The Royal Succession (22 page)

Then, turning to Charles of Valois, who had returned fortyeight hours earlier from his county of Maine, where he had been organizing his finances, he said: `Is it you, Uncle, who, in the interests of your niece Clemence, are preventing Bouville from showing us the King?'

The ex-Emperor of Constantinople, not understanding why this attack should have been made on him, turned purple in the face and cried: `But, for God's sake, Nephew, what makes you think that? I have never desired or asked such a thing! I haven't even seen Bouville, or received any message from him, for several weeks. And I have come home especially, for the presentation. I particularly desire that it should be made and that we should act in accordance with the customs of our fathers, as we haven't done for far too long.'

'Then, Messeigneurs,' said the Regent, `we are all of the same mind and are agreed, Gaucher! You were at my brother's birth. I am right in thinking that it is the godmother whose duty
-
it is to present the royal child to the barons, am I not?'

`Yes, of course, the godmother,' replied Valois, vexed that on a point of ceremonial someone other than himself should be consulted.
'I
have attended all the presentations, Philippe; yours, which was a small one, because you were t
he second son, as well as Louis and later Charles
.
And my children were presented
, also on account of my crowns. It is always the godmother.'

`Very well,' went on the Regent, `I shall inform the Countess Mahaut at once, that she will shortly have to perform this office, and I shall give orders to Bouville to open Vincennes to us. We shall s
et out on horseback at midday.'

For Mahaut this was the opportunity for which she had been waiting. She allowed no one but Beatrice to dress her, and had a coronet placed on her head; the murder of a king deserved that much.

`How long do you think it will take for your powder to affect a child five days old?'.

`That I cannot tell, Madame,' replied the lady-in-waiting. `On the deer in your woods the result was manifest after one night. King Louis, on the other hand, resisted it for nearly three days.'

`I shall always have, as a resource,'' said Mahaut, `the wetnurse I saw the other day, a handsome girl indeed, but who comes no one knows whence, and no one knows who placed her there. Doubtless, the Bouvilles. .'

`I understand, Madame,' said Beatrice smiling.. `If the death
should not appear natural, the girl could be accused and you could have her quartered.'

`My relic, my relic,' said Mahaut anxiously, touching her breast. `Oh, yes, I've got it, that's all right.'

As she was leaving the room, Beatrice murmured: `Whatever you do, Madame, do not blow your nose.'

3. Bouville's trick

`LIGHT ROARING FIRES!' Bouville told the servants. `Let the hearths flame red hot so that the warmth spreads to the corridors.'

He went from room to room, paralysing
work in his efforts to hurry it on. He dashed out to the drawbridge to inspect the guard, ordered sand to be spread in the courtyards, then had it swept up because it turned to mud, and checked all the locks though none of them would be used. All this activity was merely to cheat his own anx
iety; `She's going to kill him,
she's go
ing to kill him,'
he kept muttering' to himself.

He met his wife in one of the corridors.

`The Queen?' he asked.

Queen Clemence had been given the last sacraments that very morning.

The
Queen, whose beauty had become
legendary in two kingdoms, was ravaged and disfigured by illness. Her nose was pinched, her skin had turned yellow, marked with red blotches the size of a two-livres piece; she stank, appallingly; her urine contained traces of blood; she breathed with greater and greater difficulty and groaned from the intolerable pains in her head and stomach. She was completely delirious.

`It's a quartan fever,' said Madame de Bouville. `The midwife says that if she gets through the day she may live. Mahaut has offered to send Master de Pavilly, her personal
physician:
28

`Not at any price, not at any price,' cried Bouville. `None of Mahaut's people must be allowed to come in here.'

The mother was dying, the child was in danger, and more than two hundred barons were due to arrive with their escorts! What splendid confusion there would be in a little while, and what an easy opportunity for committing a crime!

`The child must not remain in a room next to the Queen,' Bouville went on. `I cannot put enough 'men-at-arms to watch over him, and it's all too easy to slip behind the tapestries.'

`This is a fine time to think of it; where do you wish to put him?'

`In the King's room, to which all the entrances can be guarded.' They looked at each other with the same thought; it was the
room in which the Hutin had died.

`Prepare the room and light the fire,' Bouville insisted.

`Very well, my dear, I will obey you. But if you put fifty
equerries about him, you cannot prevent Mahaut carrying the
King in h
er arms for the presentation.' I
shall be near her.'

`But if she has resolved to do it, she'll kill him, under your very nose, my poor Hugues; and you'll notice nothing. A child five days old; cannot struggle much. She'll take advantage of the crowd to plunge a needle into the weak, part of his head, make him breathe poison or strangle him with a lace.'

`Well, what do you want me to do?' cried Bouville. `I can't go to the Regent and say: "We don't wish your mother-in-law to carry the King because we fear she'll kill him."

`No, you certainly cannot! We can but pray to God,' said Madame de Bouville as she went off.

Bouville, much disturbed, entered the wet-nurse's room.

Marie de Cressay was
feeding both children at once. Both equally hungry, they clutched at her breasts with their little soft; nails, and sucked noisily. Marie had generously given the King her left breast which was supposed to be the richer.

