The Royal Succession (16 page)

`She's a bitch like her mother, and you did wrong, my barons, not to have strangled her like a viper when you had her at your mercy here last autumn,' said Robert. `I want this woman Feriennes and l want her son. See that
they are captured as soon
as we reach Arras.. And now we shall eat; the day has given me a great appetite. Kill the biggest ox in the stable and have it roasted whole; empty the pond
of Mahaut's carp; and bring us
such wine as you have not already drunk.'

Two hours later, when night had fallen, all the fine company was roaring drunk. Robert sent Lormet, who carried the mixture of wines pretty well, with a good escort, to round up as many women as the gallant humour of the barons demanded. As they pulled them from their beds, they did not look too closely to see whether they were maids or mothers of families. Lormet drove a flock of them in their nightshirts, bleating with terror, to the castle. There was a fine sabbath in Mahaut's pillaged rooms. The women's screams lent ardour to the knights, who went to the assault as if they were charging the infidel, rivalling each other in their prowess in pleasure, and hurling themselves three at a time on t
he same prize. Robert seized by
the hair-the choicest morsels for himself, stripping them roughly enough. As he weighed over tw
o hundred pounds, his conquests
had not even breath enough to scream. Meanwhile Souastre, who had mislaid his splendid helmet, was doubled up, his hands to his stomach, vomiting like a gargoyle in a thunderstorm.

Then, one by one, these valiant gentlemen began to snore. A single man would have had no trouble in cutting the throats of all the nobility of Artois that night.

The next day an unsteady army, tongues furred and minds foggy, set out for Arras where Robert had decided to set up his headquarters. He himself seemed as fresh as a pike straight from the river, which once and for all earned him the admiration of
his troops. The journey was broken, with halts, for Mahaut possessed several other castles in the neighbourhood, the sight of which reawakened the barons' courage.

But when, on Saint Magdalene's Day, Robert reached Arras, the Dame de Feriennes had disappeared.

2. The Pope's Lombard

AT LYONS the cardinals were still shut up. They had thought to weary the Regent; their seclusion had lasted for more than a month. The seven hundred men-at-arms of the Count de Forez continued to mount guard round the church and monastery of the Predicant Friars; and if, from respect for precedent, Count Savelli, Marshal of the Conclave, carried the keys permanently on his person, they were of little use, since the doors they opened had all been walled up.

The cardinals daily transgressed the Constitution of Gregory, but their consciences were quiet, for they had been compelled to meet by force. Nor did they fail to point this out daily to the Count de Forez, when he put his helmeted head in through the narrow opening which served to pass in their food. To which the Count de Forez daily replied that he had been given orders to see that the law of the Conclave should be respected. They could each go on talking to deaf ears indefinitely.

The cardinals had ceased living together, as was prescribed, for, though the nave of the Jacobins was large, a hundred people living there, with straw for bedding, had soon become intolerable. The stench created during the first nights was hardly encouraging to the election of a pope. The prelates had therefore taken possession of the monastery which abutted on the church and was within the precincts. Turning out the monks, they had organized themselves three to a cell, which was not much more comfortable. The pages had forcibly occupied a dormitory, and the chaplains the hospice which no longer received travellers.

The rule of diminishing rations of food had not been applied either; had it been, they would by now have been an assembly of skeletons. The cardinals, therefore, had sent in from outside certain luxuries which were supposed to be for the Abbot. The secrecy of the deliberations was constantly being violated; every day,
letters either came in to the Conclave or went out from it, hidden in bread or in empty dishes. Meal-time had become the hour for the post, and the correspondence which claimed to rule the fate of Christendom was sadly stained with grease.

The Count of Forez had informed the Regent of all these inobservances, but the latter had replied to let things be. `The more faults and inobservances they commit,' declared Philippe of Poitiers, `the better position we shall be in to
treat
them with, rigour when we decide to do so. As for the letters, pretend to let them go on their way, but open them as often as you can, and let me know their contents.'

Thus it was known that there had been four candidatures which failed almost as soon as, they were put forward: in the first place that of Arnaud Nouvel, ex-Abbot of Fontfroide, concerning whom the Count of Poitiers let it be known through Jean
de Forez
that he did not consider this cardinal friendly
enough to the Kingdom of France
, then the candidatures of Guillaume de Mandagout, Cardinal of Prenestre, Arnaud de Pelagrue and Berenger Fredol the elder. Gascons and Provencaux held each other in check: It was also learned that the redoubtable Caetani was beginning to disgust some of the Italians, including even his own Cousin Stefaneschi, by the baseness of his intrigues and the frenzied excesses of his calumnies.

Had he not suggested as a joke - but it was known what his jokes were like! - that they should raise the Devil and place the selection of a pope in his hands, since God, seemed to have decided not to make a choice?

