The She-Wolf (The Accursed Kings, Book 5) Read online

  One day in Paris, when Roger Mortimer was walking in the Temple quarter, accompanied only by Alspaye and Ogle, he was grazed by a block of stone falling from a building under construction. He was saved from being crushed to death only by the noise the block made as it hit a plank in the scaffolding. At the time he thought it merely an accident; but three days later, as he was coming from Robert of Artois’s house, a ladder fell in front of his horse. Mortimer went to seek advice from Tolomei, who knew the secrets of Paris better than anyone. The Sienese sent for one of the leaders of the Companion Masons of the Temple who had kept their privileges in spite of the dispersal of the Knights of the Order. And the attempts on Mortimer’s life ceased. Indeed, from then on, as soon as the workmen saw the black-clothed English lord, they saluted him with raised caps from their scaffoldings. Nevertheless, Mortimer took to having a stronger escort and had his wine tested with a narwhal’s horn as a precaution against poison. The vagabonds in Robert of Artois’s pay were told to keep their eyes and ears open. The dangers threatening Mortimer merely increased Queen Isabella’s love for him.

  And then suddenly, at the beginning of August, a little before the time arranged for the English homage, Monseigneur of Valois, whose power was now so firmly based that he was generally referred to as ‘the second King’, suddenly collapsed, at the age of fifty-five.

  For several weeks, he had been extremely irascible, losing his temper about everything and nothing; in particular, he had flown into a great rage, which had frightened his entourage, on receiving an unexpected proposal from King Edward that they should marry their youngest children, Louis of Valois and Jane of England, who were both about seven years old. Had Edward realized too late the blunder he had made two years ago by refusing his eldest son in marriage, and did he think he was going to win Valois over by this offer and detach him from the Queen’s party? Monseigneur Charles, reacting somewhat eccentrically perhaps, had taken this proposal as another insult, and had become so enraged that he had broken every object on his table, which was very abnormal behaviour in him. At the same time he had shown a feverish impatience in his approach to the work of government, had complained of the slowness of Parliament in ratifying decrees, and had argued with Mille de Noyers about the accounts produced by the Exchequer; and had then complained of the exhaustion all these duties caused him.

  One morning in Council, as he was about to sign an act, he let the goose-quill fall as it was being handed to him, and it spattered ink over the blue robe he was wearing. He bent as if to pick up the quill and was unable to raise himself; his hand hung down by his leg and his fingers had turned stiff as marble. He was surprised by the silence all about him, and did not realize he was falling out of his chair.

  They picked him up. His eyes were fixed in their sockets, turned up towards the left, his mouth was twisted to the same side, and he was unconscious. His face was very red, almost purple, and they hastily summoned a physician to bleed him. As had happened to his brother, Philip the Fair, eleven years earlier, he had been stricken in the head, in the mysterious mechanism of the will. They thought he was dying and, when they got him back to his house, the huge household was thrown into the tragic bustle of mourning.

  However, after a few days, during which he seemed to be alive more by the fact of breathing than by any consciousness of mind, he recovered a sort of semi-existence. His power of speech returned, though it was hesitant, badly articulated, stumbled over certain words, and lacked all the fluency and force that had previously distinguished it. His right leg was paralysed, as was the hand that had dropped the goose-quill.

  Sitting motionless in a chair, oppressed with heat from the coverings with which it was considered proper to stifle him, the former King of Aragon and Emperor of Constantinople, the Count of Romagna, the Peer of France, the perpetual candidate to the Holy Roman Empire, the tyrant of Florence, the conqueror of Aquitaine, the assembler of crusades, suddenly realized that all the honours a man may reap count for nothing when his body is in process of dissolution. He who since childhood had had no anxiety but to acquire the goods of the earth, suddenly became aware of other cares. He demanded to be taken to his manor of Perray, near Rambouillet, to which he had seldom gone but which had now suddenly become dear to him by one of those eccentric longings the sick have for places where they believe they may recover their health.

  The similarity of his disease to that which had struck down his elder brother obsessed his mind which, though it had become less energetic, was still as clear as ever. He sought in his past deeds the reason for this punishment the Almighty had inflicted on him. Become weak, he turned pious. He thought of the Day of Judgment. But the proud easily persuade themselves of a clear conscience; Valois found almost nothing with which to reproach himself. In all his campaigns, in all the pillages and massacres he had ordered, in all the extortions he had imposed on provinces he had conquered or delivered, he considered that he had always used his powers, both as general and prince, for the good. Only one memory caused him remorse, only one action seemed to him to be the possible cause of his present expiation, one name alone hung on his lips when he examined his career: Marigny. For, indeed, he had never really hated anyone, except Marigny. In the case of all those others whom he had ill-treated, punished, tortured, sent to their deaths, he had never acted except out of a conviction that it was for the general good, which he confused with his own ambitions. But the case of Marigny had really been a matter of private hatred. When accusing Marigny, he had deliberately lied; he had borne false witness against him; and he had organized false depositions. He had shrunk from no baseness in order to send the former Prime Minister, Coadjutor and Rector of the Kingdom, who had then been younger than he himself was now, to swing at Montfaucon. There had been no other reason for this except his desire for vengeance, the rancour he felt at seeing, day after day, another enjoy greater power in France than he did himself.

