The Iron King Read Free Page A

remained thoughtful during this outpouring. Artois went close to her and, lowering his voice, said, ‘They hate you.’
    ‘Though I don’t know why, it is true that as far as I am concerned, I never liked them from the start,’ Isabella replied.
    ‘You didn’t like them because they’re false, because they think of nothing but pleasure and have no sense of duty. But they hate you because they’re jealous of you.’
    ‘And yet my position is not a very enviable one,’ said Isabella sighing; ‘their lot seems to me far pleasanter than my own.’
    ‘You are a Queen, Madam; you are a Queen in heart and soul; your sisters-in-law may well wear crowns but they will never be queens. That is why they will always be your enemies.’
    Isabella raised her beautiful blue eyes to her cousin and Artois sensed that this time he had struck the right note. Isabella was on his side once and for all.
    ‘Have you the names of the men with whom my sisters-in-law … ?’ she asked.
    She lacked the crudeness of her cousin and could not bring herself to utter certain words.
    ‘Do you not know them?’ she said. ‘Without their names I can do nothing. Get them, and I promise you that I shall come to Paris at once upon some pretext or other, and put an end to this disorder. How can I help you? Have you told my uncle Valois?’
    She was once more decisive, precise and authoritative.
    ‘I took care not to,’ answered Artois. ‘Monseigneur of Valois is my most loyal patron and my greatest friend; but he is the exact opposite of your father. He’d go gossiping all over the place about what we want to keep quiet, he’d put them on their guard, and when the moment came when we were ready to catch the bawds out, we should find them as pure as nuns.’
    ‘Well, what do you suggest?’
    ‘Two courses of action,’ said Artois. ‘The first is to appoint to Madam Marguerite’s household a new lady-in-waiting who will be in our confidence and who will report to us. I have thought of Mme de Comminges for the post. She has recently been widowed and deserves some consideration. And in that your uncle Valois can help us. Write him a letter expressing your wish, and pretending to interest on the widow’s behalf. Monseigneur has great influence over your brother Louis and, merely in order to exercise it, will at once place Mme de Comminges in the Hôtel-de-Nesle. Thus we shall have a creature of ours on the spot, and as we say in military parlance, a spy within the walls is worth an army outside.’
    ‘I’ll write the letter and you shall take it back with you,’ said Isabella. ‘And what more?’
    ‘You must allay your sisters-in-law’s distrust of you; you must make yourself amiable by sending them nice presents,’ Artois went on. ‘Presents that would do as well for men as women. You can send them secretly, a little private friendly transaction between you, which neither father nor husbands need know anything about. Marguerite despoils her casket for a good-looking unknown; it would really be bad luck if, having a present she need not account for, we don’t find it upon the gallant in question. Let’s give them opportunities for imprudence.’
    Isabella thought for a moment, then went to the door and clapped her hands.
    The first French lady entered.
    ‘My dear,’ said the Queen, ‘please bring me the golden almspurse that the Merchant Albizzi brought me this morning on approval.’
    During the short wait Robert of Artois for the first time ceased to be concerned with his plots and preoccupations and looked round the room, at the religious frescoes painted on the walls, at the huge, beamed roof that looked like the hull of a ship. It was all rather new, gloomy and cold. The furniture was fine but sparse.
    ‘Your home is not very gay, Cousin,’ he said. ‘One might think one was in a cathedral rather than a palace.’
    ‘I hope to God,’ Isabella said in a low voice, ‘that it does not become my prison. How much I miss