The Strangled Queen

by Maurice Druon

But hardly had Bouville and Guccio gone a couple of miles than two horsemen passed them once again; this time there was no room for doubt that this riding to and fro was occasioned by their presence.

  Bouville, suddenly becoming warlike, wished to fall upon the two horsemen, but Guccio would not have it.

  ‘Our cavalcade is too slow, Messire Hugues, for us ever to catch them up, and I cannot leave my chests behind.’

  At Orange they learnt, without much astonishment, that the members of the conclave were not there, that they were probably to be found at Avignon.

  ‘But we have passed by Avignon,’ cried Bouville, losing his temper with the clerk who was giving them the information, ‘and it was as bare as the palm of my hand. What about Monseigneur Duèze? Where is Monseigneur Duèze?’

  The clerk replied that Monseigneur Duèze, since he was Bishop of Avignon, must certainly be there. The Provost of Orange, by an unfortunate coincidence, happened to be away that day and the underling who was taking his place had no instructions to attend to the comfort of the new arrivals. They had to pass another whole evening in an extremely dirty inn, which looked out upon a field of ruined and overgrown houses which seemed to them excessively ugly. Sitting opposite a Bouville foundering from fatigue, it began to seem to Guccio that he must take the expedition in hand if they were ever to reach Paris with or without results.

  In every mishap they saw a sign that they were being dogged by ill-luck. One of the men of the escort had got a broken leg from the kick of a horse and would have to be left behind; the pack-horses, which had had no proper rest, were beginning to get sore backs; it was becoming urgent that all the horses should be reshod; Messire de Bouville had a terrible cold in the head, and talked rather too much about a certain lady in Naples, wondering whether she had really loved him sincerely. During the whole of the following day he showed so little energy that he made no difficulty about letting Guccio take over his responsibilities.

  ‘I shall never dare appear before the King,’ he groaned, ‘but how on earth, I ask you, can one make a Pope when every soutane flies at our approach! I shall never be able to sit in the Council again, my poor Guccio, never again. The failure of this one mission destroys my life’s work.’

  He fussed continually. Was Madame Clémence’s portrait properly packed, had it been damaged by the rain?

  ‘I’ll look after things, Messire Hugues,’ replied Guccio authoritatively. ‘And the first thing to do is to find a lodging; you appear to me to be in considerable need of one.’

  Guccio went off to find the Captain of the Town and took the high tone with him that Bouville should have done in the first place. He sounded so high and mighty in his strong Italian accent, as he detailed the titles of his chief and those he thought proper to attribute to himself, was so convincing in explaining their requirements, that in less than an hour a palace was emptied and placed at their disposal. Guccio installed his people in it and put Bouville into a well-warmed bed. When the fat man, who made the doubtful excuse of a chill to avoid taking decisions, was snugly under the blankets, Guccio said, ‘I don’t like this atmosphere of trickery with which we are surrounded. I want now to put the gold in a safe place. There is an agent of the Bardis here; and I propose depositing it with him. Then I shall feel in a much better position to find your cardinals for you.’

  ‘My cardinals, my cardinals!’ grumbled Bouville. ‘They’re no cardinals of mine, and I’m as fed up with their tricks as you are. We’ll talk about it when I have had some sleep, if you like, because at the moment I feel utterly chilled. Are you quite certain of your Lombard? Can we trust him? After all, the money belongs to the King of France.’

  Guccio took a high tone with him.

  ‘Will you please believe, Messire Hugues, that I am as much concerned about the money as if it belonged to a member of my own family; can you understand that?’

  He went straight off to the bank which was in the Sainte-Agricole quarter of the town. The Bardi agent – who was, moreover, a cousin of the head of this powerful company – received Guccio with the cordiality due to a nephew of an important colleague, and went himself to put the gold into the strong-room. They exchanged signatures; then the Lombard led his visitor into his parlour so that Guccio might tell him of his difficulties. Standing before the hearth was a thin rather stooping man who turned round at their entry.

  ‘Guccio! Che Piacere!’ he cried, ‘come stai?’

  ‘Ma … caro Boccaccio! Per Bacho! che fortuna!’

