The Strangled Queen (11 page)

was even doubtful whether Marigny had not been the instigator of the royal Princesses' adultery, and if Philip the Fair we
re not dead through his fault.

"Anyway, do you think that your Siennes
e will accept?"
asked Valois suddenly.

"
Yes, Yes. He will ask
for security, but he'll
accept, you'll
see" Artois listened,
never growing tired of watching his cousin, at once amused and fascinated. Valois was his own particular "great man," the only being with whom he would have consented to exchange personalities. The giant, devoted to no one but himself, nevertheless felt almost capable of devotion to Valois.

For someone whose nature was not utterly dissimilar, Monseigneur of Valois's personality wa
s indeed a fascinating one, - and
to watch the way he lived and behaved was something of a spectacle. This great lord was an extraordinary pe
rsonage, impatient, tenacious,
crafty,, simple, physically courageous,: but weak in the face of flattery, and, above all animated by an ambition that nothing,
neither honours nor privileges,
could ever appease.

Others would have been perfectly satisfied with being Lord of Valois, Peer of France, Count of Alencon, of Chartres, of Perche, of Anjou, of Maine, premier peer of the kingdom besides. But not he; he was tortured by the longing to be king. At the age of thirteen he had
received the crown of Aragon,
to which he had pretensions as a descendant of Jaime the Conquistador, but had not been able to retain it. At t
wenty,
placed at the head of the French armies by his b
rother, he had ravaged Guyenne:
At thirtyone, summoned by his father-in-law, the King of Naples, to
pacify,
Tuscany, where the Guelfs and
Ghibellines were at each others throats,
he had succeeded in acquiring from the Pope the indulgences of a Crusade, with the title of Vicar-General of the Christian World and Count of Romagna, while at the same time
he extracted from the Florentines, whom he had utterly ruined, two hundred thousand golden florins as a reward for doing them the honour of going away and ceasing to pillage.

Widower of Marguerite of
Anjou-Sicily, he had hastily remarried a Courtenay, with whom he had fallen madly in love as soon as he grasped the fact that she brought him by i
nheritance the fabulous title of Emperor
of Constantinople'. Alas, he had not reigned, since the two Paleologi, who shod in purple occupied the throne of Byzantium, if they had many difficulties within their empire, nevertheless took little heed of the busybody at the other end of the Christian w
orld,' who had begun to talk as
if he were the ruler of the universe.

Again in 1308 after a series of extraordinar
y manoeuvres, Valois had become
a candidate for
the crown of the
Germanic Holy , Roman Empire without obtaining a single vote at the election. There was no available sceptre towards which he did not extend his hand across the world.

Now, at forty-four, he was not yet cured of his Byzantine dreams, nor of his German
ones either. In his thoughts he
counted up all the crowns he had nearly worn, without hesitating to include that of France. To acquire the last so little had been needed: merely that Philip the Fair should have had no children or that they should have died in infancy.

And when at times Valois exclaimed, "My life is over!
The fates have always betrayed me!
" it, was because he believed that he could have reconstituted under his own domination, from Spain to the Bosphorus, t
he Roman world as it had been a
thousand years before under the Emperor Constantine.

The great megalomaniac lord had the temperament of an adventurer, the manners of a p
arvenu and the prescience of a
founder of a dynasty. The thirteen Valois kings who were to be his descendants and reign over France for two hundred and fifty years would all have in their blood, Charles V excepted, certain characteristics of his crazed nature. But he was foredoomed to miss everything: he would die four years before the throne of France became vacant and his son succeeded to it.

"And that's what I'm reduced to, Cousin!" he cried at this
juncture with theatrical despair. "Imagine having to depend on the goodwill of a Siennese banker in order to be able to restore some kind of order
to the affairs of the kingdom!
"

4. Who rules France?

At
length the visitor Charles of Valois was awaiting was announced, and Artois assumed his most polite manner to receive Messire Spinello Tolomei.

"Friend banker," he cried going towards him, his hand
s extended, "I owe you a great
deal of money; and I have always promised you that I would pay y
ou as soon as fortune favoured
me."

