When she saw the Curator’s wife, Marie felt more than mere disappointment; she had an immediate certainty, inexplicable but absolute, that this dry woman with vertical wrinkles on her face was bringing her bad luck.
Anyone else but Marie would merely have thought that they did not like Madame de Bouville; but with Marie de Cressay all feelings took on a sort of passionate quality, and she attributed to her likes and dislikes the importance of harbingers of fate. ‘I’m sure she has come to do me harm,’ she thought.
Madame de Bouville glanced at her sharply, looking her up and down without kindness.
‘Only four days since you had your baby,’ she cried, ‘and here you are as fresh and pink as an eglantine! I compliment you, my girl; one might think you were ready to begin all over again. In truth God is very merciful towards those who despise His commandments and seems to reserve His trials for the most meritorious. For, would you believe it, Mother,’ went on Madame de Bouville, turning to the Abbess, ‘our poor Queen’s pains lasted thirty hours? Her screams are still ringing in my ears. The King presented himself seat first and they had to use forceps. He was within an ace of dying, and the mother too. It’s the Queen’s sorrow at the death of her husband which is the cause of it all, and if you ask me, it’s a miracle the child was born alive. But when fate takes a hand, you have to admit that everything goes wrong! There was Eudeline, the linen-maid – you know whom I mean?’
The Abbess discreetly nodded her head. She had, among the little novices in the convent, a child of eleven who was the natural daughter of the Hutin and Eudeline.
‘… who was a great help to the Queen, and whom Madame Clémence liked to have continually at her bedside,’ went on Madame de Bouville; ‘well, Eudeline broke her arm falling off a step-ladder and had to be taken to the Hôtel-Dieu. And now, to crown all, here’s the wet-nurse we engaged, who’s been ready waiting for a week, with her milk suddenly dried up. Really, to do a thing like that to us at such a moment! For the Queen, of course, is in no condition to feed the King; she has the fever. My poor Hugues turns this way and that till he’s utterly exhausted and has no idea what to do next, for these are not matters for a man; as for the Sire de Joinville, who no longer has a glimmering of sight or memory, all that we can hope for from him is that he should not take it into his head to expire in our arms! In other words, Mother, I am the only person capable of seeing to things.’
Marie de Cressay wondered why she was being allowed to hear of these royal tribulations, when Madame de Bouville, still cackling, went up to her and said: ‘Luckily I’ve got my head screwed on, and I remembered that this girl I brought here was about to have a child. I am sure you feed it well and that your child is doing splendidly, isn’t that so?’
She seemed to be reproaching the young mother with her good health.
‘Let’s have a closer look,’ she went on.
And with a competent hand, as if she were selecting fruit in the market, she felt Marie’s breasts. The girl took a step backwards with a feeling of revulsion.
‘You can easily feed two,’ went on Madame de Bouville. ‘You will therefore come with me, my good girl, and give your milk to the King.’
‘I cannot, Madame!’ cried Marie, before she had even thought how she could justify her refusal.
‘And why can you not? Because of your sin? You are, nevertheless, a daughter of the nobility; moreover, sin does not prevent your being rich in milk. It will be a means of redeeming yourself a little.’
‘I have not sinned, Madame, I am married!’
‘You’re the only one who says so, my poor girl! In the first place, if you were married, you wouldn’t be here. And in any case that’s beside the point. We need a wet-nurse.’
‘I cannot, because I am awaiting my husband, who is coming here to fetch me. He has let me know that he will come soon and the Pope has promised …’
‘The Pope! The Pope!’ screamed the Curator’s wife. ‘She’s out of her mind, I swear it! She believes she’s married, she believes the Pope’s concerned about her … Stop talking nonsense, and don’t blaspheme the name of the Holy Father! You will come to Vincennes at once!’
‘No, Madame, I shall not,’ replied Marie obstinately.
Little Madame de Bouville lost her temper and, taking Marie by the top of her dress, began shaking her.
