The She-Wolf (The Accursed Kings, Book 5) Page 24

  Bouville nodded his head. Yes, yes, it really was very surprising.

  ‘You can’t do better than take him with you. Besides, haven’t you the august approval of the Holy Father? I shall give you two sergeants to accompany you to the frontier of the kingdom, so that no harm shall come to you, or to … this child.’

  He seemed to find it difficult to say: ‘your son’.

  ‘Goodbye, my little prince,’ he said, embracing Giannino once more. ‘Shall I ever see you again?’

  And then he had walked quickly away, because the tears were welling to his eyes again. The child was really too painfully like the great King Philip the Fair.

  ‘Are we going back to Cressay?’ Giannino asked on the morning of May 11, when he saw the travelling-trunks being packed and a great commotion in the house announcing a journey.

  He did not seem particularly impatient to return to the manor.

  ‘No, my son,’ replied Guccio; ‘we’re going to Siena first.’

  ‘Is my mother coming with us?’

  ‘No, not at present; she’ll join us later.’

  The boy seemed satisfied. It occurred to Guccio that after hearing lies about his father for nine years, Giannino was now entering on a further period of years in which he would hear lies about his mother. But what else could he do? Perhaps one day he would have to let him believe his mother was dead.

  There was still one visit to make before leaving; the most fascinating if not the most important. He must pay his respects to Queen Clémence of Hungary.

  ‘Where is Hungary?’ the boy asked.

  ‘Very far away, towards the east. It takes weeks of travelling to get there. Very few people have ever been there.’

  ‘But why does Queen Clémence live in Paris if she is Queen of Hungary?’

  ‘She has never been Queen of Hungary, Giannino; her father was King of Hungary, but she was Queen of France.’

  ‘Then she’s the wife of Charles the Fool?’

  No, the King’s wife was Madame of Évreux, who was being crowned that very day; and later on they would go to the royal palace to have a look at the ceremony in the Sainte-Chapelle, so that Giannino might leave with a last memory more splendid than all the rest. Guccio, who was normally so impatient, grew neither weary nor bored explaining to the young mind things that seemed self-evident but indeed were not so unless you had known them always. For this was how you learned about the great world.

  But then who was this Queen Clémence they were going to see? And how did Guccio know her?

  From the Rue des Lombards to the Temple, by way of the Rue de la Verrerie, was not very far to walk. On the way Guccio told the boy how he had gone to Naples with the Count de Bouville – ‘the fat lord, you know, whom we visited the other day and who kissed you’ – to ask for this Princess’s hand in marriage to King Louis X, who was now dead. And how he, Guccio, had been with Madame Clémence in the ship that had brought them to France, and how she had nearly been drowned in a great storm before they reached Marseilles.

  ‘And that reliquary you’re wearing round your neck was given me by her in gratitude for having saved her from drowning.’

  And then, when Queen Clémence had had a son, Giannino’s mother had been chosen as wet-nurse.

  ‘My mother has never told me anything about it,’ the boy said in surprise. ‘So she knew Madame Clémence too?’

  All this seemed very complicated. Giannino would have liked to know whether Naples was in Hungary. But then passers-by were jostling them; a phrase hung unfinished in the air; a water-carrier interrupted a reply. It was very difficult for the boy to make sense of the story. And in twenty or thirty years’ time he would say: ‘My father told me about these things, one day, in Paris, when we were walking up the Rue du Temple, but I was very young; he told me that I was the foster-brother of King Jean the Posthumous …’

  Giannino knew very well what a foster-brother was. He had often heard them spoken of at Cressay; the country was full of foster-brothers. But foster-brother to a king? That gave one food for thought. For a king was a tall, strong man with a crown on his head. It had never occurred to him that kings had foster-brothers, or might be little children who died at five days old.

  ‘My mother has never told me anything about it,’ he repeated.

  And he began to blame his mother for concealing so many astonishing things from him.

  ‘And why is the place we’re going to called the Temple?’

  ‘Because of the Templars.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I know. They used to spit on the Cross, worship the head of a cat, and poison the wells so as to keep all the money in the kingdom.’

