The She Wolf of France (10 page)

`The castles will be provisioned, Robert; and we shall leave sufficient garrisons,' Valois replied.

But without the nobility and most of the knights, and without you, I repeat, who are our one great general, who will defend the kingdom in our absence? The Constable, who is nearly seventy
-
five and can only remain in the saddle by a miracle? Our King Charles? If Edward, as Lord Mortimer tells us, does not much care for war, our dear cousin is still less skilled in it. Indeed, if it comes to that, what can he do except show himself fresh and

smiling to the people? It would be folly to leave the field open to Edward's sly tricks without having first weakened him by a
defeat.'

`Then let's help the Scots,' suggested Philippe of Valois.. `Let's land on their coasts and supp
ort their war. For
my part, I'm ready to do so.'

Robert of Artois looked down so as not to show what he was thinking. There'd be a pretty mess if brave Philippe took command of an expedition to Scotland. The heir to the Valois had already shown his capacity in Italy, where he had been sent to support the Papal Legate against the Visconti of Milan. Philippe had arrived proudly with his banners, and had then allowed himself to be so imposed on and out-manoeuvred by Galeazzo Visconti that he had, in fact, yielded everything while believing himself victorious, and had come home without even having engaged in a skirmish. One needed to beware above all of any enterprise in which he was engaged. None of which prevented Philippe of Valois being Robert's best and closest friend, as well as his brother-in-law. But, indeed, you can think what you like of your friends, provided you don't tell them.

Roger Mortimer had paled a little on hearing Philippe of Valois' suggestion. For if he was King Edward's adversary and enemy, England was nevertheless still his country.

`For the moment,' he said, `the Scots are being more or less peaceful; they appear to be respecting the treaty they imposed on Edward a year ago.'

`But, really,' said Robert, `to get to Scotland you have to cross the sea. Let's keep our ships for the crusade. But we have better grounds on which to defy that bigger Edward. He has failed to render homage for Aquitaine: If we forced him to come and defend his rights to his duchy in France, and then went and crushed him we should, in the first place, all be avenged and, in the second, he'd stay quiet enough during our absence.'

Valois was fiddling with his rings and reflecting. Once again Robert was showing himself to be a wise counsellor. Robert's suggestion was still vague, but already Valois was visualizing its

implications. Aquitaine was far from unknown territory to him; he had campaigned there - his first, great and victorious campaign - in 1294.

`It would undoubtedly be good training for our knights, who have not been properly to war for a long time now,' he said; `and also an opportunity of trying out this gunpowder artillery the Italians are beginning to make use of and which our old friend Tolomei offers to supply us with, And the King of France can certainly sequester the Duchy of Aquitaine owing to the default in rendering homage for it.'

He thought for a moment.

`But it won't necessarily lead to a real campaign,' he went on. `As usual, there'll be negotiations; it'll become a matter for parliaments and embassies. And eventually the homage will be rendered with a bad grace. It's not really a completely safe pretext.'

Robert of Artois sat down again, his elbows on his knees, his fists supporting his chin.

`We can find a more sure pretext than a mere failure to render homage,' he said. `I have no need to inform you, Cousin Mortimer, of all the difficulties, qua
rrels and battles to which Aqui
taine has given rise since Duchess Alienor, having made her first husband, our King Louis VII, so notorious a cuckold that their marriage was dissolved, took her wanton body and her duchy to your King Henry II of England. Nor need I tell you of the treaty with which our good King Saint Louis, who did his best to put things on an equitable basis, tried to put a term to a hundred years of war.
15
But equity goes for nothing in settlements between kingdoms. The treaty Monseigneur Saint Louis concluded with Henry III Plantagenet, in the year of Grace 1259, was so confused that a cat couldn't have found her kittens in it. Even the Seneschal de Joinville, your wife's great uncle, Cousin Mortimer, who was devoted to the sainted King, advised him not to sign it. Indeed, we have to admit frankly that the treaty was a piece of folly.'

