The She Wolf of France (8 page)

`You'll find yourself in good company, my lord,' he said. `Look, honour where honour is due, my book begins with the Count of Artois. You've a great many pages, Monseigneur,' he added with a little laugh, looking at Robert, `Here's the Count de Bouville for his missions to the Pope and to Naples. And here's Madame the Queen Clemence...'

The banker inclined his head in deference,
`Oh, she gave us a lot of anxiety after the death of Louis X: it was as if mourning put her in a frenzy of spending. The Holy Father himself exhorted her to moderation in a special letter, and she had to pawn her jewels with me to pay off her debts. Now she's living in the Palace of the Templars which she exchanged against the Castle of Vincennes; she gets her dowry and seems to have found peace.'

He went on turning over the pages which rustled under his hand.

`And now I'm boasting,' he thought. `But one must do something to emphasize the importance of the services one renders, and to show that one's not dazzled by a new borrower.'

He had a clever way of letting them see the names while concealing the figures with his arm. He was only being half indiscreet. And, after all, he had to admit that his whole life was contained in this book, and that he enjoyed every opportunity of looking through it. Each name, each figure evoked so many memories, so many intrigues, so many secrets of which he had been the recipient, and so many entreaties by which he had been able to measure his power. Each figure commemorated a visit, a letter, a clever deal, a feeling of sympathy or one of harshness towards a negligent debtor. It was nearly fifty years since Spinello Tolomei, on his arrival from Siena, had begun by doing the rounds of the fairs of Champagne, and then come to live here, in the Rue des
Lombards, to keep a bank.

Another page, and another, which caught in his broken nails. A black line was drawn through a name.

`Here's Messer Dante Alighieri, the poet, but only for a small sum, when he came to Paris to visit Queen Clemence after she had become a widow. He was a great friend of hers, as he had been of King Charles of Hungary, Madame Clemence's father. I remember him sitting in your chair, my lord. A man without a spark of kindness. He was the son of a money-changer; and he talked to me for a whole hour with great contempt of the financier's trade. But he could afford to be ill-natured and go off and get drunk with women in houses of ill-fame, while talking of his pure love for the Lady Beatrice. He made our language sing, as no one before him has ever done. And how he described the Inferno, my lord! You have not read it? Oh, you must have it translated. One trembles to think that it may perhaps be like that. Do you know that in Ravenna, where Messer Dante spent his last years, the people used to scatter from his path in fear because they thought he really had gone down into Hell? And, even now,
many people refuse to believe that he died two years ago, for they say he was a magician and could not die. He certainly didn't like banking, nor indeed Monseigneur of Valois who exiled him from Florence.'

The whole time he was talking of Dante, Tolomei was putting out his two fingers again and touching the wood of his chair.

`There, that's where you'll be, my lord,' he went on, making, a mark in his big book;
`immediately after Monseigneur
de Marigny; but be reassured, not the one who was hanged and whom Monseigneur of Artois mentioned a little while ago. No, his brother, the Bishop of Beauvais. From today you have a credit with me of ten thousand livres. You can draw on it at your convenience, and look on my modest house as your own. Cloth, arms, jewels, you will find every kind of goods you may require at my counters and can charge them against this credit.'

He was
carrying on his trade by habit
, lending people the where
withal to buy what he sold.

`And what about
your lawsuit against your aunt, Monseigneur? Are you thinking of taking it up
again,
now that you're so powerful?' he asked Robert of Artois.

`I most certainly shall, but at the right time,' the giant replied, getting to his feet. `There's no hurry, and I've learnt that too much haste is a bad thing. I'm letting my dear aunt grow older; I'm leaving her to exhaust herself in small lawsuits against her vassals, make new enemies every day by her chicanery, and put her castles, which I treated a bit roughly on my last visit to her lands - which are really mine - into order again. She's beginning to realize what it costs her to hold on to my property. She had to lend Monseigneur of Valois fifty thousand livres which she'll never s
ee again, for they went to make
up my wife's dowry, and incidentally enabled me to pay you off. So, you see, she's not quite so noxious a woman as people say, the bitch! I merely take care not to see too much of her, she's so fond of me she might spoil me with one of those sweet dishes from which so many people in her entourage have died. But I shall have my county, banker, I shall have it, you can be sure of that. And on that day, as I've promised you, you shall become my treasurer.'

