Free Iacobus by Matilde Asensi Page B

had to find a woman called Beatrice of Hirson, lady-in-waiting to Matilda of Artois, mother-in-law of Philip V the Long, King of France. The passes in my name from the Valencian Order of Montesa were of little help to be admitted in the presence of a woman like Beatrice of Hirson, who, although it seemed was lacking a noble title, must have descended from a very long-established French nobility to hold office as the lady-in-waiting of the powerful Matilda. I was thinking about it for quite a while and finally reached the conclusion that it would be best to write a letter of presentation which would hint, with exquisite subtlety, that my interest in seeing her was related to a matter regarding her former lover, William of Nogaret. This, if my suspicions were correct, would provoke an immediate reception.
    I took great care in writing the letter and sent Jonas to the Cité Palace to hand it to her in person, if that was possible; I didn’t want those words falling into the wrong hands. Meanwhile, I spent the morning going over my notes and planning my next moves. A quick visit to the Pont-Sainte-Maxence forest, a few miles north of Paris, was compulsory to study in person the place where Philip IV the Fair, father of the current King, had fallen from his horse, as was told, and had been attacked by a huge deer. According to the reports that His Holiness had given me, on the morning of the 26th of November 1314, the King had gone out hunting in the forest of Pont-Sainte-Maxence, accompanied by his servant, Hugo of Bouville, his personal secretary, Maillard and some relatives. When they reached the area, which the King knew well as he often hunted there, the peasants told him that a rare deer with twelve antlers and a beautiful gray coat had been seen on the outskirts of the forest on two recent occasions. The King, eager to conquer that impressive specimen, went after the deer so fast that he ended up leaving his companions behind and getting lost in the forest. When they found him a while later, he was lying on the ground saying over and over: ‘The cross, the cross …’. He was immediately taken to Paris although (even though he could barely speak) he asked to be taken to his dear palace in Fontainebleau, where he had been born. The only sign of violence that the doctors could find on his body was a blow to the back of his head which surely must have happened when he fell from his horse and was attacked by the deer. He died following twelve days of dementia during which his only and constant wish was to drink water, and when he died, to the horror of those present and the court in general, his eyes could not be shut. According to my copy of Reinaldo’s report, the Grand Inquisitor of France — who accompanied the King during his last days —, the eyelids of the deceased monarch opened again and again, and they had to be covered with a blindfold before he was buried.
    It was clear to me that there were many unanswered questions in that report, for example: Why hadn’t the King sounded his horn when he was attacked by the deer? Where was the pack of dogs? Who had seen this deer with the impossible antlers? Had anyone actually caught this deer after the accident? How could the King get lost in an area that he supposedly knew like the back of his hand? As far as his symptoms, thirst, inability to express himself, dementia, rebellious eyelids, all this fit in well with the blow to his head. I had read about cases of people who, if they managed to wake up following a blow like that and didn’t die, their character had changed forever or they had gone crazy or they mechanically repeated words or body movements without any sense or they had visions or an insatiable hunger was awoken within them that ended up killing them or, like in this case, an unbearable thirst. I wasn’t worried about that as it was clear that the blow to the head was the cause of all that but those words, ‘the cross, the cross …’. What cross was