Robert felt like adding: `As was also everything else Saint Louis did, for he was undoubtedly the most disastrous king we ever had. What with his ruinous crusades, his botched treaties, and his moral laws in which what is black in one passage is discovered to be white in another Oh, how much happier France would have been had she been spared that reign! And yet, since Saint
Louis' death, everyone regrets
him, for their recollection is at fault; they remember only how he dealt out justice
under an oak and, through listening to the lies of bumpkins, wasted the time he should have been devoting to the kingdom.'

He went on: `Since the death of Saint Louis, there has been nothing but disputes, arguments, treaties concluded and broken, homage paid with reservations, hearings by Parliament, plaintiffs non-suited or condemned, rebellions in those lands and then further prosecutions. But when you, Charles, were sent by your brother Philip the Fair into Aquitaine,' Robert asked, turning to Valois, `and so effectively restored order there, what were the actual motives given for your expedition?'

`Serious rioting in Bayonne, where French and English sailors had come to blows and shed blood.'

`Very well!' cried Robert. 'We must organize an occasion for more rioting like that of Bayonne. We must take steps to see that somewhere or other the subjects of the two kings come to serious blows and that a few people get killed. And I believe I know the very place for it.

He pointed his huge forefinger at them and went on: `In the Treaty of Paris, confirmed by the peace of 1303, and reviewed by the jurists of Perigueux in the year 1311, the, 'case of certain lordships, which are called privileged, has always been reserved, for though they lie within the borders of Aquitaine, they owe direct allegiance to the King of France. And these lordships themselves have dependencies, vassal territories, in Aquitaine, but it has never been definitely decided whether these dependencies are subject to the King of France or to the Duke of Aquitaine. You see the point?'

`I do,' said Monseigneur of Valois.

His son, Philippe, did not see it. He opened wide blue eyes and his failure to understand was so obvious that his father explained: `It's quite simple, my boy. Suppose I gave you, as if it were a fief, the whole of this house, but reserved to myself the use and free disposal of this room in which we are now sitting. And this room has, as a dependency, the anteroom which
controls this
door. Which of us enjoys rights over the anteroom and is responsible for its furnishing and cleaning? The whole plan,' Valois added, turning back to Robert, `depends on being able to arrange action of sufficient importance to compel Edward to make a rejoinder.'

`There's a very suitable dependency,' the giant replied, `in the lands of Saint-Sardos, which appertain to the Priory of Sarlat in the diocese of Perigueux. Their status was argued when Philip the Fair agreed to a Treaty of Association with the Prior of
Sarlat, which made the King of France co-lord of that lordship. Edward I appealed to the Parliament of P
aris, but nothing was decided.'
16
If the King of France, as co-lord of Sarlat, builds a castle in the dependency of Saint-Sardos and puts into it a strong garrison threatening the surrounding territory, what does the King of England as Duke of Aquitaine, do about it? He must clearly give orders to his seneschal to oppose it, and will want to station troops there himself. And the first time a couple o
f soldiers meet, or an officer
of the King is maltreated or even insulted. ..'

Robert spread wide his great hands as if the result was obvious. And Monseigneur of Valois, in his blue, gold-embroidered, velvet robes, rose from his throne. He could already see himself in the saddle, at the head of his banners; he would leave for Guyenne where, thirty years ago, he had won a great victory for the King of France.

`I congratulate you, Brother,'' cried Philippe of Valois, `on the fact that so 'distinguished a knight as you are should also have as great a knowledge of procedure as a lawyer.'

`Oh, there's no
great merit
attached to that, you know, Brother. It's not from any particular liking that I've been led to inquire into the laws of France and the edicts of Parliament; it's due to my lawsuit about Artois. And since, so far, it has been no use to me, let it at least be some use to my friends,' said Robert of Artois, bowing slightly to Roger Mortimer, as if this whole great affair was being organized entirely for his benefit.

`Your coming has been of great assistance to us, my lord,' said Charles of Valois,' `for our causes are linked, and we shall not fail to ask you
most strictly for your counsel
throughout this enterprise, which may God protect!'

Mortimer felt disconcerted and embarrassed. He had done nothing and suggested nothing; but his mere presence seemed to have occasioned the others to give concrete form to their secret aspirations. And now he would be required' to take part in a war against his own country; and he had no choice in the matter.