`What is the matter, Messire? You seem, disturbed,' she asked Bouville.

He stood before her, leaning on his great sword, the black-and
-
white locks of his hair falling beside his cheeks, and his paunch extending the coat of mail, a sexagenarian archangel committed to the difficult protection of a child.

`He's so weak, our little King, so weak!' he said sadly.

`Oh, no, Messire, he's doing much better; look, he has almost caught up with mine. And the medicines they're giving me, though they upset my stomach a little, seem to be doing him

good.'
29

Bouville extended his great hand, tanned by the reins of horses and the pommels of arms; he gently stroked the little head on which a fair down was forming.

`He's not a king like others, you know . . .' he murmured.

Philip the Fair's old servant did not know how to express what he felt. For as long as he could remember or, indeed, his father had been able to remember, the m
onarchy, the kingdom, France it
self, all that had been the basis of his functions and the object of his anxieties, had been merged with a long and solid chain of strong and adult kings, who exacted devotion and dispensed honours.

For twenty years he had pushed forward the faldstool on which sat a monarch before whom Christendom trembled. Never could he have believed that the chain would be reduced so soon to this tiny pink' link, its chin smeared with mi
lk, a link one could break with
one hand.

`It's true enough,' he said, `that he has made a good recovery; except for the, mark left by the forceps, which is already disappearing, one would have to look closely to distinguish him from yours.'

`Oh, no, Messire,' said Marie; `mine is the heavier. Aren't you, Jean the Second, much heavier?'

She immediately blushed and exclaimed: `Since they're both called Jean, I call my Jean the Second. Perhaps I oughtn't to.'

Bouville, with a gesture of automatic courtesy, stroked the second baby's head. His eyes moved from one to the other.

Marie thought that the fat man's gaze was attracted by her breasts, and she blushed the harder. `When shall I stop blushing on every possible occasion?' she wondered. `There's nothing immodest or provocative in giving a child the breast!'

At that moment Madame de Bouville came into the room, carrying the clothes for the King. Bouville took her aside and murmured: `I think I've found a means.'

For some moments they conversed in low voices. Madame de Bouville nodded her head, deep in thought; twice she looked towards Marie.

`Ask her yourself,' she said at last. `She doesn't like me.'

Bouville returned to the young woman. `Marie, my child, you are going to render a great service to our little King to whom I see you are so attached,' he said. `Here are the barons coming that he may be presented to them. But we fear the cold for him, because of the convulsions he was seized with at his christening. Imagine the effect it would have if he began writhing as he did the other day! It would soon be said that he cannot live, as his enemies are spreading it abroad. We barons are warriors, and we like the King to give proof of being robust even in his infancy. Your child is the stouter and lo
oks the stronger. We would like
to present him in the King's place.'

Marie looked anxiously at Madame de Bouville, who said
quickly: 'This has nothing to do with me. It's my husband's idea.' `Wouldn't it be a sin, Messire, to do a thing like that?' Marie

asked.

'A sin, my child? But it's a virtue to protect one's king. And it would not be the first time that a healthy child was presented to the people in place of a weakly heir,' Bouville assured her, lying in a good-cause.

`But won't people notice?'

`How should they?' cried Madame de Bouville. `They're both fair; and at that age all children are alike, and alter from day to day. Who really knows the King? Messire de Joinville, who can see nothing, the Regent, who sees but little more, and the Constable, who knows more about horses than he does about infants?''

`Won't the Countess of Artois be surprised that he has no marks of forceps?'

`How could she see them, under the bonnet and the crown?'

`Besides, it's a dull day. We shall almost have to light the candles,' Bouville added, pointing to the window and the sad November sky.

Marie made no further objection. At bottom, the idea of this substitution
did her
honour and she attributed to Bouville nothing but good intentions. She took pleasure in dressing her child as a king, swaddling him in silk, placing about him the blue cloak strewn with golden lilies and the bonnet on which had been sewn a tiny crown, clothes prepared before his birth.

`How beautiful my little Jean will be,' Marie said. `Lord, a crown, a crown! You'll have to give it back to your king, you know, you'll have to give it back to him!'

She bounced her child up and down, as if he were a doll, before the cradle of Jean, I.

`Look, Sire, look at your, foster-brother, your little servant who is to take your place so that you will not catch cold.'

And she thought: `Just imagine, when I tell Guccio all this, when I tell him that his son is the King's foster-brother and that he was presented to the barons!' What a strange life we lead, a life that I would exchange for no other! How lucky it was I fell in love with him, my Lombard!'

Her happiness was destroyed by a long groan from the adjoining room.

`My God, the Queen!' thought Marie. `I had forgotten the Queen.'

An equerry entered the room, announcing the approach of the Regent and the barons. Madame de Bouville took up Marie's child.

`I'm taking him to the King's room,' she said, `and will put him back there after the ceremony till the Court has left. As for you, Marie, don't move from here till I return, and if anyone should come, in spite of the guard we're placing on the door, you must say that the child with you is yours.'

