Robert had an annoying habit, for which his provosts were always reproaching him, of inflicting only minor sentences on thieves, robbers, coggers, suborners, highwaymen, pimps, panders and roughs, except of course when he himself had suffered by the crime or robbery. He felt a secret and innate sympathy for the malefactors of the world.
By the time justice had been done, evening was beginning to fall. Robert would go down to the baths, which were in a basement room in the keep, and plunge into a tub of hot water perfumed with aromatic herbs that removed fatigue. He had himself dried and rubbed down like a horse, shaved, combed and curled; and for an hour afterwards he smelt almost human.
The pages, cupbearers and servants had already set the trestle-tables for supper, at which Robert would appear in a huge red-velvet baronial robe lined with fur, embroidered with the gold lilies and the castles of Artois, and reaching to his feet.
The Countess of Beaumont wore a robe of violet silk, lined with miniver and embroidered with ‘J’ and ‘R’ (Jeanne and Robert) intertwined in gold and with semy of silver trefoils.22
The food was less heavy than at midday, consisting of soups of herbs or milk, a roast peacock or swan garnished with young pigeons, fresh and ripened cheeses, and sweet tarts and cakes which improved the taste of the old wines that were poured from decanters shaped like lions or birds.
The service was in the French manner, that is to say two to a bowl, a man and a woman eating from the same dish, except for the Lord. Robert had his own platter, which he emptied with spoon, knife and fingers, wiping his hands on the tablecloth, like everyone else. He ate the smaller birds bones and all.
Towards the end of supper, the minstrel Watriquet de Couvin was asked to take his short harp and declaim one of the lays of his own composing. Messire Watriquet came from Hainaut; he knew Count Guillaume and the Countess, Madame de Beaumont’s sister, well, since he had begun his career at their Court. He now visited all the Valois in turn, for he was much in demand and earned substantial fees.23
‘Watriquet, give us the lay of the Ladies of Paris!’ Robert would demand with his mouth full.
It was his favourite; and though he knew it almost by heart, he always wanted to hear it over again, like a child demanding the same story every night and insisting that no detail be omitted. Who would have thought, seeing him at a moment such as this, that Robert of Artois was capable of crime and forgery?
The lay of the Ladies of Paris recounted the adventure of two bourgeoises, Margue and Marion, the wife and niece of Adam de Gonesse, who, when on their way to the tripe-seller on the morning of Twelfth Night, had the misfortune to meet a neighbour, Dame Tifaigne, a hat-maker, who persuaded them to accompany her to a tavern where the host, so it was said, gave credit.
The ladies sat down to a meal in the Maillets Tavern and the landlord, whose name was Drouin, served them an excellent repast: claret wine, a fat goose, a large dish of garlic, and hot buns.
At this point in the story, Robert of Artois always began laughing in anticipation, while Watriquet went on:
‘Lors commenca Margue à suer
Et boire à grandes hanapées.
En peu d’heures eurent échappées
Trois chopines parmi sa gorge.
“Dame, foi que je dois saint Georges,”
Dit Maroclippe, sa commère.
“Ce vin me fait la bouche amére;
Je veux avoir de la grenache,
Si devais-je vendre ma vache
Pour en avoir aux mains plein pot”.’
Sitting by the great hearth, where a whole tree trunk was burning, Robert of Artois lay back in his chair and laughed aloud.
This reminded him of his youth spent in taverns, brothels and other places of the sort. In his time he had known so many of these free and easy bitches sitting and drinking so eagerly without their husband’s knowledge! At midnight, sang Watriquet, Margue, Marion and the hat-maker, having sampled all the wines from the Artois to the ‘Saint-Mélion’, and having ordered cakes, biscuits, sweet almonds, pears, gingerbread and nuts, were still in the tavern. Margue suggested going out and dancing. The tavern-keeper insisted they should leave their clothes with him as security before they left. Drunk as they were, they readily agreed. In a second they had discarded their cloaks, dresses, bodices, stays and shifts.
Off they went into the January night, naked as the day they were born, staggering, tripping and singing at the tops of their voices: ‘Amour au vireli m’en vois’, grazing the walls and holding each other up only to collapse dead-drunk, all three of them, on to a heap of refuse.
