Beatrice passed the point of her tongue across her lips as if she were savouring some delicious wine.
‘He’s afraid I’ll poison him,’ she thought.
She was enjoying herself even though she was frightened. And to think that Mahaut believed she was spending her time trying to win over La Divion! Beatrice felt she was holding a number of deadly, if invisible, strings in her hand. She had merely to pull the right ones.
She pushed her hood back, untied the laces at her throat and took off her cloak. Her thick dark hair was plaited into tresses about her ears. Her shot-silk dress, cut very low in the bodice, generously revealed the swelling of her breasts. Robert, who had a taste for luxuriant women, could not help thinking Beatrice had gained in beauty since their last meeting.
Beatrice spread her cloak on the flagstones so that it made a half-circle. Robert looked at her in surprise.
‘What are you doing?’
She made no answer, but took three black feathers from her bag and placed them on top of the cloak, crossing them so as to make a little star; then she turned round, describing an imaginary circle with her forefinger, and muttered some incomprehensible words.
‘What are you doing?’ Robert repeated.
‘I’m casting a spell on you, Monseigneur,’ she said calmly, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, or at any rate the most natural thing for her.
Robert roared with laughter. Beatrice looked at him and then took his hand as if to draw him into the circle. Robert withdrew his hand.
‘Are you afraid, Monseigneur?’ said Beatrice with a smile.
What an advantage women had! No lord could have dared to tell Count Robert of Artois that he was afraid without a huge fist crashing into his face, or a twenty-pound sword slitting open his skull. And here was a mere vassal, a mere woman of the bedchamber, who came wandering into his house, had herself introduced into his presence, took up his time with her nonsense – ‘Mahaut has lost a tooth. I have no secrets to sell you!’ – put her cloak down on his floor and then had the nerve to tell him to his face that he was afraid.
‘You’ve always seemed to be afraid of having anything to do with me,’ Beatrice went on. ‘When long ago you first came to Madame Mahaut’s house and told her that her daughters were to be indicted – do you remember? – you even seemed to be frightened of me then. And often since then, too, for that matter. No, Monseigneur, don’t let me think you’re frightened of me!’
Robert was on the point of ringing for Lormet to turn the impertinent woman out. It was certainly what he ought to do. But behind her on the wall was Mary Magdalene, her rounded thighs emerging from her hair.
‘What do you think you’re doing with that cloak, the circle and the three feathers?’ he asked. ‘Raising the Devil?’
‘Yes, of course, Monseigneur,’ said Beatrice.
He shrugged his shoulders at such nonsense and, merely for the fun of it, stepped into the circle.
‘And now it’s happened, Monseigneur, just as I said! Because you’re the Devil yourself!’
What man could resist such a compliment? Robert laughed long and delightedly. He seized Beatrice’s chin between finger and thumb.
‘Do you realize I could have you burned as a witch?’
‘Oh, Monseigneur!’
She stood very close to him, her face turned up towards his huge chin. It bristled with red hairs. She could smell his scent of a hunted boar. She was intoxicated by danger, desire, Satanism and the fact of her betrayal.
She was a whore, a true whore, just the sort Robert liked. ‘What danger can she be to me?’ he thought.
He seized her by the shoulders and drew her to him.
‘He’s Madame Mahaut’s nephew, and he’ll do her all the harm he can,’ Beatrice thought breathlessly, her mouth to his.
7.
Bonnefille House
WHEN BISHOP THIERRY D’HIRSON was still alive, he had owned a house in the Rue Mauconseil in Paris, close to the Countess of Artois’ and he had enlarged it by buying a house from a neighbour, Julien Bonnefille. Beatrice had inherited the house and now suggested to Robert of Artois that they should met there.
The prospect of having an affair with Mahaut’s lady-in-waiting, so close to Mahaut’s own town house and, what was more, in a house that had been paid for with Mahaut’s money, excited Robert’s sense of comedy. Every now and then Fate provided a joke of this kind.
