The Royal Succession (21 page)

`I am not accustomed, 'Bouville,' the Regent replied, 'to be escorted by unarmed equerries.'

Bouville, at once embarrassed and obstinate, asked the equerries to remain in the outer court. His zealous prudence began to annoy the Regent.

`I appreciate, Bouville,' he said, `the zeal with which you have watched over the Queen's belly; but you are no longer Curator; it is to myself and the Constable that the duty of watching over the King now belongs. We leave you in charge, but do not abuse your powers.'

`Monseigneur! Monseigneur!' stammered Bouville. `I had no intention of offending you. But there is so much gossip throughout the kingdom. Indeed, I but want you to see that I am faithful to my task, and that I am aware of the honour.'

He was not good at dissimulation. He could not help looking askance at Mahaut, and then immediately lowering his eyes.

`Everyone clearly suspects me and is afraid of me,' the Countess thought.

Jeanne de Poitiers pretended to notice nothing. Gaucher de Chatillon, who had not realized the implications of what was going on, dispelled the awkwardness of the moment by saying: `Come on, Bouville, don't leave us to freeze; take us indoors.'

They did not go to the Queen's bedside. The news Madame de Bouville gave them was most alarming; the fever still had her in its grip, while she complained of appalling headaches and was shaken continuously by nausea.

`Her stomach is swelling again as if she had never been brought to bed at all,' explained Madame de Bouville. `She cannot sleep, prays that the bells ringing in her ears may be silenced, and talks to us all the time as if she were addressing her grandmother, Madame of Hungary, or King Louis, her dead husband, It's sad to hear her so delirious and not be able to do anything to stop it.'

Twenty years as chamberlain to Philip the Fair had given the Count de Bouville a long experience of royal ceremonies. How many christenings had he not had to organize?

The ritual objects were handed to those taking part. Bouville and two gentlemen of the guard placed long white napkins about their necks, holding the ends outstretched before them so that one might cover the basin of holy water, another an empty basin, and the third the cup containing the salt.

The midwife who had brought the child into the world took
the chrisom to be placed about the child's head after the anointing.

Then the wet-nurse came forward, carrying the King. 'Oh, what a good-looking girl,' thought the Constable.

Madame de Bouville ha
d found for Marie.
a rose-coloured velvet dress with a little fur at collar and cuffs, and she had long rehearsed the girl in' the part she was to play. The baby was wrapped in a robe twice too long for it, over which had been placed a veil of violet silk falling to the ground like a train.

They moved
towards the chateau
chapel. Equerries led the way, holding lighted candles. The Seneschal de Joinville came last, tottering even between his supporters. Nevertheless he had emerged a little from his usual torpor because the child was called Jean like himself,

The chapel was hung with tapestries and the stone font decorated with purple velvet, To one side was a table on which had been placed a covering of miniver; on top of this was a
fine cloth, and
on top of this again silk cushions,. The few braziers did not suffice to dispel the damp cold.

Marie placed the child on the table and unswathed him. She was intent on making no mistakes; her heart was beating, and she was so excited that she
could
barely recognize the faces about her. Could she ever have imagined that she, a girl expelled from her family, would play so important a part, standing between the Regent of France and the Countess of Artois, at the christening of a king? Dazzled by, this reversal
of
fortune, she was now full of gratitude to Madame de
Bouville
and had already, asked her pardon for her refractoriness of the day before.

As she was unwrapping the swaddling-clothes, she heard the Constable ask her name and whence she ca
me,
She felt herself blush.

The Queen's chaplain had blown four times on the body of the child, as it might be
on the four branches of
the cross, to cast out the Devil from him by virtue of the Holy Ghost; then, spitting on his forefinger, he had smeared the child's ears and nostrils with saliva to signify that he must not listen to the voice of the Devil, nor breathe the temptations of the world and the flesh.

Philippe
and Mahaut
took up the little King, one by the legs and the other by the shoulders. The Regent, with his shortsighted eyes, gazed insistently at the child's minute sex, that pink grub which frustrated all his brilliant plans for the succession, that derisory symbol of male succession, that tiny but insurmountable barrier between himself and the crown.

