The Iron King (28 page)
Then the three black-draped carts began to move again; the Provost’s sergeants-at-arms began to empty the Place, and everyone went back to his business, his forge, his butcher’s shop or his garden, with the strange spiritual calm of people for whom the death of others was no more than a spectacle.
For, in those centuries, when numbers of children died in the cradle and half the women in childbirth, when epidemics ravaged adult life, when wounds were but rarely cured, and sores did not heal, when the Church’s teaching was ceaselessly directed towards a consciousness of sin, when the statues in the sanctuaries showed worms gnawing at corpses, when each one carried throughout his life the spectre of his own decomposition before his eyes and the idea of death was habitual, natural and familiar, to be present at a man’s last breath was not, as it is for us, a tragic reminder of our common destiny.
While upon the road to Normandy, a woman with a shaven head in a black-draped cart, was screaming, ‘Tell Monseigneur Philippe that I am innocent! Tell him that I have not deceived him!’ the executioners, upon the Place du Martrai, divided in the presence of some determined loafers the belongings of their victims. Indeed, the custom was that the executioners should keep for themselves everything worn by the condemned ‘below the belt’. Thus it was that the handsome purses from the Queen of England fell into their hands. Each of the master executioners took one; it was a rare piece of good luck, something that might happen only once during the whole of their lives as executioners.
They were engaged in this division when a handsome dark woman, clothed more as a daughter of the nobility than as a townswoman, approached them and, in a low, somewhat languorous voice, asked for the tongue of one of the executed men. This beautiful girl was Beatrice d’Hirson.
‘They say that it is good for the stomach-ache,’ she said. ‘The tongue of whichever one you like; it’s all the same to me.’
The executioners looked at her somewhat suspiciously, wondering whether this had not something to do with sorcery. For it was well known that the tongue of a man who had been hanged, particularly one who had been hanged upon a Friday, was useful for raising the Devil. But could the tongue of a man who had been decapitated serve the same purpose?
However, since Beatrice had a handsome shining piece of gold in the palm of her hand, they acceded to her request and discreetly gave her what she desired.
W
HILE THE BLOOD OF
the brothers Aunay dried upon the yellow earth of the Place du Martrai, where the dogs, for many days, came to sniff and yelp, Maubuisson was slowly recovering from its nightmare.
The King’s three sons remained invisible till evening. No one visited them, except for the gentlemen attached to their persons; everyone kept clear of the doors of their apartments, behind which the three men were in the profound grip of anger, humiliation or sorrow.
Mahaut, with her small escort, had returned to Paris at midday. Distracted with hate and sorrow, she had tried to force herself into the King’s presence. Nogaret had come to inform her that the King was working and did not wish to be disturbed. ‘It is he; it is this watchdog who bars the way and prevents my reaching his master.’ Everything confirmed the Countess Mahaut’s impression that the Keeper of the Seals was the sole artisan of the disaster which had overtaken her daughters and of her own personal disgrace. Everything tended to make her believe this: Nogaret was capable of anything.
‘I leave you to God’s mercy, Messire de Nogaret, God’s mercy,’ she said in a threatening voice as she left him.
Other passions and interests were already in question at Maubuisson. The familiars of the exiled Princesses tried to renew the invisible threads of power and intrigue, even by denying the friendships of which they had been so proud but a short time before. The loom of fear, vanity and ambition set itself going once more to weave again, upon a new design, the cloth so brutally torn.
Robert of Artois, always prudent, had the cunning not to boast of his triumph; he waited merely to harvest its fruits. But already the respect that normally was given to the Burgundy clan was turning towards himself.
In the evening, at supper, the King had about him not only his two brothers and his daughter, Marigny, Nogaret and Bouville, but also Robert of Artois; from which fact it became evident that he was already regaining favour.
It was a small supper; almost a mourning supper. In the long narrow room, next to the King’s chamber, where the repast was served, there reigned a heavy silence. Even Monseigneur of Valois was silent, and the greyhound Lombard, as if he felt the diners’ embarrassment, had left his master’s feet to go and lie before the fireplace.
When the equerries, between two courses, were changing the slices of bread, Lady Mortimer came in, carrying in her arms the little Prince Edward, so that he might kiss his mother good night.
‘Madame de Joinville,’ said the King, calling Lady Mortimer by her glorious maiden name, ‘bring my grandson to me.’
‘My
only
grandson,’ he added to himself.
He took up the child and for a long moment held him before his eyes, studying the little innocent face, round and rosy, the dimples marked by shadows. ‘Whose child will you show yourself to be?’ Philip the Fair wished to ask. ‘Your weak, unstable and debauched father’s, or my daughter Isabella’s? For the honour of my blood, I should like you to take after your mother; but for the welfare of France, I pray heaven that you should only be your weak father’s son.’
‘Edward! Give a smile for Monsieur your grandfather,’ said Isabella.
The child appeared to have no fear of the unblinking stare fixed upon him. Suddenly, putting out his little hand, he buried it in the sovereign’s golden hair, and pulled out a curly lock.
Philip the Fair smiled. At once there was a sigh of relief among the diners, everyone laughed, and dared at length to speak.
When the child had gone and the meal was over, the King dismissed everyone but Marigny and Nogaret whom he signalled to remain. For a long moment he said nothing and his counsellors respected his silence.
‘Are dogs creatures of God?’ he asked suddenly, though his audience had no idea from what train of thought the question arose.
