‘You become more beautiful every time I see you, Cousin,’ he said.
‘Don’t talk nonsense; I am certainly not beautiful after twelve hours of dust upon the roads,’ the Queen replied.
‘Having loved you in memory for many long weeks, the dust is invisible; I can only see your eyes.’
Isabella leaned back a little among the cushions. Once again she felt a recurrence of that curious weakness which had seized her at Westminster in Robert’s company. ‘Can he really love me,’ she wondered, ‘or is he merely making compliments as he does, doubtless, to every woman he meets?’ Between the curtains of the litter, she could see the Count of Artois’s huge red boot and golden spur upon the dappled horse’s flank; she could see the giant thigh with its salient muscles, and she wondered whether each time she found herself in this man’s presence she would be conscious of the same disquiet, the same desire to let herself go, the same hope of reaching out to unknown territories. She made an effort to control herself. She was not there on her own behalf.
‘Cousin,’ she said, ‘tell me quickly what there is to tell, and let us make the most of this opportunity to talk.’
Rapidly, pretending to point out the countryside, he told her what he knew and what he had done, the watch he had set over the royal Princesses, the trap set at the Tower of Nesle.
‘Who are these men who are dishonouring the Crown of France?’ Isabella asked.
‘They are riding twenty paces from you. They form part of the escort attending us.’
And he gave her the essential information about the brothers Aunay, their estate, their parentage and their family relationships.
‘I want to see them,’ Isabella said.
Signalling vigorously, Artois called the two young men over.
‘The Queen has noticed you,’ he said, winking broadly, ‘and I have spoken to her of you.’
The faces of the two Aunays reflected their pleasure and their pride.
The giant motioned them towards the litter as if he were in process of making their fortunes, and, as the young men bowed lower than their horses’ withers, he said with feigned joviality, ‘Madam, here are Messires Gautier and Philippe d’Aunay, the most loyal equerries of your brother and your uncle. I recommend them to your notice. They are to some extent protégés of mine.’
Isabella gazed for an instant at the two young men, wondering what there was about their faces and their persons that could turn kings’ daughters from their duty. They were handsome, certainly, and Isabella was always somewhat embarrassed by beauty in men. Then she noticed the purses at the horsemen’s belts and glanced from them to Robert’s eyes. The latter smiled briefly. From now on he could fade into the shadows. He need not even assume the role of informer before the Court. This chance encounter should be sufficient to decide the fate of the two equerries. ‘Good work, Robert, good work,’ he said to himself.
The brothers Aunay, their heads full of dreams, returned to their places in the procession.
From Clermont, in the throes of gaiety, could be heard a great clamour of welcome for the beautiful Queen of twenty-two, who was about to bring the most surprising of disasters upon the Court of France.
IT WAS THE EVENING OF Isabella’s arrival; the King was alone with his daughter in a room of the Castle of Maubuisson, where he liked to isolate himself.
‘It is there I think things over,’ he had told his familiars one day when he was being particularly forthcoming.
Upon the table was a three-branched silver candelabra whose light fell upon a file of parchments which the King was reading and signing. Beyond the windows the park rustled in the twilight, and Isabella, looking out into the night, watched the dark absorb the trees one by one.
Since the time of Blanche of Castille, Maubuisson, on the borders of Pontoise, had been a royal residence and Philip had made it one of his regular country retreats. He liked the silence of the place, closed in as it was by high walls; he liked his park, his garden and his abbey in which Benedictine sisters lived out their peaceful lives. The castle itself was not very large, but Philip the Fair liked its quiet and preferred Maubuisson to all his greater houses.
Isabella had met her three sisters-in-law, Marguerite, Jeanne and Blanche, with a serenely smiling face, and had replied conventionally to their words of welcome.
Supper had soon been over. And now Isabella was alone with her father for the purpose of accomplishing the task, atrocious but necessary, upon which she was set. King Philip looked at her with that icy glance with which he regarded every human creature, even his own child. He was waiting for her to speak; and she did not dare.
‘I shall hurt him so much,’ she thought. And suddenly, because of his presence, because of the park, the trees and the silence, Isabella was a prey to a wave of childish memories and her throat constricted with bitter self-pity.
‘Father,’ she said, ‘Father, I am very unhappy. Oh! how very far away France seems since I have been Queen of England. And how I regret the days that are past!’
She found herself trying to fight an unexpected enemy: tears.
After a brief silence, without going to her, Philip the Fair asked gently but without warmth, ‘Was it to tell me this, Isabella, that you have undertaken the journey?’
‘And to whom should I admit my unhappiness if not to my father?’ she replied.
The King looked at the night beyond the gleaming panes of the window, then at the candles, then at the fire.
‘Happiness …’ he said slowly. ‘What is happiness, daughter, if it is not to conform to one’s destiny? If it is not learning to say yes, always to God … and often to men?’
They were sitting opposite each other on cushionless oak chairs.
‘It is true that I am a Queen,’ she said in a low voice. ‘But am I treated as a Queen over there?’
‘Are you done wrong by?’
But there was little surprise in the tone of his voice as he put the question. He knew only too well what she would answer.
‘Don’t you know to whom you have married me?’ she said with some force. ‘Can he be called a husband who deserted my bed from the very first day? From whom all my care, all my respect, all my smiles, cannot get a single word of response? Who shuns me as if I were ill and confers, not upon mistresses, but upon men, Father, upon men, the favours he denies me?’
Philip the Fair had known all this for a long time, and his reply had also been ready for a long time.
‘I did not marry you to a man,’ he said, ‘but to a King. I did not sacrifice you by mistake. I don’t have to tell you, Isabella, what we owe to our position and that we are not born to succumb to personal sorrows. We do not lead our own lives, but those of our kingdoms, and it is there alone that we can find content … if we conform to our destiny.’
He had drawn somewhat nearer to her while speaking and the light of the candle-flames etched the shadows upon his face, bringing his beauty into better relief, emphasising his air of always searching for self-conquest and being proud of it.
More than his words, the King’s expression and his beauty delivered Isabella from her weakness.
‘I could only have loved a man who was like him,’ she thought, ‘and I