The She-Wolf

by Maurice Druon

  Roger Mortimer had paled a little on hearing Philippe of Valois’s suggestion. For if he was King Edward’s adversary and enemy, England was nevertheless still his country.

  ‘For the moment,’ he said, ‘the Scots are being more or less peaceful; they appear to be respecting the treaty they imposed on Edward a year ago.’

  ‘But, really,’ said Robert, ‘to get to Scotland you have to cross the sea. Let’s keep our ships for the crusade. But we have better grounds on which to defy that bugger Edward. He has failed to render homage for Aquitaine. If we forced him to come and defend his rights to his duchy in France, and then went and crushed him we should, in the first place, all be avenged and, in the second, he’d stay quiet enough during our absence.’

  Valois was fiddling with his rings and reflecting. Once again Robert was showing himself to be a wise counsellor. Robert’s suggestion was still vague, but already Valois was visualizing its implications. Aquitaine was far from unknown territory to him; he had campaigned there – his first, great and victorious campaign – in 1294.

  ‘It would undoubtedly be good training for our knights, who have not been properly to war for a long time now,’ he said; ‘and also an opportunity of trying out this gunpowder artillery the Italians are beginning to make use of and which our old friend Tolomei offers to supply us with. And the King of France can certainly sequester the Duchy of Aquitaine owing to the default in rendering homage for it.’

  He thought for a moment.

  ‘But it won’t necessarily lead to a real campaign,’ he went on. ‘As usual, there’ll be negotiations; it’ll become a matter for parliaments and embassies. And eventually the homage will be rendered with a bad grace. It’s not really a completely safe pretext.’

  Robert of Artois sat down again, his elbows on his knees, his fists supporting his chin.

  ‘We can find a more sure pretext than a mere failure to render homage,’ he said. ‘I have no need to inform you, Cousin Mortimer, of all the difficulties, quarrels and battles to which Aquitaine has given rise since Duchess Alienor, having made her first husband, our King Louis VII, so notorious a cuckold that their marriage was dissolved, took her wanton body and her duchy to your King Henry II of England. Nor need I tell you of the treaty with which our good King Saint Louis, who did his best to put things on an equitable basis, tried to put a term to a hundred years of war.15 But equity goes for nothing in settlements between kingdoms. The treaty Monseigneur Saint Louis concluded with Henry III Plantagenet, in the Year of Grace 1259, was so confused that a cat couldn’t have found her kittens in it. Even the Seneschal de Joinville, your wife’s great-uncle, Cousin Mortimer, who was devoted to the sainted King, advised him not to sign it. Indeed, we have to admit frankly that the treaty was a piece of folly.’

  Robert felt like adding: ‘As was also everything else Saint Louis did, for he was undoubtedly the most disastrous king we ever had. What with his ruinous crusades, his botched treaties, and his moral laws in which what is black in one passage is discovered to be white in another … Oh, how much happier France would have been had she been spared that reign! And yet, since Saint Louis’s death, everyone regrets him, for their recollection is at fault; they remember only how he dealt out justice under an oak and, through listening to the lies of bumpkins, wasted the time he should have been devoting to the kingdom.’

  He went on: ‘Since the death of Saint Louis, there has been nothing but disputes, arguments, treaties concluded and broken, homage paid with reservations, hearings by Parliament, plaintiffs non-suited or condemned, rebellions in those lands and then further prosecutions. But when you, Charles, were sent by your brother Philip the Fair into Aquitaine,’ Robert asked, turning to Valois, ‘and so effectively restored order there, what were the actual motives given for your expedition?’

  ‘Serious rioting in Bayonne, where French and English sailors had come to blows and shed blood.’

  ‘Very well!’ cried Robert. ‘We must organize an occasion for more rioting like that of Bayonne. We must take steps to see that somewhere or other the subjects of the two Kings come to serious blows and that a few people get killed. And I believe I know the very place for it.’