He had risen to his feet and placed his hand on the warm neck of the greyhound who had got up at his approach and was stretching himself before the fire.
‘Sire,’ replied Nogaret, ‘we know a great deal about men because we are men ourselves, but we know very little about the rest of the phenomena of nature.’
Philip the Fair went to the window and remained there looking out, though he saw nothing but the confused shapes of stone and vegetation. As often happens to men in positions of great power on the evenings of days when they have assumed tragic responsibilities, his mind was engaged with a vague and mysterious problem, seeking some certainty in the order of the universe which might justify his life, his position and his acts.
At last he turned round and said, ‘Enguerrand, what is done is done, and the marks of fire and steel cannot be effaced. The culprits are at this moment face to face with God. But where tends the kingdom? My sons have no heirs.’
Marigny said without raising his head, ‘They will have, Sire, if they take new wives.’
‘They have wives before God.’
‘God can efface,’ said Marigny.
‘God does not obey the laws of the earth. God does not consider my kingdom but only His own. It is not by prayer that I shall free my sons from their ties!’
‘The Pope can free them,’ said Marigny.
The King then turned to look at Nogaret.
‘Adultery is no motive for annulling a marriage,’ said the Keeper of the Seals drily.
‘We have no other recourse today but Clement,’ said Philip the Fair. ‘And my first consideration must not be the common law, even if it is in the hands of the Pope. A King must foresee the fact that he may die at any time. To whom, Nogaret, and you Enguerrand, would you first go to announce my death, if it occurred at this moment? To Louis. He is the eldest; so he must be the first to be freed.’
Nogaret raised his long thin hand which caught the light from the hearth.
‘Indeed, I cannot see how Monseigneur of Navarre can ever wish to take back his wife, nor can I see that it would in any circumstances be a desirable thing for the kingdom.’
‘I feel sure,’ said Philip the Fair, ‘that you will know how to convince the Curia and Pope Clement that a King’s reasons are not those of an ordinary man, but that they are, in short, reasons.’
‘I will devote myself to it with the utmost zeal, Sire,’ replied Nogaret.
There was a sound of galloping hooves. Marigny rose and went to the window, while Nogaret said to the King, ‘The Duchess of Burgundy
20
will most certainly do the best she can to put obstacles in our way with the Holy See. Monseigneur Louis must be warned not to destroy his chances by his temperamental peculiarities.’
‘Yes,’ said Philip the Fair. ‘I will speak to him tomorrow and you will go as soon as possible to see the Pope.’
The noise of galloping hooves, which had drawn Marigny to the window, ceased upon the flagstones of the courtyard.
‘A horseman, Sire,’ said Marigny. ‘He seems to have come a long way; his clothes are covered with dust and his horse is exhausted.’
‘From whence does he come?’ asked the King.
‘I do not know; I cannot see his livery.’
21
Indeed, night had fallen and the precincts of the castle were lost in shadow. Marigny turned from the window and came back to the fire.
A moment later there was a hasty step in the corridor and Bouville, the first chamberlain, entered.
‘Sire, a courier has arrived from Carpentras and demands an audience of you.’
‘Show him in.’
A young man of about twenty-five years of age came in. He was tall and broad in the shoulder. His yellow-and-black tunic was covered with dust; the embroidered cross of the Papal Couriers gleamed on his chest. He held his hat, covered with dust and mud, in his left hand and the carved staff which was the insignia of his function. He advanced towards the King, knelt on his right knee, and took from his belt the silver-and-ebony box which contained the message.
‘Sire,’ he said, ‘Pope Clement is dead.’
The King and Nogaret started and their faces turned pale. An appalling silence followed upon the announcement. The King opened the ebony box, took out the parchment and broke the seals. He read it with concentration as if to make sure of the truth of the news.
‘The Pope we created is now dead,’ he murmured, handing the parchment to Marigny.
‘When did he die?’ asked Nogaret.
‘Six whole days ago. On the night of the nineteenth-twentieth,’ replied the courier.
‘Forty days,’ said the King.
He had no need to say more, for his three ministers were in process of making the same calculation. Forty days had passed, and no more, since upon the Island of Jews the voice of the Grand Master of the Templars had cried from among the flames, ‘Pope Clement, Chevalier Guillaume de Nogaret, King Philip, I summon you to the Tribunal of Heaven before the year is out!’ No more than six weeks had elapsed and the curse had already fallen upon the first of them.
‘Tell me,’ said the King, speaking to the courier and making him a sign to rise, ‘how did the Holy Father die, and what was he doing at Carpentras?’
‘Sire, he was journeying to Cahors and was forced to stop on the way. He was suffering from fever and pain for several days. He said that he wished to return to die in his birthplace. The doctors tried everything to cure him, even to the point of making him take a powder of powdered emeralds which, so it appears, is the best remedy for the illness from which he suffered. But nothing was any good. He choked to death. The cardinals were at his bedside. I know no more.’
He fell silent.
‘Leave us,’ said the King.
The courier went out. There was no sound in the room but the breathing of the four men, rooted to the place where they had heard the news, and the snoring of a greyhound, torpid with heat.
The King and Nogaret looked at each other. ‘Which of us two next?’ they thought. Philip the Fair’s eyes appeared even larger and more unblinking than usual. His face was astonishingly pale, and within the long royal robe that covered his body he felt stiff with the icy rigor of death.