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

  ‘We tried to reason with her, and indeed much to our own disadvantage; for, if she left us, we should miss her very much, since she does all the housekeeping. But, when it comes to it, we really do understand that, if you have come back to ask for her after so long a time, it must be because she really is your wife, even though the marriage took place in secret. Besides, much time has passed.’

  The bearded brother was spokesman and he was getting a bit mixed up. His younger brother contented himself with nodding approval.

  ‘We frankly admit,’ went on Pierre de Cressay, ‘that we made a mistake when we refused you our sister. But it was not us so much as our mother – may God keep her! – who had decided against it. A gentleman should recognize his errors, and if our sister Marie acted without our consent, we were partly to blame. All that should be wiped out. Time is the master of us all. But now it is she who refuses to see you; and yet I swear to God that she has no other man in mind. That I do know. But I really don’t understand what it’s all about any more. Our sister’s got an odd mentality, hasn’t she, Jean?’

  Jean de Cressay nodded.

  For Guccio it was a splendid revenge to have these two men standing there stammeringly repentant, when they had once come sword in hand in the middle of the night to kill him, and had obliged him to leave France. Now they wanted to give him their sister more than anything else in the world. A little more and they would be praying him to take the bull by the horns, come to Cressay, impose his will and stand out for his rights as a husband.

  But they misunderstood Guccio and his easily offended pride. He cared nothing for the two idiots. Only Marie mattered to him; and Marie was repulsing him when he was there so close to her, and had come prepared to forget all the injuries of the past. Did these people exist merely to humiliate him every time they met?

  ‘Monseigneur de Bouville must have thought she might behave like this,’ said the bearded brother, ‘for he says in his letter: “If Dame Marie, as is very likely, refuses to see the Seigneur Guccio …” Do you know why he should have written like that?’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ replied Guccio. ‘But she must have made her position with regard to me perfectly clear to Messire de Bouville for him to be so sure of it.’

  ‘And yet she has no other man in mind,’ repeated the bearded brother.

  Guccio was getting angry. His dark eyebrows contracted about the vertical line that marked his forehead. This time he really had the right to act towards Marie without scruple. She should be paid for her cruelty with even greater cruelty.

  ‘What about my son?’ he asked.

  ‘He’s here. We brought him with us.’

  In the next room the child, who was inscribed on the list of kings and whom the whole of France thought had died nine years ago, was watching the clerk doing his accounts and playing with a goose-quill. Jean de Cressay opened the door.

  ‘Jeannot, come here,’ he said.

  Guccio, interested in his own reactions, managed to summon up a little emotion. ‘My son, I’m going to see my son,’ he thought. In fact he really felt nothing at all. And yet he had so often longed for this moment. But he had not expected the heavy little countryman’s footsteps he heard approaching.

  The boy came in. He was wearing short breeches and a linen smock; his rebellious lock of hair lay askew on his pale forehead. A real little peasant.

  For a moment the three men were embarrassed, and the child was well aware of it. Pierre pushed him towards Guccio.

  ‘Jeannot, this is …’

  He had to say something, tell Jeannot who Guccio was. And what else could he tell him but the truth?

  ‘This is your father.’

  Guccio had foolishly expected transports, open arms, tears. Little Jeannot looked up at him with astonished blue eyes.

  ‘But I was told my father was dead,’ he said.

  This was a shock to Guccio; he suddenly felt furiously angry.

  ‘Not at all, not at all,’ Jean de Cressay interrupted hastily. ‘He was travelling and couldn’t send news. Isn’t that right, friend Guccio?’

  ‘I wonder how many lies they’ve brought him up on?’ Guccio thought. ‘Patience, I must have patience. How wicked to tell him his father was dead!’ And since he had to say something, he said: ‘How very fair he is.’

  ‘Yes, exactly like our uncle Pierre, the brother of our late father, whose name I bear,’ replied the bearded brother.

  ‘Jeannot, come to me, come,’ said Guccio.

