The Iron King (34 page)
‘What is all the noise about?’ asked Tolomei. ‘Is not the Archbishop alone?’
‘He has six guards with him, Signor,’ the servant replied.
Tolomei frowned; his expression changed to a certain hardness.
‘Open the shutters in my study,’ he said.
Monseigneur Jean de Marigny was already climbing the stairs. Tolomei waited for him, standing upon the landing. The Archbishop, slim and with a golden crucifix jiggling at his breast, immediately came to the point.
‘What, Messire, does this mean, this strange message that my brother has sent me during the night?’
Tolomei raised his plump, pointed hands in a pacific gesture.
‘Nothing, Monseigneur, that can in any way worry you, or was worth disturbing yourself for. I would have come to the Bishop’s Palace at your convenience. Will you come into my study? I think it will be more convenient to speak of our business there.’
The two men went into the room in which Tolomei normally worked. The servant was just finished removing the inner shutters which were ornamented with paintings. Then he put an armful of thin wood upon the embers still red in the fireplace and soon flames were crackling upwards. Tolomei made a sign to his servant to leave them.
‘You come accompanied, Monseigneur,’ he said. ‘Was that necessary? Do you not trust me? Do you think that you are in danger here? I had become accustomed, I must say, to a different kind of behaviour.’
He tried to make his voice sound formal, but his Tuscan accent was more noticeable than usual, which was a sign of anxiety.
Jean de Marigny sat down before the fire to which he extended his ringed hands.
‘This man is uncertain of himself and does not know quite how to take me,’ thought Tolomei. ‘He arrives here with a great to-do of armed men as if he were going to pillage the house, and now he sits there looking at his nails.’
‘Your haste to warn me has given me some disquiet,’ said the Archbishop at last. ‘I intended to come to see you, but I would have preferred to choose the time of my visit.’
‘But you have chosen it, Messire, you have chosen it. What I have said to Messire Enguerrand is no more than a matter of politeness, believe me.’
The Archbishop glanced quickly at Tolomei. The banker, apparently quite calm, fixed a single eye upon him.
‘Indeed, Messire Tolomei, I have a service to ask of you,’ he said.
‘I am always ready to render your lordship a service,’ replied Tolomei quietly.
‘Those … objects … that I … confided to you?’ said Jean de Marigny.
‘Extremely valuable objects indeed, which came from the possessions of the Templars,’ said Tolomei, defining them without a change in his tone of voice.
‘Have they been sold?’
‘I do not know, Monseigneur, I do not know. They have been sent out of France, as we agreed, since they could not be disposed of here. I imagine that some of them will have found a purchaser; I shall receive the advice notes at the end of the year.’
Tolomei, his fat body comfortably settled, his hands clasped upon his stomach, nodded his head good-humouredly.
‘And the receipt I signed? Do you still need it?’ said Jean de Marigny.
He was hiding his fear, but he hid it badly.
‘Are you sure you are not cold, Monseigneur? You are very white in the face,’ said Tolomei, leaning forward to place a log on the fire.
Then, as if he had forgotten the question put by the Archbishop, he went on, ‘What do you think of the matter that has been several times under discussion by the King’s Council during the last week, Monseigneur? Is it possible that they are intending to steal our goods, to reduce us to penury, to exile and death?’
‘I have no information,’ said the Archbishop. ‘These are affairs of state.’
Tolomei shook his head.
‘Yesterday I made Monseigneur your brother a proposition which it seems to me he does not wholly understand. It is most unfortunate. It is said that we are about to be despoiled in the interests of the kingdom. But indeed, we are offering to serve the kingdom by making an enormous loan, Monseigneur, and your brother remains silent. Has he not said a word of it to you? This is most regrettable, very regrettable indeed!’
Jean de Marigny got up.
‘I cannot discuss the decision of the King, Messire,’ he said drily.
