The Poisoned Crown

by Maurice Druon

  The first crash of thunder sounded as the too-large ring was being placed upon her finger; those present looked at each other, and many crossed themselves.

  When the procession emerged, the peasants were waiting, gathered before the church, wearing coarse smocks, their legs bound in rags. Clémence was hardly conscious of saying, ‘Should we not distribute alms?’

  She was thinking aloud and it was remarked that her first words as Queen were words of kindliness.

  To please her, Louis X ordered his Chamberlain, Mathieu de Trye, to throw them some handfuls of money. The peasants immediately scrambled for them upon the ground, and the first sight presented to the newly married Queen was one of savage fighting. There was a sound of ripping clothes, swine-like grunts, and the sharp impact of skulls meeting. The barons were much amused by the spectacle of the scuffle. One of the villeins, stronger and heavier than the rest, crushed a hand with a coin in it under his foot till it was compelled to open.

  ‘There’s a fellow who knows what he’s about,’ said Robert of Artois, laughing. ‘Who does he belong to? I’d willingly buy him.’

  And Clémence was displeased to see that Louis was laughing too.

  ‘This is not the way to give alms,’ she thought. ‘I shall have to teach him.’

  Rain started falling and the scramble ended in the mud.

  Tables had been laid in the largest hall in the castle. The wedding breakfast lasted five hours. ‘Here am I, Queen of France,’ Clémence said to herself from time to time. She could not get used to the idea. She found it difficult to get used to her surroundings at all. She was amazed at the gluttony of the French lords. As the wine circulated, voices grew louder. The only woman at this banquet of warriors, Clémence was conscious of being the cynosure of every eye, and realized that at the far end of the hall the conversation was taking a grosser turn.

  From time to time one of the feasters would leave the room. Mathieu de Trye, the first Chamberlain, cried, ‘The King our Lord desires that no one should piss upon the stairs by which he must pass.’

  When they had reached the fourth service of six dishes each, of which a whole pig served on the spit and a peacock with all its tail feathers formed part, two equerries came in bearing a huge pie which they set before the royal couple. The crust was broken open and a live fox jumped out to the excited cries of all present. For lack of time to prepare set pieces and elaborate sweets, which would have taken many days to make, the cooks had hoped to create an effect in this way.

  The frightened fox dashed round the hall, its tufted red brush sweeping the stone floor, its fine brilliant eyes pale with panic.

  ‘Gone away! Gone away!’ shouted the lords bounding from their seats.

  They at once organized a hunt. It was Robert of Artois who caught the fox. He threw himself full length between the table and got up, holding the animal at arms’ length. It snarled and revealed sharp teeth between black lips. Then Robert slowly closed his fingers; the vertebrae were heard to crack; the fox’s eyes turned glassy, and Robert laid the dead animal upon the table in homage before the Queen.

  Clémence, who was holding the too-large ring on her finger with her thumb, asked if it was the French custom that the women of the family should not attend weddings. It was explained to her what had happened and that those who had been coming had been unable to arrive in time.

  ‘But in any case, my dear sister, you would not have had the opportunity of seeing my wife,’ said the Count of Poitiers.

  ‘And why not, brother?’ Clémence asked, at once interested in all he said and finding some difficulty in conversing with him.

  ‘Because she is still confined to the Castle of Dourdan,’ replied Philippe of Poitiers.

  Then turning to the King he said, ‘Sire, my brother, upon this auspicious day I pray you to raise the ban imposed upon my wife Jeanne and to permit me to take her back. You know that she never forfeited her honour and that it would be an injustice to leave her any longer to pay for faults that were not hers.’

  The Hutin frowned. He clearly knew neither what to answer, nor what to decide. In order to please Clémence, should he show mercy or firmness, both royal qualities? He sought his Uncle of Valois with his eyes to ask his counsel, but the latter had just gone out for a breath of fresh air. Robert of Artois was at the other end of the hall, explaining to Philippe of Valois, Charles’s son, how to catch hold of a fox without getting bitten. Moreover, The Hutin did not much wish to bring Robert into a matter in which he was already too involved.