To which Dueze, in his
whispering voice, had replied:
`It would not be the first time, Francesco, that Satan sat among us'

When Caetani asked for a candle, it was murmured that it was not to give himself light, but to use the wax for casting a spell

Until they had been shut up, the cardinals had opposed each other from motives of doctrine, prestige or interest. But, having lived together for a month cramped in a limited space, they had begun to hate each other for personal reasons, physical reasons almost. Some neglected their appearance, had not shaved for four weeks, and were dirty in their habits. It was no longer by promises of money or ecclesiastical benefices that a candidate sought to acquire votes, but by sharing his rations with the gluttons, an action which was strictly prohibited. Denunciations went the rounds: `The Camerlingo has again eaten three of his party's dinners,' it was murmured.

These extras kept their stomachs more or less satisfied; it was not the same for their chastity, to which certain cardinals were little used to submit, and which began to sour some of their characters unpleasantly. There was a joke going the rounds among the. Provencaux:

`Monseigneur d'Auch,' they said, `suffers from abstemiousness in flesh while Messeigneurs Colonna suffer both from abstemiousness and the flesh.'

For the two Colonna brothers, physically athletic and better suited to the coat of mail than the soutane, lay in wait for pages in the passages of the monastery, promising them good absolution.

They never stopped throwing old grievances at each other's heads.

`If you had not canonized Celestin ... If you had not denied Boniface ... If you had not agreed to leave Rome . If you had not condemned the Templars ...'

They mutually accused each other of weakness in defence of the Church, ambition and venality. To hear the cardinals talk of each other, one might have thought that not one among them deserved so much as a country cure.

Monseigneur Dueze alone seemed unaware of the discomfort, the intrigues and the back-biting. For two years he had so embroiled his colleagues that he now had no need to interfere, and could leave the perversities he had implanted in their minds to do their work on their own. Having very little appetite, the meagre allowance of food in no way inconvenienced him. He had chosen to share his cell with the two Norman cardinals who had joined the Provencal party, Nicolas de
Freauville,
once confessor to Philip the Fair, and Michel du Bec, whom no one was proposing as candidates. They were too weak to form a party of their own. No one feared them, and their living with Dueze could not take on the appearance of a conspiracy. Besides, Dueze saw but little of his two companions. At a given hour he strolled in the monastery cloisters, generally leaning on the arm of Guccio, who was continually warning him: `Monseigneur, don't walk so quickly! Look, I can hardly keep up with you, my leg is still so stiff from my accident in Marseilles when I fell from Queen Clemence's ship. You know well that your chances, if I can trust what I hear, will be better the more people think that you are weak.'

`It's true, it's true, you're quite right,' replied the Cardinal, who then did his best to stoop, totter at the knees and discipline his seventy-two years.

He spent the rest of the time reading or writing. He had managed to procure what was more necessary to him than anything else in the world: books, candle and paper. When he was summoned to a meeting in the choir of the church, he pretended only to be able to tear himself with difficulty from his work, dragged himself to his stall, and there, thoroughly enjoying hearing his colleagues insult and betray each other, be contented himself with whispering: `I pray, my brothers; I pray that God will inspire us to make a worthy choice.'

Those who knew him well found him altered. He seemed steeped in Christian virtues, much given to mortification of the flesh, and set an example of kindliness and charity. When some.. one remarked on it, he would reply simply with a murmur and a gesture of disillusion: `The approach of death , it is high time I prepared myself...
'

He hardly touched his bowl at' meal-times and had it carried to one or another of his colleagues, excusing himself for breaking the rule for reasons of health. Thus Guccio would go, his hands laden, to the Camerlingo, who was prospering like a fatted ox, and say to him: `Monseigneur 'Dueze is sending you this. He thought you were looking thin this morning.'

Of the ninety-six prisoners, Guccio could communicate the most easily with the outside world; he had indeed quickly been able to establish contact with the agent of the Tolomei bank at Lyons. Through this agency passed not only the letters Guccio wrote his uncle, but also the most secret correspondence between Dueze and the Regent. These letters were spared the disgrace of journeying in greasy dishes; they were transmitted inside the books which were so indispensable to the Cardinal's pious studies.

Indeed, Dueze had no ot
her confidant but the young Lom
bard, whose cunning was more use to him each day. Their fate was closely linked, for if one wished to leave the monastery, which was overheated by the summer weather, as Pope, the other wished to depart as soon as possible, and with powerful protection, to rescue his beloved. Guccio was, however, somewhat reassured about Marie since Tolomei had written that he was watching over her like a true uncle.

At the beginning of the last week of July, when Dueze saw that his colleagues were extremely weary, exhausted by the heat, and irrevocably at daggers drawn with each other, he decided to act the farce he had long been considering and had carefully rehearsed with Guccio.