  He had heard about this from the wheelwright’s son, who had got his information from his father, who had got it from God knew where. It was not easy for Guccio, among all the crowd and in such a short time, to explain to his son that the truth was a little more complex. And the boy could not understand why the Queen they were going to see should be living with such wicked people.

  ‘They no longer live there, figlio mio. They no longer exist; it’s the Grand Master’s old house.

  ‘Master Jacques de Molay? Was that he?’

  ‘You must ward off the evil eye with your fingers, my boy, when you utter that name. The Templars were suppressed, burnt or driven out, and the King seized the Temple which was their house.’

  ‘Which king?’

  Among so many kings, poor Giannino was all at sea.

  ‘Philip the Fair.’

  ‘Did you ever see King Philip the Fair?’

  The boy had heard talk of this terrifying king who was now so highly respected; but it was all part of those shadowy times before he was born. And Guccio was touched.

  ‘Of course,’ he thought, ‘he wasn’t born then; to him it’s all as remote as Saint Louis.’

  And now they had to walk even slower because of the crowd, and he said: ‘Yes, I saw him. Indeed, I nearly knocked him down in one of these very streets because of two greyhounds I was taking for a walk on a lead. It was the day I arrived in Paris twelve years ago.’

  And time seemed to flow back over him like a huge wave, submerging him before breaking. A froth of days lay all about him. He was already a man recounting his memories.

  ‘So you see,’ he went on, ‘the house of the Templars became the property of King Philip the Fair, and afterwards of King Louis, and afterwards of King Philippe the Long, who preceded the present King. And King Philippe the Long gave the Temple to Queen Clémence in exchange for the Castle of Vincennes which she had inherited by the will of her husband King Louis.’33

  ‘Padre mio, I want a waffle.’

  He had noticed a delicious smell of waffles coming from a stall, and his interest in these kings who succeeded each other all too rapidly and exchanged their houses suddenly vanished. He already knew, too, that to begin by saying ‘Padre mio’ was a sure way of getting what he wanted; but it didn’t work this time.

  ‘No, on the way back; you’ll only make yourself dirty. And remember what I told you. Don’t talk to the Queen unless she talks to you; and kneel to kiss her hand.’

  ‘Like in church?’

  ‘No, not like in church. Look, I’ll show you, or at least I’ll explain, because I find difficulty in doing it owing to my wounded leg.’

  They were an odd sight for the passers-by, the short dark foreigner and the fair boy practising going down on their knees in a doorway.

  ‘And then you must get up quickly; but don’t jostle the Queen.’

  The Temple had been much altered since the days of Messire de Molay; and indeed had been split up. Queen Clémence’s residence consisted only of the great square tower with its four turrets and a few secondary lodgings, buildings and stables round the huge paved courtyard, and the garden behind. The rest of the commandery, the lodgings of the knights, the armouries, and the workshops of the companions, cut off by high walls, had been put to other uses. And the huge courtyard, where several hundred men could be parade
d, seemed now deserted and dead. The state litter with its white curtains, which was waiting to take Queen Clémence to the coronation, looked like a ship that had arrived in error or distress in some disused port. Though there were a few grooms and footmen standing around the litter, the whole house had an atmosphere of silence and desuetude.

  Guccio and Giannino entered the tower of the Temple by the very same door from which Jacques de Molay had come from his dungeon, twelve years before, to be taken to the place of execution.34 The rooms had been redecorated; but, in spite of the tapestries and splendid works of art in ivory, silver and gold, the heavy vaults and narrow windows, the walls deadening all sound, and indeed the very proportions of his warriors’ residence, all made it far from a suitable habitation for a woman, particularly for a woman of only thirty-two. It all seemed designed for those rough men who wore a sword over their robe, and who had at one time assured the total supremacy of Christendom within the frontiers of the old Roman Empire. For a young widow the Temple seemed a prison.

