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

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      ‘You have admitted to heresy!’

      ‘Under torture!’

      ‘… under torture …’ came the voice.

      ‘I retract everything!’ cried the Grand Master.

      ‘… everything …’ the whole cathedral seemed loudly to respond.

      A new voice was raised. It was Geoffroy de Charnay, the Preceptor of Normandy, who, in his turn, was crossing swords with the Archbishop of Sens.

      ‘Our weakness has been taken advantage of,’ he said. ‘We are the victims of your plotting and of your false promises. It is your hate and your vindictiveness that have brought us to this pass! But I, too, protest before God that we are innocent, and those who say otherwise are telling a damned lie.’

      Then uproar broke loose. The monks, packed behind the Tribunal, began shouting, ‘Heretics! To the stake with them, to the stake with the heretics!’

      But their voices were soon drowned. With that feeling of generosity the populace always has for the weak and for courage in adversity, the majority of the crowd took the part of the Templars.

      Fists were shaken at the judges. Disturbances began all over the square. There were shouts from the windows.

      On the order of Alain de Pareilles, half the archers had formed up with linked arms to prevent the crowd swarming on to the staircase. The rest lined up with their pikes levelled at the populace.

      The royal sergeants-at-arms were blindly raining down blows upon the crowd with their be-lilied staves. The merchants’ baskets had been upset and the chickens screeched among the people’s feet.

      The Tribunal had risen to its feet in consternation. Jean de Marigny was conferring with the Provost of Paris.

      ‘Decide anything you like, Monseigneur, anything you like,’ the Provost was saying. ‘But you can’t leave them there. We shall all be overrun. You don’t know what the people of Paris are capable of when they get out of hand.’

      Jean de Marigny stretched out his hand and raised his episcopal crozier to indicate that he was about to speak. But no one wanted to listen to him any more. Insults were hurled at him.

      ‘Torturer! False Bishop! God will punish you!’

      ‘Speak, Monseigneur, speak!’ The Provost was saying to him.

      He was afraid for his job and his skin; he remembered the riots of 1306 when his predecessor, Provost Barbet, had had his house pillaged.

      ‘I declare two of the condemned relapsed into heresy,’ cried the Archbishop, shouting vainly. ‘They have rejected the justice of the Church; the Church rejects them and remits them to the justice of the King.’

      His words were lost in the hubbub. Then the whole Tribunal, like a flock of terrified guinea-fowl hurried into Notre-Dame and had the door quickly shut behind them.

      Upon a sign from the Provost to Alain de Pareilles, a band of archers rushed to the steps; the wagon was brought up and the prisoners were bundled into it with blows from pike-staves. They submitted with absolute docility. The Grand Master and the Preceptor of Normandy felt at once exhausted and relaxed. At last they were at peace with themselves. The other two were no longer capable of understanding anything.

      The archers opened up a passage for the wagon, while Provost Ployebouche gave instructions to his sergeant-at-arms to clear the square as soon as possible. He was in a highly nervous condition, utterly beside himself.

      ‘Take the prisoners back to the Temple,’ he shouted to Alain de Pareilles. ‘I shall go at once to inform the King.’

      He took four sergeants-at-arms with him by way of escort.

       5

       Marguerite of Burgundy, Queen of Navarre

      WHILE ALL THIS HAD been going on, Philippe d’Aunay had reached the Hôtel-de-Nesle. He had been asked to wait in the ante-room of the Queen of Navarre’s private apartments. Time lagged. Philippe wondered whether Marguerite was detained by visitors or whether, quite simply, she was taking pleasure in keeping him waiting. It would be in character. And, quite possibly, after an hour or so, she would send to say that she could not see him. It made him furious.

      Three years ago, when their liaison had begun, she would not have behaved like this. Or would she? He could no longer remember. He had succumbed to the delights of a new relationship in which vanity played as important a part as love. At that time he would have danced attendance for five hours at a stretch merely to catch sight of his mistress, to kiss her hand, and hear a whispered word promising a meeting.

      But times had changed. The difficulties, which are the savour of a nascent love-affair, become intolerable after three years, and sometimes passion dies by the very thing that has brought it to birth. The continued uncertainty of meeting, appointments cancelled, the obligations of the Court, to which had to be added the eccentricities of Marguerite’s own character, had aroused in Philippe a sense of exasperation, which could find expression only in anger and in making new demands upon her.

      Marguerite seemed to take things much more easily. She enjoyed the double pleasure of deceiving her husband and torturing her lover. She was one of those women who can find satisfaction in love only through the spectacle of the suffering they inflict, till even that becomes a bore.

      Not a day passed but Philippe told himself that a great love could find no satisfaction in adultery, and that he did not swear to break it off.

      But he was weak, cowardly, and enmeshed. Like a gambler who doubles his stake, he followed up his fantasies of the past, his vain present, all the time he had wasted, and his former happiness. He lacked the courage to rise from the table and say, ‘I’ve lost enough.’

      And there he was, leaning against a window-frame, waiting to be told to come in.

      To alleviate his impatience, he was watching the coming and going of the grooms in the courtyard of the house. They were leading out the horses to exercise on the little Pré-aux-Clercs near by. He watched the porters delivering sides of meat and baskets of vegetables.

      The Hôtel-de-Nesle consisted of two distinct buildings: the Hôtel proper, which was of recent construction, and the tower erected under Philippe-Auguste, at the period when the town wall passed that way, in order to make a counterpart to the Tower of the Louvre on the left bank of the Seine. Six years earlier, Philip the Fair had bought the whole site from the Count Aumary de Nesle, and had granted it as a residence to his eldest son, the King of Navarre.⁹

      Until then the tower had been used as a guardroom or garrison. It was Marguerite who had had it furnished as a retreat in which to meditate, or so she said, upon her Books of Hours above the flowing river. She declared that she needed solitude, and since she was known to be eccentric, Louis of Navarre had not been unduly surprised. In reality, she had desired this amenity merely for the purpose of receiving the good-looking Aunay the more СКАЧАТЬ