Messer Tolomei showed his visitors out, walking down the stairs behind them with some prudence, and accompanied them to the door that gave on to the Rue des Lombards. When Roger Mortimer asked him what interest he was charging on the money he was lending him, the banker waved the question aside.

`Merely do me the pleasure,' he said, `of coming up to see me
when you have business with the bank. I am sure there is much in which you can, instruct me, my lord.'

A smile accompanied the words, and the left eyelid rose a little to reveal a brief glance that implied: `We'll talk alone, not in front of blabbers.'

The cold November wind blowing in from the street made the old man shiver a little. Then, as soon as the door was closed, Tolomei went behind his counters into a little waiting-room where he found Boccaccio, the travelling representative of the Bardi Company.

`Friend Boccaccio,' he said, `today and tomorrow buy all the English, Dutch and Spanish currency you can, all the Italian florins, doubloons, ducats, and foreign money you can find; offer a denier, even two deniers, above the present rate of exchange. Within three days they'll have increased in value by a quarter. Every traveller will have to come to us for foreign currency, since they'll be forbidden to export French gold. I'll go h
alves with you on the profits.'

Having a pretty good idea of how much foreign gold was available and adding it to what he already had in his coffers, Tolomei calculated that the operation would make him a profit of from fifteen to twenty thousand livres. He had just lent ten thousand and would therefore make about double his loan. With the profits he could make further loans. Mere routine.

When Boccaccio congratulated him on his ability and, turning the compliment in his thin-lipped, bourgeois, Florentine way, said that it was not in vain that the Lombard companies in Paris had chosen Messer Spinello Tolomei for their captain-general, the old man replied: `Oh, after fifty years in the business, I no longer deserve any credit for it; it's simply second nature. If I were really clever, do you know what I would have done? I'd have bought up your reserves of florins and kept all the profit for myself. But when you come to think of it, what use would it be to me? You'll learn, Boccaccio, you're still very young ...'

Boccaccio had sons who "were already grey at the temples.

`You reach an age when you have a feeling of working to no purpose if you're merely working for yourself. I miss my nephew. And yet his difficulties are more or less resolved; I'm sure that he'd be running no risk if he came back now. But that young devil of a Guccio refuses to come; he's being, stubborn, from pride I think. And, in the evening, when the clerks have left and the servants gone to bed, this big house seems very empty. I sometimes regret Siena.'

`Your nephew ought to have done what I did, Spinello,' said Boccaccio, `when I found myself in a similar difficulty with a woman of Paris. I removed my son and took him to Italy.'

Messer Tolomei shook his head and thought how melancholy a house was without children. Guccio's son must be seven by now; and Tolomei had never seen him. The mother refused to allow it.

The banker rubbed his right leg which felt heavy and cold; he had pins and needles in it. Over the years, death began to catch up with you, little by little, taking you by the feet. Presently, before going to bed, he would send for a basin' of hot water and put his leg in it,

5
. The false crusade

`MONSEIGNEUR OF MORTIMER, I shall have great need of brave and gallant. knights such as you. for my crusade,' declared Charles of Valois. `You will think me very vain to say my crusade when in truth, it is Our Lord's, but I must confess, and everyone will recognize the fact, that if this vast enterprise, the greatest and most glorious to which the Christian nations
can be summoned, takes place, it will, be because 'I shall
have organized it with my own hands. And so, Monseigneur of Mortimer, I ask you straight out, and with that fr
ankness you will learn to recog
ni
ze as natural to me: will you j
oin me?'

Roger Mortimer sat up straight in his chair; he frowned a little and lowered his lids over his flint-coloured eyes. Was he being merely
offered the command of
a banner of twenty knights, like some little country noble or some soldier of fortune stranded here by the mischance's of fate? The proposal was mere charity.