  He pointed his huge forefinger at them and went on: ‘In the Treaty of Paris, confirmed by the peace of 1303, and reviewed by the jurists of Périgueux in the year 1311, the case of certain lordships, which are called privileged, has always been reserved, for though they lie within the borders of Aquitaine, they owe direct allegiance to the King of France. And these lordships themselves have dependencies, vassal territories, in Aquitaine, but it has never been definitely decided whether these dependencies are subject to the King of France or to the Duke of Aquitaine. You see the point?’

  ‘I do,’ said Monseigneur of Valois.

  His son, Philippe, did not see it. He opened wide blue eyes and his failure to understand was so obvious that his father explained: ‘It’s quite simple, my boy. Suppose I gave you, as if it were a fief, the whole of this house, but reserved to myself the use and free disposal of this room in which we are now sitting. And this room has, as a dependency, the ante-room which controls this door. Which of us enjoys rights over the ante-room and is responsible for its furnishing and cleaning? The whole plan,’ Valois added, turning back to Robert, ‘depends on being able to arrange action of sufficient importance to compel Edward to make a rejoinder.’

  ‘There’s a very suitable dependency,’ the giant replied, ‘in the lands of Saint-Sardos, which appertain to the Priory of Sarlat in the diocese of Périgueux. Their status was argued when Philip the Fair agreed to a Treaty of Association with the Prior of Sarlat, which made the King of France co-lord of that lordship. Edward I appealed to the Parliament of Paris, but nothing was decided.16 If the King of France, as co-lord of Sarlat, builds a castle in the dependency of Saint-Sardos and puts into it a strong garrison threatening the surrounding territory, what does the King of England, as Duke of Aquitaine, do about it? He must clearly give orders to his Seneschal to oppose it, and will want to station troops there himself. And the first time a couple of soldiers meet, or an officer of the King is maltreated or even insulted …’

  Robert spread wide his great hands as if the result was obvious. And Monseigneur of Valois, in his blue, gold-embroidered, velvet robes, rose from his throne. He could already see himself in the saddle, at the head of his banners; he would leave for Guyenne where, thirty years ago, he had won a great victory for the King of France.

  ‘I congratulate you, Brother,’ cried Philippe of Valois, ‘on the fact that so distinguished a knight as you are should also have as great a knowledge of procedure as a lawyer.’

  ‘Oh, there’s no great merit attached to that, you know, Brother. It’s not from any particular liking that I’ve been led to inquire into the laws of France and the edicts of Parliament; it’s due to my lawsuit about Artois. And since, so far, it has been no use to me, let it at least be some use to my friends,’ said Robert of Artois, bowing slightly to Roger Mortimer, as if this whole great affair was being organized entirely for his benefit.

  ‘Your coming has been of great assistance to us, my lord,’ said Charles of Valois, ‘for our causes are linked, and we shall not fail to ask you most strictly for your counsel throughout this enterprise, which may God protect!’

  Mortimer felt disconcerted and embarrassed. He had done nothing and suggested nothing; but his mere presence seemed to have occasioned the others to give concrete form to their secret aspirations. And now he would be required to take part in a war against his own country; and he had no choice in the matter.

  And so, if God so willed it, the French were going to make war in France against the French subjects of the King of England, with the support of a great English baron, and money furnished by the Pope for the freeing of Armenia from the Turks.

  5

  A Time of Waiting

  THE END OF THE autumn passed, then winter, spring and the beginning of summer. Roger Mortimer saw Paris in all the
four seasons of the year. He saw mud accumulating in its narrow streets, snow covering the great roofs of the abbeys and the fields of Saint-Germain, then the buds opening on the trees by the banks of the Seine, and the sun shining on the square tower of the Louvre, on the round Tower of Nesle and on the pointed steeple of the Sainte-Chapelle.

  An exile has to wait. It is his role, one might think, almost his function. He has to wait for the bad times to pass; he has to wait till the people of the country in which he has taken refuge finish arranging their own affairs so as to have time at last to concern themselves with his. After his first days in exile, when his misfortunes excite curiosity and everyone wants to secure him as if he were a rare animal on exhibition, his presence soon becomes wearisome, embarrassing, a mute reproach even. One cannot be concerned with his affairs all the time; after all, he is the petitioner, so let him be patient.

