The Iron King

by Maurice Druon

  ‘As yet it is not a decision of the King,’ replied Tolomei. ‘Can you not tell the Coadjutor that the Lombards, called upon to surrender their lives which are at the King’s disposition, believe me, and their gold which is also his, wish, if possible, to preserve their lives? They willingly offer their gold when it is intended to take it from them by force. Why not listen to them?’

  There was a silence. Jean de Marigny, completely immobile, seemed to be looking into some distance beyond the wall.

  ‘What are you going to do with that parchment I signed for you?’ he asked.

  Tolomei ran his tongue across his lips.

  ‘What in my place would you do with it, Monseigneur? Just think for a moment. It is naturally a strange thought for you. But just imagine that there was a threat to ruin you and that you possessed something – a talisman, that’s it, a talisman which might serve you to evade ruin.’

  He went towards the window, hearing a noise in the courtyard. Porters were arriving, loaded with packing-cases and bales of cloth. Tolomei automatically valued the merchandise entering his premises that day and sighed.

  ‘Yes, a talisman against ruin,’ he murmured.

  ‘You are not suggesting that that receipt …’

  ‘Yes, Monseigneur, that is exactly what I am suggesting and wish to suggest,’ said Tolomei in a hard voice. ‘That receipt is evidence that you have embezzled the possessions of the Templars which were forfeit to the Crown. It is evidence that you have stolen, and stolen from the King.’

  He looked the Archbishop straight in the face. ‘I have done it now,’ he thought. ‘It is a question of who will flinch first.’

  ‘You will be held to have been my accomplice!’ said Jean de Marigny.

  ‘In that case we shall swing together at Montfaucon like a couple of thieves,’ replied Tolomei coldly. ‘But I shall not swing alone.’

  ‘You are an unmitigated rascal!’ cried Jean de Marigny.

  Tolomei shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘I am not an archbishop, Monseigneur, and it is not I who have embezzled the gold in which the Templars paraded the body of Christ. I am but a merchant. And at this moment we are making a deal, whether you like it or not. That is the basic meaning of everything we are saying. If there is no robbing the Lombards, there will be no scandal as far as you are concerned. Should I fall, Monseigneur, you will fall too. And from a greater height. And the Coadjutor, who is too rich not to have made enemies, will be brought down with you.’

  Jean de Marigny seized Tolomei by the arm.

  ‘Give me back the receipt,’ he said.

  Tolomei looked at the Archbishop; his lips were white; his chin, hands, indeed the whole of his body was trembling.

  Tolomei gently disengaged himself from the gripping fingers.

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘I will give you back the two thousand pounds you advanced me,’ said Jean de Marigny, ‘and you may keep all the profits of the sale.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Five thousand.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Ten thousand! Ten thousand pounds for that receipt.’

  Tolomei smiled.

  ‘And where will you find them? I know better than you do yourself of what your fortune consists. I should have to lend you them, too.’

  Jean de Marigny, his hands clenched, said, ‘Ten thousand pounds! I shall find them. My brother will help me.’

  ‘Monseigneur, I have offered, as my contribution alone, seventeen thousand pounds to the royal Treasury!’

  The Archbishop realised that he must change his tactics.

  ‘And supposing I succeed in obtaining from my brother the assurance that you will be excepted from the Order in Council? You will be allowed to leave with all your fortune and begin again elsewhere.’

  Tolomei reflected for a moment. He was being made the offer of escaping by himself. Against this assurance, was it worth while risking a huge throw of the dice?

  ‘No, Monseigneur,’ he replied. ‘I will suffer the fate of everyone else. I do not want to begin again elsewhere, and indeed have no reason to do so. By now, I have as many roots in France as you. I am a bourgeois du roi. I wish to continue living in this house, which I have built, and in Paris. I have lived thirty-two years of my life in it, Monseigneur, and, if God wills, it is here that I shall die.’

  His resolution and the tone of voice in which it was expressed were not lacking in grandeur.