It was the first time Mortimer had been received by the Count of Valois, who till now had always been busy with his duties in Council, or receiving foreign ambassadors, or travelling about the kingdom. But now, at last, Mortimer was face to face with the man who ruled France, who had that very day appointed one of his proteges, Jean de Cherchemont, - as the new Chanllor,
13
and on whom his own fate depended. For Mortimer's situation, undoubtedly enviable for a man who had been condemned to prison for life, though painful for a great lord, was
that of an exile who had nothing to offer and was reduced to begging and hoping.

The interview was taking place in what had once been the King of Sicily's palace, which Charles of Valois had received from his first father-in-law, Charles the Lame of Naples, as a wedding' present, There were some dozen people in the great audience chamber, equerries, court
iers, secretaries, all talking
quietly in little groups, frequently turning t
heir eyes towards their master,
who was giving audience, like a real sovereign, seated on a sort of throne surmounted by a canopy. Monseigneur of Valois was dressed in a long indoor robe of blue velvet, embroidered with lilies and capital Vs, which parted in front to show a. fur lining. His hands were laden with rings; he wore his private seal, which was carved from a precious stone, hanging from his belt by a gold chain; and on his head was a velvet cap, of maintenance held in place by a chased circlet of gold, a sort of undress crown.' Among his entourage were his eldest son, Philippe of Valois, a strapping fellow with a long nose, who was leaning on the back of the throne, and his son-in-law, Robert of Artois, who was sitting on a stool, his huge red-leather boots stretched out in front of him. A tree trunk was burning on the hearth nearby.

`Monseigneur,' Mortimer said slowly, `if the `help of a man who is first among the barons of the Welsh Marches, who has governed the Kingdom of Ireland and has commanded in a number of battles, can be of help to you, I willingly give you my aid in defence of Christianity, and my blood is at your service from this moment.'

Valois realized that here was a proud-man, who spoke of his fiefs in the Marches as if he still held them, and that he must treat him tactfully if he wished to make use of him.

`I have the honour; my lord,' he replied, `to see arrayed under the banner of the King of France, or rather mine, since it has been arranged that my nephew shall continue to govern the kingdom while I command the crusade, to see arrayed, I say, the leading sovereign princes of Europe: my Cousin Jean of Luxemburg, King of Bohemia, my brother-in-law Robert of Naples and Sicily, my Cousin Alfonso of Spain, as well as the Republics of Genoa and Venice who, at the Holy Father's request, will give us the support of their galleys. You will be in no bad company, my lord, and I shall see to it that everyone gives you the respect and honour due to the great lord you are. France, from which your ancestors sprung and which gave birth to your mother, will
make, sure that your deserts are better recognized than they appear to be in England.'

Mortimer bowed in silence. Whatever this assurance might be worth, he would see that it came to more than mere words.

`For it is fifty years and more,' went on Monseigneur of Valois, `since anything of importance was done by Europe in the service of God; to be precise, since my grandfather Saint Louis who, if he won his way to Heaven by it, lost his life in the process. Encouraged by our absence, the infidels have raised their heads and believe themselves masters everywhere; they ravage the coasts, pillage ships, hinder trade and, by their mere presence, profane the Holy Places. And what have we done? Year after year we have retreated from all our possessions and establishments; we have abandoned the castles we built and have neglected to defend the sacred rights we had acquired, And this has all happened as a result of the suppression of the Templars, of which my elder brother - peace to his soul, though in this I never approved him - was the instru
ment. But those times are past.
A
t the beginning of this year, delegates from Lesser Armenia came to ask our help against the Turks. I give grateful thanks to my nephew, King Charles IV, for his understanding of the importance of this appeal and for giving his support to the steps I then took. Indeed, he now believes the idea to have been originally his. Anyway, it is most satisfactory that he should now have faith in it. And so, as soon as our own forces have been assembled, we shall go to attack the Saracens in their distant lands.'