  And now, sitting in the courtyard of his manor of Perray, looking at the birds flying past and watching his grooms bring out the beautiful horses he would never ride again, Valois had begun – the word surprised him, but there was no other – had begun to love Marigny, to love his memory. He would have liked his enemy to be still alive so that he might be reconciled to him and talk to him of the many things they had both known and experienced and about which they had quarrelled so much. He missed his elder brother, Philip the Fair, his brother Louis of Évreux, and even his two first wives, less than his old rival; and at moments, when he thought no one was looking, he might have been surprised muttering a few phrases of a conversation with a dead man.

  Every day he sent one of his chamberlains to distribute a bag of money in charity to the poor of a Paris district, parish by parish; and the chamberlains were ordered to say as they placed the coins in the filthy hands: ‘Pray, good people, pray God for Monseigneur Enguerrand de Marigny and for Monseigneur Charles of Valois.’ He believed he might earn the Divine Mercy if his name were coupled with that of his victim in the same prayers. And the people of Paris were much surprised that the powerful and magnificent Lord of Valois should desire his name to be mentioned after that of the man whom he had once proclaimed responsible for all the misfortunes of the realm and had had hanged in chains from a gibbet.

  In the Council the power had passed to Robert of Artois who, owing to the illness of his father-in-law, now suddenly found himself promoted to the first rank. The giant frequently galloped down the road to Perray, in company with Philippe of Valois, to go to ask the sick man’s advice. For everyone was aware, and Artois first of all, of the gap that had suddenly been opened in the direction of the affairs of France. Of course Monseigneur of Valois had often passed for a bungler, had indeed often made decisions without having given them enough thought, and had governed by instinct rather than principle; but from having moved from Court to Court, from Paris to Spain and from Spain to Naples, from having supported the interests of the Holy Father in Tuscany, from having taken part in all the campaigns i
n Flanders, from having intrigued for the Empire and from having sat for more than thirty years in the Councils of four kings of France, he had acquired a habit of placing the problems of the realm within the framework of the affairs of Europe. It was a mental process that took place almost automatically.

  Robert of Artois, who was a stickler for custom and procedure, had not such wide views. Also, people said of the Count of Valois that he was ‘the last’, though they could not have explained precisely what they meant by this, unless it was that he was the last representative of the grand manner of administering the world, which would doubtless disappear with him.

  King Charles the Fair seemed quite indifferent and journeyed from Orléans to Saint-Maixent and to Châteauneuf-sur-Loire, still waiting for his third wife to announce the happy news that she was pregnant.

  Queen Isabella had become, so to speak, mistress of the palace in Paris, and held a sort of second English Court there.

  The date of the homage had been fixed for August 30. Edward therefore waited for the last week in the month to set out on his journey and pretend to fall ill at Sandown Abbey, near Dover. The Bishop of Winchester was then sent to Paris to certify under oath, if need be, though he was not asked to do so, the truth of the excuse, and to suggest the substitution of the son for the father, it being understood that Prince Edward, who had been made Duke of Aquitaine and Count of Ponthieu, would bring the promised sixty thousand livres.

  On September 16 the young prince arrived, but accompanied by the Bishop of Oxford and above all by Walter Stapledon, Bishop of Exeter and Lord Treasurer. In selecting Stapledon, who was one of the most active and violent partisans of the Despenser party, and also the cleverest, most cunning and among the most hated of his entourage, King Edward emphasized not only the fact that he had no intention of changing his policy but that he mistrusted everything that was going forward in Paris. The Bishop of Exeter’s mission was not solely that of an escort.

  The very day of their arrival, and almost at the very moment Queen Isabella was clasping her son in her arms, it was learned that Monseigneur of Valois had had a relapse and that it was to be expected God would take him to Himself at any moment. Everyone, the family, the great dignitaries, the barons who were in Paris, the English envoys, immediately hurried to Perray, except the indifferent Charles the Fair, who was superintending a few interior alterations at Vincennes which he had ordered Painfetiz, his architect, to undertake.

  And the people of France continued to enjoy the happy year of 1325.

  7

  Each Prince who Dies …

  TO THOSE WHO HAD not seen him during these last weeks Monseigneur of Valois seemed to have changed terribly. In the first place, everyone was used to seeing him always with some form of head-dress, whether it was a large crown glittering with precious stones on days of state, or an embroidered velvet cap whose long scalloped crest fell to his shoulder, or again one of those caps of maintenance with a gold coronet about it which he wore within doors. For the first time he appeared bareheaded, and his hair was fair, mingled with white and faded with age, while illness had taken the twist out of his long curls, which now hung lifelessly down his cheeks and over the pillows. That he should have grown so thin was startling enough, when one considered how stout and ruddy he had been, but it was less so than the contorted immobility of one side of his face and the twisted mouth from which a servant was continually wiping away the saliva, or than the dull fixity of his eyes. The gold-embroidered sheets, the blue hangings sewn with lilies which hung draped like a baldachin over the bed-head, merely served to emphasize the dying man’s physical decay.

