The Strangled Queen (17 page)

"Good! I want nothing better than to be alone!" cried Marguerite.

The last two months 'had also affected her more than the preceding half-year. As the days went by and nothing happened, she often thought that her refusal had been a mistake, that the weapon she thought was hers would turn out to be of no use to her.

Blanche ran towards the staircase. "All right, let her break
every bone in her body! I shall no longer have to hear her
screams
and groans! She won't kill herself, but at least she'll be taken away," Marguerite said to herself.

Then, at the last moment, as Blanche reached the door, she cried, "Blanche!''

She went to her and took her, by the arm. For a moment they looked at each other, Marguerite's brilliant, questioning dark eyes gazing into the blue, bewildered eyes of Blanche. Then Marguerite said wear
ily, "All right, I'll write the
letter.
-
I've come to the end of my tether too."

Leaning out into the staircase,
she shouted, "Guards, summon
Captain Bersumee."

Nothing answered her but the winter; wind shaking the tiles upon the roofs.

"You see," said Marguerite, shrugging, her shoulders, "even when I want to do it ... I shall ask to see Bersumee or the Chaplain when they bring us our dinner."

But Blanche ran down the stairs and started hammering on the lower door, screaming that she wanted to see the Captain. The archers of the guard interrupted their game of dice and one of them, replied that he would be sent for.

Bersumee arrived soon afterwards, his wolfskin cap pulled down to the solid line formed by his eyebrow
s. He listened, to Marguerite's
request.

Pens, parchment? What were they needed for? The prisoners had no right to communicate with anyone whatsoever, neither
verbally nor in writing, those
were the orders of Monseigneur de Marigny.

"I must write to the King," said Marguerite.

To the King? Well, that certainly set Bersumee a problem. Did "any
one whatsoever" include the King
?

Marguerite spoke; with such haughtiness and persuasion that, in the end, he weakened.

"Very well, but be quick about it," she cried.

It suddenly seemed to her that sending this letter, which she
had refused to write for so long, was of desperate urgency.

Since the Chaplain was absent that particular morning, Bersumee himself returned with writing materials which he had found in the sacristy.

As she was about to begin the letter, Marguerite felt a last hesitation. It filled her with a sensation of panic. Never again, if by good fortune her case were to be reopened, could she plead not guilty or pretend that the brothers Aunay had made false confessions under torture. She would have deprived her daughter of every right to the crown.

"Go on, go on!
" Blanche whispered in her ear.

"Whatever happens, things could be no worse," murmured Marguerite.

And she began to compose her renunciation.

"I recognise and declare that my daughter Jeanne is not the child of the King, my husband. I recognise and declare that I have always refused my body to the said King, my husband, with the result that there never has been any physical relationship between us ... As has been promised me, I await trans
lation to a convent in Burgundy
"

Bersumee, suspicious,
stood beside her while she wrote; then, when she had finished, he took the letter and studied it for a moment, but it was only a pretence since he was unable to read.

"This must reach Monseigneur of Artois as soon as possible," said Marguerite.

"Oh; Madam, that alters matters. You said that it was for the
King."

"To Monseigneur of Artois that he may remit it to the King!" cried Marguerite. "My God, you're a fool
! Can't you see what is written
in the address? "

"Oh, very well, But wh
o is to deliver the letter?
"

"Good God, you of course!
"

"But I have no orders."

Their relations had seriously worsened of late. Marguerite no longer hesitated to tell Bersumee what she thought of him, while Bersumee treated her with contempt because she had not succeeded in regaining her freedom.

He took all day to decide what to do. He asked the advice of the Chaplain, who was in any case aware that his pens had been
taken from the sacristy. There was a variety of reasons for his doing so; it was generally said that Marigny had fallen into disgrace and even that the King intended to bring him to trial. One thing was sure: if Marigny conti
nued to send instructions, he
certainly no longer sent money, and Bersumee had received neither his own nor his men's pay. It was a good opportunity to go and find out what was happening.

The following morning, therefore having put on his steel helmet and given Sergeant Lalaine, under pain of death, orders to permit no one whatever to enter. or leave
Chateau Gaillard
during

his absence, Bersurnee, having mounted his dappled half-bred percheron, took the road to Paris.

He arrived in the middle of the afternoo
n of the following day. It was
raining in torrents. Muddy to the eyes, Bersumee stopped at a tavern near the Louvre to fortify himself and reflect a little.

All along the road his head had ached from anxiety. How was he to know whether he was doing the right thing or not, acting for or against his own promotion? And the dilemma was represented by two names: Artois and Marigny; Artois and Marigny. By infringing the orders of the latter, what did he stand to gain from the former?