Day dawned and doors opened. They were discovered all muddy and bloody, as motionless as ‘merdes en la mi-voie’. Their husbands were sent for, who assumed they had been murdered; and the women were carried to the Cemetery of the Innocents, where they were thrown into a common grave.
‘L’une sur l’autre, toutes vives;
Or leur fuyait par les gencives
Le vin, et par tous les conduits.’
They awakened only the following night, covered with earth and among the dead, but still not sober. They began to shout in the dark, icy cemetery.
‘“Drouin, Drouin, où es allé?
Apporte trois harengs salés
Et un pot de vin du plus fort
Pour faire à nos têtes confort;
Et ferme aussi la grand fenestre!”’
Monseigneur Robert positively howled with laughter. The minstrel Watriquet had some difficulty in finishing his lay for the giant’s laughter filled the hall for some minutes on end. Tears in his eyes, he was slapping his ribs. Time and again he repeated: ‘Et ferme aussi la grand fenestre!’ His amusement was so contagious that all the household were laughing with him.
‘Oh, the hussies! Naked to the winds! “Et ferme aussi la grand fenestre!”’
And he roared with laughter again.
By and large, it was a good life at Conches; and was it not true happiness? The Countess of Beaumont was a good wife, the County of Beaumont was a good fine little county, and what did it matter that it was a domain of the Crown since its revenues were assured? But what of Artois? Was Artois really so important after all, was it worth the anxiety, the struggle and the effort? ‘Do I really care whether I am buried, when my turn comes, at Conches or at Hesdin?’
But these are the kind of doubts one tends to have after the age of forty, when some business on which one is engaged is turning out badly and one has a fortnight’s leisure. Yet one knows only too well, in one’s heart of hearts, that this fugitive wisdom will have no effect on one’s actions. Nevertheless, tomorrow, Robert would go to hunt the stag in the neighbourhood of Beaumont, and would take the opportunity to inspect the castle there and determine what repairs were needed.
It was on his return from Beaumont with his wife, on the penultimate day of the year, that Robert of Artois found his equerries and servants waiting for him in considerable agitation on the drawbridge of Conches.
During the course of the afternoon, some men had come to arrest Dame de Divion and take her to prison in Paris.
‘Arrest her? Who came to arrest her?’
‘Three sergeants-at-arms.’
‘What sergeants-at-arms? On whose orders?’ Robert shouted.
‘The King’s.’
‘Oh, really! And so you let them have their way! You’re a lot of fools and I’ll have you flogged. Arrest someone in my house? What impudence! Did you see the order?’
‘We saw it, Monseigneur,’ replied Gillet de Nelle, quaking with fright, ‘and we insisted on keeping it. We let them take Madame de Divion only on that condition. Here it is.’
It was indeed a royal order, drawn up in a clerkly hand, but sealed with Philippe VI’s seal. It was no mere Chancellory seal, which might well have been explained by some piece of high-level knavery. The wax was impressed with Philippe’s private seal, the ‘Little Seal’ as it was called, which the King carried on his person in a purse, and which was used only by his own hand.
The Count of Artois was not a man much given to anxiety. But that day he knew what fear meant.
6.
The Wicked Queen
TO RIDE FROM CONCHES to Paris in a single day was a long stage, even for a brilliant horseman with a good horse. Robert of Artois left two of the equerries accompanying him on the road with foundered horses. It was night when he reached Paris but in spite of the late hour the streets were still full of happy crowds seeing the New Year in. Drunkards were vomiting in the shadows outside the taverns; women were reeling arm in arm through the streets, as in Watriquet’s lay, and singing at the tops of their voices.
Paying no attention to the rabble, whom his horse sent staggering out of the way, Robert went straight to the palace. The Captain of the guard told him that the King had been there during the day to receive the good wishes of the townpeople, but that he had left for Saint-Germain.24
So Robert crossed the bridge and went to knock at the gates of the Château, where he had contacts. A peer of France need have no qualms about waking the Governor; but, on being questioned, the Governor asserted that he had received no prisoner by the name of Jeanne de Divion, nor anyone who resembled her description during the last two days.
