The Strangled Queen (2 page)

Being gaoler to royal personages can never be a situation of much comfort; and Robert Bersumee owed some of the worst moments of his life to these two convicted criminals who had arrived, their heads, shaven, towards the end of April, in black
-
draped wagons, escorted by a hundred archers under the com
mand of Messire Alain de Pareilles. What anxiety and worry he had endured to set against the paltry satisfaction of his vanity! They were two young women, so young that he could not help pitying them despite their sin. They were too beautiful, even beneath their shapeless robes of rough serge, for it to be possible to avoid some emotion at the sight of them day after day for seven months. Supposing they seduced some sergeant
of the garrison, supposing they escaped,
or one of them hanged herself, or they succumbed to some fatal disease, or again supposing their fortunes revived
-
for could one ever tell what might not happen in Court affairs? It would be he who was always in the wrong, culpable of being too harsh, or too weak, and none of it would help him to promotion. Moreover, like the, Chaplain, the prisoners and
the
men-at-arms themselves, he had no wish to finish his days and his career in, a fortress battered by the winds, drenched by the mists, built to accommodate two thousand soldiers and which now held no more than one hundred and fifty, above a valley of the Seine from which war had long ago retreated.

"The Queen of France's gaoler," the Captain of the Fortress repeated to himself; "it needed but that."

No one was praying; everyone pretended to follow the service while thinking only of himself.

"Requiem a
eternam dona eis domine," the Chaplain intoned.

He was thinking with fierce jealousy of priests in rich chasubles at that moment singing the same notes beneath the vaults of Notre-Dame. A Dominican in disgrace, who had, upon taking orders, dreamed of being one day Grand Inquisitor; he had ended as a prison chaplain. He
wondered whether- the change of
reign might bring him some renewal of favour.

"Et lax perpetua luceat eis," responded the Captain of
the
For
tress, envying the lot of Alain de Pareilles, Captain-General of the Royal Archers, who
marched at t
he head of every procession.

"Requiem
e
ternam So they won't even issuer us with an extra ration of wine?" murmured Private Gros-Guillaume to Sergeant Lalaine.

But the two prisoners dared not utter a word; they would have sung too loudly in their joy.

Certainly, upon that day, in many of the churches of France, there were people who sincerely mourned the death of King Philip, without perhaps being able to explain precisely the reasons for their emotion; it was simply because he was the King under whose rule; they had lived, and his passing m
arked the passing of the years.
But no such thoughts were to be found
within the prison walls.

When
Mass was over, Marguerite of Burgundy was, the first to approach the Captain of the Fortress.

"Messire Bersumee," she said, looking him straight in the eye, "I wish to talk with you upon matters of importance which also concern yourself."

The Captain of the Fortr
ess was always embarrassed when
Marguerite of Burgundy looked directly at him and on this occasion he felt even more uneasy than usual.

He lowered his eyes.

"I shall
come to
speak
with you, Madam, he replied, "as soon as I have done my rounds and changed the guard."

Then he ordered Sergeant Lalaine to accompany the Pr
incesses, recommending him in a low
voice to behave with particular correctness.

The tower in which Marguerite and Blanche were confined had but three high, identical, circular rooms, placed one above the other, each with hearth and overmantel and, for ceiling, an eight
-
arched vault;
these rooms were connected by
a spiral staircase constructed in the thickness of the wall. The ground-floor room was permanently occupied by a detachment of their guard - a guard which
caused Captain Bersumee such anxiety
that he had it relieve
d every six hours in continuous
fear that it might be suborned, seduced or outwitted. Marguerite lived in the first-floor room and Blanche on the second floor, At night the two Princesses were separated by a heavy door closed half-way up the staircas
e; by day
they were allowed to communicate with each other.

When the sergeant had accompanied them back, they waited till every hinge and lock had creaked into place at the bottom of the stairs.

Then they looked at each other and with a mutual impulse fell into each other's arms crying, "He's dead, dead."

They hugged each other, danced, laughed and cried all at once, repeating ceaselessly, "He's dead!','

They tore off their hoods and freed their short hair, the growth of seven months.

Marguerite had little black curls all over her head, Blanche's hair had grown unequally, in thick locks like handfuls of straw. Blanche
ran her hand from her forehead back
to her neck and, looking at her cousin, cried, "A looking-glass! The first thing I want is a looking-glass! Am I still beautiful, Marguerite?"

She behaved as if she were to be released within the hour and had now no concern but her appearance.

"If you ask me that, it must be because I look so much older myself," said Marguerite.

"Oh no!" Blanche cried. "You're as lovely as ever!"

She was sincere; in shared
suffering change passes unnoticed. But Marguerite shook her. head; she knew very well that it was not true.

And indeed t
he Princesses had suffered much
since the spring: the tragedy of Maubuisson coming upon them in the midst of their happiness; their trial; the appalling death of, their lovers, executed in their presence in the Great Square of Pontoise; the obscene shouts of the populace massed on their route; and after that half a year spent in a fortress; the wind howling among the eaves; the stifling heat of summer reflected from the stone; the icy cold suffered since autumn had begun; the black buckwheat gruel that formed their meals; their shirts, rough as though made of hair, and which they were allowed to change but once every two months; the window narrow as a loophole through which, however you placed your head, you could see no more than the helmet
of an invisible archer; pacing
up and down the battlements -
these things had so marked Marguerite's character, and she knew it well, that they must also have left their mark upon her face.

Perhaps Blanche with her eighteen years and curiously volatile character, amounting almost to heedlessness, which permitted her
to pass instantaneously from despair to an absurd optimism
Blanche, who could suddenly stop weeping because a bird was singing beyond the wall, and say wonderingly, "Marguerite! Do you hear the bird? "
-
Blanche, who believed in signs, every; kind of sign, and dreamed unceasingly as other women stitch, Blanche, perhaps, if she were freed from prison, might recover the complexion, the manner and the heart of other days; Marguerite, never, There was something broken in her that could never be mended.

Since the beginning of her imprisonment she had never shed so much as a single tear; but neither had she ever had a moment of remorse; of conscience or of regret.

The Chaplain, who confessed her every week, was shocked by her spiritual intransigence.

Not for an instant had Marguerite admitted her own responsibility for her, misfortunes; not for an instant had she admitted that, when one is the, grand-daughter of Saint
Louis, the daughter of the Duke
of Burgundy, Queen of Navarre and destined
to succeed to the most Christian , throne of France, to take an
equerry for lover, receive him in one's husband's house, and load him with gaudy presents, constituted a dangerous game which might cost one both honour and liberty. She felt that she was justified by the fact that she had been married to a prince whom she did not love, and whose nocturnal advances filled her with horror.

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 s
he wished to turn the situation
to her own advantage.

"You will let me speak alone with that great lout of a Bersumee, 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 Bersumee," she asked, "do you realize whom you

will be guarding from
now on?"

Bersumee 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 Criquebceuf and Rouen."

d
uring 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
d
ay.

"I have obeyed Messire de Nogaret's orders, Madam," replied Bersumee.

"Messire de Nogaret is dead."'

"He sent me the King's instructions." "King Philip is dead."

Seeing where Marguerite was leading, Bersumee replied, "But
Monseigneur de Marigny is still alive, Madam, 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 Bersumee, Captain of Chateau-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 every
day duty
in the fortress he wore a wolf skin 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 Bersumee," 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