The King Without a Kingdom (17 page)

The keep is not at the centre of the castle; it is in fact one of the towers, somewhat taller and broader than the others. We have similar castles in Périgord, but they usually have a more extravagant appearance.

The flower of Normandy’s chivalry was there assembled, as richly dressed as it was possible to be. Sixty sires had come, each with at least one equerry. The buglers had just sounded the call for dinner when one of Messire Godfrey of Harcourt’s equerries, sweating heavily from a long gallop, came to warn Count John that his uncle summoned him post-haste and urged him to leave Rouen immediately. The message was most imperious, as if Messire Godfrey had got wind of something. John of Harcourt hastened to comply with Godfrey’s command, slipping away from the company and descending the keep’s stairwell, his body obstructing everything in its path, he was so fat, a veritable barrel of a man, but reaching the foot of the stairs there he fell face to face with Robert of Lorris, who stood in his way with a most affable air about him. ‘Messire the count, messire, are you leaving? But monseigneur the dauphin is expecting you at dinner! Your place is on his left.’ Not daring to offend the dauphin, the glutton Harcourt resigned himself to delaying his departure. He would leave after the meal. And he went back up the stairs without too much regret. After all, the dauphin’s table had a fine reputation; it was known that wonders were served there, and John of Harcourt hadn’t acquired all the fat that he was larded with by sucking on blades of grass.

And indeed, what a feast! It had not been in vain that Nicolas Braque had helped the dauphin prepare it. Those who were there, and who lived to tell the tale, haven’t forgotten a thing. Six tables were spread out in the great round room. Tapestries of verdure, so richly coloured that one would have thought oneself in the middle of a forest. Near the windows, clusters of candles, to enhance the light of day coming through the embrasures,
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like the sun through the trees. Behind each guest, a carving equerry, either their own, for the great lords, or someone from the dauphin’s service for the others. They used ebony-handled knives, gilded and enamelled with the French coat of arms, especially reserved for the duration of Lent. It is the custom at court to only bring out the ivory-handled knives from Easter onwards.

As Lent was observed, fish pâtés and stews, carp, pike, tench, bream, salmon and bass, plates of eggs, poultry, game birds; the fishponds and farmyards had been emptied, the rivers cleaned out. The kitchen pages formed a human chain in the stairwell, sending up platters of silver and vermeil on which roast-chefs, sauce-chefs and other cooks had set, arranged, dressed the dishes prepared in the hearths of the kitchens’ tower. Six cupbearers poured wines from Beaune, Meursault, Arbois and Touraine … Ah! All that whets your appetite too, Archambaud! I do hope that they will prepare a good meal for us later on in Saint-Sauveur …

The dauphin, in the middle of the table of honour, had Charles of Navarre on his right and John of Harcourt on his left. He was dressed in a marbled blue cloak from Brussels and wore a hood of the same cloth, decorated with embroidered pearls arranged in leaf-patterns. I haven’t yet described monseigneur the dauphin to you … He’s broad, but with a drawn-out body, lean shoulders, his face is elongated, a big nose with a slight bump in the middle, a look in his eye by which you never know whether he is being attentive or pensive, a thin upper lip, the lower fleshy, a receding chin.

It is said, as far as one can tell, that he rather takes after his ancestor Saint Louis, who like him was very long and a little stooped. Such a bearing, next to very upright, fiery men, appears from time to time in the French royal family.

Ushers came and went, stiffly formal with the kitchen pages, to present the dishes one after the other; and the dauphin indicated with a gesture of his hand to which table they should be carried, thus honouring each of his guests in turn, the Count of Étampes, Sire de la Ferté, the Mayor of Rouen, with a smile and much courteous dignity accompanying the gesture … always made with his left hand. Because, as I told you I believe, his right hand is swollen red and causes him pain; he uses it as little as possible. He can scarcely play real tennis for half an hour and his hand immediately swells up. Ah! What a weakness for a prince … neither hunting nor fighting. His father makes no secret of his disgust, pouring scorn upon him for it. How the poor dauphin must have envied all the well-built noblemen he dealt with, the Sires of Clères, Graville, Bec Thomas, Mainemares, Braquemont, Saint-Beuve or Houdetot, those steadfast knights, sure of themselves, rowdy, proud of their exploits in battle. He must have envied even the fat Harcourt, whose quintal
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of blubber didn’t prevent him from handling a horse, nor from being a formidable tourneyer, and particularly he envied the Sire of Biville, a man famous across France who is quickly surrounded whenever he appears in society and asked to tell of his feat … It is one and the same … You see, his name has made its way to you … yes, in one single blow of a sword, a Turk cut in half, before the very eyes of the King of Cyprus. Every time he repeats his story, the gash lengthens by an inch. One day he will have also managed to split the horse in two …

