The Poisoned Crown

by Maurice Druon

  ‘Unless the new wife who is coming from Naples gives my brother an heir in the near future.’

  ‘If he is capable of procreating one, which is doubtful. And if God should allow him the time to do so.’

  At that moment Beatrice d’Hirson came in, bringing a tray laden with a jug of hippocras, silver-gilt goblets, and comfits, which was a proper refreshment to offer a visitor. Mahaut made an impatient gesture. What an unsuitable moment to disturb them! But without taking any notice Beatrice poured the spiced wine into the goblets with her slow gestures and offered one to Philippe of Poitiers. Mahaut, automatically, as she always did when there was any food or drink within reach of her hand, all but took the other goblet. Beatrice gave her a look and stopped her.

  ‘No, I’m too ill, everything makes me feel sick,’ she said.

  Poitiers was reflecting. His mother-in-law’s preoccupations were far from catching him off balance; these last weeks he had thought much about the succession. The long and short of it was that Mahaut was proposing to support him in the case of Louis’s death. But what price was she demanding for her help?

  ‘Oh, Philippe, save my daughter Jeanne from dying, I implore you,’ cried Mahaut pathetically. ‘She has not deserved such a fate.’

  ‘But who’s threatening her?’ Poitiers asked.

  ‘Robert, as always,’ she replied. ‘I have discovered that he was in league with the Queen of England, when she came to Pontoise to denounce her sisters-in-law. Which certainly brought Isabella no good luck, for her effeminate husband’s army was defeated at Bannockburn immediately afterwards, and Isabella and Edward, as if it were the chastisement of God, have lost Scotland once again.’

  She hesitated for a moment, because Poitiers had taken the goblet and raised it to his lips, but quickly went on, ‘That devil Robert has improved on that since. Do you know that the day Marguerite was found dead in her prison, Robert, whom we believed to be in his house at Conches, had in fact been to Château-Gaillard that morning?’

  ‘Is that true?’ said Poitiers, arresting the goblet halfway to his lips.

  ‘Blanche, who was confined on the storey immediately above, heard everything. The poor child, who has almost lost her senses since then, sent me a message the other day. Listen to me, Philippe, he’ll kill both of them one after the other. His game is quite obvious. He wants my county. To diminish my power and disgrace me, he begins by having my daughters imprisoned. To make himself all-powerful with the King, his cousin, he rids him of the wife who prevented his marrying again by strangling her. Now, he’ll attack my posterity, I am alone, widowed, with a son too young for me to lean upon,14 and for whose life I fear as much as for the lives of my daughters. Could not so many fears and sorrows cause a woman to die before her time? God is my witness that I do not wish to die and leave my children at the mercy of that jackal. For Christ’s sake take back your wife and protect her, and at the same time make it clear that I am not without an ally. For, if it so happened that I lost Jeanne (she touched her relic once again) and that Artois were taken from me as they are so determinedly trying to do, I should then be obliged to ask for the return, on behalf of my son, of the Palatinate of Burgundy, which was handed to you as a marriage portion in exchange for Artois.’

  Poitiers could not but admire the dexterity with which his mother-in-law had aimed her last blow. The deal was clearly stated: ‘Either you take Jeanne back, and I will help you to the throne should it become vacant, so that my daughter may be Queen of France; or you refuse to be reconciled to her, and I shall pursue the opposite policy of negotiating the return of your County of Burgundy against the loss of Artois.’

  He gazed at her for a moment in silence, as she sat there, monumental beneath the great brocade curtains draped about the bed.

  ‘She’s as cunning as a fox and as obstinate as a boar; no doubt she has blood upon her hands, but I must admit I have always had a certain feeling of friendliness towards her. Behind her ruthlessness and deceit lies a certain quality of ingenuousness.’

  To hide the smile which rose to his lips, he took a drink from the gilt goblet.

  He promised nothing, concluded nothing, for he was reflective by nature and saw no reason to make an immediate decision. But at the very least he already saw a means of counteracting in the Council of Peers the Valois influence which he thought disastrous.

  On his departure he said merely, ‘We’ll talk of all this again at the coronation, where we shall soon be meeting, Mother.’

