When Clémence of Hungary died, in 1328, that is to say at the beginning of the reign of Philippe VI of Valois, her heir, who was her nephew, the Dauphin of Viennois, sold by auction all the jewels and plate, a sale which lasted several days. The catalogue of the sale is something to dream of: three crowns, bearing in all thirty-four rubies, eighty-two emeralds, and a hundred and sixty pearls; fourteen rings, fifty-four brooches and clasps; and this is only a small part of the treasure. Difficult though it is to establish equivalents in money, one may estimate without being far out that the total of the sale reached £500,000 in today’s currency.
The biggest buyers were, on the one hand, King Philippe VI himself – who bought, among other things, the great reliquary containing a fragment of the True Cross, and also the fork which is mentioned farther on in this book; and, on the other hand, the Count of Beaumont, that is to say Robert of Artois.
18. The barons of Artois succeeded in this enterprise in the following September, which was the occasion of the sacking mentioned in Note 16.
19. I apologize for the grossness of the remark, but it is to be found textually in the deposition of the ex-Templar Everard, as it was taken down in extenso.
20. The unicorn is a legendary animal which has never existed anywhere except in heraldry, but whose single horn nevertheless was considered to be a universal antidote to poison. What was sold under the name of the horn of a unicorn, at an extremely high price, was in fact the horn of the narwhal.
21. All the tapestry manufactories which existed in Europe, and notably in Italy and Hungary, at the end of the Middle Ages, had been founded by tapestry-makers who had come from Flanders or Artois, while the town of Arras is considered to have been the centre of this growing industry at the beginning of the fourteenth century. Moreover, this prosperity is expressly attributed to the initiative of the Countess Mahaut and to the encouragement she gave to the industries which formed the wealth of her province.
When the Paris tapestry-makers began to compete with the Artois manufactories, Mahaut showed no particular preference for one as against the other and she can be found giving orders to Paris. However, upon this period the documents give very few details and only reveal the names of a few tapestry-makers without any description of their works. The inventory of the possessions of Queen Clémence is one of the first in which one finds mention of woollen tapestries ‘worked with parrots and compasses’, and again, ‘eight tapestries with figures and trees, depicting a hunt’.
Author’s Acknowledgements
I am most grateful to Georges Kessel, Edmonde Charles-Roux, Christiane Grémillon, and Pierre de Lacretelle for the assistance they have given me with the material of this book; to Huguette Roman for her help in compiling it; and to the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris and the Municipal Library of Florence for indispensable aid in research.
BY MAURICE DRUON
The Accursed Kings
The Iron King
The Strangled Queen
The Poisoned Crown
The Royal Succession
The She-Wolf
The Lily and the Lion
The King Without a Kingdom
Copyright
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
77–85 Fulham Palace Road
Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by Rupert Hart-Davis 1957
Copyright © Maurice Druon 1957
Maurice Druon asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007491308
Ebook Edition © September 2013 ISBN: 9780007492237
Version: 2013-09-05
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street
Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
http://www.harpercollins.com.au/ebooks
Canada
HarperCollins Canada
2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor
Toronto, ON, M4W, 1A8, Canada
http://www.harpercollins.ca
New Zealand
HarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand) Limited
P.O. Box 1
Auckland, New Zealand
http://www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
77-85 Fulham Palace Road
London, W6 8JB, UK
http://www.harpercollins.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
10 East 53rd Street
New York, NY 10022
http://www.harpercollins.com
The Poisoned Crown Page 24
