‘I kept silent, Most Holy Father,’ Bouville went on, ‘largely on the advice of my late wife. As I had let the opportune moment of confounding the murderess go by, my late wife pointed out with some truth that, if we revealed what had happened, Mahaut would turn furiously on the little King and on us too. Therefore, if we wanted to save him, and ourselves as well, we had to let her believe her crime had been successful. I therefore took the wet-nurse’s child to the Abbey of Saint-Denis that he might be buried among the kings.’
The Pope was thinking.
‘Therefore, the accusations made against Madame Mahaut in the lawsuit that took place the next year were well-founded?’ he asked.
‘Indeed they were, Most Holy Father, indeed they were. Monseigneur Robert was able, through his cousin, Messire Jean de Fiennes, to lay his hands on a poisoner, a sorceress, named Isabelle de Férienne, who had given to a lady-in-waiting of Countess Mahaut the poison she used to kill first King Louis, then the child who was presented to the barons. This Isabelle de Férienne, together with her son Jean, was brought to Paris to give evidence against Mahaut, You can imagine how this suited Monseigneur Robert’s book! Their depositions were taken, and it clearly appeared that they had supplied the Countess, for they had previously given her the philtre by which she boasted of having reconciled her daughter Jeanne to her son-in-law, the Count of Poitiers.’
‘Magic and sorcery! You could have had the Countess burnt,’ whispered the Pope.
‘But not at that time, Most Holy Father, not at that time. For the Count of Poitiers had become King and was giving Madame Mahaut such protection that, in my heart of hearts, I am sure he had been her accomplice, at least in the second crime.’
The Pope’s narrow face seemed to crumple even more beneath his furred skull-cap. These last words had pained him. For he had been fond of King Philippe V, to whom he owed his tiara, and with whom he had always been in perfect accord over all state matters.
‘But God’s punishment fell on them both,’ Bouville went on, ‘for within a year they had both lost their sole male heir. The Countess’s only son died at the age of seventeen. And young King Philippe lost his at only a few months old, and he never had another. But the Countess put up a clever defence against the accusations brought against her. She pleaded the irregularity of the procedure before Parliament; and the disqualification of her accusers, for, she maintained, her rank as a peer of France rendered her liable to be tried only by the Chamber of Barons. However, to establish her innocence, so she said, she besought her son-in-law – it was a fine scene of public hypocrisy – to have the inquiry continued so as to give her the opportunity of confounding her enemies. The Férienne sorceress and her son were heard again, but after being put to the question. They were in no very good state, and were covered in blood. They retracted completely, declared that their earlier accusations were lies and maintained that they had been persuaded to bring them by favours, prayers, promises and also by violence to their persons, instigated, according to the records of the Clerk of the Court, by a person whose name should not at present be mentioned; which was equivalent to naming Monseigneur Robert of Artois. Then King Philippe the Long sat in the seat of justice himself and made all his family and relations and all the intimates of his late brother appear before him: the Count of Valois, the Count of Évreux, Monseigneur of Bourbon, Monseigneur Gaucher, the Constable, Monseigneur de Beaumont, the Master of the Household, and Queen Clémence herself, asking them on their oath whether they knew or believed that King Louis and his son, Jean, had died any but a natural death. Since no proof could be produced, the hearing was being held in public, and the Countess Mahaut was sitting beside the King, everyone declared, though in many cases against their private convictions, that these deaths had been due to natural causes.’
‘But, no doubt, you were summoned to appear yourself?’
Fat Bouville hung his head.
‘I bore false witness, Most Holy Father,’ he said. ‘But what else could I do when the whole Court, the peers, the King’s uncles, the privy servants, and the widowed Queen herself all certified Madame Mahaut’s innocence on oath? I should then have been accused of lying and perjury; and I should have been sent to swing at Montfaucon.’
He seemed so unhappy, so cast down, so sad, that one could suddenly see in that plump and fleshy face the features of the little boy he had been half a century before. The Pope was moved to compassion.
