The Royal Succession

by Maurice Druon

‘How long will the ceremony last?’ he asked.

  ‘Two full hours, Sire.’

  ‘Well, we must try to get some sleep. We must be fit tomorrow.’

  But when he had returned to the Archiepiscopal Palace he went to the Queen’s room and sat on the edge of her bed. He talked to his wife of things that seemed to have but little importance; he talked of people’s places in the cathedral; he was concerned about his daughters’ clothes.

  Jeanne was already half-asleep. She had to struggle to give him her attention; she discerned in her husband a nervous tension, a sort of mounting uneasiness against which he was seeking protection.

  ‘My dear,’ she asked him, ‘do you want to sleep with me?’

  He seemed to hesitate.

  ‘I cannot; the chamberlain has not been warned,’ he replied.

  ‘You are King, Philippe,’ Jeanne said smiling; ‘you can give your chamberlain what orders you please.’

  He took some time to make up his mind. This young man who knew how to control his most powerful vassals by means of arms or money felt embarrassed at informing his servant that, owing to unforeseen desire, he was going to share his wife’s bed.

  Finally he called one of the housemaids who slept in the adjoining room and sent her to warn Adam Héron that he need not wait for him nor sleep that night outside his door.

  Then, among the parrots of the hangings, beneath the silver trefoils of the baldaquin, he undressed and slipped between the sheets. And his great uneasiness, from which all the soldiers of the Constable could not protect him, because it was a man’s uneasiness and not a king’s, was calmed at the touch of this woman’s body, her long firm legs, her soft belly and warm breasts.

  ‘My darling,’ Philippe murmured into Jeanne’s hair, ‘my darling, answer me, have you deceived me? Do not fear to answer me, for even if you did deceive me once, you are forgiven.’

  Jeanne clasped his long body, so spare and so strong, feeling the bones beneath her fingers.

  ‘Never, Philippe, I swear it,’ she replied. ‘I was tempted to do so, I confess it, but I never yielded.’

  ‘Thank you, darling,’ Philippe whispered. ‘Nothing is lacking to my kingship.’

  Nothing more was lacking to his kingship, because he was in truth like every man in his kingdom; he needed a woman, and one that should be his own.35

  10

  The Bells of Rheims

  A FEW HOURS LATER, lying on a state bed decorated with the arms of France, Philippe in a long robe of vermilion velvet, his hands joined at his breast, was awaiting the bishops who were to lead him to the cathedral.

  The first chamberlain, Adam Héron, also sumptuously clothed, was standing by the bed. The pale January morning spread a milky glow over the room.

  There was a knock at the door.

  ‘Whom do you want?’ asked the chamberlain.

  ‘I want the King.’

  ‘Who wants him?’

  ‘His brother.’

  Philippe and Adam Héron looked at each other in surprise and vexation.

  ‘All right. Let him come in,’ said Philippe, sitting up a little.

  ‘You’ve got very little time, Sire,’ said the chamberlain.

  The King signed to him that the audience would not last long.

  The handsome Charles de La Marche was in travelling clothes. He had just arrived in Rheims and had only stopped for a moment to see his uncle Valois. There was anger apparent both in his expression and the way he walked.

  Angry though he was, the sight of his brother dressed in vermilion and lying in a hieratic pose impressed him. He halted for a moment, his eyes wide in astonishment.

  ‘How he would like to be in my place,’ Philippe thought, then aloud he said: ‘So here you are, my good brother. I’m grateful to you for having understood your duty and for giving the lie to the wicked talk which had it that you would not be at my coronation. I am grateful to you. But you must hurry and get dressed, for you cannot appear like that. You’ll be late.’

  ‘Brother,’ replied La Marche, ‘I must first talk to you on an important matter.’

  ‘On an important matter, or something which is merely important to you? The important thing at the moment is not to keep the clergy waiting. In a minute the bishops will be here to fetch me.’

  ‘Well, they’ll have to wait!’ cried Charles. ‘Everyone in turn gets you to listen to him and gets something out of you. I seem to be the only person to whom you pay no attention; this time you’ll listen to me!’