  So Roger Mortimer waited, as he had waited two months in Picardy, when staying with his cousin Jean de Fiennes, for the French Court to return to Paris, as he had waited for Monseigneur of Valois to find time among all his other tasks to give him audience. And now he was waiting for the war in Guyenne with which his destiny seemed to be unavoidably involved.

  Oh, Monseigneur of Valois had not delayed in giving his orders! The officers of the King of France, as Robert had advised, had begun to mark out the foundations of a castle at Saint-Sardos, in the disputed dependencies of the lordship of Sarlat; but a castle is not built in a day, nor even in three months, and the people of the King of England had not seemed unduly concerned, at least to start with. It was a matter of waiting for an incident to occur.

  Roger Mortimer devoted his leisure to exploring the capital, which he had seen only on a brief visit ten years earlier, and to discovering the French people whom he knew but little. How powerful and populous a nation it was, and how very different from England! On both sides of the Channel it was generally believed that the two nations were very similar because their nobility derived from the same source; but what disparities there were when you looked closer. The whole population of the kingdom of England, which numbered two million souls, did not amount to a tenth of the total of the King of France’s subjects. The French numbered approximately twenty-two million. Paris alone had three hundred thousand inhabitants, while London had but forty thousand.17 And what a seething mass of people there were in the streets, how active trade and industry were, what huge sums of money changed hands. To become aware of it, one had only to take a walk across the Pont-au-Change or along the quay of the goldsmiths, and listen to all the little hammers beating gold in the back shops; or walk, holding one’s nose a little, through the butchers’ district behind the Châtelet, where the flayers and tripe-sellers worked; or go down the Rue Saint-Denis, where the mercers’ shops were; or go and inspect the stuffs in the great drapers’ market; while big business was conducted in the comparative silence of the Rue des Lombards, which Mortimer now knew well.

  Nearly three hundred and fifty guilds and corporations regulated and controlled the conduct of these trades; each had its laws, customs and Feast Days, and there was practically no day in the year on which, after Mass had been heard and a conference held in the parlour, a great banquet was not given for the Masters and Companions. Sometimes it was the Hatters, sometimes the Candlemakers, sometimes the Tanners. On the hill of Sainte-Geneviève a whole population of clerics and doctors in hoods argued in Latin, and the echoes of their controversies over apologetics or the principles of Aristotle furnished the seed for discussions throughout the whole of Christendom.

  The great barons and prelates, as well as many foreign sovereigns, maintained houses in the city where they held a sort of court. The nobility frequented the streets of the Cité, the Mercers’ Gallery in the Royal Palace, and the neighbourhood of the town houses of Valois, Navarre, Artois, Burgundy and Savoy. Each of these houses was a sort of permanent agency for the great fiefs; in them were concentrated the interests of each province. And the city was ceaselessly growing, pushing out its suburbs into the gardens and fields beyond the walls of Philip Augustus, which were now beginning to disappear, swamped by the new building.

  If you went a little way out of Paris, you saw that the countryside was prosperous. Mere drovers and swineherds often possessed a vineyard or field of their own. Women employed in tilling the land, or indeed in other trades, never worked on Saturday afternoons for which they were however paid; moreover, almost everywhere, work ceased on Saturdays at the third ringing for vespers. The large number of religious feast days were all holidays, as were the feast days of the Corporations. And yet these people complained. But what were their principal grievances? Tithes and taxes, of course, as in every country in every period, and the fact that they always had someone over them to whom they belonged. They had the feeling that they were always working for someone else’s benefit, and that they could never dispose freely either of themselves or the fruits of their labour. In spite of the decrees of Philippe V, which had indeed been insufficiently observed, there were still many more serfs in France than there were in England, where most peasants were free men, bound moreover to equip themselves for service in the army, and had a form of representation in the Royal Parliament. This made the fact that the people of England had demanded charters from their sovereigns easier to understand.

