The Iron King (30 page)
Then beautiful Beatrice closed her eyes; her upper lip curled curiously, uncovering little white teeth; and she gave herself up to the illusion that she was in the Devil’s grasp.
Besides, did not Everard limp?
N
OGARET WORKED EVERY NIGHT
as he had done all his life. And every morning the Countess Mahaut hoped for the arrival of news which would re-open to her the King’s door. In vain. Messire de Nogaret seemed to be in peculiarly good health, and Beatrice had to bear the fury of the terrible Countess. She went back to Master Engelbert. As she expected, Everard had suddenly disappeared. She began to have doubts about him, and also doubted the power of Pharaoh’s Serpent; she feared that out of spite or because of the calcined tongue of one of the Aunays the Devil had directed his blows elsewhere.
One morning in the third week of May, Nogaret, unusually, arrived rather late for a meeting of the Privy Council and entered the hall upon the heels of the King, brushing against Lombard as he passed.
All the usual counsellors were present and, for once, the two brothers and the three sons of the King were all gathered together.
The most urgent matter in hand was the election of the Pope. Marigny had just received a report from Carpentras, where the cardinals, who had been holding a conclave since the death of Clement V, were in process of disputing to such an extent that an early issue seemed unlikely.
The pontiff’s throne had now been vacant for four weeks, and the situation required that the King of France should make known his intentions without delay.
All present knew the King’s desire; he wished the Papacy to remain at Avignon, under his hand; he wished to choose himself, if not apparently at least in fact, the future head of the Christian Church, and to put him under an obligation by the mere fact of selecting him; he wished that the huge political organisation which was the Church should not be able to act, as it had so often done in the past, contrary to the policy of the Kingdom of France.
But, indeed, the twenty-three cardinals who were present at Carpentras, cardinals who came from all over the Christian world, from Italy, from France, from Spain, from Sicily and from Germany, and who had acquired their dignity for peculiarly unequal services, were divided into almost as many rival camps as there were birettas.
Theological argument, political opposition, rivalry of interest, and family jealousies exacerbated their disagreement. With the Italian cardinals in particular, there existed irremediable hatreds between the Caetani, the Colonna and the Orsini.
‘These eight Italian cardinals,’ said Marigny, ‘are agreed upon one point only, that of removing the Papacy back to Rome. Fortunately, they are not in agreement as to who should be elected Pope.’
‘That agreement may well come with time,’ remarked Monseigneur of Valois.
‘That is why they must not be allowed to have the time,’ replied Marigny.
There was a brief silence, and at that moment Nogaret felt a sensation of nausea in his stomach and a difficulty in breathing. He found it hard to sit upright in his chair and to control the trembling of his body. Then suddenly his fatigue disappeared; he breathed deeply and wiped his forehead.
‘For many Christians,’ said Charles of Valois, ‘Rome is the seat of the Papacy, in their eyes Rome is the centre of the world.’
‘That, undoubtedly, would be convenient for the Emperor of Constantinople, but not for the King of France,’ said Marigny.
‘All the same, Messire Enguerrand, you cannot undo the labour of centuries and prevent the throne of Saint Peter being situated where it was founded.’
‘But whenever the Pope wishes to rule from Rome, he is never able to remain there,’ cried Marigny. ‘He is invariably compelled to fly before the different factions that divide the City and to take refuge in some castle or other under the protection of this town or that, with troops to guard him who do not even belong to him. He is in fact much happier under the protection of our garrison of Villeneuve installed upon the farther bank of the Rhône.’
‘The Pope will remain in his establishment at Avignon,’ said the King.
‘I know Francesco Caetani well,’ went on Charles of Valois; ‘he is a man of great learning and merit upon whom I may be able to bring some influence to bear.’
‘I don’t want to have this Caetani at all,’ said the King. ‘He belongs to the family of Boniface, and he will renew the errors of the bull Unam Sanctam.’