  ‘Sire, my husband,’ said Clémence, ‘for my sake grant your brother the boon he asks. Today is a day of rejoicing, and I would wish every woman in your realms to have her share in it.’

  She clearly had taken the matter to heart, and with surprising warmth, as if she felt relieved that Philippe of Poitiers had a wife and wished to take her back.

  She gazed at Louis. She was beautiful. Her blue eyes, huge between their fair eyelashes, rested upon him in a way that surpassed all other pleas.

  Moreover, he had dined well and emptied his cup rather more often than he had intended. The moment was approaching when he would be able to sample the delights of this beautiful body of which he was now master. He had not the wit to weigh the political consequences of what was being asked of him.

  ‘Beloved, there’s nothing I won’t do to please you,’ he replied. ‘Brother, you may take back Madame Jeanne and bring her among us as soon as you please.’

  His younger brother, the young Count de la Marche, the best looking of the three, who had been following the conversation with attention, then said, ‘What about me, brother; will you authorize the same thing on behalf of Blanche?’

  ‘For Blanche, never!’ the King said decisively.

  ‘Merely permission to go and see her at Château-Gaillard and place her in a convent where she will be less hardly treated ...’

  ‘Never,’ repeated The Hutin in a tone which forbade argument.

  The fear that Blanche, once out of her fortress, would speak of the circumstances of Marguerite’s death had caused him for once to take a decision that was both immediate and without appeal.

  And Clémence, feeling that it was wiser to rest upon her first victory, did not dare to intervene further.

  ‘Am I never to have the right to have a wife again?’ Charles went on.

  ‘Let fate take its course, brother,’ replied Louis.

  ‘Fate seems to be favouring Philippe more than me.’

  And from that moment Charles de la Marche conceived a resentment, not so much against the King as against the Count of Poitiers, to whom he was in any case alien in temperament, and whom he was angry to see better treated than himself.

  At the end of this exhausting day the young Queen was so tired that the events of the night seemed to take place in another life. She felt no fear, nor any particular suffering, nor any significant happiness. She merely submitted, feeling that things must take their course. Before relapsing into sleep, she heard mumbled words which allowed her to hope that her husband appreciated her. Had she not been so inexperienced, she would have understood that, for a time at least, she held complete sway over Louis X.

  And indeed, the King was astonished to find a submissiveness in this daughter of kings which until then he had found only among servants. The appalling agonies of impotence which he had suffered in Marguerite of Burgundy’s bed now disappeared. Perhaps after all he did not like brunettes. Four times he was triumphantly successful with this beautiful body which was so submissive to his desires and glowed faintly, as if made of mother-of-pearl, beneath the little oil-lamp hanging under the canopy of the bed. Never before had he accomplished such an exploit.

  When he left the room, late in the morning, his head felt dizzy though he held it high. His glance was assured, and one might have thought that his marriage night had obliterated the memory of his military mortifications. What had been lost in war might be regained in love.

  For the first time The Hutin
felt capable of receiving without embarrassment the dubious jokes of his cousin of Artois, who was considered to be the most potent womanizer at Court.

  Then, towards midday, they set out towards the north. Clémence turned a last time to look at the castle in which she had stayed but twenty-four hours and whose exact shape she would never be able to remember clearly.

  Two days later they arrived at Rheims. The inhabitants, who had not seen a coronation for thirty years – that is to say that for at least half the population the spectacle was an entirely new one – had gathered at the gates and along the streets. The town was full of people from the surrounding country, who had come on foot or on horseback, of every kind of merchant, showmen with performing animals, jugglers, sergeants-at-arms, and officers of the Crown who were as pre-occupied as if they carried the whole weight of the Kingdom upon their shoulders.