"Very good news indeed, Monseigneur," replied the banker. "Well, then! I can begin by showing the gratitude I
owe-
you
by

procuring you a royal client."

Tolomei saluted Valois with a profound inclination of his head,
saying, "Who does not know M
onseigneur at least by sight an
d
renown. He is well remembered at Sienna."

He
had left there the same kind of
memories as he had left in Florence, at least to
the extent that, the town being
smaller, he had taken only
seventeen thousand florins for "
pacifying" it

Olive-skinned, pendulous of jowl, his left eye closed it was supposed that he opened it only
when he was speaking the truth,
and it was therefore rarely seen
-
his grey, well-groomed hair falling low upon the collar of his dark green robe, Messire Tolomei waited to be asked to sit down. Havin
g looked him up
and down for a moment, Monseigneur of Valois complied.

Since the death of old Boccanegra, Tolomei had been elected by his colleagues, as had been expected, Captain-General of the Lombard Companies of Paris, a high-sounding title which had no military significance but gave its holder a more certain power than that of the Constable. His function was the secret control of a third of the banking operations in the kingdom, and it is well

known that in these matters who can control a third controls the whole.

"There will be great changes in France now, friend banker," said Robert of Artois. "Messire de Marigny, who is no more a friend of yours, I believe, than he is of ours, finds himself very awkwardly placed."

"I know," murmured Tolomei.

"Moreover. I have told Monseigneur," went on Artois, "that, since he needs the assistance of a financier, he can do no better than come to
you whose ability and loyalty I
know so well."

Tolomei smiled politely but lie thought mistrustfully, "If they were going to offer me the management of the Treasury, they would not be paying me so marry compliments."

" What can I do to serve you, Monseigneur? he asked, turning to Valois.

"What a banker usually does, Messire Tolomei," replied Valois With that fine arrogance he always assumed when he was going to ask for money.

"That can mean a number of things," replied the Siennese. "Have you fu
nds you wish to lay out in good
merchandise which will double its price in the next six months? Or do you wish to acquire an interest in merchant shipping? It is developing very rapidly at the present time when so much that we need must be brought in by sea?"

"No, it is nothing of that kind; I shall consider such matters later on," Valois replied quickly. "For the moment, what I require of you is to procure me some fresh money for the Treasury."

Tolomei looked disconsolate.

"Alas, Monseigneur, in spite of my great desire to serve you, that is the one thing I cannot do. My friends and I have been bled white in recent times. None of the money the Treasury borrowed from us for the war in Flanders has yet been retu
rned to us. Private accounts "
Tolomei glanced at Artois-"
bring us in nothing, nor do the advances we have made upon them; and to tell you the truth, Monseigneur, my coffers a
re a
bit rusted at the locks. How much do you need?"

"Not much. Ten thousand pounds."

The banker raised his hands in a gesture of horror.

"Santo Dio! Where shall I find them?" he cried.

These were only preliminaries, and Artois had foreseen that Tolomei, as usual, would plead poverty, say that he was stripped to the bone and groan more loudly than job on his dunghill. But Valois, who was in a hurry, wanted to demonstrate this authority and assumed a tone which generally succeeded in imposing his will.

"Come, come, Messire Tolomei! he cried. "Don't talk like that. I have sent for you on business, and in order that you should practise your profession as you have always practised it, with profit I suspect."

"My profession, Monseigneur," replied Tolomei, his eye shut, his hands comfortably' crossed upon his stomach, "my profession is to lend; not to give. And for a long time now I have done nothing but give without return. I can't make money out of thin air and have not found the philosopher's stone."

"Don't you want to help me get rid of Marigny for you? It would be to your own i
nterest, I should have thought!
"

"Monseigneur, to pay tribute to one's enemy when he is powerful and then to pay it again so that he should no longer be so, is a double operation which, you will agree, brings in very little return. Moreover, I should want to know what the consequences would be, and if I have a chance of getting my money back."

Charles of Valois then launched into the great homily he had given all comers since the day before. lie intended, if only he were given the means to do it,
to suppress all the "novelties"
introduced by Marigny and his middle-class justiciars, restore the authority of the great lords, and re-establish order and prosperity, in the kingdom by returning to the old feudal rights which had made the grandeur of the kingdom of France. Order! As happens with all political blunderers, the word was ceaselessly upon his lips, and nothing could have persuaded him to admit that the world had changed even a little in the last century.