  And by his use of the word ‘mother’, which he now employed for the first time in fifteen months, Mahaut realized that she had won.

  As soon as Poitiers had left, Beatrice came in and inspected the goblet.

  ‘He drank it to the dregs,’ she said with satisfaction. ‘You will see, Madam, that Monseigneur of Poitiers will go straight off to Dourdan.’

  ‘What I do see,’ Mahaut replied, ‘is that he would make us an excellent King, should we lose our present one.’

  For anyone who knew the Countess Mahaut, to hear her utter such words meant that Louis X was as good as dead.

  8

  A Country Wedding

  ON TUESDAY, AUGUST 13TH, 1315,15 at first light, the inhabitants of the little town of Saint-Lye in Champagne were awakened by cavalcades coming from Sézanne in the north and Troyes in the south.

  First to arrive were the masters of the King’s Household who came at a gallop and disappeared into the castle with a large following of equerries, cellarmen, and valets. They were followed by a great convoy of furniture and plate under the command of the majordomos, the pantrymen, and the upholsterers; and finally came all the clergy from Troyes, riding mules and singing psalms, closely followed by the Italian merchants who, by reason of the famous fairs of Champagne, had one of their principal business centres in Troyes. The church-bell began to ring riotously; the King was shortly to be married at Saint-Lye.

  Soon the peasants began shouting ‘Hurrah!’ and the women went of their own accord into the fields to gather flowers to strew upon the road, as if the Holy Sacrament were passing, while the commissariat officers spread over the countryside, acquiring all the eggs, meat, poultry, and fish from the fish-ponds they could find.

  Luckily it had ceased raining; but the day was grey and overcast; the heat of the sun nevertheless came through the clouds. The King’s people wiped their foreheads and the villagers, looking at the sky, prophesied that the storm would break before vespers. From the castle came the sound of carpenters hammering; the kitchen chimneys belched smoke, and high wagons of straw were being unloaded that it might be spread in the rooms as bedding for servants and even a gentleman or two.

  Saint-Lye had not known such a bustle since the day that Philip Augustus, at the beginning of the previous century, had come to hand over the royal castle with due solemnity to the Bishops of Troyes. With only one great event every hundred years, memory had time to dim.

  Towards ten o’clock the King, surrounded by his brothers-in-law, his two uncles, his cousins Philippe of Valois and Robert of Artois, galloped through the village without acknowledging the acclamations as they scattered the carpet of flowers which had to be replaced when he had gone by. He was hurrying on ahead of his new wife.

  About two miles away, led by the Bishop of Troyes, appeared the cavalcade of the Princess Clémence of Hungary. The latter, leaning from her litter, asked the Comte de Bouville which of the horsemen coming to meet her was her future husband. Fat Bouville, somewhat fatigued by the journey and moved by the prospect of finding himself face to face once more with his King, explained badly, and Clémence at first took the Count of Poitiers for her fiancé, because he was the tallest of the three princes who were coming to meet them, and because he sat his horse with a natural majesty. But it was the least good-looking of the horsemen who first dismounted and came towards the litter. Bouville, leaping from his horse, rushed up to him, seized his hand in order to kiss it and, bending his knee, said, ‘Sire, here is Madam of Hungary.’
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  Then beautiful Clémence looked at the young man with the stooping shoulders, the big pale eyes, and yellow complexion, with whom fate and court intrigue had sent her to share destiny, power, and bed.

  Louis X gazed at her in silence with an expression of stupefaction which at first gave Clémence the impression that she was not pleasing to him.

  It was she who decided to break the silence.

  ‘Sire Louis,’ she said, ‘I am your servant for ever.’

  Her words seemed to loosen The Hutin’s tongue.

  ‘I feared, Cousin, that the painted portrait of you they sent me was flattering and deceptive,’ he said, ‘but I now see that your grace and beauty surpass the reproduction.’

  And he turned towards his following as if to make them acknowledge his good fortune.

  Then the members of the family were presented.