  ‘All right, Charles, let’s talk,’ said Philippe, sitting on the edge of the bed. ‘But I warn you that we shall have to be brief.’

  La Marche made a gesture with his head which seemed to say: ‘We shall see, we shall see.’ He took a chair, doing his best to look important and hold his head high.

  ‘Poor Charles,’ thought Philippe, ‘he wants to ape the manners of our uncle Valois, but he hasn’t the presence.’

  ‘Philippe,’ went on La Marche, ‘I have asked you over and over again to confer a peerage on me, and increase my appanage and my revenues. Have I asked you, or haven’t I?’

  ‘What a family!’ Philippe murmured.

  ‘And you’ve always refused to listen to me. But I’m asking you now for the last time; I’ve come to Rheims, but I shall attend your coronation only if I am given a peer’s place. If I’m not, I shall go away again.’

  Philippe looked at him for a moment in silence, and beneath that glance Charles felt himself diminish and dissolve, lose all self-assurance and all importance.

  In the presence of their father, Philip the Fair, the young Prince had in the old days felt the same sensation of his own insignificance.

  ‘One moment, Brother,’ said Philippe, rising to his feet and going to speak to Adam Héron, who had withdrawn into a corner of the room.

  ‘Adam,’ he asked in a low voice, ‘have the barons who went to fetch the holy ampulla from the Abbey of Saint-Rémy returned?’

  ‘Yes, Sire, they are already at the cathedral with the clergy of the abbey.’

  ‘Very well, then deal with the town gates as at Lyons.’

  He made three almost imperceptible movements of the hand, which signified: portcullises, bars, keys.

  ‘On the day of the coronation, Sire?’ murmured Héron in stupefaction.

  ‘Exactly, on the day of the coronation. And make haste.’

  The chamberlain left the room and Philippe came back to the bed.

  ‘Well, Brother, what were you asking of me?’

  ‘A peerage, Philippe.’

  ‘Oh, yes, a peerage. Well, Brother, I’ll give you one, I’ll give you one with pleasure; but not at once, because you have made your request too well known. If I yielded now, it would be said that I was acting not because I wished but because I was constrained to it, and everyone would think that he had a right to behave as you do. You must know that there will be no more appanages created or augmented before an ordinance has been promulgated declaring that no part of the royal domains is alienable.’36

  ‘But you no longer need the peerage of Poitiers! Why don’t you give it to me? You must admit that my position is insufficient!’

  ‘Insufficient?’ cried Philippe, who was beginning to lose his temper. ‘You were born the son of a king, you’re the brother of a king; do you think that your position is insufficient for a man of your intelligence and capacities?’

  ‘My capacities?’ said Charles.

  ‘Yes, your capacities, which are limited. The moment has come when you must be told so to your face, Charles. You’re a fool; you always have been and you don’t get any better as you grow older. When you were no more than a child you already seemed to everyone so stupid, so backward in intelligence, that our mother herself despised you, sainted woman that she was! She called you “the goose”. Do you remember, Charles? “The goose.” You were one and you’ve remained one. Our father used to make you sit on his Council; what did you learn there? You used to gape at the flies, while th
e affairs of the realm were being discussed, and I can’t ever remember your uttering a remark which did not make either our father or Messire Enguerrand shrug his shoulders. Do you think that I want to make you more powerful because of the great help you’d be to me, when for the last six months you’ve done nothing but conspire against me? You had everything to gain from taking another road. You think you’ve got a strong character, and that people will bend to your will? No one has forgotten the pitiful figure you cut at Maubuisson, when you were bleating: “Blanche, Blanche!” and crying at the injury done you before the whole Court.’

  ‘Philippe! Is it your place to say that to me?’ cried La Marche, sitting bolt upright, his features contorted. ‘Is it your place when your wife …’

  ‘I won’t hear a word against Jeanne, not a word against the Queen!’ Philippe interrupted, raising his hand. ‘I know that to do me an injury, or to feel less alone in your misfortune, you continue to spread your lies.’