But let me come back to the Dauphin Charles. This boy knows what his birth and his station require of him; he knows why God brought him into this world, the place that Providence had assigned to him, in the highest rank of men, and that, unless he were to die before his father, he would be king. He knows that he will have sovereign power with which to govern over the kingdom; he knows that he will personify France. And even if he is secretly grieved that God hasn’t given him, along with his charge, the strength that will help him to bear it successfully, he knows that he must make up for the inadequacies of his body with a good grace, an attention to others, a mastery of his expressions and his words, an air of benevolence and certainty that never let anyone forget who he is, including himself, and thus he creates for himself a means to majesty. That is no mean feat, when one is but eighteen years old and one’s beard has scarcely begun to grow!

It has to be said that he was prepared from an early age. He was just eleven years old when his grandfather, King Philip VI, finally managed to buy the Dauphiny from Humbert II of Vienna. That somewhat made up for the defeat at Crécy and the loss of Calais. I told you after which negotiations … Ah! I thought … So you want to know about it in detail?

The Dauphin Humbert was as swollen with pride as he was crippled with debt. He wanted to sell, while continuing to govern parts of the territory he was handing over, and wanted his states to remain independent upon his death. At first he had wanted to deal with the Count of Provence, King of Sicily; but he had set his price too high. He then turned to France, and it was then that I was called upon to take care of negotiations. In an early agreement, he was to give up his crown, but only after his demise … he had lost his only son … a part in cash, one hundred and twenty thousand florins if you please, and the rest in a pension. He could have lived comfortably on that for the rest of his days. But instead of clearing his debts, he squandered everything in seeking glory fighting the Turks. Hounded by his creditors, he was forced to sell all he had left, that is, his lifelong pension rights. This he ended up accepting for two hundred thousand florins more and an allowance of twenty-four thousand pounds, while continuing to play the high and mighty. Thankfully for us, he no longer had any friends.

It was I, and I say this modestly, who found the compromise that was able to satisfy the honour of Humbert and his subjects. The title of Dauphin of Viennois would not be borne by the King of France, but by the eldest of the grandsons of Philip VI and then, in turn, by his eldest son. In this way the dauphin’s subjects, who had been hitherto independent, maintained the illusion of having a prince who reigned only over them. That was why the young Charles of France, having received his investiture in Lyons, had to accomplish throughout the winter of 1349 and spring 1350, a tour of his new states. Processions, receptions, fairs. I repeat, he was only eleven years old. By virtue of that ease with which children get into character, he became used to the cheers of the crowds welcoming him in the towns, the bowed heads he walked between, he sat gracefully on a throne while officials rushed to pile silk hassocks under his feet … enough so that they didn’t dangle in the air … he received suzerains’ tributes in his hands, listened solemnly to local grievances. He surprised by his dignity, his affability, the common sense behind his questions. People were touched by his earnestness; tears welled up in the eyes of old knights and their old wives when he assured them of his love and his friendship, praising them for their merits and counting on their loyalty. The slightest word of any prince is the object of infinite gossip which conveys self-importance upon the one who received it. But coming from such a young boy, from this miniature of a prince, the simplest of phrases inspired such moving tales! ‘One cannot pretend at that age.’ But of course he was pretending, and even enjoying pretending, like all children do. Pretending to be interested in someone he was seeing, even if he was offered a cross-eyed gaze and a toothless grin, pretending to be happy with whatever gift that was presented, even if he had already received four of the same, feigning authority when the moment came, after having listened to representatives of a town council complain about a matter of a toll or some such narrow dispute … ‘Your rights will be restored, if you have been done wrong by. I want an enquiry to be made post-haste.’ He had quickly understood how effective it was to command, in a determined tone of voice, an investigation, to be led diligently … this produced great impression without committing him to anything.

