The King Without a Kingdom (31 page)

‘The banners of Foix,’ answered Phoebus, ‘will be raised as a vassal’s must, as soon as I have paid my homage to you, sire my cousin. And those of Béarn will follow, if I so wish.’

What a great success as a supper of reconciliation! The archbishop-chancellor, surprised and displeased, vainly went about patching things up. Bucy showed a wooden face. But deep down inside, he exulted. He felt that he was the true master.

The King of Navarre’s name wasn’t even pronounced, even though Queen Joan and Queen Blanche were present.

Upon leaving the palace, Ernauton of Spain, the giant of an equerry, said to the Count of Foix – I wasn’t in there, but this is the gist of what was reported back to me: ‘I admired your patience. If I were Phoebus, I would not wait for another insult, I would leave immediately for my Béarn.’ To which Phoebus responded: ‘And were I Ernauton, that is exactly the advice I would give to Phoebus. But I am Phoebus, and must first and foremost look out for the future of my subjects. I do not wish to be the one who withdraws, and thus appear to put myself in the wrong. I will exhaust every opportunity for an agreement, up to the limits of honour. But La Forêt, I fear, has led me into a trap. Unless a fact of which I am unaware, and of which he is unaware, has turned the king against me. We will see tomorrow.’

And the next day, after Mass, Phoebus entered into the great hall of the palace with six equerries to bear the train of his robe, and for once he was not bareheaded. Because he was wearing his crown, gold upon gold. The hall was filled with chamberlains, advisors, prelates, chaplains, masters of Parliament and great officers of state. But who does Phoebus notice first: the Count of Armagnac, Jean de Forez, standing close by the king as if leaning against the throne, cutting a most arrogant figure. On the other side of the throne, de Bucy pretending to tidy his rolls of parchment. He took one of them and read, as if it had been an ordinary decree: ‘Messire, King of France, monseigneur, grants you audience for the County of Foix and the Viscountcy of Béarn that you have received from him, and you will become his man as Count of Foix and Viscount of Béarn according to the proprieties made between his predecessors and your own. Kneel.’

There was a moment of silence. Then Phoebus responded in the clearest of voices: ‘I cannot.’

The audience showed their surprise, sincere for the most part, feigned by some, with a hint of pleasure. It is not often that an incident occurs in a tribute ceremony.

Phoebus repeated: ‘I cannot.’ And he added very clearly: ‘One of my knees will bend: that of Foix. But that of Béarn cannot bend.’

It was then that King John spoke, and his voice was scored with anger. ‘I have granted you an audience for Foix and for Béarn.’ Those gathered there quivered with curiosity. And the debate went something like this. Phoebus: ‘Sire, Béarn is land of freehold tenure, and you cannot grant me audience for that which is not of your suzerainty.’ The king: ‘It is falsehood, what you allege, and has been for too many years subject of dispute between your relatives and mine.’ Phoebus: ‘It is truth, sire, and shall only remain the matter of discord should you so wish it. I am your faithful and loyal subject for Foix, as my forefathers have always professed, but I cannot declare myself your man for that which I obtained only from God.’ The king: ‘Wicked vassal! You are contriving for yourself treacherous means to shirk the service that you owe me. Last year you brought not one of your banners to the Count of Armagnac, my lieutenant in Languedoc here before you, and because of your failure to lend assistance, he was unable to drive away the English
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!’ Phoebus then said, superbly: ‘If the fate of Languedoc depends only upon my participation, and if Messire of Armagnac is powerless to guard his province, then it is not to him that you should give the lieutenancy, sire, but to me.’

The king had worked himself into a fury, his chin was trembling. ‘You are scoffing at me, good sire, but you will not do so for much longer. Kneel!’

‘Remove Béarn from the homage, and I will bend my knee directly.’

‘You will bend it in prison, evil traitor!’ cried the king. ‘Seize him!’

The play had been put on, planned, staged, at least, by Bucy, who had only to make a sign for Perrinet le Buffle and six other sergeants to promptly surround Phoebus. They already knew that they were to take him to the Louvre.

The very same day, the Prevost Marcel went about the town saying: ‘King John had only one more enemy to make; that work is now accomplished. If all the thieves that hover round the king remain in place, there will soon be not one single honest man able to breathe outside of jail.’

T
HIS IS A FINE BUSINESS
, my nephew, a fine business indeed! Do you know what the pope wrote to me in a letter of the twenty-eighth of November, though its dispatch must have been somewhat delayed, or the courier first went to find me where I wasn’t to be found, as it only reached me yesterday evening in Arcis? Guess … Well, the Holy Father, deeply concerned about the disagreement I have with Niccola Capocci, holds me to blame for: ‘the lack of charity between you’. I would very much like to know how I could show Capocci any charity. I haven’t seen him since Breteuil, where he promptly slipped away to establish himself in Paris. And so who is at fault for the discord if not the one who wanted at all costs to place me with this selfish, narrow-minded prelate whose only concern is his own comfort, and whose actions have no other design than to foil my own? General peace, he doesn’t care for such things. All that matters to him is that I fail to achieve it. Lack of charity, a fine thing indeed! Lack of charity … I have good reason to believe that Capocci is involved in some shady dealings with Simon de Bucy, and that he had something to do with the imprisonment of Phoebus … let me put your mind at rest, yes, you know … he was released in August; and thanks to whom? Me; that you didn’t know, on the promise that he would join the king’s army.

Finally, the Holy Father is pleased to assure me that I am praised for my efforts and that my activities meet with the approval of not only himself but also the entire college of cardinals. I don’t believe he writes as much to the other one. But he wants, as he has wanted since October, to go back on his recommendation to include Charles of Navarre in the general peace agreement. I can easily guess who suggested that to him.