  The citizens of Rheims would not have believed that they were to have the opportunity of seeing a similar procession and what’s more, paying its cost, three times over in less than fourteen years.

  But never again would the threshold of the Cathedral of Rheims be crossed by a King of France together with the three successors history had designed for him. Behind Louis X, indeed, were the Count of Poitiers, the Count de la Marche, and Count Philippe of Valois, that is to say the future Philippe V, the future Charles IV, and the future Philippe VI. The two Philippes, Poitiers and Valois, were twenty-two years old; Charles de la Marche, twenty-one. Before the latter reached the age of thirty-seven, the crown would have been placed on all their three heads in turn.

  PART TWO

  AFTER FLANDERS, ARTOIS

  1

  The Insurgents

  OF ALL HUMAN FUNCTIONS that which consists in governing men, though the most envied, is the most disappointing, for it has no end and permits the mind no rest. The baker who has done his baking, the woodman before the oak he has felled, the judge who has delivered his judgement, the architect who has seen the last pinnacle in place, the painter once he has finished his picture, may all, for a night at least, know the relative relaxation which follows the satisfactory conclusion of a job. He who governs can never know it. Hardly has one political hurdle been surmounted than another, which was in course of formation while the first was being dealt with, demands immediate attention. The victorious general enjoys the honours of his victory for a long while; but a prime minister has to face the new situation born of that very victory itself. No problem can remain unresolved for long, for that which appears relatively unimportant today assumes tragic proportions tomorrow.

  The exercise of power is comparable only to the profession of medicine, which is also subject to this unremitting cycle, this priority of urgencies, this constant watching of minor ills because they may be symptomatic of more serious affections; indeed, the perpetual taking of responsibility in fields where a solution must depend upon future circumstances. The organization of society, like the health of individuals, can never be taken as definitive or considered as a task finally accomplished.

  The statesman’s only moments of rest are in defeat, with all its bitterness and the anxious recapitulation of accomplished fact, often of a threatening future. There is no rest for those in power but in defeat.

  What is true of today, when the task of directing a nation requires almost superhuman strength and talent, was doubtless true through the ages; and the profession of king, when kings themselves governed, consisted in equally ceaseless labour.

  Hardly had Louis X, after his melancholy military adventure, allowed the affairs of Flanders to lapse, resigning himself to letting them go from bad to worse since he was unable to resolve them, hardly had he acquired the mystic prestige which the coronation conferred upon the sovereign, however deplorable a monarch he might be, than fresh troubles burst upon him in the north of France.

  The Barons of Artois, in accordance with their promise to Robert, had not disarmed upon returning home from the army. They went up and down the country with their ‘banners’, trying to win over the population to their cause. The whole nobility was on their side and, through it, the countryside. The middle classes in the towns were divided in their allegiance. Arras, Boulogne, Thérouanne made common cause with the insurgents. Calais, Avesnes, Bapaume, Aire, Lens, and Saint-Omer remained faithful to the Countess Mahaut. The province was in a state of upheaval approaching insurrection.

  The leaders were Jean de Fiennes, the lords of Caumont and Souastre, and Gérard Kierez, the cleverest of them all, who knew how to draw up petitions and understood how to manage the proceedings before the King’s Councils.

  Maintained, directed, and furnished with subsidies by Robert of Artois, they had, thanks to the latter, the support of the Count of Valois and of the whole reactionary faction surrounding Louis X.

  Their demands were of two kinds. On the one hand they demanded a return to the customs of Saint Louis, desiring to go back to the times when they were answerable only to local courts, could declare war when they pleased and scarcely paid any taxes. On the other they demanded a change in local administration and particularly the resignation of Mahaut’s Chancellor, Thierry d’Hirson, who was anathema to them.

  Had their demands been met, it would have meant that the Countess Mahaut would have been deprived of all authority in her appanage, which was exactly what her nephew Robert wanted.

