The Strangled Queen

She did not reproach herself with having acted as she had; she merely hated those who had brought her disaster about; and it was upon others alone that she lavished her despairing anger: against her sister-in-law, the Queen of England, who had denounced her, against the royal family of France who had condemned her, against her own family of Burgundy who had failed to defend her, against the whole kingdom, against fate itself and against God. It was upon others that she wished so thirstily to be avenged when she thought that, on this very day, she should have been side by side with the new king, sharing in power and majesty, instead of being imprisoned, a derisory queen, behind walls twelve feet thick.

Blanche put her arm round her neck.

‘It’s all over now,’ she said. ‘I’m sure, my dear, that our misfortunes are over.’

‘They are only over,’ replied Marguerite, ‘upon the condition that we are clever, and that quickly.’

She had a plan in mind, thought out during Mass, whose outcome she could not yet clearly envisage. Nevertheless she wished to turn the situation to her own advantage.

‘You will let me speak alone with that great lout of a Bersumée, whose head I should prefer to see upon a pike than upon his shoulders,’ she added.

A moment later the locks and hinges creaked at the base of the tower.

The two women put their hoods on again. Blanche went and stood in the embrasure of the narrow window; Marguerite, assuming a royal attitude, seated herself upon the bench which was the only seat in the room. The Captain of the Fortress came in.

‘I have come, Madam, as you asked me to,’ he said.

Marguerite took her time, looking him straight in the eye.

‘Messire Bersumée,’ she asked, ‘do you realize whom you will be guarding from now on?’

Bersumée turned his eyes away, as if he were searching for something in the room.

‘I know it well, Madam, I know it well,’ he replied, ‘and I have been thinking of it ever since this morning, when the courier woke me on his way to Criquebœuf and Rouen.’

‘During the seven months of my imprisonment here I have had insufficient linen, no furniture or sheets; I have eaten the same gruel as your archers and I have but one hour’s firing a day.’

‘I have obeyed Messire de Nogaret’s orders, Madam,’ replied Bersumée.

‘Messire de Nogaret is dead.’2

‘He sent me the King’s instructions.’

‘King Philip is dead.’

Seeing where Marguerite was leading, Bersumée replied, ‘But Monseigneur de Marigny is still alive, Madame, and he is in control of the judiciary and the prisons, as he controls all else in the kingdom, and I am responsible to him for everything.’

‘Did this morning’s courier give you no new orders concerning me?’

‘None, Madam.’

‘You will receive them shortly.’

‘I await them, Madam.’

For a moment they looked at each other in silence. Robert Bersumée, Captain of Château-Gaillard, was thirty-five years old, at that epoch a ripe age. He had that precise, dutiful look professional soldiers assume so easily and which, from being continually assumed, eventually becomes natural to them. For ordinary everyday duty in the fortress he wore a wolfskin cap and a rather loose old coat of mail, black with grease, which hung in folds about his belt. His eyebrows made a single bar above his nose.

At the beginning of her imprisonment Marguerite had tried to seduce him, ready to offer herself to him in order to make him her ally. He had failed to respond for fear of the consequences. But he was always embarrassed in Marguerite’s presence and felt a grudge against her for the part she had made him play. Today he was thinking, ‘Well, there it is! I could have been the Queen of France’s lover.’ And he wondered whether his scrupulously soldierly conduct would turn out well or ill for his prospects of promotion.

‘It has been no pleasure to me, Madam, to have had to inflict such treatment upon women, particularly of such high rank as yours,’ he said.

‘I can well believe it, Messire, I can well believe it,’ replied Marguerite, ‘because one can clearly see how knightly you are by nature and that you have felt great repugnance for your orders.’

As his father was a blacksmith and his mother the daughter of a sacristan, the Captain of the Fortress heard the word ‘knightly’ with considerable pleasure.

‘Only, Messire Bersumée,’ went on the prisoner, ‘I am tired of chewing wood to keep my teeth white and of anointing my hands with the grease from my soup to prevent my skin chapping with the cold.’

‘I can well understand it, Madam, I can well understand it.’

‘I should be grateful to you if from now on you would see to it that I am protected from cold, vermin and hunger.’