Providence looks af
ter fools as it does drunkards.
While Bersumee was warming his stomach before the fire, a great clap on his jerkin-clothed back put a stop to his meditations.

It was Sergeant Quatre-Barbes an old companion in arms who had just come in and recognised him. They had not seen each other for six years. They embraced, stood back to look each other
up and down, embraced again and loudly demanded wine to celebrate their meeting.

Quatre-Barbes, a thin fellow with black teeth and a squint, was a Sergeant of the Company of Archers of the Louvre nearby. He was a regular at this tavern. Bersumee envied his living in Paris. Quatre-Barbes envied Bersumee his having been promoted more quickly than himself and his being now Captain of a Fortress. Everything therefore went well between them, since they envied each other's lot!

"Good God! Do you mean to say you guard Dame Marguerite ? You old bastard, I bet you have a good time! " cried Quatre-Barbes.

From questioning each other they became confidential, then passed to the problems that so much concerned Bersumee. What truth was there in the rumour of Marigny's disgrace? QuatreBarbes must know, living as he did in the capital and more particularly in the Louvre, which was under the Rector-General's control ! It was thus that Bersumee learnt, much to his terror, that Monseigneur de Marigny had, triumphed over the difficulties in his
path, that three days earlier
the King had recalled him
-
and, embraced him in the presence; of several barons, while
handing
him his exoneration, and that he was now as powerful as ever.

"If I were Marigny, I know very well what I should do," said Quatre-Barbes.

"This damned letter's put me in the hell of a mess," thought Bersumee.

Wine liberates the tongue. Bersumee, taking care that no one near them should hear, admitted to his newly recovered friend why he was there and asked his advice.

The Sergeant
sat for a long moment with his nose-in his mug, then replied, "In
your
place, I should go to the Palace and see Alain de Pareilles, who is your chief, and ask his advice. At least you'll be covered,"

The afternoon had gone in talking and drinking. Bersumee was a little drunk, and felt relieved that a decision had been made for him. But it was too late to go and present himself to the Captain-General of the Archers. Quatre-Barbes was not on guard that night. The two companions supped where they were; then the Sergeant, as was inevitable upon the arrival of an old friend from the country, led Bersumee to visit the prostitutes who, since the ordinance of Saint Louis, were congregated in,
the streets behind Notre-Dame,
their hair dyed that they might be clearly distinguished from honest women.

Thus Marguerite of Burgundy's letter which, in principle, was to change the succession to the throne of France, remained the whole night sewn into Bersumee's jerkin, upon a chest in a brothel
In the early morning Quatre-Barbes invited Bersurnee to come and wash in his, quarters in the Louvre; towards nine o'clock, brushed, clean and close-sha
ven, Bersumee presented himself at the guard-house
of the Palace and had himself announced to Alain de Pareilles.

The Captain of the Archers showed no hesitation
whatever
when Bersumee told him of the situation. He passed his fingers through his iron
-grey hair, and-asked,
"From whom do you receive your instructions?"

"From Monseigneur de
Marigny, Messire."

"Who, over me
commands all the royal fortresses?" "Monseigneur de Marigny, Messire" "To whom must you refer upon
every
question? "To you, Messire."

"And above me"

"To Monseigneur de Marigny:"

Bersumee
felt that delightful sensation of protection, that resumption of childhood, that the good soldier knows in the presence of someone of higher rank than his own.

"So," concluded
Alain de Pareilles, "it is to Monseigneur de Marigny that you must deliver your letter. But take care to put it into his own hands.

Half an hour later, in the Rue des Fosses-Saint-Gerrnain,
it was announced to Enguerrand
de Marigny, who was working in his stu
dy with his secretaries, that a
certain Captain Bersumee, coming from Messire de Pareilles, wished to see him.

"Bersumee ... Bersumee . said Enguerrand. "Ah yes, of course! That's the fool in command at Chateau-Gaillard. I'll see him."

And he indicated that he wished to be left alone.

Extremely nervous at being shown in to the Rector of the Kingdom, Bersumee took from his jerkin the letter addressed to Monseigneur of Artois. Since it was not sealed, Marigny read it at once with earnest attention, his face showing no expression whatever.

"When was this written?" he asked. "The day before yesterday, Monseigneur."

"You have done very well to bring it to me. I compliment you. Assure Madame Marguerite that her letter will be sent onto the right quarter. And if she should have
a
mind to write others, see
that they take the same route. How is Madame Marguerite?"

"As well as can be expected in prison, Monseigneur. But she certainly stands up to it better than Madame Blanche, whose mind appears to be somewhat deranged."

Marigny made a vague gesture which indicated that no one's state of mind was of any significance in the affair.

