‘To be honest, Most Holy Father,’ said Bouville, hesitating a little, ‘without of course being as well informed as you are, it seems to me nevertheless that …’
‘Oh, what a very unskilful ambassador,’ thought Pope John. ‘If I were in his place, I’d allow it to be believed that Valois had already assembled his banners, and I’d stand out for no less than three hundred thousand livres.’
When he had let Bouville flounder long enough, he said: ‘Tell Monseigneur of Valois that the Holy Father renounces the crusade; and, knowing that Monseigneur is a most obedient son and a most excellent Christian, he will obey for the good of Holy Church herself.’
Bouville was very unhappy indeed. It was true that everyone was inclined to give up the crusade, but not quite like this, in a couple of words, without discussion.
‘I have no doubt, Most Holy Father,’ Bouville replied, ‘that Monseigneur of Valois will obey you; but he has already personally assumed very great liabilities.’
‘How much does Monseigneur of Valois require not to suffer too much from these liabilities he has assumed?’
‘I do not know, Most Holy Father,’ said Bouville, blushing pink. ‘Monseigneur of Valois has given me no instruction in the matter.’
‘Oh, yes, indeed I know him well enough to be sure he foresaw this. How much?’
‘He has already advanced a great sum to the knights of his own fiefs so that they might equip their banners …’
‘How much?’
‘He has been experimenting with this new gunpowder artillery …’
‘How much, Bouville?’
‘He has signed very considerable orders for weapons of all kinds …’
‘I’m no soldier, Messire, and I’m not asking you for the number of cross-bows. I merely want to know what figure Monseigneur of Valois requires as compensation.’
But he was amused to see Bouville in such difficulties. And Bouville himself could not help smiling to see all his stratagems pierced like a sieve. There was no doubt he would have to give the figure. Whispering as softly as the Pope himself, he murmured: ‘One hundred thousand livres.’
John XXII shook his head and said: ‘That is no more than Count Charles’s customary and unreasonable demand. I seem to remember that, on a certain occasion, the Florentines had to pay him even more to free themselves of the help he had brought them. It cost the Sienese a little less to persuade him to consent to leave their city. And, on another occasion, the King of Anjou had to disgorge a very similar sum in gratitude for assistance for which he had never asked. It’s a method of financing oneself as good as another, no doubt. Do you know, Bouville, your Valois is no more than a bandit. Very well, take him back the good news. We’ll give him his hundred thousand livres, together with our apostolic blessing.’
On the whole, the Pope was glad to get out of it at the price. And Bouville was delighted that his mission was so suddenly accomplished. To have to bargain with the Sovereign Pontiff as if he were a Lombard merchant would have been really too painful. But the Holy Father made gestures of this kind, which were not perhaps precisely those of generosity, but rather a sound estimate of the price he must pay for power.
‘Do you remember, Messire Count,’ went on the Pope, ‘the time you brought me five thousand livres from the Count of Valois to this very town, to assure the election of a French cardinal by the Conclave? Indeed, that was money invested at a high rate of interest!’
Bouville was always sentimental about the past. He remembered the misty field in the country to the north of Avignon, near Pontet, and the curious conversation they had had, sitting together on a low wall.
‘Yes, I remember, Most Holy Father,’ he said. ‘Do you know that, when I saw you approaching, never having seen you before, I thought I had been deceived and that you were no cardinal, but merely a very young priest whom some prelate had disguised to send in his place?’
The compliment made Pope John smile. He, too, remembered well.
‘And that young Italian,’ he asked, ‘that little Sienese, who worked in a bank and was with you at the time, the boy whom you later sent to me at Lyons, where he served me so well during the Conclave, young Guccio Baglioni, what’s happened to him? I have always thought I’d see him again. He’s the only one who ever did me a service in the past who has not come forward to ask me some favour or preferment.’
‘I don’t know, Most Holy Father, I really don’t know. He went back to his native Italy. I have had no news of him, either.’