  Madame Clémence did not keep her visitors waiting long. She appeared, already dressed for the ceremony she was to attend, wearing a white dress, with a bodice of veiling across her breast, a royal cloak hanging from her shoulders and a gold crown on her head. She looked a true Queen, like those depicted in church windows. Giannino thought queens dressed like this every day of their lives. Beautiful, fair, magnificent and distant, her eyes a little absent, Clémence of Hungary smiled conventionally, with that smile a Queen, who has neither power nor realm, owes it to herself to give people who approach her.

  This dead woman without a tomb, who had to fill her too long days with useless occupations, collected pieces of goldsmiths’ work, and this was the only interest she had in the world, or indeed pretended to have.

  The audience was rather disappointing for Guccio, who had expected some display of emotion, but not for the boy, who saw before him a saint out of Heaven in a mantle of stars.

  Madame of Hungary asked all the proper questions that form the basis for the conversation of sovereigns who have nothing to say. For all Guccio’s attempts to turn the conversation to their common memories, to Naples and the storm, the Queen evaded him. For, in fact, all memories were painful to her and she thrust them from her. And when Guccio, trying to attract her attention to Giannino, said he was ‘the foster-brother of your son, Madame’, her beautiful face turned almost hard. A Queen did not weep in public. But it was too great cruelty, though unconscious, to show her a fair, fresh, living child of the same age as hers would have been, and one, moreover, who had sucked the same milk.

  The voice of their common blood was silent, only the voice of misfortune was alive. And the day, perhaps, was not very well chosen, for Clémence was going to attend the coronation of the third Queen of France since herself. Out of politeness, she forced herself to ask: ‘What will this pretty boy do when he’s grown up?’

  ‘He will be a banker, Madame; at least I hope so, like his father and all his ancestors.’

  Like all his ancestors. Queen Clémence was in the presence of her son. She did not know it. She never would know it.

  She imagined Guccio had come to claim a debt or ask payment for some gold cup or jewel she had bought from his uncle. She was so used to tradesmen’s demands. She was surprised when she realized that this young man had come merely to visit her. Were there still people who came to pay their respects and wanted nothing from her, neither money nor services?

  Guccio told the boy to show the Queen the reliquary he was wearing round his neck. The Queen had forgotten, and Guccio had to remind her of the Hôtel-Dieu in Marseilles, where she had given it to him. ‘This young man was once in love with me,’ she thought.

  It was the illusory consolation of a woman whose love-life had ended too soon and who grasped at any evidence of an emotion she might once have aroused, even when that emotion was so tenuous that the man who showed it was not even aware of it himself.

  She bent down to kiss the boy. But Giannino immediately fell on his knees again and kissed her hand.

  She looked round, almost automatically, for a present to give him and, seeing a silver-gilt box, handed it to the boy, saying, ‘I am sure you like comfits? Take this comfit-box, and may God keep you.’

  It was time to set out for the ceremony. She got into her litter, and ordered the white curtains to be closed. She was suddenly devastated by an intolerable sense of unhappiness that seemed to emanate from her whole body, from her breasts, legs and stomach, from that whole useless beauty which was hers. At last she could weep.

  In the Rue du Temple there was a considerable crowd all moving the same way, towards the Seine and the Cité, to see what they could of the coronation, though they would doubtless see little more than themselves.

  Guccio took Giannino by the hand and followed the white litter, as if he were part of the Queen’s escort. In this way they were able to cross the Pont-au-Change, enter the courtyard of the Palace, and watch the great lords going into the Sainte-Chapelle, wearing their state robes. Guccio recognized most of them and could tell the boy their names: the Countess Mahaut of Artois, still taller in her coronet; Count Robert, her nephew, who was even taller still; Monseigneur Philippe of Valois, now a Peer of France, with his lame wife beside him; and Madame Jeanne of Burgundy, the other widowed Queen. But who were this young couple, some eighteen and fifteen years of age, who were following them? Guccio asked his neighbours. He was told they were Madame Jeanne of Navarre and her husband, Philippe of Évreux. Indeed, you had to get used to the changes life brought about. The daughter of Marguerite of Burgundy was fifteen years old, and now she was married, after all the dynastic dramas that had been caused by her presumed bastardy.

  The crush was so great that Guccio had had to hoist Giannino on to his shoulders; the little devil weighed a ton.

