The Royal Succession

by Maurice Druon

  Indeed, Duèze had no other confidant but the young Lombard, whose cunning was more use to him each day. Their fate was closely linked, for if one wished to leave the monastery, which was overheated by the summer weather, as Pope, the other wished to depart as soon as possible, and with powerful protection, to rescue his beloved. Guccio was, however, somewhat reassured about Marie since Tolomei had written that he was watching over her like a true uncle.

  At the beginning of the last week of July, when Duèze saw that his colleagues were extremely weary, exhausted by the heat, and irrevocably at daggers drawn with each other, he decided to act the farce he had long been considering and had carefully rehearsed with Guccio.

  ‘Have I tottered enough? Have I fasted enough? Do I look sick enough?’ he asked his temporary page. ‘And are my fellow-Cardinals so disgusted with each other that they will come to a decision through sheer weariness?’

  ‘I think so, Monseigneur, I think they’re ripe for it.’

  ‘Then, my young friend, go and set your tongue to work; as for me, I think I shall go and lie down, probably never to get up again.’

  Guccio began mixing with the servants of the other Cardinals, saying that Monseigneur Duèze was much exhausted, that he showed signs of being ill, and that it was to be feared, taking his great age into consideration, that he would not quit the Conclave alive.

  The next day Duèze did not appear at the daily meeting, and the Cardinals murmured among themselves, each one repeating, as if of his own knowledge, the rumours Guccio had spread.

  The following day Cardinal Orsini, who had just had a violent altercation with the Colonnas, met Guccio and asked him whether it were true that Monseigneur Duèze was so very weak.

  ‘Oh, yes, Monseigneur, and you see me sick at heart,’ replied Guccio. ‘Do you know that my good master has even given up reading? It is as much as to say that his life is drawing to a close.’

  Then, with that ingenuously audacious air which he knew so well how to make use of at the right moment, he added: ‘If I were in your place, Monseigneur, I know what I should do. I should elect Monseigneur Duèze. You would thus be able to leave this Conclave at last, and hold another under your own auspices as soon as he is dead, which, I repeat, cannot now be long. In a week’s time you may well have lost the opportunity.’

  That very evening Guccio saw Napoléon Orsini in council with Stefaneschi, who was an Orsini through his mother, Albertini de Prato and Guillaume de Longis, that is to say all the Italians who favoured Duèze. The following day the same group met again as if by accident in the cloisters, but with the addition of the Spaniard Luca Flisco, half-brother to Jaime II of Aragon, and Arnaud de Pélagrue, the leader of the Gascon party; and Guccio, passing close by, heard one of them say: ‘And if he does not die?’

  ‘A pity, but if he dies tomorrow, we shall doubtless be here for another six months.’

  Guccio immediately sent a letter to his uncle in which he advised him to buy up from the Bardi company all the debts Jacques Duèze owed that bank. ‘You should be able to acquire them without difficulty at half their value, for the debtor is given out as dying, and the lender will think you mad. Buy them even at eighty livres for the hundred, I assure you that it will be good business or I am no longer your nephew.’

  He also advised Tolomei to come to Lyons himself as soon as he could.

  On the 29th of July the Count de Forez had an official letter handed to the Cardinal Camerlingo from the Regent. In order to hear it read, Jacques Duèze consented to leave his pallet; he was practically carried to the meeting.

  The Count of Poitiers’s letter was harsh. It detailed all the lapses from the rule of Gregory. It recalled his threat to demolish the roof of the church. It took the Cardinals to task for their discord, and suggested that, if they could reach no conclusion, the tiara should be conferred on the oldest among them. And the oldest was Jacques Duèze.

  When the old Cardinal heard these words, he waved his arms in a sort of dying gesture and said in a hardly audible voice: ‘The most worthy, Brothers, the most worthy! What would you do with a pastor who has not even the strength to carry himself, and whose place is in Heaven, if the Lord will receive me there, rather than here below?’

  He had himself carried back to his cell, lay down on his pallet and turned his face to the wall. It was only because Guccio knew him well that he realized that his shoulders were shaking with laughter and that he was not gasping like a dying man.

