The Strangled Queen

The Lord Chamberlain, followed by five officers of the household,4 advanced with solemn tread to the edge of the open vault into which the body had already been lowered, threw into the cavity the carved wand which was the insignia of his office, and pronounced the formula which officially marked the change of reign: ‘The King is dead! Long live the King!’

After him, all present repeated: ‘The King is dead! Long live the King!’

And the cry from a hundred throats resounded from bay and arch and pillar and re-echoed among the high vaults.

The Prince with the lack-lustre eyes, narrow shoulders and hollow chest who, at this moment, had become Louis X, felt a curious sensation in the nape of his neck, as if stars were bursting there. His whole body was seized by an agonizing chill and he was afraid of falling down in a swoon. He began to pray for himself as he had never prayed for anyone in the world.

On his right hand his two brothers, Philippe, Count of Poitiers, and Prince Charles, who had not as yet acquired a territorial estate, gazed fixedly at the tomb, their hearts constricted by the emotion every man must feel, be he child of poverty or king’s son, at the moment his father’s body is lowered into the earth.

On the left of the new Sovereign were his two uncles, Monseigneur Charles of Valois and Monseigneur Louis of Evreux, both big men who had already passed their fortieth year.

The Count of Evreux was a prey to memories of the past. ‘Twenty-nine years ago,’ he thought, ‘we too were three sons standing upon these same stones before our father’s tomb. It seems such a little while ago; and now Philip has gone. Life is already over.’

His eyes turned to the nearest effigy, which was that of King Philip III. ‘Father,’ prayed Louis of Evreux with all his heart, ‘receive my brother Philip kindly into the other kingdom, for he succeeded you well.’

Further along, near the altar, was the tomb of Saint Louis, and beyond again the stone effigies of the great ancestors. And then, on the other side of the nave, the empty spaces, bare flagstones which one day would open for this young man who was succeeding to the throne, and after him, reign upon reign, for all the kings of the future. ‘There is still room for many centuries of them,’ thought Louis of Evreux.

Monseigneur of Valois, his arms crossed, his chin held high, his eyes restless, observed all that was going on, watching to see that the ceremony was properly conducted.

‘The King is dead! Long live the King!’

Five times more the cry sounded through the basilica as the chamberlains passed by. Then the last wand rebounded from the coffin and silence fell.

At that moment Louis X was seized with a violent fit of coughing that he was quite unable to control. A flux of blood mounted to his cheeks and for a long moment he was shaken by a paroxysm, as if he were about to spit his soul out before his father’s grave.

All those present looked at each other, mitre bent towards mitre, crown towards crown; there were whispers of anxiety and pity. Everyone was thinking, ‘Supposing he too were to die within a few weeks, what would happen then?’

Among the peers of France the redoubtable Countess Mahaut of Artois, her face red from the cold, watched her giant nephew Robert, and wondered why he had arrived at Notre-Dame the day before only in the middle of the funeral mass, unshaven and muddied to the waist. Where had he come from, what had he been doing? As soon as Robert appeared, there was intrigue in the air. The favour in which he seemed to stand, since Philip the Fair had died a few days ago, did nothing to reassure the Countess. And she was thinking that if the new King should catch a bad chill while burying his father, her affairs would come to fruition all the quicker.

Surrounded by the justiciars of the Council, Monseigneur Enguerrand de Marigny, Coadjutor of the Sovereign they were burying, and Rector-General of the kingdom, wore a princely mourning. From time to time he exchanged glances with his younger brother, Jean de Marigny, Archbishop of Sens,5 who had officiated the day before at Notre-Dame and now, mitre on head, crozier in hand, was surrounded by the high clergy of the capital.

For two middle-class Normans who, twenty years earlier, called themselves simply the brothers Le Portier, they had had prodigious careers and, the elder ever pushing the younger upwards, succeeded in sharing power successfully between them, one controlling the civil power, the other the ecclesiastical. Between them they had destroyed the Order of the Knights Templar.