‘Here’s an ungrateful creature for you! She sins and gets herself in the family way; we take care of her, save her from the law, put her in the best convent, and when we come to fetch her to be wet-nurse to the King of France, the hussy jibs. Here’s a good subject of the King for you! Don’t you realize that you are being offered an honour that the greatest ladies in the kingdom would fight for?’
‘In that case, Madame,’ said Marie resolutely, ‘why don’t you ask these great ladies who are more worthy than I?’
‘Because they didn’t sin at the right moment, the idiots! But what are you making me say? Enough talk, you’re coming with me.’
If Uncle Tolomei, or the Count de Bouville himself, had come to make the same demand of Marie de Cressay, she would certainly have accepted. She had a generous heart, and would have offered to feed any child in distress; particularly the Queen’s. Pride, and interest too, would have persuaded her to it as well as kindness of heart. Wet-nurse to the King, while Guccio was page to the Pope, should smooth away all their difficulties and make their fortune. But the Curator’s wife had not approached her in the right way. Because she was treated not as a happy mother but as a delinquent, not as a respectable woman but as a serf, and because she still saw Madame de Bouville as a harbinger of misfortune, Marie forgot to think and turned stubborn. Her great dark blue eyes shone with mingled fear and indignation.
‘I shall keep my milk for my own son,’ she said.
‘We shall see about that, you wicked girl! Since you won’t obey of your own accord, I shall call in the escort waiting outside and they’ll remove you by force!’
The Mother Abbess intervened. The convent was an asylum she could not allow to be violated.
‘I am not saying that I approve the conduct of my relation,’ she said, ‘but she has been committed to my care.’
‘By me, Mother!’ cried Madame de Bouville.
‘That is no reason to come and do her violence within these walls. Marie will leave only of her own accord, or at the orders of the Church.’
‘Or on those of the King! For you are a royal convent, Mother, and don’t you forget it! I am acting in the name of my husband; if you want an order from the Constable, who is the King’s tutor, and has just returned to Paris, or an order from the Regent himself, Messire Hugues will go and get them to seal it; we shall lose three hours, but I shall be obeyed.’
The Abbess took Madame de Bouville aside to inform her in a low voice that what Marie had said about the Pope was not altogether false.
‘But what do I care!’ cried Madame de Bouville. ‘I’ve got to keep the King alive and I have no one to hand but her.’
She went out, and called to the men of her escort to seize the rebel.
‘You are witness, Madame,’ said the Abbess, ‘that I have not given my consent to your being forcibly carried off.’
Marie, struggling between two of the escort as they dragged her across the courtyard, screamed: ‘My child! I want my child!’
‘That’s right,’ said Madame de Bouville. ‘She must be allowed to take her child. By rebelling like this she has made us forget everything.’
A few minutes later, Marie, having quickly packed her clothes and clutching her newborn child to her, left the hospice in tears. Outside, two mule-litters were in readiness.
‘Just look at her!’ cried Madame de Bouville. ‘You come and fetch her with a litter, as if she were a princess, and she screams and makes an appalling scene!’
Surrounded by the night, jostled by the trotting of the mules for a whole hour, in a box of wood and tapestry with loose curtains, through which the cold of November entered, Marie was than
kful that her brothers had made her bring her big cloak when she left Cressay. How she had suffered from the heat under the heavy stuff when she arrived in Paris! ‘Am I never to leave anywhere without tears and unhappiness?’ she thought. ‘What have I done that every hand should be against me?’
The baby slept, wrapped in a great fold of the cloak. Feeling this little life, so unconscious and untroubled, snuggling into the hollow of her breast, Marie gradually regained her calm. She was going to see Queen Clémence; she would talk to her of Guccio; she would show her the reliquary. The Queen was young; she was beautiful and pathetic because of her misfortunes. ‘The Queen … it’s the Queen’s child I’m going to nurse!’ Marie thought, realizing for the first time the strange and unexpected nature of this adventure, which Madame de Bouville’s aggressive behaviour had presented in so odious a light.
