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

‘He calls it Lombard? I am happy to know it. The King is a man of wit,’ said Tolomei, laughing. ‘Do you know that yesterday morning, Monseigneur …’

He was going to tell the story when there was a knock on the door. A clerk appeared and announced that Count Robert of Artois asked to be received.

‘Very well. I’ll see him,’ said Tolomei, dismissing the clerk with a wave of his hand.

Jean de Marigny looked glum.

‘I would rather not meet him,’ he said.

‘Of course, of course,’ the banker replied soothingly. ‘Monseigneur of Artois is a great talker. He’d tell everyone that he had seen you here.’

He rang a bell. The hangings immediately parted and a young man in a tight-fitting tunic came into the room. It was the same boy who had very nearly knocked over the King of France the day before.

‘Nephew,’ said the banker, ‘take Monseigneur out without passing through the gallery and take care that he should meet no one. And carry these for him down to the street,’ he added, placing the two bags of gold in the boy’s arms. ‘Good-bye, Monseigneur!’

Messer Spinello Tolomei bowed low to kiss the amethyst on the prelate’s finger. Then he pulled the hangings aside.

When Jean de Marigny had gone out, the Siennese came back to the table and took up the receipt, rolling it carefully.

‘Coglione!’ he murmured. ‘Vanesio, ladro, ma pure coglione.’ (Vain, thieving and a fool to boot.)

And now his left eye was open. He put the document in the drawer and went out to greet his other visitor.

He crossed the great gallery, lit by ten windows, and containing his trade counters; for Tolomei was not only a banker but an importer and merchant of rare goods of every kind, from spices and Cordova leather to Flanders cloth, gold-embroidered Cyprian carpets and the essential oils of Arabia.

A multitude of clerks dealt with the ceaseless coming and going of clients; the accountants made their calculations on a special kind of abacus, moving the brass counters in the frames; and the whole gallery was filled with a low hum of business.

Passing rapidly through the gallery, the fat Siennese bowed to a client here, corrected a figure there, reprimanded an employee or refused, with a ‘niente’ lisped between the teeth, a demand for credit.

Robert of Artois was leaning over a counter of Oriental weapons, weighing a heavy damascened dagger in his hand.

The giant turned quickly when the banker placed his hand on his arm, assuming that boorish, jovial manner which he generally affected.

‘Well,’ said Tolomei, ‘you want to see me?’

‘Yes,’ said the giant. ‘I’ve got two things to ask of you.’

‘And the first is money, I suppose.’

‘Quiet!’ groaned Artois. ‘Must all Paris know, you damned money-lender, that I owe you a fortune? Let’s go and talk privately.’

They left the gallery. Once in his private room with the door closed, Tolomei said, ‘Monseigneur, if it’s a question of a new loan, I very much fear that it is not possible.’

‘Why?’

‘My dear Monseigneur Robert,’ Tolomei went on calmly, ‘when you brought a law-suit against your aunt Mahaut for the inheritance of the County of Artois, I paid the costs. Well, you lost the case.’

‘But you know very well that I lost it through dishonesty,’ cried Artois. ‘I lost it through the intrigues of that bitch Mahaut. May she die of it! A thieves’ market! She was given Artois so that Franche-Comté should revert to the Crown through her daughter. But if there were any justice in the world, I should be a peer of the realm and the richest baron in France! And I shall be, do you hear me Tolomei, I shall be!’

And he banged the table with his enormous fist.

‘My dear fellow, I sincerely hope so,’ said Tolomei, still perfectly calm. ‘But in the meantime you’ve lost your case.’

He had discarded his episcopal manners and was a great deal more familiar with Artois than he had been with the Archbishop.

‘Nevertheless, I’ve received the County of Beaumont-le-Roger, and an income of five thousand pounds, as well as the castle of Conches in which I live,’ replied the giant.

‘Certainly,’ said the banker. ‘But that has not paid me back. Rather the contrary.’

‘I haven’t yet succeeded in getting paid. The Treasury owes me for several years in arrears.’

‘Of which you’ve borrowed the greater part from me. You needed money to repair the roof of Conches and the stables.’

‘They had been burnt down,’ said Robert.

‘Very well. And then you needed money to maintain your partisans in Artois.’

‘What should I do without them? It’s through them, Fiennes and others, that one day I shall win my case, arms in hand if necessary. And then, Messer Banker, tell me …’

And the giant changed his tone, as if he had had enough of playing the part of a rebuked schoolboy. He took the banker’s robe between his thumb and forefinger, and began slowly pulling him to his feet.

‘Tell me this. You paid for my costs, my stables and all the rest of it, of course you did, but haven’t you been able to do a very satisfactory deal or two because of me? Who told you that the Templars were about to be arrested, and advised you to borrow money from them which you never had to pay back? Who told you about the debasing of the currency, which permitted you to lay out all your gold in merchandise and re-sell it for twice the amount? Well, who did that for you?’

For Tolomei, obeying a tradition which still exists in high banking circles, had informers who were close to the councils of state, and his principal informer was Robert of Artois who was the friend and close companion of Charles of Valois, who told him everything.

Tolomei disengaged himself, smoothed out the crease in his robe, smiled and, his left eye closed, replied, ‘I grant it, Monseigneur, I grant it. You have sometimes given me useful information. But, alas!’

‘Alas, what?’

‘Alas! The profits I have been able to make through you are very far from covering the advances I have made you.’

‘Is that true?’

‘It is,’ said Tolomei with the most innocent air in the world.

He was lying, and was sure of being able to do so with impunity, for Robert of Artois, though clever in intrigue, understood very little about accountancy.

‘Oh!’ said the latter, vexed.

He scratched the stubble on his chin and meditatively shook his head.

‘All the same, when I think of the Templars … You ought to be pretty pleased this morning, eh?’ he asked.

‘Yes and no, Monseigneur; yes and no. For a long time they have done our business no harm. Who is going to be attacked next? Is it to be us, us Lombards, as we’re called. Dealing in gold is not an easy business. And without us nothing could be done. But by the way,’ Tolomei went on, ‘has Monsieur de Valois said anything to you about another change in the value of the Paris pound, as I hear is proposed?’

‘No,’ said Artois who was following his own line of thought. ‘But this time I’ve got Mahaut. I’ve got Mahaut because I hold her daughters and her niece in the hollow of my hand. And I’m going to strangle them … crack! … like that!’

Hatred hardened his features and made him almost good-looking. He had moved nearer to Tolomei once more. The latter was thinking, ‘This man, due to his obsession, is capable of almost anything. Anyway, I’ve made up my mind to lend him another five hundred pounds – though he does smell of game.’ Then he said, ‘How have you done this?’