The Iron King (19 page)

Since he had not received the reception he had expected at the English Court nor, on his appearance alone, been given the honours due to a prince, he came to the conclusion, as he stepped on to the soil of France once more, that the English were barbarians. As for Queen Isabella, however unhappy she might be, however contemptibly she might be treated by her husband, it was no more than she deserved. ‘Was one to cross the sea at the risk of one’s life, only to be given the thanks due to a servant? Those people had a great air, but their manners were not from the heart. They rebuffed the most loyal devotion. They need feel no astonishment if they were so little liked and so often betrayed.’

Upon these very same roads a week ago, he had thought of himself as an ambassador and a royal lover. Now Guccio began to understand that fortune does not smile upon young men as it does in fairy tales. But he would have his revenge. How, or upon whom, he did not yet know, but revenge was what he intended to have.

In the first place, since destiny and the contempt of kings had destined him to be but a Lombard banker, he would be such a banker as had never before been seen. His uncle Tolomei had charged him to return by the branch at Neauphle-le-Vieux to recover a debt. Very well, the debtors would soon discover the sort of lightning that had struck them!

Journeying by Pontoise, in order to turn off across the Île de France, Guccio, who always had to be playing a part to himself, had become the implacable creditor. Beside him the Jew of Venice, who in the legend demanded a pound of flesh for a pound of gold, would have seemed positively tender-hearted.

Thus he arrived at Neauphle on the morning of the feast of Saint Hugh. The branch of the Tolomei bank occupied a building near the church, on the town square built on the side of a hill.

Guccio hustled the employees of the bank, demanded to see the account-books and rated everyone. What on earth was the chief clerk thinking about? Had he, Guccio Baglioni, the nephew of the head of the company, to go out of his way each time a sum of three hundred pounds was due?
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, who were these squires of Cressay who owed three hundred pounds? He was informed. The father was dead, which Guccio already knew. What more? There were two sons, aged twenty and twenty-two. What did they do? They spent their time hunting. Evidently idlers. There was also a daughter aged sixteen. Certainly ugly, Guccio decided. And what of the mother who ran the house since the Squire of Cressay’s death? They were people of good family, but utterly ruined. How much was their house and land worth? Fifteen hundred pounds more or less. They had a mill and a hundred serfs on their property.

‘And owning all that, do you mean to say you haven’t been able to make them pay up?’ Guccio cried. ‘You’ll see that they’ll soon do so for me.’ Where did the Provost live? At Montfort-l’Amaury? Very well. What was his name? Portefruit? Good. If they hadn’t paid up by tonight, he would go and see the Provost and have their property seized. That was all there was to it!

He mounted his horse again and left for Cressay as if he were going to take a fortress single-handed. ‘My gold or distraint, my gold or distraint,’ he kept repeating to himself. ‘And they can pray to God and his Saints.’

The trouble was that someone had had the same idea before him, and that someone was Provost Portefruit.

Cressay, which is a mile and a half from Neauphle, is a village built on the side of a valley by the bank of the Mauldre, a stream which is not too wide for a horse to jump.

The castle Guccio came in sight of was in fact no more than a large manor house in somewhat poor repair. It had no moat, since the river served it for defence together with low towers and a marshy approach. The whole place was redolent of poverty and decay. The roofs were collapsing in several places; the pigeon-loft appeared ill-stocked; there were cracks in the mossy walls, while wide gaps in the neighbouring woods revealed hundreds of stumps sawn off close to the ground. There was a considerable bustling in the courtyard as the Siennese entered it. Three royal sergeants-at-arms, their belilied staves in their hands, were harrying some ragged-looking serfs to gather the livestock, fasten the oxen in pairs and bring sacks of grain from the mill to load on to the Provost’s wagon. The shouting of the sergeants, the running to and fro of terrified peasants, the bleating of some twenty sheep and the screeching of chickens together produced an astonishing hubbub.

No one paid any attention to Guccio; no one came to take his horse, so he tied the bridle to a ring. An old peasant passing by merely said, ‘Bad luck has fallen upon this house. If the master were alive, he’d die a second death. It’s unjust!’

The door of the building was open and from it came the sound of a violent argument.