At the start, however, Robert was very cautious indeed. He also owned a house in the same street and, though he did not live in it, there was at least some excuse for his presence in the neighbourhood; nevertheless, he preferred not to go to Bonnefille House till after dark. In the crowded, narrow streets of the districts by the Seine, a nobleman like Robert could not pass unnoticed, for his height was so conspicious and he was accompanied by an escort. He therefore waited for darkness to fall. Gillet de Nelle and three footmen, selected from among the strongest and most discreet, always went with him. Gillet was in command of the guard, and the three strong-armed bruisers were stationed at the doors of Bonnefille House, where they did their best to look as if they were casual loiterers.
On his first visits Robert refused to drink the spiced wine Beatrice offered him. ‘The wench may have been ordered to poison me,’ he thought. He was reluctant to take off his surcoat, which was lined with thin chain mail, and throughout their pleasure he kept an eye on the chest on which his dagger lay.
Beatrice was amused by his fears. It delighted her that a little bourgeoise from Artois, who was still unmarried at over thirty and had been tumbled in so many beds, could frighten a colossus like Robert, who was so powerful a peer of France.
Indeed, for her, too, the adventure had all the spice of perversity. Not only was it taking place in the house of her uncle, the Bishop, but with Madame Mahaut’s mortal enemy. Beatrice had continually to invent new lies to account for her absence. La Divion was being difficult, she said; she would not give in all at once; it would be madness to hand her a large sum of money in return for which she would no doubt merely tell lies; it was wiser to keep in constant touch with her, extract the account of wicked Monseigneur Robert’s intrigues little by little, the names of his accomplices, and then verify what she said by seeing the Sieur Juvigny at the Louvre, or Michelet Guéroult, notary Tesson’s assistant. Oh, it was certainly a most complicated business and required both time and money. ‘I think I really must give the clerk a piece of stuff for his wife; it may induce him to talk. Will you authorize me to take two livres, Madame?’
And how amusing it was to look Madame Mahaut straight in the eye, smile at her and think: ‘Less than twelve hours ago, I was giving myself naked to Messire, your nephew!’
Now that she saw her lady-in-waiting taking so much trouble in her service, Mahaut chid her less, indeed showed her affection once more and made her presents. For Beatrice, on the other hand, there was an exquisite and double pleasure to be derived from deceiving Mahaut and subjugating Robert at the same time. For a man was not subjugated merely by an hour in the same bed with him, any more than a wild beast was mastered by being bought and kept in a cage.
Mere possession is not power.
You are not master of a wild beast till you have trained it to lie down at the sound of your voice, retract its claws, and need no bars but your eyes.
For Beatrice, Robert’s suspicions were so many claws to be filed. In all her career as a huntress she had never before had the opportunity to trap so great a quarry, and one whose vicious nature was a byword. Robert of Artois’ name was on the point of being used to frighten children.
The day Robert accepted a goblet of red wine from her hand, Beatrice knew she had won her first victory. ‘I might have poisoned it,’ she thought, ‘and he would have drunk it.’
And the day he fell asleep, like the ogre in the fable, she felt she had achieved a real triumph. The giant had a line about his neck where the robe or breastplate ended; the brick of his face tanned by the open air ceased
: and below was white, freckled skin, while his shoulders were covered with red hairs like pig’s bristles. This line seemed to Beatrice positively to invite the axe.
His copper-coloured hair, which was curled and hung in ringlets over his cheeks, had been pushed aside to reveal a small, childish, delicately-shaped ear, which was rather touching. ‘You could stick a bodkin into that ear till it reached the brain,’ thought Beatrice.
A few minutes later Robert woke up with a start and looked anxiously about him.
‘Well, Monseigneur, I didn’t kill you,’ she said with a laugh.
Her laughter revealed dark red gums.
As if in gratitude, he took her again. He had to admit that she made an admirable partner, inventive, practised, yielding, never sullen, and crying her pleasure aloud. Robert, who had had every sort of skirt in his time, silk, linen and cotton, and believed himself a master in lechery, had to confess that he had met his match.