The rattle of the drawbridge as it was lowered, the hollow sound of the horses’ hooves on the planks, was followed by the clink of their shoes on the cobbles of a courtyard. Marie was told to get out of her litter; she passed through a group of armed soldiers, followed an ill-lit stone corridor, and saw a fat man in a coat of mail, whom she recognized as the Count de Bouville. All about Marie people were whispering; she heard the word ‘fever’ several times. Someone signed to her to walk on tiptoe; a hanging was raised.
In spite of illness the customs of the birth-chamber had been respected. But, since the season of flowers was over, only late and yellow foliage had been spread about the floor and it was already beginning to wither under foot. About the bed seats had been placed for visitors who would never come. A midwife was standing by, crushing aromatic herbs between her fingers. On the hearth, on iron trivets, grey-looking concoctions were boiling. The room was lit only by the fire and by the oil nightlight above the bed.
No sound came from the cradle, which was placed in a corner of the room.
Queen Clémence was lying on her back, her legs raised, humping the sheets, because of the pain she was suffering. Her cheekbones were red, her eyes bright. Marie noticed above all her long golden hair spread over the pillows, and the concentrated gaze which did not seem to see what it was fixed on.
‘I’m thirsty, I’m very thirsty,’ the Queen groaned.
The midwife whispered to Madame de Bouville: ‘She has been shivering for more than an hour; her teeth have been chattering; and her lips turned purple like the face of someone dead. We thought she was dying. We rubbed her whole body; then her skin began to sweat as you can see. She has perspired so much that her linen must be changed; but we cannot find the keys of the linen-room, which were kept by Eudeline.’
‘I will give them to you,’ replied Madame de Bouville.
She led Marie into a neighbouring room, where a fire was also burning.
‘You will live here,’ she said. The royal cradle was brought in. Amid all the linen in which the King was wrapped he was hardly visible. He had a tiny nose, thick, closed eyelids, was puny and sleeping in a sort of flaccid immobility. One had to go very close to him to make sure that he was breathing. From time to time a tiny grimace, a sort of painful contortion, relieved the impassiveness of his features. Before this little being, whose father was dead, whose mother was perhaps to die, and who showed such slight signs of life, Marie de Cressay was assailed with an immense pity. ‘I’ll save him; I’ll make him big and strong,’ she thought.
As there was only one cradle, she laid her own child down beside the King.
2
Leave it to God
THE COUNTESS MAHAUT HAD been in a rage for the last twenty-four hours.
She let her rage and disappointment have full rein to Béatrice d’Hirson, who was helping her dress for the christening of the King.
‘One might have thought, pining as Clémence was, that she would have miscarried! Many stronger than she do so. But no! She lasted out her nine months. She might even have had a still-born child. But not at all! Her brat’s alive. It might at least have been a girl! But not on your life, it had to be a boy. My poor Béatrice, was it worth doing so much, running such great risks – and indeed they’re not yet over – for fate to play such a trick on us?’
For Mahaut was now profoundly convinced that she had only murdered the Hutin to give the Crown of France to her son-in-law and her daughter. She almost regretted not having killed the wife at the same time as the husband, and all her hatred was now turned on the newborn child whom she had not yet seen, towards the baby to whom she was shortly to act as godmother and whose existence, hardly begun, was an obstacle to her ambitions.
This woman, powerful, immensely rich and despotic, had a truly criminal nature. Murder was her favourite method of bending fate to her own advantage; she liked contemplating her murders before she committed them, and afterwards she enjoyed the memory of them; she extracted from them all the excitements of fear, the pleasures of deception and the joys of secret triumph. If a first assassination did not have all the success she counted on, she began accusing fate of injustice, considered herself hard done by, and then began seeking the next victim who stood in her way and whom she might destroy.
Béatrice d’Hirson, reading the Countess’s thoughts, said softly, lowering her long eyelashes: ‘Madame, I have kept some of that excellent powder which served you so well for the King’s sweets in the spring.’
‘You’ve done well, you’ve done well,’ replied Mahaut; ‘it is always better to be provided; we have so many enemies!’
Béatrice, who was tall herself, had to raise her arms to arrange the Countess’s chin-band and place her cloak about her shoulders.