  The boy obeyed, but his rough little hand seemed ill at ease in Guccio’s and he wiped his cheek after being kissed.

  ‘I’d like to have him for a few days,’ Guccio went on, ‘to take him to see my uncle Tolomei, who wants to make his acquaintance.’

  And, as he said this, Guccio automatically closed his left eye, like Tolomei.

  Jeannot looked at him with his mouth open. What a lot of uncles there were! Everyone always seemed to be talking of uncles.

  ‘I’ve got an uncle in Paris who sends me presents,’ he said in a clear voice.

  ‘He’s the one we’re going to visit. If your uncles have no objection. You see nothing against it, do you?’ Guccio asked.

  ‘Of course not,’ replied Pierre de Cressay. ‘Monseigneur de Bouville mentions it in his letter and tells us to permit it.’

  It was obvious that the Cressays never did anything without Bouville’s permission.

  The bearded brother was already thinking of the presents the banker was bound to give his great-nephew. He might reasonably expect a purse of gold, which would be particularly welcome since a murrain had fallen on the livestock this year. And – who could tell? – the banker was old and might well intend mentioning the child in his will.

  Guccio was already savouring his vengeance. But had vengeance ever consoled for lost love?

  It was Guccio’s horse and the Pope’s harness that first attracted the boy. He had never seen so fine a mount. He also stared with a mixture of curiosity and admiration at the clothes this father who had fallen to him from the skies was wearing. He gazed at the skin-tight breeches that had no single crease at the knee, the boots of dark, supple leather, and the short travelling coat of a curiously shot material, leaf-brown in colour, closed high in front by a line of small buttons held in loops, and with a little hood that fell back from the neck.

  The Count de Bouville’s sergeant-at-arms was much more brightly and splendidly dressed in his azure-blue coat gleaming in the sunshine, with its braided scallops at wrist and thigh and its lordly coat of arms embroidered on the breast. But the boy had realized at once that it was Guccio who gave the sergeant orders, and he was lost in admiration for a father who spoke as a master to someone so resplendently clothed.

  They had already ridden some four leagues. In the inn at Saint-Nom-la-Bretèche where they halted, Guccio, in a naturally authoritarian voice, ordered an omelette with herbs, a capon roasted on the spit, and a cream cheese. And wine. The alacrity displayed by the servants still further increased Jeannot’s respect for him.

  ‘Why do you speak differently from us, Messire?’ he asked. ‘You don’t pronounce your words in the same way we do.’

  Guccio was rather hurt at this remark from his own son about his Tuscan accent.

  ‘Because I come from Siena, in Italy, which is my country,’ he replied proudly. ‘And you will become a Sienese too, a free citizen of a town in which we are powerful. And now don’t call me Messire, but Padre.’

  ‘Padre,’ the boy repeated docilely.

  Then Guccio, the sergeant and the boy sat down to their meal. And while they were waiting for the omelette, Guccio began to teach Jeannot the names of common objects in his own tongue.

  ‘Tavola,’ he said, putting his hand on the edge of the table, ‘bottiglia,’ picking up a bottle, ‘vino …’

  He felt rather embarrassed by the boy’s presence, and found it difficult to be himself; he was paralysed by the fear of being unable to make himself loved, and also of being u
nable to love. Though he kept on saying to himself ‘This is my son,’ he felt nothing except a profound hostility to the people who had brought him up.

  Jeannot had never drunk wine before. At Cressay they drank only cider, or even skimmed milk like peasants. He drank a few mouthfuls. He was accustomed to the omelette and the cream cheese, but the roast capon made it like a feast day. He enjoyed this meal taken on the road in the middle of the afternoon. He was not frightened, and the excitement of the adventure made him forget to think of his mother. He had been told he would see her again in a few days’ time. The names Paris and Siena meant little to him and he had no precise idea of how far away they were. Next Saturday he would be back beside the Mauldre and would be able to say to the miller’s daughter and the wheelwright’s sons: ‘I am Sienese.’ Nor would he have to explain matters, since they knew even less about these things than he did.