‘If you learnt such things at the sabbath, my dear,’ he said, ‘we ought to send more virgins to it!’
For Beatrice often talked to him of the sabbath and the Devil. Deliberate of movement, drawling of voice, and seeming so soft and languorous, she revealed true violence only in bed, while her speech became rapid and animated only when she talked of demons and sorcery.
‘Why have you never married?’ Robert asked her. ‘You must have had offers from many men, particularly if you allowed them such a foretaste of marriage.’
‘Because marriages are made in church, and I hate the Church.’
Kneeling on the bed, hands on knees, a dark shadow in the hollow of her thighs, and her eyes wide, Beatrice said: ‘You see, Monseigneur, the priests and popes of Rome and Avignon don’t teach the truth. There is not one God; there are two, the god of light and the god of darkness, the prince of Good and the prince of Evil. Before the creation of the world, the inhabitants of darkness rebelled against the inhabitants of light, and the vassals of Evil, in order to exist, for Evil is death and annihilation, devoured part of the principles of Good. And then, since the two forces of Good and Evil were in them, they were able to create the world and engender mankind in whom the two principles are not only mingled but in perpetual conflict, though Evil is predominant, because it is the natural element of their origin. And it is evident that these two principles exist, since man and woman exist, diversely made, like you and me,’ she went on with a lustful smile. ‘And it is Evil that arouses our lust and draws us together. And therefore people who have a stronger disposition towards Evil than towards Good must honour Satan and make a pact with him, if they are to be happy and successful. For them the Lord of Good is the enemy.’
This strange philosophy, redolent of sulphur, and confected from ill-digested scraps of Manichaeanism and corrupt elements, ill-transmitted and ill-understood, of the doctrines of the Cathars, was at that time a great deal more wide-spread than the rulers realized. Beatrice was far from being exceptional; but for Robert, who had never come across these ideas before, she opened the door to a world of mystery; and he was fascinated, moreover, to hear a woman talk of such things.
‘You’re a great deal more intelligent than I thought. Who taught you all this?’
‘The former Templars,’ she said.
‘Oh, the Templars! They certainly knew a great deal.’
‘You destroyed them.’
‘Not I, not I!’ cried Robert. ‘It was Philip the Fair and Enguerrand, Mahaut’s friends. Charles of Valois and I were against suppressing them.’
‘They have remained powerful through magic; all the misfortunes that have beset the kingdom since their suppression have been due to the pact they made with Satan, because the Pope condemned them.’
‘Oh, the misfortunes of the kingdom!’ said Robert, far from convinced. ‘Have not many of them been due to my aunt rather than to the Devil? After all, it was she who murdered my cousin, the Hutin, and his son after him. Didn’t you lend a hand there yourself?’
He often returned to the question, but Beatrice always managed to avoid it. Sometimes she smiled vaguely as if she had failed to hear him; or, again, she would answer off the point.
‘Mahaut doesn’t know that I’ve made a pact with the Devil. She would certainly dismiss me if she did.’
And she would hastily branch off into her favourite subjects again: the black mass, the enemy and negation of the Christian mass, which had to be celebrated at midnight in a cellar, and preferably near a cemetery; the two-faced idol they worshipped; and the black host consecrated by uttering the name of Beelzebub thrice. The officiant should preferably be an unfrocked priest or a renegade monk, and that was why so many of them were former Templars.
‘The God above is bankrupt; he promises happiness and pays the creatures who serve him with nothing but misfortune; one should obey the god below. Listen, Monseigneur, if you want the Devil’s support for the documents in your case, pierce their corners with a red-hot iron and let the hole show traces of fire. Or, again, mark each page with a little cross in ink, the upper branch shaped like a hand. I know exactly how to do it.’
But Robert did not entirely believe in all this; and though she knew better than anyone that the documents he claimed to possess must be forgeries, he refused to agree to anything of the kind.
