Maurice Druon - The She-Wolf

You needed a clear mind not to lose your way amid this complicated family tree, to know, for instance, when Madame Jeanne of Valois was mentioned, whether the Countess of Hainaut was meant or the Countess of Beaumont, the wife of Robert of Artois. Just to help matters, the two girls had the same name. As for Catherine, heiress to the phantom throne of Constantinople, who was by the second marriage, she had wedded in the person of Philip of Tarantum, Prince of Achaia, an elder brother of her father’s first wife. It was, indeed, something of a puzzle!

And now Monseigneur Charles was proposing that the elder daughter of his third marriage should wed his great-nephew of England.

At the beginning of the year, Monseigneur of Valois had sent a mission consisting of Count Henry de Sully, Raoul Sevain de Jouy and Robert Bertrand, known as the ‘Knight of the Green Lion’. To curry favour with Edward II, these ambassadors had accompanied him on an expedition against the Scots; but, at the Battle of Blackmore, the English had fled and allowed the French ambassadors to fall into the hands of the enemy. Their freedom had had to be negotiated and their ransoms paid. When, at last after a number of unpleasant adventures, they had been released, Edward had replied, evasively and dilatorily, that his son’s marriage could not be decided on so quickly, that the matter was of such great importance that he could make no contract without the advice of his Parliament, and that Parliament would be summoned to discuss the matter in June. He wished to link this affair with the homage he was due to pay the King of France for the Duchy of Aquitaine. And then, when Parliament had at last been convoked, the question had not even been discussed. 6

In his impatience, Monseigneur of Valois had taken the first opportunity of sending over the Count de Bouville, whose devotion to the Capet family was undoubted and who, though lacking in genius, had considerable experience of similar missions. In the past, Bouville had negotiated in Naples, on the instructions of Valois himself, the second marriage of Louis X with Clémence of Hungary; he had been Curator of the Queen’s stomach after the Hutin’s death, but that was not a period he cared to recall. He had also carried out a number of negotiations in Avignon with the Holy See; and in matters concerning family relationships his memory was faultless, he knew all the infinitely complex inter-weavings that formed the web of the royal houses’ alliances. Honest Bouville was much vexed at having to go back this time with empty hands.

‘Monseigneur of Valois will be very angry indeed,’ he said, ‘since he has already asked the Holy Father for a licence for this marriage.’

‘I’ve done all I can, Bouville,’ the Queen said, ‘and you can judge from that what weight I carry here. But I do not regret it as much as you do; I do not want another princess of my family to suffer what I have suffered here.’

‘Madame,’ Bouville replied, lowering his voice still further, ‘do you doubt your son? He seems to take after you rather than after his father, thank God. I remember you at his age, in the garden of the Palace of the Cité, or at Fontainebleau …’

He was interrupted. The door opened to give entrance to the King of England. He hurried in; his head was thrown back and he was stroking his blond beard with a nervous gesture which, in him, was a sign of irritation. He was followed by his usual councillors, the two Despensers, father and son, Chancellor Baldock, the Earl of Arundel and the Bishop of Exeter. The King’s two half-brothers, the Earls of Kent and Norfolk, who had French blood since their mother was the sister of Philip the Fair, formed part of his entourage, but rather against their will so it seemed; and this was also true of Henry of Leicester. The last was a square-looking man, with bright, rather protruding eyes, who was nicknamed Crouchback owing to a malformation of the neck and shoulders which compelled him to hold his neck completely askew, and gave the armourers who had to forge his cuirasses a good deal of difficulty. A number of ecclesiastics and local dignitaries also pressed into the doorway.

‘Have you heard the news, Madame?’ cried King Edward, addressing the Queen. ‘It will doubtless please you. Your Mortimer has escaped from the Tower.’

Lady Despenser, at the chess-board, gave a start and uttered an exclamation of indignation as if the Baron of Wigmore’s escape were a personal insult.

Queen Isabella gave no sign, either by altering her attitude or expression; only her eyelids blinked a little more rapidly over her beautiful blue eyes, and her hand, beneath the folds of her dress, furtively sought that of Lady Jeanne Mortimer, as if encouraging her to be strong and calm. Fat Bouville had got to his feet and moved a little apart, feeling himself unwanted in this matter which purely concerned the English Crown.

‘He is not my Mortimer, Sire,’ replied the Queen. ‘Lord Mortimer is your subject, I should have thought, rather than mine; and I am not accountable for the actions of your barons. You kept him in prison; he has escaped; it’s the common form.’

‘And that shows you approve him! Don’t restrain your joy, Madame. In the days when Mortimer deigned to appear at my Court, you had no eyes except for him; you were continually extolling his merits, and you have always put down the crimes he has committed against me to his greatness of soul.’

‘But was it not you, yourself, Sire my Husband, who taught me to love him at the time he was conquering, on your behalf and at the peril of his life, the Kingdom of Ireland, which indeed you had great difficulty in holding without him? Was that a crime?’ 7

Put out of countenance by this attack, Edward looked spitefully at his wife and found some difficulty in replying.

‘Well, your friend’s on the run now, running hard towards your country no doubt!’

As he talked, the King was walking up and down the room, working off his useless agitation. The jewels hanging from his clothes quivered at every step he took. The rest of the company followed him with their eyes, turning their heads from side to side, as if they were watching a game of tennis. There was no doubt that King Edward was a fine-looking man, muscular, lithe and alert. He kept himself fit with games and exercises and had so far resisted any tendency to stoutness though his fortieth birthday was close at hand; he had an athlete’s constitution. But if you looked closer, you were struck by the fact that his forehead was utterly unlined, as if the anxieties of power had failed to mark him, by the pouches beginning to form beneath his eyes, by the uncertain line of the curve of the nostril, and by the long chin beneath the thin, curled beard. It was not an energetic or authoritative chin, nor even a really sensual one, but merely too big and too elongated a chin. There was twenty times more determination in the Queen’s little chin than there was in this ovoid jaw whose weakness the silky beard could not conceal. And the hand he passed from time to time across his face was flaccid; it fluttered aimlessly and then tugged at a pearl sewn to the embroidery of his tunic. His voice, which he hoped and believed was imperious, merely suggested lack of control. His back, which was wide enough, curved unpleasantly from the neck to the waist, as if the spine lacked substance. Edward had never forgiven his wife for having one day advised him to avoid showing his back if he wished to gain the respect of his barons. His knee was shapely and his leg well-turned; indeed, these were the best points of this man who was so little suited to his responsibilities, and to whom a crown had fallen by some curious inadvertence on the part of Fate.

‘Haven’t I enough worries and difficulties already?’ he went on. ‘The Scots are always threatening and invading my frontiers and, when I give battle, my armies run away. And how can I defeat them when my bishops treat with them without my permission, when there are so many traitors among my vassals, and when my barons of the Marches raise troops against me on the principle that they hold their lands by their swords, when some twenty-five years ago – have they forgotten? – it was determined and ordered otherwise by King Edward, my father. But they learned at Shrewsbury and Boroughbridge what it costs to rebel against me, didn’t they, Leicester?’