His thoughts were no longer linked; he was incoherent with anger; and walking up and down the room throwing his leg must have covered a quarter of a league.
‘Perhaps if you went and saw the Queen …’
‘Neither the Queen nor anyone else! Let Marie go back to her muddy hamlet, where the manure’s up to your ankles. No doubt they’ve found her a husband, a fine husband like those squalid brothers of hers. Some hairy, stinking knight who’ll bring up my child, the cuckold! If she came on her knees to me, I wouldn’t have her now, do you hear, I wouldn’t have her!’
‘I think if she came in at this moment, you’d talk in another tone,’ said Tolomei gently.
Guccio turned pale and covered his eyes with his hands. ‘My beautiful Marie …’ He saw her in the room at Neauphle again; he saw her close to him; he could distinguish the golden lights in her dark blue eyes. How could such a betrayal have been concealed behind those eyes?
‘I’m going away, Uncle.’
‘Where to? Are you going back to Avignon?’
‘I should cut a pretty figure there! I told everybody that I was coming back with my wife; I said she had every virtue. The Holy Father himself would be the first to ask me for news.’
‘Boccaccio was telling me the other day that the Peruzzi are undoubtedly going to farm the taxes in the seneschalship of Carcassonne.’
‘No! Neither Carcassonne nor Avignon.’
‘Nor Paris, of course …’ said Tolomei sadly.
There comes a moment towards the evening of every man’s life, however egotistical he may have been, when he feels weary of working for himself alone. The banker, having looked forward to the presence of a pretty niece and a happy family in his house, suddenly saw his own hopes disappear and in their place the prospect of a long and lonely old age.
‘No, I must go,’ said Guccio. ‘I want nothing more to do with France, which grows fat on us and despises us because we are Italian. What has France given me, I ask you? A stiff leg, four months in the Hôtel-Dieu, six weeks in a church, and to cap it all, this! I ought to have known that this country would be no use to me. Do you remember how the day after my arrival I very nearly knocked down King Philip the Fair in the street? It was a bad omen! Not to speak of my sea voyages, in which I twice nearly perished, and of all the time spent counting coppers for villeins in the muddy town of Neauphle, because I believed myself in love.’
‘All the same, you’ll take away one or two good memories,’ said Tolomei.
‘What need of memories have I at my age? I want to go back to my own town of Sienna where there is no lack of pretty girls, the prettiest girls in the world people say when I tell them I’m Siennese. In any case they’re not such bitches as the girls here! My father sent me to you to learn; I think I’ve learnt enough.’
Tolomei opened his left eye; it was a little misty under the eyelid.
‘You may be right,’ he said. ‘Your sorrow will fade more quickly when you’re far away. But regret nothing, Guccio. It’s no bad apprenticeship you’ve served. You have lived, travelled, learned the miseries of the poor and discovered the weaknesses of the great. You have been to the four Courts which dominate Europe, those of Paris, London, Naples and Avignon. There are not many people who have been shut up in a Conclave! You’ve been broken in to business. I shall give you your share; it’s a handsome sum. Love has made you commit a few follies, and you’re leaving a bastard behind you as does everyone who has travelled much … And you’re still only twenty. When do you want to leave?’
‘Tomorrow, Zio Spinello, tomorrow if you don’t mind. But I shall come back!’ Guccio added in a furious voice.
‘Indeed, I sincerely hope so, my boy! I hope you won’t let your old uncle die without seeing you again!’
‘I shall come back one day, and take away my child. For he is mine, after all, as much as he’s the Cressays’. Why should I leave him to them? So that they may bring him up in their stables, like a mongrel hound? I’ll take him away, do you hear, and that will be Marie’s punishment. You know what they say in our country: the vengeance of a Tuscan …’
A terrific uproar on the ground floor cut him short. The house with its wooden beams shook to its foundations as if a dozen drays had entered the courtyard. Doors banged.
Uncle and nephew went to the spiral staircase which seemed to be resounding to the noise of a cavalry charge. A voice was shouting: ‘Banker! Where are you, banker? I need some money.’
And Monseigneur Robert of Artois reached the top of the stairs.