4. My lords, look on the King

THE BARONS had some difficulty in all crowding into the great hall; they were talking, cough
ing, stamping their feet and be
ginning to get impatient with having to stand so long. The escorts had invaded the corridors to see the spectacle; there were groups of heads in all the doorways.

The Seneschal de Joinville, who had been kept in bed until the last moment so as not to overtire him, was standing at the door of the King's chamber with Bouville.

`You must make the announcement, Messire Seneschal,' said Bouville. `You are the oldest companion-in-arms of Saint Louis; the honour is yours by right.'

Ill
with anxiety, his face running with sweat, Bouville was thinking: `I could not do it. I could not make the announcement. My voice would betray me.'

At the end of the dim corridor he saw the Countess Mahaut appear, gigantic, looking still larger in her coronet and heavy state mantle. Never had Mahaut of Artois seemed to him so huge and so terrifying.

He dashed into the room and said to his wife: `The moment has come.'

Madame de Bouville went to meet the Countess, whose heavy step rang on the flagstones, and handed her the light burden.

The place was dark; Mahaut did not look closely at the child. She merely thought that he had increased in weight since the day of the christening.

'Ah, our little king is doing well,'' she said. `I compliment you, my dear.'

`We watch over him very carefully, Madame; we do not wish to incur his godmother's reproaches,' replied Madame de Bouville, assuming her most polite manner.

`It's not before it was time,' thought Mahaut; `he seems singularly healthy.'

She saw Bouville's face in the light from a window.

`What's the matter with you that you're sweating like that, Messire Hugues?' she asked. `It can't be from the heat.'

`It's due to all the fires I've had lit. Messire the Regent gave me little time to make all the necessary preparations.''

Their eyes met;
it was a bad moment for both of them,

Let us move on,' said Mahaut `clear the way for me.'

Bouville gave his arm to the old Seneschal, and the two curators moved slowly towards' the great hall. Mahaut followed a' few paces behind them. Now was the best opportunity and it might not occur again. The slowness of the Seneschal's advance permitted her to take her time. There were, indeed, equerries and ladies-in-waiting; lining the walls, all gazing at the child in the dusk; but who would notice so brief and so natural a gesture?

`Now then! We must look our best,' said Mahaut to the crowned child she was holding in the crook of her arm. `We must do honour to the realm, and not dribble.'

She took her handkerchief from her purse and quickly wiped the little wet lips. Bouville turned his head; but the gesture was already accomplished, and Mahaut, concealing the handkerchief in the hollow of herhand was pretending to arrange the child's cloak.

`We are ready,' she said.

`The doors of the hall were opened and silence fell. But the Seneschal could not see the crowd of faces before him.

`Make the announcement, Messire, make the announcement,' said Bouville.

`What must I, announce?' asked Joinville:

`The King, of course, the King!'

'The
King
' :murmured Joinville. `It's the fifth king I shall
have served, do you realize that?'

`Of course, of course, but make the announcement,' Bouville repeated nervously.

Mahaut, behind them, wiped the baby's mouth a second time to make certain.

The Sire de Joinville, having cleared his throat with a number of rasping coughs, finally made up his mind to make the announcement. In a grave and reasonably steady voice he said: `My, lords, look on the King! Look on the King, my lords!'

`Long live the King!' replied the barons, uttering the cry they had been denied since the burial of the Hutin.

Mahaut went straight to the Regent and to the members of the royal family gathered about him.

`But he's strong ... he's rosy .:. he's fat,' said the barons as she passed by.

`What's this people have been saying about his being a weakling and unlikely to live?' murmured Charles of Valois to his son Philippe.

`Oh, the family of France is always valiant,' said La Marche in imitation of his uncle.

The Lombard's child looked well, indeed too well, to Mahaut's eyes. `Couldn't he cry and writhe a little?' she thought. And she secretly tried to pinch him through the cloak. But the swaddling
-
clothes were thick, and the child only made a happy little Burgling sound: The spectacle presented to his blue eyes, so recently opened, seemed to please him. `The little wretch! He'll start cooing in a
minute. But he'll be cooing
less tonight, unless Beatrice's powder has lost its virtue!'

There we're shouts from the back of the hall: 'We can't see him; we want to admire him!'

`Take him, Philippe,' said Mahaut to her son-in-law, handing him the baby. degYour arms are longer than mine. Show the King to his vassals.'

The Regent took the little Jean by the body, and raised him high in the air so that everyone might see him. Suddenly Philippe felt a warm viscous liquid running over his hands. The child, seized with hiccups, was vomiting the milk it had sucked half an hour before, but the milk had become green and mixed with bile; his face had also become green, then quickly turned a dark, indefinable, alarming hue, while his neck twisted backwards.

There was a great cry of anguished disappointment from the crowd of barons.

`Lord, Lord,' cried Mahaut, `the convulsions have seized him again!'

`Take him back,' said Philippe quickly, placing the child in her arms as if it were a dangerous package.

`I knew it!' cried a voice.

It was Bouville. He had turned purple, and his eyes moved in anger between the Countess and the Regent.

`Yes, you are right, Bouville,' said the latter. `It was too early to present this sick child.'

'I knew it!' repeated Bouville.