Guccio looked at the walls about him as if he were already their master. He inquired about Pierre’s and Jean’s plans. Had they no plans for the reconditioning of the Manor? Alterations which would make it conform to the taste of the day?
‘In Italy,’ he said, ‘I saw some painted ceilings which would be most effective here. And don’t you think you ought to rebuild your bathroom? They build little ones today which are extremely convenient and, in my opinion, a bathroom is indispensable to people of quality.’
It was to be understood that he was implying, ‘I am prepared to pay for all this, for this is how I like living.’
He also had ideas about the furniture, and tapestries with which to decorate the walls. He was beginning seriously to annoy Jean de Cressay, and even the huge Pierre himself thought that it was going a bit too far to begin speaking immediately about reconditioning the whole house.
Guccio had been there half an hour, and Marie had not yet appeared. ‘Perhaps,’ he thought, ‘I should declare myself at once ...’
‘Am I to have the pleasure of seeing Demoiselle Marie; will she be of our company at dinner?’
‘Of course, of course; she is dressing, she’ll be down soon,’ replied Dame Eliabel. ‘You will find her much altered; she is completely obsessed by her new-found happiness.’
Guccio rose to his feet, his heart beating, his complexion turning dark. Where others turned red, he became olive-coloured.
‘Really?’ he cried. ‘Oh, Dame Eliabel, what happiness you give me!’
‘Yes, and we too are delighted to be able to share the good news with a friend such as yourself. Our dear Marie is affianced ...’
She paused in order to savour the pleasure of seeing Guccio change countenance.
‘She is affianced to a relation of ours, the Lord of Saint-Venant, a gentleman of Artois of the most ancient nobility who has fallen in love with her, as she has with him.’
Aware that they were all looking at him, Guccio made an effort to ask, ‘And when is the wedding to be?’
‘In the first days of summer,’ replied Dame Eliabel.
‘But to all intents and purposes it’s an accomplished fact,’ said Jean de Cressay, ‘because promises have been exchanged.’
For a moment Guccio felt bewildered, incapable of speech, fiddling automatically with the golden reliquary given him by Queen Clémence, which now shone brightly upon his parti-coloured jerkin of the latest Italian fashion. He heard Jean de Cressay open a door and call his sister. Then he recognized the sound of Marie’s footsteps; pride coming to his aid, he compelled himself to put a good face on it.
Marie came in, her manner stiff and distant, but her eyes red. She greeted Guccio composedly. He congratulated her as naturally as he could, while she received his compliments with as much dignity as she could muster. She was not far from bursting into tears, but was alone in knowing it, and she succeeded so well in controlling herself that Guccio took for real coldness what in reality was Marie’s fear of betraying herself and of suffering the punishments she had been threatened with.
The too copious meal was a long agony. Dame Eliabel, delighting in her own duplicity, pretended to a false gaiety, obliging her guest to take second helpings of every dish, constantly ordering the servant to bring another slice of mutton or boar for his hunk of bread.
‘Have you lost your appetite on your long journeys?’ she cried. ‘Come now, Messire Guccio, at your age you must eat well. Isn’t it to your liking? Take a larger helping of that pie!’
Guccio wanted to throw his bowl in her face.
He was not once able to meet Marie’s eyes.
‘She’s apparently not too proud to have gone back on her word to me,’ thought Guccio. ‘Have I escaped death only to receive an affront such as this! Oh, I had good reason for my fears when I despaired in the Hôtel-Dieu. And the letters I sent her! But why did she reply through Ricard that she was still the same and longed to see me, while in fact she was getting engaged elsewhere? This is a betrayal that I shall never be able to forgive! Oh, what a filthy dinner this is! I can never remember a worse!’
The search for vengeance is frequently a by-product of sorrow. Guccio wondered how he could respond to the humiliation inflicted upon him. ‘I could, of course, demand the immediate payment of the debt, and this perhaps might place them in such difficulties that they would have to give up the wedding.’ But the plan seemed to him inadmissibly vulgar. Had he been dealing with a middle-class family, he might perhaps have used them thus; but with gentlemen, who wished to inflict their nobility upon him, he wanted to find a gentlemanly answer. He wanted to prove to them that he was a greater gentleman than all the Cressays and Saint-Venants on earth.