  A splendid corpulent lord, dressed in gold as if he were going to a tournament and who seemed somewhat short of breath, embraced Clémence, calling her ‘niece’ and told her that he had seen her as a child in Naples; Clémence realized that he was Charles of Valois, the principal artisan of her marriage. Philippe of Poitiers called her ‘sister’, as if he already considered her as united to his brother, and the ceremony no more than a formality. Then the horses of the litter shied. A colossal human frame, whose head Clémence could not see, masked the light for a moment, and the Princess heard a voice saying, ‘Your cousin, Count Robert of Artois.’

  They quickly set off again, and the King ordered the Bishop of Troyes, Monseigneur Jean d’Auxois, to go on ahead so that all might be ready at the church.

  Clémence had expected the meeting to take place in quite a different way. She had imagined that tents would have been pitched in some previously selected spot, that heralds of arms would sound trumpets from both sides, and that she herself would alight from her litter to partake of a light meal, while gradually getting to know her fiancé. She had also thought that the wedding would be celebrated only after a few days and would be the prelude to two or three weeks of festivity, with jousting, jugglers, and minstrels, as was the custom at princely weddings.

  The abrupt reception upon a country road in a forest, and the absence of all parade, surprised her a little. It was as if they had chanced to meet at a hunting party. She was still more disconcerted when she learnt that she was to be married within the hour in a neighbouring castle, where they would spend the night before leaving for Rheims on the morrow.

  ‘My dear Sire,’ she asked the King, who was now riding beside her, ‘are you returning to the war?’

  ‘Of course, Madam, I am returning – next year. If I pursued the Flemings no farther this year, and have left them to their terror, it was so that I could hasten to meet you and conclude our espousals.’

  This compliment seemed to Clémence so exaggerated that she did not know what to think of it. She was meeting with one surprise after another. This King, who was so impatient to meet her that he demobilized a whole army, was offering her a village wedding.

  In spite of the strewn flowers and the enthusiasm of the peasants, the castle of Saint-Lye, a small fortress with thick walls fouled by three centuries of damp, seemed sinister to the Neapolitan princess. She had barely an hour to change her clothes and rest before the ceremony, if one can call rest a sojourn in a room in which the upholsterers had not yet finished putting up the hangings embroidered with parrots, and in which Monseigneur of Valois buzzed about like a huge golden drone on the pretext of instructing his niece in a few minutes in all she must know about the Court of France and in the essential place that he, Charles of Valois, occupied at it.

  Thus Clémence was to know that Louis X, if he had every quality that went to make a perfect husband, was no less the possessor of every virtue, particularly in political matters. He was easily influenced and needed to be encouraged in his good ideas while being defended from bad counsellors. In this Flanders affair, for instance, Valois considered that Louis had not sufficiently listened to him, while he had given too much credence to the counsels of the Constable, the Count of Poitiers, and even to Robert of Artois. As to the election of a Pope, Clémence had presumably passed through Avignon? Whom had she seen? Cardinal Duèze? Of course, it was Duèze whom they must elect. Clémence must understand why Valois had been so determined, and indeed managed things so cleverly, that she had been chosen as Queen of France; he had counted upon her beauty, charm, and wisdom to help him lead the King in the way he should go. Clémence should discuss everything confidentially with himself. Was he not her nearest relation at the Court, since he had married, as his first wife, an aunt of Clémence, and was he not in the position of a father to the young King? Clémence and Valois should be close allies from now on.

  But in truth Clémence was beginning to be dizzy from the flood of words, the names flowing out pell-mell, and from the restless activity of this gold-embroidered personage who so buzzed about her. She wondered whether the Constable was Robert of Artois, and which of the King’s two brothers she had seen was called the Count of Poitiers. Her head was in turmoil from too many new impressions, too many glimpsed faces. And, what was more, she was going to be married in a few minutes. She was convinced of everyone’s goodwill, and was touched that the Count of Valois should show her so much solicitude. But she would have liked to prepare her mind in prayer. Was this a Queen’s marriage?

  She had the courage to ask why the ceremony was to take place so hastily.

  ‘Because you must be in Rheims on Sunday, where Louis will be crowned, and he wishes your marriage to take place first, so that you may be at his side,’ Valois replied.

