The Poisoned Crown

by Maurice Druon

  As he contemplated his wasted, motionless legs, wondering whether he would ever be able to stand upon them again, he described in his letters to Marie de Cressay the wonderful life he would give her. He had become the friend and protégé of the new Queen of France. To read his letters one might have thought that it was he alone who had negotiated the King’s marriage. He told of his embassy to Naples, the storm, and how he had behaved in it, relating the courage of the crew. He attributed his accident to a chivalrous design; he had leapt forward to assist Princess Clémence and to save her from falling into the sea, when she was on the point of leaving the ship, which was, even in harbour, still tossed by waves.

  Guccio had also written to his uncle Spinello Tolomei describing his misfortune, begging that the Neauphle branch be kept for him and asking for a credit with their Marseilles correspondent.

  He had a number of visitors who distracted his mind a little and gave him a chance of complaining in company, which is more satisfying than complaining to oneself. The representative of the Tolomei Bank was assiduous in his attentions and arranged for better food than that supplied by the hospital brothers.

  One afternoon Guccio had had the pleasure of seeing his friend Signor Boccaccio di Cellino, senior traveller of the Bardi company, who happened to be passing through Marseilles. Guccio had been able to unburden himself to him as much as he pleased.

  ‘Think of all I’ll miss,’ Guccio said. ‘I shall not be able to attend Donna Clemenza’s wedding, where I would have taken my place among the great lords. Having done so much to bring it about, it really is bad luck not being able to be there! And I shall also miss the coronation at Rheims. It’s really quite intolerable. And I’ve had no reply from my darling Marie.’

  Boccaccio did his best to console him. Neauphle was not a suburb of Marseilles, and Guccio’s letters were not carried by royal couriers. They had to go by the usual Lombard stages, Avignon, Lyons, Troyes, and Paris; the couriers did not leave every day.

  ‘Boccacino, my dear friend,’ cried Guccio, ‘since you’re going to Paris, I beseech you, if you have the time, go to Neauphle and see Marie. Tell her all I’ve said! Find out if my letters have reached her safely; try and discover whether she still loves me. Don’t hide the truth from me, even if it’s unpalatable. Don’t you think, Boccacino, that I might travel in a litter?’

  ‘What, so that your wound can reopen, worms get into it, and that you may die of fever in some filthy inn upon the road? What an idea! Are you mad? Really, Guccio, you’re twenty now, after all.’

  ‘Not yet!’

  ‘All the more reason for staying where you are; what’s a month here or there at your age?’

  ‘If it happened to be the operative month, my whole life might be ruined.’

  Princess Clémence sent one of her gentlemen every day to ask news of the invalid. Fat Bouville came three times himself to sit beside the young Italian’s bed. Bouville was overwhelmed with work and anxiety. He was doing his best to get the future Queen’s attendants properly fitted out before setting forth on the road to Paris. Exhausted by the voyage, some of the company had had to retire to bed. No one had any clothes but the soaked and spoiled garments they had been wearing when they disembarked. The gentlemen and ladies of the suite were placing orders with tailors and dressmakers without worrying about payment. The whole of the Princess’s trousseau, which had been lost at sea, was to be made again; silver, china, trunks, all the necessities of the road, which at the period formed the normal equipment for a royal personage’s journey, had to be bought again. Bouville had sent to Paris for funds; Paris had replied that Naples should be approached, since the loss had taken place during that part of the journey which was in the territorial waters of the Crown of Sicily. The Lombards had had to be brought into play. Tolomei had remitted the demands to the Bardis, the usual money-lenders of King Robert of Naples; which explained Signor Boccaccio’s short stay in Marseilles, since he was on his way to arrange matters. In these chaotic circumstances Bouville much missed Guccio’s assistance, and when the ex-Chamberlain came to visit him, it was more to complain of his own lot and to ask the young man’s advice than to bring him comfort. Bouville had a way of looking at Guccio which seemed to imply: ‘Really, how could you do this to me!’

  ‘When are you leaving?’ Guccio asked him, looking forward to the moment with despair.