  They fell into each other’s arms.

  You always meet the same people travelling because, of course, it’s always the same people who travel.

  There was nothing very singular about Signor Boccaccio’s presence here, since he was a traveller for the Bardi company. The good luck lay simply in the fact of meeting him on that particular day. Guccio and Boccaccio had made part of the journey to London together the year before; they had become intimate friends; Guccio knew that Boccaccio had a child by a French mistress.

  While the Lombard of Avignon was ordering spiced wine for them, Guccio and Boccaccio talked delightedly like old friends.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ asked Boccaccio.

  ‘I’m chasing cardinals,’ replied Guccio, ‘and I don’t mind telling you that they’re far from easy game.’

  Upon which he recounted the whole story of their mission, the misadventures they had had these last days, and raised a good laugh at the fat Bouville’s expense. He himself felt singularly cheered; he felt at home here, as if he were in the circle of his own family.

  If you are always prone to meet the same people, it is true too that the same people always do you a good turn and get you out of difficulties.

  ‘You need not be astonished,’ said Signor Boccaccio, ‘at not finding your Monsignori. They have been instructed to take care, and everyone who comes from the Court of France, or says he does, puts them to flight. Last summer Bertrand de Got and Guillaume de Budos, the nephews of the late Pope, arrived here, sent by your friends Nogaret and Marigny, supposedly to take their uncle’s body back to Cahors. They brought with them a mere five hundred soldiers, a somewhat excessive number of bearers for a single corpse! The gallant soldiers had been sent to force the election of a Pope who was not to be Cardinal Duèze, and their arguments were not altogether of a gentle kind. One fine morning their eminences’ houses were all sacked while they were sitting in conclave in the convent of Carpentras. The cardinals had to escape through a breach in the wall into the open country and run for their lives. They haven’t forgotten it yet.

  ‘You can add,’ said the Bardi cousin, ‘that the garrison of Villeneuve has been reinforced, and that the cardinals fear from moment to moment to see the archers cross the bridge. They thought that your arrival was the signal. And do you know who the horsemen were who so continuously passed you? Undoubtedly Archbishop Marigny’s people. They are clearly infesting the whole of these parts at the moment. I don’t know exactly what they are after, but it is not the same thing as you are.’

  ‘You and Bouville,’ went on Boccaccio, ‘will achieve nothing here on behalf of the King of France; moreover you run the risk of swallowing a dose of poison one night and never awakening again. At this moment, coming from the King of Naples is no recommendation to the cardinals, or to some of them at least! You have just come from there, haven’t you?’

  ‘Straight from there,’ replied Guccio, ‘and we even have old Queen Marie’s blessing to see Cardinal Duèze as soon as possible.’

  ‘Good God, why didn’t you say so at once! I can arrange an interview with Duèze, who is an odder fish than you might expect. I can arrange it for tomorrow, if you like.’

  ‘You know where to find him, do you?’

  ‘He has never left here,’ said Boccaccio, laughing. ‘Go back to your lodging, and I will bring you news before nightfall. Have you, by chance, any money for him? Good. He often needs it and owes us quite a bit.’

  Three hours later Signor Boccaccio k
nocked on the door of the palace where Bouville lodged. He brought fairly good news. The following morning at about nine o’clock Cardinal Duèze would be taking a constitutional at a place called Pontet, so named because of a little bridge there, two and a half miles north of Avignon. The Cardinal agreed to meet, as if by chance, the Seigneur de Bouville, should the latter happen to be passing through the place and provided he was not accompanied by more than six men. The men of the escort were to remain upon the boundaries of a large field, while Duèze and Bouville conversed in the centre of it, out of sight and hearing. The Cardinal of the Curia delighted in making mysteries.

  ‘Guccio, my boy, you are saving me and I shall always remember to be grateful to you,’ said Bouville, whose chill seemed to recover with hope renewed.

  The following morning, therefore, Bouville, accompanied by Guccio, Signor Boccaccio and four horsemen, went to Pontet. The day was foggy, hiding the contours of the land and deadening sound; the locality was as deserted as one could wish. Messire de Bouville had put on three coats, which made him appear even fatter than usual. They had to wait for some time.

