Yes, he had heard right: they were claiming that the Salic Law was invalid and that his coronation had been irregular.
‘The fact that the peers made me King of their own free will and the Archbishop of Reims crowned me eight years ago is of no importance, I suppose, Messire Bishop?’
‘Many of the peers and barons who elected you have since died,’ replied Burghersh, ‘and many others are now wondering if what they did was approved by God!’
Philippe threw his head back, opened his mouth wide, and laughed aloud.
Had not King Edward recognized him as King when he came to render homage at Amiens?
‘Our King was then a minor. The homage he rendered you, which to be valid required the consent of the Council of Regency, was decided merely on the order of the traitor Mortimer who has since been hanged.’
This bishop, who had been appointed Chancellor by Mortimer, had been his chief counsellor, had accompanied Edward to Amiens and had himself read the formula of homage in the cathedral, certainly had his wits about him.
And what was he saying now in those same loud tones? That it was he, Philippe, in his capacity as Count of Valois, who should render homage to Edward. For the King of England was perfectly prepared to recognize the rights of his cousin of France to Valois, Anjou and Maine, and even to his peerage. This was really being too magnanimous!
The King was listening to these ridiculous demands in the Hôtel de Nesle. He had given it to his wife and was spending a day there between visits to Saint-Germain and Vincennes. As minor lords might say: ‘We shall sit in the great hall’, or ‘in the little parrot room’, or ‘we shall have supper in the green room’, so the King would decide: ‘Today I shall dine in the Palace of the Cité’, or ‘in the Louvre’, or ‘with my son the Duke of Normandy, in the house which belonged to Robert of Artois’.
And so the walls of the old Hôtel de Nesle, and of the still older Tower that could be seen through the windows, were witness to this farce. It would seem that certain places are destined to be the scenes of the tragedy of nations under the guise of comedy. For it had been in this house that Marguerite of Burgundy had deceived the Hutin in the arms of the Chevalier d’Aunay, unaware that her pleasures were to change the whole course of the French monarchy, and now the King of England was presenting his defiance to the King of France, and the King of France was laughing!36
Indeed, he laughed so much that he felt almost moved to pity, for he recognized Robert’s inspiration behind this absurd embassy. The man was clearly mad. He had found another king, younger and more ingenuous, to impress with his gigantic follies. Really, where would he stop? Defiance between kingdoms! Substituting one king for another! Yet, given a certain degree of aberration, you could hardly hold people responsible for absurdities that were part of their nature. If Robert of Artois had appeared at that moment, Philippe would undoubtedly have embraced him and pardoned him.
‘Where are you staying, Monseigneur Bishop?’ Philippe VI inquired courteously.
‘At the Hôtel du Château Fétu, in the Rue du Tiroir.’
‘Very well, go home then! Enjoy yourself for a few days in our good city of Paris and then, if you wish, come back to see us again with some more sensible request. For I don’t hold this against you. Indeed, to have undertaken such a mission and to have carried it out without laughing, as I have seen you do, is no small feat. I consider you to be the best ambassador to whom I have ever given audience.’
He did not know how right he was. Henry de Burghersh had passed through Flanders on his way to Paris. And there he had held secret conversations with the Count of Hainaut, the King of England’s father-in-law, the Count of Gueldre, the Duke of Brabant, the Marquess of Juliers, Jakob Van Artevelde and the aldermen of Ghent, Ypres and Bruges. He had even sent members of his suite to the Emperor Louis of Bavaria. Philippe VI was still in ignorance of certain negotiations that had taken place and of certain agreements that had been reached.37
‘Sire, I must present you with the letters of defiance.’
‘Very well, very well, let’s have them,’ Philippe said. ‘We shall keep these splendid pages by us and read them often. They will serve to cheer us should we be sad. And now you shall be served with something to drink. Your throat must be parched with so much talking.’
He clapped his hands to summon a page.
