The She Wolf of France (14 page)

`Are you so desirous of confronting King Edward, your brother, with whose fits of passion and injustice you are so familiar?' Mortimer went on.
`He'll reproach you with
a defeat for which the Despensers are alone responsible. You must be aware, my lord, that you have been betrayed. We have known all along that you were promised reinforcements were on the way to you, when in fact they had never even been embarked. And the order given the Seneschal of Bordeaux not to come to your assistance before the reinforcements arrived - reinforcements that, in fact, did not exist - was surely nothing but a betrayal? You ne
ed not be surprised to find me
well informed, for I owe it
merely to the Lombard bankers.
And have you not asked yourself the reason for so criminal a negligence towards you? Do you not see the object of it?'

Kent stilt remained silent, his head inclined a little to one side, gazing at his fingernails.

'Had you won this war, you would have been a danger to the Despensers, my lord,' Mortimer went on, `and would have achieved too important a position in the kingdom. They have quite
naturally preferred to subject
you to the discredit of a
defeat, even at the price of Aquitaine, which has but little importance for men who have no care but to steal the baronies of
the Marches one after the other. Do you not realize that my rebellion of three years ago was for England against the King, or, perhaps for the King against himself? How do you know that you will not be accused of criminal negligence and immediately cast into prison on your arrival home? You are still young, my lord, and have no idea of what those wicked men are capable.'

Kent smoothed his fair curls back behind his ears and replied at last. 'I'm beginning to know it, my lord, and to my cost.'

`Would you be entirely reluctant to offer yourself as the first hostage, on the guarantee, of course, that you would be treated as a prince? Since Aquitaine is now lost, and I fear for ever, our duty is to save the kingdom itself, and we can do that best from here.'

The young man looked at Mortimer in surprise, but he was already half prepared to consent.

`But two hours ago,' he said, `I was still the Lieutenant of my brother the King, and are you asking me so soon to join a rebellion?'

`Without its being apparent, my lord, without its being apparent. Great decisions are made in a few seconds.'

`How many seconds do you give me?'

`There is no need, my lord. You have already made your decision.,

Roger Mortimer scored no l
ittle success when young Edmund,
Earl of Kent, came back to the Council table and announced that he was prepared to offer himself as the senior hostage.

Mortimer leaned towards him and said: `And now we must work to save your cousin and sister-in-law, the Queen. She deserves our love and can be of the greatest help to us.'

PART TWO
ISABELLA IN LOVE

THE CHURCH of Saint Agricola had recently been entirely rebuilt. The Cathedral of the Doms, the Church of the Minorites, and those of the Predicant friars and the August
inians
had been enlarged and renovated. The Hospital's of Saint John of Jerusalem had built themselves a magnificent commandery. Beyond the Place
au Change a
new chapel to Saint Anthony was rising, and the foundations for a future Church of Saint Didier were being dug.

The
Count de Bouville
had been going about Avignon for a week. He no longer
recognized it, nor could he
find in it a single reminder of the past. Every time he went out, he was surprised and amazed. How
could
a town have changed its appearance so completely in eight years?

For it was not only churches that had risen from the earth or acquired
new facades, raising on every
hand spires, arches, rosewindows, and traceries of white stone which the winter sunlight tinged with gold while the wind from the Rhone sang through them.

On every hand
princes
and prelates
palaces, communal buildings, rich burgesses' houses, offices of Lombard companies, shops and warehouses were building. On all sides the patient, incessant sound of mason' hammers seemed to
patter like
rain; the millions of little taps of metal on soft stone by which capitals are built. Constantly traversed by the torches which preceded the cardinals even in daylight, the swarming, lively, busy crowd trampled the sawdust, the st
onedust and the rubbish. The em
broidered shoes of power being soiled by the dust of building is the symbol of a period of wealth.

