The Iron King (35 page)

To the limping servant who came forward he threw the reins, saying, ‘Rub the horses down and feed them!’

The door of the house opened and Marie de Cressay appeared.

‘Messire Guccio!’ she cried.

Her surprise was so great that she turned pale and had to lean against the door frame.

‘How beautiful she is,’ thought Guccio; ‘and she still loves me.’

The cracks in the walls disappeared and the towers of the Manor House regained their remembered proportions.

But Marie was already shouting towards the inside of the house, ‘Mother! Messire Guccio has come back.’

Dame Eliabel received the young man warmly, kissed him on both cheeks and clasped him to her extensive bosom. The thought of Guccio had often been present to her widowed nights. She took his hand, made him sit down, and ordered wine and pasties to be brought him.

Guccio accepted his welcome gratefully and explained the reason for his coming as he had thought it out: he had come to Neauphle to put some order into the branch of the bank which appeared to be suffering from maladministration. The clerks were not keeping proper track of the debtors. At once Dame Eliabel grew anxious. ‘You gave us a whole year,’ she said. ‘Winter has come upon us after a very bad harvest and we have not as yet …’

Guccio was indefinite about this, intimating that the squires of Cressay, since they were his friends, would not be allowed to be unduly pressed. Dame Eliabel asked Guccio to stay in the Manor House. He would, she said, find nowhere in the town where he would be more comfortable or have more society. Guccio accepted the invitation and sent for his luggage.

‘I have brought,’ he said, ‘some pieces of cloth and some ornaments which I hope will please you. As for Pierre and Jean, I have a couple of well-trained falcons for them which will help them to be even more successful in hunting, if that is possible.’

The cloth, the ornaments and the falcons astonished the whole household and were received with cries of joy. Pierre and Jean, having returned from their daily hunting expedition, with that odour of earth and blood which adhered to them like a garment, asked Guccio a hundred questions. This companion, miraculously arrived, when they were making up their minds to the long boredom of the bad months, seemed to them more worthy of affection than even upon his first visit. One might have thought that they had known each other all their lives.

‘And what has happened to our friend Provost Portefruit?’ asked Guccio.

‘He continues to steal as much as he can, but thank God no longer from us, thanks to you.’

Marie slipped in and out of the room, bending over the fire as she poked it, placing new straw upon the curtained pallet. She said nothing, but never stopped looking at Guccio. The latter, finding himself alone with her towards evening, took her gently by the elbows and drew her to him.

‘Can you see nothing in my eyes which reminds you of felicity?’ he said, borrowing the phrase from a romance of chivalry he had recently read.

‘Oh yes, Messire!’ replied Marie in a shaken voice, her eyes opening wide. ‘I have never ceased from imagining you here, distant though you may have been. I have forgotten nothing and go back on nothing.’

He tried to think of some excuse for not having returned for six months, and for having sent no message. To his surprise, Marie, far from reproaching him, thanked him for having returned quicker than she had expected.

‘You said that you would come back at the end of the year on business,’ she said. ‘I didn’t expect to see you sooner. But even if you had not come at all, I should have waited for you all my life.’

Guccio had retained from Cressay the memory of a sweet and beautiful girl, and a certain regret for a love affair which had come to nothing, but to be quite frank he had thought of her but seldom during all these months. Now he found her wonderful and fascinating, grown like a plant through spring and summer. ‘How lucky I am!’ he thought. ‘She might have forgotten me or got married.’

As often happens with men of unfaithful nature, this particular young man, infatuated though he was with her, was fundamentally modest about love, because he imagined other people to be like himself. He could not believe, having seen her so little, that he had inspired so strong and rare a feeling.

‘Marie,’ he said with newly found warmth, ‘in order not to lie to you as men usually do, not only have I never ceased thinking of you, but nothing has altered the feelings I had for you.’

They stood face to face, both overcome by their feelings, and both somewhat embarrassed by their words and gestures.

‘The field of rye …’ Guccio murmured.

He bent down and put his lips to Marie’s which opened like a ripe fruit.

He thought this was the appropriate moment to ask her for the help he needed.