‘It would seem that I have not come on a very propitious day,’ thought Guccio, whose bad temper was increasing all the time.

He mounted the steps to the threshold and, guided by the sound of the voices, entered a long, dark chamber, with stone walls and a beamed roof.

A young girl, whom he scarcely bothered to look at, came to meet him.

‘I have come on business and wish to speak to someone belonging to the family,’ he said.

‘I am Marie de Cressay. My brothers are here and so is my mother,’ replied the girl in a hesitant voice, pointing to the far end of the room. ‘But they are very busy at the moment.’

‘No matter, I’ll wait,’ said Guccio.

And to show that he intended doing so, he went over to the fireplace and extended his boot to the flames, though he did not feel cold.

At the far end of the room, the argument was still going on. With her two sons, one bearded, the other beardless, but both tall and ruddy, Madame de Cressay was stubbornly holding her own with a fourth personage whom Guccio soon realised was Provost Portefruit.

Madame de Cressay – known as Dame Eliabel in all the surrounding district – had a bright eye, a fine bust, and bore her forty years buxomly in her widow’s weeds.

‘Messire Provost,’ she cried, ‘my husband got into debt in order to equip himself for the King’s war in which he gained more wounds than profit, while the domain, without a man to look after it, got on as best it could. We have always paid our tithes, our State benevolences and given charity to God. Who has done more in the Province, may I ask? And is it to enrich people of your sort, Messire Portefruit, whose grandfather went barefoot in the gutters hereabouts, that we are to be robbed?’

Guccio looked about him. A number of rustic stools, two chairs with backs to them, benches fastened to the wall, some chests and a great pallet bed with curtains which, nevertheless, revealed the palliasse, made up the furniture of the room. Above the hearth hung an old shield with faded colours. The war-shield, doubtless, of the late Squire of Cressay.

‘I shall complain to the Count of Dreux,’ went on Dame Eliabel.

‘The Count of Dreux is not the King, and I am acting upon the King’s orders,’ replied the Provost.

‘I don’t believe you, Messire Provost. I will not believe that the King orders people who have formed part of chivalry for two hundred years to be treated like malefactors. Indeed, if that were the case, the kingdom would cease to function.’

‘At least give us time!’ said the bearded son. ‘We will pay by instalments. You cannot strangle people like this.’

‘Let us put an end to this argument. I have already given you time,’ interrupted the Provost, ‘and you have paid nothing.’

He had short arms, a round face and spoke in a sharp voice.

‘My job is not to listen to your complaints, but to collect debts,’ he went on. ‘You still owe the Treasury three hundred and twenty pounds and eight pence: if you haven’t got them, that’s too bad. I shall seize your belongings and sell them.’

Guccio thought, ‘That fellow is using exactly the tone I intended to use myself and, by the time he’s finished, there’ll be nothing left to seize. This is a peculiarly useless journey. I wonder if I should join them straight away?’

He felt angry with the Provost who had appeared so inopportunely and was taking the wind out of his sails, stealing the very part he had intended to play himself.

The girl who had received him remained standing not far away. He looked at her more closely. She was fair and had beautiful waves of hair showing beneath her coif, a luminous complexion, great dark eyes and a slender, straight and well-turned figure. She seemed very embarrassed that a stranger should be present at the scene. It was no everyday occurrence to see a young cavalier of agreeable appearance, whose clothes testified to a certain wealth, pass through those parts; it was most unfortunate that this should occur upon the family’s most disastrous day.

Guccio’s eyes remained fixed on Marie de Cressay. However ill-disposed he felt, he realised that he had thought badly of her without knowing her. He had not expected to find so attractive a girl in such a place. Guccio’s eyes slid from her breast to her hands; they were white, well-formed and slender, altogether in keeping with her face.

At the far end of the room the argument was still going on.

‘Isn’t it bad enough to have lost a husband without having to pay six hundred pounds to keep a roof over one’s head? I shall complain to the Count of Dreux,’ repeated Dame Eliabel.

‘We have already paid three hundred,’ said the bearded son.

‘To seize our possessions is to reduce us to hunger, to sell them is to condemn us to death,’ said the second son.

