The Poisoned Crown

by Maurice Druon

  The barons of Artois had risen to their feet with delighted expressions; and one felt that they were upon the point of acclaiming Robert as if he had been a great minstrel who had just recited an heroic passage.

  ‘If you have the impudence, Sire,’ Artois went on, passing from rage to irony, ‘if you have the audacity to injure Master Thierry, to deprive him of the least part of the fruits of his larcenies, to threaten even the smallest nail on the smallest finger of the smallest of his nephews, then, Sire, you are committing an imprudence! Here is Madame Mahaut showing all her claws and ready to spit in the face of God. For the vows she made at your baptism and the homage she paid you upon her knees count for nothing beside her allegiance to Master Thierry, who is her true suzerain!’

  He had finished his peroration. Mahaut had not moved. The eyes of aunt and nephew met in a long moment of defiance.

  ‘Lies and calumnies, Robert, drool like saliva from your mouth,’ said the Countess calmly. ‘Take care never to bite your tongue, you might die of it.’

  ‘Be quiet, Madam!’ cried The Hutin suddenly, not wishing to be surpassed in violence by his cousin. ‘Be quiet! You have deceived me! I forbid you to return to Artois before you have subscribed to the judgement I have made and which, so I am told on all sides, is a sound one. And you will reside until that time either at Paris or at Conflans, but nowhere else. This is enough for today, the Council is adjourned.’

  He was seized with a violent fit of coughing which bent him double on his throne.

  ‘I hope to God he dies of it!’ said Mahaut between her teeth.

  The Count of Poitiers had not uttered a word. He was swinging one of his legs and thoughtfully stroking his chin.

  PART THREE

  THE TIME OF THE COMET

  1

  The New Master of Neauphle

  ON THE SECOND THURSDAY after Epiphany, which was market-day, there was a considerable commotion in the Lombard bank at Neauphle-Château. The office was being cleaned from top to bottom as if for the visit of a prince; the village painter was giving a new coat to the heavy front door; the strong-boxes were being polished till their iron bands shone brighter than silver; the cobwebs were being swept away from the door-frames; the walls were being whitewashed and the counters polished; and the clerks, whose account-books, balances, and abaci had been pushed aside, found it difficult to attend to clients with normal serenity.

  A young girl of about seventeen, tall, handsome, her cheeks coloured by the frost, crossed the threshold and halted in amazement at the sight of all the activity. From the brown camlet cloak in which she was muffled and the silver clasp at her neck, indeed from all her bearing, one could tell at a glance that she was a daughter of the nobility. Seeing her the villagers removed their hats.

  ‘Oh, Demoiselle Marie!’ cried Ricard, the head clerk. ‘Welcome! Come in and warm yourself. Your basket is ready, as it is every week, but, with all this going on, I have had it put on one side for safe-keeping.’

  Then, turning to a fat peasant who was asking for some silver pieces in exchange for a Louis d’or, ‘Yes, you’ll be attended to, Master Guillemard,’ and turning towards the second clerk he cried, ‘Piton! Attend to Master Guillemard.’

  He led the girl into a neighbouring room, which served as a common-room for the bank’s employees and in which a big fire was burning. From a cupboard he took a basket of osiers, covered with a cloth.

  ‘Nuts, oil, fresh bacon, spices, wheat-flour, dried peas, and three large sausages,’ he said to Marie. ‘As long as we have enough to eat, you shall have it too. Those are the orders of Messire Guccio. And I am putting it all down to his account as usual. The winter is dragging on and I shall be much surprised if it doesn’t end in famine as it did last year. But this year we shall have made better provision.’

  Marie took the basket. ‘Is there no letter?’ she asked.

  The first clerk – he was by birth half-Italian and half-French, and his real name was Ricardo – shook his head in assumed sorrow.

  ‘No, my fair Demoiselle, no letter this time!’

  He smiled at her disappointed expression, and added, ‘No, no letter, but good news!’

  ‘Is he recovered?’ the girl cried.

  ‘And for whom do you think we are making all these preparations in the very middle of January, when we never normally do any painting till April?’