‘As yet it is not a decision of the King,’ replied Tolomei. ‘Can you not tell the Coadjutor that the Lombards, called upon to surrender their lives which are at the King’s disposition, believe me, and their gold which is also his, wish, if possible, to preserve their lives? They willingly offer their gold when it is intended to take it from them by force. Why not listen to them?’
There was a silence. Jean de Marigny, completely immobile, seemed to be looking into some distance beyond the wall.
‘What are you going to do with that parchment I signed for you?’ he asked.
Tolomei ran his tongue across his lips.
‘What in my place would you do with it, Monseigneur? Just think for a moment. It is naturally a strange thought for you. But just imagine that there was a threat to ruin you and that you possessed something – a talisman, that’s it, a talisman which might serve you to evade ruin.’
He went towards the window, hearing a noise in the courtyard. Porters were arriving, loaded with packing-cases and bales of cloth. Tolomei automatically valued the merchandise entering his premises that day and sighed.
‘Yes, a talisman against ruin,’ he murmured.
‘You are not suggesting that that receipt …’
‘Yes, Monseigneur, that is exactly what I am suggesting and wish to suggest,’ said Tolomei in a hard voice. ‘That receipt is evidence that you have embezzled the possessions of the Templars which were forfeit to the Crown. It is evidence that you have stolen, and stolen from the King.’
He looked the Archbishop straight in the face. ‘I have done it now,’ he thought. ‘It is a question of who will flinch first.’
‘You will be held to have been my accomplice!’ said Jean de Marigny.
‘In that case we shall swing together at Montfaucon like a couple of thieves,’ replied Tolomei coldly. ‘But I shall not swing alone.’
‘You are an unmitigated rascal!’ cried Jean de Marigny.
Tolomei shrugged his shoulders.
‘I am not an archbishop, Monseigneur, and it is not I who have embezzled the gold in which the Templars paraded the body of Christ. I am but a merchant. And at this moment we are making a deal, whether you like it or not. That is the basic meaning of everything we are saying. If there is no robbing the Lombards, there will be no scandal as far as you are concerned. Should I fall, Monseigneur, you will fall too. And from a greater height. And the Coadjutor, who is too rich not to have made enemies, will be brought down with you.’
Jean de Marigny seized Tolomei by the arm.
‘Give me back the receipt,’ he said.
Tolomei looked at the Archbishop; his lips were white; his chin, hands, indeed the whole of his body was trembling.
Tolomei gently disengaged himself from the gripping fingers.
‘No,’ he said.
‘I will give you back the two thousand pounds you advanced me,’ said Jean de Marigny, ‘and you may keep all the profits of the sale.’
‘No.’
‘Five thousand.’
‘No.’
‘Ten thousand! Ten thousand pounds for that receipt.’
Tolomei smiled.
‘And where will you find them? I know better than you do yourself of what your fortune consists. I should have to lend you them, too.’
Jean de Marigny, his hands clenched, said, ‘Ten thousand pounds! I shall find them. My brother will help me.’
‘Monseigneur, I have offered, as my contribution alone, seventeen thousand pounds to the royal Treasury!’
The Archbishop realised that he must change his tactics.
‘And supposing I succeed in obtaining from my brother the assurance that you will be excepted from the Order in Council? You will be allowed to leave with all your fortune and begin again elsewhere.’
Tolomei reflected for a moment. He was being made the offer of escaping by himself. Against this assurance, was it worth while risking a huge throw of the dice?
‘No, Monseigneur,’ he replied. ‘I will suffer the fate of everyone else. I do not want to begin again elsewhere, and indeed have no reason to do so. By now, I have as many roots in France as you. I am a
bourgeois du roi
. I wish to continue living in this house, which I have built, and in Paris. I have lived thirty-two years of my life in it, Monseigneur, and, if God wills, it is here that I shall die.’
His resolution and the tone of voice in which it was expressed were not lacking in grandeur.
‘Moreover,’ he added, ‘even if I desired to give you back the receipt, I could not do so; it is no longer here.’
‘You lie!’ cried the Archbishop.