No, indeed, Hugues de Bouville no longer recognized the
place. Not only were his eyes filled with the dust of building by the Mistral but they were constantly being dazzled. The shops, which all boasted of being suppliers to the Holy Father, the Pope, or to their Eminences of his Sacred College, were full of the most sumptuous merchandise on earth; the thickest velvets, silks, cloth-of-gold and the richest braid, sacerdotal jewels, pectoral crosses, croziers, rings, ciboriums, monstrances, pattens, as well as eating-platters, spoons, goblets. and' tankards, engraved with the Papal or with cardinals' arms, were heaped on the counters of Tauro
the Sienese, of Merchant Corboli
and of Master Cachette, the silversmiths.

Painters were needed to decorate all these naves, ceilings, cloisters and audience chambers; the three Pierres, Pierre de Puy, Pierre de Camelere and Pierre Gaudrac, with the assistance of their innumerable pupils, were spreading gold, azure and carmine as they depicted the signs of the Zodiac round scenes from the two Testaments. Sculptors were needed and Master Macciolo of Spoleto was carving effigies of the saints in oak and walnut which he would then paint or cover with gold. And in the streets everyone bowed low to a man who, though preceded by no torches, was always escorted by an imposing following carrying measuring rods and huge plans on rolls of parchment; he was Messire Guillaume de Coucouron, the chief of all the Papal architects, who had been rebuilding Avignon since the year 1317 at the fabulous cost of five thousand gold florins.

The women of this religious metropolis were more beautifully dressed than those of anywhere else in the world. To watch them come out
of mass, walk through the streets, visit the shops, hold court in the middle of the street itself, shivering and laughing in their furred cloaks, among assiduous lords and knowing clerics, was an enchantment to the eye. Some of these ladies had no hesitation in being seen walking on the arm even of a canon or a bishop, and the two skirts swept the white dust in harmonious accord.

The Church's Treasury enabled every human activity to prosper. It had been necessary to construct new brothels and extend the prostitutes' quarter, for all the monks, novices, clerics, deacons and sub-deacons who haunted Avignon were not necessarily saints. The town magistrates had posted up strict regulations: `Prostitutes and procuresses are forbidden to live in the better streets, to wear the same ornaments as respectable women, to wear veils in public or to touch with the hand bread and fruit on the stalls on pain of being obliged to buy the goods they have
so touched. Married courtesans are expelled from the town and
will be summoned to appear before the magistrates should they
enter it.
But, despite the regulations, the courtesans dressed in
the finest clothes, bought the best fruit, walked in the aristocratic
streets and had no difficulty in marrying, so prosperous and
sought
after were they. They gazed with assurance at the so
called
respectable women who behaved no better than they did,

for the only difference between them was that chance had given
them lovers of higher rank.

And it was not only Avignon but all the neighbouring countryside that was being transformed. On the farther side of the
Bridge of S
aint-Benezat, on the Villeneuve bank, Cardinal Arnaud de Via,
a ne
phew of the Pope, was building
an enormous collegiate church; and Philip the Fair's tower was already being called `the old tower' because it was thirty years old. But would any of all this have existed but for Philip the Fair who in times past had imposed Avignon on the Papacy as its headquarters?
21
At Bedarrides, Chateauneuf and Noves, the Pope's builders were raising churches and castles out of the earth.

Bouville could not help taking a certain personal pride in all this. For it was in part due to him that the present Pope had been elected. Indeed, it was he, Bouville, who eight or even nine years ago now, after an exhausting chase in pursuit of the cardinals who were scattered all over the countryside between Carpentras and Orange, had discovered Cardinal Dueze, given him funds for his electoral campaign and sent his name to Paris as that of the best candidate for France. In fact, Dueze, who was already the candidate of the King; of Naples, had taken great care to let himself be discovered. But it is the habit of ambassadors to believe themselves solely responsible for the outcome of their missions when they are successful. And Bouville, on his way to the banquet Pope John XXII was giving in his honour, stuck out his stomach - though he imagined he was throwing out his
chest - shook his white hair over
his fur collar and spoke rather loudly to his equerries as he passed through the streets of Avignon.