"Look after their bodily health; see that they are fed
and
warm."

"By the way Monseigneur
"

"Yes, what is it?
"

"I am rather hard up for money at Chateau-Gaillard. I have received none to pay my men with, nor myself."

Marigny shrugged his shoulders; he was not at all surprised. For the last two months everything had been going to wrack and ruin.

"I will give orders to your bailiwick," he said. "The cashier will bring your account up to date before the week's out. How much are you personally due?"

"Fifteen pounds and sixpence, Monseigneur."

"You shall receive thirty at once."

And Marigny rang for his secretary to show Bersumee out and pay him the wages of obedience.

Left alone, Marigny read Marguerite's letter over again with great care, thought for a moment, and then threw it into the fire.

With a satisfied smile he watched the parchment curling up in the flames; at that moment he felt himself to be in reality the most powerful personage in the kingdom. Nothing escaped him; he held, everyone's fate in the palm of his hand, even the King's.

PART THREE

THE ROAD TO MONTFAUCON

1
. Famine

THE
wretchedness
of the people of France was greater that year than it had been for a hundred past, and a scourge that had ravage
d previous centuries reappeared
: famine. In Paris the price of a bushel of salt was ten silver pennies, and twelve bushels of wheat sold for sixty pence, a price never before reached within living memory. This increase in prices was primarily caused by the disastrous harvest of the preceding summer, but was also largely contributed to by the disorganised state of the administration, by the disturbances created in a number of provinces by the barons' leagues, by people panicking and therefore hoarding, and by the cupidity of speculators.

February is undoubtedly the most difficult month in a year of scarcity. The last supplies from the previous autumn are exhausted, and so is the physical and mental resistance of human beings. Cold is joined to hunger. It is the month which has the highest death rate. People despair of ever seeing the spring again; in some despair becomes despondency and in others turns to hatred. As the road to the cemetery becomes familiar, everyone begins to wonder when his own turn will come.

In the country dogs that could no longer be fed were eaten, and cats had become wild again and were hunted like game. For lack of fodder cattle were dying and people fought over the carrion. Women plucked frozen grass for food. It was common knowledge that the bark of the beech made a better flour than that of the oak. Day by day young people were being drowned beneath
the ice on the lakes attempting to catch fish. There were practically no old people left. Carpenters, w
eak and emaciated as they were,
were in constant employment making coffins. The mills had ceased to grind. Mothers who had gone insane still held in their arms the corpses of their children who clutched a handful of rotten straw in their dead fingers. From time to time a monastery could be importuned; but charity itself was powerless, for there was nothing to buy except shrouds for the dead. Tottering crowds evacuated the countryside for the towns in the vain hope of finding bread; but they only met anot
her procession of skeletons who
coming from the towns, seemed to be walking towards the Last Judgment.

Things were in this s
tate in those regions normally
considered rich, a
s well as in the poorer ones in
Valois as well as in Champagne, in Marche as in Poitou, in Angoumois, in Brittany, and even in Beauce, even in Brie, even in the Ile-de-France. It was the same at Neauphle and at Cressay.

Guccio, on his way from Avignon to Paris with Bouville, had noted the evidences of the state of the country but, since he had lodged only with Provosts or in royal castles, had provisions,
for
the journey, good gold in his pocket to meet the exorbitant prices of the inns, and had been in a hurry to get back, he had not seen want near at hand.

He was no more aware of it wh
en, three days after his return
-
he was trotting along the road that leads from Paris to Neauphle. His travelling cloak, lined with fur, was warm, his horse going well, and he was going towards the woman he loved. He spent the time polishing phrases for the beautiful Marie in his head, perhaps to tell her how he had spoken of her to Madame of Hungary, future Queen of France, and that the thought of her had never left him, which was in fact the truth. Because chance infidelities do not prevent one thinking, indeed rather the contrary, of the person to whom one is being unfaithful; indeed it is the most frequent manner of being faithful that men have. Then he was going to describe to Marie the splendours of Naples. He felt himself, as a result of his journey, clothed in an aura of importance and high diplomacy; he intended to make himself loved.

It was only when he reached the neighbourhood of Cressay, because he knew the district well and had a tenderness for it as the scene of his springtime love-making, that Guccio began to become aware of things other than himself.

The deserted fields,
the silent villages, the rar
e column of smoke from a hovel,
the absence of livestock,
the few thin and filthy people
he met, and above all the looks they gave him, began to give the young Tuscan a feeling of disquiet and insecurity which grew stronger with every step he took.
And when he entered
the courtyard of the old manor upon the banks of the Mauldre, he had an intuition of disaster. There was no cock upon the midden, no lowing from the cowhouse, not the bark of a dog. The young man went forward but no one, servant or master, appeared to greet him. The house seemed dead. "Have they left?" Guccio wondered. "Have their goods been seized and have they been sold up during my absence?' What can have happened? Or has the plague been raging in these parts?"

