The Poisoned Crown

by Maurice Druon

  ‘Yes, and the whole Court’ll die of it! Oh, there won’t be any danger as far as I’m concerned; I’m no longer invited. But, I repeat, every dish is tried by the servant and touched with the unicorn’s horn.20 It would soon be discovered from which forest the deer had come. To get the poison is one thing, to introduce it in the right place is another. Order it at once, and let it be rapid and leave no trace. By the way, Beatrice, you liked that cloak of watered silk I wore at the coronation, didn’t you? Very well, it’s yours!’

  ‘Oh, Madam, Madam! How wonderfully kind you are!’ cried Beatrice, putting her arms round Mahaut’s neck.

  ‘Mind my tooth!’ cried the Countess, putting her hand to her cheek. ‘And do you know how I broke it? On one of those beastly sweets Louis gave me.’

  She stopped short and her grey eyes glowed beneath her eyebrows. ‘The sweets!’ she murmured. ‘Yes, that’s it, that’s it; have the poison prepared and say that it’s for my deer. Whatever happens, it’ll come in useful.’

  7

  In the King’s Absence

  ON A DAY TOWARDS THE end of May, when the King was away hawking, Jeanne called upon her sister-in-law Queen Clémence. The interdict which applied to the Countess Mahaut did not extend to her daughter; the Queen and the Countess of Poitiers saw each other fairly frequently, and Jeanne never failed to show her royal sister-in-law her gratitude for having obtained her pardon. Clémence, from her side, felt herself linked to the Countess of Poitiers by that particular tenderness one feels towards people to whom one has done a good turn.

  If the Queen had felt a moment’s jealousy, or more exactly a feeling of the injustice of fate, when she heard that Jeanne was pregnant, the feeling had been quickly dissipated when she found herself in a similar condition. Indeed, their pregnancies seemed to have brought the sisters-in-law closer to each other. They talked together at length about their health, the regimen they followed, the precautions they took, and Jeanne, who had already had two daughters before her condemnation, gave Clémence the benefit of her experience.

  The distinction with which Madame of Poitiers carried her burden at seven months was much admired. She came in to the Queen her head held high, her step firm, her complexion fresh, her appearance as elegant as always; her dress seemed to flow about her.

  The Queen rose to receive her, but the smile on her lips vanished when she saw that Jeanne of Poitiers was not alone; behind her followed the Countess of Artois.

  ‘Madam my Sister,’ said Jeanne, ‘I wanted to ask you to show my mother the finely wrought tapestries with which you have hung and newly divided your room.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Mahaut, ‘my daughter has spoken so much of them that I wished to have the opportunity of admiring them myself. You know that I am something of an expert in these matters.’

  Clémence was in some perplexity. She did not wish to infringe, even accidentally, her husband’s decisions, and he had forbidden Mahaut to appear at Court; but on the other hand she thought it would be stupid to send her away now that she had got so far, sheltering as she was behind her daughter’s pregnancy as behind a buckler. ‘There must be some serious reason for her visit,’ thought Clémence. ‘Perhaps she wishes to make a settlement and is looking for some way of regaining favour without losing face. Her wish to see my tapestries can be no more than a pretext.’

  She therefore pretended to believe in the pretext and led her two visitors to her room which had been newly decorated.

  The tapestries were not only used to decorate the walls, but were hung from the ceiling in such a way as to make of the vast hall a number of cosy little rooms which were easier to heat, allowing the sovereigns a certain privacy from their attendants and deadening their voices to the ears of the indiscreet. The effect was rather as if nomad princes had established their tents within the building.

  Clémence’s set of tapestries showed hunting scenes in exotic countrysides where numerous little lions disported themselves beneath orange-trees and birds of strange plumage frolicked among the flowers. The hunters and their arms appeared only in the background of the tapestries, half-hidden by the foliage, as if the artist had been ashamed to depict men indulging in their lust for killing.

  ‘Oh, how beautiful they are,’ cried Mahaut, ‘and how delightful it is to see high warped cloth so admirably worked.’

