s there?’ she cried.

  There was silence once more. But she knew that she was no longer alone. She, too, was holding her breath now. She was aware of such panic as she had never felt before. In a few moments she was about to die; she was utterly certain of it, and still worse perhaps than the fear of death was the agony of not knowing the guise it would take, what part of her body would be attacked, whose this invisible presence was, closing in upon her along the wall.

  A heavy weight suddenly hurled itself upon the bed. Marguerite uttered a cry that Blanche of Burgundy, on the storey above, heard across the night and was never to forget. The cry was abruptly broken off by the sheet being placed across Marguerite’s mouth. Two hands had seized the Queen of France and were twisting the sheet about her throat.

  Her head resting against a man’s broad chest, her arms flailing the air and all her body twisting in an effort of release, Marguerite’s breath came in stifled gasps. The sheet round her neck grew tighter like a collar of burning lead. She was suffocating. She felt her eyes burning; she heard huge bronze bells ringing behind her temples. But the killer had a technique all his own; the bell-ropes suddenly broke in a great cracking of vertebrae and Marguerite was plunged into the shadowy gulf, infinite in space and time.

  A few minutes later, in the courtyard of Château-Gaillard, Robert of Artois, who was whiling away the time drinking a goblet of wine and pretending to issue orders, saw his valet Lormet come up to his horse as if to tighten the girths.

  ‘It is done, Monseigneur,’ murmured Lormet.

  ‘You have left no trace?’ asked Robert in a low voice.

  ‘None, Monseigneur. I put everything back in its place.’

  ‘Not so easy without a light.’

  ‘You know well, Monseigneur, that I can see in the dark.’

  Having hoisted himself into the saddle, Artois signed to Bersumée to approach.

  ‘I have not found Madame Marguerite at all well,’ he said to him, ‘I very much fear, from her condition, that she will not survive the week, perhaps not even tomorrow. Should she die, your orders are to come to Paris as fast as a horse can gallop and go direct to Monseigneur of Valois to give him the news. To Monseigneur of Valois, you understand? And this time try to make no mistake in the address. And no loose talk; don’t think, you’re not paid to. And remember that your Monseigneur de Marigny is in prison, and that there might be a vacancy for you on the same gallows.’

  Dawn was beginning to break over the forest of Andelys, marking with a faint glow, somewhere between grey and pink, the horizon formed by the trees. Below Château-Gaillard the river glistened faintly.

  Descending the hill, Robert of Artois felt the regular movement of his horse’s shoulders beneath him, and its warm flanks quivering against his boots. He filled his lungs with deep breaths of the morning air.

  ‘All the same, it’s good to be alive,’ he murmured.

  ‘Yes, it’s good, Monseigneur,’ replied Lormet. ‘And what’s more it’s going to be a fine, sunny day.’

  5

  A Morning of Death

  DESPITE THE NARROWNESS OF the window, Marigny could see between the thick bars, let into the stone in the form of a cross, the sumptuous backcloth of the sky in which shone the April stars.

  He did not wish to sleep. He hung upon the noises of Paris, as if hearing them gave him assurance of still being alive; but they were few; the cry of the watchman, the bell of a neighbouring convent, the rumbling of country wagons bringing their loads to the vegetable market. This city, whose streets he had widened, whose buildings he had embellished, whose riots he had suppressed, this living city in which one felt the pulse of the kingdom cease
lessly beating and which, because of it, had been for sixteen years at the centre of his thoughts and cares, and for the last fortnight hated by him as one hates a human being.

  This feeling had begun upon that morning when Charles of Valois, fearing that Marigny might find accomplices at the Louvre, of which he had been Captain, had decided to transfer him to the tower of the Temple. On horseback, surrounded with Sergeants-at-Arms and archers, Marigny had thus crossed a great part of the capital and had suddenly discovered that the population who, for so many years, had bowed down as he passed by, hated him. The insults hurled at him, the outbursts of joy in the streets as he passed, the raised fists, the mockery, the laughter, the threats of death, all these had been for the late Rector of the Kingdom a disillusionment more serious perhaps than his arrest itself.