  On the other hand, the nobility of France was not divided like England’s; there were, of course, many sworn enemies over matters of personal interest, such as the Count of Artois and his aunt Mahaut; there were clans and parties; but the whole nobility made common front when it was a question of the general interest or the defence of the realm. The conception of the nation was clearer and claimed greater adherence.

  At this period the real similarity between the two countries lay in the persons of their kings. Both in London and in Paris the crown had devolved on a weak man, incapable of that true concern for the public good without which a prince is but a prince in name.

  Mortimer had been presented to the King of France and had seen him on several occasions; he had been able to form no high opinion of this man of twenty-nine, whom the lords were accustomed to call Charles the Fair and the people Charles the Fool because, though in face and figure he resembled his father closely enough, he had not an ounce of brains behind his noble appearance.

  ‘Have you found suitable lodgings, my lord Mortimer? Is your wife with you? Oh, how you must miss her! How many children has she borne you?’

  This was practically the sum of the King’s conversation with the exile. And on each occasion he had asked him once again: ‘Is your wife with you? How many children has she borne you?’ having forgotten the answers between two audiences. His preoccupations seemed to be entirely domestic and uxorious. His unfortunate marriage to Blanche of Burgundy, from which he had retained a scar, had been dissolved by an annulment in which he himself had not appeared in the best light. Monseigneur of Valois had immediately married him off to Marie of Luxemburg, the young sister of the King of Bohemia with whom Valois, at that particular moment, wished to come to an understanding over the kingdom of Arles. And now Marie of Luxemburg was pregnant, and Charles the Fair fussed over her in a rather silly way.

  The King’s incompetence did not, however, prevent France from taking a hand in the affairs of the whole world. The Council governed in the King’s name, and Monseigneur of Valois in the name of the Council; nothing, so it appeared, could be done without France having decided on it. She was at this time giving continual advice to the papacy, and the great courier, Robin Cuisse-Maria, who earned eight livres and some deniers – a real fortune – for making the journey to Avignon, was constantly occupied carrying dispatches, requisitioning his horses from the monasteries on the way. And it was the same with regard to all the courts, those of Naples, Aragon and Germany. For the affairs of Germany were being closely watched, and Charles of Valois and his friend Jean of Luxemburg had worked hard to get the Pope to excommunicate the Emperor, Ludwig of Bavaria, so that the
crown of the Holy Roman Empire might be offered – to whom, indeed? To Monseigneur of Valois himself, of course! This was an old dream with which he was infatuated. Whenever the throne of the Holy Roman Empire had been vacant, or made vacant, Monseigneur of Valois had put himself forward as a candidate. At the same time, the preparations for the crusade were being pushed forward, and it had to be recognized that, could the crusade be led by the Emperor, it would make a great impression on the Infidel, and on Christians, too, for that matter.

  There was also trouble with Flanders, which was always causing the Crown anxiety, whether the people were rebelling against their Count because he was loyal to the King of France, or whether the Count himself rose against the King to satisfy his people. And then, too, there was concern over England, and Roger Mortimer was now summoned by Valois whenever this subject was in question.

  Mortimer had taken lodgings near Robert of Artois’s house, in the Rue Saint-Germain-des-Prés, opposite the Navarre house. Gerard de Alspaye, who had been with him since his escape from the Tower, was in charge of his household, in which Ogle, the barber, held the position of butler. The household had been increased by a few refugees who had also been compelled to go into exile owing to the enmity of the Despensers. In particular, there was John Maltravers, an English lord belonging to Mortimer’s party and, like Mortimer himself, a descendant of a companion of the Conqueror. He had been declared a King’s enemy. Maltravers had a long, dark face with straight, lank hair, and huge teeth; he looked like his horse. He was not the most agreeable of companions and was inclined to make people start with an abrupt, neighing laugh, which generally appeared quite motiveless. But you do not choose your friends in exile; common misfortune forces them on you. Mortimer learnt from Maltravers that his wife had been transferred to Skipton Castle in the county of York, her sole attendants being her lady, her equerry, a laundress, a footman and a page, and that she received only thirteen shillings and four deniers a week on which to keep herself and her people; it might almost have been imprisonment.