Bersumée lowered his head.

‘I have no orders, Madam,’ he replied.

‘I am only here because of the hatred of King Philip, and his death will change everything,’ went on Marguerite with such assurance that she very nearly convinced herself. ‘Do you intend to wait till you receive orders to open the prison doors before you show some consideration for the Queen of France? Don’t you think you would be acting somewhat stupidly against your own interests?’

Soldiers are often indecisive by nature, which predisposes them towards obedience and causes them to lose many a battle. Bersumée was as slow in initiative as he was prompt in obedience. He was loud-mouthed and ready with his fists towards his subordinates, but he had very little ability to make up his mind when faced with an unexpected situation.

Between the resentment of a woman who, so she said, would be all-powerful tomorrow, and the anger of Monseigneur de Marigny who was all-powerful today, which risk was he to take?

‘I also desire that Madame Blanche and myself,’ continued Marguerite, ‘may be allowed to go outside the fortifications for an hour or two a day, under your guardianship if you think proper, so that we may have a change of scene from battlements and your archers’ pikes.’

She was going too fast and too far. Bersumée saw the trap. His prisoners were trying to slip through his fingers. They were therefore not so certain after all of their return to Court.

‘Since you are Queen, Madam, you will understand that I owe loyalty to the service of the kingdom,’ he said, ‘and that I cannot infringe the orders I have received.’

Having said this, he went out so as to avoid further argument.

‘He’s a dog,’ cried Marguerite when he had left, ‘a guard-dog who is good for nothing but to bark and bite.’

She had made a false move and was beside herself to find some means of communicating with the outside world, receive news, and send letters which would be unread by Marigny. She did not know that a messenger, selected from among the first lords of the kingdom, was already on his way to lay a strange proposal before her.

2

Robert of Artois

‘YOU’VE GOT TO BE READY for anything when you’re a Queen’s gaoler,’ said Bersumée to himself as he left the tower. He was seriously perturbed, filled with misgiving. So important an event as the King’s death could not but result in a visitor to Château-Gaillard from Paris. So Bersumée, shouting at the top of his voice, made haste to make his garrison ready for inspection. On that count at least he intended to be blameless.

All day there was such commotion in the fortress as had not been seen since Richard Cœur-de-Lion. There was much sweeping and cleaning. Had an archer lost his quiver? Where could it have got to? And what of those coats of mail rusted under the armpits? Go on, take handfuls of sand, polish them till they shine!

‘Should Messire de Pareilles appear suddenly, I don’t want him to find a troop of ruffians!’ shouted Bersumée. ‘Make haste, get a move on there!’

The guard-house was cleaned; the chains of the drawbridge greased. The cauldrons for boiling pitch were brought out, as if the fortress were to be attacked within the hour. And bad luck to anyone who did not hurry! Private Gros-Guillaume, the same who had hoped for an extra ration of wine, got a kick on the backside. Sergeant Lalaine was worn out.

Doors were slamming everywhere; Château-Gaillard had an atmosphere of moving house. If the Princesses had wished to escape, this was the one day to choose among a hundred. Such was the chaos, no one would have seen them leave.

By evening Bersumée had lost his voice, and his archers slept upon the battlements. But the following day when, in the early hours of the morning, the look-outs reported a troop of horsemen, a banner at their head, advancing along the Seine from the direction of Paris, the Captain congratulated himself upon having taken the steps he had.

He rapidly donned his smartest coat of mail, his best boots, no more than five years old with spurs three inches long, and, putting on his helmet, went out into the courtyard. He had a few moments left in which to glance with anxious satisfaction at his still tired men, but their arms, well polished, shone in the pale winter light.

‘Certainly no one can reprimand me for this turn-out,’ he said to himself. ‘And it will make it easier for me to complain of the meagreness of my salary, and the arrears of money due to me for the men’s food.’

Already the horsemen’s trumpets were sounding under the cliff, and the clatter of their horses’ hooves could be heard upon the chalky soil.

‘Raise the portcullis! Lower the drawbridge!’

The chains of the portcullis quivered in the guide-blocks and, a moment later, fifteen horsemen, bearing the royal arms and surrounding a red-clothed cavalier, who sat his mount as if impersonating his own equestrian statue, passed like a whirlwind beneath the vault of the guard-house and debouched into the courtyard of Château-Gaillard.

