TO THOSE WHO HAD not seen him during these last weeks Monseigneur of Valois seemed to have changed terribly. In the first place, everyone was used to seeing him always with some form of head-dress, whether it was a large crown glittering with precious stones on days of state, or an embroidered velvet cap whose long scalloped crest fell to his shoulder, or again one of those caps of maintenance with a gold coronet about it which he wore within doors. For the first time he appeared bareheaded, and his hair was fair, mingled with white and faded with age, while illness had taken the twist out of his long curls, which now hung lifelessly down his cheeks and over the pillows. That he should have grown so thin was startling enough, when one considered how stout and ruddy he had been, but it was less so than the contorted immobility of one side of his face and the twisted mouth from which a servant was continually wiping away the saliva, or than the dull fixity of his eyes. The gold-embroidered sheets, the blue hangings sewn with lilies which hung draped like a baldachin over the bed-head, merely served to emphasize the dying man’s physical decay.
And before receiving the crowd of people who were now pressing into the room, he had asked for a looking-glass and for a moment had studied that face which, only two months ago, had dominated kings and nations. What did prestige and the power of his name matter to him now? Where were all the ambitions he had pursued so long? And what satisfaction was there in always walking with one’s head held high while other people bowed, since within that head, the day before yesterday, there had taken place so shattering a fall into the dark void? And what was the use of the hand whose back and palm servants, grooms and vassals had hurried so assiduously to kiss, now that it lay dead beside him? And the other hand, which he could still control, and which he would use in a little while for the last time to sign the will he was about to dictate – if a left hand would lend itself to writing – did it belong to him any more than the signet ring with which he sealed his orders and which would be slipped from his finger after his death? Had anything ever really belonged to him?
His right leg, which was completely paralysed, seemed already to have been taken from him. And at times he felt a sort of empty chasm in his chest.
Man is a thinking individual who acts on other men and transforms the world. And then, suddenly, the individual disintegrates, falls apart, and then what is the world, and what are other men? At this moment, the important thing for Monseigneur of Valois was no longer titles, possessions, crowns, kingdoms, the exercise of power, or the primacy of his own person among the living. The emblems of his lineage, the acquisition of wealth, even the heirs of his blood whom he saw assembled about him, none of these was of any account in his lustreless eyes. The important things were the September air, the leaves, still green but beginning to turn, which he could see through the open windows, but above all the air, the air he breathed with such difficulty and which was engulfed in that chasm which seemed to lie deep within his chest. As long as he could feel the air entering his throat, the world would continue to exist with himself as its centre, but a frail centre now, like the last flicker of a candle-flame. And then everything would cease to be, or rather everything would continue to be, but in an utter darkness and a terrifying silence, as a cathedral still exists when the last candle has been put out.
Valois thought of the great deaths in his family. He could hear again the words of Philip the Fair: ‘See what the world is worth. Here lies the King of France!’ He remembered those of his nephew, Philippe the Long: ‘Look on your Sovereign Lord; there is none among you, however poor he may be, with whom I would not exchange my lot!’ At the time, he had heard these words without understanding them; but now he knew what the princes of his family had felt at the moment of passing into the tomb. There were no other words in which to express it, and those who still had time to live could not understand it. Each man who dies is the poorest man in the world.
And when all was dissolved, destroyed and extinguished, when the cathedral was filled with shadows, what would that poorest of men discover on the other side? Would he find what he had been taught by religion? Yet what were those teachings but immense and alarming uncertainties? Would he be brought before a Judgment Seat; and what was the face of the Judge like? And in what scales would all the actions of his life be weighed? What punishment could be inflicted on a being who no longer existed? Punishment … What punishment? Perhaps the punishment consisted in being conscious at the moment of crossing the dark wall.
Charles of Valois could not put aside the thought that Enguerrand de Marigny had also been conscious, indeed even more completely conscious, for he was a man in good health and at the height of his powers, who was not dying of the rupture of some secret cog in the human mechanism, but by another’s will. For him it had not been the last flicker of a single candle, but all the flames blown out at once.
The very same marshals, dignitaries and great officers who had accompanied Marigny to the scaffold were here now, standing round his bed, filling the whole room, overflowing into the next room beyond the door, and they had that very same look of men who were leading one of their number to his last heartbeat, strangers to the death they were watching, participants in a future from which the condemned man was eliminated.
