The Strangled Queen Read Free Page A

spiritual intransigence.
    Not for an instant had Marguerite admitted her own responsibility for her, misfortunes; not for an instant had she admitted that, when one is the, grand-daughter of Saint Louis, the daughter of the Duke of Burgundy, Queen of Navarre and destined to succeed to the most Christian , throne of France, to take an equerry for lover, receive him in one's husband's house, and load him with gaudy presents, constituted a dangerous game which might cost one both honour and liberty. She felt that she was justified by the fact that she had been married to a prince whom she did not love, and whose nocturnal advances filled her with horror.
    She did not reproach herself with having acted as she had; she merely hated those who had brought her disaster about; and it was upon others alone that she lavished her despairing anger: against her sister-in-law, the Queen of England, who had denounced her, against the royal family of France who had condemned her, against her own family of Burgundy who had failed to defend her, against the whole kingdom, against fate itself and against God. It was upon others, that she wished so thirstily to be avenged when she thought that, on this very day, she should have been side by side with the new king, sharing in power and majesty, instead of being imprisoned, a derisory queen, behind walls twelve feet thick.
    Blanche put her arm round her neck.
    "It's all over now," she said. "I'm sure, my dear, that our misfortunes are over."
    "They are only over," replied Marguerite, "upon the condition that we are clever, and that quickly."
    She had a plan in mind, thought out during Mass, whose outcome she could not yet clearly envisage. Nevertheless s he wished to turn the situation to her own advantage.
    "You will let me speak alone with that great lout of a Bersumee, whose head I should prefer to see upon a pike than upon his shoulders," she added.
    A moment later the locks and hinges creaked at the base of the tower.
    The two women put their hoods on again. Blanche went and stood in the embrasure of the narrow window; Marguerite, assuming a royal attitude, seated herself upon the bench which was the only seat in the room. The Captain of the Fortress came in.
    "I have come, Madam, as you asked me to," he said. Marguerite took her time, looking him straight in the eye. "Messire Bersumee," she asked, "do you realize whom you
    will be guarding from now on?"
    Bersumee turned his eyes away, as if he were searching for something in the room.
    "I know it well, Madam, I know it well," he replied, "and I have been thinking of it ever since this morning, when the courier woke me on his way to Criquebceuf and Rouen."
    d uring the seven months of my imprisonment here I have had insufficient linen, no furniture or sheets; I have eaten the same gruel as your archers and I have but one hour's firing a d ay.
    "I have obeyed Messire de Nogaret's orders, Madam," replied Bersumee.
    "Messire de Nogaret is dead."'
    "He sent me the King's instructions." "King Philip is dead."
    Seeing where Marguerite was leading, Bersumee replied, "But Monseigneur de Marigny is still alive, Madam, and he. is
    in control of the judiciary and the prisons, as he controls all else in the kingdom, and I am responsible to him for everything."
    "Did this morning's courier give you no new orders concerning me?"
    "None, Madam."
    "You will receive them shortly."
    "I await them, Madam."
    For a moment they looked at each other in silence. Robert Bersumee, Captain of Chateau-Gaillard, was thirty-five years old, at that epoch a ripe age. He had that precise, dutiful look, professional soldiers assume so easily and which, from being, continually assumed, eventually becomes natural to them.; For ordinary every day duty in the fortress he wore a wolf skin cap and a rather loose old coat of mail, black with, grease, which hung in folds about his belt. His eyebrows made a single bar; above his nose.
    At the beginning of her imprisonment Marguerite had