Enguerrand de Marigny was one of those rare men who have the certainty of being part of history while still alive, because they have made it. And he needed to remember where he had started, and to what heights he had risen, in order at this moment to be able to bear the great sorrow which had come to him. ‘Sire Philip, my King,’ he thought as he gazed at the coffin, ‘I served you as well as I knew how, and you confided to me the highest tasks, as you conferred upon me the greatest honours and innumerable gifts. How many days did we work side by side? We thought alike in everything; we made mistakes, and we corrected them. I swear that I shall defend the work we accomplished together and shall pursue it against those who are now making ready to destroy it. But how lonely I shall feel!’ For this great politician had fervour, and he thought of the kingdom as might a second king.

Egidius de Chambly, Abbot of Saint-Denis, on his knees at the edge of the vault, made a last sign of the Cross. Then he rose to his feet, signalled to the sextons, and the heavy flat stone rolled into place above the tomb.

Never again would Louis X hear his father’s terrible voice saying, ‘Be quiet, Louis!’

And far from being relieved, he was seized with panic. He heard a voice beside him say, ‘Come on, Louis!’

He started; it was Charles of Valois who had spoken, telling him to move forward. Louis X turned towards his uncle and murmured, ‘You saw him become King. What did he say? What did he do?’

‘He entered upon his responsibilities without hesitation,’ replied Charles of Valois.

‘He was eighteen, seven years younger than I am,’ thought Louis X. Feeling everyone’s eyes upon him, he did his best to stand upright, and began to walk forward while the procession formed behind him, monks, their heads bent, hands in sleeves, singing a psalm. Since they had been singing continuously for twenty-four hours, their voices were beginning to grow hoarse.

Thus they went from the basilica to the chapter house of the Abbey, where was laid the traditional repast which closed the funeral ceremony.

‘Sire,’ said Abbot Egidius, leading Louis to his place, ‘we shall say two prayers from now on, one for the King God has taken from us, the other for him whom He has given us.’

‘Thank you, Father,’ said Louis X in an uncertain voice.

Then he sat down with a tired sigh and at once asked for a cup of water which he swallowed at one gulp. During the whole meal he remained silent, eating nothing, drinking a great deal of water. He felt feverish, physically and mentally ill.

‘One must be robust to be a king.’ It was one of the maxims Philip the Fair used to his sons when, before they were knights, they used sometimes to grumble at the exercises of arms or at the quintain.6 ‘One must be robust to be a king,’ Louis X repeated to himself during these first moments of his reign. He was one of those people whom fatigue makes irritable, and he thought irritably that when one is bequeathed a throne, one should also be bequeathed the necessary strength to sit upright on it. But who, unless he had the strength of an athlete, could have borne the past week without feeling exhausted?

That which precedent demanded of a new sovereign, as he assumed his post, was utterly inhuman. Louis had had to attend his father’s deathbed, receive the transmission of the royal miraculous power,7 countersign the last will and testament, and take his meals for two days beside the embalmed corpse. Then had followed the transportation of the body by water from Fontainebleu to Paris, a whole series of progresses and vigils, interminable religious services and processions, all in the most appalling winter weather, paddling in frozen mud, a sullen wind taking your breath away, sleet pricking your face.

But Louis X admired his uncle of Valois who, throughout these days, had been constantly at his side, making every decision, solving questions of precedent, indefatigably, helpfully, terribly present. ‘Without him, what should I have done?’ thought Louis.

It was Valois who seemed to have the sinews of a king. Already, talking to the Abbot of Saint-Denis, he was beginning to express concern about Louis’s coronation, which could not take place till the following summer, for the Abbot of Saint-Denis had besides the guardianship of the royal tombs, the keeping of the banner of France, which was brought out when the King went to war, and the guardianship of the instruments and vestments of coronation. The Count of Valois wished to know whether all was in order: was the great mantle in need of repair? Were the caskets for transporting the sceptre, the spurs and the hand of justice to Rheims in good condition? And the gold crown? It was essential that the goldsmiths should measure Louis X’s head as soon as possible in order to alter the crown to the right size.

How Monseigneur of Valois would have liked to wear that crown himself! And he fussed about like one of those old spinsters who busy themselves pinning the dresses of brides.