  ‘Ricard, is it really true? Your master’s coming?’

  ‘Santo dio, yes, he’s coming! He’s already in Paris and has sent us word that he is arriving tomorrow. It would seem that he is most eager to get here, since it appears that he has hardly halted on the journey.’

  ‘Oh, how happy I am! How happy I shall be to see him again!’

  Then, controlling herself, as if to give way to her joy were to be lacking in modesty, Marie added, ‘All my family will be delighted to see him.’

  ‘Yes, but I’ve got earache today,’ replied Ricard, ‘and it’s market-day too. I could have done without all this extra trouble. Look, Demoiselle Marie, I would like your opinion upon the decorations of the room we have prepared for him, whether it’s to your taste or not.’

  He led her upstairs and opened the door of a well-proportioned room, though it was somewhat low of ceiling, in which the beams had just been waxed. The room was furnished with a few rather coarse oak pieces, with a narrow bed, whose coverlet was nevertheless a fine piece of Italian brocade, and with a few pewter ornaments and a candlestick. Marie looked round the room.

  ‘This all looks very nice,’ she said. ‘But I think, indeed I hope, that your master will soon be lodged at the manor.’

  Ricard once more gave a slight smile.

  ‘I expect so too,’ he replied. ‘I promise you that everyone here is very intrigued by Messire Guccio’s arrival and by the news that he is going to settle here. Since yesterday there has been a ceaseless flow of people coming here on every kind of pretext, taking up our time for nothing at all, to such an extent that you might think there was no one else in the town who could count out a dozen pennies for a shilling. All this merely to gaze in astonishment at the decorating we are doing and to be told the reason for it all over again. I must say that Messire Guccio is much beloved in the neighbourhood since he had Provost Portefruit dismissed: everyone complained of him. He will be warmly welcomed and I can see him becoming the real master of Neauphle, after your brothers of course,’ he added as he saw the girl out by the garden door.

  Never had the road between the town of Neauphle and the Manor of Cressay seemed so short.

  ‘He’s coming, he’s coming ...’ she repeated to herself like a song, jumping from one rut to another. ‘He’s coming, he loves me, and we shall soon be married. He will be the true master of Neauphle.’ The basket of food felt light upon her arm.

  As she went into the courtyard of Cressay, she met her brother Pierre.

  ‘He’s coming!’ she cried, putting her arms round his neck.

  ‘Who’s coming?’ asked the great lout in amazement.

  It was the first time in months that he had seen his sister show any real sign of happiness.

  ‘Guccio’s coming!’

  ‘Oh, that’s good news,’ cried Pierre de Cressay. ‘He was a good friend and I shall be delighted to see him again.’

  ‘He’s coming to live in Neauphle, where his uncle has given him charge of the branch. And above all ...’

  She stopped, but, incapable of keeping her secret any longer, she pulled her brother’s ill-shaven face down towards her and whispered in his ear, ‘He’s going to ask for my hand.’

  ‘What nonsense!’ said Pierre. ‘Where did you get that idea from?’

  ‘It is not an idea, I know it ... I know it ... I know it ...’

  Attracted by the noise, Jean de Cressay, the eldest of them, came out of the stables, where he was in process of grooming his horse. He had a wisp of straw in his hand.

  ‘Jean, it seems that a brother-in-law is arriving from Paris,’ said the younger b
rother.

  ‘A brother-in-law? Whose brother-in-law?’

  ‘That’s just it! Our sister has found herself a husband!’

  ‘Well, that would be no bad thing!’ Jean replied.

  He entered good-humouredly into the game and believed that it was merely a piece of girlish nonsense.

  ‘And who is this powerful baron,’ he went on, ‘who covets the honour of uniting himself to our ruined towers and our fine heritage of debt? I only hope, sister, that he’s rich, because we need it.’

  ‘Oh, yes, he is,’ replied Marie. ‘It’s Guccio Baglioni.’

  From her elder brother’s expression she knew at once that she was in for a scene. She suddenly felt cold and her ears began humming.

