The Iron King

by Maurice Druon

  Marie handed the taper to Guccio and leant upon the stone in a particular way that made it swivel back upon itself, opening up a hiding place under the base of the altar. In the light of the flame Guccio saw a skull and some pieces of bone.

  ‘Who is it?’ he asked.

  He was superstitious and made the sign against the evil eye behind him with his fingers.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Marie. ‘No one knows.’

  Next to the whitened skull Guccio deposited the leaden box which contained the damning evidence against the most powerful prelate in France.

  When the stone was pushed back into place it was impossible to tell that anyone had touched it.

  ‘Our secret is locked in the hands of God,’ Marie said.

  Guccio took her in his arms and tried to kiss her.

  ‘No, not here,’ she said in a frightened voice. ‘Not here in the chapel.’

  They came back into the Great Hall where a servant was laying the table with the bread and milk of the first meal of the day. Guccio stood in front of the fire until the servant had gone and Marie came to him.

  Then they linked hands, Marie leaning her head on Guccio’s shoulder and thus they remained for a long moment. As she leaned against him, she was learning to understand his male body, the first that she had ever held in her arms and the only one that she ever would.

  ‘I shall love you for ever, even if you cease to love me,’ she said.

  Then she went and poured the milk into the bowls, and broke the bread into it. Every movement she made was implicit with happiness. Guccio thought of the chalky skull he had seen under the altar steps.

  Four days went by. Guccio accompanied the two brothers hunting and was not unskilful. He made several visits to the branch at Neauphle in order to justify his stay in the district. Once he met Provost Portefruit, who recognised him and saluted him with servility. This salute reassured Guccio. If some persecution of the Lombards had taken place, Messire Portefruit would not have treated him with such politeness. ‘And should it be he who comes to arrest me one day soon,’ thought Guccio, ‘the thousand pounds I’ve brought will be a help in bribing him.’

  Apparently Dame Eliabel had no suspicion of what was going on between her daughter and the young Siennese. Guccio was convinced of this by overhearing a conversation one evening between the good lady and her younger son. Guccio was in his room on the first floor. Dame Eliabel and Pierre de Cressay were talking by the fire in the Great Hall, and their voices came up through the chimney.

  ‘What a pity Guccio is not of noble birth,’ Pierre said. ‘He would make a good husband for my sister. He is good-looking and well-educated, and in a desirable position in the world. I wonder if this is not something we should think about.’

  Dame Eliabel did not receive the suggestion kindly.

  ‘Never!’ she cried. ‘Money has turned your head, my son. We are poor at the present moment, but our blood gives us the right to expect the best alliances, and I shall not give my daughter to a young man of plebeian birth who, moreover, is not even a Frenchman. Certainly the young man is pleasing, but let him not be so ill-advised as to make love to Marie. I should stop it at once. A Lombard! My daughter given to a Lombard! Besides, he has not even thought of it, and if my age did not give me a certain modesty, I would admit to you that he has more eyes for me than he has for her, and that is why he is here, as much at home as a graft upon a tree.’

  Guccio, even though he smiled at the Lady of the Manor’s illusions about him, was hurt by the contempt she felt for his plebeian birth and his profession. ‘These people borrow money from you to live, don’t pay you back what they owe you, and still consider you less than one of their peasants. And what would you do, my good lady, without the Lombards?’ Guccio said to himself in annoyance. ‘All right, then! You try to marry your daughter off to some great lord and see how she accepts the idea.’

  At the same time he felt a certain pride at having so successfully seduced a daughter of the nobility, and it was that night that he determined to marry her in spite of all the obstacles that could be placed in his path, indeed because of these very obstacles. He succeeded in persuading himself of a vast number of admirable reasons for this course, without admitting the only true one: that he loved her.

  During the meal that followed, he looked at Marie, thinking, ‘She is mine: she is mine!’ And every feature of Marie’s face, her lovely upturned eyelashes, her eyes flecked with gold, her parted lips, all seemed to answer him, ‘I am yours.’ And Guccio kept asking himself, ‘Why can’t the others see it?’

