The Royal Succession (29 page)

`Indeed,' went on Valois, `out of the six lay peers who should hold your crown tomorrow, you have precisely none.'

`But I have, Uncle; you're forgetting the Countess of Artois and yourself.'

Valois violently shrugged his shoulders.

`The Countess of Artois!' he cried. `A woman holding your crown when you yourself, Philippe, you yourself. have only reached your position by excluding women!'

`Holding the crown is not wearing it,' said Philippe.

`Did Mahaut help you to become King that you should increase her importance in this way! You'll but lend more credit to all the lies that are going about. Don't let's bring up the past, Philippe, but is it not really Robert who should occupy the peer's seat for Artois?'

Philippe pretended not to have heard his uncle's last words.

`At all events the ecclesiastical peers are here,' he said.

`They're here, they're here,' said Valois, shaking his rings. `But there are only five out of the six who should be here. And what do you think they'll do, those peers of the Church, when they see that on the side of the king
dom there is but one hand - and
what a hand! - raised to crown you?'

`But, Uncle, do you count for nothing?'

It was Valois' turn to ignore the question. '

`Even your own brother is cool towards you.' he said.

`It's no doubt because Charles,' replied Philippe; softly, `does
not fully realize, my dear Uncle, on what good terms we-are, and
he
may
think that he is serving you by doing mean ill office.' But you may be reassured; his arrival is announced for tomorrow.'

`Why don't you give him
a peerage at once? Your father
did it for me, and your brother Louis for you; I should feel less alone in supporting you.'

`Or less alone in betraying me,' thought Philippe, who went on: `Is it for Robert, or for Charles, that you have come to plead, or did you want to talk to me of yourself?'

Valois fell silent for a moment, lolled back in his chair, and contemplated the diamond glittering on his, forefinger.

`Fifty or a hundred thousand?' Philippe wondered. `I don't care a damn about the others. But I need him, and he knows it. If he refuses and makes a scandal, I may have to postpone my coronation.'

`Nephew,' said Valois at last, `you can see that I have not stood aloof and that I have even spent a lot of money on my clothes and my suite to do you honour. But if the other peers are absent, I think I shall have to withdraw. What would be said, if I were seen alone at your side? That you had bought me, precisely that.'

'I should deplore that, Uncle, I should deplore it very much. But there it is, I cannot oblige you to do something which displeases you. Perhaps the time has come to give up the custom by which the peers raise their hands to the crown.'

`Nephew! Nephew!' cried Valois.

`And if there must be consent by election,' Philippe went on, `perhaps it should be asked, not of the six great barons, but of the people, Uncle, who provide men for the armies and money for the Treasury. It will become the duty of the Estates, whom I shall summon.'

Valois could not contain himself; leaping from his chair, he began shouting: `You're blaspheming, Philippe, or you've gone mad! Has there ever been a king elected by his subjects? Your Estates are a splendid innovation! These ideas come straight from Marigny, who was born of the lower orders and did your father so much injury. I am telling you that, if you begin like this, in
fifty years
time the people will manage without us; they'll choose some rich burgess for king, some doctor of Parliament, some grocer who has made a fortune by thieving. No, Nephew, no; this time
I've made up my mind; I shall not hold up the crown of a king who is only of his own making, and who is prepared to act in such a way that the crown must soon become the perquisite of clodhoppers!'

Purple in the face, he was striding up and down the room.

`A
hundred thousand or fifty thousand?' Philippe was
still wondering. `What
sum must he be bribed with?'

`Very well, Uncle, don't hold it,' he said. `But let me send for my bursar at once.'

`Why?'

`To get him to alter the lists of donations I am to seal tomorrow, in celebration of my happy accession; you head that list for a hundred thousand livres.'

The thrust told. Valois stood there flabbergasted, his arms outstretched.

Philippe realized he had won and,
though the victory had cost
him dear, he had to make an effort not
to smile at the sight of his
uncle's face. The latter quickly managed, however, to cover his embarrassment. He had been cut off in the middle of his
rage; he continued with it. Anger was w
ith him a method of trying to
confuse other people's reasoning, when his own argunents were weak.

`To begin with, Eudes is at the bottom of all the harm,' he said.
`I blame him very much for it and I shall write to him! And what right had the Count of Flanders and
the Duke of Brittany to take
his part and refuse your summons? When the King summons you to hold his crown, you come to do so! Am I not here myself? The barons, indeed, are overstepping their rights. And there lies the danger of authority passing to the little vassals and the burgesses. As for Edward of England,
what faith can be placed in a
man who behaves like a woman? I sh
all therefore be at your side
to set them an example. And what you contemplated giving me I shall accept out of a sense of justice. For it is only just that those who are loyal to the King should be treated in a different manner from those who betray him. You govern well. As to this gift which marks your esteem for me, when are you going to sign it?'

`At once, Uncle, if you so wish. But it will bear tomorrow's date,' replied King Philippe V.

For the third time, and always by means of money, he had silenced the Count of Valois.

'
It is certainly time I was crowned,' said Philippe to his bursar, when Valois had left. `If I had to do any more negotiating I think next time I should have to sell the kingdom.'

And when Fleury showed surprise at the enormous sum promised, the King added: `Don't worry, don't worry, Geoffroy, I have given no date as to when the donation is to be paid. He'll only get it a little at a time. But he'll be able to borrow on it. Now let's go to supper.'