Oh, he would have given all the crowns of Byzantium, all the thrones of Germany, all the sceptres and all the gold from ransoms for one look, just one, in which he did not feel himself eliminated. Sorrow, compassion, regret, horror, and the sadness of memories: all these might be seen in the circle of multi-coloured eyes surrounding the bed of a dying prince. But every one of these emotions was simply a proof of his elimination.
Valois looked at his eldest son, Philippe, the tall fellow with the big nose, standing beside him under the baldachin, who tomorrow, or one day soon, or perhaps even in a minute’s time, would be the only, the real Count of Valois, the living Valois; tall Philippe was sad, as was proper, and was holding the hand of his wife, Jeanne of Burgundy, the Lame; but he was also being careful to adopt the right attitude because of the future before him, and he seemed to be saying to those present: ‘Look, it’s my father who’s dying!’ And from those features, of which he was the source and the progenitor, Valois was wiped out.
And the other sons: Charles of Alençon who avoided catching the dying man’s eye, and turned slowly away when their glances met; and young Louis, who was frightened, seemed indeed almost ill with fear because this was the first deathbed he had ever attended. And his daughters, several of whom were present: the Countess of Hainaut, who from time to time made a sign to the servant whose duty it was to wipe his mouth, and her younger sister, the Countess of Blois, and a little farther away the Countess of Beaumont beside her giant husband Robert of Artois, both standing in a group with Queen Isabella of England and the young Duke of Aquitaine, the boy with the long eyelashes, behaving as well as if he was in church, who would have but this one memory of his great-uncle Valois.
It seemed to Valois as if they were plotting together over there, preparing a future from which he would also be eliminated.
If he turned his head to the other side of the bed, it was to see standing there, upright, competent, like a woman who has seen many people die and is already a widow, Mahaut de Châtillon-Saint-Pol, his third wife. Gaucher de Châtillon, the old Constable, with his saurian head and his seventy-seven years, was in process of winning another victory; he was watching a man twenty years his junior die before him.
Étienne de Mornay and Jean de Cherchemont, both former chancellors of Charles of Valois before becoming in turn Chancellors of France, Mille de Noyers, the lawyer and Master of the Exchequer, Robert Bertrand, the Knight of the Green Lion, and lately appointed a marshal, Brother Thomas de Bourges, his confessor, and Jean de Torpo, his physician, were all there to help him, each in accordance with his function. But who could help a man to die? Hugues de Bouville wiped away a tear. But for what was fat Bouville weeping if it were not for his own lost youth, the imminence of old age and the passing of his own life?
Indeed, a dying prince was a poorer man than the poorest serf in his kingdom. For the poor serf had not to die in public; his wife and children could deceive him as to the imminence of death; he was surrounded by no pomp foretelling his end; nor was he obliged to draw up, when in extremis, the affidavit of his own demise. And indeed that was what they were all waiting for, all these high personages assembled. For what, after all, was a will but an avowal drawn up by oneself of one’s own death? It was a document concerned with other people’s futures. The secretary was waiting, his inkpot in place on his writing-board, his parchment and pen ready. So be it. He must begin, or rather finish. It was not so much the effort of mind that was so great but the effort of renouncement. A will should begin like a prayer.
‘In the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost …’
Charles of Valois had spoken. Everyone thought he was praying.
‘Write, friend,’ he said to the secretary. ‘Can’t you hear that I’m dictating? I, Charles …’
He stopped, because it gave him a painful and frightening sensation to hear his own voice uttering his own name for the last time. Was not a name the very symbol of a man’s existence and of his individuality? Valois would have liked to stop there, because nothing else interested him any more. But there were all those eyes fixed on him. For the last time he must act, and for others from whom he already felt himself so profoundly separated.
‘I, Charles, son of the King of France, Count of Valois, Alençon, Chartres and Anjou, make known to all concerned that I, being sound in mind, though ill in body …’
Though his utterance was slightly embarrassed and his tongue stumbled over certain words, often the simplest, his mental machinery, that had always been accustomed to formulate his wishes in words, apparently continued to function normally. But to the dying man it seemed as if he himself was his only audience. He was in the middle of a river; his voice was speaking to the bank he was leaving; he trembled at the thought of what would happen when he reached the farther side.