  The following day Guccio found at Neauphle a message from his uncle which informed him that the danger, for the moment, was over; Guccio was to return at once.

  Guccio had, therefore, to make it known that important business called him back to Paris. Dame Eliabel, Pierre and Jean evidenced much regret. Marie said nothing, merely went on with the embroidery at which she was working but, as soon as she was alone with Guccio, she allowed her sorrow to become manifest. Had some disaster occurred? Was Guccio in danger?

  He reassured her. On the contrary, thanks to himself, thanks to her, thanks to the document concealed in the chapel, the men who desired the destruction of the Italian financiers were defeated.

  Then Marie burst into tears because Guccio was going away.

  ‘You are leaving me,’ she said, ‘and it is as if I were dying.’

  ‘I shall come back as soon as I can,’ said Guccio.

  And he covered Marie’s face with kisses. He felt suddenly angry with the events which interfered with his personal desires. That all the Lomard banks were saved gave him no pleasure, quite the contrary indeed! He would have liked still to be in danger, and therefore have a motive for remaining at Cressay. He blamed himself for not having known how to take advantage in time of this beautiful proffered body, lying in surrender and abandon in his arms. ‘To wait like this is not possible for a man,’ he thought.

  ‘I shall come back, beautiful Marie,’ he said again; ‘I swear it, because there is nothing I want so much in the world as you.’

  And this time he was sincere. He had come to find a hiding place; he went away with love in his heart.

  Since his uncle in his message had said nothing of the Archbishop’s receipt, Guccio pretended to believe that it was his duty to leave it in the chapel at Cressay, thus arranging a pretext for his early return. But new events were on their way which would change the destinies of them all.

  8

  The Meet at Pont-Sainte-Maxence

  ON THE FOURTH OF November the King was due to hunt in the forest of Pont-Sainte-Maxence. In company with his first chamberlain Hugues de Bouville, his private secretary Maillard, and a few intimate friends, he had slept the night at the Castle of Clermont, six miles from the meet.

  The King appeared carefree and in better humour than he had been for a long time. The affairs of the kingdom permitted him to take a holiday. The loan from the Lombards had put the Treasury in funds. Winter would soon put a stop to the rebellious barons of Champagne and the townsfolk of Flanders.

  It had been snowing during the night, the first snow of the year, so early as to be almost without precedent; the morning frost, coming on top of it, had frozen the fine snow hard and transformed the whole countryside into an immense white sea. One was aware with surprise, as happens once a year, that the colours of the world were reversed, there was light where normally was shadow, and the sky in full daylight was darker than the earth.

  Men, hounds and horses were preceded by great puffs of misty breath which faded in the air like clouds of thistledown.

  The hound, Lombard, trotted along by the King’s horse. Even though he was intended for coursing hares, he also played his part in the hunting of stag and wild boar; working on his own he often brought the pack back on to the line. For though greyhounds are normally reputed to hunt only by eye and not by scent, this particular one, nevertheless, had a nose like a Poitevin hound.

  Di
stant and difficult as he might be with men, Philip the Fair was easy and understanding with animals. He showed them greater friendship than he did his closest relations. Having all the characteristics of the Capet family, he was a countryman, at home on the land. Among trees, plants and animals, King Philip found peace and satisfaction.

  In the middle of the clearing where the meet took place, amid a great hullabaloo of stamping horses and men, of neighing and barking, the King stayed for some time inspecting his magnificent pack, asking news of some bitch, absent because she had recently pupped, and talking to his hounds.

  ‘Well, me beauties! Bike here then, bike here then, me beauties!’ he called to them.

  The chief huntsman, accompanied by a number of whippers-in, came to make his report to the King. At dawn several stags had been harboured, of which one was a royal and, so said the hunt servants in charge of the tufters, a twelve-pointer – the most noble beast to be found in the forest. Moreover, this was a lone stag of the kind which, unattached to a herd, goes from forest to forest and is the stronger and braver for being on its own.

  ‘Set on,’ said the King.