‘God forbid,’ cried Bishop Burghersh. ‘I should be a traitor if I drank the wine of an enemy to whom I have sworn from the bottom of my heart to do all the harm I can!’
Philippe of Valois started roaring with laughter again. Without another glance at the ambassador and the three English lords, he put his hand on the King of Navarre’s shoulder and withdrew with him into his private apartments.
4.
Windsor
WINDSOR LIES IN GREEN, rolling, friendly country. The castle seems to envelop the hill rather than crown it, and its plump walls are like the arms of a giantess asleep on the grass.
The country round Windsor is very similar to that of Normandy, or at least to those parts in which lie Evreux, Beaumont and Conches.
On this particular morning Robert was riding slowly along. On his left wrist he was carrying a falcon, its talons sunk into the thick leather of his glove. A single equerry was riding in front of him along the river-bank.
Robert was bored. No decision had been reached about the French war. Towards the end of the previous year the English, as if to confirm the defiance presented at the Tower of Nesle by some war-like act, had merely contented themselves with taking a small island, which belonged to the Count of Flanders and lay off Bruges and L’Eclus. In revenge, the French had come over and set fire to a few towns on the South Coast. The Pope had at once insisted on a truce to the war, which had never in fact been properly begun, and both sides had agreed to it for the strangest reasons.
Philippe VI, though refusing to take Edward’s pretensions to the crown of France seriously, had nevertheless been much impressed by a communication he had received from his uncle, King Robert of Naples. This prince, erudite to the point of pedantry, was, together with a Porphyrogenite of Byzantium, one of the only two rulers in the world who deserved the title of ‘Astrologer’. He had recently investigated the horoscopes of Edward and Philippe; and so impressed had he been by his findings that he had gone so far as to write to the King of France advising him ‘to avoid ever going to war with the King of England, for that King would always be successful in anything he undertook’. Such prophecies cannot be entirely laughed off and, however successful you may be in the lists, you are bound to hesitate before breaking a lance with the stars.
As for Edward III, he seemed a little afraid of his own audacity. For many reasons the dangers involved seemed excessive. He feared his army might prove insufficient both in numbers and in training; he sent embassy after embassy to Flanders and Germany in the hope of cementing the coalition. Henry Wryneck, who was now half blind, advised prudence, unlike Robert of Artois who wanted immediate action. What was Edward waiting for to begin campaigning? Was he going to delay till the Flemish princes he had rallied to his cause had died; till Jean of Hainaut, now exiled from the Court of France, where he had enjoyed so much favour, and living in England again, had lost the strength of his arm and could no longer wield a sword; till the weavers of Ghent and Bruges had grown weary and saw fewer advantages to be derived from the unkept promises of the King of England than from obedience to the King of France? Edward hoped to receive assurances from the Emperor; but the Emperor would certainly not run the risk of being excommunicated a second time before English soldiers were actually on the Continent. There was too much talk, negotiation and procrastination; the real fact was that courage was lacking.
Nevertheless, Robert of Artois seemed to have little reason to complain. He had been given castles and a pension; he dined with the King, drank with the King, and received every possible consideration. But he was tired of having expended so much effort over a period of three years on people who refus
ed to take a risk, on a young man to whom he was offering a crown! – and what a crown – and who failed to seize it. Besides, he was lonely. His exile, comfortable though it might be, weighed on him. What could he talk to young Queen Philippa about, unless it was of her grandfather Charles of Valois or her grandmother of Anjou-Sicily? At times he felt as if he were an ancestor himself.
He would have liked to see Queen Isabella, who was really the only person in England with whom he had memories in common. But the Queen Mother no longer appeared at Court; she lived at Castle Rising in Norfolk, where her son very occasionally went to visit her. Since Mortimer’s execution she no longer took any interest in anything.38
Robert was suffering from the nostalgia of exile. He thought of Madame de Beaumont; how would she look, when he saw her again after so many years of imprisonment if he ever did see her again? Would he recognize his sons? Would he ever see his house in Paris, his Castle of Conches or France again? At the rate the war he had taken so much trouble to foment was going, he would have to wait till he was a hundred before he had any hope of seeing his country once more.