‘Calm yourself, Bouville,’ he said, leaning towards him and putting his hand on his shoulder. ‘And don’t reproach yourself with having done wrong. God set you a problem that was a little heavy for you. I will take your secret on myself. Only the future can tell whether you did the right thing. You wanted to save a life that had been confided to you as part of the responsibilities of your position, and you saved it. You might have endangered many other lives had you spoken.’
‘Oh, Most Holy Father, indeed I feel much calmer now,’ said the ex-Chamberlain. ‘But what will happen to the little hidden King? What should be done about him?’
‘Wait and do nothing. I’ll think about it and let you know. Go in peace, Bouville. As for Monseigneur of Valois, he can have his hundred thousand livres, but not a florin more. And let him stop bothering me about his crusade, and come to an agreement with England.’
Bouville knelt, raised the Pope’s hand effusively to his lips, got to his feet, and backed towards the door, since it appeared the audience was over.
The Pope recalled him with a gesture.
‘Bouville, what about your absolution? Don’t you want it?’
A moment later Pope John was alone and walking up and down his study with little tripping steps. The wind from the Rhône was blowing under the doors and wailing through the fine new palace. The parakeets were chirping in the aviary. The embers in the brazier in the corner of the room had turned dull. John XXII was confronted with one of the most difficult problems he had known since his election. The real King of France was an unknown child, hidden away in the courtyard of a manor. Only two people in the world, or three now, knew of it. Fear prevented the two first from talking. And now that he himself knew, what was he to do about it, when two kings had already succeeded to the throne of France, two kings duly crowned and anointed with the holy oil, thought they were in fact nothing but usurpers? Oh, yes indeed, it was a grave matter, nearly as grave as the excommunication of the Emperor of Germany. What should he do? Reveal the whole affair? It would throw France and, in her wake, a great part of Europe into the most appalling dynastic turmoil. Once again, here were the seeds of war.
There was also another consideration that decided him to keep silent, and it had to do with the memory of King Philippe the Long. Yes, John XXII had been very fond of that young man, and had helped him as much as he could. Indeed, he had been the only sovereign he had ever admired or to whom he was grateful. To tarnish his memory was to tarnish John XXII at the same time; for, without Philippe the Long, would he ever have become Pope? And now dear Philippe was revealed to have been a criminal, or at least the accomplice of a criminal. But was it for Pope John, for Jacques Duèze, to throw the first stone? Did he not owe both his hat and his tiara to the grossest frauds? And suppose, to assure his election, he had had to allow a murder to be committed?
‘Lord, Lord, I thank Thee for having spared me that temptation. But am I worthy of being charged with the care of Thy creatures? And suppose the wet-nurse talked one day, what would happen then? Could one ever trust a woman’s tongue? Lord, it would be merciful, if Thou wouldst sometimes enlighten me! I have given Bouville absolution, but the penance is for me.’
He collapsed on to the green cushion of his prie-dieu and remained there a long time, his face hidden in his hands.
3
The Road to Paris
HOW THE FRENCH ROADS rang out clear beneath the horses’ hooves! What happy music the crunching gravel made! And the air she was breathing, the soft, sunlit morning air, how wonderfully scented it was, what a marve
llous savour it had! The buds were beginning to open, and little, tender, green, crinkled leaves stretched out across the road to caress the travellers’ brows. No doubt the grass of the banks and fields of the Île-de-France was not so thick or rich as English grass, but for Queen Isabella it was the grass of freedom and, indeed, of hope.
Her white mare’s mane swung to the rhythm of its paces. A litter, carried by two mules, was following a few yards behind. But the Queen was too happy and too impatient to tolerate being enclosed in such a conveyance. She preferred to ride her hack and to set a faster pace; she would have liked to jump the hedge and gallop away across the grass.