  ‘You have acquitted Jeanne, because you wanted to keep Burgundy, because, as always, you have put your interest before your honour. But perhaps my unfaithful wife can still also serve her turn.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean what I say!’ replied Charles de La Marche. ‘And I tell you, too, that if you want to see me at the coronation, I insist on sitting in a peer’s place. A peerage, or I go!’

  Adam Héron came into the room and informed the King, by a nod of the head, that his orders had been passed on. Philippe thanked him in the same manner.

  ‘Go then, Brother,’ he said. ‘There is only one person who is necessary to me today: the Archbishop of Rheims, who will crown me. And you’re not the Archbishop, I imagine? So go; go if you wish.’

  ‘But why’, cried Charles, ‘does our uncle Valois get what he wants, whereas I never do?’

  Through the half-opened door could be heard the chanting of the approaching procession.

  ‘When I think that if I were to die it would be this fool who would be Regent!’ Philippe thought. He put his hand on his brother’s shoulder.

  ‘When you have injured the kingdom for as many long years as our uncle has, you can demand the same price. But, thank God, you’re less assiduous in your folly!’

  He glanced at the door, and the Count de La Marche went out, pale, a prey to impotent rage, only to meet a great crowd of clergy.

  Philippe went back to the bed and lay down in the same position, his hands clasped, his eyes shut.

  There was a knocking at the door; this time it was the bishops knocking with their crosiers.

  ‘Whom do you want?’ said Adam Héron.

  ‘We want the King,’ replied a grave voice.

  ‘Who wants him?’

  ‘The ecclesiastical peers.’

  The doors were opened and the Bishops of Langres and Beauvais entered, their mitres on their heads, their reliquaries about their necks. They went up to the bed, helped the King to rise, presented him with holy water, and, while he knelt on a silken cushion, said prayers.

  Adam Héron placed about Philippe’s shoulders a cape of vermilion velvet matching his robe. Then, suddenly, there broke out a quarrel over precedence. Normally the Duke-Archbishop of Laon took the place at the King’s right. But at that time the see of Laon was vacant. The Bishop of Langres, Guillaume de Durfort, was supposed to replace him. But Philippe chose the Bishop of Beauvais for the place. He had two reasons for doing this: on the one hand, the Bishop of Langres had somewhat too openly welcomed the ex-Templars into his diocese, giving them places as clerks; on the other hand, the Bishop of Beauvais was a Marigny – a relation of the great Enguerrand and of his brother, the Archbishop of Sens – and Philippe wished to do homage, if not to the Bishop himself, at least to his name.

  It therefore happened that the King found himself with two prelates on his right and none on his left.

  ‘I am a duke-bishop; it is for me to be on the right,’ said Guillaume de Durfort.

  ‘The see of Beauvais is more ancient than that of Langres,’ replied Marigny.

  Their faces began to grow red beneath their mitres.

  ‘Messeigneurs, the King decides,’ said Philippe.

  Durfort obeyed and changed places.

  ‘One discontented man the more,’ thought Philippe.

  Amid crucifixes, candles and the smoke of incense, they went down into the street where the whole Court, the Queen at its head, was already formed up in procession. They walked to the cathedral.

  There was great cheering as the King passed by. Philippe was somewhat pale and screwed up his shortsighted eyes. The earth of Rheims seemed suddenly to have become strangely hard beneath his feet; he felt as if he were walking on marble.

  At the doors of the cathedral there was a halt for more prayers; then, to the sound of the organ, Philippe advanced up the nave towards the altar, the great dais and the throne on which, at last, he took his seat. His first gesture was to indicate to the Queen the seat prepared for her on the right of his own.

  The church was crowded. Philippe could see nothing but a sea of coronets, embroidered breasts and shoulders, jewels and chasubles glittering in the light of the candles. A human firmament was spread at his feet.

  He turned his eyes upon his more immediate neighbourhood, looking to right and left to see who was on the dais. Charles of Valois was there and Mahaut of Artois, monumental, shimmering in brocades and velvets, as she smiled at him; Louis of Evreux was sitting a little further away. But Philippe did not see Charles de La Marche, nor Philippe of Valois, whose father was also searching for him.