  When they had swallowed their last mouthful, wiped their daggers on pieces of bread and replaced them at their belts, they remounted their horses. Guccio lifted the boy and placed him in front of him across the saddle-bow.32

  The heavy meal and above all the wine, which he had now tasted for the first time, had made the child drowsy. Before they had gone half a league, he fell asleep, indifferent to the jolting of the trotting horse.

  There is nothing so moving as a sleeping child, particularly during the day, when adults are awake and about their business. Guccio held the jolting, swaying, abandoned little body steady. It was already quite heavy. He instinctively caressed with his chin the fair hair that seemed to be seeking shelter against him and drew his arm closer about the boy, as if to make the little, round, drowsy head lie even closer against his chest. There was a smell of childhood about the little sleeping body. And suddenly Guccio felt himself to be really a father, and proud of it, and tears misted his eyes.

  ‘Jeannot, my Jeannot, my Giannino,’ he murmured, putting his lips to the warm, silky hair.

  He had reined his horse back into a walk and signed to the sergeant to do likewise, so as not to wake the boy and at the same time to prolong his own happiness. What did it matter when they arrived? Tomorrow Giannino would wake up in the house in the Rue des Lombards, which would seem a palace to him; servants would fuss over him, wash him, dress him like a little lord, and a fairy-tale life would begin for him.

  Marie de Cressay refolded the now useless dress under the eyes of her silent but disappointed maid. For the maid had also dreamed of a different life to which she would follow her mistress, and there was a certain reproof in her attitude.

  But Marie had stopped trembling and her eyes were dry; she had made her decision. She had only a few days to wait, a week at most. This morning she had been taken unawares; it was those nine years in which she had turned the same thoughts over and over in her mind which had made her so nervous and afraid and induced her to give so absurd an answer, so crazy a refusal.

  It was because she had been thinking only of the oath Madame de Bouville – that wicked woman – had made her swear so long ago; and of her threats: ‘If you insist on seeing this man again … it will be his death.’

  But the years had gone by. Two kings had succeeded to the throne and no one had ever uttered a word. And Madame de Bouville was dead. Besides, did that terrible oath agree with the laws of God? Was it not a sin to prevent a human being avowing her spiritual troubles to her confessor? Even nuns could be relieved of their vows. Surely no one had the right to separate a wife from her husband? That was not Christian either. And the Count de Bouville was not a bishop, nor indeed was he anything like so terrifying as his wife had been.

  Marie ought to have thought of all these things this morning; she should have realized that she could not live without Guccio, that her place was beside him, and that when Guccio came to fetch her nothing in the world – oaths taken in the past, the secrets of the Crown, the fear of what men might do, or even the punishment of God, were it to be inflicted – ought to prevent her going with him.

  She would not lie to Guccio. A man who still loved you after nine years, had taken no other woman, and had come back to look for you, had a loyal and upright heart, like a knight who surmounted every ordeal. Such a man could share a secret and keep it. Besides, what right had she to lie to him, to let him believe his son was alive and that he was clasping him in his arms, when it was not true?

  Marie would explain to Guccio that their child, their first-born – for, in her thoughts, the dead child was already only their first-born – had been given and exchanged by a tragic concatenation of events to save the life of the real King of France. And she would ask Guccio to share her oath. Together they would bring up the little posthumous Jean, who had reigned during the first five days of his life, until the day came when the barons sought him out to give him back his crown. And the other children they would have would be like real brothers to the King of France one day. If things could all go wrong through the agency of a blind Fate, why should they not also go right?

  All this Marie would explain to Guccio, when he came back in a few days’ time, next week, and brought Jeannot with him, as had been agreed with her brothers.