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Philippe of Poitiers, who had said nothing until that moment, now interrupted with a forward movement of his long body.
‘There are,’ he said, ‘so many intrigues in this business that one intrigue should cancel out another. If we don’t bring pressure to bear, we shall be involved in a conclave which may well last a year. In more difficult circumstances than these, Messire de Nogaret has shown what he is capable of doing. It is up to us to be the most tenacious and stubborn party.’
After a moment’s silence, Philip the Fair turned to Nogaret.
The latter was pale in the face and seemed to be breathing with difficulty.
‘What do you advise, Nogaret?’
‘Yes, Sire,’ said the Keeper of the Seals with an effort.
He put a shaking hand to his forehead.
‘May I be excused. This appalling heat …’
‘It is not hot at all,’ said Hugues de Bouville.
Nogaret, with a great effort, said in a distant voice, ‘The interests of the kingdom and of the Faith demand that we should act in this way.’
He fell silent, and no one could understand why he had said so little.
‘And your advice, Marigny?’
‘I propose that we should find some pretext for removing the remains of the late Pope, as was his desire, to Cahors, in order to show the conclave that this is a matter for haste. Bertrand de Got, Clement’s nephew, might well be charged with this pious mission. Messire de Nogaret would set out upon his journey, with all necessary powers, accompanied by a sufficient armed escort. His escort would guarantee his powers.’
Charles of Valois turned his head away; he disapproved of this show of force.
‘And how does my annulment come into all this business?’ asked Louis of Navarre.
‘Be quiet, Louis,’ said the King. ‘That is exactly what we are endeavouring to determine.’
‘Yes, Sire,’ said Nogaret without even realising that he had spoken.
His voice was low and hoarse. He felt troubled in mind and appeared to see things out of focus. The beams of the hall suddenly seemed to him as high as those of the Sainte-Chapelle. Then, suddenly, they seemed as near as those of the subterranean chambers in which he was accustomed to interrogate his prisoners.
‘What is going on?’ he asked, trying to loosen the buttons of his coat. He appeared to have suffered a sudden cramp, his knees were raised against his stomach, his head was lowered, and his hands clutched at his chest. The King rose, followed by all those present. Nogaret cried aloud as if strangled and fell vomiting upon the floor.
It was Hugues de Bouville, the Grand Chamberlain, who took him back to his house where he was immediately visited by the King’s doctors.
These consulted lengthily among themselves before coming to give the Sovereign their diagnosis. Their report meant nothing whatever. But very soon, both at the Court and in the town, there was talk of some unknown malady. Poison? It was said that the most powerful antidotes had been tried. Affairs of state, that day, were to all intents and purposes suspended.
When the Countess Mahaut learnt the news from Beatrice, she merely said, ‘He is paying,’ and sat down to eat.
Nogaret was paying. For some hours now he had not recognised those about him. He was at death’s door upon his bed and, lying on his side, his body shaken with spasms, was spitting blood.
At first he had endeavoured to remain sufficiently upright to lean over a basin, but now he no longer had the strength to do so and his blood, flowing from his mouth, fell upon a thick sheet that a servant changed from time to time.
The room was full of people; couriers in relays, taking the latest news to the King, servants, major-domos, secretaries and, in a corner, forming a small, sly, talkative group, were Nogaret’s relations, thinking of the possible spoils and putting a value upon the furniture.
As far as Nogaret was concerned, these were all unrecognisable spectres, moving upon a far, illogical, pointless plain, amid what seemed to him but a confused noise. But there were other more visible presences that appeared to him alone.
For, at this hour, when the anguish of sin had come upon him for the first time, he thought of the death of others, and felt at the last that he was the brother of all those whom he had persecuted, hounded, made martyrs of, and executed. Those who had died under interrogation, in prison, at the stake, on the wheel, now arose from his overwrought imagination and appeared to close in upon him, almost near enough to touch him.
‘Go back, go back!’ he screamed in terror.