His anxiety continued throughout the pudding and the cheese. When they came to the end of the meal, he suddenly took off his reliquary and gave it to the girl, saying, ‘Here, my fair Marie, is my wedding present to you. It was Queen Clémence’ – and Guccio made the name ring out – ‘it was the Queen of France who placed it round my neck with her own hands because of the services I rendered her and because of the friendship with which she honours me. Within it is a relic of Saint John the Baptist. I never thought that I should come to part with it; but it seems that one can gladly part with all one holds most dear; and I shall be happy to think that you are wearing it from now on. May it protect you, and the children I hope you will have with your gentleman from Artois.’
This was the only way he could find of showing his contempt. It was paying a high price merely for the opportunity of turning a phrase. And indeed, as far as the Cressays, who hadn’t a sixpence between them, were concerned, Guccio’s emotional disturbances were always apt to end in costly gestures. Having come to take, he invariably left having given.
If Marie did not at that moment burst into tears, it was because the fear of her mother and brother weighed more heavily upon her than did her sorrow; but her hand trembled as she took the reliquary from Guccio’s fingers. She carried it to her lips; this she could do because it contained a relic. But Guccio did not see her gesture; he had already turned away.
On the pretext of his recent wound, the fatigue of his journey, and the necessity of returning to Paris on the following day, he immediately took leave of them, called his servant, put on his fur coat, leapt on his horse, and left the courtyard of Cressay with the certainty that he would never set foot in it again.
‘And now we shall have to write to our cousin Saint-Venant,’ said Dame Eliabel to her son Jean when Guccio had passed the gate.
Having reached the bank at Neauphle, Guccio said not a word all evening. He had the books brought him and pretended to be absorbed in examining the accounts. Ricard, the clerk, who had seen him leave so joyfully in the morning, realized that things had gone badly. Guccio told him that he would set off again the following morning; he did not seem to wish to make confidences and Ricard judged it wiser not to question him.
Guccio spent a sleepless night in the room that had been prepared so carefully for a long stay. He now regretted his reliquary and thought that his expensive gesture had merely been absurd. ‘She didn’t deserve so much; I’ve been a fool. And what will Uncle Spinello think of the situation?’ he wondered as he tossed about among the crumpled sheets. ‘He’ll say that having besought him to give me this branch I don’t now know what I want. I shall certainly never ask him for another. I might have returned in the Queen’s escort and made myself a place in her household; I missed the quay by trying to jump too quickly, and then spent six months in hospital. Instead of returning to Paris and looking after my affairs, I rush headlong to this little town in order to marry a country girl about whom I’ve been crazy for nearly two years, as if there were no other woman in the world! And all this merely to find that she prefers some nitwit of her own sort. Bel lavoro! Bel lavoro! This’ll be a lesson to me; it’s time I grew up.’ By dawn he had almost persuaded himself that fate had done him a great service. He called his servant, had his luggage strapped up, a
nd his horse saddled.
While he was drinking a bowl of soup before leaving, a servant he had seen at Cressay the day before entered the bank and asked to speak to him alone. She came with a message: Marie, who had succeeded in escaping for an hour, was awaiting Guccio halfway between Neauphle and Cressay by the bank of the Mauldre at ‘the place you know well’, she added.
As Guccio had seen Marie but once outside the Manor, he realized that she meant the orchard by the river where they had kissed for the first time. But he replied that there must be some mistake, that as far as he was concerned he had nothing to say to Madame Marie, and that she should not have put herself to the trouble of coming out to meet him.
‘Madame Marie is in a sad state,’ said the servant. ‘I swear to you, Messire, that you should go and meet her; if you have been offended, it has nothing to do with her.’
Without deigning to reply, he leapt on to his horse and started off down the road.
‘The quay at Marseilles! The quay at Marseilles!’ he kept repeating to himself. ‘Enough of this foolishness; who knows what I shall be in for if I see her again. Let her consume her own tears if she wants to weep!’