‘You will be holding the child, Madame. You may perhaps not have another opportunity so soon,’ she went on. ‘It’s only a powder, you know, and hardly perceptible on one’s finger.’
She spoke in a suave, tempting voice as if she were suggesting some delicacy.
‘Ah, no!’ cried Mahaut. ‘Not during a christening; it might bring us bad luck!’
‘Do you think so? You would be returning a soul without sin to Heaven.’
‘Besides, God knows how my son-in-law would take it! I’ve not forgotten the expression on his face when I undeceived him about his brother’s death, and the coldness with which he has since treated me. There are too many people whispering accusations against me. One king in the year is enough; let us for the moment bear with the one who has just been born.’
It was a small, almost secret cavalcade that left for Vincennes to make Jean I a Christian; and the barons who had prepared their ceremonial clothes, expecting to be summoned to a great occasion, were left to pay the cost.
The Queen’s illness, the fact that the birth had taken place outside Paris, the darkness of winter, and the little pleasure taken by the Regent in being presented with a nephew, all resulted in the christening being dispatched rapidly as if it were some mere formality.
Philippe arrived at Vincennes accompanied by his wife Jeanne, Mahaut, Gaucher de Châtillon and a few equerries to hold the horses. He had omitted to inform the rest of the family. Besides, Valois was touring his fiefs to gather money; and Evreux had remained in Amiens to bring the Artois affair to a conclusion. As for Charles de La Marche, Philippe had had a lively altercation with him the day before. La Marche had asked his brother, in honour of the birth of the King, to give him a peerage and increase his appanage and revenues.
‘But, Brother,’ Philippe had replied, ‘I am only the Regent; the King alone can give you a peerage – and then only at his majority.’
Bouville’s first words, as he received the Regent in the forecourt of the manor, were to ask: ‘No one is armed, Monseigneur? No one has a dagger, a stiletto, or a misericord?’
No one could tell whether his anxiety was directed towards the escort or the godfathers and godmothers.
‘I am not accustomed, Bouville,’ the Regent replied, ‘to be escorted by unarmed equerries.’
Bouville, at once embarrassed and obstinate, asked the equerries to remain in the outer court.
His zealous prudence began to annoy the Regent.
‘I appreciate, Bouville,’ he said, ‘the zeal with which you have watched over the Queen’s belly; but you are no longer Curator; it is to myself and the Constable that the duty of watching over the King now belongs. We leave you in charge, but do not abuse your powers.’
‘Monseigneur! Monseigneur!’ stammered Bouville. ‘I had no intention of offending you. But there is so much gossip throughout the kingdom. Indeed, I but want you to see that I am faithful to my task, and that I am aware of the honour.’
He was not good at dissimulation. He could not help looking askance at Mahaut, and then immediately lowering his eyes.
‘Everyone clearly suspects me and is afraid of me,’ the Countess thought.
Jeanne de Poitiers pretended to notice nothing. Gaucher de Châtillon, who had not realized the implications of what was going on, dispelled the awkwardness of the moment by saying: ‘Come on, Bouville, don’t leave us to freeze; take us indoors.’
They did not go to the Queen’s bedside. The news Madame de Bouville gave them was most alarming; the fever still had her in its grip, while she complained of appalling headaches and was shaken continuously by nausea.
‘Her stomach is swelling again as if she had never been brought to bed at all,’ explained Madame de Bouville. ‘She cannot sleep, prays that the bells ringing in her ears may be silenced, and talks to us all the time as if she were addressing her grandmother, Madame of Hungary, or King Louis, her dead husband. It’s sad to hear her so delirious and not be able to do anything to stop it.’
Twenty years as chamberlain to Philip the Fair had given the Count de Bouville a long experience of royal ceremonies. How many christenings had he not had to organize?
The ritual objects were handed to those taking part. Bouville and two gentlemen of the Guard placed long white napkins about their necks, holding the ends outstretched before them so that one might cover the basin of holy water, another an empty basin, and the third the cup containing the salt.