‘I mixed up the keys. I think I must have lost the right one. I really do seem to have the most extraordinary bad luck. And once things start going wrong …’
She was off again. But Robert felt she was speaking the truth; people did not invent such a stupid story when they set out to deceive. He would have strangled her with pleasure could it have served any useful purpose.
‘My going there must have given the alarm,’ she added. ‘They found the safe and forced the locks. I’m sure it was that Beatrice …’
Lormet put his head in at the door. Robert waved him away.
‘But after all, Monseigneur,’ Jeanne de Divion said, as if she were trying to make amends for her failure, ‘don’t you think the documents could be easily reproduced?’
‘Reproduced?’
‘After all, we know what they said! I can repeat Monseigneur Thierry’s letter almost word for word …’
Vague of eye and waving a finger in emphasis, she began reciting:
‘“I feel greatly guilty that I have for so long concealed the fact that the right to the County of Artois belongs to Monseigneur Robert by the agreements made at the marriage of Monseigneur Philippe of Artois and Madame Blanche of Brittany, which were drawn up in duplicate and sealed. Of these deeds I hold one copy, and the other was subtracted from the archives of the Court by one of our great lords … I have always intended that, after the death of Madame the Countess at whose desire and on whose orders I have acted, should God call her to Himself before me, restoration should be made to the said Monseigneur Robert of the deeds I have in my possession …”’
La Divion might lose keys, but she could remember a once-read text. There were no doubt minds made that way. And now she was suggesting to Robert, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, that he should commit forgery. She obviously had no sense whatever of right and wrong, could make no distinction between the moral and the immoral, the permissible and the forbidden. Morality was what happened to suit her. Robert, during the course of his forty-two years, had committed almost every conceivable crime. He had killed, lied, denounced, pillaged and raped. But he had not yet been a forger.
‘There is also the old bailiff of Béthune, Guillaume de la Planche, who must remember things that could help us, for he was Monseigneur Thierry’s clerk at the time.’
‘Where is this old bailiff?’ Robert asked.
‘In prison.’
Robert shrugged his shoulders. Things were going from bad to worse. He had made a grave mistake to be so hasty. He ought to have waited until he had the documents actually in his hands before giving so many assurances. On the other hand, the King himself had advised him to make use of the occasion of the homage.
Old Lormet put his head in at the door again.
‘All right, I’m coming,’ Robert said impatiently. ‘There’s only the square to cross.’
‘The King’s making ready to go down,’ Lormet said reproachfully.
‘Very well, I’m coming.’
When all was said and done, the King was his brother-in-law and, what was more, only King because he, Robert, had so desired it. How hot it was! He felt the sweat running down under his peer’s robes.
He went to the window, and looked out at the cathedral and its two asymmetrical, fretted towers. The sun was shining at an angle on the great rose window. The bells were still pealing and drowning the noise of the crowd.
The Duke of Brittany, followed by his suite, was mounting the steps to the central porch.
Twenty yards behind him, the lame Duke of Bourbon followed, two pages carrying the train of his mantle.
Behind them again, came Mahaut of Artois’ retinue. She had good reason to walk with so firm a step today! Taller than most men, her face crimson, she was acknowledging the greetings of the people with slight but imperious inclinations of the head. There went a criminal, a liar, a poisoner of kings, and a thief who had stolen documents from the royal archives. And now, on the very point of confounding her, of being victorious at last, after twenty years of effort, he was going to be compelled to renounce his triumph. And why? Because a bishop’s concubine had lost a key!
Was there not justification for using base means against the base? Should one be over-nice about the means one employed to bring about the triumph of right?
And, after all, when you came to think of it, if Mahaut did possess the documents from the safe at Château d’Hirson – even if she had not immediately destroyed them, which she probably had – she could certainly never produce them or allude to their existence, since they were proof of her guilt. If similiar documents were produced in evidence against her, she would be caught. It was a pity he had not the whole day in front of him in which to think it over and get more information. He had to make his mind up within the hour, and entirely on his own.
‘I’ll see you again, woman; but not a word to anyone,’ he said.
Forgery was undoubtedly a serious risk.
He picked up his huge coronet and put it on his head. With a glance at the many mirrors that reflected him split into some thirty separate fragments, he set out for the cathedral.
‘A KING’S SON CANNOT kneel to a count’s son!’ said the sixteen-year-old Sovereign. He had thought of this formula entirely on his own, and insisted on it to his counsellors, so that they in turn should insist on it to the French jurisconsults.
‘Really, my Lord Orleton,’ said young King Edward III, when they arrived in Amiens, ‘last year you came over to maintain that I had a greater right to the throne of France than my cousin of Valois. Do you now suggest that I should throw myself to the ground at his feet?’
Like so many boys whose parents have lived dissolute and irregular lives, Edward III, now that he was on his own for the first time, was determined to act on sound and sensible principles. During his six days in Amiens, he had insisted that the whole question of the homage be reconsidered.
‘But my Lord Mortimer is most anxious to maintain peace with France,’ said John Maltravers.
‘My lord,’ Edward interrupted him, ‘you are here to guard me, I believe, not to advise.’
He could not conceal his dislike of the long-faced Baron who had been not only his father’s jailer but undoubtedly also his murderer. To have to submit to Maltravers’ surveillance and indeed his spying, for that was what it amounted to, annoyed Edward very much. He went on:
‘My Lord Mortimer is our great friend, but he is not the King, and it is not he who is to render homage. And my Lord Lancaster, who by virtue of presiding over the Council of Regency is alone in a position to take decisions in my name, gave me no instructions before I left as to the nature of the homage I should render. I refuse to render the homage of a liegeman.’
The Bishop of Lincoln, Henry de Burghersh, Chancellor of England, who was also of Mortimer’s party, but less under his thumb and certainly more intelligent than Maltravers, could not but approve the young King’s concern to defend his dignity and the interests of his realm, in spite of the difficulties it created.
For not only did the homage of a liegeman oblige the vassal to present himself with neither arms nor crown, but also to take the oath on his knees, which implied that the vassal was, as his first duty, the suzerain’s man.
‘As