The Accursed Kings Series Books 1-3: The Iron King, The Strangled Queen, The Poisoned Crown

He was interrupted by the door bursting open. Monseigneur of Valois, the King’s brother and Emperor of Constantinople, entered. Without bothering to find out what had already been said, he cried, ‘What’s this I hear, Brother? Messire Le Portier de Marigny (he always inisted on saying “Le Portier”) thinks that nothing could be better? Well, Brother, your counsellors are content with very little! I wonder when they’ll think things are going badly!’

In Charles of Valois’s presence, everything seemed suddenly to quicken in tempo. He seemed to move in a hurricane. He was two years younger than Philip the Fair, whom he resembled little. He was as excitable as the other was calm.

Semi-bald, with a large nose, his face blotched from a life of campaigning and from the excesses of the table, carrying a paunch before him, he was dressed with an almost oriental sumptuousness which, upon anyone but him, would have looked absurd. Born close to the throne of France, inconsolable at not having succeeded to it, this mischief-making prince had never ceased travelling the world in search of another throne upon which to take his seat. For a short time he had been King of Aragon, had then renounced that kingdom in order to intrigue for the crown of Emperor of Germany; but he had been defeated in the election. By his second marriage, to Catherine of Courtenay, he was Emperor-Pretender to Constantinople, though a real Emperor, Andronic II Paleologos, was at this moment ruling in Byzantium. Everything else about him was in keeping. His greatest claims to fame were his lightning campaign in Guyenne in 1297, for he was a good general, and his campaign in Tuscany where, supporting the Guelfs against the Ghibellines, he had ravaged Florence and sent a certain political rhymer, named Dante, into exile. It was upon this account that the late Pope had created him Count of Romagna. Valois kept royal state, had his court and his own chancellor; and he loathed Enguerrand de Marigny for many reasons, for his plebeian birth, for his title of Coadjutor, because his statue had been placed among those of kings in the Mercers’ Hall, because his policy was hostile to the great feudal barons, indeed on every possible count. Valois could not stomach the fact, grandson of Saint Louis as he was, that the kingdom should be governed by a man of the people. On this particular day he was dressed in blue and gold from hat to shoes.

‘What!’ he cried. ‘Four senile old men whose fate, so we were told, was all fixed – and how successfully, alas – can hold the royal power in check, and you say that all is for the best! The populace are spitting upon the verdict of the Ecclesiastical Commission – and what a Commission it is! – though it does represent the Church! And everything is for the best! The crowd is shouting – and do you know what, Brother? – death to you; and everything is for the best! Very well, Brother, everything is undoubtedly for the best!’

He raised his hands, which were fine and laden with rings, and sat down in the nearest chair at the bottom end of the table, as if to show that, if he could not sit at the King’s right hand, he would sit opposite him.

Enguerrand de Marigny stood up, a flicker of irony showing at the corners of his mouth.

‘Monseigneur of Valois must be misinformed,’ he said calmly. ‘Of the four old men of whom he speaks only two protested against their sentence. As for the populace, every report I have assures me that they are much divided in opinion.’

‘Divided!’ cried Charles of Valois. ‘By what right are they divided? Who asks the people their opinion? You do, Messire de Marigny, and one may well guess why. This is the result of your charming policy of assembling the middle class, the serfs and the peasants to approve the King’s decisions. Now the populace think they can do as they please!’

In every period and in every country there have always been two parties: the reactionary and the progressive. These two tendencies came face to face at the King’s Council. Charles of Valois considered himself the natural head of the great barons. He was the incarnation of the permanence of the past, and his political gospel derived from certain principles which he was prepared to defend to the last: the right of private war between the great barons, the right of the great feudal overlords to coin money within their own territories, a return to the morality of chivalry, submission to the Holy See as the supreme arbitrating power, and the maintenance of the feudal organisation of society in its integrity. All those things which had become established owing to the circumstances of society in previous centuries and which now Philip the Fair, inspired by Marigny, had abolished or still sought to overthrow.

Enguerrand de Marigny stood for progress. His main ideas concerned the centralisation of power, the unification of finance and administration, the independence of the civil power from religious authority, external peace by fortifying strategic towns and permanently garrisoning them, internal peace by enforcing submission to the royal authority, the augmentation of production and commerce, and the security of communications. But there was another side to the medal: police proliferated, and they were as expensive to maintain as fortresses were to build.

Vehemently opposed by the feudal party, Enguerrand succeeded in rallying to the King a new and growing class which was gradually becoming aware of its own importance: the middle class. On many occasions, for instance, when it was a question of raising taxes or over the affair of the Templars, he had called upon the middle class of Paris to gather before the Palace of the Cité. He had done the same thing in various provincial towns. He had in his mind the example of England, where the House of Commons was already functioning.

As yet, these small French assemblies had no right to discuss, they were merely to listen to the measures the King proposed and approve them.

Blundering though he was in some ways, Valois was far from being a fool. He never missed an opportunity of trying to discredit Marigny. Their opposition, for long secret, had become an open struggle some months since, of which this particular Council of the 18th March was but a phase.

The controversy had taken a violent turn and argument grew heated.

‘If the great barons, of which you, Monseigneur, are the greatest,’ said Marigny, ‘had submitted more willingly to the royal edicts, we should not have had to rely upon the support of the people.’

‘A fine support indeed!’ cried Valois. ‘It’s clear that you learnt no lesson from the riots of 1306, when the King and yourself had to take refuge in the Temple from a Paris in uproar! I tell you that if you go on like this, it won’t be long before the middle class will govern without the King, and your assemblies will make the laws.’