  The following day Duèze seemed to have recovered a little strength; a too consistent weakness would have aroused suspicion. But, when there arrived a recommendation from the King of Naples supporting that of the Count of Poitiers, the old man began coughing in the most pitiful way; he must have been in very poor health to have caught cold in such hot weather.

  Bargaining still went on, for not all the Cardinals’ hopes had yet been extinguished. Of the twenty-four Cardinals there was doubtless not a single one, however ill-placed, who had not at one moment or another said to himself: ‘Why not I?’

  Among the public who had gathered in Lyons, attracted by the expectation of an early decision, the opinion began to grow that there were no perfect institutions, that they were all as bad as each other, equally vitiated by human ambition; the elective system designed to fill the throne of Saint Peter was proving no better than the hereditary system was for the throne of France.

  But the Count de Forez was beginning to prove still harsher. He was now having the food openly searched, reducing it to one course a day, and he confiscated the correspondence or threw it back into the monastery.

  By the 5th of August Napoléon Orsini had succeeded in bringing over to the supporters of Duèze the terrible Caetani himself, as well as several members of the Gascon party. The Provençaux were beginning to scent victory.

  It became evident, on the 6th of August, that Monseigneur Duèze could count on eighteen votes, that is to say on two votes more than the absolute majority that no one had been able to muster in two years and three months. The last dissidents, seeing that the election was about to take place in their despite, and fearing that they might suffer for their obstinacy, proceeded to take credit for recognizing the high Christian virtues of Monseigneur Duèze, and declared themselves ready to give him their suffrage.

  The following day, 7 August 1316, it was decided to vote.24 Four tellers were appointed. Duèze appeared, carried by Guccio and his second page.

  ‘He weighs very light,’ Guccio murmured to the Cardinals who watched them go by and made way with a deference which was already significant of the choice they were about to make.

  ‘Since you wish it so, Lord, since you wish it so …’ Duèze whispered to the paper on which he was about to record his vote.

  A few minutes later he was unanimously proclaimed Pope and his twenty-three rivals gave him an ovation.

  He was to lead them a terrible life during the next eighteen years!

  Guccio moved forward to help to his feet the pathetic old man, who had become the supreme authority of the world.

  ‘No, my son, no,’ said Duèze. ‘I shall endeavour to walk on my own. May God sustain my steps.’

  A few idiots then thought that they were witnessing a miracle, but others realized they had been made fools of.

  But the Camerlingo had already burnt the voting-papers in the fireplace and the white smoke announced to the world that there was a new Pope. The sound of picks began echoing against the brickwork which walled up the great door. But the Count de Forez was a prudent man; as soon as space enough had been made, he entered the opening himself.

  ‘Yes, yes, my son, it is I,’ said Duèze, who had trotted to the door.

  Then the masons finished breaking down the walls; the two leaves of the door were opened and the sun, for the first time for forty days, shone into the church of the Jacobins.

  There was a great crowd about the steps outside: commoners, burgesses of Lyons, consuls, lords and observers from foreign courts; the whol
e crowd knelt. A fat man with an olive complexion and one eye closed pushed forward by the Count de Forez. He seized the hem of the Pope’s robe and carried it to his lips; it was on his grey head that there fell the first blessing of him who was henceforward to be called John XXII.

  ‘Uncle Spinello,’ cried Guccio, when he saw the fat man kneeling.

  ‘Ah, so you are his uncle! I like your nephew well, my son,’ said Duèze to the banker, motioning him to rise; ‘he has served me faithfully, and I wish to keep him by me. Embrace him, embrace him!’

  Guccio fell into Tolomei’s arms.

  ‘I bought it all up as you told me, and at six for ten,’ Tolomei immediately whispered, while Duèze continued blessing the crowd. ‘That Pope now owes us several thousands of livres. Bel lavoro, figlio mio. You are a true nephew of my own blood.’

  There was a man standing behind them with a face as long as those of the Cardinals; it was Signor Boccaccio, the principal traveller for the Bardi.

  ‘Ah, so you were inside, were you, rascal?’ he said to Guccio. ‘If I had known that, I should not have sold.’

  ‘And Marie? Where is Marie?’ Guccio asked his uncle anxiously.