‘… and asking God’s mercy, while in fear and dread of His Judgment, I order by these presents the disposal of myself and my possessions, and make my last will and testament in the manner hereinafter written. In the first place I resign my soul into the keeping of our Lord Jesus Christ and His merciful Mother and all His Saints …’
On a sign from the Countess of Hainaut the servant wiped away the saliva which was dribbling from the corner of his mouth. All private conversation had ceased and everyone was trying to avoid even the rustling of clothes. Those present seemed utterly astonished that this inert and feeble body, crippled by illness, should still be able to think so clearly and even be fastidious in the choice of language.
Gaucher de Châtillon murmured to his neighbours: ‘He won’t die today.’
Jean de Torpo, one of the physicians, shook his head doubtfully. In his opinion Monseigneur Charles would not see another dawn. But Gaucher went on: ‘I’ve seen many of them, I’ve seen many of them … I tell you there’s still life in that body …’
The Countess of Hainaut put her finger to her lips and prayed the Constable to be silent; Gaucher was deaf and did not realize how loud he whispered.
Valois continued his dictation: ‘I wish my body to be buried in the Church of the Minorites in Paris, between the tombs of my two first wives …’
His eyes sought the face of his third wife, the living one, the future widow Mahaut de Châtillon. Three wives, and a whole life had been lived … And it was Catherine, the second, whom he had loved the most, perhaps because of her mythical crown of Constantinople. Catherine had been a beauty, well worthy to bear her legendary title. Valois was astonished that his unhappy body, half-paralysed and on the very verge of annihilation, should still retain a vague and diffused quivering of the old desires that transmitted life. And so he would lie beside her, beside the Empress, and on the other side he would have his first wife, the daughter of the King of Naples, both dust for such a long time now. How strange that the memory of a desire should remain when the body which was its object no longer exists! And what of the Resurrection? But there was his third wife, the wife he was looking at now, who had been a good companion to him too. He must leave her something.
‘Item, I desire my heart to be placed in the town and place which my wife Mahaut de Saint-Pol elects for her burial; and my entrails in the Abbey of Chaâlis, the right to divide my body having been granted me by a Bull of our Most Holy Father, the Pope …’ He hesitated in a vain endeavour to remember the date, and added: ‘… previously.’28
How proud he had been of this authorization, which was given only to kings, to distribute his body as saints were divided up into relics! He had insisted on being treated as a king even in the tomb. But now he was thinking of the Resurrection, the only hope left to those on the verge of the final step. If the teachings of religion were true, how would the Resurrection affect him? His entrails at Chaâlis, his heart wherever Mahaut de Saint-Pol chose, and his body in the church in Paris, would he rise up before Catherine and Marguerite with an empty breast and a stomach filled with straw and sewn up with hemp? There must be some other arrangement, something the human mind was incapable of conceiving. Would there be a press of bodies and eyes, like that which was now about his bed? What wild confusion there would be, if all ancestors and all descendants rose up together, and all murderers face to face with their victims, and all mistresses, and all the betrayed. Would Marigny rise up before him?
‘Item, I leave to the Abbey of Chaâlis sixty livres tournois to celebrate my birthday …’
Once again the napkin wiped his chin. For nearly a quarter of an hour he detailed all the churches, abbeys and pious foundations in his fiefs to which he desired to leave here a hundred livres, there fifty, there a hundred and twenty, and there a lily to embellish a shrine. The enumeration was monotonous, except to himself for whom each name represented a steeple, a village, a town of which for a few hours more, or even days perhaps, he would still be the lord, and some particular and personal memory of it. The thoughts of those present wandered, as they did at Mass when the service was too long. Only Jeanne the Lame, who found it painful to stand for so long on her short leg, listened attentively. She was adding and calculating. At every figure she looked at her husband, Philippe of Valois, and her face, though far from naturally ugly, was made hideous by the avarice of her thoughts. These legacies would all have to be paid out of their inheritance! Philippe was frowning too.
In the meantime, the English clan was standing by the windows and plotting again. Queen Isabella was anxious, though the concern on her face might have been thought due to the circumstances. In face she was extremely worried. In the first place, because Mortimer was not there; and she never felt really safe, or indeed really alive, when he was not near her. And in the second, she felt that she was constantly watched and spied on by Stapledon, the Bishop of Exeter, who had come unbidden to Perray on the grounds that it was his duty to escort the young Duke of Aquitaine everywhere. This man, who was Edward’s evil genius, was bound to cause disaster wherever he might be, or at the very least serious trouble. Isabella pulled Robert of Artois by the sleeve to make him bend his ear down to her.
