The Royal Succession (28 page)

He insisted so much that Tolomei ,finally whispered to his nephew: `Go, or we shall wound him. But hold your tongue.'

Guccio therefore finished his unhappy day in a tavern, whose owner paid tribute to the officers of the watch to be allowed to carry on some of the traffic of a brothel. Moreover, every word that was said in the place was reported to the office of the sergeants-at-arms.

Monseigneur of Artois was at his most typical, insatiable at the pitcher, prodigious in appetite, obstreperous, obscene, overflowing with human kindness towards his young companion while he raised the whores' skirts in order to show everyo
ne
Mahaut's true likeness.

Guccio, encouraged to emulate him, did not neglect the wine. His eyes bright, his hair in disorder and his movements uncertain, he shouted: `'I know things too . Ah, if I were to tell you!'

`Tell me, tell me!'

But, drunk as he was, Guccio preserved an underlying prudence.

`The Pope. ..' he said. 'Oh, I know a lot about the Pope.'

Suddenly he burst into floods of tears on a whore's shoulder; then he slapped her face because he saw in her the image of all feminine betrayal.

`But I shall come back and I shall take him away!' 'Who, the Pope?'

`No, the child!'

The evening had become confused, vision uncertain, and the
girls provided by the brothel-keeper had discarded their clothes,
when Lormet came to Robert of Artois and whispered in his ear:

`There's a man outside, watching us.' `Kill him!' the giant said casually. `Very well, Monseigneur.'

Thus Madame de Bouville lost one of her servants; she had sent him to follow the young Italian.

Guccio was never to know that Marie, by her sacrifice, had probably saved him from finishing up as a corpse floating on the waters of the Seine.

Sprawling in a dirty bed across the breasts of the girl whose face he had smacked, and who now showed herself understanding of man's sorrows, Guccio continued to insult Marie, imagining that he was avenging himself on her by taking this bought body in his arms.

`You're quite right! I don't like women either; they're all deceitful,' said the whore, whose face Guccio was never afterwards able to remember.

The next day, his hat pulled
down over his eyes, his limbs weak, exhausted both in body and soul, Guccio took the road to Italy. He was taking with him a handsome fortune in the form of a letter of credit signed by his uncle; it represented his share of the profits
in
the business he had done during the last two years.

That same day, King Philippe V, his wife Jeanne, and the Countess Mahaut, with all their suites, arrived in Rheims.

The gates of the Manor of Cressay had already closed on the beautiful Marie, who was to live there, inconsolable, in a perpetual winter.

The real King of France was to grow up there as if he were a bastard. He was to take his first steps in the muddy courtyard among the ducks, play in the field with the yellow irises by the banks of the Mauldre, in that very field where Marie, as she walked through it, recalled again and again the face of her charming Sienese and the fleeting passage of her dead love. She was to keep her oath and for thirty years carry her secret; only at last to confess it, on her deathbed, to a Spanish priest who passed that way.

Marie de Cressay's destiny was a strange one. Crossed in love, she was condemned to a life of solitude; but once in her whole life did she leave
her
native village and then only to be involved, all innocence and helplessness, at the heart of a dynastic drama; while her confession, one day, was to trouble Europe.

* The history of this confession, and the dramatic life of Clemence of Hungary's son, will be the subject of one of the volumes in the second series of The Accursed Kings.'

9. The eve of the coronation

THE GATES of Rheims, surmounted by the royal arms, had been freshly painted. The streets were hung with bright draperies, carpets and silks, the same indeed that had served a year and a half earlier for the coronation of Louis X. By the Archiepiscopal Palace three great halls had been quickly run up by carpenters; one for the King's table, another for the Queen's, and
a third for the great officers, so t
hat the whole Court might be
feasted.

The burgesses of Rheims, at whose expense the coronation tool: place, found the cost somewhat heavy.