But Bouville looked a little flustered as he answered, and the Pope noticed it.
‘If I remember correctly, there was some unfortunate business about a marriage, or a false marriage, with a daughter of the nobility, whom he had made a mother. Her brothers were persecuting him. Wasn’t that it?’
Indeed, the Holy Father remembered it all very well. What a memory he had!
‘I’m really very surprised,’ went on Pope John, ‘that being a protégé both of yours and mine, as well as being professionally engaged in finance, he has not profited by the circumstances to make his fortune. He begot child. Was it born? Did it live?’
‘Yes, yes, it was born,’ Bouville said hastily. ‘It’s living somewhere in the country with its mother.’
He was looking more and more embarrassed.
‘Someone told me – now who was it?’ went on the Pope, ‘– that the girl was wet-nurse to the little posthumous king born to Madame Clémence of Hungary during the regency of the Count of Poitiers. Is that right?’
‘Yes, indeed, Most Holy Father, I believe that was the girl.’
The thousands of tiny wrinkles that furrowed the Pope’s face seemed to quiver.
‘What do you mean, you believe it? Were you not Curator of Madame Clémence’s stomach? And beside her when she had the misfortune to lose her son? You really should know who the wet-nurse was?’
Bouville had turned purple. He should have been more careful and realized that, when the Holy Father mentioned the name of Guccio Baglioni, there was an underlying intention behind it, and a rather cleverer one than when he himself had mentioned the Council of Valladolid and the Moors of Spain in order to broach the question of the crusade. In the first place, the Holy Father must certainly have news of Guccio, since the Tolomei of Siena were one of his bankers.
The Pope’s little grey eyes never left those of Bouville, and the questioning went on: ‘Madame Mahaut of Artois was involved in a trial, was she not? And you must have been a witness? What was the real truth of that affair, my dear Messire Count?’
‘Oh, nothing more than what the court brought to light, Most Holy Father. Mere spiteful gossip, of which Madame Mahaut wished to clear herself.’
The repast had come to an end and the noble pages, handing round the ewers and basins, were pouring water over the diners’ fingers. Two noble knights came forward to pull the Pope’s chair back.
‘Messire Count,’ he said, ‘it has been a great joy to me to see you once more. I do not know, in view of my great age, whether this joy will be accorded me again …’
Bouville, who had risen to his feet, breathed more easily. The moment to say goodbye seemed to have arrived and there would be an end to the interrogation.
‘But,’ went on the Pope, ‘before you leave, I would like to grant you the greatest favour that it lies in my power to give a Christian. I shall hear your confession myself. Come with me to my room.’
2
The Holy Father’s Penance
‘SINS OF THE FLESH? Naturally, since you’re a man. Sins of gluttony? One has only to look at you; you’re fat. Sins of pride? You’re a great lord. But your very position obliges you to be attentive to your devotions; so you confess all these sins, which are the common basis of human nature, and are regularly absolved of them before you approach the Holy Table.’
It was a strange confession in which the Vicar of Christ both asked the questions and answered them. From time to time his whispering voice was drowned by the cries
of birds, for the Pope kept a chained parrot in his room and there were parakeets, canaries, and those little red birds from the islands, called cardinals, fluttering about in an aviary.
The floor of the room was of painted squares on which had been laid Spanish rugs. The walls and the chairs were covered in green; the bed-hangings and the curtains at the windows were of green linen. And against this leafy, woodland colour, the birds showed up bright as flowers.25 In a corner was a bathroom with a marble bath. Next door was the wardrobe, where huge cupboards contained white habits, red capes and embroidered robes, and beyond that again was the study.