Thinking thus, he galloped a few hundred yards towards Paris; then, suddenly, to his valet’s amazement, he turned his horse and set out at a gallop across country.
In a few minutes he came to the bank of the Mauldre; he saw the orchard and Marie waiting for him beneath the apple trees.
3
The Midnight Marriage
WHEN, A LITTLE AFTER vespers, Guccio dismounted in the Rue des Lombards before the Tolomei bank, his horse was foaming.
Guccio threw the reins to his servant, crossed the great gallery where the counters were, and climbed, as quickly as his stiff leg would let him, the stairs leading to his uncle’s study.
He opened the door; the light was masked by Robert of Artois’s back. The latter turned about.
‘Ah, Providence has sent you, friend Guccio,’ he cried, extending his arms. ‘I was just asking your uncle for a sure and diligent messenger to go at once to Arras to Jean de Fiennes. But you’ll have to be prudent, young man,’ he added, as if Guccio’s consent were not in question; ‘for my dear friends, the Hirsons, are far from taking things easily. They let loose their hounds on anyone who comes from me.’
‘Monseigneur,’ Guccio replied, still breathless from his ride, ‘Monseigneur, only a year ago I nearly brought up my soul at sea while going to England on your service; I have just spent six months in bed as a result of going to Naples on the service of the King, and neither of these journeys has resulted in any good fortune to myself. For this once you will allow me not to obey you, for I must attend to my own affairs which will not permit of delay.’
‘I’ll pay you so well that you won’t regret it,’ said Robert.
‘Doubtless with the money that I shall have to lend you, Monseigneur,’ softly interposed uncle Tolomei, who was standing in the shadow, his hands crossed over his stomach.
‘I wouldn’t go for a thousand pounds, Monseigneur!’ cried Guccio. ‘And particularly not into Artois.’
Robert turned to Tolomei.
‘Tell me, friend banker, have you ever heard such a thing in your life? A Lombard to refuse a thousand pounds, which I haven’t even offered him! Clearly he must have sound reasons. I suppose your nephew isn’t in the pay of Master Thierry, may God strangle him, and with his own guts if possible!’
Tolomei burst out laughing.
‘You needn’t fear, Monseigneur; I suspect my nephew of being in love and even of having won the heart of a high-born lady.’
‘Oh, if it’s a matter of a woman, there’s nothing I can do about it, and I shall have to forgive him his refusal. All the same, I need someone to go on the business I told you of.’
‘Don’t worry, I have someone who will do; an excellent messenger, who will serve you all the more discreetly for the fact of knowing you. Besides, a monk’s robe is not much noticed upon the roads.’
‘A monk?’ said Robert, looking doubtful.
‘An Italian.’
‘Ah, that’s better. You see, Tolomei, I’m playing for high stakes. Since the King has forbidden my aunt Mahaut to leave Paris, I’m going to take the opportunity of having her château of Hesdin, or rather my château of Hesdin, taken by the “allies”! I’ve bought – yes, and with your gold, you’ll say! – I’ve bought the consciences of two of the dear Countess’s sergeants-at-arms, two rascals, as are all the others she employs, who’ll sell themselves to the highest bidder. They’ll let my friends into the place. And if I can’t enjoy what belongs to me, at least I can promise you a splendid sack and I’ll give you the job of selling the loot.’
‘Oh, Monseigneur, you’re mixing me up in a very pretty business!’
‘Nonsense! You might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. Since you’re a banker you’re a thief, and you’re not the man to be afraid of receiving stolen goods; I never divert people from their natural bent.’
Since the arbitration he had been in the greatest good humour.
‘Goodbye, my friend, I’m very fond of you,’ he went on. ‘Oh, I was forgetting: the names of the two sergeants-at-arms. Give me a sheet of paper.’ And as he wrote out his message, he added, ‘To the lord of Fiennes, you understand, and to no one else. Souastre and Caumont are watched too closely.’