‘The law is the law,’ replied the Provost. ‘I know the law and I shall sell you up as surely as I am levying distraint.’
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Once more these were the very words that Guccio had prepared.

‘This Provost seems an odious man. What grudge does he owe you?’ Guccio asked in a low voice.

‘I don’t know, and my brothers know little more: we understand very little about these things,’ replied Marie de Cressay. ‘It is something to do with inheritance tax.’

‘And is that what the six hundred pounds are due for?’ said Guccio.

‘Disaster has overtaken us,’ she murmured.

Their eyes met, held for a moment, and Guccio thought the girl was going to burst into tears. But on the contrary, she was brave in the face of adversity, and it was only from modesty that she turned her beautiful dark blue eyes away.

Guccio thought for a moment. His anger against the Provost was beginning to mount, precisely because the man was showing him the disagreeable part that he had been prepared to play himself.

Suddenly, leaping across the room, Guccio flung himself before the agent of authority and cried, ‘Wait a moment, Messire Provost! Are you quite sure that you are not in process of committing theft?’ In his stupefaction, the Provost turned upon him and asked him who he was.

‘That does not matter,’ replied Guccio, ‘and you’ll be much happier in ignorance, if by any chance your accounts are not correct. I, too, have reason to be interested in the inheritance of the Squires of Cressay. Would you be so good as to tell me your estimate of the value of the estate?’

As the other tried to take a high tone with him, threatening him with the sergeants-at-arms, Guccio went on, ‘Take care! You are speaking to a man who but the other day was the guest of the Queen of England, and who tomorrow has the power to make known to Messire Enguerrand de Marigny how his Provosts behave. So you’d better answer, Messire: how much is the estate worth?’

These words had considerable effect. At the name of Marigny, the Provost was troubled; the family fell silent, listening astonished; and Guccio felt that he had grown in stature by a couple of inches.

‘According to the estimates of the bailiwick, Cressay is worth three thousand pounds,’ the Provost at length replied.

‘Really, three thousand?’ cried Guccio. ‘Three thousand pounds a country manor, while the Hôtel-de-Nesle, one of the most beautiful houses in Paris, the residence of Monseigneur the King of Navarre, is scheduled on the registers of the tithe at five thousand pounds? Estimates in your bailiwick are very high.’

‘There is the land too.’

‘The whole estate is worth no more than fifteen hundred and I know this from a sure source.’

Upon part of his forehead, above his left eye, the Provost had a birthmark, a huge strawberry-mark which turned violet in emotion. While talking to him Guccio never took his eyes off it, and this put the Provost somewhat out of countenance.

‘Would you mind telling me now,’ went on Guccio, ‘what the inheritance tax is?’

‘Fourpence in the pound in this bailiwick.’

‘You’re lying disgracefully, Messire Portefruit. The tax is two-pence in the pound for nobles in every bailiwick. You are not the only one who knows the law. I know it too. This man is taking advantage of your ignorance to cheat you like the thief he is,’ said Guccio, turning to the Cressay family. ‘He comes here to cheat you by using the King’s name, but he has failed to tell you that he farms tithes and taxes, and that he will send to the King’s Treasury only what is prescribed by law while the rest goes into his own pocket. And if he sells you up, who will then buy the Castle of Cressay, not for three thousand but for fifteen hundred or less, or merely for the debt? This is a fine plan, Messire Provost!’

All Guccio’s irritation, all his anger and annoyance, accumulated upon the journey, had now found its outlet. He grew heated as he talked. He had found at last an opportunity of seeming important, of being respected and of playing the part of a strong man. Without being altogether aware of it, he had gone over to the camp he had come to attack, he was defending the weak and assuming the role of a righter of wrongs.

As for the Provost, his fat round face had grown pale and the violet strawberry-mark above his eye made a dark patch upon his forehead. He waved his over-short arms up and down like a duck. He protested his honesty. It was not he who had calculated the accounts. A mistake might have been made by his clerks or perhaps by those of the bailiwick.

Very well! We will calculate these accounts over again,’ said Guccio.

In a few minutes he was able to show that the Cressays owed no more than a hundred and fifty pounds.