‘Marie,’ he said, ‘I have not come here on any business to do with the branch of our bank, nor upon any question of your family’s debt. But I do not wish to, nor indeed can I, hide anything from you. It would be an offence to the love I bear you. The secret I am going to tell you is a new link which I offer you, and it is a serious one, because it affects the lives of many people, as well as my own. My uncle and powerful friends have charged me with the business of hiding in a sure place a certain document, which has to do both with affairs of state and their own safety. Undoubtedly, at this moment, there are archers searching for me,’ went on Guccio who, as usual, was beginning to boast. ‘There were twenty places in which I could have looked for a hiding-place, but it was to you, Marie, that I came. My life from now on depends upon your silence.’

‘No, it is upon you,’ Marie said, ‘that my life depends, my lord. I have faith only in God and in the man who first held me in his arms. My life is his.’

Having convinced himself as he talked, Guccio felt for Marie a great surge of gratitude, tenderness and desire. However conceited he might be, he was nevertheless surprised at having inspired so persistent, powerful, and reliable a passion.

‘My life is yours,’ the girl went on. ‘Your secret is mine. I shall conceal what you want concealed. I shall be silent about what you wish me to keep silent and your secret will die with me.’

Tears were forming in her dark blue eyes. ‘Like this,’ thought Guccio, ‘she resembles those spring mornings when the sun shines and rain falls at the same time.’

Then, coming back to what was on his mind, he said, ‘What I have to hide is contained in a leaden box hardly bigger than my two hands. Is there anywhere here?’

Marie thought for a moment.

‘In the chapel,’ she replied. ‘We will go there tomorrow at dawn. My brothers leave the house to hunt at first light. Tomorrow my mother will leave but a little later, since she has to shop in the town. I only hope that she will not want to take me with her! But in that case I shall say that I have a sore throat.’

Guccio murmured his thanks, while Dame Eliabel’s step could be heard outside.

Upon this occasion, since Guccio was staying for a longer time, he was lodged on the first floor, in a vast, clean but chilly room. He went to bed, his dagger within reach, and the leaden box containing the Archbishop’s receipt beneath his head. He had made up his mind not to go to sleep. He did not know that at that precise hour the two brothers Marigny had had their terrible interview and that the Orders in Council directed against the Lombards were already burnt.

Fighting to keep his eyes open, he counted up the number of women he had already had (he was not yet nineteen and the addition took but little time to make), thought of the two young townswomen whom he was currently engaged in assisting to deceive their husbands and, comparing them to Marie, came to the conclusion that they were both immoral and not particularly beautiful.

He did not know that he had fallen asleep. A sound woke him up with a start; for a moment he thought that they were coming to arrest him and ran to the window. However, it was Pierre and Jean de Cressay, accompanied by two peasants, with their new falcons at their wrists, leaving the house. Then doors banged; a grey mare, weary with age, was brought for Dame Eliabel, who departed in her turn, escorted by the limping servant. Guccio put on his boots and waited.

A few moments later Marie called him from the ground floor, and Guccio went down, hiding the leaden box beneath his cloak.

The chapel was a small vaulted room, part of the interior of the Manor House, facing east; its walls were whitewashed.

Marie lit a taper at the oil-lamp burning before a statue of Saint John the Evangelist indifferently carved in wood. In the Cressay family the Christian name of Jean was always given the eldest son.

‘I found the hiding place when I was a child, playing with my brothers,’ said Marie. ‘Come.’

She took Guccio to one side of the altar.

‘There, push this stone,’ she said, lowering the taper to light the spot.

Guccio pushed the stone, but nothing moved.

‘No, not like that.’

Marie handed the taper to Guccio and leant upon the stone in a particular way that made it swivel back upon itself, opening up a hiding place under the base of the altar. In the light of the flame Guccio saw a skull and some pieces of bone.

‘Who is it?’ he asked.

He was superstitious and made the sign against the evil eye behind him with his fingers.

‘I don’t know,’ said Marie. ‘No one knows.’

Next to the whitened skull Guccio deposited the leaden box which contained the damning evidence against the most powerful prelate in France.