  The hounds were uncoupled, led to the covert, and put on the scent, while the huntsmen spread out, taking positions where the stag might break cover.

  ‘Tallyho! Tallyho!’ was soon heard.

  The stag had been viewed; hounds were heard giving tongue so that the forest was filled with the noise, the sound of horns, the thundering of hooves and crashing of broken branches.

  Generally speaking, stags for some time circle the place where they are found, make cunning diversions within the forest itself, cover their tracks, try to find a younger stag beside which they will run for a short time to make the hounds change line, and then return to their original lair.

  This particular stag surprised everyone by running straight to the north. In the face of danger, his instinct was to return to the distant forest of the Ardennes from which, doubtless, he had originally come.

  The King, in considerable excitement, cutting through the wood to get well forward, came to its edge and waited for the stag to break into the open.

  But nothing can be so easily lost as a hunt. You believe that you are no more than two hundred yards from hounds and huntsmen, who appear to be well within earshot, and a second later you are left in total silence and solitude, amid towering trees without clue as to where the pack, which was giving tongue so loudly, has disappeared, nor what fairy has cast a spell over your companions to make them vanish so suddenly.

  Moreover, on that particular day, the frosty air carried sound badly, and hounds could only hunt with difficulty since the frozen snow was not holding scent.

  The King was lost, and gazing across the wide white valley, where as far as the eye could see the fields with their low hedges, the stubbles of past harvest, the roofs of a village and the distant undulations of a forest were all covered with the same flawless sparkling bed of snow, he was overcome with a sort of stupor. The sun had broken through and the countryside shone beneath its rays; and the King suddenly felt a curious lassitude, a sensation of complete estrangement from the universe. He did not pay overmuch attention to it, for he was healthy and had never been let down by his physical stamina. He thought that perhaps he had become too heated with galloping.

  Concentrating upon whether his stag had broken cover or not, he followed the edge of the wood at a walk, gazing at the ground in order to find the animal’s slot. ‘Surely his slot should be easy to see in the snow,’ he said to himself. He saw a peasant not far off.

  ‘Hullo there, my man!’ The peasant turned and came towards him. He was a labourer of some fifty years of age, with broad shoulders and short legs, his weather-tanned face strongly marked with wrinkles; his legs were clothed in thick canvas gaiters and he was holding a cudgel in his right hand. He removed his cap, revealing greying hair.

  ‘Have you seen a big hunted stag?’ the King asked him.

  The man nodded his head, replying, ‘Indeed I have, Sire. A beast like that crossed in front of my nose no longer ago than it would take me to repeat an Ave, no more. He had certainly been hunted for at least two hours, he was tired and his tongue was hanging out. He was certainly your stag. You won’t have to hunt him much further because, in the state he was in, he was looking for water. And he will only find it at the lake of Fontaine.’

  ‘Were the hounds on his line?’

  ‘There were no hounds, Sire. But you will find his slot, the cleft wide, just about by that big white birch over there. You’ll take your stag at the lake, with or without hounds.’

  The King was astonished.

  ‘You seem to know the country and hunting,’ he said.

  The weather-beaten face broke into a smile. Small cunning brown eyes gazed up at the King.

  ‘I know a bit about hunting and the country,’ said the man, ‘and I hope that so great a King as you are may long take his pleasure in it, as long as God wills.’

  ‘So you recognise me, do you?’

  The other nodded his head again and proudly said, ‘I am a free man, thanks to you, Sire, and no longer the serf I was born. I know my figures and can hold a style to add with if I have to. I once saw Monseigneur of Valois, when he enfranchised the serfs of the county, and from your look and what I have heard about you, I knew at once that you were his brother.’

  ‘Are you happy to be a free man?’

  ‘Happy? Of course I am. That’s to say it makes you feel quite different; you no longer feel like the living dead. And we chaps know very well that we owe to you the Order in Council that Monseigneur of Valois read out to us. And we often repeat to ourselves as our prayer here on earth: “Given that every human being, formed in the image of Our Lord, should in general be free by natural right …” It’s good to hear that, when you thought that you were once and for all no more nor less than an animal.’