  ‘Your Marie is well. She’s as beautiful as you are cunning, and if the little Lombard she is carrying takes after you both, he’ll get on in the world. But go quickly, go, my boy! Can’t you see that the Holy Father wants you?’

  3

  The Wages of Sin

  THE REGENT PHILIPPE WAS determined to attend the coronation of the Pope he had made, and thus establish himself as the Protector of Christendom.

  ‘It gave me enough trouble,’ he said. ‘It is only right that he should now help me to establish my government. I wish to be at Lyons for his coronation.’

  But the news from Artois continued disquieting. Robert had taken Arras, Avesnes and Thérouanne without difficulty, and went on conquering the countryside. In Paris Charles of Valois was secretly helping him.

  Faithful to the tactics of encirclement, which were natural to his character, the Regent began by working on the border regions of Artois in order to prevent the rebellion from spreading. He wrote to the barons of Picardy to remind them of their loyalty to the Crown of France, courteously intimating that he would tolerate no lapse from their duty; and a large contingent of troops and sergeants-at-arms was sent into the provostships to police the country. To the Flemings, who, after the lapse of a year, were still making mock of the Hutin’s ridiculous expedition in which he had lost his army in the mud, Philippe proposed a new treaty of peace which gave them very advantageous conditions.

  ‘In the mess we have been left to clear up we must be prepared to lose a little so as to save the whole,’ the Regent explained to his councillors.

  Even though his son-in-law, Jean de Fiennes, was one of Robert’s chief lieutenants, the Count of Flanders felt that such a good opportunity for making a treaty was unlikely to arise again. He agreed to negotiations and so remained neutral in the affairs of the neighbouring county.

  Philippe had thus to all intents and purposes shut the gates on Artois. He then sent Gaucher de Châtillon to negotiate directly with the leaders of the rebellion, and to assure them of the Countess Mahaut’s good intentions.

  ‘Listen well, Gaucher; you must not negotiate with Robert,’ he warned the Constable, ‘because that would be recognizing the rights he claims. We still consider he has forfeited Artois in accordance with my father’s judgment. You are going there only to negotiate the differences between the Countess and her vassals, which, in our view, have nothing to do with Robert. Pretend to ignore him.’

  ‘Monseigneur,’ said the Constable, ‘do you mean to make your mother-in-law triumph everywhere?’

  ‘Not at all, Gaucher; particularly if she has frequently abused her rights, as I think she has. The fact is that Dame Mahaut is an extremely imperious woman, and she believes that everyone was born expressly to serve her to the last farthing and the last drop of sweat! I want peace,’ the Regent continued, ‘and to achieve it there must be an equitable settlement. We know that the townsfolk support the Countess because they are always wrangling with the nobles, while the nobles have taken up Robert’s cause so as to get their wrongs righted. Find out if their demands are justified and try to satisfy them without impairing the prerogatives of the Crown; try to detach the barons from our turbulent cousin by pointing out to them that they can obtain more from us through justice than they can from him through violence.’

  ‘You’re a clever man, Monseigneur; you’re certainly a clever man,’ said the Constable. ‘I did not believe that in my latter years it would be given me to serve with such pleasure so wise a prince, who is not a third of my age.’

  Meanwhile the Regent, through the Count de Forez, was asking the Pope to postpone his coronation a little. Duèze, though properly anxious to see his election quickly confirmed by coronation, agreed most politely to a delay of a fortnight.

  But when the fortnight had elapsed the affairs of Artois were still far from settled; and the agreement with the Flemings could not be ratified before the 1st of September. Philippe therefore asked Duèze, this time through the Dauphin of Viennois, to postpone the ceremony once more, but Duèze, to the Regent’s surprise, showed firmness, almost obstinacy, by fixing the date of his coronation irrevocably for the 5th of September.

  He wished to hold it on that date for imperative reasons which he kept secret and which indeed would not have been apparent to all. The fact was that he had been consecrated Bishop of Fréjus on the 5th of September, in the year 1300; his protector, King Robert of Naples, had been crowned in the first week of September 1309; and, though it had been by forging a royal letter, it was on the 4th of September 1310 that the trick had succeeded in obtaining for him the episcopal see of Avignon.