`Have I tottered enough? Have I fasted enough? Do I look sick enough?' he asked his temporary page. `And are my fellow cardinals so disgusted with each other that they will come to a decision through sheer weariness?'

`I think so, Monseigneur, I think they're ripe for it.'

`Then, my young friend, go and set your tongue to work; as for me, I think I shall go and lie
down, probably never to get up
again.

Guccio began mixing with the servants
of the other cardinals, saying that Monseigneur Dueze was much exhausted, that he showed signs of being ill, and that it was to be feared, taking his great age into consideration, that he would not quit the Conclave alive.

The next day Dueze did not appear at the daily meeting, and the cardinals murmured among: themselves, each one repeating, as if of his own knowledge, the rumours Guccio had spread.

The following day Cardinal Orsini, who had just had a violent altercation with the Colonnas, met Guccio and asked him whether it were, true that Monseigneur Dueze was so very weak.

`Oh, yes, Monseigneur, and you see me sick at heart,' replied Guccio, To you know that my good master has even
given up reading? It is as much as
to say that his life is drawing to a close.'

Then, with that ingenuously audacious air which he knew so well how to make use of at the right moment, he added: `If I were in your place, Monseigneur. I know what I should do. I should elect Monseigneur Dueze. You would thus be able to leave this Conclave at last, and hold another under your own auspices as soon as he is dead, which, I repeat, cannot now be long. In a week's time you may well have lost the opportunity.'

That very evening Guccio saw Napoleon Orsini in council with Stefaneschi, who was an Orsini through his mother, Albertini de Prato and Guillaume de Long
is, that is to say all the Ital
ians who favoured Dueze. The following day the same group met again as if by accident in the cloisters, but with the addition of the Spaniard Luca Flisco, half-brother to Jaime II of Aragon, and Arnaud de Pelagrue, the leader of the Gascon party; and Guccio, passing close by, heard one of them say: `And if he does not die?'

`A pity, but if he dies tomorrow, we shall doubtless be here for another six months.'

Guccio immediately sent a letter to his uncle in which he
advised him to buy up from the Bardi Company all the debts Jacques Dueze owed that bank. `You should be able to acquire them without difficulty at half their value, for the debtor is given out as dying, and the lender will think you mad. Buy them even at eighty livres for the hundred, I assure you that it will be good business or I am no longer your nephew.'

He also advised Tolomei to come to Lyons himself as soon as he could.

On July 29th the Count de Forez had an official letter handed to the Cardinal Camerlingo from the Regent. In order to hear it
read, Jacques Dueze consented to leave his pallet; he was practically carried to the meeting.

The Count of Poitiers' letter was harsh. It detailed all the lapses from the Rule of Gregory. It recalled his threat to demolish the roof of the church. It took the cardinals to task for their discord, and suggested that, if they could reach no conclusion, the tiara should be conferred on the oldest among them. And the oldest was Jacques Dueze.

When the old Cardinal heard these words, he waved his arms in a sort of dying gesture and said in a hardly audible voice: `The most worthy, Brothers, the most worthy! What would you do with a pastor who has not even the strength to carry himself, and whose place is in Heaven, if the Lord will receive me there, rather than here below?'

He had himself carried back to his cell, lay down on his pallet and turned his face to the wall. It was only because Guccio knew him well that he realized that his shoulders were shaking with laughter and that he was not gasping like a dying man.

The following day Dueze seemed to have recovered a little strength; a too consistent weakness would have aroused suspicion. But, when there arrived a recommendation from the King of Naples supporting that of the Count of Poitiers the old man began coughing in the most pitiful way; he must have been in very poor health to have caught cold in such hot weather.

Bargaining still went on, for not all the cardinals' hopes had yet been extinguished. Of the twenty-four cardinals there was doubtless not a single one, however ill-placed, who bad not at one moment or another said to himself: 'Why not I?'

Among the public who had gathered in Lyons, attracted by the expectation of an early decision, the opinion began to grow that there were no perfect institutions, that they were all as bad as each other, equally vitiated by human ambition; the elective system designed to fill the throne of Saint Peter was proving no
better than the hereditary system was for the throne of France.

But the Count de Forez was beginning to prove still harsher. He was now having the food openly searched, reducing it to one course a day, and he confiscated the correspondence or threw it
back into the monastery.

By August 5th Napoleon Orsini had succeeded in bringing over to the supporters of Dueze the terrible Caetani himself, as well as several members of the Gascon party. The Provencaux were beginning to scent victory.

It became evident, on August 6th, that Monseigneur Dueze could count on eighteen votes, that is to say on two votes more than the absolute majority that no one had been able to muster in two years and three months. The last dissidents, seeing that the election was about to take place in their despite, and fearing that they might suffer, for their obstinacy, proceeded to take credit for recognizing the high Christian virtues of Monseigneur Dueze, and declared themselves ready to give him their suffrage. '

The following day, August 7th, 1316, it
was decided to vote,
Four tellers were appointed. Dueze appeared, carried by Guccio and his second page.

