Robert of Artois felt triumphant, and he would feel even more so shortly, when he went up to his Cousin Philippe in the cathedral and uttered certain words that would make the assembled kings, dukes and barons start in surprise. None would emerge as happy as he went in; and this would be particularly true of his dear Aunt Mahaut and the Duke of Burgundy.
He would certainly be wearing his peer’s robes for the first time to advantage! Twenty years and more of stubborn struggle would receive their reward today. And yet, behind his pride and joy, he felt a sense of regret. What could be the cause of it when fate was smiling on him and all his hopes were coming true? Then suddenly he knew: it was the smell of pancakes. A peer of France, who was about to claim the county of his ancestors, could not go down into the street wearing his coronet with eight fleurons and eat a pancake. A peer of France could not loiter about the streets, mingle with the multitude, tweak a girl’s breast, and go brawling through the night in company with half a dozen whores, as he used to do when he was poor and twenty. Yet his nostalgia reassured him. ‘Anyway,’ he thought, ‘the life’s not dead in me yet!’
His visitor was standing shyly by the door, not daring to disturb the thoughts of a lord in so splendid a coronet.
She was a woman of about thirty-five, with a triangular face and high cheekbones. The hood of her travelling-cloak revealed plaited tresses, and her full, rounded bosom heaved beneath her white linen bodice as she breathed.
‘By God, the Bishop had good taste!’ thought Robert, when he turned and saw her.
She bent a knee in a curtsy. He held out his huge gloved hand with its ruby rings.
‘Give them to me,’ he said.
‘I haven’t got them, Monseigneur,’ she replied.
There was a sudden change in Robert’s expression.
‘Do you mean to say you haven’t got the papers?’ he cried. ‘You promised me to bring them today!’
‘I’ve come straight from the Château d’Hirson, Monseigneur. I went there yesterday with Sergeant Maciot. We opened the iron wall-safe with skeleton keys.’
‘Well?’
‘Someone had been there before us. It was empty.’
‘What splendid news!’ cried Robert, who had turned rather pale. ‘You’ve been trifling with me for a whole month. “Monseigneur, I can give you the deeds that will put you in possession of your county! I know where they are. Give me an estate and an income, and I’ll bring them to you next week …” And then that week goes by, and then another … “The Hirson family are in the château; I can’t go there when they’re in residence …” “I’ve now been there, Monseigneur, but the key I had with me was not the right one. Have a little patience …” And now, on the very day I’ve got to produce the two documents to the King …’
‘The three documents, Monseigneur: the marriage contract of your father, Count Philippe, the letter from Count Robert, your grandfather, and Monseigneur Thierry’s letter …’
‘Very well then! The three of them! And now you come here and say foolishly: “I haven’t got them; the safe was empty!” Do you expect me to believe you?’
‘Ask Sergeant Maciot, who went with me! Don’t you realize, Monseigneur, that I’m even more distressed than you are?’
There was a wicked and suspicious glint in Robert’s eyes. ‘Tell me, La Divion’, he said in a different tone of voice, ‘are you by any chance trying to double-cross me? Is this an attempt to extract more money from me, or have you betrayed me to Mahaut?’
‘How can you even think of such a thing, Monseigneur?’ she cried on the verge of tears. ‘All my difficulties and my poverty are due to the Countess of Mahaut who stole everything my dear Seigneur Thierry left me in his will. I wish Madame Mahaut all the harm you can do her. Just think, Monseigneur, I was Thierry’s mistress for twelve years. Many people cut me because of it, but after all a bishop’s a man like another! People are so unkind …’
She began telling Robert her story all over again, though he had already heard it three times at least. She talked quickly; her eyes, beneath her straight brows, had the curious inward look of the utterly self-centred, of people whose thoughts are entirely and unceasingly concentrated on their own affairs.
She could obviously expect no help from her husband, whom she had left to go and live with Bishop Thierry. She realized that on the whole her husband had been very accommodating, perhaps because he had early ceased to be a man (Monseigneur would understand what she meant). It was to save her from poverty and in gratitude for all the happy years she had given him that Bishop Thierry had put her down in his will for several houses, a sum in gold and an annuity. But he had been afraid of Madame Mahaut and had felt obliged to appoint her his executrix.
‘She always disliked me, because I was younger than she was, and because Thierry in the past – he told me so himself – had been compelled to pleasure her. He was well aware that she would treat me badly when he was no longer there to protect me, and that the Hirsons, who are all against me – particularly Beatrice, Madame Mahaut’s lady-in-waiting, who is the worst of the lot – would contrive to throw me out of the house and deprive me of everything due to me …’
Robert had ceased to listen to her interminable complaints. He put his heavy coronet down on a chest and scratched his red head in thought. His splendid scheme was falling to the ground, for it was entirely dependent on the production of the documents. ‘Just one convincing little document, Brother, and I shall at once order a review of the judgements of 1309 and 1318,’ Philippe VI had said. ‘But you must realize that I can do nothing without that, however great my wish to serve you, or I shall be breaking my word to Eudes of Burgundy, with all the consequences that you can imagine.’ And it was no small document, but the highly important papers Mahaut had stolen so as to be able to lay her hand on the Artois inheritance that he had boasted of being able to produce!
‘And in a few minutes’ time,’ he said, ‘I have to be in the cathedral for the homage.’
‘What homage?’ asked La Divion.
‘The King of England’s, of course!’
‘Oh, so that’s why the town’s so crowded I could scarcely push my way through.’
So this fool of a woman saw nothing, heard nothing and knew nothing, so busy was she with her own ridiculous little concerns!
It occurred to Robert that he had perhaps been unwise to credit this woman’s tale; he began to doubt whether the documents, the safe at Hesdin and the Bishop’s confession had ever existed outside her imagination. And was Maciot l’Allemant also a dupe, or had he connived with her?’
‘Tell the truth, woman! You’ve never seen these documents!’
‘But I have, Monseigneur!’ cried La Divion, pressing her hands to her prominent cheeks. ‘It was at the Château d’Hirson, the day Thierry fell ill, before he had himself carried to his Hôtel d’Arras. “My Jeannette, I want to forearm you against Madame Mahaut, as I forearmed myself,” he said. “The documents she stole from the archives in order to rob Monseigneur Robert were not destroyed as she believes. Those from the Paris archives were burnt in her presence; but the duplicates from the Artois archives” – these are Thierry’s very words, Monseigneur – “I have always kept here, though I told her they had been destroyed too, and I have added a letter in my own hand to them.” Then Thierry took me to the safe concealed in the wall of his study, and gave me the documents to read. They all had seals on them; and I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw what villainy had been done. There were also eight hundred livres in gold in the safe. And he gave me the key in case anything happened to him …’