The Iron King

‘Doubtless he’s better treated, and I’m glad of it for his sake,’ answered Philippe. ‘No doubt I’m a fool, a fool to allow myself to be humiliated by a woman who treats me as a servant, who summons me to her bed when she feels inclined, who sends me about my business when the inclination has passed, who leaves me whole days without a sign, and pretends not to recognise me when we meet. After all, what game is she playing?’

Philippe d’Aunay, equerry to Monseigneur the Count of Valois, the King’s brother, had been for three years the lover of Marguerite, the eldest of Philip the Fair’s daughters-in-law. And he dared to speak thus to Blanche of Burgundy, the wife of Charles, Philip the Fair’s third son, because Blanche was the mistress of his brother, Gautier d’Aunay, equerry to the Count of Poitiers. And if he dared to speak thus to Jeanne, Countess of Poitiers, it was because Jeanne, no one’s mistress as yet, nevertheless was a party, partly from weakness, partly because it amused her, to the intrigues of the other two royal daughters-in-law. She arranged meetings and interviews.

Thus it was that in the early spring of 1314, upon the very day that the Templars came up for judgment, the very day this serious matter was the Crown’s main concern, of the three royal sons of France, the eldest, Louis, and the youngest, Charles, were cuckolded by two equerries, one of whom was in their uncle’s household and the other in their brother’s, and all this was taking place under the auspices of their sister-in-law, Jeanne, who, though faithful as a wife, was a benevolent go-between, finding a pleasurable excitement in living the loves of others.

The report that had been given the Queen of England a few days earlier was thus very far from false.

‘In any case, there’ll be no Tower of Nesle tonight,’ said Blanche.

‘As far as I’m concerned, it won’t be any different from previous nights,’ replied Philippe d’Aunay. ‘But what makes me absolutely furious is the thought that tonight, in the arms of Louis of Navarre, Marguerite will say the very same words that she has so often said to me.’

‘That’s going too far, my friend,’ said Jeanne with considerable haughtiness. ‘A little while ago you were accusing Marguerite, quite unreasonably, of having other lovers. Now you wish to prevent her having a husband. The favours she gives you have made you forget your place. Tomorrow I think I shall advise our uncle to send you into his county of Valois for several months. Your estates lie there and it will be good for your nerves.’

At once, good-looking young Philippe calmed down.

‘Oh, Madam!’ he murmured. ‘I think I should die of it.’

He was much more attractive in this mood than when angry. It was a pleasure to frighten him, merely to see him lower his long silken eyelashes and watch the slight trembling of his white chin. He was suddenly so unhappy, so pathetic, that the two young women, forgetting their alarm, could do no other than smile.

‘You must tell your brother, Gautier, that I shall sigh for him tonight,’ said Blanche in the kindest possible way.

Once again, it was impossible to tell whether she was lying or telling the truth.

‘Oughtn’t Marguerite to be warned of what we’ve just learnt?’ said Aunay hesitatingly. ‘In case she intended tonight …’

‘Blanche can do what she likes; I won’t undertake anything more,’ said Jeanne. ‘I was too frightened. I don’t want to have anything more to do with your affairs. It’ll all end badly one day, and I’m really compromising myself for nothing at all.’

‘It’s quite true,’ said Blanche; ‘you get nothing out of our good fortune. And of us all, it’s your husband who’s away most often. If only Marguerite and I had your luck.’

‘But I’ve no taste for it,’ Jeanne answered.

‘Or no courage,’ said Blanche gently.

‘It’s quite true that even if I did want it, I haven’t your facility for lying, Sister, and I’m sure that I should betray myself at once.’

Having said so much, Jeanne was pensive for a moment or two. No, certainly, she had no wish to deceive Philippe of Poitiers; but she was tired of appearing to be a prude.

‘Madam,’ said Aunay, ‘couldn’t you give me a message for your cousin?’

Jeanne looked covertly at the young man with a sort of tender indulgence.

‘Can’t you survive another day without seeing the beautiful Marguerite?’ she said. ‘Well then, I’ll be kind. I’ll buy a jewel for Marguerite and you shall go and give it to her on my behalf. But it’s the last time.’

They went to one of the baskets. While the two young women were making their choice, Blanche at once selecting the most expensive trinkets, Philippe d’Aunay was thinking again of the meeting with the King.

‘Each time he sees me, he asks me my name over again,’ he thought. ‘This must be the tenth time. And every time he makes some allusion to my brother.’

He felt a sort of dull apprehension and wondered why the King frightened him so much. No doubt it was because of the way he looked at you out of those over-large, unwinking eyes with their strange, indefinite colour which lay somewhere between grey and pale blue, like the ice on ponds on winter mornings, eyes that remained in the memory for hours after you had looked into them.

None of the three young people had noticed a tall man, dressed in hunting-clothes, who, from some distance off, while pretending to buy a buckle, had been watching them for some little time. This man was Count Robert of Artois.

‘Philippe, I haven’t enough money on me, do you mind paying?’