When the stone was pushed back into place it was impossible to tell that anyone had touched it.

‘Our secret is locked in the hands of God,’ Marie said.

Guccio took her in his arms and tried to kiss her.

‘No, not here,’ she said in a frightened voice. ‘Not here in the chapel.’

They came back into the Great Hall where a servant was laying the table with the bread and milk of the first meal of the day. Guccio stood in front of the fire until the servant had gone and Marie came to him.

Then they linked hands, Marie leaning her head on Guccio’s shoulder and thus they remained for a long moment. As she leaned against him, she was learning to understand his male body, the first that she had ever held in her arms and the only one that she ever would.

‘I shall love you for ever, even if you cease to love me,’ she said.

Then she went and poured the milk into the bowls, and broke the bread into it. Every movement she made was implicit with happiness. Guccio thought of the chalky skull he had seen under the altar steps.

Four days went by. Guccio accompanied the two brothers hunting and was not unskilful. He made several visits to the branch at Neauphle in order to justify his stay in the district. Once he met Provost Portefruit, who recognised him and saluted him with servility. This salute reassured Guccio. If some persecution of the Lombards had taken place, Messire Portefruit would not have treated him with such politeness. ‘And should it be he who comes to arrest me one day soon,’ thought Guccio, ‘the thousand pounds I’ve brought will be a help in bribing him.’

Apparently Dame Eliabel had no suspicion of what was going on between her daughter and the young Siennese. Guccio was convinced of this by overhearing a conversation one evening between the good lady and her younger son. Guccio was in his room on the first floor. Dame Eliabel and Pierre de Cressay were talking by the fire in the Great Hall, and their voices came up through the chimney.

‘What a pity Guccio is not of noble birth,’ Pierre said. ‘He would make a good husband for my sister. He is good-looking and well-educated, and in a desirable position in the world. I wonder if this is not something we should think about.’

Dame Eliabel did not receive the suggestion kindly.

‘Never!’ she cried. ‘Money has turned your head, my son. We are poor at the present moment, but our blood gives us the right to expect the best alliances, and I shall not give my daughter to a young man of plebeian birth who, moreover, is not even a Frenchman. Certainly the young man is pleasing, but let him not be so ill-advised as to make love to Marie. I should stop it at once. A Lombard! My daughter given to a Lombard! Besides, he has not even thought of it, and if my age did not give me a certain modesty, I would admit to you that he has more eyes for me than he has for her, and that is why he is here, as much at home as a graft upon a tree.’

Guccio, even though he smiled at the Lady of the Manor’s illusions about him, was hurt by the contempt she felt for his plebeian birth and his profession. ‘These people borrow money from you to live, don’t pay you back what they owe you, and still consider you less than one of their peasants. And what would you do, my good lady, without the Lombards?’ Guccio said to himself in annoyance. ‘All right, then! You try to marry your daughter off to some great lord and see how she accepts the idea.’

At the same time he felt a certain pride at having so successfully seduced a daughter of the nobility, and it was that night that he determined to marry her in spite of all the obstacles that could be placed in his path, indeed because of these very obstacles. He succeeded in persuading himself of a vast number of admirable reasons for this course, without admitting the only true one: that he loved her.

During the meal that followed, he looked at Marie, thinking, ‘She is mine: she is mine!’ And every feature of Marie’s face, her lovely upturned eyelashes, her eyes flecked with gold, her parted lips, all seemed to answer him, ‘I am yours.’ And Guccio kept asking himself, ‘Why can’t the others see it?’

The following day Guccio found at Neauphle a message from his uncle which informed him that the danger, for the moment, was over; Guccio was to return at once.

Guccio had, therefore, to make it known that important business called him back to Paris. Dame Eliabel, Pierre and Jean evidenced much regret. Marie said nothing, merely went on with the embroidery at which she was working but, as soon as she was alone with Guccio, she allowed her sorrow to become manifest. Had some disaster occurred? Was Guccio in danger?

He reassured her. On the contrary, thanks to himself, thanks to her, thanks to the document concealed in the chapel, the men who desired the destruction of the Italian financiers were defeated.