  And before receiving the crowd of people who were now pressing into the room, he had asked for a looking-glass and for a moment had studied that face which, only two months ago, had dominated kings and nations. What did prestige and the power of his name matter to him now? Where were all the ambitions he had pursued so long? And what satisfaction was there in always walking with one’s head held high while other people bowed, since within that head, the day before yesterday, there had taken place so shattering a fall into the dark void? And what was the use of the hand whose back and palm servants, grooms and vassals had hurried so assiduously to kiss, now that it lay dead beside him? And the other hand, which he could still control, and which he would use in a little while for the last time to sign the will he was about to dictate – if a left hand would lend itself to writing – did it belong to him any more than the signet ring with which he sealed his orders and which would be slipped from his finger after his death? Had anything ever really belonged to him?

  His right leg, which was completely paralysed, seemed already to have been taken from him. And at times he felt a sort of empty chasm in his chest.

  Man is a thinking individual who acts on other men and transforms the world. And then, suddenly, the individual disintegrates, falls apart, and then what is the world, and what are other men? At this moment, the important thing for Monseigneur of Valois was no longer titles, possessions, crowns, kingdoms, the exercise of power, or the primacy of his own person among the living. The emblems of his lineage, the acquisition of wealth, even the heirs of his blood whom he saw assembled about him, none of these was of any account in his lustreless eyes. The important things were the September air, the leaves, still green but beginning to turn, which he could see through the open windows, but above all the air, the air he breathed with such difficulty and which was engulfed in that chasm which seemed to lie deep within his chest. As long as he could feel the air entering his throat, the world would continue to exist with himself as its centre, but a frail centre now, like the last flicker of a candle-flame. And then everything would cease to be, or rather everything would continue to be, but in an utter darkness and a terrifying silence, as a cathedral still exists when the last candle has been put out.

  Valois thought of the great deaths in his family. He could hear again the words of Philip the Fair: ‘See what the world is worth. Here lies the King of France!’ He remembered those of his nephew, Philippe the Long: ‘Look on your Sovereign Lord; there is none among you, however poor he may be, with whom I would not exchange my lot!’ At the time, he had heard these words without understanding them; but now he knew what the princes of his family had felt at the moment of passing into the tomb. There were no other words in which to express it, and those who still had time to live could not understand it. Each man who dies is the poorest man in the world.

  And when all was dissolved, destroyed and extinguished, when the cathedral was filled with shadows, what would that poorest of men discover on the other side? Would he find what he had been taught by religion? Yet what were those teachings but immense and alarming uncertainties? Would he be brought before a Judgment Seat; and what was the face of the Judge like? And in what scales would all the actions of his life be weighed? What punishment could be inflicted on a being who no longer existed? Punishment … What punishment? Perhaps the punishment consisted in being conscious at the moment of crossing the dark wall.

  Charles of Valois could not put aside the thought that Enguerrand de Marigny had also been conscious, indeed even more completely conscious, for he was a man in good health and at the height of his powers, who was not dying of the rupture of some secret cog in the human mechanism, but by another’s will. For him it had not been the last flicker of a single candle, but all the flames blown out at once.

  The very same marshals, dignitaries and great officers who had accompanied Marigny to the scaffold were here now, standing round his bed, filling the whole room, overflowing into the next room beyond the door, and they had that very same look of men who were leading one of their number to his last heartbeat, strangers to the death they were watching, participants in a future from which the condemned man was eliminated.

  Oh, he would have given all the crowns of Byzantium, all the thrones of Germany, all the sceptres and all the gold from ransoms for one look, just one, in which he did not feel himself eliminated. Sorrow
, compassion, regret, horror, and the sadness of memories: all these might be seen in the circle of multi-coloured eyes surrounding the bed of a dying prince. But every one of these emotions was simply a proof of his elimination.

  Valois looked at his eldest son, Philippe, the tall fellow with the big nose, standing beside him under the baldachin, who tomorrow, or one day soon, or perhaps even in a minute’s time, would be the only, the real Count of Valois, the living Valois; tall Philippe was sad, as was proper, and was holding the hand of his wife, Jeanne of Burgundy, the Lame; but he was also being careful to adopt the right attitude because of the future before him, and he seemed to be saying to those present: ‘Look, it’s my father who’s dying!’ And from those features, of which he was the source and the progenitor, Valois was wiped out.

  And the other sons: Charles of Alençon who avoided catching the dying man’s eye, and turned slowly away when their glances met; and young Louis, who was frightened, seemed indeed almost ill with fear because this was the first deathbed he had ever attended. And his daughters, several of whom were present: the Countess of Hainaut, who from time to time made a sign to the servant whose duty it was to wipe his mouth, and her younger sister, the Countess of Blois, and a little farther away the Countess of Beaumont beside her giant husband Robert of Artois, both standing in a group with Queen Isabella of England and the young Duke of Aquitaine, the boy with the long eyelashes, behaving as well as if he was in church, who would have but this one memory of his great-uncle Valois.