‘If you want to obtain complete power over an enemy and bring him to disaster through the Devil’s will,’ she told him one day, ‘you must rub his armpits, the back of his ears and the soles of his feet with an unguent made of fragments of the host, the powdered bones of an unbaptized child, the semen of a man that has been spread on the back of a woman during the black mass, together with the woman’s menstrual blood.’14
‘It would not make me feel so safe,’ Robert said, ‘as a little rat or vermin poison administered to a certain enemy of mine.’
Beatrice pretended not to have heard him. Yet the very idea sent the blood coursing through her veins. She knew she must give Robert no immediate answer, that he must not be allowed to know that she had in fact already consented. What better pact could there be to link two lovers for ever than participation in crime?
She was in love with him, and did not realize that, in trying to trap him, she herself had been caught in the snare. She existed only for the hours they could spend together, and then lived on the memory of their last meeting and in the expectation of the next, waiting to feel once again his fifteen stone crushing her, and to smell the zoo-like odour that emanated from him, particularly when he was making love, and hear that wild beast’s growl she could draw from his throat.
There are many more women with a taste for monsters than one is apt to think. The Court dwarfs, Jean the Fool and his colleagues, were well aware of it; they could not satisfy all their conquests. Even the victim of some accidental peculiarity becomes an object of curiosity often leading to desire; a one-eyed knight, for instance, merely for the fascination of raising his black patch. And Robert, in his way, was a sort of monster.
The autumn rain was falling on the roofs. And Beatrice was amusing herself chasing the rumblings of his gigantic stomach with her fingers.
‘In any case, Monseigneur,’ she said, ‘you have no need of help to get what you want; you require no instruction in the sciences. You’re the Devil I’ve summoned up in you. The Devil who does not know he is the Devil.’
Satiated, he was staring dreamingly up at the ceiling, listening to her.
The Devil had flaming eyes, huge claws on his fingers to lacerate people’s flesh, a forked tongue, and breath like that of a furnace. But the Devil might also perhaps have the weight and smell of Robert. She was really in love with Satan. She was the Devil’s woman and no one would separate her from him.
One night, when Robert of Artois returned from Bonnefille House, his wife handed him the notorious marriage contract, completed at last except for the seals.
Robert read it through, went over to the hearth, and casually thrust the poker into the fire. When the point was red hot, he made a hole wi
th it in one of the leaves of parchment, which sizzled.
‘What are you doing, my dear?’ asked Madame de Beaumont.
‘I’m merely making sure it’s good-quality parchment,’ he said.
Jeanne of Beaumont looked at her husband for a moment, then said gently, almost maternally: ‘Really, Robert, you ought to get your nails cut. What’s this new fashion you’ve adopted of wearing them so long?’
8.
Return to Maubuisson
IT MAY WELL HAPPEN that a plot, which has been hatching for a long time, is in fact compromised from the start by some failure in reasoning.
Robert suddenly realized that the ballistas he had mounted so carefully might well break at the very moment of firing, because he had neglected an essential spring.
He had certified to his brother-in-law, the King, and solemnly sworn on Holy Writ, that his titles of inheritance existed; he had had documents forged to resemble as nearly as possible those that had disappeared; he had suborned innumerable witnesses to establish the validity of the documents. It seemed likely that he had enough support for his case to be accepted without argument.
But there was one person who knew without a shadow of doubt that his documents were forgeries; and this was Mahaut of Artois, since she had herself burned the real documents, first those she had stolen through Enguerrand de Marigny from the Paris archives some twenty years ago, and then, more recently, the copies found in Thierry d’Hirson’s safe.
Moreover, though a forgery may be accepted as authentic by people who are favourably disposed and who have never seen the original, this is far from the case with someone who is aware that falsification has taken place.
Of course Mahaut could not declare: ‘These documents are forged because I have burnt the originals’; but, knowing they were forged, she would do her best to show them up; one could be sure of that. Though it had failed, the arrest of La Divion’s servants was warning enough. There were too many people involved in the forgery, and someone was bound to betray it either from fear or in the hope of reward.
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