"Before long," he cried, "I assure you we shall have returned to the good old customs of my ancestor Saint Louis!

As he spoke, he pointed to a sort of altar, upon which stood a
reliquary in the form of a human foot containing a bone from the
heel of his grandfather; the foot was of silver and the nails inset
in gold.

The remains of the King-Saint had been cut up into pieces,
since each member of the family and each royal chapel desired to
possess a portion. The top of the skull was preserved in a fine

bust of goldsmith's work in the Sainte-Chapelle; the Countess
Mahaut of Artois, in her castle at Hesdin, possessed several hairs
as well as a fragment of the jaw; and so many slivers and splinters
of bone, so much debris, had been dissipated in this way that one might well wonder what could be left in the-tomb at Saint-Denis. If all the pieces had been reassembled, the surprising discovery would undoubtedly have been made that the King-Saint had doubled in size since his death .
14

Having asked permission, the Captain-General of the Lombards rose and devoutly kissed the big toe of the silver foot. Then, returning, he asked, "Why do you require exactly ten thousand

pounds,
Monseigneur?"

Valois was compelled to explain that Marigny's orders had succeeded in emptying the
Treasury
and that the money was required for Bouville's mission.

"At Naples. Yes," said Tolomei. "Yes, we do much business with Naples through our cousins, the Bardi. To marry the King. Yes, yes, I perfectly understand, Monseigneur. - At length to reassemble the conclave. Alas, Monseigneur, a conclave is more expensive than a palace, and how much less solid! Yes, Monseigneur, yes, I understand."

Then, when Valois had at last revealed all that was in his mind to the fat little man who always pretended ignorance in order to have things more clearly explained, Tolomei said, "All that is very well thought out, Monseigneur, and I wish you every success from the bottom of my heart; but I see no assurance that you will succeed in marrying the King, nor that you will have a Pope, nor even, if these things do happen, that I should see my gold again, supposing that I were in a position to provide it."

Valois looked irritably at Artois. "What an odd little man you
have brought me," he seemed to be implying, "and having talked at this length, am I to get nothing in the end?"

"Listen, banker," cried Artois, rising, "you may not have this sum of money, but I know very well that you can get it for us if you want to. What interest do you require? What favours do you want?
"

"But none, Monseigneur, no favours at all," protested Tolomei; "neither from you, you know it very well, nor from Monseigneur of Valois, whose protection is so dear to me. I am merely trying; to think how I can help you."

Then, turning once again towards the silver foot, he added softly, "Monseigneur of Valois has just said that he wants to return to the good old customs of Monseigneur Saint Louis. But what does he mean by that? Are all the old customs to be brought back into use?"

"Certainly," replied Valois not well understanding what the, other was leading up to.

"For instance, is the right of the great barons to mint money within their domains to be reintroduced?"

The two lords looked at each other as if a great light had suddenly dawned upon them. How had they failed to think of that one before?

Indeed, the unification of the currency throughout the kingdom, as well as the royal monopoly in issuing it, were institutions of Philip the Fair. Before that, the great lords minted or had minted for them, concurrently with the royal coinage, their own gold and silver coins which had currency within their domains; and they drew huge profits from the privilege. And those who, like the Lombard bankers, furnished the raw metal and played the exchanges between one province and another found it equally profitable.

Charles of Valois at once saw himself re-establishing his fortune.

"Do you also mean, Monseigneur," went on Tolomei, still gazing at the reliquary as if he were valuing it in his mind, "that you will re-establish the right to
private war between the barons?
"

This was another feudal custom which Philip the Fair had abolished so as to prevent the great vassals from causing bloodshed, at the slightest excuse, within the kingdom in order to regulate their differences, establish their glory, or banish their boredom.

"Oh, if we could do that again," cried Robert of Artois, "I should soon recover my county from my bitch of an Aunt Mahaut."