  She went up to the tapestry, felt it, caressed it.

  ‘Look, Jeanne,’ she went on, ‘how pliant and consistent it is; look at the charming contrast between the flowered background, those florets stitched in indigo, and the fine kermes red of the parrot’s feathers. It is truly an artistic triumph in the use of wools!’

  Clémence looked at her in some astonishment. The Countess Mahaut’s grey eyes shone with pleasure, her hand seemed to touch tenderly; her head a little bent forward, she lingered in contemplation of the delicacy of the drawing and the contrast of the colours. This strange woman, tough as a warrior, clever as a monk, fierce in her appetites and hatreds, was now, suddenly disarmed, giving herself up to the enchantment of a tapestry. And she was, indeed, quite certainly the greatest expert in the matter to be found in all the Kingdom.

  ‘They really are a most excellent selection, Cousin,’ she said, ‘and I congratulate you. These tapestries would give the most hideous walls a festal air. They are in the manner of Arras, and yet the wools seem to glow more brightly upon the web. Whoever made them for you, they’re clever people.’

  ‘They’re tapestry-makers working in my country,’ explained Clémence, ‘but I must admit that they come from yours, the master craftsmen at least.21 Besides, they’re people who travel a great deal. My grandmother, who sent me these pictorial tapestries to replace my wedding presents lost at sea, also sent me some weavers. I have set them up near here, for a time at least, where they will continue to weave for me and the Court. And if you would care to employ them, or if Jeanne should, they are most certainly at your disposal. You merely have to order the design you want, and with their hands and their looms they’ll produce the picture as you see it.’

  ‘I shall most certainly avail myself of it, Cousin; I accept with gratitude,’ declared Mahaut. ‘I very much want to decorate my house a little. I’m so bored with it. And since Messire de Conflans controls my tapestry-makers at Arras, the King will forgive me for making some use of your Neapolitans.’

  Clémence accepted the point as it had been uttered, with a half-smile. Between herself and the Countess of Artois for one moment was that understanding which marks a taste in common for the luxurious and works of art by human hands.

  While the Queen continued to show Jeanne the tapestries upon the walls, Mahaut went towards those which enclosed the royal bed, beside which she had seen a bowl full of sweets.

  ‘Has the King also surrounded himself with pictorial tapestries?’ she asked Clémence.

  ‘No, Louis has not much in the way of hangings in his room. I must say that he doesn’t sleep there very much.’

  She stopped, blushing slightly at her involuntary admission.

  ‘That goes to show how much he likes your company, Cousin,’ replied Mahaut in a jolly voice. ‘Besides, what man would not appreciate someone as beautiful as you!’

  ‘I had feared,’ continued Clémence, with the calm shamelessness peculiar to the pure, ‘that Louis would sleep apart when I became pregnant. But not at all! Oh, we sleep as Christian people should!’

  ‘I’m delighted, really delighted,’ said Mahaut. ‘So he continues to sleep with you, does he; what a worthy fellow! Mine, God keep him, never did as much. What a good husband you have in him!’

  She had reached the bedside table.

  ‘May I, Cousin?’ she asked, indicating the bowl. ‘Do you know that you have given me a taste for sweets?’

  Heroically, and in spite of the toothache from which she was still suffering, she took a sweet and chewed it with the sound side of her mouth.

  ‘Oh, this one seems to have been made out of bitter almond,’ she said, �
�I’ll take another.’

  Turning her back upon the Queen and Jeanne of Poitiers, who were only some five paces away, she took out of her purse a home-made sweet and slipped it into the bowl.

  ‘Nothing is so much like one sweet as another,’ she said to herself, ‘and if he finds this one rather bitter to the taste, he’ll think that it’s the natural bitterness of the almond.’ She went over to the other two women.

  ‘Well, Jeanne,’ she went on, ‘tell Madam your Sister-in-law what you have on your mind, that which you so much desired to tell her.’

  ‘Indeed, Sister,’ said Jeanne rather hesitatingly, ‘I wanted to tell you what worries me.’

