The Death Ship of Dartmouth: (Knights Templar 21) by Michael Jecks

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 moregently, ‘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