  And then Queen Isabella of England came by, having returned expressly from Ponthieu. Guccio thought her astonishingly little altered since he had seen her long ago at Westminster, when he had delivered to her a message from Count Robert. Though he had thought of her as being taller than she was. Beside her walked her son, young Edward of Aquitaine. And everyone craned their necks because the train of the boy’s ducal mantle was borne by Roger Mortimer, as if he were the Prince’s Great Chamberlain or tutor. It was an audacious thing to do. Perhaps only Madame Isabella would have dared show such defiance before the peers, bishops and all the others who had received letters from her cuckolded husband. Roger Mortimer wore an air of triumph, which was only surpassed by that of King Charles the Fair, whom no one had ever seen looking so happy before. The Queen of France, so it was whispered, was two months gone at last. And her official coronation, which had been deferred till now, was by way of being a reward.

  Giannino suddenly lent down to Guccio’s ear and said: ‘Padre mio, the fat lord who kissed me in his garden the other day is there, looking at me.’

  What a confused and disturbing succession of thoughts passed through good Bouville’s mind as from amid the press of dignitaries he saw the real King of France, whom all the world thought in his tomb at Saint-Denis, perched on the shoulders of a Lombard banker, while the wife of his second successor was being crowned.

  And that very afternoon, on the road to Dijon, the pleasantest and safest for Italy, two of that same Count de Bouville’s sergeants-at-arms were escorting the Sienese traveller accompanied by the fair boy. Guccio Baglioni thought he was carrying off his son; in fact, he was kidnapping the true and legitimate King of France. And this secret was known by no one save an august old man in a room in Avignon filled with the cries of birds, a former Chamberlain in his garden in the Pré-aux-Clercs, and a despairing young woman in a meadow in the Île-de-France. The widowed Queen in the Temple would continue to have Masses said for a dead child.

  4

  The Council at Chaâlis

  THE LATE JUNE sky had cleared after the storm. In the royal apartments of the Abbey of Chaâlis, that Cistercian establishment
founded by the Capets in which the entrails of Charles of Valois had been deposited a few months ago,35 the candles were smoking and mingling the smell of wax with the scent of the earth after rain and the odour of incense that lingered about all religious houses. Insects escaping the storm had come in through the arched windows and were fluttering round the flames.

  It was a melancholy evening. The expressions of all those present were thoughtful, sullen or bored. The tapestries that hung over the bare stone walls of the vaulted chamber were already old; they were strewn with lilies and followed the pattern in general use in the royal residences. There were some ten people assembled about Charles IV: Count Robert of Artois, Count Philippe of Valois, the Bishop of Beauvais, Jean de Marigny, a Peer of the Realm, the Chancellor Jean de Cherchemont, Count Louis of Bourbon, the Lame, the Great Chamberlain, and the Constable Gaucher de Châtillon. The last had lost his eldest son the previous year, and it seemed to have aged him at a single blow. He now really looked every one of his seventy-six years; and he was getting increasingly deaf, which he attributed to the bombards which had been let off in his ear at the siege of La Réole.

  A few women had been admitted because it was a family matter that had to be dealt with this evening. There were the three Jeannes, who were the first ladies of the kingdom; Madame Jeanne of Évreux, the Queen, Madame Jeanne of Valois, Robert’s wife – who was called the Countess of Beaumont, in accordance with her husband’s official title, though the latter, from habit, was still referred to as Monseigneur of Artois – and then Jeanne of Burgundy, the wicked, avaricious granddaughter of Saint Louis, who was lame like her cousin of Bourbon, and was the wife of Philippe of Valois.

  And then Mahaut, a Mahaut with grey hair and dressed in black and purple, heavy of bust, buttock, arm and shoulder, colossal. People often seemed to grow shorter with age, but not Mahaut. During these last months she had become an old giantess, and was even more impressive than as a young giantess. It was the first time in a very long while that the Countess of Artois had appeared at Court without a coronet on her head for the ceremonies at which her rank as a Peer of the Realm compelled her attendance. It was the first time, since the death of her son-in-law, Philippe the Long, that she had been seen at a Council.