  ‘Oh, my poor friend, not before the middle of July.’

  ‘Perhaps by then I shall be well.’

  ‘I hope so. Do your best; your being well again would be a great help to me.’

  But the middle of July came without Guccio being up on his feet, far from it indeed. The day before her departure, Clémence of Hungary insisted upon saying goodbye to the sick man herself. Guccio was already much envied by his companions in the hospital for the number of visitors who came to see him, the solicitude with which he was surrounded, and the ease with which his demands were satisfied. He became an almost legendary and heroic figure when the fiancée of the King of France, accompanied by two ladies-in-waiting and six Neapolitan gentlemen, strode in through the doors of the great ward of the Hôtel-Dieu. The brothers, who were singing vespers, looked at each other in astonishment, and their voices turned a little hoarse. The beautiful Princess knelt down, like the most humble of the faithful, and then, when the prayers were over, advanced down between the beds, through the long expanse of suffering, followed by a hundred pairs of astonished eyes.

  ‘Oh, poor people,’ she murmured.

  She immediately ordered her following to give alms in her name to every patient, and that two hundred pounds should be given to the foundation.

  ‘But, Madam,’ Bouville, who was walking beside her, whispered, ‘we haven’t enough money to pay with.’

  ‘What does that matter? It’s better than buying chased drinking-cups or silks for dresses. I feel ashamed of such vanities; I even feel ashamed of my own health when I see so much misery.’

  She brought Guccio a little reliquary which enclosed a minute piece of Saint John’s robe ‘with a visible stain of the Baptist’s blood’ which she had bought at a great price from a Jew who specialized in this particular business. The reliquary was suspended from a little gold chain which Guccio immediately hung round his neck.

  ‘Oh, dear Signor Guccio,’ said Princess Clémence. ‘I am so sorry to see you lying here. You have twice made a long journey so as to be, with Messire de Bouville, the messenger of good tidings; you were of great assistance to me at sea, and now you will not be present at the celebration of my wedding!’

  The ward felt as hot as an oven. Outside a thunderstorm threatened. The Princess took a handkerchief from her bag and wiped away the sweat which shone upon the invalid’s face with so natural and gentle a gesture that Guccio’s eyes filled with tears.

  ‘But how did this happen to you?’ Clémence went on. ‘I saw nothing at the time and, indeed, do not yet know what occurred.’

  ‘I ... I thought, Madam, that you were about to disembark, and as the ship was still rolling, I ... I leapt forward wishing to give you my arm for support. It was growing dark and the light was bad and, there it is, my foot slipped.’

  From then on he had to believe in the half-lie himself. He would so like it to have happened like that! And, after all, the sudden whim which had made him want to jump ashore first ...

  ‘Dear Signor Guccio,’ said Clémence, much moved. ‘I do hope you get well quickly. And come and tell me of it at the Court of France; my door will always be open to you as a friend.’

  They gazed into each other’s eyes but with perfect innocence, because she was the daughter of a King and he the son of a Lombard. Had the circumstances of their birth been different, this man and this woman might have fallen in love.

  They were never to see each other again, and yet their destinies were to be more strangely and tragically linked than any two destinies have ever been.

  4

  Portents of Disaster

  THE FINE WEA
THER WAS short-lived. The tempests, gales, rain, and hailstorms which that summer devastated the west of Europe, and which Princess Clémence had already suffered on her voyage, began again the day after the cavalcade’s departure. After staging first at Aix-en-Provence and then at the Château d’Orgon, they arrived at Avignon in pouring rain. The painted leather hood of the litter in which the Princess was carried poured water like a cathedral gargoyle. Were the fine new clothes to be spoilt so quickly, the trunks flooded with rain, and the silver-embroidered saddles of the Neapolitan gentlemen destroyed before they had even been admired by the people of France? Messire de Bouville had caught cold, which did not make things easier. Could one imagine anything more absurd than to catch cold in the middle of July? The poor man was coughing, spitting, and snivelling in the most horrible way. As he grew older, his health was becoming more delicate, unless it were that the Rhône valley and the neighbourhood of Avignon were peculiarly unlucky for him.