  The Archbishop of Rheims, Robert de Courtenay, weighed down with sacerdotal ornaments, rose from his throne opposite the royal throne. Philippe rose too and went to kneel before the altar.

  Throughout the singing of the Te Deum Philippe was wondering: ‘Have the gates been properly closed? Have my orders been faithfully carried out? My brother is not the man to stay hiding in a room while I’m being crowned. And why is Philippe of Valois absent? What are they plotting? I should have left Galard outside to be in a better position to command his crossbowmen.’

  But while the King was anxious, his younger brother was paddling in a marsh.

  When he had left the royal chamber in a rage, Charles de La Marche had gone at once to the Valois lodging. He had not found his uncle there because he had already gone to the cathedral, only Philippe of Valois, who was finishing dressing and to whom he breathlessly related what he called his brother’s ‘felony’.

  The two cousins were somewhat similar, with the difference that Philippe of Valois was physically bigger and stronger than Charles; as regards their intelligence, they complemented each other in vanity and folly.

  ‘If that’s the case, I shan’t attend the ceremony either; I’ll leave with you,’ declared Valois the younger.

  Thereupon they assembled their escorts and went proudly to one of the town gates. Their pride, however, had had to yield before the sergeants-at-arms.

  ‘No one may enter or leave. The King’s orders.’

  ‘Even Princes of France?’

  ‘Not even Princes; the King’s orders.’

  ‘Ah, he wants to coerce us!’ cried Philippe of Valois, who was now making the affair his own. ‘Well, we’ll get out all the same!’

  ‘How do you propose to do that, since the gates are closed?’

  ‘Let’s pretend to go back to our lodgings, and leave it to me.’

  They thereupon indulged in a schoolboy trick. The equerries of the young Count of Valois were sent to find ladders and these they quickly placed at the end of a blind alley at a place where the walls appeared to be unguarded. And then the two cousins, their bottoms in the air, scaled the wall, not for one moment imagining that on the further side lay the Vesle marshes. They let themselves down into the fosse with ropes. Charles de La Marche lost his foothold in the muddy, icy water; he would have been drowned if his cousin, who was six feet tall and had strong muscles, had not fished him out in time. T
hen they went off, like a couple of blind men, groping across the marshes. There was soon no question of their giving up. Going on or going back amounted to the same thing. They were risking their lives and it took them three full hours to get out of the mire. The few equerries who had followed them were floundering about them and did not hesitate to curse them aloud.

  ‘If ever we get out of here,’ cried La Marche to keep up his courage, ‘I know what I shall do. I shall go to Château-Gaillard!’

  Young Valois, dripping with sweat in spite of the cold, looked his stupefaction across the rotting reeds.

  ‘Do you still care for Blanche?’ he asked.

  ‘I no longer care for her at all, but I want some information from her. She is the last person who can say whether Louis’s daughter is a bastard or not, and whether Philippe was a cuckold like me! With her evidence I shall be able to disgrace my brother in my turn, and have the crown given to Louis’s daughter.’

  The clamour of the bells of Rheims came to their ears.

  ‘When I think, when I think it’s for him they’re ringing!’ said Charles de La Marche, up to his waist in mud, pointing a hand towards the town.

  In the cathedral the chamberlains had unclothed the King. Philippe the Long, standing before the altar, had nothing on his body but two shirts, one over the other, one of fine linen next to the skin, the other of white silk, wide open at the breast and under the arms. The King, before being invested with the insignia of his majesty, was presenting himself to his assembled subjects as an almost naked man, and one, indeed, who was shivering.

  All the emblems of coronation were laid out on the altar, under the guardianship of the Abbot of Saint-Denis, who had brought them. Adam Héron took from the Abbot’s hands the hose, long silken garments embroidered with lilies, and helped the King to put them on, as also the shoes, also of embroidered cloth. Then Anseau de Joinville, in the absence of the Duke of Burgundy, fastened the gold spurs to the King’s feet, and then immediately removed them again. The Archbishop blessed the great sword which was supposed to be that of Charlemagne, and fastened it to the King’s side with the baldric while reciting: ‘Accipe hunc gladium cum Dei benedictione …’fn1