  At last, out of the fog, came a small group of horsemen surrounding a young man riding a white mule. He leapt athletically from his mount. He was wearing a black cape beneath which showed red robes, his head was covered by a cap with ear-flaps and lined with white fur. He came towards them with a quick, almost dancing step through the wet grass, and it was only then that the young man was recognizable as Cardinal Duèze. His adolescence was seventy years old. Only his face, hollow of cheek and of temple, and the white eyebrows upon his dry skin, betrayed his age; and his eyes had a sort of watchful intensity which was no longer that of youth.

  Bouville also walked forward and met the Cardinal by a little wall. The two men looked at each other a moment, mutally surprised at each other’s appearance, which in no way accorded with their expectations. Bouville, with his innate respect for the Church, had expected to meet a prelate of majestic appearance, somewhat unctuous perhaps, but not this elf bouncing out of the fog. The Cardinal of the Curia, who had imagined that an old warrior like Nogaret or Bertrand de Got had been sent to him, gazed with stupefaction at this fat man covered with as many layers of clothes as an onion has skins, who was noisily blowing his nose.

  It was the Cardinal who spoke first. His voice always surprised those who had never heard it before. Muffled like a funeral drum, breaking when it rose to a higher register, rapid and smothered, it seemed to come not from him but from someone close by for whom one instinctively looked.

  ‘So you come, Messire de Bouville, on behalf of King Robert of Naples, who does me the honour of his Christian confidence. The King of Naples, the King of Naples,’ he repeated. ‘You were Great Chamberlain to King Philip, who was not very favourably disposed towards me; though I really do not know why, since I acted as he wished at the Council of Vienna in order to have the Templars suppressed.’

  ‘I believe, Monseigneur,’ replied Bouville, who was taken aback by this opening, ‘that you were opposed to stigmatizing Pope Boniface, or at least his memory, with heresy; and King Philip did not forget it.’

  ‘Really, Messire, it was asking too much. Kings are never aware of how much they require of one. When one runs the risk of becoming one day a Pope oneself, one naturally cannot be expected to create precedents of that nature. When a King himself succeeds to the throne, he does not proclaim that his father was a traitor, an adulterer and a plunderer. Boniface died mad, of course, refusing the sacraments and uttering the most horrible blasphemies. But what would the Church have gained by establishing his shame. And as for Pope Clement V, my venerated benefactor – you know that I owe the little I am to him, and that we were both born at Cahors – Pope Clement was certainly of this opinion. Monseigneur de Marigny does not like me either; he has done everything to oppose me, particularly these last weeks. I don’t understand what it’s all about! Why do you wish to see me. Is Marigny still as powerful in France as he was, or does he merely pretend to be so? It is said that he is no longer in power, and yet everyone continues to obey him.’

  The Cardinal was a strange man making use of a criminal’s technique to bring about a meeting with an ambassador, and then from the first moment discussing brass tacks as if he had known him all his life. Moreover, speaking rapidly in a smothered voice, his delivery was irregular, and his argument disconnected. Like many autocratic old men, he followed the line of his own thought without taking into consideration whether it was being followed.

  ‘The truth is, Monseigneur,’ replied Bouville, who did not want to engage in an argument about Marigny, ‘that I have come to express to you the wish of King Louis and of Monseigneur of Valois that a Pope may be elected as early as possible.’

  The Cardinal raised his white eyebrows.

  ‘A fine wish,’ said Duèze, ‘when my election has been prevented for the last nine months by corruption, trickery and force. But you may as well know that I am in no particular hurry! For the last twenty years I have been working on my Theasaurum Pauperum, and I shall require a good six years more to finish it, without taking into account my Art Transmutatoire, which treats of alchemy, and my Elixir des Philosophes, more occult still, which I should much like to see finished before I die. I am busy enough with these things, and I am not so anxious for a tiara which would overweigh me with duties. No, really, I am in no hurry. But has there been a change of policy in Paris? Nine months ago I had collected nearly every vote, and it was the King of France who lost them for me. Do they now want to see me become Pope after all?’