‘Just look at me, my banker friend, I’ve this moment come out of prison!’ he cried. ‘Would you believe it? My honey-sweet, my shortsighted cousin – the King, I mean, since it appears he is so – at last remembered that I was rotting in the gaol he threw me into, and he has now freed me, the kind fellow!’
‘Welcome, Monseigneur,’ said Tolomei without much enthusiasm.
And he leaned forward to look down the stairs, still doubting that the hurricane could have been caused by one man alone.
Lowering his head so as not to bang it against the lintel of the door, the Count of Artois entered the banker’s study and went to a looking-glass.
‘By God! I look like a death’s-head!’ he said, taking his face in his hands. ‘Really, one might die of less! Just imagine it, for seven weeks I’ve only seen the day through a tiny window crossed with iron bars thick as a donkey’s pizzle! Broth twice a day which looked like a colic before you even ate it. Luckily my Lormet had his own methods of supplying me with food, otherwise I should be dead by now. And the bed, if you can call it a bed! Because of my royal blood I was allowed a bed. I had to break the wood to be able to stretch out my legs! But have patience; my dear cousin will pay for it all.’
In fact, Robert had not lost an ounce of weight and prison had not affected his rock-like nerves. If his complexion was a little less high, his grey, flint-coloured eyes were shining more wickedly than ever.
‘And a splendid freedom they’ve allowed me! “You’re free, Monseigneur,”’ the giant imitated the Governor of the Châtelet; ‘“but you may go no further than twenty leagues from Paris; but the office of the King’s sergeants-at-arms must know where you are living; but the Captain of Evreux, if you go to your estates, must be informed!” In other words: “Stay here, Robert, walking the streets under the eyes of the watch, or go and moulder at Conches. But don’t take a step towards Artois, and not a step towards Rheims! And above all, you’re not wanted at the coronation! You might well sing a psalm unpleasing to certain ears!” And they’ve chosen a good day on which to release me. Neither too early, nor too late. The whole Court has left; there’s no one at the Palace, no one at Valois’s house … He’s abandoned me all right, that cousin has! And here I am in a dead city, without even a farthing in my purse for supper tonight or for a wench to serve my amorous mood! Seven weeks, you know, banker! But no, you can’t understand; that sort of thing doesn’t worry you any longer. But mind you, I whored enough in Artois while I was there to keep me quiet for a bit; and there must be a lot of little knaves on the way in those parts who’ll never know that they’ll be able to say “grandfather” when speaking of Philippe-Auguste. But I’ve discovered a strange thing that the doctors and philosophers, the rats, might think on: why should man be furnished with a member which, the more work you give it, the more it asks to do?’
He laughed aloud, cracked an oaken chair as he sat down on it, and suddenly appeared to notice Guccio’s presence.
‘Well, young man, how are your love affairs going?’ he asked, which meant no more, when he said it, than ‘good day’.
‘My love affairs! You may well talk of them, Monseigneur!’ replied Guccio, somewhat annoyed at having been interrupted by a greater and noisier violence than his own.
Tolomei indicated to the Count of Artois with a look that the subject was untimely.
‘What,’ cried Artois with his usual tact, ‘has a fair one forsaken you? Give me her address at once that I
may hasten there! Come, don’t look so sad; all women are whores.’
‘Yes, indeed, Monseigneur, every one of them!’
‘Well, let’s sport with frank whores at least! Banker, I need money. A hundred livres. And I’ll take your nephew out to supper with me, and make him forget his sorrow. A hundred livres! Yes, I know, I know, I already owe you a lot and you think I shall never pay you; but you’re wrong. You’ll see Robert of Artois more powerful than ever. Philippe can pull his crown down to his nose if he likes; it won’t be long before I knock it off. Because I’m going to tell you something worth more than a hundred livres, something which will be very useful to you in judging whom to lend money to. How’s regicide punished? Hanging, beheading, quartering? You’ll soon have the opportunity of witnessing a delightful spectacle: my fat aunt Mahaut, naked as a whore, being pulled apart by four horses and her filthy guts spread out in the dust. And her niggling son-in-law’ll keep her company! The pity of it is that they can’t be executed twice. Because they’ve killed two, the villains! I said nothing while I was in the Châtelet; I didn’t want someone to come and bleed me like a pig one fine night. But I’ve been keeping in touch with things. Lormet, my Lormet as always; he’s a splendid fellow! But listen to me.’