The ceremonial demanded that' after the evening meal the King, surrounded by his officers and the chapter, should go to the cathedral to meditate and pray. The church was already prepared, the tapestries hung, the hundreds of candles in their, places, and the great dais raised in the choir. Philippe's prayers were short, nevertheless he spent a considerable time in being instructed for the last time on the sequence of the ritual and the gestures he would have to make. He verified that the side doors were locked, inquired into the security arrangements, and asked where everyone was sitting.

`The lay peers, the members of the royal family and the great officers of State are on the dais,' it was explained to him. `The Constable, remains at your side. The Chancellor stays at the Queen's side. The throne, opposi
te yours, is that of the Arch
bishop of Rheims, and the seats placed about the High Altar are for the ecclesiastical peers.'

Philippe wandered slowly about the dais, and turned down the corner of a carpet with his foot.

`How strange it is,' he thought. `I was here only last year for my brother's coronation. And I paid no attention to all these details.'

He sat down for a moment, but not on the royal throne; a superstitious fear prevented his occupying it yet. `Tomorrow I shall really be King.' He thought of his father, of the line of his ancestors, who had preceded him in this church; he thought of
his brother, killed by a crime of which he was innocent but by which he was now profiting; he thought of the other crime, the murder of the child, which he equally had not ordered but of which he was the silent accomplice, almost the inspirer. He thought of death, his own death, and of the millions of men who were his subjects, of the millions of fathers, sons, brothers whom he would govern until then

`Are they all like me,' he wondered, `criminals if they had the opportunity, innocent only because they are powerless, and ready to make use of evil to accomplish their ambitions? And yet, when I was at Lyons, my only desire was for justice. But is that certain? Is human nature really so detestable, or is it royalty which makes us like this? Is the discovery that one is so impure and so 'besmirched the tribute one must pay to rule? Why did God make us mortal, since it is death that makes us: so detestable, through the fear we have of it, and through the use we make of it? Perhaps someone will try to kill me tonight.'

He watched the great shadows wavering in the high windows
between the pillars. He felt no repentance, only a lack of happiness at being King.

`This no doubt is what is called an orison, and why we are counselled to come to the church the night before the coronation!

He judged himself clearly for what he was; a bad man, with the gifts of a very great king.

He was not sleepy, he would gladly have stayed there much longer meditating on himself, human destiny, the origins of human actions; and asking himself the greatest questions in the world, those that can never be answered.

`How long will the ceremony last?' he asked.

`Two full hours, Sire.!

'Well, we must try to get Borne sleep. We must be fit tomorrow.'

But when he had returned t
o the Archiepiscopal Palace he w
ent to the Queen's room and sat on the edge of her bed. He talked to his wife of things that seemed to have but little importance; he talked of people's places in the cathedral; he was concerned about his daughters' clothes.

Jeanne was already half asleep. She had to struggle to give him her attention; she discerned in her husband a nervous tension, a sort of mounting uneasiness against which he was seeking protection.

`My dear,' she asked him, `do you want to sleep with me?' He seemed to hesitate.

`I cannot;
the Chamberlain has not been Warned,' he replied.

`You are King, Philippe,' Jeanne said smiling; `you can give your chamberlain what orders you please.'

H
e took some time to make up his mind. This young man who knew how to control his most powerful vassals by means of arms or money felt embarrassed at infor
ming his servant that, owing to
unforeseen desire, he was going to share his wife's bed.

Finally he called one of the housemaids who slept in the adjoining room and sent her to warn Adam Heron that he need not wait for him nor sleep that night outside his door.

Then, among the parrots of the hangings, beneath the silver trefoils of the baldaquin, he undressed and slipped between the sheets. And his great uneasiness, from which all the soldiers of the Constable could not protect him, because it was a man's uneasiness and not a king's, was calmed at the touch of this woman's body, her long firm legs, her soft belly and warm breasts.

`My darling,' Philippe mur
mured into, Jeanne's hair, `my
darling, answer me, have you deceived me? Do not fear to answer me, for even if you did de
ceive me once, you are forgiven
?
'

Jeanne clasped his long body, so spare and so strong, feeling the bones beneath her fingers.

`Never, Philippe, I swear it,' she replied. `I was tempted to do so, I confess it, but I never yielded.'

`Thank you, darling,' Philippe whispered. `Nothing is lacking to my kingship.'

Nothing more was lacking to his kingship, because he was in truth like every man in his kingdom; he needed a woman, and one that should be his own.
35

10. The bells of Rheims

A FEW hours later, lying on a state bed decorated with the arms of France, Philippe in a long robe of vermilion velvet, his hands joined at his breast, was awaiting the bishops who were to lead him to the cathedral.

The First Chamberlain, Adam Heron, also sumptuously clothed, was standing by the bed. The pale January morning spread a milky glow over the room.

There was a knock at the door.

`Whom do you want?' asked the Chamberlain.

`I want the King.!

'Who wants him?'

`His brother.'

Philippe and Adam Heron looked at each other in surprise and vexation.

`All right. Let him come in,' said Philippe sitting up a little.

`You've got very little time, Sire,' said the Chamberlain.

The King signed to him that the audience would not last long.

The handsome Charles de la Marche was in travelling-clothes. He had just arrived in Rheims and had only stopped for a moment to see his Uncle Valois. There was anger apparent both in his expression and the way he walked.