  What he did not say was that the expenses of the wedding were paid by the Crown, while the expenses of the coronation were paid by the aldermen of Rheims. And the royal Treasury, after the Muddy Army’s setback, was more depleted than ever. This was the reason for the scamped marriage and the lack of pageantry; the rejoicings would be held with the citizens of Rheims as hosts.

  Clémence of Hungary only managed to get a little peace by asking for her confessor. She had already confessed that morning, but she wished to be assured of going to the altar without sin. Had she not perhaps committed some venial fault during these last hours, failed in humility by being surprised at the lack of pomp with which she had been received, lacked in charity towards her neighbour in wishing to see Monseigneur of Valois at the devil rather than buzzing about her?

  Louis X, the evening before, had had more serious things to confess to the Dominican father who had charge of his soul.

  While the last preparations were being made, Hugues de Bouville was accosted in the courtyard of the castle by Messire Spinello Tolomei, the Captain-General of the Lombards in Paris. Still perfectly alert in spite of his sixty years and his enormous paunch, he also was going to Rheims, where he had heavily underwritten supplies for the coronation. He was going to see how his agents had carried out their business. He asked Bouville for news of his nephew Guccio.

  ‘What the devil did he want to go and throw himself into the sea for? Oh, I miss him these days! It’s he who ought to be dashing about the country,’ Tolomei groaned.

  ‘And don’t you think I’ve missed him all the way from Marseilles?’ Bouville replied. ‘The escort spent twice as much as it would have done if he had been in charge of the cash.’

  Tolomei was anxious. With his left eye shut, his thick lip thrust forward a little, he was complaining of events. In spite of what Monseigneur of Valois had promised, a new tithe had been exacted from the Lombard bankers; upon every sale, contract, exchange of gold or silver, both buyer and seller had now to pay twopence in the pound; and king’s agents were to be set up everywhere to control the markets and receive the taxes. All this bore a considerable resemblance to the Orders in Council of King Philip.

  ‘Why did they tell us that everything would be changed?’

  Bouville left Tolomei to join the wedding procession.

  It was a triumphant Monseigneur
of Valois who led the bride to the altar. As for Louis X, he had to walk alone. There was no female member of the family present to give him her arm. His aunt, Agnes of France, daughter of Saint Louis, had refused to be present, and it was well enough known why: she was the mother of Marguerite of Burgundy. The Countess Mahaut had excused herself at the last moment owing to the difficulties created by the insurrection in Artois. She would come straight to Rheims for the coronation. As for the Countess of Valois, though imperiously directed to be present by her husband, she had either taken the wrong road, with the swarm of girls who attended her, or had broken the axle of her coach; the Chamberlain, ordered to accompany her, would hear more of it.

  Monseigneur Jean d’Auxois, his mitre upon his head, officiated. During the whole service Clémence reproached herself with her lack of religious preparation. With an effort she raised her thoughts to heaven, asking God to vouchsafe her, throughout her whole life, the virtues of a spouse, the qualities of a sovereign, and the blessings of motherhood; but, in spite of herself, her eyes turned to the man who stood breathing heavily beside her, whose face she barely knew, and whose bed she would have to share that very night.

  Every time he knelt he gave a short cough as if it were a tic; the deep furrow across his retreating chin was surprising in so young a man. His thin mouth was turned down at the corners; his long, straight hair was mouse-coloured. And when this man, to whom she was in process of being united, looked at her with his huge pale eyes, she felt embarrassed by the concentrated gaze he turned upon her hands, her throat, and her mouth. She wondered why she could not recover that state of supreme, unmitigated happiness which had been hers upon leaving Naples.

  ‘Oh Lord, let me not be ungrateful for all the mercies Thou hast accorded me.’

  But one cannot always control one’s thoughts, and Clémence surprised herself by thinking in the middle of her marriage service that, if she had been allowed to choose among the three princes of France, she would undoubtedly have preferred the Count of Poitiers. She was seized with terror and nearly cried aloud, ‘No, I do not, I am not worthy!’ At that moment, she heard herself make the response ‘I do’, in a voice that seemed not to be her own, to the Bishop who was asking her whether she was prepared to take Louis, King of France and Navarre, as her lawful wedded husband.