As fat Bouville entered the room, he had made to kneel, but the Holy Father had put him into one of the green chairs near himself. Indeed, no penitent could have been treated with greater consideration. Philip the Fair’s ex-Chamberlain was at once surprised and relieved for, great dignitary that he was, he had feared having to make a real confession, and to the Sovereign Pontiff, of all the dust, the dross, the mean desires and the nasty actions of a life, of all the dregs that fall to the bottom of the soul through the days and the years. But the Holy Father seemed to consider these kinds of sins to be trifles or, at least, to be within the competence of humbler priests than himself. But on leaving the table, Bouville had not noticed the glances exchanged between Cardinal Gaucelin Duèze, Cardinal du Pouget and Jacques Fournier, the ‘White Cardinal’. They were well acquainted with this particular stratagem of Pope John, the post-prandial confession, which he used so as to be able to talk in real privacy to an important guest, and by which he gained knowledge of many state secrets. Who could resist this sudden offer, as flattering as it was terrifying? Everything – surprise, religious awe and the beginnings of the digestive process – was calculated to break down intellectual resistance.
‘All that matters,’ went on the Pope, ‘is that a man should have behaved well in that particular station to which God has called him in this world, and it is in this matter that his sins are visited on him most severely. You, my son, have been chamberlain to a king and entrusted with most important missions under three others. Have you always been truly conscientious in the performance of your duties and responsibilities?’
‘I think, Father, Most Holy Father I mean, that I have performed my tasks with zeal, and have been to the best of my ability a loyal servant to my suzerains …’
He broke off, realizing suddenly that he was hardly there to utter his own eulogy. Changing his tone, he went on: ‘I must accuse myself of having failed in certain missions in which I might have succeeded. The fact is, Most Holy Father, I have not always been clever enough, and I have sometimes realized, only when it was too late, that I have made mistakes.’
‘It is no sin to be a little slow-witted. It can happen to us all and, indeed, is the precise opposite of malice prepense. But have you committed on the occasion of your missions, or because of your missions, such grave sins as homicide, or bearing false witness?’
Bouville shook his head in denial.
But the little grey eyes, lacking both eyelashes and eyebrows, gazed luminously and fixedly at Bouville out of that wrinkled face.
‘Are you quite certain? Here, my dear son, is the opportunity for the complete purification of your soul! You have never borne false witness – never?’ asked the Pope.
Again Bouville felt ill at ease. What lay behind this persistence? The parrot uttered a raucous cry from its perch, and Bouville started.
‘Indeed, Most Holy Father, there is one thing weighing on my mind, though I do not really know whether it is a sin, nor which sin’s name to give it. I have not myself committed homicide, I swear it, but I was unable once to prevent it. And, afterwards, I was compelled to bear false witness; but I could not act otherwise.’
‘Tell me about it, Bouville,’ said the Pope.
But it was now the Pope’s turn to adopt a more suitable tone: ‘Confess to me this secret that weighs on you so much, my dear son.’
‘It certainly does weigh on me,’ Bouville said, ‘and even more so since the death of my dear wife Marguerite, with whom I shared it. I often think that, should I die, without having entrusted it to anyone …’
Tears suddenly sprang to his eyes.
‘Why have I never thought of confiding it to you before, Most Holy Father? As I was saying, I am often slow-witted. It was after the death of King Louis X, the eldest son of my master, Philip the Fair …’
Bouville glanced at the Pope and already felt comforted. At last he was going to be able to discharge his conscience of the burden it had borne for eight years. It had undoubtedly been the worst moment of his life and remorse still lay heavily on his mind. Of course, he must confess the whole thing to the Pope!
And now Bouville began to talk more easily. He recounted how, having been appointed the Curator of Queen Clémence’s stomach after the death of her husband, Louis Hutin, he had feared that the Countess Mahaut of Artois would make an attempt on the lives both of the Queen and the child she was carrying. It was at the time when Monseigneur Philippe of Poitiers, the late King’s brother, was manoeuvring for the Regency against the Count of Valois and the Duke of Burgundy.
At the recollection, John XXII raised his eyes to the painted beams of the ceiling, and his thin face looked thoughtful for a moment. For it was he himself who had announced the death of his brother to Philippe of Poitiers, having learned it from the young Lombard, Baglioni. Oh, the Count of Poitiers had managed things very well, both with regard to the Conclave and the Regency! It had all been arranged that June morning in 1316, at Lyons, in the house of Consul Varay.