‘Can it be the King?’ thought Bersumée, rushing forward. ‘Good God! Can the King have come to fetch his wife already?’

From emotion his breath came in short gasps, and it took him a moment to recognize the man in the blood-red cloak who, slipping from his horse, colossal in mantle, furs, leather and silver, was forcing a way towards him through the surrounding horsemen.

‘On the King’s service,’ said the huge cavalier, fluttering a parchment with dependent seal under Bersumée’s nose, but giving him no time to read it. ‘I am Count Robert of Artois.’

The salutations were cut short, Monseigneur Robert of Artois slapped Bersumée on the shoulder to show that he was not haughty and made him wince; then asked for mulled wine for himself and his escort in a voice that made the watchmen turn about upon their towers. He created a hurricane about him as he paced to and fro.

Bersumée, the night before, had decided to shine whoever his visitor might be, had determined not to be caught napping, to appear the perfect captain of an impeccable fortress, to make an impression that would not be forgotten. He had a speech ready; but it was never delivered.

Almost at once Bersumée found himself being invited to drink the wine he had been ordered to produce, heard himself stuttering servile flattery, saw the four rooms of his lodging, which was attached to the keep, reduced to absurd proportions by the immense size of his visitor, was aware of nervously spilling the contents of his goblet, and then of finding himself in the prisoners’ tower, following in the wake of the Count of Artois, who was racing up the dark staircase at incredible speed. Until that day Bersumée had always considered himself a tall man; now he felt a dwarf.

Artois had only asked one question concerning the Princesses: ‘How are they?’

And Bersumée, cursing himself for his stupidity, had replied, ‘They are very well, thank you, Monseigneur.’

At a sign Sergeant Lalaine unlocked the door with trembling hands.

Marguerite and Blanche were waiting, standing in the middle of the round chamber. They were both pale and, with the opening of the door, with a single, instinctive impulse for mutual support, reached for each other’s hands.

Artois looked them up and down. His eyes blinked. He had halted in the doorway, completely filling it.

‘You, Cousin!’ said Marguerite.

And, as he did not reply, gazing intently at these two women to whose distress he had so greatly contributed, she went on in a voice grown quickly firmer, ‘Look at us, yes, look at us! See the misery to which we are reduced. It must offer a fine contrast to the spectacle presented by the Court, and to the memory you had of us. We have no linen. No dresses. No food. And no chair to offer so great a lord as you!’

‘Do they know?’ Artois wondered as he went slowly forward. Had they learnt the part he had played in their disaster, out of revenge, out of hate for Blanche’s mother, that he had helped the Queen of England to lay the trap into which they had fallen?3

‘Robert, are you bringing us our freedom?’

It was Blanche who said this and now went towards the Count, her hands extended before her, her eyes bright with hope.

‘No, they know nothing,’ he thought. ‘It will make my mission the easier.’

He did not reply and turned upon his heel.

‘Bersumée,’ he said, ‘is there no fire here?’

‘No, Monseigneur; the orders I received …’

‘Light one! And is there no furniture?’

‘No, Monseigneur, but I …’

‘Bring furniture! Take away this pallet! Bring a bed, chairs to sit on, hangings, torches. Don’t tell me you haven’t them! I saw everything necessary in your lodging. Fetch them at once!’

He took the Captain of the Fortress by the arm and pushed him out of the room as if he were a servant.

‘And something to eat,’ said Marguerite. ‘You might also tell our good gaoler, who daily gives us food that pigs would leave at the bottom of their trough, to give us a proper meal for once.’

‘And food, of course, Madam!’ said Artois. ‘Bring pastries and roasts. Fresh vegetables. Good winter pears and preserves. And wine, Bersumée, plenty of wine!’

‘But, Monseigneur …’ groaned the Captain.

‘Don’t you dare talk to me,’ shouted Artois. ‘Your breath stinks like a horse!’

He threw him out, and banged the door shut with a kick of his boot.

‘My good Cousins,’ went on Artois, ‘I was expecting the worst indeed; but I see with relief that this sad time has not marked the two most beautiful faces in France.’