Anyone arrested on the order of the King could be imprisoned only in the Châtelet or the Louvre; so Robert went to the Louvre; but the Captain of the Louvre gave him the same answer. Where, then, was La Divion? Was it possible that Robert had travelled quicker than the King’s sergeants-at-arms, ridden by a different road and thereby got ahead of them? And yet, at Houdin, where he had made inquiries, he had been told that three sergeants-at-arms had passed through several hours before with a woman prisoner. It was all very mysterious.
Robert gave it up and went to his own house, where he slept badly. At dawn he left for Saint-Germain.
There was a white frost over field and meadow; the branches of the trees were bright with rime, and the hills and forests round the Manor of Saint-Germain looked like a landscape of sugar.
The King had just woken up. But, for Robert, all doors were opened to Philippe VI’s bedchamber. The King was still in bed, surrounded by chamberlains and huntsmen, to whom he was giving orders for the day’s hunting.
Robert hurried in, quickly went down on one knee, rose and said: ‘Sire, my brother, take back the peerage you gave me, and my fiefs, lands and revenues, deprive me of their use and profit, and dismiss me from your Privy Council at which I am no longer worthy to appear. I count for nothing now in the realm!’
Opening his blue eyes wide in surprise above his long fleshy nose, Philippe said: ‘What’s the matter with you, Brother? What has upset you? What are you talking about?’
‘I’m simply stating the truth. I’m saying I no longer count for anything in the realm since the King, without even deigning to inform me, has had a woman living under my roof arrested!’
‘Whom have I arrested? Who is she?’
‘A certain Dame de Divion, Brother, a member of my household and a woman of the bedchamber to my wife, your sister, whom three sergeants-at-arms arrested on your orders at my Castle of Conches and have taken to prison!’
‘On my orders?’ said Philippe, in stupefaction. ‘But I have given no such orders. Divion? I don’t even know the name. In any case, Brother, have the grace to believe me when I say that I would never have anyone arrested under your roof, even if I had reason to do so, without telling you of it and first asking your advice.’
‘That is what I would have thought, Brother,’ said Robert, ‘yet the order is undoubtedly yours.’
And from beneath his surcoat he produced the warrant the sergeants-at-arms had left behind them.
Philippe VI glanced at it, recognized his private seal, and the flesh of his nose turned pale.
‘Hérouart, my gown!’ he cried to one of his chamberlains. ‘And get out, all of you! Hurry! Leave me alone with Monseigneur of Artois!’
Throwing back the gold-embroidered coverlets, he got out of bed, wearing a long white nightshirt. His chamberlain helped him into a furred gown, and went to stoke the fire on the hearth.
‘Get out, get out! I said leave me alone.’
Never since he had been in the King’s service had Hérouart de Belleperche been spoken to so roughly, as if he were a mere scullion indeed!
‘No, I never sealed this nor dictated anything of the sort,’ said the King, when the Chamberlain had gone.
He examined the document with great care, fitted the two pieces of the seal, which had been broken to open the letter, together, and took a crystal magnifying-glass from a drawer in a side table.
‘Perhaps someone has counterfeited your seal, Brother,’ said Robert.
‘It cannot be done. The die-sinkers, as you no doubt know, are skilled in the prevention of forgery. They invariably introduce some tiny, secret, deliberate imperfection, especially in royal seals or in those of great barons. Look at the “I” in my name – do you see the little break in the staff, and the little hollow mark in the foliage of the border?’
‘In that case,’ said Robert, ‘could someone have removed the seal from another document?’
‘I know it can be done with a hot razor or by other means. My chancellor has told me so.’
Robert’s expression became remarkably ingenuous, as if he were hearing some extraordinary fact for the first time. But his heart began beating rather faster.
‘But that cannot be the case,’ Philippe went on, ‘because to prevent that kind of thing I use my Little Seal only for seals that must be broken; I never apply it to a flat page or a lace.’
He was silent for a moment, his eyes fixed on Robert as if he were asking him for an explanation, though, in fact, he was trying to think of one himself.