`In any case,' thought Philippe to console himself, `I shall be Regent for fifteen years.. And in fifteen years many things can happen; shall I be alive in fifteen years' time? And will this child live till then?'

But to be Regent is not to be King.

The child remained perfectly quiet, even slept during the preliminary rites. He found his voice only when he was completely immersed in the cold water, but then he howled with the full force of his lungs, almost suffocating himself, and his tears mingled with the water of his
baptism. While the other god-
fathers and godmothers, Gaucher, Jeanne, the Bouvilles and the Seneschal, held their hands over the little naked body, he was immersed three times, first with his head towards the east, then to the north, then to the south, to symbolize the sign of the

cross.
27

He grew quiet again when he had been taken from the icy bath, and placidly accepted the consecrated oil with which his forehead was anointed. He was placed on the cushions and Marie de Cressay proceeded to dry him, while the rest of those present crowded as close as they could to the warmth of the braziers.

Suddenly Marie de Cressay's voice rang out through the chapel.

`Lord! Lord! He's dying, he's dying!' she screamed.

Everyone rushed to the table. The infant King had turned blue, and moment by moment his colour grew darker till it was almost black; his body was stiff, his arms contracted, his head twisted and his eyes had turned up, showing only the whites.

An invisible hand was stifling his insentient life amid the wavering candles and the anxious, bended heads.

Mahaut heard a voice murmur: `She did it.'

She raised her eyes and encountered the gaze of the Bouvilles.

`Who can have done the deed so as to accuse me of it?' she wondered.

However, the midwife had taken the child from Marie's trembling hands and was trying to reanimate it.

`It's not certain he'll die, it's not certain,' she said.

The child stayed rigid, extended and dark in hue for nearly two minutes, which seemed to last an infinity of time; then, suddenly, he began jerking in violent spasms, his head bobbing in all directions, his limbs twisting; it seemed incredible that there could be so much force concealed in so puny a body. The midwife had to hold him tight to prevent him from falling out of her
hands. The chaplain crossed himself as if he were in the presence of some manifestation of the Devil and began reciting the prayers for the dying. The child's face was contorted and he was slobbering; the black tint disappeared from his skin and was gradually replaced by a sort of icy pallor which was no less alarming. He then became still, urinated over the midwife's dress, and they thought he was saved; but his head immediately fell forward; and he grew slack and inert; and now they believed he was really dead.

`It was high time he was baptized,' said the Constable.

Philippe was picking the hot wax from the candles off his hands.

And suddenly, the little body waved its legs, uttered several cries, feeble but no longer distressful, and his lips worked in a movement of suction; the King was alive and hungry.'

`The Devil fought hard before being expelled from his body,' said the chaplain.

`It is not usual,' the midwife explained, `for convulsions to seize on a child so early. It's because he was born with forceps; it does happen from time to time, And then he lacked the wetnurse's milk for several hours:'

Marie de Cressay felt herself to blame, 'If only I had come at once, instead of arguing with Madame de Bouville,' she thought.

No one, of course, thought of blaming the immersion in cold water, nor made allusion to the family's splendid heredity, to the cripples, lunatics and epileptics flourishing on that glorious tree.

Th
e reasons given by the midwife,
and in particular the pressure on the brain by the forceps, were in any case-sufficient.

`Do you think he's likely to suffer further seizures?' Mahaut asked.

`It is much to be feared, Madame,' replied the midwife. `One cannot tell when a fit will come on him, nor how it will end.'

`Poor child!' said Mahaut loudly.

They took the King back to the chateau and separated unhappily.

Philippe of Poitiers said no word during the whole journey back. When he reached the palace, he allowed his mother-in-law to follow him and shut herself into the room with him.

`You only missed being King by very little just now, my son,' she said.

Philippe made no reply.

`Indeed, after what we have seen, no one would be surprised if the child were to die during the next few days,' she went on. The Regent remained silent.