It was only now that he took off his hat and bowed low.

‘We still manage to wash,’ said Marguerite. ‘Provided we break the ice on the basins they bring us, we have sufficient water.’

Artois sat down on the bench and continued to gaze at them. ‘Well, my girls,’ he murmured to himself, ‘that’s what comes of trying to carve yourselves the destinies of queens from the inheritance of Robert of Artois!’ He tried to guess whether beneath the rough serge of their dresses, the two young women’s bodies had lost the soft curves of the past. He was like a great cat making ready to play with caged mice.

‘How is your hair, Marguerite?’ he asked. ‘Has it grown properly?’

Marguerite of Burgundy started as if she had been pricked with a needle. Her cheeks grew pale.

‘Get up, Monseigneur of Artois!’ she cried furiously. ‘However reduced you may find me here, I will still not tolerate that a man should be seated in my presence when I am standing!’

He leapt to his feet, and for a moment their eyes confronted each other. She did not flinch.

In the pale light from the window he was better able to see this new face of Marguerite’s, the face of a prisoner. The features had preserved their beauty, but all their sweetness had gone. The nose was sharper, the eyes more sunken. The dimples, which only last spring had shown at the corners of her amber cheeks, had become little wrinkles. ‘So,’ Artois said to himself, ‘she can still defend herself. All the better, it will be the more amusing.’ He liked a battle, having to fight to gain his ends.

‘Cousin,’ he said to Marguerite with feigned good-humour, ‘I had no intention of insulting you; you have misunderstood me. I merely wanted to know if your hair had grown sufficiently to allow of your appearing in public.’

Distrustful as she was, Marguerite could not prevent herself giving a start of joy.

Appear in public? This must mean that she was to go free. Had she been pardoned? Was he bringing her a throne? No, it could not be that, he would have announced it at once.

Her thoughts raced on. She felt herself weakening. She could not prevent tears coming to her eyes.

‘Robert,’ she said, ‘don’t keep me in suspense. I know it’s a characteristic of yours. But don’t be cruel. What have you come to say to me?’

‘Cousin, I have come to deliver you …’

Blanche uttered a cry and Robert thought that she was going to swoon. He had left his sentence suspended; he was playing the two women like a couple of fish at the end of a line.

‘… a message,’ he finished.

It pleased him to see their shoulders sag, to hear their sighs of disappointment.

‘A message from whom?’ asked Marguerite.

‘From Louis, your husband, our King from now on. And from our good cousin Monseigneur of Valois. But I may only speak to you alone. Perhaps Blanche would leave us?’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Blanche submissively, ‘I will retire. But before I go, Cousin, tell me: what of Charles, my husband?’

‘He has been much distressed by his father’s death.’

‘And what does he think of me? Does he speak of me?’

‘I think he regrets you, in spite of the suffering you have caused him. Since Pontoise he has never been seen to show his old gaiety.’

Blanche burst into tears.

‘Do you think,’ she asked, ‘that he has forgiven me?’

‘That depends a great deal upon your cousin,’ replied Artois mysteriously, indicating Marguerite.

And he led Blanche to the door, closing it behind her.

Then, returning to Marguerite, he said, ‘To start with, my dear, there are a few things I must tell you. During these last days, when King Philip was dying, Louis your husband has seemed utterly confused. To wake up King, when one went to sleep a prince, is a matter for some surprise. He occupied his throne of Navarre only in name, and had no hand in governing. You will remember that he is twenty-five years old, and at that age one is able to reign; but you know as well as I do that, without being unkind, judgement is not his most outstanding quality. Thus, in these first days, Monseigneur of Valois, his uncle, stands behind him in everything, directing affairs with Monseigneur de Marigny. The trouble is that these two powerful minds dislike each other because they are too similar, hardly listening to what they say to each other. It is even thought that very soon they will no longer listen to each other at all, which, if it continued, would be most unfortunate, since a kingdom cannot be governed by two deaf men.’

Artois had completely changed his tone. He was speaking with sense and precision, giving the impression that his turbulent entrances were largely made for effect.