And so, if God so willed it, the French were going to make war in France against the French subjects of the King of England, with the support of a great English baron, and money furnished by the Pope for the freeing of Armenia from the Turks.

5. A time of waiting

THE END of the autumn passed, then winter, spring and the beginning of summer. Roger Mortimer saw Paris in all the four seasons of the year. He saw mud accumulating in its narrow streets, snow covering the great roofs of the abbeys and the fields of Saint-Germain, then the buds opening on the trees by the banks of the Seine, and the sun shining on the square tower of the Louvre, on the round Tower of Nesle and on the pointed steeple of the Sainte-Chapelle.

An exile has to wait. It is his role, one might think, almost his function. He has to wait for the bad times to pass; he has to wait till the people of the country in which he has taken refuge finish arranging their own affairs so as to have time at last to concern themselves with his. After his first days in exile, when his misfortunes excite curiosity and everyone wants to secure him as if he were a rare animal on exhibition, his presence soon becomes wearisome, embarrassing, a mute reproach even. One cannot be concerned with his affairs all the time; after all, he is the petitioner, so let him be patient.

So Roger Mortimer waited, as he had waited two months in Picardy, when staying with his Cousin Jean de Fiennes, for the French court to return to
Paris, as he had waited for Mon
seigneur of Valois to find time among all his other tasks to give him audience. And now he was waiting for the war in Guyenne with which his destiny seemed to be unavoidably involved.

Oh, Monseigneur of Valois had not delayed in giving his orders! The officers of the King of France, as Robert had advised, had begun to mark out the foundations of a castle at SaintSardos, in the disputed dependencies of the lordship of Sarlat; but a castle is not built in a day, nor even in three months, and the people of the King of En
gland had not seemed unduly con
cerned, at least to start with. It was a matter of waiting for an incident to occur.

Roger Mortimer devoted his leisure to exploring the capital, which he had seen only on a brief visit ten yearSS earlier, and to discovering the French people whom he knew but little. How powerful and populous a nation it was, and how very different from England! On both sides of the Channel it was generally
believed that the two nations were
very similar because their no
bility derived from the same sou
rce; but what disparities there
were when you looked closer. Th
e whole population of the King
dom of England, which numbered two million souls, did not
amount to a tenth of the total of the King of France's subjects.
The French numbered approxim
ately twenty-two million. Paris
alone had three hundred; thousand inhabitants, while London
had but fort
y thousand.
And what a seething mass of people
there were in the streets, ; how active trade and industry were, what huge sums of money changed hands. To become aware of it, one had only to take a walk across th
e Pont-au-Change or along the
quay of the goldsmiths, and listen to all the little hammers beating gold in the back shops; or walk, holding one's nose a little, through the butchers' district behind the
Chatelet, where the flayers
and tripe-sellers worked; or go down the Rue Saint-Denis, where the mercers' shops, were; or go and inspect the stuffs in the great drapers' market; while big business was conducted in the comparative silence of, the Rue des Lombards, which Mortimer now knew well.

Nearly three hundred and fifty
guilds and corporations regulated and controlled the conduct of these trades; each had its laws, customs and feast days, and there was practically no day in the year on which, after mass had been heard and a conference held in the parlour, a great banquet was not given for the masters and companions. Sometimes it
was the Hatters,
sometimes the Candlemakers, sometimes the Tanners. On the hill of Sainte
Genevieve
a whole population of clerics and doctors in hoods argued in Latin, and the echoes of their controversies over apologetics or the principles of Aristotle furnished the seed for discussions throughout the whole of Christendom.

The great barons and prelates, as well as many foreign sovereigns, maintained houses in the city where they held a sort of Court. The nobility frequented the st
reets of the Cite, the Mercers Gallery
in the royal palace, and the neighbourhood of the town hous
es of Valois, Navarre, Artois,
Burgundy and Savoy. Each of these houses was a sort of permanent agency for the great fiefs; in them were concentrated the interests of each province. And the city was ceaselessly growing, pushing out its suburbs into the gardens and fields beyond the walls
of Philip Augustus, which were
now beginning to disappear, swamped by the new building.