‘Beware of Exeter,’ she whispered, ‘that thin Bishop standing over there biting his thumb. I’m very anxious, Cousin. My last letter from Orleton had been opened and the seal glued on again.’
They could hear Charles of Valois’s voice saying: ‘Item, I bequeath to my wife, the Countess, the ruby which my daughter of Blois gave me. Item, I bequeath to her the embroidered cloth which belonged to my mother, Queen Marie …’
Though everyone’s mind had wandered during the pious bequests, all eyes grew brighter now that it was a question of the jewels. The Countess of Blois raised her eyebrows and showed a certain disappointment. Her father might well have returned to her the ruby she had given him, instead of leaving it to his wife.
‘Item, the reliquary of Saint Edward in my possession …’
Hearing the name of Saint Edward, the young Prince Edward of England raised his long lashes and tried to catch his mother’s eye. But no, the reliquary went also to Mahaut de Châtillon. And Isabella thought that Uncle Charles might well have left it to his great-nephew who was present.
‘Item, I leave to Philippe, my eldest son, a ruby and all my arms and harness, except a coat of mail which is of Acre work, and the sword with which the Lord of Harcourt fought, both of which I leave to Charles, my second son. Item, to my daughter of Burgundy, the wife of Philippe my son, the finest of all my emeralds.’
The lame woman’s cheeks turned a little red, and she thanked him with an inclination of the head which seemed almost indecent. You could be sure that she would have the emeralds examined by an expert jeweller to make certain which of them was the finest.
‘Item, to Charles my second son, all my horses and palfreys, my gold chalice, a silver bowl and a missal.’
Charles of Alençon began stupidly weeping, as if he had only become aware of the fact that his father was dying, and of the sorrow he felt at it, at the very moment the dying man mentioned him by name.
‘Item, I leave to Louis, my third son, all my silver plate …’
The child clung to Mahaut de Châtillon’s skirts; she tenderly stroked his forehead.
‘Item, I will and command that all that remains of my funeral trappings be sold to pay for prayers for my soul … Item, that my wardrobe be distributed to my body-servants …’
There was a discreet stir by the open windows and heads leaned out. Three litters were entering the courtyard of the manor, which had been strewn with straw to deaden the sound of horses’ hooves. From a great litter, decorated with gilded carvings and curtains embroidered with representations of the castles of Artois, the huge and monumental Countess Mahaut, her hair now grey beneath her veil, alighted, as did her daughter, the Dowager Queen Jeanne of Burgundy, the widow of Philippe the Long. The Countess was also accompanied by her Chancellor, Canon Thierry d’Hirson, and her lady-in-waiting, Béatrice, the Canon’s niece. Mahaut had come from her Castle of Conflans, near Vincennes, which she rarely left in these days which were so hostile to her.
The second litter, which was all white, was that of the Dowager Queen Clémence of Hungary, widow of Louis Hutin.
From the third and more modest litter, which had plain curtains of black leather, emerged with some difficulty, and assisted by only two servants, Messer Spinello Tolomei, Captain-General of the Lombard Companies of Paris.
And so, through the corridors of the manor, came two former Queens of France, young women of the same age: they were both thirty-two and one had succeeded the other on the throne. They were dressed all in white, which was the custom for widowed queens. They were both fair and beautiful, particularly Queen Clémence, and indeed they looked rather like twin sisters. Behind them, a head and shoulders taller, came the redoubtable Countess Mahaut who, as everyone knew, though they lacked the courage to say so, had killed the husband of one of these queens so that the husband of the other might reign. And then, behind again, dragging a leg, his stomach to the fore, his white hair sparse over his collar and the crow’s-feet of time on his cheeks, came old Tolomei, who had been involved, more or less closely, in every intrigue. And because age is in itself ennobling, because money is the real source of power in the world, because Monseigneur of Valois could not in the past have married the Empress of Constantinople without him, and because without Tolomei the Court of France could not have sent Bouville to fetch Queen Clémence from Naples, nor Robert of Artois have undertaken his lawsuits, nor married the daughter of the Count of Valois, and because without Tolomei the Queen of England could not have been here with her son, the old Lombard, who had seen so much and learnt so much and had kept so many secrets, was treated with that respect which is normally reserved only for princes.
Everyone moved aside and backed against the walls to free the doorway. Bouville trembled when Mahaut’s skirts brushed against his stomach.
Isabella and Robert of Artois looked at each other questioningly. Did Tolomei’s and Mahaut’s simultaneous arrival mean that the old Tuscan fox was working also for their adversaries? But Tolomei reassured his clients with a discreet smile. There was no more to their joint arrival than could be explained by the chances of the road.