‘As far as I am concerned, as you know very well,’ he went on, ‘I don’t care at all for Messire de Marigny, who has so often stood in my way, and I hope with all my heart that my cousin Valois, whose friend and ally I am, will come out on top.’

Marguerite did her best to understand the intrigues which were everyday matters to Artois, and into which he was so abruptly plunging her once more. She was no longer in touch with affairs, and it seemed to her that she was awakening from a long slumber of the mind.

From the courtyard, blanketed to some extent by the walls, came the shouts of Bersumée, who was busy having his lodging emptied by the soldiers.

‘Louis still hates me, doesn’t he?’ she said.

‘Oh, as for that, I won’t conceal from you that he hates you very well! You must admit that he has reason to,’ replied Artois. ‘To have decorated him with a cuckold’s horns is an embarrassment when they must be worn above the crown of France! Had you done as much to me, Cousin, I should not have made such a clamour throughout the kingdom. I should have given you such a beating that you would never have desired to do the like again, or else …’

He looked so steadily at Marguerite that she was frightened.

‘… or else I should have acted in such a way that I could feign the preservation of my honour. However, the late King, your father-in-law, clearly judged otherwise and things are as they are.’

He certainly possessed a fine assurance in deploring a scandal he had done everything in his power to set alight. He went on, ‘Louis’s first thought, after witnessing his father’s death, indeed the only thought he has in mind at present, since I believe him incapable of entertaining more than one at a time, is to extricate himself from the embarrassment in which you have placed him and to live down the shame you have caused him.’

‘What does Louis want?’ asked Marguerite.

For a moment Artois swung his monumental leg backwards and forwards as if he were about to kick a stone.

‘He intends asking for the annulment of your marriage,’ he answered, ‘and you can see, from the fact that he has sent me to you at once, that he wants to put it through as quickly as possible.’

‘So I shall never be Queen of France,’ thought Marguerite. The foolish dreams of the day before were already proved vain. A single day of dreaming to set against seven months of imprisonment, against the whole of time!

At this moment two men came in carrying wood and kindling. They lit the fire. Marguerite waited till they had gone again.

‘Very well,’ she said wearily, ‘let him ask for an annulment. What can I do?’

She went over to the fireplace and held her hands out to the flames which were beginning to catch.

‘Well, Cousin, there is much you can do, and indeed you can be the recipient of a certain gratitude if you will take a course that will cost you nothing. It happens that adultery is no ground for annulment; it’s absurd, but so it is. You could have had a hundred lovers instead of one, pleasured every man in the kingdom, and you would be no less indissolubly married to the man to whom you were joined before God. Ask the chaplain or anyone else you like; so it is. I have taken the best advice upon it, because I know very little of church matters: a marriage cannot be broken, and if one wishes to break it, it must be proved that there was some impediment to its taking place, or that it has not been consummated, so that it might never have been. You’re listening to me?’

‘Yes, yes, I see what you mean,’ said Marguerite.

It was no longer a question of the affairs of the kingdom, but of her own fate; and she was registering each word in her mind that she might not forget it.

‘Well,’ went on her visitor, ‘this is what Monseigneur Valois has devised to get his nephew out of his difficulty.’

He paused and cleared his throat.

‘You will admit that your daughter, the Princess Jeanne, is not Louis’s child; you will admit that you have never slept with your husband and that there has therefore never been a true marriage. You will declare this voluntarily in the presence of myself and your chaplain as supporting witnesses. Among your previous servants and household there will be no difficulty in finding witnesses to testify that this is the truth. Thus the marriage will have no defence and the annulment will be automatic.’

‘And what am I offered in exchange for this lie?’ asked Marguerite.

‘In exchange for your cooperation,’ replied Artois, ‘you are offered safe passage to the Duchy of Burgundy, where you will be placed in a convent until the annulment has been pronounced, and thereafter to live as you please or as your family may desire.’

On first hearing, Marguerite very nearly answered, ‘Yes, I accept; I declare all that is desired of me; I will sign no matter what, on condition that I may leave this place.’ But she saw Artois watching her from under lowered lids, a gaze ill-matched with his good-natured air; and intuitively she knew that he was tricking her. ‘I shall sign,’ she thought, ‘and then they will continue to keep me here.’