  For a few more seconds Jean de Cressay pretended to treat the whole matter as a joke, but the tone of his voice had changed. He wanted to know why his sister had spoken thus. Was she particularly attracted to Guccio? Had she had any conversation with him which went beyond the limits of propriety? Had he written to her without the family’s knowledge?

  To every question, Marie replied ‘No,’ but her anxiety was increasing. Even Pierre felt a certain uneasiness.

  ‘I’ve been stupid again,’ he said to himself. ‘I’d have done better to keep my mouth shut.’

  All three of them went into the Great Hall of the Manor where their mother, Dame Eliabel, was spinning wool by the fireplace. The lady of the manor had during these last months recovered her natural stoutness as a result of the food which Guccio had sent Marie every week since the famine of the preceding winter.

  ‘Go up to your room,’ said Jean de Cressay to his sister.

  As the eldest, he had the authority of a head of the family, and Marie obeyed without discussion.

  When they heard the door shut on the first floor, Jean told his mother what he had just learned.

  ‘Are you quite sure, my son? Can it be true?’ she cried. ‘Who could possibly imagine that a girl of our rank, whose ancestors have formed part of chivalry for three centuries, could marry a Lombard? I am sure that young Guccio, who indeed is an extremely nice boy, and keeps his station, has never even thought of it.’

  ‘I don’t know whether he has thought of it or not,’ replied Jean, ‘but I know that Marie is thinking of it.’

  Dame Eliabel’s fat cheeks grew red.

  ‘The child’s imagining things!’ she said. ‘My sons, if that young man has come here to visit us several times and shown us so much friendliness, it is because, I am sure, he is more interested in your mother than in your sister. Oh, without any impropriety of course,’ she hastened to add, ‘and not a single word that could offend me has passed his lips. Nevertheless, these are things one knows when one is a woman and I have been well aware that he admires me.’

  So saying, she sat straight and bridling upon her stool.

  ‘Without wishing to doubt your judgement, Mother,’ replied Jean de Cressay, ‘I am not so sure. Do you remember that the last time Guccio came here, we left him alone several times with our sister, when she seemed to be so ill; and it was after that time that she recovered her health.’

  ‘It’s perhaps because from that moment she began to have enough to eat again, and we too,’ Pierre remarked.

  ‘Yes, but I realize also that since then it has always been through Marie that we have heard news of Guccio. His Italian journey, the accident to his leg ... It is always Marie whom Ricard informs and never one of us. And the way she always insists on going to get the food from the bank herself! I tell you there’s something behind all this to which our eyes have been closed.’

  Dame Eliabel left her distaff, shook the bits of wool from her skirt, and, rising, declared in an outraged voice, ‘Indeed, it would be extremely dishonest of this young man to have made use of his ill-gotten fortune to suborn my daughter, and try to buy our alliance by a few gifts of food and clothing, when the honour of being our friend should suffice to repay him.’

  Pierre de Cressay was the only member of the family who had a sense of the realities of the situation. He was simple, loyal, and without prejudices. So much bad faith, in conjunction with such vain pretensions, began to make him impatient. ‘They’re each jealous of Marie in their own way,’ he said to himself, looking at his mother and his brother who were engaged in mutually encouraging each other’s indignation.

  ‘You seem to forget, both of you,’ he said, ‘that Guccio’s uncle is still our creditor to the extent of three hundred pounds which he has been kind enough not to demand, nor has he asked for the interest which is increasing all the time. And if we were not distrained upon by Provost Portefruit and turned out of our house, it’s to Guccio that we owe it. And remember that he has saved us from dying of hunger with food for which we have never paid. Before sending him about his business, just think whether you can discharge your debts. Guccio is rich and will become more so as time goes on. He is under high protection, and if the King of France thought he cut a sufficiently good figure to send him with an embassy to Naples to fetch the new Queen, I don’t see why we should be so difficult about it.’

  Jean shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘It was Marie who told us that too,’ he said. ‘He must have gone there as a merchant on business.’

  ‘And even if the King did send him to Naples, that doesn’t mean that he would give him his daughter’s hand!’ cried Dame Eliabel.