‘The only possible conclusion,’ he said, ‘is that someone termporarily stole my seal. But who? And when did they do it? It never leaves the purse at my belt during the day; I put it aside only at night.’
He went to the side table, took a purse of cloth-of-gold from the drawer and felt the contents, then he opened it and took from it a little gold seal, its shaft in the shape of a lily.
‘And I always put it on again in the morning.’
He was talking more slowly now, for he had a terrible suspicion. He picked up the warrant and studied it very carefully again.
‘I know that hand,’ he said. ‘It’s not that of Hugues de Pommard, nor that of Jacques la Vache, nor that of Geoffroy de Fleury.’25
He rang for Pierre Trousseau, the other chamberlain on duty.
‘Send me the clerk Robert Mulet, it he’s in the house, and if he’s elsewhere, find him. Tell him to come here with his pens.’
‘Am I not right in thinking,’ Robert asked, ‘that Mulet is secretary to your wife, Queen Jeanne?’
They had unconsciously reverted to the second person singular they had used in the past, when Philippe was still very far from becoming King, and Robert was not yet a peer, and they were merely cousins and good friends. In those far-off days Monseigneur Charles of Valois had always held Robert up as an example to Philippe, because of his strength, his tenacity, and his good sense in affairs of State.
‘Yes, Mulet sometimes works for me and sometimes for Jeanne,’ Philippe said evasively to cover his embarrassment.
He realized that the same suspicions had occurred to Robert.
Mulet was in the house and hurried in, carrying his writing-board under his arm. He bowed low to kiss the King’s hand.
‘Set out your board and write,’ said Philippe VI. He at once began to dictate: ‘In the King’s name, to our loyal and beloved Provost of Paris, Jean de Milon, greetings. We order you to set free …’
The two cousins had both drawn near and were reading over the clerk’s shoulder. His writing was clearly the same as in the warrant.
‘… at once the Dame Jeanne de …’
‘Divion …’ supplied Robert.
‘… who is in our prison of … Where is she?’ Philippe asked.
‘Neither in the Châtelet, nor the Louvre,’ said Robert.
‘In the Tower of Nesle, Sire,’ said the clerk, who hoped his zeal and excellent memory would be appreciated.
The two cousins looked at each other and folded their arms with an identical gesture.
‘How do you know?’ the King asked the clerk.
‘Because, Sire, I had the honour of writing your order to arrest the lady three days ago.’
‘Who dictated it to you?’
‘The Queen, Sire. She told me you had no time to do so and had therefore asked her to do it on your behalf. There were two orders, one for her arrest and one for her imprisonment.’
Philippe had turned very pale; he was both ashamed and furious, and dared not look his brother-in-law in the face.
‘The bitch,’ Robert thought. ‘I knew she hated me, but to go to the lengths of stealing her husband’s seal to injure me! How has she managed to be so well informed?’
‘Are you going to finish dictating the order, Sire?’ he asked.
‘Of course, of course,’ said Philippe, emerging from his thoughts.
He dictated the last paragraph. The clerk lit a candle at the fire, poured a few drops of red wax on the folded sheet and presented it to the King so that he might himself apply the Little Seal.
Philippe was lost in thought and seemed scarcely to be aware of what he was doing. Robert took the order and rang the bell. Hérouart de Belleperche came into the room. He seemed to be spending his whole time running in and out this morning.
‘To the Provost, within the hour, on the King’s order,’ Robert said, handing him the letter.
‘And summon Madame the Queen at once,’ Philippe ordered from the farther end of the room.
The clerk Mulet was still waiting, looking from the King to the Count of Artois and wondering whether his zeal was meeting with quite the appreciation he had expected. Robert waved him out of the room.
A minute or two later Queen Jeanne came in with her peculiar lame gait. At every step she took, she seemed to be moving through a quarter of a circle, pivoting on her longer leg. She was slender and facially almost beautiful, though her teeth were already rotting. Her eyes were large, but falsely and deceitfully limpid; she had long fingers that were not quite straight, so that light showed between them when she held them close together.
The Lily and the Lion Page 19