After seven weeks of enforced silence, terrible talker that he was, he was catching up. And he drew breath only to talk the more.
‘Listen to me carefully,’ he went on. ‘One: Louis confiscates the county of Artois from Mahaut in order to give it back to me; Mahaut immediately has him poisoned. Two: Mahaut, to cover herself, assists Philippe to the regency against Valois, who would have supported me in my rights. Three: Philippe gets his law of succession accepted which excludes women from the Crown of France, but not from the inheritance of fiefs, of course! Four: having been confirmed as Regent, Philippe can raise an army to dislodge me from Artois, which I was on the point of completely regaining. Not being a fool, I came and surrendered by myself. But Queen Clémence is about to be brought to bed; they want a free hand; they shut me up in prison. Five: the Queen gives birth to a son. No matter! They isolate Vincennes, hide the child from the barons, say that he won’t live, fix things up with some midwife or wet-nurse whom they frighten or bribe, and kill the second king. After which he goes off and gets crowned at Rheims. That, my friends, is how you obtain a crown. And all this so as not to give me back my county of Artois!’
At the word ‘wet-nurse’ Tolomei and Guccio exchanged a brief but anxious glance.
‘These are things everyone believes,’ went on Artois, ‘but which no one dares proclaim for want of proof. But I have the proof! I’m now going to produce a certain woman who furnished the poison. And then they’ll have to make that Béatrice d’Hirson, who has served as the Devil’s pander in this splendid game, sing a little by the application of the boot.’
‘Fifty livres, Monseigneur; I can give you fifty livres.’
‘Miser!’
‘It’s all I can do.’
‘Very well. You’ll then owe me the other fifty. Mahaut will pay you the lot, with interest.’
‘Guccio,’ said Tolomei, ‘come and help me count out fifty livres for Monseigneur.’
He retired with his nephew into the next room.
‘Uncle,’ murmured Guccio, ‘do you think there is any truth in what he said?’
‘I don’t know, my boy, I don’t know; but I think you’re quite right to leave. It might be a bad thing to get mixed up in this affair; it has a nasty smell. Bouville’s strange manner, Marie’s sudden flight … Of course, one cannot take everything this madman says for gospel; but I’ve often noticed that, when it’s a question of crime, he’s never very far from the truth; he’s an expert in it and scents it from afar. Remember the adultery of the Princesses; it was he who exposed it, and he had already told us about it. As for your Marie,’ said the banker, waving his fat hand in a gesture of uncertainty, ‘she’s perhaps less ingenuous and less frank than we believed. There’s certainly some mystery here.’
‘After her traitorous letter one can believe anything,’ said Guccio, whose thoughts were straying all over the place.
‘Believe nothing, seek nothing; leave. It’s good advice.’
When Monseigneur of Artois had taken possession of the fifty livres, he would not be satisfied till Guccio agreed to take part in a little celebration he intended to hold on the occasion of his being freed. He needed a companion and would have got drunk with his horse rather than do so alone.
He insisted so much that Tolomei finally whispered to his nephew: ‘Go, or we shall wound him. But hold your tongue.’
Guccio therefore finished his unhappy day in a tavern, whose owner paid tribute to the officers of the watch to be allowed to carry on some of the traffic of a brothel. Moreover, every word that was said in the place was reported to the office of the sergeants-at-arms.
Monseigneur of Artois was at his most typical: insatiable at the pitcher, prodigious in appetite, obstreperous, obscene, overflowing with human kindness towards his young companion, while he raised the whores’ skirts in order to show everyone Mahaut’s true likeness.
Guccio, encouraged to emulate him, did not neglect the wine. His eyes bright, his hair in disorder and his movements uncertain, he shouted: ‘I know things too … Ah, if I were to tell you!’
‘Tell me, tell me!’
But, drunk as he was, Guccio preserved an underlying prudence.
‘The Pope …’ he said. ‘Oh, I know a lot about the Pope.’