  But Mahaut was not the woman to allow herself to be despoiled. By cunning, continual argument, unfulfilled promises, pretending to yield today what she would throw back into the melting-pot tomorrow, she sought to gain time by every means at her disposal. Customs? Of course she would grant them. But in order to do so there must, naturally, be a commission to determine what precisely these customs were in every lordship of the province. Her administrators? If they had transgressed or abused their powers, she would punish them without mercy. But for this, too, a commission was clearly necessary. And then the argument would be taken to the King, who understood nothing about it and thought of his other anxieties, while the judicial arguments flowed on. Countess Mahaut accepted the grievances of Master Gérard Kierez; she gave evidence of her goodwill. She wished to find out what it was all about, and they would have an interview in the near future at Bapaume. Why Bapaume? Because Bapaume was on her side and she had a garrison there. She insisted upon Bapaume. And then, on the appointed day, she failed to arrive at Bapaume, because she had had to go to Rheims for the coronation. And after the coronation she forgot all about the promised interview. But, nevertheless, she would go to Artois as soon as possible; let everyone be patient. The Commissions of Inquiry were pursuing their natural course, that is to say, the agents in her pay were compelling people, with threats of flogging, prison, or the gibbet, to sign themselves as witnesses in favour of the administration of the Canon-Chancellor, Thierry d’Hirson.

  The barons lost their temper; they rebelled openly and forbade Thierry, who was in Paris with the Countess, to show his head in Artois on pain of death. Then they commanded the other Hirson, Denis, the Treasurer, to appear before them and he had the foolhardiness to comply; putting a sword to his throat, they obliged him to deny his brother upon oath.

  The political conflict became a question of settling old scores. Matters began to look so dangerous that Louis X went to Arras himself. He wished to arbitrate. But he could do very little, since he had no army, and the only ‘banner’ which remained mobilized was precisely that which was in revolt.

  On September 19th Mahaut’s people determined to surprise and arrest the lords of Souastre and Caumont, two gallants who were a perfect complement to each other, one being a brilliant speaker and the other strong of arm; they appeared to have become the leaders of the insurrection. Souastre and Caumont were thrown into prison. Robert of Artois immediately pleaded their cause before the King.

  ‘Sire, my Cousin,’ he said, ‘you know that I have nothing whatever to do with these matters since I was so disgracefully deprived of my inheritance, which is now governed by my aunt
Mahaut, and, it must be admitted, ill enough. But if Souastre and Caumont are kept in gaol, I tell you there will be war in Artois. I am only giving you my opinion because of the goodwill I bear you.’

  The Count of Poitiers argued in the opposite sense.

  ‘It may have been a mistake to have arrested these two lords, but it would be still more foolish to release them at this moment. It would encourage insurrection throughout the Kingdom; it is your authority, Brother, which is in question.’

  Charles of Valois lost his temper.

  ‘It is enough for you, Nephew,’ he cried, addressing Philippe of Poitiers, ‘that your wife, who has recently been released from Dourdan, should have been returned to you. Don’t plead her mother’s cause. You can’t ask the King to open prison doors for those whom you like, and to close them upon those whom you do not.’

  ‘I don’t see the relevance, Uncle,’ Philippe replied.

  ‘I see it all right, and indeed one might think that Countess Mahaut is at the back of your demands.’

  In the end The Hutin ordered Mahaut to free the two imprisoned lords. In the Countess’s circle a bad pun was going the rounds: ‘At the moment our lord King Louis is devoted to Clemency.’

  Souastre and Caumont came out of their week’s imprisonment with martyrs’ haloes. On September 26th they ordered all their partisans, who now called themselves ‘the allies’, to meet at Saint-Pol. Souastre spoke at great length, and the scurrility of his speech and the violence of his language carried his audience away. They were to refuse to pay the taxes and were to hang the provosts, tax-collectors, and all the agents, sergeants-at-arms, or other representatives of the Countess, beginning of course with the Hirson family.