  ‘My dear mother,’ replied Pierre, ‘as far as I know Marie is not the daughter of the King of France! She is very good-looking, of course ...’

  ‘I refuse to sell my sister for money,’ cried Jean de Cressay.

  He had one eyebrow higher than the other and when he was angry the asymmetry became very apparent.

  ‘Naturally you won’t sell her,’ replied Pierre, ‘but you’ll select some old dotard for her, and fail to be offended by the fact that he is rich, provided he can wear spurs on his gouty heels. If she loves Guccio, you won’t be selling her! Nobility? Great God, surely we two boys can uphold it. I don’t mind telling you that, as far as I’m concerned, I would not be altogether averse from their marriage.’

  ‘And you wouldn’t be averse from seeing your sister installed at Neauphle, in our very own fief, behind the counter of a bank, weighing coins, and trafficking in spices? You’re out of your mind, Pierre, and I don’t know where you can have acquired your lack of respect for what we are,’ said Dame Eliabel. ‘In any case, as long as I’m alive, I shall never consent to such a misalliance! Nor will your brother, will you, Jean?’

  ‘Even to discuss the matter is going too far, and I ask you, Pierre, never to speak of it again.’

  ‘All right, all right, you’re the eldest, do as you think best,’ said Pierre.

  ‘A Lombard! A Lombard!’ went on Dame Eliabel. ‘Young Guccio’s coming, you say? Leave it to me, sons. The debt we owe him and the obligations we are under prevent our closing our doors to him. Very well, we’ll receive him well; indeed we’ll receive him too well; but if he is deceitful, I shall be so too. And I guarantee I’ll prevent his ever desiring to come here again, if it is for the motive we fear!’

  2

  Dame Eliabel’s Reception

  FROM DAWN THE FOLLOWING day one might have thought that the feverish activity which had taken charge of the bank at Neauphle had been caught by the Manor of Cressay. Dame Eliabel harried her maid, and six peasants from the neighbourhood had been summoned to forced labour for the day. The flagstones were being thoroughly scrubbed, the tables were being set as if for a wedding, tree trunks were being stacked each side of the chimney-piece; fresh straw had been laid in the stables, the courtyard brushed with birch-brooms, and, in the kitchen, a young wild boar and a whole sheep were already turning on the spit; pies were cooking in the oven; and in the village the rumour was abroad that the Cressays were expecting an envoy from the King.

  The day was cold and bracing, with a pale January sun which nevertheless lit up the leafless branches and illuminated points of light in the puddle
s on the roads.

  Guccio arrived towards the end of the morning, wearing a coat lined with expensive fur, and a lavish bonnet of green cloth whose peak fell upon one shoulder. He was riding a fine bay horse which seemed to be in beautiful condition and was richly harnessed. He was followed by a servant, also on horseback, and you could see from a mile off that he was a rich man.

  He found Dame Eliabel and her two sons in their best clothes and was delighted with his welcome. From the ampleness of the fare provided, from the attentiveness of the servant, the embraces of Dame Eliabel, and the evident pleasure at his presence, he drew happy auguries.

  Marie must have informed them of his intent and it had been received with enthusiasm. It was known why he was come, and he was already being treated as her fiancé. Only Pierre de Cressay seemed somewhat embarrassed.

  ‘My dear friends,’ cried Guccio, ‘how delighted I am to see you again! But you should not have put yourselves to all this expense. Treat me exactly as if I were a member of the family.’

  This speech displeased Jean, who secretly exchanged a glance with his mother.

  Guccio had somewhat changed in appearance. His accident had given him a slight stiffness of the right leg which nevertheless gave a certain haughty elegance to his walk. Also, in hospital he had grown to his full height; he was now an inch taller, his features were set, and his face had acquired that more serious and mature expression which is the result of a long ordeal of physical suffering. He had outgrown his adolescence and had now taken on the appearance of a man.

  Without having lost any of his previous assurance, rather the contrary, he now took less pains to impose himself on others. His French had grown more correct; he spoke with less accent and somewhat more slowly, though he still gesticulated as much as before.