So Bouville had feared that the Countess of Artois would commit a crime, another crime, since it was common gossip that she had murdered Louis Hutin by poison. And she had had every reason to hate him, moreover, for he had just confiscated her county. But she had also had very good reason, after his death, to wish for the success of the Count of Poitiers, for she was his mother-in-law. If he became King, she was certain of holding her possessions. The one obstacle in her way was the child the Queen was carrying. The child who was born and was a male.
‘Unhappy Queen Clémence,’ said the Pope.
Mahaut of Artois had arranged to be appointed godmother. In this capacity it was her duty to carry the new little King to the ceremony of presentation to the barons. Bouville had been certain, as had Madame de Bouville, that if the terrible Mahaut intended committing a crime, she would do so without hesitation during the ceremony, for it was the only occasion she would have of carrying the child in her arms. Bouville and his wife had therefore decided to hide the royal infant during those hours, and to substitute for him the wet-nurse’s son, who was but a few days older. Under the state swaddling clothes, no one would notice the substitution, for no one had as yet seen Queen Clémence’s child, not even herself, for she was suffering from a serious fever and almost at the point of death.
‘And indeed,’ said Bouville, ‘Countess Mahaut smeared poison over the child’s mouth and nose after I had handed him to her, and he died in convulsions in the presence of the barons. It was this innocent little creature I delivered over to death. And the crime was accomplished so smoothly and so quickly, and I was so perturbed, that it never occurred to me to cry out at once, and in public: “This is a lie!” And then it was too late. How could I explain?’
The Pope was leaning forward a little, his hands clasped over his robe, losing not a word of the story.
‘What happened to the other child, the little King, Bouville? What did you do with him?’
‘He is alive, Most Holy Father, he is alive! My late wife and I confided him to the wet-nurse. And, indeed, we had considerable difficulty. The unfortunate woman hated us both, as you can well imagine, and was groaning in her anguish. With mingled threats and appeals we made her swear on the Gospel to look after the little King as if he were her own child, and never to reveal what had happened to anyone at all, even in the confessional.’
‘Oh, oh,’ murmured the Holy Fa
ther.
‘And so little King John, the real King of France, is being brought up in a manor in the Île-de-France, without his or anyone else’s knowing who he really is, apart from the woman who passes for his mother and myself.’
‘And who is this woman?’
‘She is Marie de Cressay, the woman the young Lombard, Guccio Baglioni, was in love with.’
Everything was now clear to the Holy Father.
‘And does Baglioni know nothing about it?’
‘Nothing, I’m sure of it, Most Holy Father. For the Cressay woman refused ever to see him again, as we had ordered her, so as to keep her oath. Besides, it all happened very quickly, and the boy set out at once for Italy. He thinks his son is still alive. He gets news of him from time to time through his uncle, the banker Tolomei.’
‘But why, Bouville, since you had proof of the crime, and it should have been easy enough to bring it home to her, did you not denounce the Countess Mahaut? When I think,’ added Pope John, ‘that she was sending her chancellor to me, at that very time, to try to persuade me to support her cause against her nephew Robert …’
It suddenly occurred to the Pope that Robert of Artois, the rowdy giant, the sower of discord, the assassin even – for it seemed more than likely he had had a hand in the murder of Marguerite of Burgundy at Château Gaillard – Robert of Artois, the great baron of France, the black sheep, was nevertheless more worthy perhaps, when all was said and done, than his cruel aunt, and that he possibly had some right on his side in his fight against her. What a world of wolves these sovereign courts were. It was the same in every kingdom. And was it to govern, to pacify and to direct this sort of flock that God had inspired him, a poor little burgess of Cahors, with the great ambition of attaining to the tiara which, indeed, he now wore and sometimes felt to be a trifle heavy?
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