As he listened, Abbot Egidius watched the young King who, once again, was shaken by his cough, and he thought, ‘Of course, every preparation must be made; but will he last till then?’

When the meal was over, Hugues de Bouville, First Chamberlain to Philip the Fair, rose to break his carved wand before Louis X, signifying that he had accomplished his ultimate office. Fat Bouville’s eyes filled with tears, his hands trembled and he tried three times before he succeeded in breaking the wooden wand, the delegated counterpart of the great sceptre of gold. Then he sat down again next to young Mathieu de Trye, First Chamberlain to Louis who was to succeed him. He murmured, ‘It’s up to you now, Messire.’

Everyone went out, mounted their horses, and the procession re-formed for the last lap. Outside there was but a thin crowd to cry, ‘Long live the King!’ The populace had got cold enough the day before, watching the great procession whose head had already reached Saint-Denis when its tail had not yet passed the Porte de Paris; today’s procession had nothing exciting to offer. Sleet was falling, soaking through everyone’s clothes to the skin; only the most ardent spectators remained, or those who could shout from their own doorsteps without getting wet.

From the time when he had first known that he would one day be King, Louis had dreamed of entering his capital in glorious sunshine. And when the Iron King, rebuking him, said harshly, ‘Louis, don’t be so stubborn!’ how often had he not wished that his father might die, thinking, ‘When I can command, everything will be different, and people will see what kind of a man I am.’

But now he had been proclaimed King, and yet there seemed to be nothing to mark the fact that he had been suddenly transformed into a sovereign. If anything had altered, it was only that he felt himself weaker than yesterday, ill-assured in his new-found majesty, and thinking at every turn of his father whom he had so little loved.

With lowered head and shaking shoulders, he pressed his horse on between empty fields where the stubbles showed above a carpet of snow; he seemed to be leading the survivors of a conquered army.

Thus they arrived at the outskirts and entered the gates. The people of the capital seemed no more enthusiastic than those of Saint-Denis. Besides, what reasons had they to demonstrate happiness? The early winter hindered communications and increased the death-rate. The last harvest had been extremely bad; food was scarce and its price continually increasing. Famine was in the air. And the little that was known about the new King contained nothing to awaken hope.

He was considered stubborn and self-opinionated, from whence derived his nickname of ‘The Hutin’, which from the Court had spread across the town. No one knew of a single great or generous action he had ever performed. He had only the sad reputation of a prince deceived by his wife, and who, once the scandal was discovered, had taken delight in torturing and then drowning in the Seine those of his household servants whom he had believed to be accomplices of his misfortune.

‘That’s why they feel contempt for me,’ Louis X said to himself. ‘Because of that bitch who tricked me and made me a laughing-stock before the world. But they will be made to love me, and if they won’t, I shall act so as to make them tremble at sight of me and hail me, when they see me, as if they loved me very much indeed. But the first thing I need is to take another wife, to have a queen beside me, so that my dishonour may be effaced.’

Alas, the report his cousin of Artois had given him the day before, upon his return from Château-Gaillard, appeared to make this no easy matter. ‘The bitch will give way; I shall bully her, torture her into yielding.’

Night had fallen and the archers of the escort held lighted torches. As it had been rumoured among the lower orders that pieces of silver would be thrown them, groups of the poor, their naked flesh showing through their rags, had gathered at street corners. But no coins fell.

Thus the melancholy torchlight procession, passing by the Châtelet and the Pont au Change, reached the Palace of the Cité.

With the support of an equerry’s shoulder, Louis X dismounted, and the procession at once broke up. The Countess Mahaut gave the signal for dispersal, declaring that everyone needed warmth and rest, and that she was going to the Hôtel d’Artois.

The prelates and lords took advantage of this to go off to their own houses. Even the brothers of the new King departed. So, upon entering his Palace, Louis X found himself abandoned by everyone but his escort of equerries and servants, his two uncles, Valois and Evreux, Robert of Artois and Enguerrand de Marigny. They passed through the Mercers’ Hall, immense and almost deserted at this hour. A few merchants,8 padlocking their baskets after a bad day’s business, removed their hats and gathered in a group to cry ‘Long live the King!’ Their voices sounded weak, lost among the vaults of the two enormous naves.

