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

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?

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At the Great Door of Notre-Dame (#ulink_cc31d4ff-3261-5c96-8820-56fc9e1370dc)

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.

During this recital of accusation, false witness, and extorted confession, Jacques de Molay murmured to himself ‘Lies … lies … lies.’

The hoarse repetition of this word uttered in an undertone, reached his companions.

The anger the Grand Master had felt rising in him during the ride in the wagon, far from diminishing, was increasing. The blood began to beat more strongly yet behind his sunken temples.

Nothing had happened to interrupt the progress of the nightmare. No band of ex-Templars had burst out of the crowd. Fate appeared inexorable.

‘We have heard the Brother Hugues de Payraud, who admits that he obliged novices to deny Christ three times.’

Hugues de Payraud was the Brother Visitor. He turned to Jacques de Molay with an expression of horror and said in a low voice, ‘Brother, Brother, could I really have said that?’

The four dignitaries were alone, abandoned by God and man, held as in a giant vice between the soldiers and the Tribunal, between the royal power and the power of the Church. Each word pronounced by the Cardinal-Legate but screwed the vice tighter, till it was clear that the nightmare could end only in death.

How could the Commissions of Inquiry have failed to understand, for it had been explained to them a hundred times, that this test of denial had been imposed upon the novices for the sole purpose of discovering their attitude in the event of their being taken a prisoner by the Saracens and called upon to deny their religion?

The Grand Master had a wild longing to throw himself at the Prelate’s throat, beat him, throw his mitre to the ground, and strangle him; all that prevented him was the certainty of being stopped before he could ever reach him. Besides, it was not only the Legate whom he longed to attack, but the young Marigny too, the fop with the golden hair who adopted such a negligent air. But, above all, he longed to attack his three real absent enemies: the King, the Keeper of the Seals, and the Pope.

Powerless rage, heavier to bear than all his chains, impaired his vision, forming a red film before his eyes, and yet, something had to happen. … He was seized by so violent an attack of giddiness that he was afraid of falling to the ground. He did not even notice that Charnay had been seized by a similar fury and that the Preceptor of Normandy’s scar had turned white across his crimson forehead.

The Legate was taking his time about the reading, lowering the parchment in his hand, only to raise it once again to the level of his eyes. He was making the performance last as long as possible. The depositions were over; the time had come to announce the sentence. The Legate continued, ‘In consideration that the accused have avowed and recognised the above, they are condemned to solitary confinement for the term of their natural lives, that they may obtain the remission of their sins by means of their repentance. In nomine patris. …’

The Legate had finished. There was nothing left for him to do but sit down, roll up the parchment, and hand it to a priest.

At first there was no reaction from the crowd. After such a recital of crime, sentence of death had been so much expected that mere solitary confinement – that is to say, imprisonment for life, a dungeon, chains, and bread and water – appeared almost as an act of clemency.

Philip the Fair had perfectly gauged the situation. Popular opinion, taken aback, would accept without difficulty, almost disinterestedly, this ultimate resolution of a tragedy that had preoccupied it for seven years. The senior Legate and the young Archbishop of Sens exchanged an almost imperceptible smile of connivance.

‘Brothers, Brothers,’ stuttered the Brother Visitor, ‘did I hear that correctly? They aren’t going to kill us! They’re going to spare us!’

His eyes filled with tears; his swollen hands trembled and his broken teeth parted as if he were about to laugh.

It was the sight of this hideous joy that let loose the flood-gates. For one instant Jacques de Molay looked at the half-witted face of a man who had once been brave and strong.

And suddenly from the top of the steps they heard a voice shout, ‘I protest!’

And so powerful was the voice that at first they could not believe that it came from the Grand Master.

‘I protest against an iniquitous sentence and I declare that the crimes of which we are accused are wholly invented!’ cried Jacques de Molay.

A huge sigh came from the crowd. The Tribunal was thrown into confusion. The Cardinals looked at each other in stupefaction. No one had expected anything of the kind. Jean de Marigny leapt to his feet. The time for negligent airs had passed; he was pale and strained and trembling with rage.

‘You are lying!’ he shouted. ‘You confessed before the Commission.’

From instinct, the archers had closed their ranks, awaiting an order.

‘I am guilty,’ went on Jacques de Molay, ‘only of having yielded to your promises, your threats and your tortures. I protest, in the name of God who hears us, that the Order of which I am the Grand Master is innocent.’

And God indeed seemed to hear him, for the Grand Master’s voice, caught up in the interior of the cathedral, reverberating in the vaults, returned as an echo, as if another, deeper voice, were repeating his words from the far end of the nave.

‘You have confessed to sodomy!’ cried Jean de Marigny.

‘Under torture,’ replied Molay.

‘… under torture …’ came the voice which seemed to resound from the tabernacle.

‘You have admitted to heresy!’