The Royal Succession (20 page)

Marie de Cressay wondered why she was being allowed to hear
of these royal tribulations, when Madame de Bouville, still cackling, went up to her and said: `Luckily I've got my head screwed on, and I remembered that this girl I brought here was about to have a child. I am sure you feed it well and that your child is doing splendidly, isn't that so?'

She seemed to be reproaching the young mother with her good health.

`Let's have a closer look,' she went on.

And with a competent hand, as if she were selecting fruit in the market, she felt Marie's breasts.. The girl took a step backwards with a feeling of revulsion.

`You can easily feed two,' went on Madame de Bouville. `You will therefore come with me, my good girl, and give your milk to the King.'

`I cannot, Madame!' cried Marie, before she had even thought how she could justify her refusal.

`And why can you not? Because of your sin? You are, nevertheless, a daughter of the nobility; moreover, sin does not prevent your being rich in milk. It will be a means of redeeming yourself a, little.'

`I have not sinned, Madame, I am married!'

`You're the only one who says so, my poor girl! In the first place, if you were married, you wouldn't be here. And in any case that's beside the point. We need a wet-nurse.'

`I cannot, because I am awaiting my husband who is coming here to fetch me. He has let me know that he will come soon and the Pope has promised...'

`The Pope! The Pope!' screamed the Curator's wife 'She's out of her mind, I swear it! She believes she's married, she believes the Pope's concerned about her ... Stop talking nonsense, and don't blaspheme the name of the Holy Father! You will come to Vincennes at once!'

`No, Madame, I shall not,' replied Marie obstinately.

Little Madame
de Bouville lost her temper and, taking Marie by the top of her dress, began shaking her.

`Here's an ungrateful creature for you! She sins and gets herself in the family way; we take care of her, save her from the law, put her in the best convent, and when we come to fetch her to be wet-nurse to the King of France, the hussy jibs. Here's a good subject of the King for you! Don't you realize that you are being offered an honour that the greatest ladies in the kingdom would fight for?'

`In that case, Madame,' said Marie resolutely, `why don't you
ask these great ladies who are more worthy than I?'

'Because they didn't sin at the right moment, toe idiots! But what are you making me say? Enough talk, you're coming with me.'

If Uncle Tolomei, or the Count de Bouville himself, had come to make the same demand of Marie de Cressay, she would certainly have accepted. She had a generous heart, and would have offered to feed any child in distress; particularly the Queen's. Pride, and interest too, would have persuaded her to it as well as kindness of heart. Wet-nurse to the King, while Guccio was page to the Pope, should smo
oth away all their difficulties
and make their fortune. But the Curator's wife had not approached her in the right, way. Because she was treated not as a happy mother but as a delinquent, not as a respectable woman but as a serf, and because she still saw
Madame d
e Bouville as a harbinger of misfortune, Marie forgot to think
and turned stubborn.
Her, great dark blue eyes shone with mingled fear and indignation,

`I shall keep my milk for my own son,' she said.

`We shall see about that, you wicked girl! Since you won't obey
of your own accord, I shall
call
in the escort waiting outside and they'll remove you by force!'

The Mother Abbess intervened. The convent was an asylum she could not allow to be violated.

`I am not saying that I approve the conduct of my relation,' she said, `but she has been committed to my care.'

`By me, Mother!' cried Madame de Bouville.

`That is no reason to come and do her violence within these walls. Marie will leave only of her own accord, or at the order of the Church.

'Or on those of
the King!
For you are a royal convent, Mother, and don't you forget it! I'm acting in the name of my husband; if, you want an order; from the Constable, who is the King's tutor, and has just returned to Paris, or an order from the Regent himself Messire Hugues will go and get them to seal it; we shall lose three hours, but I shall be obeyed.'

The Abbess took Madame de Bouville aside to inform her in a low voice that what Marie had said about the Pope was not altogether false.