The doctors ran to him. Nogaret, haggard, twisting upon his bed, his eyes rolling in terror, was endeavouring to repulse the shades.
And the smell of his own vomited blood seemed to him to be the smell of the blood of his, victims.
He suddenly sat up and then fell back again. Those present had retreated to a distance and were watching him, he who was one of the masters of the kingdom, fade into the shadows. With his hands to his throat, he struggled to ward off the red-hot irons which had so often burnt naked breasts in his presence. His legs were at the mercy of appalling cramps and he was heard to cry, ‘The pincers, the pincers! Take them away for mercy’s sake!’
It was the same cry that the brothers Aunay had uttered in their prison of Pontoise.
The nightmare in which Nogaret fought was no other than the reflection of his own life, in so far as it had affected others.
‘I did nothing in my own name! I served the King, the King alone.’
Before the bar of agony the lawyer was making a last pleading.
The room emptied towards eleven o’clock at night. Only one doctor, a barber-surgeon and one old retainer remained with Nogaret. The King’s couriers, wrapped in their cloaks, slept side by side upon the floor of the ante-chamber. His family had gone, not without certain regrets. One of them had slipped a purse into a servant’s hand, saying, ‘Let me know when it is all over.’
Bouville, who had come to get news, questioned the doctor on duty.
‘Nothing we can do has been any use,’ the latter said in a low voice. ‘He is vomiting less, but he is still in delirium. We can but await the end! Unless some miracle …’
With the death rattle in his throat, Nogaret, lying upon his bed, alone knew that the dead Templars awaited him in the shades.
They passed before him, some on horseback, clothed in their surcoats of war, others raising their bodies shattered by torture; there they stood, lining an empty road, bordered by precipices and lit by the light of pyres.
‘Aymon de Barbonne … Jean de Furne … Pierre Suffet … Brintinhiac … Guillaume Bocelli … Ponsard de Gizy …’
Was it the shades who uttered their names, or was it merely the dying man no longer aware of his own words?
‘The sons of Cathare!’
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cried a voice which suddenly drowned all others.
And, surging suddenly out of darkest night, the tall figure of Boniface VIII became manifest in that immense distance of space that was Nogaret’s consciousness, that space which contained mountains and valleys, and in which huge crowds marched onwards towards the Last Judgment.
‘Sons of Cathare!’
At the sound of Boniface’s voice, the whole drama of Nogaret’s life revived. He saw himself, upon a September day, beneath the bright Italian sun, riding at the head of six hundred horsemen and a thousand artillerymen towards the rock of Anagni; beside him rode Sciarra Colonna, the mortal enemy of Boniface, the man who had preferred to serve three years chained to an oar in a Berber galley rather than be recognised and risk being handed over to the Pope. Thierry d’Hirson was a member of that expedition. The little town had opened its gates of its own accord; the Caetani Palace was taken and, passing through the interior of the Cathedral, the attackers had invaded the Pope’s apartments. And there the old Pope, who was then eighty-six, his tiara upon his head, crucifix in hand, alone in a huge deserted hall, had watched the armed horde burst in upon him. Summoned to abdicate, he had replied, ‘This is my neck, this is my head; if I die, I shall die as Pope.’ Sciarra Colonna struck him in the face with his steel gauntlet.
From the profound depths of his agony, Nogaret cried, ‘At least I prevented his killing him.’
The City had been given over to pillage. Two days later, the inhabitants had changed sides, had fallen upon the French troops, and had wounded Nogaret who had been compelled to fly for his life. Nevertheless he had achieved his object. The old man’s mind had not been able to resist fear, anger and outrage. When he had been released, Boniface had wept like a child. When he had been brought back to Rome he had become subject to wild dementia, insulting everyone who approached him, refusing all food and dragging himself upon all fours about the room in which he was held prisoner. A month later, the King of France had triumphed, the Pope was dead, blaspheming and refusing, in an access of rage, even the last sacraments.