Boulogne, where she had been married fifteen years earlier in the Church of Notre-Dame, Montreuil, Abbeville and Beauvais had formed the stages of her journey. She had spent the preceding night at Maubuisson, near Pontoise, in the royal manor where she had seen her father, Philip the Fair, for the last time. Her journey had been almost a pilgrimage through the past. It was as if she were journeying back through the stages of her life, as if fifteen years were being abolished, so that she could make a new start.
‘Your brother Charles would no doubt have taken her back,’ Robert of Artois was saying, as he rode beside Isabella. ‘And he would have imposed her on us as Queen, so much did he regret her and so little could he make up his mind to find a new wife.’
Of whom was Robert talking? Oh yes, of Blanche of Burgundy. Her memory had been evoked by Maubuisson where, a little while ago, a cavalcade consisting of Henri de Sully, Jean de Roye, the Earl of Kent, Roger Mortimer and Robert of Artois himself, together with a whole company of lords, had come to greet the traveller. Isabella had felt considerable pleasure at being treated like a Queen again.
‘I really believe Charles derived a secret pleasure from contemplating the horns of cuckoldom she had set on his brow,’ Robert went on. ‘Unfortunately, or rather fortunately, the sweet Blanche, a year before Charles became King, got herself pregnant in prison by her gaoler. Those daughters of Mahaut are such damned hot pieces they’d set a bundle of tow on fire at five yards.’
The giant was riding on the Queen’s left, on the sunny side, and was mounted on a huge, dappled percheron; he cast his shadow over the Queen. She was urging her hack forward, trying to keep in the sun. Robert talked and talked, delighted to have met her again, giving rein to his naturally trivial nature, and trying at the same time, during these first leagues, to renew the links of cousinship and old friendship. Isabella had not seen him for eleven years; she found him less changed than she had expected. His voice was still the same, and so was that odour of a great eater of venison which his body emitted in the heat of the march and the breeze blew in gusts about him. His hands were red and hairy to the nails, his expression malicious even when he tried to make it amiable, and his paunch bulged over his belt as if he had swallowed a bell. But the assurance of his speech and gestures was less feigned than it had been, for it had now become part of his nature; the lines that framed his mouth were cut deeper in the fat.
‘And Mahaut, my bitch of an aunt, has had to resign herself to the annulment of her daughter’s marriage. Oh, not without a struggle and bearing false witness before the bishops! But she was finally confounded. For once, Cousin Charles was obstinate. Because of the business with the gaoler and the pregnancy. And once that weak-kneed creature sticks his toes in about something, you can’t move him. There were any number of questions asked during the annulment case. They even salvaged from its dust the dispensation, granted by Clement V, allowing Charles to marry a relation but without specifying a name. But what member of our families ever married anyone but a cousin or a niece? So then, Monseigneur Jean de Marigny most cleverly turned to the question of a spiritual relationship. Was not Mahaut Charles’s godmother? Of course, she denied it and said she had attended the baptism only as an assistant and unofficial godmother.26 Then everyone, barons, stewards, valets, priests, choristers and townsmen of Creil, where the baptism took place, gave evidence that she had held the child to hand it to Charles of Valois, and that no mistake was possible in view of the fact that she was the tallest woman in the chapel, indeed taller by a head than anyone else. What a liar she is!’
Isabella compelled herself to listen, but her attention was really focused on herself and on a curious contact which, a little while before, had moved her. How surprising a man’s hair felt when it was suddenly brought in touch with your fingers.
The Queen glanced up at Roger Mortimer, who had placed himself on her right with a sort of natural authority, as if he were her protector and guardian. She looked at the thick curls emerging from under his black hat. You would never have thought his hair could be so silky to the touch.
It had happened by chance at the very first moment of their meeting. Isabella had been surprised to see Mortimer appear beside the Earl of Kent. So in France the rebel, fugitive and outlaw – for Edward had, of course, deprived him of all his rights, titles and property – rode beside the King of England’s brother and seemed even to take precedence over him. The members of the English escort had looked at each other in astonishment.