`But what do I care!' cried Madame de Bouville. 'I've got to keep the King alive and I have no one to hand but her.'

She went out, and called to the men of her escort to seize the rebel.

`You are witness, Madame,' said' the Abbess, `that I have not
given my consent to your being forcibly carried off.'

Marie, struggling between two of the escort as they dragged her across the courtyard, screamed: 'My child! I want my child!'

`That's right,' said Madame de Bouville. `She must be allowed to take her child. By rebelling like this she has made us forget everything.'

A few minutes later, Marie, having quickly packed her clothes and clutching her newborn child to her, left the hospice in tears.

Outside, two mule litters were in readiness.

`Just look at her!' cried Madame de Bouville. `You come and fetch her with a litter, as if she were a princess, and she screams and makes an appalling scene!'

Surrounded by the night, jostled by the trotting of the mules for a whole hour, in a box of wood and tapestry with loose curtains, through which the cold of November entered, Marie was thankful that her brothers had made her bring her big cloak when she left Cressay. How she had suffered from the heat under the heavy stuff w
hen she arrived in Paris! 'Am I
never to leave anywhere without tears and unhappiness?' she thought. `What have I done that every hand should be against me?'

The baby slept, wrapped in a great fold of the cloak. Feeling this little life, so unconscious and untroubled, snuggling into the hollow of her breast, Marie gradually regained her calm. She was going to see Queen Clemence; she would talk to her of Guccio; she would show her the reliquary. The Queen was young; she was beautiful and pathetic because
of her misfortunes. `The Queen,
it's the Queen's child I'm going to nurse!' Marie thought, realizing for the first time the strange and unexpected nature of this adventure, which Madame de Bouville's aggressive behaviour had presented in so odious a light.

The rattle of the drawbridge as it was lowered, the hollow sound of the horses' hooves on the planks, was followed by the clink of their shoes on the cobbles of a courtyard. Marie was told to get out of her litter; she passed through a group of armed soldiers, followed an ill-lit stone corridor, and saw a fat man in a coat of mail, whom she recognized as the Count de Bouville. All about Marie people were whispering; she heard the word `fever' several times. Someone signed to her to wall; on tiptoe; a hanging was raised.

In spite of illness the customs of the birth-chamber had been respected. But, since the season of flowers was over, only late and
yellow foliage had been spread about the floor and it was already beginning to wither under foot. About the bed, seats had been
placed for visitors who would never come. A midwife was standing by, crushing aromatic herbs between her fingers. On the
hearth, on iron trivets, grey-looking concoctions were boiling. The room was lit only by the fire and by the oil night-light above the bed.

No sound came from the cradle, which was placed in a corner of the room,

Queen Clemence was lying on her back, her legs raised, humping the sheets, because of the pain she was suffering. Her cheekbones were red, her eyes bright. Marie noticed above all her long golden' hair spread over the pillows, and the concentrated gaze which did not seem to see
what it was fixed on.

`I'm thirsty, I'm very thirsty,' the Queen groaned.

The midwife whispered to Madame de Bouville: `She has been shivering for more than an hour; her teeth have been chattering; and her lips turned purple like the face of someone dead. We thought she was dying. We rubbed her whole body; then her skin began to sweat as you can see. She has perspired so much that her
linen must be changed; but we cannot find the
keys of the linen room, which
were kept by Eudeline.',

`I will give them to you,' replied Madame
de Bouville.
'

She led Marie into a neighbouring room, where a fire was also burning.

`You will live
here.'
she said. The royal cradle was brought in. Amid all the linen in which the King was wrapped he was hardly visible. He had a tiny pose, thick, closed eyelids, was puny and sleeping in a sort of flaccid immobility.' One had to
go
very close to him to make sure that he was breathing. From time to time a tiny grimace, a sort of painful contortion, relieved the impassiveness of his features. Before this little being, whose father was dead,
whose mother
was perhaps to die, and who showed such slight signs of life, Marie de Cressay was assailed with an immense pity. `I'll save him; I'll make him big and strong,'' she thought.