  The new Pope’s relations with the stars were excellent, and he knew how to suit the stages of his own ascension to that of the sun.

  ‘If Monseigneur the Regent of France and Navarre, whom we love so well,’ he replied, ‘is prevented by the duties of the realm from being at our side on that solemn day, we shall regret it much, but we shall then no longer fear causing him so long a journey, and shall go and don the tiara in the town of Avignon.’

  Philippe of Poitiers signed the treaty with the Flemings on the morning of the 1st of September. On the 5th, at dawn, he reached Lyons, accompanied by the Count of Valois and the Count de La Marche, whom he did not wish to leave in Paris out of his sight, as well as Louis of Evreux.

  ‘You’ve made us ride as fast as a courier, Nephew,’ said Valois as he dismounted.

  They barely had time to put on the clothes specially prepared for the ceremony, which had been ordered by the Bursar, Geoffroy de Fleury. The Regent wore an open robe the colour of peach blossom, lined with two hundred skins of miniver.25 Charles of Valois, Louis of Evreux, Charles de La Marche and Philippe of Valois, who was also present at the ceremony, had each received as a present a robe of camocas lined in the same manner.

  In Lyons, which was all decked with flags, a huge crowd gathered to watch the procession.

  Jacques Duèze, preceded by the Regent of France, rode to the primatial church of Saint-Jean on horseback through a huge kneeling crowd. All the bells of the town were pealing. The reins of the Pontiff’s horse were held on one side by the Count of Evreux and on the other by the Count de La Marche. The papacy was closely framed by the French monarchy. The Cardinals followed, wearing their red hats, fastened under the chin by knotted strings above their copes. The bishops’ mitres sparkled in the sun. It was Cardinal Orsini, a descendant of Roman patricians, who placed the tiara on the head of Jacques Duèze, the son of a burgess of Cahors.

  Guccio, from a good place in the cathedral, was lost in admiration of his master. The little old man, with his thin chin and narrow shoulders who, four weeks earlier, had been thought to be dying, bore without difficulty the heavy sacerdotal emblems with which he was laden. The Pharaonic rites of the interminable ceremony,
which raised him so much above his fellows, making of him a symbol of divinity, seemed to leave their imprint on his personality almost without his knowing it, lending his features an unexpected and impressive majesty, which became more evident as the liturgy unfolded. He could not, however, restrain a slight smile when he donned the pontifical sandals.

  ‘Scarpinelli! They called me Scarpinelli, Cardinal Little Shoes,’ he thought. ‘They said I was the son of a cobbler. But now I’m wearing the little shoes! Lord, I have nothing further to wish for. I have but to rule well.’

  That very day he got the Regent to confer a patent of nobility on his brother Pierre Duèze, before proceeding, during the course of the next two years, to make five of his own nephews cardinals.

  If the patent of nobility which Philippe of Poitiers dictated himself after the ceremony was intended to honour the Holy Father through his brother, it nevertheless showed an astonishing aspect of the young Prince’s mind. ‘It is not family wealth,’ he wrote, ‘nor individual wealth, nor the other favours of fortune, which carry weight in the combination of moral qualities and meritorious actions. These are things which blind chance bestows on the deserving as on the undeserving, and which may happen equally to the worthy as to the unworthy … On the other hand, every man establishes himself as the inheritor of his own actions and his own merits, while it is of no importance whence we come, if indeed we even know from whom we come …’

  But the Regent had not journeyed so far or given the new Pope such marks of his esteem to obtain nothing in return. Between these two men, separated in age by half a century – ‘You are the rising sun, Monseigneur, and I am the setting sun,’ Duèze was accustomed to say to Philippe – there existed, since their first meeting, a secret affinity and an enduring understanding. John XXII did not forget the promises of Jacques Duèze, nor the Regent those of the Count of Poitiers. Hardly had the Regent broached the subject of the ecclesiastical benefices, whose first year’s income was to be paid to the Treasury, than the new Pope told him that the documents were ready for signing. But, before the seals were affixed, Philippe had a private conversation with Charles of Valois.