Irritated and depressed, he had gone off hawking by himself this morning to pass the time and to forget. But the thick soft grass under his horse’s hooves, the English grass, was denser and more luxuriant than the grass of the Ouche countryside. The sky was pale blue, with little, high and ragged clouds; the May breeze was blowing through the hawthorn and the white apple blossom, which reminded him of the hawthorn and apple blossom of Normandy.
Robert was nearly fifty, and what had he done with his life? He had eaten, drunk, whored, hunted, travelled, worked hard for himself and at State business, taken part in tournaments, and gone to law more than any other man of his time. No single life could have encompassed greater vicissitudes and tribulations, none been more turbulent. But he had never enjoyed the present. He had never really stopped in what he was doing to savour the passing moment. He had always been concerned with tomorrow and the future. His wine had gone sour because of his desire to drink it in Artois; in his mistress’ bed his thoughts had been concerned with defeating Mahaut; and even in the most enjoyable tournament his jousting had been governed by his diplomacy. Throughout his travels as an exile the food at the inn and the beer in the tavern had always had the bitter savour of hate and vengeance. And now he was still thinking of tomorrow and the future. His angry impatience prevented his appreciating the fine morning, the splendid countryside, the soft air he breathed, and the savage yet docile bird whose grip he could feel on his wrist. Was this what was called living, and was there nothing to show for the fifty years he had spent on earth but the ashes of his hopes?
He was startled out of his bitter reflections by his equerry, who was posted on a hill a little way ahead, crying:
‘Mark, Monseigneur! Mark! A heron!’
Robert sat up straight in the saddle and screwed up his eyes. The falcon in its leather hood, from which only the beak emerged, was trembling on his wrist; it, too, recognized the cry. There was a sound of reeds rustling and a heron rose from the river bank.
‘Mark, Monseigneur! Mark!’ the equerry repeated.
The great bird was flying straight towards Robert, low against the wind. He let it fly on past him a hundred yards and then, freeing the falcon from its hood, he threw it into the air with a wide sweep of his arm.
The falcon circled its master’s head three times, came low, skimming the ground, saw its prey and streaked away like a bolt from a crossbow. Seeing it was being pursued, the heron stretched its neck and, so as to lighten itself, disgorged the fish it had just eaten in the river. But the falcon was closer now and soaring upwards in a spiral. To prevent the falcon getting above it, the heron gained height with a great beating of wings. Though it continued to rise and grow smaller to the eye, it was nevertheless losing distance, since it was rising against the wind and was slowed by its own wing-spread. Then it turned downwind, but the falcon turned above it and stooped. The heron jinked and the talons failed to gain a hold, but the shock of the impact made the heron fall like a stone for fifty feet before it recovered and flew on. The falcon stooped again.
Robert and his equerry stared up at the battle in which speed of manoeuvre and sheer lust to kill counted for more than size and pacific strength.
‘Look at that heron,’ cried Robert angrily; ‘It’s really the cowardliest of birds! It’s four times the size of my little falcon; it could kill it with a single thrust of its great beak; but the damned coward runs away! Go on, my brave little bird, strike! Ah, that’s the way! There! The heron’s given up. It’s taken!’
He put his horse into a gallop towards the spot where the birds would fall. The falcon’s talons were round the heron’s neck, strangling it; its great wings were beating more and more feebly as it carried its conqueror down in its fall. A few feet from the ground, the falcon released its hold to let its victim fall alone, and then hurled itself on it again to kill it by pecking at its head and eyes. Robert and his equerry had already come up.
‘To the lure, to the lure!’ said Robert.
The equerry took a dead pigeon from his saddle-bow and threw it to the falcon to lure it away. But a well-trained falcon knows it must accept its reward in this form and not touch its prey. And the brave little bird, its head all bloody, devoured the dead pigeon, one foot still on the heron. A few grey feathers, torn out during the fight, were drifting slowly down out of the sky.