`He weighs very light,' Guccio murmured to the cardinals who watched them go by and made way with a deference which was already significant of the choice, they were about to make.

`Since you wish it so, Lord, since you wish it so ...'Dueze whispered to the paper on which he was about to record his vote.

A few minutes later he was unanimously proclaimed Pope and his twenty-three rivals gave him an ovation,

He was to lead them a terrible life during the next eighteen years!

Guccio moved forward to help to his feet the pathetic old man; who had become the supreme authority of the world.

`No, my son, no,'
said Dueze. `I shall endeavour
to walk on my own, May God sustain my steps.

A few idiots then thought that they were witnessing a miracle
, but others realized they had
been made fools of.

But the Camerlingo had already burnt the voting papers in the fireplace and the white smoke announced to the world that there was a new pope. The sound of picks began echoing against the brickwork which walled up the great door. But the Count de Forez was a prudent man; as soon as space enough had been made, he entered the opening himself.

`Yes, yes, my son, it is I,' s
aid Dueze,
who had trotted to the door.

Then the masons finished breaking down the walls; the two leaves of the door were opened and the sun, for the first time for forty days, shone into the Church of the Jacobins.

There was a great crowd about the steps outside; commoners, bur
gesses of Lyons, consuls, lords
and observers from foreign Courts; the whole crowd knelt. A fat man with an olive complexion and one eye closed pushed forward by the Count de Forez. He seized the hem of the Pope's robe and carried it to his lips; it was on his grey head that there fell the first blessing of him who was henceforward to be called John XXII

`Uncle Spinello,' cried Guccio, when he saw the fat man kneeling.

'Ah, so you are his uncle! I like your nephew well, my son,' said Dueze to the banker, motioning him to rise; `he has served me faithfully, and I wish to keep him by me. Embrace him, embrace him!'

Guccio fell into Tolomei's arms.

`I bought it all up as you told me, and at six for ten,' Tolomei immediately whispered, while Dueze continued blessing the crowd. `That Pope now owes us several thousands of livres. Bel lavoro, figlio mio. You are a true nephew of my own blood.'

There was a man standing behind them with a face as long as those of the cardinals; it was Signor Boccaccio, the principal traveller for the Bardi.

'Ah, so you were inside, were you, rascal?' he said to Guccio. `If I had known that, I should not have sold.'

`And' Marie? Where is Marie?' Guccio asked his uncle anxiously.

`Your Marie is well. She's as beautiful as you are cunning, and if the little Lombard she is carrying takes after you both, he'll get on in the world. But go quickly, go, my boy! Can't you see that the Holy Father wants you?'

3. The
wages of sin

THE REGENT PHI
LIPPE was determined to attend the coronation of the Pope he had made, and thus establish himself as the Protector of Christendom.

`It gave me enough trouble,' he said. `It is only right that he
should now help me to establish my Government. I wish to be at Lyons for his coronation.'

But the news from Artois continued disquieting. Robert had taken Arras, Avesnes and Therouanne without difficulty, and went
on conquering the countryside.
In Paris Charles of Valois was secretly helping him.

Faithful to the tactics of encirclement, which were natural to his character, the Regent began by working on the border regions of Artois in order to prevent the rebellion from spreading. He wrote to the barons of Picardy to remind them of their loyalty to the Crown of France, courteously intimating that he would tolerate no lapse from their duty; and a large contingent of troops and sergeants-at-arms was sent into the provostships to police the country. To the Flemings, who, after the lapse of a year, were still making mock of the Hutin's ridiculous expedition in which he had lost his army in the mud, Philippe proposed a new Treaty of Peace which gave them very advantageous conditions.

`In the mess we have been left to clear up we must be prepared to lose a little so as to save the whole,' the Regent explained to his councillors.

Even though his son-in-law,
J
ean
de
Fiennes, was one of Robert's chief lieutenants, the Count of Flanders felt that such a good opportunity for making a treaty was unlikely to arise again; He agreed to negotiations and -so remained neutral in the affairs of the neighbouring county.

Philippe had thus to all intents and purposes shut the gates on Artois. He then sent Gaucher de Chatillon to negotiate directly with the leaders of the rebellion, and to assure
them of the Coun
tess Mahaut's good intentions.

`Listen well, Gaucher;' you must not negotiate with Robert,' he warned the Constable, `because that would be recognizing the rights he claims.' We still consider he has forfeited Artois in accordance with my father's judgement. You are going there only to negotiate the differences between the Countess and her vassals, which, in our view, have nothing to do with Robert. Pretend to ignore him.'

`Monseigneur,' said the Constable, `do you mean to make your mother-in-law triumph everywhere?