  ‘Moreover,’ he added, ‘even if I desired to give you back the receipt, I could not do so; it is no longer here.’

  ‘You lie!’ cried the Archbishop.

  ‘It has gone to Sienna, Monseigneur! To my cousin Tolomei with whom I have many business interests in common.’

  Jean de Marigny did not reply. He went quickly to the door and called, ‘Souillard! Chauvelot!’

  ‘Now, we must put a brave face on it!’ Tolomei thought.

  Two great fellows of six foot apiece appeared, pikes in their hands.

  ‘Watch this man; see that he doesn’t move an inch from where he stands!’ said the Archbishop. ‘And close the door. Tolomei, if you cross me, you’ll regret it! I’m going to search till I find the document! I shall not leave without it!’

  ‘I shall regret nothing, Monseigneur, and you will find nothing. You will leave here in the same state as you arrived, whether I am alive or dead. But if by chance I am dead, you may as well know that it will do you no good. For my cousin in Sienna has been warned, if I should die before my time, to make the existence of this receipt known to King Philip,’ said Tolomei.

  His heart was beating too quickly in his fat body, and he felt the cold sweat trickling down the small of his back. Feeling a sort of internal support, as if his back were against an invisible wall, he managed to remain calm.

  The Archbishop searched the chests, turned out the drawers full of credit notes upon the floor, scattered the files of papers and the rolls of parchment. From time to time he looked secretly at the banker in order to see whether his effort at intimidation was succeeding. He went into Tolomei’s room and the latter heard him turning his cupboards to chaos.

  ‘Luckily Nogaret is dead,’ thought Tolomei. ‘He would have gone about this business differently and would certainly have found some way of defeating me.’

  The Archbishop reappeared.

  ‘You can go,’ he said to the two guards.

  He was defeated. Tolomei had not given way to fear.

  Some agreement must be reached.

  ‘Well then?’ asked Marigny.

  ‘Well, Monseigneur,’ said Tolomei calmly, ‘I have nothing more to say to you than I said a little while ago. All this disorder is completely useless. Talk to the Coadjutor and press him to accept the offer I have made while there is yet time. Otherwise …’

  Without finishing his sentence, the banker went to the door and opened it. Jean de Marigny went out without another word.

  The scene which took place that very day between the Archbishop and his brother was terrifying. Suddenly face to face, their personalities nakedly revealed, the two Marignys who, until then, had walked in step, were now at odds.

  The Coadjutor overwhelmed his younger brother with contemptuous reproaches, and the younger brother defended himself as best he could, but meanly.

  ‘You’re a fine one to blame me!’ he cried. ‘Where does your wealth come from? From what Jews sent to the stake? From what Templars you have burnt? I have only followed your example. I have been useful enough to you in your plots; now it’s your turn to be useful to me.’

  ‘Had I known what you were like, I would not have made you an archbishop,’ said Enguerrand.

  ‘You would have found no one but me to sentence the Templars, and you very well know it.’

  The Coadjutor knew very well that the exercise of power leads to unworthy relationships. But he felt suddenly oppressed by being brought face to face with the consequences in his own family. A man who would agree to betray his own conscience for the sake of
a mitre, might well also steal and betray. This man happened to be his brother, that was all.

  Enguerrand de Marigny took up the mass of papers upon which he had prepared the Orders in Council against the Lombards and, with a furious gesture, threw it into the fire.

  ‘A lot of work for nothing,’ he said. ‘Such a lot of work!’

  7

  Guccio’s Secrets

  CRESSAY, IN THE CLEAR LIGHT of spring, with the transparent leaves of the trees and the quivering silver surface of the Mauldre, remained a happy memory for Guccio. But when, on this October morning, the young Siennese, continuously looking over his shoulder to make certain that he was not being followed by archers, arrived upon the heights of Cressay, he wondered for a moment whether he had not made a mistake. The autumn seemed somehow to have shrunk the Manor House, to have made it sink into the earth. ‘Were its towers so low?’ Guccio said to himself. ‘And can one’s memory alter so much in a mere six months?’ The courtyard had become, under the rain, a muddy bog into which the horses sank above their pasterns. ‘At least,’ thought Guccio, ‘there is little chance that anyone will look for me here.’