  ‘How much did you have to pay for your freedom?’

  ‘Seventy-five pounds.’

  ‘And you had them?’

  ‘From the work of a lifetime, Sire.’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘André – André of the Woods, they call me, because that’s where I live.’

  The King, who was not ordinarily generous, felt that he wished to give this man something. Not out of charity, but as a present.

  ‘Be a good servant of the kingdom, André of the Woods,’ he said, ‘and keep this as a remembrance of me.’

  He detached his horn and handed it to the peasant. The latter took it, a fine piece of carved ivory with silver mountings, which was worth more than the man had paid for his liberty. The peasant’s hands shook with pride and emotion.

  ‘Oh!’ he murmured, ‘Oh this, this! … I shall place it under the statue of the Virgin Mary that it may protect our house. May God preserve you, Sire.’

  The King moved away, conscious of a happiness which he had not known for many months past. A man had spoken to him among the solitudes of the forest, a man who, thanks to himself, was both free and happy. The weighty burden of power and of the years was alleviated at a single stroke. ‘It is easy enough to know when one is being ruthless,’ he said to himself; ‘but one can never tell, from the height of a throne, if the good one has wished to do has really been done, nor for whom.’

  This approval, which had unexpectedly come to him from among the masses of his subjects, was more precious to him and more delightful than all the praises received from courtiers. ‘When my brother needed money, I told him, “Don’t demand more taxes from your serfs without giving anything in exchange. Free the serfs of your apanage, as I have done those of Agenais, Rouergue, Gascony, and the seneschalships of Carcassonne and Toulouse.” I should have extended the franchise to the whole kingdom. Supposing this man I have just seen had been educated when he was young, he might have made a provost or the captain of a town and been a good deal better than many.’

  He thought of all the Andrés of the Woods, of the valleys and of the f
ields, the Jean-Louis of the pastures, the Jacques of the hamlet or the vineyard, whose children, freed from their servile state, would constitute a great reserve of manpower for the kingdom. ‘I shall have the edict for freeing the serfs applied to the other bailiwicks.’ He felt the quieter for this meeting. It had dissolved the haunting fear he had suffered since the deaths of the Pope and Nogaret. He felt that God had spoken to him through one of the most humble voices among his subjects to approve his royal work.

  At that moment he heard a sharp hoarse barking on his right and recognised Lombard giving tongue.

  ‘Get forrard then, get forrard then!’ shouted the King.

  Lombard was on the line, running fast, his nose a few inches from the ground. It was not the King who was lost, but all the rest of the hunt, and Philip the Fair felt a youthful pleasure at the thought that he would bring the royal stag to bay and kill it, alone with his favourite hound.

  He put his horse into a gallop and, for nearly an hour, across fields and valleys, jumping hedges and fences, he followed Lombard. He felt hot, and the sweat trickled down his back.

  Suddenly, as they came out of a copse, he saw a black shape flying away in front of him.

  ‘On, on, on!’ shouted the King. ‘Forrard on, Lombard, forrard on!’

  It was quite certainly the hunted stag, a great black beast with a pale belly. He no longer ran as lightly as he had at the beginning of the hunt; he ran heavily, stopping from time to time, looking back, and then starting again, bounding heavily. He was, indeed, making his way towards the lake of which the peasant had spoken. He was looking for water to refresh himself, the water which is fatal to animals at bay, weighing down their limbs so that they cannot emerge from it again. Lombard bayed now that the stag was in view and he was gaining ground on it. But all of them, the King, his horse, the hound, and the stag, were at the end of their tether.

  There seemed to the King to be something peculiar about the stag’s antlers; there seemed to be something upon them which glittered from time to time and then went out. There was, however, nothing about it of the fabulous and legendary stags which one never meets in fact, such as the famous stag of Saint Hubert with a golden cross growing upon its forehead. This one was no more than a great, exhausted beast, which had behaved with a curious lack of cunning during the hunt, running straight across country from its fear. It would soon be brought to bay.