He was yet to find out that he would be overtaken by such fragile health, although he had fallen ill for several weeks in Grenoble. It was while at Grenoble he learned of his mother’s death, then his grandmother’s, and shortly after, the remarriage of both his grandfather and of his father, one after the other, before it was announced to him that he himself was soon to marry Madame Joan of Bourbon, his cousin, who was the same age as he. This took place at Tain-l’Hermitage at the beginning of April, with great pomp and affluence from the Church and nobility. Just six years ago.

It is a miracle that it didn’t go to his head, or that he wasn’t disturbed by all that pomp and vanity. He had simply revealed the penchant shared by all the princes of his family for spending and luxury. Spendthrifts. Acquire everything that takes their fancy, immediately. I want this, I want that. Buying, possessing the most beautiful things, the rarest, most curious, and above all the most expensive, menagerie animals, sumptuous silverware, illuminated manuscripts, spending, living in rooms hung with silk and gold drapery from Cyprus, their clothes sewn with fortunes in gemstones that brightly glisten in the candlelight. This, for the dauphin, as for all his lineage, is the symbol of power and proof, in his own eyes, of majesty. A naivety that comes down to the family from the grandfather, the first of the Charleses, Philip the Fair’s brother, titular Emperor of Constantinople, that great idiot who bumbled about, shaking up Europe, and even for a moment thought about the Empire of Germany. A profligate one if ever there was … they all have it in their blood. When they order shoes for the family, it is by the two-dozen, forty or fifty-five pairs at a time, for the king, for the dauphin, for Monseigneur of Orléans. To be sure, their stupid poulaines get saturated with mud, especially the long tips, which lose their shape, the embroidery gets dulled, and in three days they’re ruined, that each took a month for the best Paris artisans, who are in Guillaume Loisel’s boutique, to make. I know this because my own red slippers come from there too; but I make do with just eight pairs a year. And look, am I not always properly attired?

As the court sets the tone, nobles and bourgeois spend a fortune on passementerie,
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furs, jewels, vanity spending. They vie with each other for ostentation. Consider alone the hood worn by monseigneur the dauphin on that day in Rouen, a mark
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of large pearls and a mark of small ones were used, all ordered from Belhommet Thurel for the sum of three hundred or three hundred and twenty écus! Should you really be surprised that the coffers are empty when each one spends more money than he has left?

Ah! There is my palanquin returning. They have changed the equipage. Well then, let’s get back in …

In any case, there is one man that takes advantage of financial difficulties, and who makes good business from shortfalls in the royal coffers; and that is Messire Nicolas Braque, Grand Master of France, who is also Treasurer and Governor of Finance. He set up a small banking company, I should say a company just for show, which buys back at two-thirds the price, sometimes half, sometimes even at a third of the price, the king’s and his family’s debts. The mechanism is simple. A court supplier is in desperate trouble because for two years now nobody has paid him a thing and he no longer knows how he is going to pay his journeymen or buy his supplies. He comes looking for Messire Braque, and waves the unpaid bills under his nose. Messire Braque is most impressive; he is a handsome man, always severely dressed, and never lets past his lips any more words than are absolutely necessary. No one can put people in their place like he does. Such as those who turn up ranting and raving … ‘This time I’ll give him a piece of my mind; there is much to be said and I will not mince my words …’ The angry court supplier finds himself quick as a flash turned into a stammering, imploring wreck. Messire Braque drops on him, like a shower from a drainpipe, a few cold, stiff words: ‘Your prices are inflated as is always the case with work done for the king … the clientele of the court brings you a great many customers from whom you earn a good living … if the king has trouble paying, it is because all the monies from his Treasury go to covering the costs of the war … you should inform the bourgeois, such as Master Marcel, who baulk at granting aid … since you are having so much trouble supplying the king, we will withdraw our orders …’ And when the plaintiff has quietened down, most grieved and shivering, Braque tells him: ‘If you are truly in financial difficulties, I am willing to come to your aid. I can bring to bear my influence on your behalf with a bank, where I can count on some friends to buy back your debts. I will attempt, I repeat, I will attempt to have them redeemed at four-sixths of their value; and I will acquit you of that sum. The company will be paid back whenever, if ever, God is willing to replenish the Treasury. But don’t speak a word of this, otherwise everyone in the kingdom will ask the same of me. It is a great favour indeed that I am granting you.’