  To the limping servant who came forward he threw the reins, saying, ‘Rub the horses down and feed them!’

  The door of the house opened and Marie de Cressay appeared.

  ‘Messire Guccio!’ she cried.

  Her surprise was so great that she turned pale and had to lean against the door frame.

  ‘How beautiful she is,’ thought Guccio; ‘and she still loves me.’

  The cracks in the walls disappeared and the towers of the Manor House regained their remembered proportions.

  But Marie was already shouting towards the inside of the house, ‘Mother! Messire Guccio has come back.’

  Dame Eliabel received the young man warmly, kissed him on both cheeks and clasped him to her extensive bosom. The thought of Guccio had often been present to her widowed nights. She took his hand, made him sit down, and ordered wine and pasties to be brought him.

  Guccio accepted his welcome gratefully and explained the reason for his coming as he had thought it out: he had come to Neauphle to put some order into the branch of the bank which appeared to be suffering from maladministration. The clerks were not keeping proper track of the debtors. At once Dame Eliabel grew anxious. ‘You gave us a whole year,’ she said. ‘Winter has come upon us after a very bad harvest and we have not as yet …’

  Guccio was indefinite about this, intimating that the squires of Cressay, since they were his friends, would not be allowed to be unduly pressed. Dame Eliabel asked Guccio to stay in the Manor House. He would, she said, find nowhere in the town where he would be more comfortable or have more society. Guccio accepted the invitation and sent for his luggage.

  ‘I have brought,’ he said, ‘some pieces of cloth and some ornaments which I hope will please you. As for Pierre and Jean, I have a couple of well-trained falcons for them which will help them to be even more successful in hunting, if that is possible.’

  The cloth, the ornaments and the falcons astonished the whole household and were received with cries of joy. Pierre and Jean, having returned from their daily hunting expedition, with that odour of earth and blood which adhered to them like a garment, asked Guccio a hundred questions. This companion, miraculously arrived, when they were making up their minds to the long boredom of the bad months, seemed to them more worthy of affection than even upon his first visit. One might have thought that they had known each other all their lives.

  ‘And what has happened to our friend Provost Portefruit?’ asked Guccio.

  ‘He continues to steal as much as he can, but thank God no longer from us, thanks to you.’

  Marie slipped in and out of the room, bending over the fire as she poked it, placing new straw upon the curtained pallet. She said nothing, but never stopped looking at Guccio. The latter, finding himself alone with her towards evening, took her gently by the elbows and drew her to him.

  ‘Can you see nothing in my eyes which reminds you of felicity?’ he said, borrowing the phrase from a romance of chivalry he had recently read.

  ‘Oh yes, Messire!’ replied Marie in a shaken voice, her eyes opening wide. ‘I have never ceased from imagining you here, distant though you may have been. I have forgotten nothing and go back on nothing.’

  He tried to think of some excuse for not having returned for six months, and for having sent no message. To his surprise, Marie, far from reproaching him, thanked him for having returned quicker than she had expected.

  ‘You said that you would come back at the end of the year on business,’ she said. ‘I didn’t expect to see you sooner. But even if you had not come at all, I should have waited for you all my life.’

  Guccio had retained from Cressay the memory of a sweet and beautiful girl, and a certain regret for a love affair which had come to nothing, but to be quite frank he had thought of her but seldom during all these months. Now he found her wonderful and fascinating, grown like a plant through spring and summer. ‘How lucky I am!’ he thought. ‘She might have forgotten me or got married.’

  As often happens with men of unfaithful nature, this particular young man, infatuated though he was with her, was fundamentally modest about love, because he imagined other people to be like himself. He could not believe, having seen her so little, that he had inspired so strong and rare a feeling.

  ‘Marie,’ he said with newly found warmth, ‘in order not to lie to you as men usually do, not only have I never ceased thinking of you, but nothing has altered the feelings I had for you.’