The Hutin moved slowly forward, his legs stiff in his too-heavy boots, his body hot with fever. He looked to right and left where, against the walls, were arranged awe-inspiring statues of the forty kings who, since Mérovée, had reigned over France. Philip the Fair had erected them at the entrance to the royal abode, so that the living sovereign might appear in a spectator’s eye to be the continuation of a sacred race, designed by God for the exercise of power.

This colossal heritage in stone, white-eyed under the glow of the torches, dismayed still further the poor Prince of flesh and blood upon whom the succession had descended.

A merchant said to his wife, ‘Our new King doesn’t look much of a chap.’ The merchant’s wife, as she stopped blowing upon her fingers, replied with that peculiar sneer women so often adopt towards the victims of misfortune that can come from no one but themselves, ‘He certainly looks a proper cuckold.’

She did not speak over-loud, but her shrill voice resounded in the silence. The Hutin turned about with a start, his face suddenly aglow, vainly trying to see who had dared pronounce that word as he passed. Everyone about him looked away, pretending not to have heard.

They reached the foot of the Grand Staircase. Dominating, framing the monumental doorway, rose the two statues of Philip the Fair and Enguerrand de Marigny, for the Rector-General of the kingdom had received the supreme honour of seeing his likeness placed in the gallery of history in his lifetime, a pair to his master’s.

If there was anyone who hated the sight of that statue, it was Monseigneur of Valois. Whenever he had to pass by it, he raged with fury that a man of such mean birth should have been raised up so high. ‘Cunning and intrigue have lent him such effrontery that he assumes all the airs of being of our blood,’ thought Valois. ‘But it’s all very fine, Messire; we’ll bring you down from that pedestal, I promise you. We’ll show you pretty quick that the period of your meretricious greatness is over.’

‘Messire Enguerrand,’ he said, turning haughtily towards his enemy, ‘I think the King desires only the company of his family.’

By the word ‘family’, he meant only Monseigneur of Evreux, Robert of Artois and himself.

Marigny pretended not to have understood and, addressing himself to the King, in order to avoid a scene and at the same time to signify clearly that he proposed taking no orders but his, said, ‘Sire, there are many matters pending which require my attention. May I be permitted to withdraw?’

Louis was thinking of something else; the word uttered by the merchant’s wife was still ringing in his head. He would have been incapable of repeating what Marigny had just said.

‘Certainly, Messire, certainly,’ he replied impatiently. And he mounted the stairs which led to his apartments.

5

The Princess in Naples

DURING THE LAST YEARS of his reign, Philip the Fair had entirely rebuilt the Palace of the Cité. This careful man, who was almost miserly in his personal spending, knew no limits when it was a matter of glorifying the idea of royalty. The Palace was huge, overawing, and a sort of pendant to Notre-Dame: on the one side was the House of God, on the other the House of the King. The interior still looked new; it was all very sumptuous and rather dull.

‘My Palace,’ Louis X said, to himself, looking about him. He had not stayed there since its rebuilding, living as he did in the Hôtel de Nesle which had come to him, as had the crown of Navarre, through his mother. He began surveying the apartments which he now saw with a new eye because they were his.

He opened doors, passed through huge rooms in which his footsteps echoed: the Throne Room, the Justice Room, the Council Room. Behind him Charles of Valois, Louis of Evreux, Robert of Artois, and the Chamberlain, Mathieu de Trye walked in silence. Footmen passed silently through the corridors, secretaries disappeared into the staircases; but no voices were heard; everyone still behaved as at a death vigil. From the windows the glass of the Sainte-Chapelle could be seen glowing faintly through the night.

At last Louis X stopped in the room of modest proportions in which his father had normally worked. A fire, big enough to roast an ox, burnt there, but it was possible to keep warm while protected from the direct heat of the flames by dampened osier screens set around the hearth. Louis asked Mathieu de Trye to have dry clothes brought him; he took off his robe, placing it upon one of the screens. His uncles and his cousin Artois followed his example. Soon the heavy cloth, wet from the rain, the velvets, the furs, the embroideries, began to steam while the four men in their shirts and trunk-hose, like four peasants come home from the fields, stood there, turning about in the warmth.