`If the occupants of the throne die as quickly as this,' they said, `and we have the honour of crowni
ng a king every year, we shall
soon only be able to eat once in
twelve months and have to sell
our shirts to do so! Clovis is costing us dear by having had
himself anointed here! If another town in the kingdom would

care to buy the holy ampulla, we would certainly do a deal.' To the difficulties of finding the money was added the difficulty of finding, in midwinter, enough food for so many mouths. But the burgesses of Rheims had collected eighty-two oxen, two hundred and forty sheep, four hundred and twenty-five calves, seventy
-
eight pigs, eight hundred rabbits and hares, eight hundred capons, one thousand eight hundred and twenty geese, more than ten thousand hens and forty thousand eggs, without counting the barrels of sturgeons, which had to be brought from Malines, the four thousand freshwater crayfish, the salmon, pike, tench, bream, perch, carp, and the three thousand five hundred eels for making pies. They had collected two thousand cheeses, and hoped that the three hundred casks of wine, which was luckily a local product, would suffice to satisfy the thirsty gullets which would be banqueting there for three days or more.

The chamberlains, who had arrived in advance to organize the rejoicings, made singular demands. Had they not decided that at one single course three hundred roast herons should be served? These officers were very like the
ir master, the King in a hurry,
who ordered his coronation almost from one week to the next, as if it were a halfpenny mass to mend a broken leg.

The pastrycooks had for days been building their almond-: paste castles in the colours of France.

And the mustard! The mustard had not arrived! They needed sixty-two gallons. And then of course the guests couldn't eat out of the palms of their hands! They had made a mistake in selling off so cheaply the fifty thousand wooden bowls from the preceding coronation; it would have been more profitable to wash them and keep them. As for the four thousand pitchers, they'd either been broken or stolen. The seamstresses were hastily hemming two thousand six hundred ells of cloths, find it could be
calculated that the total expense would amoun
t to hear, ten thousand livres.
But in fact the inhabitants of Rheims would get their money
back, because the
coronation had attracted great
numbers of Lombard and Jewish merchants who
paid tax on their
sales:

The coronation, like all royal ceremonies, took place in a fair like atmosphere. A continual spectacle was offered to the populace during these days, and people carne from far to see it. The women dressed in new dresses; the gallants did not look glum at the sight of a jeweller's shop; brocades, fine stuffs and furs sold
without difficulty. The clever made fortunes, and the shopkeepers who served their customers competently could make in a single week enough to keep them for five years.

The new King was lodged in the Archiepiscopal Palace, before which a crowd was permanently gathered to watch for the appearance of the Sovereign or marvel at the Queen's coach which was covered in brilliant scarlet.

Queen Jeanne, surrounded by her ladies-in-waiting, supervised, with a woman's delighted excitement, the unpacking of the twelve trunks and four chests, the coffer containing shoes and the coffer containing spices. Her wardrobe was certainly the finest that any woman in France had ever had. There was a special dress for every day and almost every hour of this triumphal journey.

The Queen had made her solemn entry into the town dressed in a coat of cloth-of-gold lined with ermine, while shows, mystery plays and entertainments were taking place all along the streets for the benefit of the royal couple. For the supper on coronation eve, which was to take place shortly, the Queen would wear a dress of violet velvet trimmed with miniver. For the morning of the coronation she had a dress of turkey cloth-of
-
gold, a scarlet cloak and a vermilion cape; for dinner a dress embroidered with the arms of France; for supper a dress of cloth-of-gold and two different mantles of ermine.

The following day she was to wear a d
ress of green velvet, and later
another of azure camocas with a squirrel cape. She would never appear in public wearing the same dress, nor even the same jewels.

These marvels were laid out in a room whose decorations had also been brought from Paris: white silk hangings embroidered with thirteen hundred and twenty-one golden parrots, and in the centre the great arms of the Counts of Burgundy showing a lion gules; the baldaquin, counterpane and cushions were decorated with seven thousand silver trefoils. On the floor had been placed carpets with the arms of France and of the County of Burgundy.

Jeanne, went several times into Philippe's room to show him' the beauty of some stuff or th
e perfection of some creation.

`My dear Sire, my well-beloved,' she cried, `how happy you are making me!'

Though little inclined to be emotionally demonstrative, she could not help tears coming to her eyes. She was dazzled by her own fate, particularly when she remembered that she had but recently been in prison at Dourdan. What an astounding reversal of fortune in less than eighteen months! She thought of the dead Marguerite, she thought of her sister Blanche of Burgundy, who was still shut up in Chateau Gaillard. `Poor Blanche, who loved finery so much. What pleasure today would have given her!' she th
ought, as she tried on a golden
belt encrusted with rubies and emeralds.

