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

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СКАЧАТЬ while before, she had received Robert of Artois. A young woman with a narrow face and rigid deportment sat beside her on a stool. Guccio went down on one knee and searched his mind for the elusive compliment. He had imagined – from what absurd illusion? – that the Queen would be alone. The presence of a third person damped all his splendid expectations. The Queen spoke first.

      ‘Lady le Despenser,’ she said, ‘let us look at the jewels this young Italian has brought. I am told they are marvellous.’

      The name Despenser disquieted Guccio, made him anxious.

      What possible role could a Despenser have about the Queen?

      Having risen at a sign from Isabella, he opened the casket and showed it to her. Lady le Despenser, glancing at it, said in a dry, curt voice, ‘The jewels are certainly quite beautiful, but they are not for us. We cannot buy them, Madam.’

      The Queen looked put out but, containing her anger, replied, ‘I know, Madam, that you, your husband and indeed all your family take such great care of the finances of the kingdom that one might think they were your very own. But here you will permit me to spend my own money as I please. I notice too, Madam, that when some stranger or merchant comes to the Palace, my French ladies are always absent, as if by some accident, so that you or your mother-in-law are in attendance upon me as if you were on guard. I suspect that, if these same jewels were shown to my husband or to yours, they would find a use for them in loading each other with them as women dare not do.’

      However much she might try to control herself, Isabella could not help showing her resentment against this abominable family who, while bringing the crown into contempt, pillaged the treasury. For not only did the Despensers, father and mother, profit in an abject way from the love the King bore their son, but even the wife of the latter consented happily to the scandal, even forwarded it. This Lady le Despenser the younger, born Eleanor de Clare, was moreover the sister-in-law of the late Gaveston, that is to say that King Edward II had married the nearest relative of his former lover, who had been beheaded, to his present favourite.

      Vexed at the affront, Eleanor le Despenser rose and busied herself in a far corner of the enormous room, though she never took her eyes from the Queen and the young Siennese.

      Guccio, recovering some of the self-possession that was ordinarily natural to him, but which today had been so strangely lacking, at last dared look Isabella in the face. Now or never, he must make the young Queen understand that he was on her side, that he pitied her misfortunes and wished for nothing but to serve her. But she was so cold in manner, showed such indifference to his person, that his heart froze. Undoubtedly she was beautiful, but her beauty seemed to Guccio to repel all thought of desire, tenderness or even understanding. She seemed to him more like a religious statue than a living woman. Her beautiful blue eyes had the same cold, fixed stare as those of Philip the Fair. How could one say to such a woman, ‘Madam, we are of similar age, we are both young and I am in love with you’? It seemed that inheritance, royal function and consecration, had created a being who differed from the rest of the human race and for whom time and flesh and blood had other rules.

      All Guccio could do was to take Robert of Artois’s iron ring from his finger, taking care to hide the gesture from the Despenser, and say, ‘Madam, you will do me the favour of looking at this ring and examining its design?’

      The Queen nodded her head and, her expression unaltered, looked at the ring.

      ‘It pleases me,’ she said. ‘I imagine you have other things worked by the same hand?’

      Guccio pretended to search the casket, played with some pearls and, taking the message from his pocket, said, ‘The prices are all marked.’

      ‘Let us go to the light that I may better see these pearls,’ replied Isabella.

      She rose and, accompanied by Guccio, went to a window embrasure where she read the message at her ease.

      ‘Are you going back to France?’ she said in a low voice.

      ‘As soon as it pleases you to order me to do so, Madam,’ replied Guccio softly.

      ‘Then tell Monseigneur of Artois that I shall shortly be in France, and that everything will be done as we agreed.’

      Her face showed some animation, but her attention was entirely centred upon the message and not upon the messenger. Nevertheless, a royal desire to recompense those who served her made her add, ‘I will tell Monseigneur of Artois that he must reward your trouble better than I know how to do at this moment.’

      ‘The honour of seeing and obeying you, Madam, is the finest reward that I could wish.’

      Isabella thanked him with a movement of her head, merely as she would have greeted the simple compliment of a servant, and Guccio realised that between the great-granddaughter of Monsieur Saint Louis and the nephew of a Tuscan banker there was a distance that could never be crossed.

      In a loud voice, so that the Despenser might hear, Isabella said, ‘I will let you know through Albizzi what I may decide about these pearls. Good-bye, Messire.’

      She dismissed him with a gesture.

      He went down on one knee again and then retired, relieved at having accomplished his mission, but very disappointed of his dreams.

       4

       The Debt

      DESPITE ALBIZZI’S COURTESY in offering to keep him several days, Guccio left London next morning at dawn, extremely annoyed with himself. He could not forgive himself, that he, a free citizen of Sienna, who on that score alone considered himself the equal of any gentleman on earth, should have allowed himself to be disconcerted by the presence of a queen. Do what he would, he could never forget that he had been tongue-tied, that his heart had beat too quickly, and that his legs had felt weak, when he found himself in the presence of the Queen of England. And she had not even honoured him with a smile. ‘After all, she is but a woman like another! What had I to be nervous about?’ he kept on repeating to himself with annoyance. Even when he was already far from Westminster he was still muttering to himself in this strain.

      Having found no companion, as on his previous journey, he was travelling alone, chewing over his discontent both of others and himself. This state of mind continued during the whole of his journey home, becoming even worse as the miles passed.

      Since he had not received the reception he had expected at the English Court nor, on his appearance alone, been given the honours due to a prince, he came to the conclusion, as he stepped on to the soil of France once more, that the English were barbarians. As for Queen Isabella, however unhappy she might be, however contemptibly she might be treated by her husband, it was no more than she deserved. ‘Was one to cross the sea at the risk of one’s life, only to be given the thanks due to a servant? Those people had a great air, but their manners were not from the heart. They rebuffed the most loyal devotion. They need feel no astonishment if they were so little liked and so often betrayed.’

      Upon these very same roads a week ago, he had thought of himself as an ambassador and a royal lover. Now Guccio began to understand that fortune does not smile upon young men as it does in fairy tales. But he would have his revenge. СКАЧАТЬ