The room was lit by a cluster of candles burning in a triangular stand of wrought-iron. The bell of the Sainte-Chapelle rang the evening angelus.

Suddenly a deep sigh, almost a groan, sounded from the darkest corner of the room; everyone started, and Louis X could not help crying out in a sharp voice, ‘What’s that?’

Mathieu de Trye entered, followed by a valet bringing Louis a dry robe. The valet went down on all fours and pulled from under a piece of furniture a big greyhound with a high curved backbone and a fierce eye.

‘Come, Lombard, come here.’

It was Philip the Fair’s favourite pet, present of the banker Tolomei, the same dog that had been found near the King when he had fallen motionless during his last hunt.

‘Four days ago this hound was at Fontainebleu, how has he managed to get here?’ asked The Hutin furiously.

An equerry was called.

‘He came with the rest of the pack, Sire,’ explained the equerry, ‘and he will not obey; he runs away at the sound of a voice and I have been wondering since yesterday where he had hidden himself.’

Louis ordered that Lombard should be taken away and shut up in the stables; and, as the big greyhound resisted, scraping the floor with its claws, he chased it out with kicks.

He had hated dogs since the day when, as a child, he had been bitten by one as he was amusing himself piercing its ear with a nail.

Voices were heard in a neighbouring room, a door opened and a little girl of three appeared, awkward in her mourning robe, pushed forward by her nurse who was saying, ‘Go on, Madame Jeanne; go and kiss Messire the King, your father.’

Everyone turned towards the little figure with pale cheeks and too-big eyes, who had not yet reached the age of reasoning but was, for the moment, the heiress to the throne of France.

Jeanne had the round, protruding forehead of Marguerite of Burgundy, but her complexion and her hair were fair. She came forward looking about her at people and things with the anxious expression of an unloved child.

Louis X stopped her with a gesture.

‘Why has she been brought here?’ he cried. ‘I don’t want to see her. Take her back at once to the Hôtel de Nesle; that’s where she must live, because it’s there …’

He was going to say, ‘… that her mother conceived her in her illicit pleasures.’ He stopped himself in time, and waited till the nurse had taken the child away.

‘I don’t want ever to see the bastard again!’ he said.

‘Are you really certain that she is one, Louis?’ asked Monseigneur of Evreux, moving his clothes away from the fire to prevent their scorching.

‘It’s enough for me that there is a doubt,’ replied The Hutin, ‘and I refuse to recognize the progeny of a woman who has shamed me.’

‘All the same, the child is fair-haired, as we all are.’

‘Philippe d’Aunay was fair too,’ replied The Hutin bitterly.

‘Louis must have good reasons, Brother, to speak as he does,’ said Charles of Valois.

‘What’s more,’ Louis went on, shouting at the top of his voice, ‘I don’t ever again want to hear the word that was thrown at me as we passed through the hall; I don’t want to go on imagining all the time that people are thinking it; I don’t want ever again to give people the chance of thinking it.’

Monseigneur of Evreux was silent. He was thinking of the little girl who must live among a few servants in the deserted immensity of the Hôtel de Nesle. He heard Louis say, ‘Oh, how lonely I shall be here!’

Louis of Evreux looked at him, surprised as always by this nephew of his who gave way to every impulse of his mood, who preserved resentments as a miser keeps his gold, chased dogs away because he had once been bitten, his daughter because he had once been deceived, and then complained of his solitude.

‘If he had had a better nature and a kinder heart,’ he thought, ‘perhaps his wife would have loved him.’

‘Every living man is alone, Louis,’ he said gravely. ‘Each one of us in his loneliness undergoes the moment of recognition of sin, and it is mere vanity to believe that there are not moments like this in life. Even the body of the wife with whom we sleep remains a stranger to us; even the children we have conceived are strangers. Doubtless the Creator has willed it thus so that we may each of us have no communion but with Him and with each other but through Him. There is no help but in compassion and in the knowledge that others suffer as we do.’

The Hutin shrugged his shoulders. Had Uncle Evreux never anything to offer as consolation but God, and as a remedy but charity?