  ‘Now we’re coming to the point,’ thought Clémence; ‘they’re going to tell me why they have come.’

  ‘My husband is very far away,’ Jeanne continued, ‘and his absence distresses me. Could you not persuade the King to let Philippe come back for my lying-in? It’s a time when one likes to have one’s husband close to one. It may be a weakness, but one feels a certain sense of protection and fears the pains of childbirth less if one knows that the child’s father is close at hand. You’ll soon know the truth of this, Sister.’

  Mahaut had taken pains not to let Jeanne know of her plot, but she used her daughter in every step of her plan. ‘If it comes off,’ she had thought, ‘it will be desirable for Philippe to be in Paris as soon as possible so as to take over the powers of Regency.’

  Jeanne’s request was of a kind that was well calculated to move Clémence. She had feared that they would speak to her of Artois, and now felt almost relieved at their merely making an appeal to her kindness. She would do everything possible to see that Jeanne’s wish was realized.

  Jeanne kissed her hands, and Mahaut did the same, crying, ‘Oh, how kind you are! I told Jeanne that there was no hope except in appeal to you!’

  They then took their leave. Mahaut did not seem to wish to stay any longer.

  As she left Vincennes to return to Conflans, she said to herself, ‘There, it is done. Now I have nothing to do but wait. I wonder which day he’ll eat it? Unless of course Clémence ... but she does not care for sweetmeats; always provided that she doesn’t go and eat that particular one from one of those cravings of pregnancy! Anyway, it would be hitting at Louis just the same by removing at one stroke both his wife and his child. And in any case he would be accused of killing his second wife; one only lends money to the rich.’

  ‘You’re very silent, Mother,’ Jeanne said in astonishment. ‘The interview went off very well. Was there anything which displeased you?’

  ‘Nothing, Daughter, nothing,’ replied Mahaut. ‘I feel sure we’ve adopted the right course.’

  8

  The Monk is Dead

  A SIMILAR EVENT TO THAT which, at the Court of France, made the Queen and the Countess of Poitiers so happy, was to sow drama and disaster in a little Manor thirty miles from Paris.

  For several weeks Marie de Cressay’s face had been ravaged with pain and grief. She hardly answered questions addressed to her. Her dark blue eyes seemed to have grown larger from the purple shadows about them; a little vein showed in the transparency of her forehead. There was a certain aberration in her manner.

  ‘Do you think she’s going to develop a wasting disease as she did last year?’ asked her brother Pierre.

  ‘No, she’s growing no thinner,’ replied Dame Eliabel. ‘She needs a lover, that’s all there is to it; and I think that her thoughts dwell rather too much upon that Guccio. It’s high time she was married.’

  But the cousin of Saint-Venant, approached by the Cressays, had replied that he was, for the moment, too busy making war in Artois with his neighbours, but he would think about it as soon as peace was restored.

  ‘He must have heard about the state of our affairs,’ said Pierre de Cressay. ‘You’ll see, Mother, you’ll see, one of these days we shall regret having sent Guccio away.’

  The young Lombard was still received from time to time at the Manor, where they pretended to treat him as a friend as they had done in the past. The debt of three hundred pounds was still in being, while the interest was still accumulating. Moreover, the famine had not come to an end and it was noted that the bank at Neauphle was only provided with food upon those days when Marie visited it. Jean de Cressay, in an access of pride, had asked Guccio for an account of all the food supplied for the last year and more; but, once he had received the bill, he had neglected to pay it. And Dame Eliabel continued to allow her daughter to go to Neauphle once a week, but only in company with her servant and taking strict account of the time she spent on the way.

  The meetings of the secretly married couple were therefore rare. But the young servant-girl showed herself responsive to Guccio’s generosity and, what was more, she was not altogether indifferent to Ricard, the chief clerk. She dreamt of attaining a middle-class position, and was quite willing to wait among the strong-boxes and the accounts, listening to the agreeable tinkle of money in the scales, while love was being hurriedly made on the first floor.

