If some error had crept in, like the unfortunate ‘1322’ in place of ‘1302’ in the letter read at Reuilly, Mahaut would certainly not fail to dicover it. The seals might appear perfect, but Mahaut would demand a minute examination. Moreover, the late Count Robert II, as was the usual practice of princes, always had the name of the clerk who had written it mentioned in an official document. But, of course, there could be no question of it in a forgery. The omission might well pass in a single document, but could it do so in the three that were to be presented? Mahaut would merely open the Artois archives and say: ‘Compare them. Can you find among all the documents bearing my father’s seal a single one in which the clerk’s hand resembles the writing of these?’
Robert had come to the conclusion that the forged documents, which for him had acquired all the value of authenticity, could not be used until the person who disposed of the originals had also been disposed of. In other words, he could win his case only on condition that Mahaut was dead. This was no longer merely a wish, it had become a necessity.
‘Should Mahaut happen to die,’ he said to Beatrice one day, with a pensive air, his hands clasped behind his head, his eyes staring up at the ceiling in Bonnefille House, ‘should she die, I could take you into my household as my wife’s lady-in-waiting. Since I would then have acquired the inheritance of Artois, people would think it quite normal that I should take over certain members of my aunt’s household. I should then always have you near me.’
It was a coarse bait, but presented to a greedy fish.
Beatrice could think of no more delightful prospect. She could imagine herself living in Robert’s house, hatching her plots, first as his secret, then as his official mistress, for these things are always accepted in time. Besides, who could tell? Madame de Beaumont, like everyone else, was not immortal. Of course, she was seven years younger than Beatrice, and seemed to enjoy excellent health, but what a triumph it would be for an older woman to supplant a younger. It might well be that a properly managed magic spell might make a widower of Robert within the next few years. Love neither reasons nor sets bounds to the imagination. There were times when Beatrice dreamed of herself as the Countess of Artois, dressed in peeress’ robes.
And suppose the King, as might also happen, should die, and Robert became Regent? There were women in every century who rose from lowly birth to the highest rank through the desire they were able to arouse in a prince, and because they had both physical graces and mental abilities which made them superior, by natural right, to all others. The Empresses of Rome and Constantinople, so the troubadors related, had not all been born on the steps of the throne. Among the great of this world a woman rose quickest by lying on her back.
Before permitting herself to be hooked, Beatrice allowed just enough time to elapse to make sure of the fisherman. Robert had to pledge himself to the hilt before he could convince her, promise over and over again that he would take her into the Artois household, guarantee the position and prerogatives she would enjoy, as well as the precise lands he would give her. At last she was prepared to admit that she might be able to find a magician who, by making a proper waxen likeness, piercing it with needles and uttering the right spells, could destroy Mahaut. Nevertheless, Beatrice still made a pretence of being hesitant and having scruples. Was not Mahaut her benefactress and indeed that of the whole Hirson family?
Gold necklaces with jewelled clasps began to adorn Beatrice’s neck; Robert was beginning to learn the methods of gallantry. As she played with a jewel he had given her, Beatrice said that the surest and most rapid method of casting a successful spell was to take a child less than five years old, make it swallow a white host, cut the child’s head off, dip a black host in its blood and then, by some subterfuge or other, persuade the victim to eat it. There would be little difficulty in finding a child of the right age. Many a poor family, overburdened with brats, would be prepared to sell one, and there was no need to divulge the purpose for which it was required.
Robert made a wry face; the scheme involved too many complications for an uncertain result. His preference was for administering good, sound poison, which would do the job.
In the end Beatrice seemed to give way for love of the devil she adored, and from impatience to go to live in the Hôtel d’Artois, where she could see him several times a day. She would do anything for him. But, in fact, she had already been in possession of a sufficient quantity of white arsenic to exterminate the whole district for a week, when Robert thought he was persuading her at last by getting her to accept fifty livres with which to buy some.
