as, if not the prime mover, at any
rate the principal performer in the plot. His wife, Joan (Isabel) of
Angouleme, widow of the late King of England, John Lackland, and mother
of the reigning king, Henry III., was indignant at the notion of becoming
a vassal of a prince himself a vassal of the King of France, and so
seeing herself--herself but lately a queen, and now a king's widow and a
king's mother--degraded, in France, to a rank below that of the Countess
of Poitiers. When her husband, the Count of La Marche, went and rejoined
her at Angouleme, he found her giving way alternately to anger and tears,
tears and anger. "Saw you not," said she, "at Poitiers, where I waited
three days to please your king and his queen, how that when I appeared
before them, in their chamber, the king was seated on one side of the
bed, and the queen, with the Countess of Chartres, and her sister, the
abbess, on the other side: They did not call me nor bid me sit with them,
and that purposely, in order to make me vile in the eyes of so many folk.
And neither at my coming in nor at my going out did they rise just a
little from their scats, rendering me vile, as you did see yourself. I
cannot speak of it, for grief and shame. And it will be my death, far
more even than the less of our land which they have unworthily wrested
from us; unless, by God's grace, they do repent them, and I see them in
their turn reduced to desolation, and losing somewhat of their own lands.
As for me, either I will lose all I have for that end or I will perish in
the attempt." Queen Blanche's correspondent added, "The Count of La
Marche, whose kindness you know, seeing the countess in tears, said to
her, 'Madam, give your commands: I will do all I can; be assured of
that.' 'Else,' said she, 'you shall not come near my person, and I will
never see you more.' Then the count declared, with many curses, that he
would do what his wife desired."

And he was as good as his word. That same year, 1241, at the end of the
autumn, "the new Count of Poitiers, who was holding his court for the
first time, did not fail to bid to his feasts all the nobility of his
appanage, and, amongst the very first, the Count and Countess of La
Marche. They repaired to Poitiers; but, four days before Christmas, when
the court of Count Alphonso had received all its guests, the Count of La
Marche, mounted on his war-horse, with his wife on the crupper behind
him, and escorted by his men-a