Mahaut’s entrance embarrassed everyone. It was as if the beams of the ceiling had suddenly become lower. Valois stopped dictating when he saw his old giantess of an enemy appear, driving the two white widows before her, as if they were a couple of ewe lambs she was taking out to pasture. And then Valois saw Tolomei, and his unparalysed hand, on which glittered the ruby that was to pass to the finger of his eldest son, waved in front of his face as he said: ‘Marigny, Marigny …’
Everyone thought his mind was wandering. But not at all; the sight of Tolomei had merely reminded him of their common enemy. Without the help of the Lombards, Valois could never have triumphed over the Coadjutor.
Then the huge Mahaut of Artois was heard to say: ‘God will forgive you, Charles, for your repentance is sincere.’
‘The bitch!’ said Robert of Artois, loud enough for those about him to hear. ‘She, of all people, dares to speak of remorse!’
Charles of Valois paid no attention to the Countess of Artois and signed to the Lombard to come near. The old Sienese went to the bedside, raised the paralysed hand and kissed it. But Valois did not feel the kiss.
‘We are praying for your recovery, Monseigneur,’ said Tolomei.
Recovery! It was the only word of comfort Valois had heard from any of these people for whom his death appeared to be no more than a formality! Recovery! Was the banker saying that merely out of kindness or did he really believe in it? They looked at each other and, in Tolomei’s single open eye, that dark and cunning eye, the dying man saw something like an expression of complicity. Here, at last, was one eye from which he was not eliminated!
‘Item, item,’ went on Valois, levelling his forefinger at the secretary, ‘I will and command that all my debt be paid by my children.’
This was indeed a splendid bequest he was making Tolomei with these words, a more valuable one than all the rubies and all the reliquaries. And Philippe of Valois, Charles of Alençon, Jeanne the Lame and the Countess of Blois all looked equally disconcerted. How right the Lombard had been to come!
‘Item, to Aubert de Villepion, my chamberlain, the sum of two hundred livres tournois; to Jean de Cherchemont, who was my chancellor before being that of France, a similar sum; to Pierre de Montguillon, my equerry …’
And now once more Monseigneur of Valois was in the thrall of that spirit of largesse which had cost him so dear throughout his life. Acting the prince to the last gasp, he was recompensing those who had served him. Two hundred or three hundred livres were not in themselves great sums but, when multiplied by forty or fifty and added to the pious bequests, all the Pope’s gold, which had already been considerably diminished, could not suffice. Nor would a year’s revenues from the whole Valois appanage. Charles clearly intended to be prodigal even after his death.
Mahaut went over to the English group. She greeted Isabella with a glance in which gleamed an old hatred, smiled at the little Prince Edward as if she wanted to bite him, and at last looked at Robert.
‘My dear Nephew, how grievous this must be to you; he was a real father to you …’ she said in a low voice.
‘And it must be a terrible shock to you, Aunt,’ he replied in the same tone. ‘After all, he is the same age as yourself, or very near it. You cannot have many more years to live …’
People were coming and going at the back of the room. Isabella suddenly noticed that the Bishop of Exeter had disappeared; or rather that he was in process of disappearing, for she saw him going out through the door, with that proud, unctuous and gliding motion so common among ecclesiastics when moving through a crowd; and he was in company with Canon d’Hirson, Mahaut’s chancellor. And the giantess was also watching them going out together, and each woman realized that the other was aware of what was taking place.
Isabella was anxiously wondering. What could Stapledon, her enemy’s envoy, have to say to the Countess’s chancellor? And how did they know each other, since Stapledon had arrived only yesterday? It was perfectly clear that the English spies had been in contact with Mahaut. Indeed, it was only to be expected. ‘She has every reason to want to avenge herself on me and destroy me,’ thought Isabella. ‘After all, I denounced her daughters. Oh, how I wish Roger were here! Why did I not insist on his coming?’
The two priests had found no difficulty in meeting. Canon d’Hirson had had Edward’s envoy pointed out to him.
‘Reverendissimus sanctissimusque Exeteris episcopus?’ he asked him. ‘Ego canonicus et comitissae Artesiensis cancellarius sum.’fn1
They had been instructed to meet at the first opportunity. And this opportunity had arisen here. And now, sitting side by side in a window embrasure at the end of a corridor, their beads in their hands, they conversed in Latin, as if they were making the responses to the prayers for the dying.