Philippe was anxious, and his wife's enthusiasm tended to depress him; he was examining the accounts with his Bursar.

`I am delighted, my dear, that all this pleases you,' he ended by saying. `You see, I am following the example of my father, who, as you know, was very careful in his expenditure though he was never stingy when it was a matter of the royal majesty. You must show off these beautiful clothes well, because they are for the people who provide them by their labour, as much as they are for you; and take great care of them, for you will not be able to have others for some time. After the coronation we shall have to economize.'

`Philippe,' Jeanne asked, `won't you do something for my sister Blanche on this day?'

`I have, I have. She is being treated as a princess again, but with the reservation that she does not go outside the walls of her prison. A difference must be made between Blanche who sinned, and you, Jeanne, who were always pure though falsely accused.'

As he said these last words, he looked at his wife with a gaze which revealed more anxiety for the royal honour than any certainty of her love.

`Besides,' he added, `her husband is far from pleasing me at the moment. He is a bad brother to me!' '

Jeanne realized that it would be useless to insist and that it would be to her advantage never to open the subject again. As long as Philippe was king, he refused to free Blanche.

Jeanne withdrew and Philippe returned to the examination of the long sheets of figures Geoffroy de Fleury was presenting for his inspection.

The expenses were not limite
d merely to the clothes of the King and Queen. Philippe had
indeed, received a few presents. For instance, the grey robe he was wearing that day had been given him by his grandmother, Marie of Brabant, the widow of Philippe III; and Mahaut had given the figured cloth for the dresses of the little princesses and t
he young Louis-Philippe. But it
was little among so much.

The King had had to provide new clothes for his fifty-four sergeants-at-arms and their commander, Pierre de Galard, the Master of the Crossbowmen. Adam Heron, Robert de Gamaches, Guillaume de Seriz, the chamberlains, had each received ten ells of striped cloth from Douai to make themselves stylish coats. Henry de Meudon, Furant de la Fouaillie and Jeannot Malgeneste, the huntsmen, had been given new liveries, as had all the archers. And as twenty knights
were to be armed after the cor
onation, there were another twenty robes to give! These presents of clothes were customary gifts; and precedent also demanded that the King should add to the shrine of Saint-Denis a golden lily set with emeralds and rubies.

`What's the total?' Philippe asked.

`Eight thousand five hundred and forty-eight livres, thirteen sols, and eleven deniers, Sire,' replied the Bursar. `Perhaps you might ask for the dues normally paid at a happy accession?

`My accession will be all the happier if I impose no new taxes. We'll manage some other way,' said the King.

At this moment the Count of Valois was announced. Philippe raised his hands towards the ceiling: `That's what we've forgotten in our calculations. You'll see, Geoffroy, you'll see! That uncle will cost me more by himself than ten coronations! He's come to do a deal with me. Leave me alone with him.'

How splendid Monseigneur of Valois was! Embroidered, bedizened, doubled in size by his furs which opened on a robe sewn with precious stones! If the inhabitants of Rheims had not known that the new King was young and, thin, they might have taken him for the King himself.

`My dear nephew,' he began, `you see me much distressed, mush distressed on your account. Your brother-in-law of England is not coming.'

`For a long
while now, Uncle, the King of England has not attended our coronations,' Philippe replied.

`Of course; but they send a representative, some relation or great lord of their Court to occupy their place as Duke of Guyenne.' But Edward has sent no one; he thereby confirms the
fact that he does
not recognize
you. The Count of Flanders; whom. you thought you had won over with, your treaty last September, is not here either, nor is the Duke of Brittany.'

`I know, Uncle, I know.'

`As for the Duke of Burgun
dy, don't let's mention him; We
knew very well that he would let you down. But, on the other hand, his mother, our Aunt Agnes, entered the town a while ago, but I do not think that she has come with the purpose of giving you her support.'

`I know, Uncle, I know,' Philippe repeated.

The unexpected arrival of the last daughter of Saint Louis worried Philippe more than he liked to say. At first he had thought that the Duchess Agnes had come to negotiate. But she showed no haste to put in an appearance, and he had determined not to take the first step himself. `If the people, who acclaim me when I appear, and who believe that I am to be envied, only knew of the hostility and danger around me!' he thought.