In any case, one thing appeared to be quite settled: the Holy See would not return to Italy. There was now an end to the illusions that Clement V had prudently allowed to be entertained during his pontificate. The Roman patricians might well conspire against John XXII and threaten that, if he did not return to the Eternal City, they would create a schism by electing another pope who would occupy the true throne of Saint Peter.
22
The
one-time Burgess of Cahors had answered the Roman, princes by conferring but one hat on them among the sixteen cardinals he had created since his enthronement. All the other hats had gone to Frenchmen.

`You see, Messire Count,' Pope John had said to Bouville, a few days earlier, at the first audience he had granted him, speaking in that hoarsely whispering voice with which he controlled Christendom in such a masterful way, `you see, Messire Count, one must govern with one's friends and against one's enemies. Princes who spend their time and their strength trying to win over their adversaries create only discontent among their true supporters while acquiring false friends, who are always ready to betray them.'

To be convinced of the Pope's intention to remain in France, it was necessary only to look at the castle he had built by incorporating the old Bishop's Palace and which now dominated the town with its towers, battlements and machicolations. The interior was divided into spacious cloisters, reception rooms, and splendidly decorated apartments under blue ceilings, strewn with stars like the sky.
23
There were two ushers on the first door, two on the second, five on the third, and fourteen for the other doors. The Palace Marshal had under his orders forty couriers and sixty-three sergeants-at-arms. This was no temporary establishment.

And to discover with whom Pope John intended ruling, Bouville had merely to look at the dignitaries who came to take their places at the long table gleaming with gold and silver plate in the banqueting-hall, which was hung with silk tapestries.

The Cardinal-Archbishop of Avignon was called Arnaud de Via; he was the son of a sister of the Pope. The Cardinal-Chancellor of the Roman Church; that is to say the P
rime Minister of Christendom, a
tall, stout man, who looked well in his purple, was Gauclin Dueze, the son of Pierre Dueze, that brother of the Pope whom King Philippe V had ennobled. And then there were a nephew of the Pope; Cardinal de la Motte-Fressange, and a cousin of the Pope, Cardinal Raymond Le Roux. Another nephew of the Pope, Pierre de Vicy, controlled the Papal household and its expenses, and was in charge of the two stewards, the four cellarers, the masters of the stables and the farriery, the six grooms of the
chamber, the thirty chaplains,
the sixteen confes
sors for visiting pilgrims, the
bellringers, the sweepers, the water-carriers, the laundresses, the physicians, the
apothecaries and the barbers.

Cardinal Bertrand du Pouget was certainly not the least of the personages present at the Papal table. He was the perambulating Papal Legate in Italy, and it was whispered of him - but of whom were things not whispered here? - that he was a natural son Jacques Dueze had had when, so far from thinking he would ever become Pope, he was not yet a prelate, Chancellor to the King of Naples, nor even a doctor or a cleric, and had not indeed thought of leaving his native Cahors, though already past his fortieth year!

All Pope John's relations, down to cousins once removed, were lodged in his palace and shared his repasts; two of them even lived in the private entresol underneath the dining-room. They had all been given posts
among
the hundred noble knights, one as the Dispenser of Charity, another as Master of the Apostolic Chamber, who administered all the ecclesiastical income, the annates, tithes, subsidies, death duties and taxes from the Sacred Penitential. The Court consisted of more than four hundred persons and its annual expenses amounted to over four thousand florins.

When, eight years earlier, the Conclave at Lyons had raised to the throne of Saint Peter an exhausted and fragile old man, who, so it was expected and indeed hoped, would give up the ghost the following week, the Papal Treasury had been empty. But during
these eight years, this little
old man, who looked like a feather blown by the wind, had administered so well the Church's finances, had taxed so successfully the adulterers, the sodomites and the incestuous, the thieves and the criminals, the bad priests and the bishops guilty of violence, had sold abbeys for such good prices and had so cleverly organized all the resources of ecclesiastical property, that he had been able to build a town and acquire the greatest income in the world. He might well afford to feed his family and govern through it. Nor was he niggardly with charity to the poor and gifts to the rich. He presented his visitors with jewels and holy medals in gold, which were furnished by his usual supplier, the Jew Boncoeur.