Canon d’Hirson had a copy of a very interesting letter addressed to Queen Isabella from a certain English bishop who signed himself ‘O’. The letter had been stolen from an Italian businessman while he was sleeping in an inn in Artois. Bishop ‘O’ advised the Queen not to come back for the present, but to gather as many partisans in France as she could, to assemble a thousand knights and land with them in England to chase out the Despensers and that wicked Bishop Stapledon. Thierry d’Hirson had the copy on him. Would Monseigneur Stapledon care to have it? A paper passed from the Canon’s cloak to the Bishop, who cast an eye on it and recognized the clever, succinct style of Adam Orleton. If, he added, Roger Mortimer took command of this expedition, the whole English nobility would rally to him within a few days.
Bishop Stapledon gnawed at a corner of his thumb.
‘Ille baro de Mortuo Mari concubinus Isabellae reginae aperte est,’fn2 said Thierry d’Hirson.
Did the Bishop want proof of it? Hirson could give him whatever proof he might require. It would be enough to question the servants, have the comings and goings at the Palace of the Cité watched, or merely ask the familiars of the Court what they thought.
Stapledon concealed the letter in his robe, under his pectoral cross.
The crowd was beginning to leave the bedroom. Monseigneur of Valois had named the executors of his will. His great seal, bearing the lilies and surrounded with the inscription: ‘Caroli regis Franciae filii, comitis Valesi et Andegaviae’,fn3 had been impressed in the wax poured on to the ribbons hanging from the document.
‘Monseigneur, may I present to your high and saintly person my niece Béatrice, lady-in-waiting to the Countess?’ said Thierry d’Hirson to Stapledon, indicating a beautiful dark girl, with liquid eyes and swaying hips, who was approaching them.
Béatrice d’Hirson kissed the Bishop’s ring; then her uncle whispered a few words to her. She went back to the Countess Mahaut and murmured in her ear: ‘It is done, Madame.’
And Mahaut, who was still standing near Isabella, put out her great hand and stroked young Prince Edward’s forehead.
Then everyone went back to Paris. Robert of Artois and the Chancellor because they had to attend to government matters. Tolomei because he had business. And Mahaut because, now that her revenge was in train, she had nothing more to do here. Isabella because she wanted to see Mortimer. The widowed Queens because nobody could find room to put them up. Even Philippe of Valois had to go back to Paris for administrative matters concerning the great county of which he was already the de facto lord.
There remained beside the dying man only his third wife, his eldest daughter, the Countess of Hainaut, his younger children and his personal servants. Scarcely more people than there would have been round the deathbed of some little provincial knight, although Valois’s name and actions had concerned the world from the Atlantic to the Bosporus.
And next day Monseigneur Charles of Valois was still breathing, and the following day too. The Constable Gaucher had been right; there was still life in that broken body.
The whole Court during these days went to Vincennes for the homage that young Prince Edward, Duke of Aquitaine, was to render to his uncle, Charles the Fair.
Then, in Paris, a brick fell from a scaffolding very close to Bishop Stapledon’s head; after which a footbridge gave way under the prelate’s mule, while he happened to be following it on foot. And again, one morning, as he was leaving his lodgings at the hour of early Mass, he found himself in a narrow street face to face with Gerard de Alspaye, the ex-Lieutenant of the Tower of London, and barber Ogle. The two men seemed to be out simply for a stroll. But did people leave home at that hour of the morning merely to listen to the birds singing? A little silent group of men was standing in the mouth of an alley and, among them, Stapledon thought he recognized the long horse-face of Baron Maltravers. A convoy of market-gardeners, which was crowding the street at that moment, gave the Bishop the opportunity to hurry back to his own door. That very night, saying goodbye to no one, he took the road to Boulogne, where he embarked secretly.
And he took with him, not only the copy of Orleton’s letter, but ample evidence against Queen Isabella, Mortimer, the Earl of Kent and all the lords who formed their entourage.
In his manor in the Île-de-France, a league distant from Rambouillet, Charles of Valois, abandoned by nearly everyone, and withdrawn into his own body as if he were already in the tomb, was still alive. He, who had been called the second King of France, no longer paid attention to anything except the air which entered his lungs with an irregular rhythm and, from time to time, with agonizing pauses. And he was to continue breathing this air, which was life to all God’s creatures, for long weeks to come, indeed until December.