It was now merely a question of waiting for the right opportunity. Beatrice told Robert that Mahaut was surrounded by physicians, who were hurriedly summoned at her slightest indisposition; while the kitchens were under constant surveillance and the cupbearers attentive to their duties. It was no easy undertaking.
And then, suddenly, Robert changed his mind. He had had a long audience with the King, who had just received the report from the commissioners who had worked so diligently to the plaintiff’s directions. More than ever convinced that his brother-in-law was in the right, Philippe VI’s one desire was to serve him. To avoid a lawsuit, of which the result must be a foregone conclusion, but which was bound to create a considerable scandal to the disadvantage both of the Court and the kingdom, he had decided to summon Mahaut and persuade her to surrender Artois.
‘She’ll never agree,’ said Beatrice, ‘and you know it as well as I do, Monseigneur.’
‘Anyway, let’s try it, If the King does manage to make her see reason, it will be by far the best way, won’t it?’
‘No; poison is the best way.’
An amicable solution would not suit Beatrice at all for it would mean a postponement of her becoming a member of Robert’s household. She would have to go on being the Countess’ lady-in-waiting till Mahaut died, and only God knew when that would be. It was therefore she who now wanted to bring matters to a head; all the obstacles and difficulties she had raised herself no longer frightened her now. As for a suitable opportunity, there were many every day, for instance when she brought the Countess Mahaut her medicines and infusions.
‘But the King has summoned her to Maubuisson in three days’ time,’ Robert went on.
Eventually the lovers agreed that, if Mahaut fell in with the King’s proposal that she should give up Artois, she would be allowed to go on living; but, if she refused, Beatrice would poison her that very same day. What better opportunity could there be? If Mahaut were taken ill after dining with the King, who would dare suspect him of murdering her or, if they did suspect it, dare voice their suspicions?
Philippe VI had suggested to Robert that he should be present at the interview of conciliation; but Robert had refused.
‘Sire, my brother, your words will carry more weight if I am not present; Mahaut hates me so much that the mere sight of me would be more inclined to make her stubborn than accommodating.’
He believed this to be true, but he also wanted to establish an alibi.
Three days later, on October 23rd, Countess Mahaut was jolting along the road to Pontoise in her great gilded litter, painted with the arms of Artois. Her only surviving daughter, Queen Jeanne, Philippe the Long’s widow, was with her. Beatrice was sitting opposite her mistress on a tapestry-covered stool.
‘What sort of proposal do you think the King is going to make, Madame?’ Beatrice asked. ‘If it’s a question of a compromise, I hope you’ll refuse it, if you’ll forgive my offering advice. I shall soon have all the proof we need against Monseigneur Robert. La Divion is prepared to give us evidence to confute him.’
‘Why don’t you bring this Divion to see me? You seem to be on very good terms with her, and yet I’ve never set eyes on her,’ said Mahaut.
‘It’s impossible, Madame; she’s in fear of her life. If Monseigneur Robert got to know of it, she would most certainly not hear mass the next morning. I can only persuade her to come to see me at night at Bonnefil
le House, and then she always has an escort of footmen to guard her. But you must refuse, Madame, absolutely refuse!’
The widowed Jeanne, dressed in white, was silently watching the landscape go by. It was not till the steep roofs of Maubuisson appeared above the autumn woods in the distance that she said: ‘Do you remember, Mother, fifteen years ago?’
Fifteen years ago, dressed in sackcloth and with her head shaven, she had screamed her innocence along this very road from the black tumbril taking her to Dourdan. In a second black tumbril, her sister Blanche and her cousin, Marguerite of Burgundy, were on their way to Château Gaillard. Fifteen years ago!
She had been pardoned and had recovered her husband’s affection. Marguerite was dead, and Louis X was dead. Jeanne had never questioned Mahaut about the circumstances surrounding Louis the Hutin’s and little Jean I’s deaths. And then Philippe the Long had become King and reigned for six years, after which he too had died. Jeanne could not believe she was the same woman who had suffered that appalling day at Maubuisson fifteen years ago. After all, she had eventually been crowned Queen of France at Reims; and now here she was travelling in her mother’s litter. Indeed, her mother, who was so imposing and autocratic, was the only constant thing in her life; she had always submitted to her domination and ever since childhood had been frightened of speaking to her.
