The She Wolf of France (28 page)

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
Evreux. 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 he
r 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 byway 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 Pre-aux-Clercs, and a de
spairing young woman in a meadow in the Isle-de-France. The widowed Queen in the Temple would continue to have masses said for a dead child.

4. The council at Chaalis

THE LATE June sky had cleared after the storm. In the royal apartments of the Abbey of Chaalis, 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. Inse
cts escaping the storm had come
in through the arched windows and were fluttering round the flames.

It was
a melancholy evening. T
he expression's 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, th
e Lame, the Great Chamberlain,
and the Constable Gaucher de Chatillon. 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 Reole.

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 Evreux, the Queen, Madame Jeanne of Valois,
Robert's wife - who was called
the Coun
tess 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.

She had arrived at Chaalis arrayed in mourning like a walking catafalque, draped like a church in Passion week. In fact, her daughter Blanche had recently died in the Abbey of Maubuisson to which she had finally been admitted, after first being transferred from Chateau Gaillard to a less forbidding residence near Coutances, a privilege Mahaut had obtained for her in exchange for the annulment of her marriage. But Blanche had not profited much by this amelioration of her lot. She had died only a few months after entering the convent, exhausted by the long years of imprisonment and by the terrible winter nights in the fortress at Andelys. She had died of emaciation, coughing and misfortune, at the age of thirty, wearing a nun's veil and almost mad. And all this for one year of love, if indeed her adventure with Gautier d'Aunay could be called love; al
l this because she had allowed
herself to be drawn into imitating the pleasures of her sister-in
-
law, Marguerite of Burgundy, and at the age of eighteen, when she scarcely knew what she was doing.

The woman who would at this moment have been Queen of France, the only woman Charles the Fair had ever really loved, had thus died at the very moment she had at last achieved a relative peace. And Charles the Fair, in whom her death aroused so many painful memories, was sad, and though his third wife knew very well what he was thinking of, she pretended not to notice it.

And Mahaut had seized the opportunity this death afforded her. She had come, unbidden and unannounced, as if, a sorrowing mother, she was responding merely to the dictates of her heart, and desired to present her condolences to the unhappy former husband; and they had fallen into each other's arms. Mahaut had placed her mustachioed lips to her former son-in
-
law's cheeks; Charles, with a childish gesture, had rested his brow on that monumental' shoulder and had shed a few tears among the giantess' hearse-like draperies. And thus, as so often, human relations were changed by the passage of death and the obliteration of the springs of resentment.

But Mahaut knew very well what she was doing by hurrying to Chaalis; and her nephew Robert was fretting. He smiled at her, they smiled at each other, they called each other `my good
aunt' and `my dear nephew' and both showed that `proper love between relations' to which they had bound themselves by the treaty of 1318. They hated each other. They would have done their best to kill each other had they ever found themselves alone in the same room. The real reason for Mahaut's coming - she had not said so, but Robert was well aware of it - was because of a letter she had received. Indeed, everyone present had received a similar letter; with merely a few minor variations: Philippe of Valois, Jean de Marigny, the Constable, and the King - above all the King.

Beyond the windows the clear night was spangled with stars. Here were eleven people of the highest importance, sitting in a circle under the arched ceiling, betwee
n the pillars with their carved
capitals, and they, felt insufficient. They were unable to persuade themselves they had any real power.

The King, weak in character and limited in understanding, had moreover no immediate family and no personal servants. Who were these princes and dignitaries assembled about him this evening? Cousins or councillors inherited from his father or his uncle. Not one of them was really his, created by him and bound to him. His
father had had
three sons and two brothers sitting i
n his Council; and even on days
when there were quarrels, days when the late Monseigneur
of Valois stormed at everyone,
they remained family rows. Louis the Hutin had had two brothers and two uncles; Philippe the
Long,
the same
two uncles, who supported him
in their diverse ways, as well as a brother, Charles himself. But the survivor had almost no one. His Council gave the irresistible impression of the end of a dynasty; the only hope of a continuation of the line, of a direct succession, was asleep in the womb of that silent woman who, neither particularly pretty nor ugly, was standing beside Charles with her hands clasped, knowing well; that, as Queen she was merely a replacement.

The letter, the notorious letter they were now considering, was dated June 19th, at Westminster. The Chancellor held it in his hand, and the green wax of the broken seal was peeling from the parchment.

`
The matter that has caused King
Edward such great anger appears to be that Monseigneur Mortimer carried the train of the Duke of Aquitaine's mantle at Madame the Queen's coronation. And, natura
lly, the fact that his personal
enemy should have been appointed to his son's entourage with such a considerable mark of dignity can be felt by our Lord Edward only as a personal affront.'

It was Monseigneur Jean de Marigny who was speaking in that suave, melodious, well-modulated voice of his, which he accompanied from time to time with a gesture of his fine hands, on which gleamed his bishop's amethyst. His three superimposed robes were of thin cloth, as was suited to the season, and the outer robe, which was shortest, fell in elegant folds. They were impregn
ated with that particular scent
with which Monseigneur de Marigny liked to anoint himself on coming from the bath or the sweating-room; a bishop rarely smelled so fine. His face seemed to have no weaknesses and his eyebrows made a horizontal line each side of his straight nose. If the sculptor reproduced his features accurately, Monseigneur de Marigny would make a handsome effigy for the cover of his tomb; but that would be a long time hence, for he was still, young. He had known how to profit by his brother's position as Coadjutor to the Iron King, and had also correctly judged the right moment at which to betray that brother. Indeed, he had succeeded in surmounting with ease those vicissitudes which occurred when reigns changed, and had gone from one see to another, ultimately to attain, at the age of forty, the distinction of being a peer spiritual and a member of the King's Council.

`Cherchemont,' said King Charles to his chancellor, `read again that passage in which our brother Edward complains about Messire de Mortimer.'

Jean de Cherchemont unfolded the parchment, held it under a candle, mumbling a little as he searc
hed for the passage, and read:
"The adherence of our wife and our son to our notoriously known traitors and mortal enemies, in particular the said traitor, Mortimer, who carried at Paris the train of our son, in public, during the solemnization of the coronation of our very dear sister, your wife, the Queen of France, at the last Pentecost, with such great shame and vexation to us."'

Bishop Marigny leaned towards Constable Gaucher and murmured: `That's an ill-written letter, and his Latin's worse still.'

The Constable had not heard very well; he contented himself with muttering: `An unnatural sodomite!'

`Cherchemont,' went on the King, `have we any right to refuse the request of our brother of England when he asks us to put a term to his wife's sojourn?'

The w
ay Charles the Fair addressed h
is chancellor, instead of turning, as he normally did, to Robert of Artois, who was at once his senior councillor and his uncle by marriage, proved that for once he had a plan in mind.

Both because he was not absolutely sure of the King's intentions and because he feared to offend
Monseigneur Robert of Artois, -
who was so powerful, Jean de Cherchemont, before answering, took refuge in the end of the letter as if he required to reconsider the last lines before giving his advice.