He ties
t
he reins of his horse to a ring
in the wall
-
he had bro
ught no servant with him for so
short a journey so as to be the freer
-
and went into the living-house. He found himself face to face with Madame de Cressay.

"Oh, Messire Guccio! " she cried.
"I thought...
I thought ... and so you have come back

There were tears in Dame Eliabel's eyes, and she sought support, from a piece of furniture as if faint with the surprise of seeing him.
She had lost a stone and a half
and aged by ten years. Her
dress now hung about her where
before it had stretched tautly across her breast and hips; her complexion had turned grey, her cheeks were sunken and quivered beneath the widow's veil framing her face.

In order to dissimulate his astonishment at seeing t
he change in her, Guccio looked round
the Great Hall. Heretofore it had had all the appearance of a dignified way of living in spite of straitened means; today it revealed utter poverty, a dusty and chaotic penury.

"We are in no condition to receive a guest," said Dame Eliabel sadly.

"Where are your sons, Pierre and Jean?" "Hunting, as they are every day."

"And Marie?" asked Guccio.

"Alas!
" said Dame' Eliabel, lowering her eyes.

Guccio felt icy claws at his head, his throat and about his heart.

"Ch'e successo? What has happened?"

Dame Eliabel shrugged her shoulders in a gesture of despair.

"She is so low," she said, "so weak that I can no longer
hope
for her recovery, nor even that she will see Easter."

" What is the matter
with her?," said Guccio, feeling the claws relax because he had at first imagined the worst.

"The same thing that is the matter with all of us and of which we are all dying in these parts! Hunger, Signor Guccio. And you can well imagine, if stout bodies such as mine are so exhausted that they are afraid of falling, what ravages hunger inflicts upon a constitution like my daughter's, which is still immature."

"But good God, Dame Eliabel," cried Guccio, "I thought tha
t famine only affected the poor!
"

"And what else
do- you think we are but poor?
" replied the widow. "We are in no better case merely because we are noble and own a tumbledown manor house. For squires like us, all our wealth consists in our serfs and the work they do. How can we expect them to feed us, when they haven't anything to eat themselves and come to die before our door with outstretched hands. We have had to kill off our livestock in order to share it with them. Add to that that the Provost has been requisitioning, here as elsewhere, upon orders from Paris, so he said, doubtless to feed his Sergeants-at-Arms, for th
ey are still fat. When all our
peasants have died, what will remain to us but to follow their example ? Land in itsel
f is worth nothing; it is only
valuable if it is worked, and putting corpses into it won't make it productive. We no longer have any servants either male or female. Our poor lame old man
."

"The one you called your carver?"

"Yes, our carver ..." she said with a sad smile. "Well, he left us for the cemetery a few weeks ago. It was in keeping." "Where is she?" asked Guccio.

"Marie? Upstairs in her room."

" May I see her? "

The widow hesitated a moment; even in disaster she preserved a sense of convention.

"Yes, certainly," she said, "I will go and prepare her for your visit."

She went upstairs with heavy steps and a moment later called Guccio. He reached the top of the stairs in a few
strides

Marie de Cressay was lying in a narrow bed in the old-fashioned way, the bedclothes not tucked in and the mattress and cushions piled so high behind her back that her body seemed to be at an angle to the ground.

"Signor
Guccio..
Signor Guccio ..." Marie murmured.

Her eyes looked bigger for the
blue
shadows that surrounded
them;
her long chestnut
and
gold hair
was spread out over the velvet pillow. Upon her thin cheeks and fragile neck her skin had a disquieting transparency. And the impression that
she
had
formerly, given of having drunk the sunlight had disappeared, as if
a
great white cloud had come, to rest over her.

Dame Eliabel left them, to avoid showing them her tears; and Guccio wondered whether the lady of the manor knew, if Marie in, her illness had admitted, the love she bore in her heart.

Maria mia my beautiful Marie," said Guccio going close to the bed.

"There you are at, last, come
back at last. I was so afraid oh so very afraid, of dying without seeing you again."

She looked at Guccio with searching intensity, and her eyes were anxiously questioning.

"
What is the mat
ter with you, Marie?" he asked,
because he didn't know ,what else to say.

"Weakness, my beloved, mere weakness. And the, great fear I had that you had abandoned me."

"I had to go to Italy on the King's service, and leave so suddenly that I had no chance of letting you know."

"On the King's service ... ' she murmured.