The equerry dismounted, picked up the heron and handed it to Robert: it was a splendid bird and, when he held it out at arm’s length, was from beak to feet almost as tall as a man.
‘What a damned coward of a bird!’ Robert repeated. ‘There’s almost no sport in taking it. These herons are noisy birds, but afraid of their own shadows, and start bawling when they see them. They’re really fit game only for villeins.’
The falcon was satiated and, obedient to the whistle, came to Robert’s wrist. When he had replaced its hood, they trotted back towards the castle.
Suddenly the equerry heard Robert of Artois utter a short loud laugh, for which there was no apparent cause. It made the horses shy.
The horns had already sounded for dinner when they reached the postern.
‘The King is going to dinner,’ said the groom who came to take Robert’s horse in the courtyard.
‘What shall I do with the heron, Monseigneur?’ asked the equerry.
Robert glanced up at the royal standard flying over the keep of Windsor and there was a wickedly mocking expression on his face.
‘Bring it along and we’ll go to the kitchens,’ he said. ‘Then you’ll go to find me one or two of the castle minstrels.’
5.
The Heron and the Oath
DINNER HAD REACHED THE fourth of its six courses, but the Count of Artois’ place on Queen Philippa’s left was still empty.
‘Has our Cousin Robert not come home?’ asked Edward III, who had been surprised at his absence when they went into dinner.
One of the pages waiting on the diners replied that Count Robert had been seen returning from hawking over an hour ago. What could have happened? Surely, if Robert had been tired or ill, he would have sent a servant to make his excuses to the King.
‘Robert treats your Court, Sire, my nephew, as if it were an hotel. Though, I must admit, it doesn’t surprise me,’ said Jean of Hainaut, Queen Philippa’s uncle.
Jean of Hainaut, who prided himself on being a paragon of knightly courtesy, did not like Robert, in whom he could not help seeing the perjurer banished from the Court of France for forging seals; and he blamed Edward III for placing so much faith in him. Moreover, like Robert, Jean of Hainaut had in the past been attracted by Queen Isabella, and with no greater success; but he was shocked by the loose way in which Robert talked to the Queen Mother in private.
Edward made no answer and lowered his long lashes till he had mastered his irritation. He was always afraid of making some remark which would give people an opportunity of saying late
r: ‘The King spoke without knowing the facts; the King was unjust.’ Then he looked up at the Countess of Salisbury, who was undoubtedly the most attractive woman at his Court.
Tall, pale-complexioned, with a pure oval face, beautiful black tresses and wide, mauve-shadowed eyes, the Countess of Salisbury seemed always to be dreaming. Such women are dangerous for, though they look as if they are dreaming, they are in fact thinking. Her dark-shadowed eyes frequently met those of the King.
Salisbury paid no attention to this exchange of glances, in the first place because he considered his wife’s virtue as unquestionable as the King’s fidelity to the Queen, and secondly because he was himself at the moment captivated by the laughter, vivacity and bird-like pipings of the Earl of Derby’s daughter, who was sitting next to him. Honours were raining on Salisbury; he had just been made Warden of the Cinque Ports and Marshal of England.
But Queen Philippa was rather disturbed. A woman is always anxious when she is pregnant and sees her husband’s glances turning too frequently towards another’s face. For, indeed, Philippa was pregnant again, but she had not this time noticed in Edward that amazed gratitude that he had shown when she had first become a mother.
Edward was now twenty-five; for some weeks past he had been growing a little fair beard that covered no more than his chin. Was it to please the Countess of Salisbury? Or was it merely to give his youthful face a look of authority? The beard made him look a little like his father; the Plantagenet in him seemed to be struggling with the Capet. Merely by living, man becomes degraded and loses in purity what he gains in power. However clear a spring may be, when it becomes a river it cannot help being polluted by mud and slime. Madam Philippa had reason to be anxious.
The Lily and the Lion Page 26