As there was only one cradle, she laid her own child down beside the King.

2. Leave it to God

THE COUNTESS MAHAUT had been in a rage for the last twenty-four hours.

She let her rage and disappointment have full rein to Beatrice d'Hirson, who was helping her dress for the christening of the King.

`One might have thought, pining as Clemence was, that she
would have miscarried! Many stronger than she do so. But no! She lasted out her nine months. She might even have had a stillborn child. But not at all! Her
brat's
alive. It might at least have been a girl! But not on your life, it had to be a boy. My poor Beatrice, was it worth doing so much, running such great risks - and indeed they're not yet over - for fate to play such a trick on us!'

For Mahaut was now profoundly convinced that she had only murdered the Hutin to give the crown of France to her son-in
-
law and her daughter. She almost regretted not having killed the wife at the same time as the husband, and all her hatred was now turned on the newborn child whom she had not yet seen, towards the baby to whom she was shortly to act as godmother a
nd whose existence, hardly beg
an, was an obstacle to her ambitions.

This woman, powerful, immensely rich and despotic, had a truly criminal nature. Murder was her favourite method of bending fate to her own advantage; she liked contemplating her murders before she committed them, and afterwards she enjoyed the memory of them; she extracted from them all the excitements of fear, the pleasures of deception and the joys of secret triumph. If a first assassination did not have all the success she counted on, she began accusing fate of injustice, considered herself hard done by, and then began seeking for the next victim who stood in her way and whom she might destroy.

Beatrice d'Hirson, reading the Countess' thoughts, said softly, lowering her long eyelashes: `Madame, I have kept some of that excellent powder which served you so well for the King's sweets in the spring.'

`You've done well, you've done well,' replied Mahaut; `it is always better to be provided; we have so many enemies!' Beatrice, who was tall herself, had to raise her arms to arrange
the Countess' chin-band and place her cloak about her shoulders.

`You will be holding the child, Madame. You may perhaps not have another opportunity so soon,' she went on. `It's only a powder, you know, and hardly perceptible on one's finger.'

She
spoke in a suave, tempting voice as if she were suggesting some delicacy.

'Ah, no!' cried Mahaut.
`Not during a christening;
it might bring us bad luck!'

`Do
you think so? You would
be returning a soul without sin to Heaven.'

`Besides, God knows how my son-in-law would take it!
I've not
forgotten the expression on his face when I undeceived him about his brother's death, and the coldness with which he has since treate
d me. There are too many people
whispering accusations against me. One king in the year is enough; let us for the moment bear with the one who has just been born.'

It was a small, almost secret cavalcade that left for Vincennes to make Jean I a Christian; and the barons who had prepared
their ceremonial clothes, expecting to be summoned to a great
occasion, were left to pay the
cost.

The Queen's:' illness, the
fact that
the birth had taken place outside Paris, the darkness of winter, and the little pleasure taken by the Regent in
being presented with a
nephew, all resulted in the christening being, dispatched rapidly as if it were some mere formality.

Philippe arrived at Vincennes accompanied by his wife Jeanne, Mahaut, Gaucher de Chatillon and a few equerries to hold the horses. He had omitted to inform the rest of the family. Besides, Valois was touring his fiefs to gather money; and Evreux had remained in Amiens to bring the Artois affair to a conclusion. As for Charles de la Marche, Philippe had had a lively altercation with him the day before. La Marche had asked his brother, in honour of the birth of the King, to give him a peerage and increase his apanage and revenues.:

`But, Brother,' Philippe had replied, `I am only the Regent; the King alone can give you a peerage - and then only at his majority.'

Bouville's first words, as he received the Regent in the forecourt of the manor, were to ask: `No one is armed, Monseigneur? No one has a dagger, a stiletto, or a misericord?'

No one could tell whether his anxiety was directed towards the escort or the godfathers and godmothers.