Mahaut was also remembering the past.
‘It’s all been that wicked Robert’s fault,’ she said, ‘It was he who conspired with that bitch Isabella. I’m told affairs are not going too well at the moment either for her or that Mortimer whose whore she is. They’ll all be punished one day!’
They were all three lost in their own thoughts.
‘And now I’ve got long hair again; and wrinkles too for that matter!’ murmurered the widowed Queen.
‘You shall have Artois, my girl,’ said Mahaut, tapping her knee.
Beatrice was looking out at the passing countryside and smiling at the clouds.
Philippe VI received Mahaut courteously, but also with a certain haughtiness of speech as befitted a king. He desired peace between his great barons. The peers, who were the supports of the Crown, must give no example of discord or sharp practice to the people.
‘I have no intention of being biased by what may have happened in previous reigns,’ Philippe said, as if he were casting a veil of indulgence over Mahaut’s past actions. ‘I must take my stand on the present. My commissioners have completed their task; and I cannot conceal the fact, Cousin, that the witnesses are very far from being in your favour. What’s more, Robert is on the point of producing his documents.’
‘The witnesses are bribed and the documents forged,’ Mahaut muttered.
Dinner was held in the great hall, where once Philip the Fair had pronounced judgement on his three daughters-in-law. ‘It must be in everyone’s thoughts,’ the Dowager Queen Jeanne said to herself and she could summon up no appetite. In fact, apart from her mother and herself, no one was thinking of that long ago event of which nearly all the witnesses were dead. After dinner one old equerry might perhaps say to another: ‘Do you remember, Messire, how we were standing by Monseigneur Charles of Valois, and now Madame Jeanne has come back here as Dowager Queen …’ But a moment later he would be thinking of something else.
We are all apt to fall into the error of assuming that other people think we are as important as we do ourselves; but unless there is some particular reason for their remembering it, others forget what has happened to us very quickly; and, even if they have not forgotten, their memories attach much less weight to it than we are inclined to believe.
Had the meeting taken place elsewhere, Mahaut might perhaps have been more amenable to Philippe VI’s proposals. He was a monarch who always wanted to be the arbiter, and was therefore constantly in search of compromise. But Mahaut’s old hatreds were all revived by Maubuisson and she was in no mood to yield. She would have Robert convicted of forgery and prove that he was a perjurer. She could think of nothing else.
She made up for having to measure her words by eating enormously, engulfing everything that was put before her, and draining her goblet as soon as it was filled. The combination of wine and anger turned her face purple. The King was actually suggesting that she should hand over her county to Robert for a payment of forty thousand livres a year in compensation.
‘I can guarantee,’ Philippe said, ‘that I shall get your nephew to agree to the proposal.’
But Mahaut was thinking: ‘If Robert has got his brother-in-law to make me this proposal, it must be because he is not very sure of his titles and with his usual cunning would prefer to pay an annual rent of forty thousand livres than produce his forged documents.’
‘I refuse, Sire, my cousin,’ she said, ‘to despoil myself in this way; and since Artois is mine, your justice will let me keep it.’
Philippe lowered his long nose and looked up at her. Her stubbornness might be due simply to pride, or it might be fear that by yielding she would be admitting the accusations against her. But Philippe, in his desire for a compromise, had an alternative solution: Mahaut should keep her county, title, rights, and peer’s coronet for her lifetime, but would sign a deed to be ratified by the peers, in the King’s presence, making her nephew Robert heir to Artois. She could really have no objection to this arrangement; her only son had died young; her daughter enjoyed a royal dowry; and her granddaughter had acquired, through marriage, the huge Duchy of Burgundy. Could Mahaut really want more? In this way Artois would go back one day to the natural heir.