"If you need arms for your troops," said Tolomei, "I can obtain them for you at the lowest possible pr
ices from the Tuscan armourers.
"

"Messire Tolomei, you have exactly expressed the things I want to accomplish," cried Valois, "and that is why I ask you to join with me in all confidence."

He had already made the banker's suggestions his own, and within the hour would announce them as his own ideas.

Tolomei was also dreaming in his own way, for great financiers are no less imaginative than great conquerors, and it is a mistake to think that behind their calculations there exist no abstract thoughts of power.

The Captain-General of the Lombards already saw himself supplying the great barons of the kingdom with raw gold, and encouraging their differences in order to sell them arms.

"Well," asked Charles of Valois, "have you now decided to supply me with the money I want?"

"Perhaps, Monseigneur, perhaps; that is to say, I cannot give it to you myself, but I can find it for you in Italy, which is particularly lucky since it is precisely there that your embassy is going. I will guarantee it, which is a big risk, but I am prepared to take it, from the desire I have to serve you. Naturally, Monseigneur, it will be necessary for a man of mine, bearing letters of credit, to accompany your envoy so as to take charge of the money and account for it."

Monseigneur of Valois frowned; these conditions did not please him at all; he would have preferred to receive the money direct and keep some of it to meet his own most urgent needs.

"You see, Monseigneur," said Tolomei, "I shall not he alone in this matter; the Italian companies are still more cautious than we are, and I must give them every assurance that they are not being duped."

In fact, what he really wanted was to have an agent with the expedition who could report to him everything that happened.

"A
nd who will you send who will n
ot cut a poor figure beside Messire de Bouville? " asked Valois.

"I shall see, Monseigneur, I shall see. I have but few people." "Why," asked Artois, "do you not send the boy who went to England for me?"

"My nephew Guccio?" asked Tolomei.

"That's the one, your nephew. He's intelligent, shrewd and good-looking. He'll be able to help our friend Bouville, who undoubtedly speaks but little Italian, upon the journey. I assure you, Cousin," said Artois to Valois, "that the boy is worthy of the job."

"I shall miss him in my business," said the banker, "but that can't be helped. Monseigneur, I give him to you. It's fated that you should always get what you want of me."

When Messire Spinello Tolomei had left the study, Robert of Artois stretched himself and said, "You see, Cousin, you see I was not mistaken."

"And do you know what made up
his mind for him? It was that!
" replied Valois, indicating with a graceful gesture his grandfather's foot. "Thank God, all respect for what is noble has not been lost in France. The kingdom can be set to rights."

That night a young man was overcome with mingled satisfaction and impatient hope; it was Louis The Hutin when his uncle told him that Bouville's embassy would leave before two days were out.

But another young man, when given the same news by his uncle, appeared less delighted; he was Guccio Baglioni.

"What, Nephew!" cried Tolomei. "Here you are offered a wonderful journey, the opportunity of seeing Naples, the Court of Naples, of living among princes, making friends among them
-
if you are not
un idioto completo
! - of seeing a conclave
-
and a concla
ve is a most remarkable thing - O
f learning much and enjoying yourself and you make
la faccia lunga
as if I were breaking bad news. You're spoilt, my boy, and you don't recognise your opportunities. Alas, the younger generation! Why, when I was your
age, I should have leapt with joy and be already busy with my packing! To look as you do, there must be some girl you don't want to leave; am I right? "

Young Guccio's olive complexion grew a little darker, which was the sign that he was blushing.

"Well, well, she'll wait for you, if she loves you," went on the banker. "Women are Made for waiting. One always finds them again. And if you are afraid that she does not love you enough, profit by those you will meet on the journey. There is but one thing one never finds again; that is youth, and time to travel about the world."

As he looked at his nephew, Spinello Tolomei thought to himself, "How strange life is! Here is this boy who, barely arrived from Sienna, went to London upon the intrigues of Monseigneur of Artois which brought the scandal of the Princesses of Burgundy to a head and forced The Hutin to separate from his wife; and now he is going off again to Naples to find him another wife. There must be some affinity in the stars between my nephew and the new
King; their destinies seem to b
e linked. Who knows, perhaps Guccio will become a very great personage? I must ask Martin, the astrologer, to study these matters with care.

5
,
A Castle by the Sea