He got to his feet, closed the gold clasp of his coat, and then, placing his hands on Guccio’s shoulders, which made Guccio feel as if he were sinking halfway into the floor, he said, ‘You’re quite right, my boy, amuse yourself with the lady of high degree, it’s proper to your age. When you’re a few years older, you’ll know that they’re only harlots like the rest, and that the pleasures they sell can be bought for tenpence in a brothel.’
He went out, and for several seconds afterwards his great laugh could be heard shaking the staircase.
‘Well, nephew, when’s the wedding to be?’ asked Messire Tolomei. ‘I didn’t expect you back so soon.’
‘Uncle, you must help me!’ cried Guccio. ‘Those people are absolute monsters, they’ve forbidden Marie to see me again, their cousin in the north is hideously deformed and she’ll certainly die!’
‘What people? What cousin?’ asked Tolomei. ‘It seems to me, my boy, that your affairs have not gone as well as you expected. Tell me what’s happened and try to be a little clearer.’
So Guccio told his uncle the story of his visit to Neauphle. With his Latin sense of tragedy he made everything seem even blacker than it was. The girl was shut up; she had risked death to cross the fields to meet him and had begged him to save her. The Cressay family, having discovered Marie’s intentions, wished to marry her by force to a distant relation, a man of appalling morality and hideous physical appearance.
‘An old man of forty-five!’ cried Guccio.
‘Thank you,’ said Tolomei.
‘But Marie loves no one but me, she’s told me so, she’s said it often. She doesn’t want anyone else for husband, and I know that she’ll die if she’s forced to marry someone else. Uncle, you must help me.’
‘But how can I help you, my boy?’
‘You must help me to abduct Marie. I’ll take her to Italy and live there.’
Spinello Tolomei, one eye almost shut, the other wide open, looked at his nephew with a half-anxious, half-amused expression.
‘I told you, my boy, that it wouldn’t be as easy as you thought, and that you were making a mistake by going and becoming infatuated with a daughter of the nobility. Those people haven’t got a shirt of their own to their backs; they can only eat thanks to us. Oh yes, I know all about it. They owe us everything down to their beds, but they spit on our faces if one of our boys wants to sleep in it. Believe me, forget the whole thing. When we’re insulted, it’s generally because we’ve stuck our necks out. Choose a beautiful girl from one of our families, well provided with gold from our bank, who will give you equally beautiful children, and whose coach will splash
the feet of your country lass with mud.’
Guccio had a sudden idea.
‘Saint-Venant, isn’t he one of the “allies” of Artois?’ he cried. ‘Supposing I took Monseigneur Robert’s message, and could find this Saint-Venant, challenge him, and kill him!’
He put his hand to his dagger.
‘A fine thing,’ said Tolomei, ‘and it wouldn’t make a noise, of course. And then the Cressays would choose another fiancé in Brittany or in Poitou, and you’d have to go and kill him too. You’re taking on quite a job!’
‘I’ll marry Marie or not at all, Uncle, and I won’t let anyone else marry her.’
Tolomei raised his hands above his head.
‘So like the young! In fifteen years’ time your wife will be ugly in any case, figlio mio; and you’ll ask yourself, when you look at her, if that lined face, that fat stomach, and those hanging breasts were really worth all the trouble you took about her.’
‘It’s not true! It’s not true! Besides, I’m not thinking of fifteen years hence, but of my life today, and I know that nothing in the world can take Marie’s place. She loves me.’
‘She loves you, does she? Well, my boy, if she loves you so much – and don’t go repeating my words to our good friend the Archbishop of Sens – if she loves you so much, believe me, marriage is not an indispensable condition of happiness for two people. You should rejoice rather that they have chosen for her a husband who is imbecile, deformed, and losing his teeth, according to the portrait you have painted of him without ever having seen him. There could be no better solution to your problem.’
‘Schifoso! Queste sono parole schifose! Vengono da un uomo che non conosce Maria!fn5 You don’t know how pure she is, the strength of her religion. She can only be mine through marriage, and she will never belong but to him to whom she will be united before God. If that’s how things are, I shall abduct her without your help, and we shall travel the roads like miserable tramps, and your nephew will end by dying of hunger and cold while crossing the mountains.’
The Poisoned Crown Page 15