  Hardly had the cavalcade installed itself in one of the palaces of the papal town than Monseigneur Jacques Duèze,5 Cardinal of the Curia, came to greet Clémence of Hungary with a large number of clergy in his train. This old and alchemistical prelate, who had been a candidate for the triple tiara for the last fifteen months, still preserved, in spite of his seventy years, his strangely youthful walk. He danced among the puddles beneath the pouring rain which had put out the torches his people carried before him.

  Cardinal Duèze was the official candidate of the family of Anjou-Sicily. That Clémence should be marrying the King of France was clearly an advantage to him and strengthened his position. He counted upon the new Queen to support him in Paris, and thus to win over to him the votes he lacked among his French colleagues.

  Agile as a deer, he dashed up the stairs, compelling the pages who were carrying his train to break into a run behind him. He was accompanied by Cardinal Orsini and the two Colonna Cardinals, who were equally devoted to the Neapolitan interest. They had some difficulty in keeping up with him.

  Though his handkerchief was to his nose and his speech hoarse, Messire de Bouville resumed some of his ambassadorial dignity to receive these empurpled dignitaries.

  ‘Well, Monseigneur,’ he said to the Cardinal, treating him as an old acquaintance, ‘I see that it is easier to meet you when one is accompanying the niece of the King of Naples than when one comes to you on the orders of the King of France. It is no longer necessary to gallop across country in search of you.’

  Bouville was in a position to permit himself such amiable teasing; the Cardinal had cost the French Treasury four thousand pounds.fn4

  ‘The fact is, Monseigneur,’ the Cardinal replied, ‘that Madame Marie of Hungary and her son, King Robert, have consistently done me the honour of giving me their pious confidence and the union of their family to the throne of France, by means of this fair Princess of high repute, is an answer to my prayers.’

  Bouville heard once more that strange voice which was at once rapid, broken, smothered, and almost extinct, seeming to issue from some throat other than the Cardinal’s and to be directed at some third person. At the moment, what he had to say was addressed to Clémence, whom the Cardinal never quitted with his eyes.

  ‘Moreover, Messire Comte, circumstances have some-what changed,’ he went on, ‘and we no longer perceive the shade of Monseigneur de Marigny behind you, and he held power for a long time and seemed always ready to practise defenestration. Is it true that he was proved to be so dishonest in his accountancy that your young King, of whose charity of soul we are all aware, was unable to save him from just punishment?’

  ‘You know that Messire de Marigny was my friend,’ replied Bouville courageously. ‘He began as a page in my household. I think that his agents, rather than himself, were dishonest. It was a grief to me to see a friend of so old a standing come to disaster through stubborn pride and a desire to control everything himself. I warned him ...’

  But Cardinal Duèze had not yet reached the end of his perfidious courtesies.

  ‘You see, Messire,’ he went on, ‘that there really was no need to press so hastily for your master’s annulment, about which you came to speak to me. Providence often comes to our rescue, provided one is prepared to assist it with a firm hand.’

  He never took his eyes off the Princess. Bouville hastened to change the subject and to lead the prelate aside.

  ‘Well, Monseigneur, how goes the Conclave?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s still in the same state, that is to say nothing has supervened. Monseigneur d’Auch, our revered Cardinal Camerlingo, has not succeeded, or does not wish to succeed, for reasons known only to himself, to bring us into assembly. Some of us are at Carpentras, others at Orange, we ourselves are here, and the Caetani are at Vienne.’

  Thereupon, he launched into a subtle but, neverthe less, ferocious indictment of Cardinal Francesco Caetani, the nephew of Boniface VIII and his most violent adversary.

  ‘It is so delightful to watch him display so much courage today in the defence of his uncle’s memory; nevertheless, we are unable to forget that, when your friend Nogaret came to Anagni with his cavalry to besiege Boniface, Monseigneur Francesco abandoned his devoted relation, to whom he owed his hat, and, dressed as a footman, took flight. He seems born to felony as others are to the priesthood,’ said Duèze.