  These minutes, stolen from the watchfulness of the Cressay family and forbidden by the world, had been at first like islands of light in this strange marriage, which had not yet had ten hours of common existence. Guccio and Marie lived upon the memory of these moments for the whole of each week; the splendour of their marriage night had not been belied.

  At their last meetings, however, Guccio had remarked a certain difference in Marie’s attitude. Like Dame Eliabel, he too had noticed how strange the young girl looked, and the shadows which were marked beneath her eyes, and the little blue vein on her temple which aroused his tenderness and on which he liked to place his lips.

  He had attributed this change to impatience on Marie’s part with the false position in which they found themselves. Happiness, when distilled drop by drop, and always clothed in lies, soon becomes torture. ‘But it is she who wants us to keep silent,’ he said to himself. ‘She maintains that her family will never recognize the marriage and will have me arrested. And my uncle agrees with that too. So what are we to do?’

  ‘What are you worrying about, darling?’ he asked her on that third day of June. ‘The last few times I’ve seen you you’ve seemed less happy. What are you afraid of? You know I am here to defend you.’

  Beyond the window was a cherry-tree in blossom, all amurmur with birds and wasps. Marie turned to him, and there were tears in her eyes.

  ‘Darling,’ she said, even you can’t defend me against what has happened.’

  ‘What has happened?’

  ‘Nothing more than what, by God’s will, should happen to me through you,’ Marie replied softly with lowered head.

  He wanted to make sure that he had understood her.

  ‘A child?’ he murmured.

  ‘I was afraid to admit it. I feared that you might love me less.’

  For some seconds he stood there unable to say a word, because none came to his lips. Then he took her face in his hands and forced her to look at him.

  Like nearly everyone fated to suffer the madness of passion, Marie had one eye slightly smaller than the other; this minute difference, which in no way lessened the beauty of her face, was more noticeable in her present state of anxiety and made her expression all the more moving.

  ‘Marie, doesn’t it make you happy?’ said Guccio.

  ‘Yes, of course, if it makes you happy too.’

  ‘But, Marie, it’s marvellous!’ he cried. ‘This completes us, and the fact of our marriage will become clear in the light of day. Now your family will have to accept it. A child! A child! It’s a miracle.’

  And he looked at her from head to foot, overwhelmed with astonishment that so natural a thing should have happened to them, to her and to him. He felt he was a man, he felt strong. It would have taken little to make him lean from the window and cry the news aloud to the whole town.

  Whatever happened to him, this young man only saw it to begin with in the best possible light and a
s an occasion for acquiring merit. He had secretly married the daughter of a knight and now she had made him a father! He never saw the vexations that might result from his actions till the following day.

  The servant’s voice came up to them from the ground floor, telling them the hour.

  ‘What shall I do? What shall I do?’ said Marie. ‘I shall never dare tell my mother.’

  ‘All right, I’ll come and tell her,’ he replied.

  ‘Wait another week.’

  He preceded her down the narrow wooden staircase, holding out his hands to help her descend, step by step, as if she had already become extremely fragile and he must sustain her at every step she took.

  ‘But I’m not yet inconvenienced,’ she said.

  He suddenly realized how comic his attitude was and laughed loudly and happily. Then he took her in his arms and they exchanged so long a kiss that she was breathless.

  ‘I must go,’ she said. ‘I must go.’

  But Guccio’s happiness was contagious and she went on her way reassured. The situation had in no way changed, and yet Marie had regained confidence, simply because Guccio shared her secret.

  ‘You’ll see, you’ll see what a wonderful life we shall have,’ he said to her as he led her to the garden door.

  The Creator was immensely wise and charitable when He forbade us knowledge of the future, while He has vouchsafed us the delights of memory and the enchantments of hope. Few people would survive the knowledge of what lies in store for them. If this husband and wife, these two lovers, had known that they would only see each other once again in the whole of their lives, and that only after ten years had gone by, they would probably have killed themselves on the spot.

  Marie sang all the way home as she passed fields carpeted with golden flowers and trees in blossom. She wished to stop by the bank of the Mauldre to gather irises.