Michael Jecks - The Death Ship of Dartmouth

‘King Philippe was delighted. He was to meet his grandson for the first time, and his court celebrated our visit with feasting and dancing. While there, the Queen’s brothers were knighted, and she gave them gifts, as well as presents for their wives: three silken purses, one each to Blanche, Marguerite and Jeanne, the three wives of her royal brothers.’

He lapsed, shaking his head grimly, but Baldwin did not interrupt his thoughts. Patiently he waited for the bishop to continue.

‘Such innocuous little trinkets they seemed. Even such as they can cause disaster, though. A year later Queen Isabella returned to France to continue negotiations with her father on behalf of her husband, and noticed that the purses were now being worn at the belts of three other knights.

‘She was suspicious at once, and went to tell her father that same evening. I mentioned the torch-bearers? I wasn’t with her on that trip, but I heard all about it. Dear God!

‘The king was enraged. He felt, rightly, that this brought shame and dishonour on his house and his line. His sons, the princes, had been cuckolded in the most flagrant way. Their wives had engaged in lewd feasting and dancing, emulating the debauched whores of Gomorrah in their pride and lust for pleasure. The king immediately had them all followed, and learned that they met their lovers, the d’Aunai brothers, in the Tour de Nesle, a palace nearby …’

‘I know it,’ Baldwin said shortly. He hated to think of the events that had led to the slaughter of two young men.

The bishop noticed his manner and continued more gently, ‘Two of the women confessed immediately. The third denied adultery, but she was to be punished anyway, for not telling the king or her husband what the other two were up to.’

‘What became of the women?’ Baldwin asked.

‘The sisters-in-law were all condemned. Blanche and Marguerite were sent to the Château-Gaillard in penitential dress, wearing rough hair clothing that would sear their flesh. Marguerite did not survive the first winter in that harsh environment. She froze to death in one of the upper chambers. Jeanne was held in the milder castle at Dourdan for a while, and eventually the Parlement released her after declaring that she was innocent of adultery. Blanche remained at Château-Gaillard: I presume she is still there. Her marriage has been declared null by the Pope, so she is merely a woman of no honour — a poor slut with no man to protect her.’

‘I was in France in that year,’ Baldwin said quietly. ‘I recall the men being executed.’

‘The two knights could hope for no pity. They had polluted the loins of the women who would become Queens; they had desecrated the lineage of the court. It showed how the fleur de lis had been undermined by frivolity and lewdness. They were hanged, I think?’

Baldwin shook his head, his face grim at the memory. ‘No. The king wanted an example to be made. One of the guilty men escaped as soon as he heard of the accusations and fled to England; his brother was less swift to run and was captured. But running away to the very place where his accuser was herself the Queen was foolish in the extreme. He was taken and returned to France.

‘They were brought to the execution grounds of Montfaucon, and there Gautier and his brother Philippe d’Aunai were bound to wheels. Over time their limbs were broken with iron bars; then their testicles and tarses were hacked off and thrown to the dogs. Only when they had suffered in anguish for a long while were their heads struck off and their bodies clamped in gibbets to be hung on display for the mockery of the populace, as proof that no man could contaminate the royal family with impunity.’

‘I heard that the shame hastened King Philippe’s end,’ the bishop said sadly. ‘He was dead before the end of the year.’

Baldwin’s jaw clenched. ‘I think it was more likely that God had chosen to call him to His throne. When the Grand Master of the Knights Templar, Jacques de Molay, was murdered on King Philippe’s orders, it’s said de Molay demanded that the king should stand before God to defend himself for destroying God’s crusading army.’

‘You believe that?’

The memory of the injustice made Baldwin continue, even though his usual caution should have advised him to be more circumspect. ‘I believe with my entire heart and soul that Philippe was evil. Any man who could commit such a crime against a holy and religious Order deserves no less. He killed the Templars, and suffered for it.’

‘I do wonder, though … the punishment for his misdeed was truly dreadful,’ Stapledon mused. ‘To think that a man’s line could be so devastated. Perhaps it was God’s vengeance, as you say. Certainly none of his sons have been blessed so far, have they? After King Philippe IV died, his son Louis X survived him by only two years. Philippe V became King in 1316 but died in 1322, and the last brother, Charles, has been on the throne now for two years. I do not know how healthy he is, but there is no heir as yet, I believe?’

Baldwin shook his head. He was still remembering that appalling year in which the d’Aunai brothers and so many others had died. He had no sympathy for Philippe.

In 1314 Sir Baldwin had been forced to come to terms with the destruction of his ancient and honourable Order, the Knights Templar. His comrades had been arrested on Friday, 13 October 1307, while he and some of his friends had been out of their preceptory, and as a result he had escaped the torturers, the indignity and shame. Yet he had been scarred, he told himself, eyeing his hand. It did not quiver or shake, but only because of an enormous effort of will.

‘So, Sir Baldwin, I must ask you for a favour, if you would be so kind.’

There was something in his tone that brought Baldwin to attention instantly. ‘What is that, my lord Bishop? If I can serve you, you know I would be glad to,’ he said, but he was warned by the bishop’s reticence that this was no ordinary request.

It was late that night when Simon returned to his little chambers and sat before his fire with a bowl of hot soup and hunk of bread. He didn’t bother to go to his table, but sipped straight from his bowl as he contemplated all he had learned that day.

Originally he had taken a larger house in Dartmouth, but that was when he had hoped that his wife Meg might join him here. Since hearing of the death of Abbot Robert, it seemed clear enough to him that he would not be staying here for long. The good abbot had been his enthusiastic patron, and with him gone, it was likely that the new abbot would seek to install his own friend or loyal servant. Simon had quickly decided to take a smaller place.

It was comfortable enough, though. Situated in the upper of the two streets, a short distance from the Porpoise, a rowdy tavern, he had a fair-sized front room, a smaller kitchen and parlour behind, and a pleasant solar chamber above the front room for his bed. Outside there was a simple privy in his garden. For a man living alone, it was fine.

There was a squeak and rattle from a loose sign further up the road, and although the noise normally didn’t affect him, today it grated on his ear as though there was an invisible connection between his head and the rusty metal. When he heard a cat screech, he shot from his seat, spilling soup over his lap, making him curse loudly. He was not the only man in Clifton or Hardness who felt the same anxiety that night, he knew.

It was always hard when his friend Baldwin heard of some little precaution he took: Baldwin had a hard-nosed manner about all sensible safeguards, calling them ‘superstitious nonsense’ or somesuch, but Simon didn’t care. As far as he was concerned, it was proof of Baldwin’s foolishness. Simon wasn’t superstitious, anyway. He simply didn’t believe in taking risks.