Читать книгу: «The Iron King»

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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.’