My Lady Mary of Vertus

My Lady Mary of Vertus, a very good lady and a saintly woman, came to tell me that the queen was making great lamentation, and asked me to go to her and comfort her. And when I came there, 1 found her weeping; and I told her that he spoke sooth who said that none should put faith in woman. “ For,” said I, “ she that is dead is the woman that you most hated, and yet you are showing such sorrow.” And she told me it was not for the queen that she was weep king, but because of the king’s sorrow in the mourning that he made, and because of her daughter, afterwards the Queen of Navarre, who had remained in men’s keeping.

The unkindness that the Queen Blanche showed to the Queen Margaret was such that she would not suffer, in so far as she could help it, that her son should be in his wife’s company, except at night when he went to sleep with her. The palace where the king and his queen liked most to dwell was at Pontoise, because there the king’s chamber was above and the queen’s chamber below; and they had so arranged matters between them that they held their converse in a turning staircase that went from the one chamber to the other; and they had further arranged that when the ushers saw the Queen Blanche coming to her son’s chamber, they struck the door with their rods, and the king would come running into his chamber so that his mother might find him there; and the ushers of Queen Margaret’s chamber did the same when Queen Blanche went thither, so that she might find Queen Margaret there.

Once the king wras by his wife’s side, and she was in great peril of death, being hurt for a child that she had borne. Queen Blanche came thither, and took her son by the hand, and said: “ Come away; you have nothing to do herel” When Queen Margaret saw that the mother was leading her son away, she cried: “Alas! whether dead or alive, you will not suffer me to see my lord! ” Then she fainted, and they thought she was dead; and the king, who thought she was dying, turned back; and with great trouble they brought her round.