`Nevertheless, if he died, you
would still be obliged to wait
for Jeanne of Navarre's majority.'

`Oh, no, Mother! Oh no!' Philippe replied vehemently. 'We are no longer bound now by the law of July. The question of Louis' succession is closed; it would be the question of little Jean's succession which would have to be considered. Between my brother and myself there would have been a king, and I should be my nephew's heir.'

Mahaut gazed at him in
admiration:' H
e has thought this out during the christening,' she thought.

`You have always dreamed of being King, Philippe; admit it,' she said. `Even when you were a child you used to break off branches to make yourself sceptres!'

He raised his head a little and smiled at her, l
etting the silence run on. Then
grave again, he said: `Do you know, Mother, that
the Dame de Feriennes
has disappeared from Arras, as have the men I sent to arrest h
er and deal with her to prevent
her talking too much? It appears that she is held secretly in some castle of Artois, and they say that your barons are boasting of it.'

Mahaut wondered what Philippe intended by
this warning,
Did he merely wish to point out the dangers she ran? Or prove to her that he was protecting her? Or was it his manner of confirming his prohibition to resort to poison? Or, alternatively, was he, by making allusion to the supplier of the poison, giving her to understand that she had a free hand?

`Further convulsions might well kill him,' went on Mahaut.

`Leave it to God, Mother, leave it to God,' said Philippe, putting an end to the audience.

`Leave it to God, or
leave it
to me?' thought the Countess of Artois. `He's prudent, even to the point of taking care not to damn his own soul; but he understood me very well. It's that fat idiot Bouville who'll give me most trouble'

From that moment her imagination set to work. Mahaut had a crime in prospect; and that the victim was a newborn child excited her as much as if he had been the most, ferocious of protagonists.

She began a careful campaign of perfidy. The King had been born unlikely to live; she told everyone so, and described, with tears in her eyes, the painful scene at the christening.

`We all thought he was going to die before our eyes, and indeed
he very nearly did so. Ask the Constable who was there too; I've never seen Messire Gaucher, who is a brave man, turn so pale. Besides, everyone will be able to judge of the little King's weakness when he is presented to the barons, as must be done. It may even be that he is already dead, and that it is being concealed from us. For the presentation is unduly delayed, and no reason has been given us for it. It appears that Messire de Bouville is opposed to it because the unfortunate Queen - whom God keep ! - is desperately ill. But after all the Queen is not the King!'

Mahaut's followers, such as her cousin Henry de Sully and her Chancellor Thierry d'Hirson, spread her remarks.

The barons were becoming alarmed. For indeed, why was the solemn presentation being so long deferred? The private christening, Bouville's evasions, the impenetrable silence maintained at Vincennes, all seemed mysterious.

Contradictory rumours were going the rounds. The King was a cripple and they did not wish to reveal it. The Count of Valois had had him removed and taken secretly to Naples to place him in safety. The Queen was not ill; she had returned to her own country.

`If he's dead, we should be told so,' some were murmuring.

`The Regent has had him killed!' others asserted.

`What nonsense you're talking! The Regent's not that kind of man; but he's mistrustful of Valois.'

`It's not the Regent; it's Mahaut. She's preparing her blow, or has already carried it out. She will keep on saying that the King cannot live!'

While this ill-wind was blowing through the Court again, and people's nerves were overwrought with odious conjectures and infamous suspicions, with which everyone felt himself to be bespattered, the Regent remained impenetrably silent. He was absorbed in the administration of the kingdom, and if someone spoke to him of his nephew, he changed the subject to Flanders, Artois, or the collection of taxes.

On the morning of November 19th, since irritation was growing, a number of barons and masters of Parliament came in a delegation to have an audience with Philippe and make strong representations, demands almost, that he should agree to the presentation of the King. Those who were expecting a refusal or an evasive answer had an angry glint already in their eyes.

`But I desire it, Messeigneurs, I desire the presentation as much as you do,' said the Regent. `But I am being opposed in the matter; it's the Count de Bouville who refuses it.'