It was Jeanne who spoke, drawing Philippe out of his reflections. And Philippe responded with alacrity. Jeanne had chosen for Marguerite a girdle woven of gold thread.

‘Oh, I should like one like it!’ said Blanche.

But she had not the money either, and it was Philippe who paid.

It was always thus when he was in company with these ladies. They promised to pay him back later on, but they always forgot, and he was too much the gallant gentleman ever to remind them.

‘Take care, my son,’ Messire Gautier d’Aunay, his father, had said to him one day, ‘the richest women are always the most expensive.’

He realised it when he went over his accounts. But he did not care. The Aunays were rich and their fiefs of Vémars and of d’Aulnay-les-Bondy, between Pontoise and Luzarches, brought them in a handsome income. Philippe told himself that, later on, his brilliant friendships would put him in the way of a large fortune. And for the moment nothing cost too much for the satisfaction of his passion.

He had the pretext, an expensive pretext, to rush off to the Hôtel-de-Nesle, where lived the King and Queen of Navarre, beyond the Seine. Going by the Pont Saint-Michel, it would take him but a few minutes.

He left the two princesses and quitted the Mercers’ Hall.

Outside, the great bell of Notre-Dame had fallen silent and over all the island of the Cité lay a menacing and unaccustomed quiet. What was happening at Notre-Dame?

4 (#ulink_aa5bfcd6-00e6-5c5c-84a0-b78f6eadc788)

At the Great Door of Notre-Dame (#ulink_aa5bfcd6-00e6-5c5c-84a0-b78f6eadc788)

THE ARCHERS HAD FORMED a cordon to keep the crowd out of the space in front of the cathedral. Heads appeared in curiosity at every window.

The mist had dissolved and a pale sunlight illumined the white stone of Notre-Dame of Paris. For the cathedral was only seventy years old, and work was still continuously in progress upon the decorations. It still had the brilliance of the new, and the light emphasised the curve of its ogival windows, pierced the lacework of its central rose and accentuated the teeming statues of its porches with rose-coloured shadows.

Already, for an hour, the sellers of chickens who, every morning, did business in front of the cathedral, had been driven back against the houses.

The crowing of a cock, stifling in its cage, split the silence, that weighty silence which had so surprised Philippe d’Aunay as he came out of the Mercers’ Hall; while feathers floated head-high in the air.

Captain Alain de Pareilles stood stiffly to attention in front of his archers.

At the top of the steps leading up from the open space, the four Templars stood, their backs to the crowd, face to face with the Ecclesiastical Tribunal which sat between the open doors of the great portico. Bishops, canons, and clerics sat in rows upon benches specially placed for them.

People looked with curiosity at the three Cardinal Legates, sent especially by the Pope to signify that the sentence was without appeal and had the final approval of the Holy See. The attention of the spectators was also particularly held by Jean de Marigny, the young Archbishop of Sens, brother of the First Minister, who had conducted the whole prosecution, and by Brother Renaud, the King’s confessor and Grand Inquisitor of France.

Some thirty monks, some in brown habits, some in white, stood behind the members of the Tribunal. The only civilian in the assembly, Jean Ployebouche, Provost of Paris, a man of some fifty years, thick-set and frowning, seemed not altogether happy in the company in which he found himself. He represented the royal power and was responsible for the maintenance of order. His eyes moved continuously from the crowd to the Captain of the Archers, from the Captain to the young Archbishop of Sens; one could imagine that he was thinking, ‘Provided everything goes off quietly.’

The sun played upon the mitres, the crosses, the purple of the cardinalatial robes, the amaranth of the bishops, the cloaks of ermine and velvet, the gold of pectoral crosses, the steel of coats of mail and of the weapons of the guard. These brilliant, scintillating colours rendered more violent yet the contrast with the accused on whose account all this pomp was gathered together. The four ragged Templars, standing shoulder to shoulder, looked as if they had been sculptured out of cinders.

The Cardinal-Archbishop of Albano rose to his feet and read the heads of the judgment. He did it slowly and with emphasis, savouring the sound of his own voice, pleased both with himself and with the opportunity of appearing before a foreign audience. Every now and then he pretended to be horrified at having even to mention the crimes he was enumerating, and at these moments his reading assumed an unctuous majesty of diction in order to relate some new transgression, some as yet unmentioned crime, and to announce yet further evidence, of an appalling nature.

‘We have heard the Brothers Géraud du Passage and Jean de Cugny, who assert with many others that they were compelled by force, upon being received into the Order, to spit upon the Cross, since, as they were told, it was only a piece of wood while the true God was in Heaven … We have heard Brother Guy Dauphin upon whom it was enjoined that, if one of his superiors were tormented by the flesh and desired to find satisfaction upon his body, he must consent to everything that was asked of him … We have heard upon this point the Sire de Molay who, under interrogation, has admitted and avowed that …’

The crowd had to listen hard to grasp the meaning of the words which were disfigured both by the Italian accent and the emphasis of their utterance. The Legate made too much of them and went on too long. The crowd began to grow impatient.