Suddenly he burst into floods of tears on a whore’s shoulder; then he slapped her face because he saw in her the image of all feminine betrayal.
‘But I shall come back and I shall take him away!’
‘Who, the Pope?’
‘No, the child!’
The evening had become confused, vision uncertain, and the girls provided by the brothel-keeper had discarded their clothes, when Lormet came to Robert of Artois and whispered in his ear: ‘There’s a man outside, watching us.’
‘Kill him!’ the giant said casually.
‘Very well, Monseigneur.’
Thus Madame de Bouville lost one of her servants; she had sent him to follow the young Italian.
Guccio was never to know that Marie, by her sacrifice, had probably saved him from finishing up as a corpse floating on the waters of the Seine.
Sprawling in a dirty bed across the breasts of the girl whose face he had smacked, and who now showed herself understanding of man’s sorrows, Guccio continued to insult Marie, imagining that he was avenging himself on her by taking this bought body in his arms.
‘You’re quite right! I don’t like women either; they’re all deceitful,’ said the whore, whose face Guccio was never afterwards able to remember.
The next day, his hat pulled down over his eyes, his limbs weak, exhausted both in body and soul, Guccio took the road to Italy. He was taking with him a handsome fortune in the form of a letter of credit signed by his uncle; it represented his share of the profits in the business he had done during the last two years.
That same day King Philippe V, his wife Jeanne, and the Countess Mahaut, with all their suites, arrived in Rheims.
The gates of the manor of Cressay had already closed on the beautiful Marie, who was to live there, inconsolable, in a perpetual winter.
The real King of France was to grow up there as if he were a bastard. He was to take his first steps in the muddy courtyard among the ducks, play in the field with the yellow irises by the banks of the Mauldre, in that very field where Marie, as she walked through it, recalled again and again the face of her charming Siennese and the fleeting passage of her dead love. She was to keep her oath and for thirty years carry her secret; only at last to confess it, on her deathbed, to a Spanish priest who passed that way.
Marie de Cressay’s destiny was a strange one. Crossed in love, she was condemned to a life of solitude; but once in her whole life did she leave her native village and then only to be involved, in all innoce
nce and helplessness, at the heart of a dynastic drama; while her confession, one day, was to trouble Europe.fn1
9
The Eve of the Coronation
THE GATES OF RHEIMS, surmounted by the royal arms, had been freshly painted. The streets were hung with bright draperies, carpets and silks, the same indeed that had served a year and a half earlier for the coronation of Louis X. By the Archiepiscopal Palace three great halls had been quickly run up by carpenters; one for the King’s table, another for the Queen’s, and a third for the great officers, so that the whole Court might be feasted.
The burgesses of Rheims, at whose expense the coronation took place, found the cost somewhat heavy.
‘If the occupants of the throne die as quickly as this,’ they said, ‘and we have the honour of crowning a king every year, we shall soon only be able to eat once in twelve months and have to sell our shirts to do so! Clovis is costing us dear by having had himself anointed here! If another town in the kingdom would care to buy the holy ampulla, we would certainly do a deal.’ To the difficulties of finding the money was added the difficulty of finding, in midwinter, enough food for so many mouths. But the burgesses of Rheims had collected eighty-two oxen, two hundred and forty sheep, four hundred and twenty-five calves, seventy-eight pigs, eight hundred rabbits and hares, eight hundred capons, one thousand eight hundred and twenty geese, more than ten thousand hens and forty thousand eggs, without counting the barrels of sturgeons, which had to be brought from Malines, the four thousand freshwater crayfish, the salmon, pike, tench, bream, perch, carp, and the three thousand five hundred eels for making pies. They had collected two thousand cheeses, and hoped that the three hundred casks of wine, which was luckily a local product, would suffice to satisfy the thirsty gullets which would be banqueting there for three days or more.
The chamberlains, who had arrived in advance to organize the rejoicings, made singular demands. Had they not decided that at one single course three hundred roast herons should be served? These officers were very like their master, the King in a hurry, who ordered his coronation almost from one week to the next, as if it were a halfpenny Mass to mend a broken leg.