And Mortimer had jumped from his horse and hurried over to the Queen to kiss the hem of her dress; but the hack had moved and Roger’s lips had lightly touched Isabella’s knee, while she had mechanically put out her hand and rested it on the bare head of the friend she had regained. And now, as they rode along the road, its surface striped with the shadows of the branches overhead, the silky contact of his hair was still with her, as perceptible as if it were enclosed within her velvet glove.
‘But the most serious grounds for pronouncing the marriage annulled, besides the fact that the contracting parties were not of canon age for copulating, nor indeed physically capable of doing so, were discovered in the fact that your brother Charles, when he was married, lacked the discernment to select a wife suited to his rank, or the ability to express a preference, in view of the fact that he was incapable, simple and imbecile, and that the contract was consequently invalid. Inhabilis, simplex et imbecillus! And everyone, from your uncle Valois to the last chambermaid, were at one in agreeing that he was all that, and the best proof of it was that the late Queen his mother had herself thought him so stupid that she had nicknamed him “the Goose”! Forgive me, Cousin, for talking of your brother like this, but after all he’s the King we’ve got over us. A pleasant companion however in other respects, and with a handsome face, but with not much spirit about him. You’ll realize that one has to govern in his stead and that you mustn’t expect too much of him.’
From Isabella’s left came Robert of Artois’s inexhaustible voice and his wild-beast odour. From her right Isabella felt Roger Mortimer’s eyes resting on her with a disturbing persistence. From time to time she looked up at his flint-coloured eyes, his clean-cut features and the deep cleft in his chin, at his tall, shapely figure sitting so erect in the saddle. She was surprised she had no memory of the white scar marking his lower lip.
‘Are you still as chaste as ever, my fair Cousin?’ Robert of Artois suddenly asked her.
Queen Isabella blushed and raised her eyes furtively to Roger Mortimer, as if the question had already made her, in some inexplicable way, feel a little guilty towards him.
‘Indeed, I’ve been forced to be,’ she replied.
‘Do you remember our interview in London, Cousin?’
She blushed deeper still. Of what was he reminding her, and what would Mortimer think? It had been nothing but a moment of forlornness when saying goodbye; there had not even been so much as a kiss; she had merely leaned her forehead against a man’s chest in search of refuge. Did Robert still remember it after eleven years? She felt flattered, but not in the least moved. Had he mistaken what had been but a moment of dismay for an avowal of love? Yet, perhaps, on that day, but on that day only, had she not been Queen, and had he not been in such a hurry to leave in order to denounce the Burgundy girls …
‘Well, if you do take it into your head to change yo
ur habits …’ said Robert gallantly. ‘Whenever I think of you, I always have the feeling of a debt I’ve never collected …’
He broke off suddenly, having met Mortimer’s eyes and seen in them the glance of a man ready to draw his sword if he heard another word. The Queen saw the challenge and, to keep herself in countenance, stroked the white mane of her mare. Dear Mortimer, how noble and chivalrous he was! And how good it was to breathe the air of France, and how pretty the road was, with its alternating sunlight and shade!
There was an ironical half-smile on Robert of Artois’s fat cheeks. As for the debt – he had thought the expression delicate enough – he must think no more of it. He felt sure that Mortimer loved Queen Isabella and that Isabella loved Mortimer.
Other people are generally aware of our love before we realize it ourselves.
‘Ah, well,’ he thought, ‘my good cousin will amuse herself with this Knight Templar.’
4
King Charles
IT HAD TAKEN ABOUT a quarter of an hour to cross the town from the gates to the Palace of the Cité. There were tears in Queen Isabella’s eyes when she set foot in the courtyard of that palace she had seen her father build, and which had already begun to acquire something of the patina of time. The black stains on the stone where the gutters emptied had not been there when Isabella had set out from this very place to become Queen.
The doors were thrown open at the top of the grand staircase, and Isabella could not help expecting to see the imposing, icy, sovereign features of King Philip the Fair. How often in the past she had gazed at her father standing at the top of these very stairs preparing to go down into his city.
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