‘It has gone to Sienna, Monseigneur! To my cousin Tolomei with whom I have many business interests in common.’
Jean de Marigny did not reply. He went quickly to the door and called, ‘Souillard! Chauvelot!’
‘Now, we must put a brave face on it!’ Tolomei thought.
Two great fellows of six foot apiece appeared, pikes in their hands.
‘Watch this man; see that he doesn’t move an inch from where he stands!’ said the Archbishop. ‘And close the door. Tolomei, if you cross me, you’ll regret it! I’m going to search till I find the document! I shall not leave without it!’
‘I shall regret nothing, Monseigneur, and you will find nothing. You will leave here in the same state as you arrived, whether I am alive or dead. But if by chance I am dead, you may as well know that it will do you no good. For my cousin in Sienna has been warned, if I should die before my time, to make the existence of this receipt known to King Philip,’ said Tolomei.
His heart was beating too quickly in his fat body, and he felt the cold sweat trickling down the small of his back. Feeling a sort of internal support, as if his back were against an invisible wall, he managed to remain calm.
The Archbishop searched the chests, turned out the drawers full of credit notes upon the floor, scattered the files of papers and the rolls of parchment. From time to time he looked secretly at the banker in order to see whether his effort at intimidation was succeeding. He went into Tolomei’s room and the latter heard him turning his cupboards to chaos.
‘Luckily Nogaret is dead,’ thought Tolomei. ‘He would have gone about this business differently and would certainly have found some way of defeating me.’
The Archbishop reappeared.
‘You can go,’ he said to the two guards.
He was defeated. Tolomei had not given way to fear.
Some agreement must be reached.
‘Well then?’ asked Marigny.
‘Well, Monseigneur,’ said Tolomei calmly, ‘I have nothing more to say to you than I said a little while ago. All this disorder is completely useless. Talk to the Coadjutor and press him to accept the offer I have made while there is yet time. Otherwise …’
Without finishing his sentence, the banker went to the door and opened it. Jean de Marigny went out without another word.
The scene which took place that very day between the Archbishop and his brother was terrifying. Suddenly face to face, their personalities nakedly revealed, the two Marignys who, until then, had walked in step, were now at odds.
The Coadjutor overwhelmed his younger brother with contemptuous reproaches, and the younger brother defended himself as best he could, but meanly.
‘You’re a fine one to blame me!’ he cried. ‘Where does your wealth come from? From what Jews sent to the stake? From what Templars you have burnt? I have only followed your example. I have been useful enough to you in your plots; now it’s your turn to be useful to me.’
‘Had I known what you were like, I would not have made you an archbishop,’ said Enguerrand.
‘You would have found no one but me to sentence the Templars, and you very well know it.’
The Coadjutor knew very well that the exercise of power leads to unworthy relationships. But he felt suddenly oppressed by being brought face to face with the consequences in his own family. A man who would agree to betray his own conscience for the sake of a mitre, might well also steal and betray. This man happened to be his brother, that was all.
Enguerrand de Marigny took up the mass of papers upon which he had prepared the Orders in Council against the Lombards and, with a furious gesture, threw it into the fire.
‘A lot of work for nothing,’ he said. ‘Such a lot of work!’
C
RESSAY, IN THE CLEAR LIGHT
of spring, with the transparent leaves of the trees and the quivering silver surface of the Mauldre, remained a happy memory for Guccio. But when, on this October morning, the young Siennese, continuously looking over his shoulder to make certain that he was not being followed by archers, arrived upon the heights of Cressay, he wondered for a moment whether he had not made a mistake. The autumn seemed somehow to have shrunk the Manor House, to have made it sink into the earth. ‘Were its towers so low?’ Guccio said to himself. ‘And can one’s memory alter so much in a mere six months?’ The courtyard had become, under the rain, a muddy bog into which the horses sank above their pasterns. ‘At least,’ thought Guccio, ‘there is little chance that anyone will look for me here.’