It was after Friquet de Fricamps escaped that King John decided to transfer his son-in-law to Arleux, a fortress in Picardie where all around the people are devoted to the Artois. He feared Charles of Navarre was receiving benefits from too much collusion in Paris. He would not have him in the same prison as Phoebus, nor even the same town.

And then, having sacrificed nearly all in the affair of Breteuil, as I was telling you yesterday, he returned to Chartres. He had told me: ‘We will speak in Chartres.’ I was there, while Capocci was showing off in Paris …

Where are we now? Brunet! The name of this town? And Poivres, have we passed Poivres? Ah! Good, it is ahead of us. I have been told that its church is worth seeing. I might add that all these churches in Champagne are most beautiful. It is a land of faith.

Oh! I don’t regret having seen the camp in Chartres, and I would have liked you to have seen it too. I know; you have been excused from the army in order to stand in for your sick father … and somehow keep the English
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in check outside Périgord. It may have saved you from laying at rest today under a tombstone in a monastery in Poitiers. Can one ever know? It is for Providence to decide.

So, imagine Chartres: sixty thousand men, at the very least, camped on the vast plain that looks down onto the cathedral and its spires. One of the biggest armies ever assembled, if not the biggest, in the history of the kingdom. But separated into two distinct parts.

On one side, lined up in handsome rows in their hundreds, the tents of silk or canvas mingled with the colours of the banners and the knights. The movement of the men, horses and carts produced a great swarming of colour and steel under the sun, as far as the eye could see; traders in arms, harnesses, wine and food had set up their stalls on wheels on this side, as well as the brothel keepers bringing cartloads of girls under the watchful eye of the King of the Ribald … whose name I still can’t recall.

And then, a good distance away, well separated, as in the images of the Last Judgement, on one side, Paradise, on the other … Hell, those on foot, camped on cut wheat, with no other shelter than a canvas sheet held up by a stake, and that was when they had thought of bringing one; a gigantic populace spread out randomly, weary, filthy, idle, gathered in tribes by their lands of origin and not much good at obeying their makeshift chiefs. Besides, what orders would they have obeyed? They were scarcely given any tasks to carry out, they were commanded to perform no manoeuvres. All these people had to do, their only occupation, was to hunt for food. The smartest went to pilfer from the knights, or pillage the farmyards of the neighbouring hamlets, or poach. Behind each talus could be seen three beggars sitting on their heels around a roasting rabbit. Sudden scrambles erupted to get to the carts that handed out barley bread, at irregular hours. What was regular however was the king’s visit, every day, amongst the ranks of the foot soldiers. He inspected the most recent arrivals, one day those from Beauvais, the next those from Soissons, the day after those from Orléans and Jargeau.

He was accompanied by, hear this, his four sons, his brother, the constable, the two marshals, John of Artois, Tancarville, who else … a horde of equerries.

One time, which turned out to be the last time, you will see why, he invited me as if he were doing me a great honour. ‘Monseigneur of Périgord, tomorrow, should it please you to follow me, I will take you with me on the inspection.’ I was still expecting to come to an agreement with him on the few proposals, vague as they were, that might be passed on to the English, to hang the beginnings of a negotiation on. I had suggested that the two kings entrust deputies to draw up the list of all the points of contention between the two kingdoms. That alone would be enough for four years of discussions.

Or, I would seek another, quite different approach. We would pretend to ignore the disputes and would commit to preliminary talks about preparations for a common expedition to Constantinople. The important thing was to begin discussions.

So I went dragging my red robe through this vast flea-ridden squalor that was camped out on the Beauce. I choose my words well: flea-ridden, as upon my return Brunet had to search me for lice. I couldn’t very well push away the miserable wretches who came to kiss the hem of my robe! The smell was even more offensive than at Breteuil. A big storm had broken the night before and the foot soldiers had slept on the sodden ground; their rags and tatters steamed in the morning sun, and they stank to high heaven. The archpriest, who walked before the king, stopped. He really took up a lot of room, the archpriest! And the king stopped, as did all of his company.

‘Sire, here are those from the provostship of Bracieux in the bailiwick of Blois, who arrived yesterday. They are pitiful.’ With his mace, the archpriest pointed to forty or so ragged rogues, muddy, hirsute. They hadn’t shaven at all for ten days; as for washed, don’t even think of it. Any disparity in their clothing merged into a greyish hue of grime and earth. Some had holes in their shoes; some went barefoot; others had only rags wrapped around their legs. They straightened up to make a good impression; but they had a worried look in their eyes. Indeed, they had not expected to see the king himself suddenly appear before them, surrounded by his gleaming escort. And the beggars from Bracieux huddled together. The curved blades and the hooked spikes of a few voulges or halberds
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stuck up above them like thorns out of a miry faggot.

‘Sire,’ continued the archpriest, ‘there are thirty-nine of them, when there should be fifty. Eight have halberds, nine are equipped with swords, of which one is very poor. Just one possesses both a sword and a halberd. One of them has an axe, three have iron bars and another is armed with only a dagger; the rest have nothing at all.’

I would have wanted to laugh if I hadn’t wondered what drove the king to waste his time and that of his marshals, counting rusted swords. That he should be seen once, so be it, it was a good thing. But every day, every morning? And why invite me to this paltry inspection?

I was surprised then to hear his youngest son, Philip, cry out in the artificial tone that youths have when trying to pass themselves off as mature men: ‘It is certainly not with such levying that we will win great battles.’ He is only fourteen years old; his voice was breaking and he didn’t quite fill his chainmail shirt. His father stroked his son’s forehead as if congratulating himself on having fathered such a wise warrior. Then, addressing the men from Bracieux, he asked: ‘Why are you not better equipped with weaponry? Tell me, why? Is this how one shows up for my army? Haven’t you received orders from your prevost?’