  And then their happiness, which had been so long deferred, could really begin. And if all joy on earth had to be paid for by an equal weight of suffering, then they would both have earned all their future happiness in advance. Would Guccio want to live at Cressay? Clearly not. In Paris? It would be dangerous for little Jean and they must not defy the Count de Bouville from too close at hand, after all. They would go to Italy. Guccio would take her to that country of which she knew nothing but the beautiful cloth it produced and its clever goldsmiths’ work. She already loved Italy because the man God had selected for her came from that country. Marie was already travelling in her thoughts beside her recovered husband. In a week’s time everything would be all right; she had only a week to wait.

  Alas, in love, it is not enough to have the same desires; they must also be expressed at the same time.

  3

  The Queen in the Temple

  FOR A BOY OF nine whose whole horizon, since he had been of an age to remember, had been limited by a stream, manure pits and village roofs, the discovery of Paris could be no other than an enchantment. But how could this discovery be described when it was made under the aegis of a father who was so proud of his son, who positively gloried in him, and who had him dressed, curled, bathed and anointed, who took him to the best shops, stuffed him with sweetmeats, bought him embroidered shoes and a purse to wear at his belt with real money in it? Jeannot, or Giannino, was having a wonderful time.

  And then there were all the fine houses to which his father took him. For Guccio, on a variety of pretexts, and sometimes on none at all, was making the round of his old acquaintances, merely to be able to say proudly: ‘My son!’ and show off this miracle, this unique splendour to the world: a little boy who said: ‘Padre mio’ with an Île-de-France accent.

  If people showed surprise at Giannino’s fairness, Guccio mentioned his mother who was of noble family; and on these occasions he would assume an expression of pretended discretion, which was indeed redolent both of indiscretion and of that boastfully mysterious air with which Italians feign silence about their conquests. And thus all the Lombards in Paris, the Peruzzi, the Boccanegra, the Macci, the Albizzi, the Frescobaldi, the Scamozzi, and Signor Boccaccio himself were in the know.

  Uncle Tolomei, one eye open, the other closed, his stomach larger than ever and his leg trailing, took a considerable part in all this display. Oh, if only Guccio could come and live in Paris again under his roof, together with little Giannino, how happy the old Lombard would be for the rest of his days.

  But it was an impossible dream. For in that case the child would have to be surrendered to his other family, according to promise, and they would be able to see him only from time to time. But why would not that silly, stubborn Marie de Cressay agree to the regularization of the marriage? Why would she not live with her husband n
ow that everyone was in agreement? Tolomei, though he hated travelling anywhere nowadays, offered to go to Neauphle and make a last attempt.

  ‘But it’s I who no longer want anything to do with her, Uncle,’ declared Guccio. ‘I won’t have my honour flouted. Besides, what pleasure would there be in living with a woman who no longer loves me?’

  ‘Are you quite sure of that?’

  There was one sign, and one only, which made Guccio a little uncertain of the answer to that question. He had found about Giannino’s neck the little reliquary Queen Clémence had once given him when he was in the Hôtel-Dieu at Marseilles, and which he in turn had given Marie once when she was very ill.

  ‘My mother took it from her neck and put it round mine when my uncles brought me to you that morning,’ the boy explained.

  But could he rely on so slender an indication as this, on a gesture that might well have a purely religious significance?

  And then the Count de Bouville had been categorical.

  ‘If you want to keep the child, you must take him to Siena, and the sooner the better,’ he had said to Guccio.

  The interview had taken place at the former Great Chamberlain’s house, behind the Pré-aux-Clercs. Bouville was walking in his garden which was enclosed by walls. Tears came to his eyes when he saw Giannino. He had kissed the little boy’s hand before kissing his cheek and, gazing at him, looking him up and down from head to foot, he had murmured: ‘A real little prince, a real little prince!’

  And as he talked he wiped the tears from his eyes. Guccio was astonished by such evident emotion in a man who had held such high positions, and he was touched by it, taking it for a token of friendship for himself.

  ‘A real little prince, as you say, Messire,’ Guccio had replied happily; ‘and it’s surprising enough when you think that he has seen nothing of life but the country and that his mother, after all, is really only a peasant.’