The King remained silent, his chin cupped in his hand, and his wide-open eyes staring straight before him. He never blinked, and it was this peculiarity that gave his gaze a strangeness which frightened everyone.

Marigny turned towards him as if to ask him to use his authority to stop an argument which was getting away from the point at issue.

Philip the Fair raised his chin a little and said, ‘Brother, our concern today is with the Templars.’

‘Very well,’ said Valois rapping the table, ‘let’s concern ourselves with the Templars.’

‘Nogaret!’ murmured the King.

The Keeper of the Seals rose to his feet. Since the beginning of the Council he had been burning with anger and was only waiting an opportunity to show it. A fanatic for the public weal and for the policy of the State, the affair of the Templars was his affair, and he brought to it an energy which was both tireless and limitless. Moreover, he owed his high position to this prosecution, for, at the dramatic Council of 1307, when the Archbishop of Narbonne, who at that time held the Seals, refused to apply them to the order for the Templars’ arrest, Philip the Fair had taken the Seals from the Archbishop’s hand and had placed them in Nogaret’s. Dark, lanky, with a long face and narrow eyes, he was constantly fidgeting with some part of his clothing or biting the nail of one of his flat fingers. He was ardent, austere, and as hard as the scythe of death.

‘Sire, the event that has just occurred, monstrous and terrible though it is to think on and horrible to hear,’ he began in a rapid, emphatic voice, ‘proves that every indulgence, every clemency you accord these devil’s disciples is a weakness that turns back upon yourself.’

‘It is quite true,’ said Philip the Fair, turning towards Valois, ‘that the clemency you advised, Brother, and that my daughter of England sent to ask of me, has not borne good fruit. Go on, Nogaret.’

‘These vile dogs do not deserve to be left alive; instead of blessing the clemency of their judges, they took advantage of it to insult both the Church and the King. The Templars are heretics …’

‘Were,’ interrupted Charles of Valois.

‘You were saying, Monseigneur?’ asked Nogaret impatiently.

‘I said were, Messire, because if my memory serves me right, of the fifteen thousand Templars that existed in France, you’ve only got four in your hands at the present moment; and it’s embarrassing, I agree, that after seven years of trial, they should still insist upon their innocence! It seems to me that in the old days, Messire de Nogaret, you moved more swiftly, when at a single blow you eliminated a pope.’

Nogaret trembled with rage and his complexion grew darker yet under the blue shadow of his beard. He it was who had gone to depose old Pope Boniface VIII, who was eighty-six years of age, by hitting him in the face and pulling him off his pontifical throne by the beard. The Chancellor’s adversaries never failed to remind him of this incident. Nogaret had been excommunicated for excess of zeal. And it had required all the authority that Philip the Fair had over Clement V to get the excommunication cancelled.

‘We know, Monseigneur,’ he replied, ‘that you have always supported the Templars. Doubtless you were counting upon their armies to reconquer, even to the utter ruin of France, the phantom throne of Constantinople upon which you have never as yet been able to sit.’

He had returned insult for insult, and his complexion returned almost to normal.

‘By thunder!’ cried Valois, leaping to his feet and upsetting his chair behind him.

There was a barking from beneath the table at which everyone jumped except Philip the Fair, while the King of Navarre burst out laughing. The barking came from the largest greyhound. Philip the Fair had kept him close and he was not yet accustomed to these outbursts.

‘Louis, be quiet,’ said Philip the Fair, glancing coldly at his son.

Then he clicked his fingers, saying, ‘Lombard, stop it!’ Pulling the dog’s head against his leg, he stroked it for a moment.

Louis of Navarre, who was already nicknamed ‘le Hutin’, that is to say the wayward fool, lowered his head to conceal his inability to control his silly laughter. He was twenty-eight years old, but his mental development was no greater than at seventeen. He had his father’s eyes, but with the difference that his gaze was weak and lacked directness, and his father’s hair but without its lustre.

‘Sire,’ said Charles of Valois when Bouville, the Chamberlain, had picked up his chair for him, ‘Sire, my Brother, God is my witness that I have never desired anything but your interest and your glory.’

Philip the Fair turned his eyes upon him, and Charles of Valois felt his assurance ebbing. Nevertheless he went on, ‘It is only of you I think, Brother, when I see all that has made the strength of the kingdom being wantonly destroyed. Without the Templars and without the Chivalry of France, how can you undertake a crusade should the necessity arise?’

It was Marigny who replied.

‘Under our King’s wise reign,’ he said, ‘we have had no need of a crusade, precisely because the Chivalry has remained quiet, Monseigneur, and there has been no necessity to lead it overseas to expend its ardour.’

‘And the question of the Faith, Messire?’

‘The gold taken from the Templars has swollen the Treasury, Monseigneur, as has the enormous trade and commerce that used to be carried on behind the banners of the Faith; goods are diffused just as well without crusades.’

‘Messire, you talk like an infidel!’

‘I talk like a servant of the kingdom, Monseigneur!’

The King lightly tapped the table.

‘Brother,’ he said once more, ‘we have met to discuss the Templars. I ask you for your counsel.’

‘My counsel … my counsel?’ Valois repeated, taken aback.

He was always ready to reform the universe, but never to furnish any precise opinion.

‘Well, Brother, let those who have conducted the business so well’ – he indicated Nogaret and Marigny – ‘inspire you with suggestions as to how it should be brought to an end. As far as I am concerned …’

He made the gesture of Pilate.