  They stood face to face, both overcome by their feelings, and both somewhat embarrassed by their words and gestures.

  ‘The field of rye …’ Guccio murmured.

  He bent down and put his lips to Marie’s which opened like a ripe fruit.

  He thought this was the appropriate moment to ask her for the help he needed.

  ‘Marie,’ he said, ‘I have not come here on any business to do with the branch of our bank, nor upon any question of your family’s debt. But I do not wish to, nor indeed can I, hide anything from you. It would be an offence to the love I bear you. The secret I am going to tell you is a new link which I offer you, and it is a serious one, because it affects the lives of many people, as well as my own. My uncle and powerful friends have charged me with the business of hiding in a sure place a certain document, which has to do both with affairs of state and their own safety. Undoubtedly, at this moment, there are archers searching for me,’ went on Guccio who, as usual, was beginning to boast. ‘There were twenty places in which I could have looked for a hiding-place, but it was to you, Marie, that I came. My life from now on depends upon your silence.’

  ‘No, it is upon you,’ Marie said, ‘that my life depends, my lord. I have faith only in God and in the man who first held me in his arms. My life is his.’

  Having convinced himself as he talked, Guccio felt for Marie a great surge of gratitude, tenderness and desire. However conceited he might be, he was nevertheless surprised at having inspired so persistent, powerful, and reliable a passion.

  ‘My life is yours,’ the girl went on. ‘Your secret is mine. I shall conceal what you want concealed. I shall be silent about what you wish me to keep silent and your secret will die with me.’

  Tears were forming in her dark blue eyes. ‘Like this,’ thought Guccio, ‘she resembles those spring mornings when the sun shines and rain falls at the same time.’

  Then, coming back to what was on his mind, he said, ‘What I have to hide is contained in a leaden box hardly bigger than my two hands. Is there anywhere here?’

  Marie thought for a moment.

  ‘In the chapel,’ she replied. ‘We will go there tomorrow at dawn. My brothers leave the house to hunt at first light. Tomorrow my mother will leave but a little later, since she has to shop in the town. I only hope that she will not want to take me with her! But in that case I shall say that I have a sore throat.’

>   Guccio murmured his thanks, while Dame Eliabel’s step could be heard outside.

  Upon this occasion, since Guccio was staying for a longer time, he was lodged on the first floor, in a vast, clean but chilly room. He went to bed, his dagger within reach, and the leaden box containing the Archbishop’s receipt beneath his head. He had made up his mind not to go to sleep. He did not know that at that precise hour the two brothers Marigny had had their terrible interview and that the Orders in Council directed against the Lombards were already burnt.

  Fighting to keep his eyes open, he counted up the number of women he had already had (he was not yet nineteen and the addition took but little time to make), thought of the two young townswomen whom he was currently engaged in assisting to deceive their husbands and, comparing them to Marie, came to the conclusion that they were both immoral and not particularly beautiful.

  He did not know that he had fallen asleep. A sound woke him up with a start; for a moment he thought that they were coming to arrest him and ran to the window. However, it was Pierre and Jean de Cressay, accompanied by two peasants, with their new falcons at their wrists, leaving the house. Then doors banged; a grey mare, weary with age, was brought for Dame Eliabel, who departed in her turn, escorted by the limping servant. Guccio put on his boots and waited.

  A few moments later Marie called him from the ground floor, and Guccio went down, hiding the leaden box beneath his cloak.

  The chapel was a small vaulted room, part of the interior of the Manor House, facing east; its walls were whitewashed.

  Marie lit a taper at the oil-lamp burning before a statue of Saint John the Evangelist indifferently carved in wood. In the Cressay family the Christian name of Jean was always given the eldest son.

  ‘I found the hiding place when I was a child, playing with my brothers,’ said Marie. ‘Come.’

  She took Guccio to one side of the altar.

  ‘There, push this stone,’ she said, lowering the taper to light the spot.

  Guccio pushed the stone, but nothing moved.

  ‘No, not like that.’