  Bouville was in some difficulty, since he did not know Whether it was Jacques Duèze or another whom Monseigneur of Valois wished for. He had been told ‘a Pope.’

  ‘But certainly, Monseigneur,’ he replied mildly. ‘Why not you?’

  ‘In that case something important is to be demanded of me, or at any rate from whoever is elected,’ said the Cardinal. ‘What is it?’

  ‘The fact is, Monseigneur, the King requires an annulment,’ said Bouville.

  ‘In order that he may remarry with Clémence of Hungary?’

  ‘How do you know that, Monseigneur?’

  ‘The Inner Council at which this was decided took place five weeks ago, did it not?’

  ‘You are very well informed, Monseigneur. I cannot imagine how you acquire your information.’

  The Cardinal did not reply and merely looked heavenwards as if he saw angels passing.

  ‘An annulment,’ he whispered to himself. ‘Certainly, one can always annul. Were the doors of the church properly open on the marriage day? You were present and you don’t remember, isn’t that so? Yes, it may well be that others remember that they were inadvertently closed. Your King is a very close cousin of his wife’s. It is possible that they omitted to ask for a dispensation. On those grounds one could unmarry nearly every prince in Europe; they are related to each other on every side, and one has but to look at the results of their unions to realize the fact, this one is lame, that one deaf, and another impotent. If from time to time there were no sin or misalliance among them, they would very soon become extinct from scrofula or debility. Moreover, I shall refer to all this in my Thesaurum, in order to encourage the poor not to follow the example of the great.’

  ‘The French royal family,’ replied Bouville somewhat vexed, ‘are all in very good health, and our princes of the blood are as robust as blacksmiths.’

  ‘Of course, of course, but when illness does not attack their bodies, it attacks their minds. And many of their children die in infancy. No, really, I am in no hurry to become Pope.’

  ‘But if you should become it, Monseigneur,’ said Bouville, trying to recapture the thread, ‘would the annulment seem possible before summer?’

  ‘To annul is less difficult,’ said Jacques Duèze dryly, ‘than to recover the votes that have been lost to me.’

  The conversation was going round in a circle. Bouville looked towards his men at the end of the field
and much regretted that he could not call Guccio or perhaps Signor Boccaccio, who seemed so clever. The fog was beginning to thin a little. Bouville was tired of standing and his three coats were beginning to weigh him down. He automatically sat down on the little wall which consisted of flat stones placed one upon another, and wearily asked, “Well, Monseigneur, what is the situation at the moment?’

  ‘The situation?’ said the Cardinal.

  ‘Yes, I mean the state of the conclave?’

  ‘The conclave? But there isn’t one. Cardinal Albano …’

  ‘You mean Messire Arnaud d’Auch, late Bishop of Poitiers?’

  ‘That is he.’

  ‘I know him; he came a year or so ago to Paris as Papal Legate to pass sentence on the Grand Master of the Templars.’

  ‘That’s the man. Being Cardinal Camerlengo, it is up to him to summon us; he has managed not to do so since Messire de Marigny forbade him to.’

  ‘But if, in the end …’

  At that moment Bouville suddenly realized he was sitting down while the prelate was still standing, and he quickly rose and apologized.

  ‘No, no, I beg you, Messire,’ said Duèze, making him sit down again.

  And with an agile movement he came and sat down next to him upon the wall.

  ‘If the conclave was reconstituted,’ went on Bouville, ‘what decision would it come to?’

  ‘None. And why this is so is perfectly clear.’

  Perfectly clear to Duèze, of course, who, like every candidate for election, ran over the number of votes in his favour ten times a day, but less simple for Bouville who had some difficulty in understanding what followed, quavered out as it was in that voice from the confessional.

  ‘The Pope has to be elected by two-thirds of the votes. We are twenty-three at the conclave; fifteen Frenchmen and eight Italians. Of those eight, five are for Cardinal Caetani, Boniface’s nephew, irremediably. We shall never win them over. They want to avenge Boniface, hating the Crown of France and everyone who, either directly or through Pope Clement, my venerated benefactor, has served it.’