‘Had your brother, Count Philippe, not died before your father, you cannot deny, Cousin, that your nephew would be in possession of the county today. This way both your honours will be safe, and it seems to me that I am resolving your differences most justly.’
Mahaut set her jaw and shook her head in refusal.
Philippe VI showed some irritation and hastened the service of dinner. If Mahaut was going to treat him like this and offend him by refusing to accept his arbitration, let her have her lawsuit and let the result be on her own head!
‘I am not inviting you to stay the night, Cousin,’ he said, as soon as they had washed their hands; ‘I do not believe a stay in my Court would be agreeable to you.’
This was a clear sign of his disfavour.
Before taking the road, Mahaut went for decency’s sake to shed a tear or two at the tomb of her daughter, Blanche, in the abbey chapel. She had stated in her will that she wished to be buried there herself.15
‘Maubuisson,’ she said, ‘is not a place that has brought us much luck. But to lie there dead, what does it matter?’
She was in a very bad temper all the way home.
‘Did you hear what that great fool we’re unlucky enough to have for King said? He expects me to give up Artois, just like that, and merely to please him! The very idea of making that great foul Robert my heir! My hand would wither away before it signed a thing like that! They’ve clearly been accomplices in roguery for a long time past and owe each other a lot! And to think that if it weren’t for my having cleared the path to the throne …’
‘Mother …’ Jeanne murmured in a low voice.
If she had dared to say what she thought and had not been afraid of a savage rebuff, Jeanne would have advised her mother to accept the King’s proposals. But it would have done no good.
‘He’ll never get me to agree to that,’ repeated Mahaut.
Though she did not know it, she had signed her death-warrant; and her executioner was sitting opposite her in the litter, looking at her through her dark lashes.
‘Beatrice,’ said Mahaut suddenly, ‘help me to unlace. My stomach’s swollen.’
Her anger had upset her digestion. They had to stop the litter so that Madame Mahaut might relieve herself in a neighbouring field.
‘I shall give you some quince paste tonight, Madame,’ said Beatrice.
Night had fallen by the time they reached the Rue Mauconseil in Paris. Mahaut’s stomach
was still rather upset, but she was feeling better. She took a little supper and went to bed.
9.
The Wages of Sin
BEATRICE WAITED TILL ALL the servants were asleep. She then went to Mahaut’s bed, and raised the tapestry curtain that was drawn close at nights. The night-light hanging from the ceiling gave a faint blue glow. Beatrice was in her nightdress and was holding a spoon in her hand.
‘Madame, you’ve forgotten to take your quince paste.’
Mahaut was sleepy, her mind was confused with anger and fatigue, and she merely said: ‘Oh, yes. You’re a good girl to have remembered it.’
And she swallowed the spoonful.
Two hours before dawn she awakened her household with a great clamour of shouting and bell-ringing. They found her vomiting into a basin held by Beatrice.
Summoned at once, Thomas de Miesier and Guillaume de Venat, her physicians, inquired about the previous day’s menu, insisting on a detailed account of everything the Countess had eaten. They had little difficulty in diagnosing a serious attack of indigestion, complicated by a flux of blood caused by anger.
Barber Thomas was sent for and bled the Countess for his usual fee of fifteen sols; also Dame Mesgnière, the herb woman from Petit Pont, who administered a clyster of an infusion of herbs.16
Beatrice, on the pretext of going to fetch an electuary from Master Palin, the spice-maker, escaped during the course of the evening to meet Robert at Bonnefille House, only three doors away from Mahaut’s.
‘It is done,’ she said.
‘Is she dead?’ cried Robert.
‘Oh, no, she’s going to suffer a long time yet,’ said Beatrice with a glint in her dark eyes. ‘But we shall have to be careful, Monseigneur, and not see each other too often just at present.’
It took Mahaut a month to die.
Night after night, dose by dose, Beatrice hastened her to the tomb; and she was able to do so all the more easily because Mahaut trusted no one but her, and refused to take medicine from any hand but hers.