  His eyes, alight with senile anger, seemed to shine from the depths of his withered, sunken face. To listen to him, one would have thought that Cardinal Caetani was capable of the most heinous crimes; the devil was clearly in him.

  ‘And, as you know, Satan may appear anywhere; and surely nothing could be more grateful to him than to establish himself within the College of Cardinals.’

  And, what’s more, to speak of the devil at that period was not merely a conversational image; his name was not mentioned lightly, since it might be a prelude to a ban of heresy, to torture and the scaffold.

  ‘I am well aware,’ Duèze added, ‘that the throne of Saint Peter cannot remain indefinitely vacant, and that this is bad for the whole world. But what can I do? I have offered myself, however little I may desire to accept so heavy a task; I have offered to accept the burden since it appears that agreement can be achieved only upon myself. If God, in selecting me, wishes to raise the least worthy to the highest place, I submit to the will of God. What more can I do, Messire de Bouville?’

  After which he presented Princess Clémence with a superb copy, richly illuminated, of his Elixir des Philosophes, a treatise on hermetic philosophy which had considerable renown among the specialists of the subject and of which it was extremely doubtful that the Princess would understand a single word. For Cardinal Duèze, a master of intrigue, possessed a universal mind, was versed in medicine, alchemy, and in all the humane sciences. His works were to stand for another two centuries.

  He departed, followed by his prelates, vicars, and pages; he was already living a Pope’s life and would deny, to the limits of his strength, election to anyone else.

  When, the following morning, Madame of Hungary’s cavalcade took the road for Valence, the Princess asked Bouville, ‘What did the Cardinal mean yesterday when he spoke of assisting Providence to accomplish our desires?’

  ‘I don’t know, Madam, I don’t very well remember,’ replied Bouville, embarrassed. ‘I think he was talking of Messire de Marigny, but I didn’t very well understand.’

  ‘It seemed to me that he was speaking rather of my future husband’s annulment, which was impossible of realization. Of what did Madame Marguerite of Burgundy die?’

  ‘Of a chill she caught in her prison, and of remorse for her sins without doubt.’

  And Bouville blew his nose to conceal his disquiet; he knew only too well the rumours which were current about the sudden death of the King’s first wife and had no wish to speak of them.

  Clémence accepted Bouville’s explanation, but it did not set her mind at rest.

  ‘I owe my future happiness,’ Clémence said to herself, ‘to the deat
h of another.’

  She felt herself to be inexplicably allied to this queen whom she was to succeed and whose sins caused her as much horror as the punishment inspired her with pity.

  Is not true charity, so rarely felt by those who inculcate it, precisely the emotion which impels the individual, however unreasonably, to identify himself with the crime of the criminal as well as with the responsibility of the judge?

  ‘Her sins led to her death, and her death to my becoming queen,’ Clémence thought. She saw it as a sort of judgement upon herself and felt that she was surrounded with portents of disaster.

  The storm, the accident to the young Lombard, and the rain which was becoming calamitous, were all signs of ill omen.

  For the weather grew no better. The villages they passed through had an appearance of desolation. After a winter of famine, the harvest had promised well and the peasants had regained courage; a few days of mistral and terrible storms had shattered their expectations. And now apparently inexhaustible rain was rotting their crops.

  The Durance, the Drôme, and the Isère were in flood and the Rhône, along whose banks they were journeying, was dangerously swollen. From time to time they had to stop to free the road of a fallen tree.

  For Clémence, the contrast between Campania, where the sky was always blue and the people smiling, the orchards laden with golden fruit, and this ravaged valley, haunted by a wasted populace and depressed villages, half-depopulated by famine, was depressing.

  ‘And the farther north we go, doubtless the worse it will become. I have come to a hard land.’

  She wished to relieve all the misery she saw, and constantly halted her litter to distribute charity to anyone who seemed in need. Bouville was compelled to reason with her.