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

‘Is Madame Isabella as beautiful as they say she is, Uncle?’ asked Guccio smiling.

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The Road to London (#ulink_31273df3-10e7-518b-a7ea-1013697bdf18)

SOME PEOPLE ARE ALWAYS dreaming of travel and adventure in order to give themselves airs and an aura of heroism in other people’s eyes. Then, when they find themselves in the middle of an adventure and in peril, they begin to think, ‘What a fool I was. Why on earth did I put myself in this position?’ These were precisely the circumstances in which young Guccio Baglioni found himself. There was nothing he had desired more than to see the sea. But now that he was upon it, he would have given anything in the world to be somewhere else.

It was the period of the equinoctial gales, and very few ships had raised their anchors that day. Having played a somewhat hectoring role on the quay at Calais, his sword at his side and his cape flung over his shoulder, Guccio had at length found a ship’s captain who agreed to give him a passage. They had left in the evening, and the storm had risen almost as soon as they had left harbour. Having found a corner below decks, next to the mainmast – ‘This is where you will feel the least movement’, the captain had said – and where a wooden shelf served as a bunk, Guccio was spending the most disagreeable night of his life.

The waves beat against the ship like battering-rams, and Guccio felt that the world around him was being turned topsy-turvy. He rolled off the shelf on to the floor and for a long time struggled in total darkness, colliding now against the ship’s side, now against coils of rope hardened by seawater or, again, against ill-stowed packing-cases which were noisily sliding from side to side. He kept on trying to clutch invisible objects that escaped his grasp. The hull seemed to be on the point of disintegrating. Between two gusts of the storm, Guccio heard the sails flapping and great masses of water breaking over the deck above him. He wondered whether the whole ship had not been swept clear, and whether he was not the only survivor in an empty ship that was thrown upwards to the sky by the waves and then dropped once more into the depths with a descent so rapid that it seemed to have no end to it.

‘I shall most certainly die,’ Guccio said to himself. ‘How stupid to die in this way at my age, engulfed in the sea. I shall never see my uncle again, or the sun. If only I had waited another day or two at Calais! How stupid I am! But if I come out of this per la Madonna, I shall stay in London; I shall become a water-carrier or anything else, but never again shall I set foot in a ship.’

In the end he grasped the foot of the mainmast in his arms and, falling upon his knees in the darkness, clutching, trembling, seasick, his clothes soaked, he waited for death and promised prayers to Santa Maria delle Nevi, to Santa Maria della Scala, to Santa Maria del Servi, to Santa Maria del Carmine – indeed to all the churches of Sienna whose names he could remember.

At dawn the storm suddenly lessened. Guccio, exhausted, looked about him: packing-cases, sails, tarpaulins, anchors and ropes were heaped in terrifying disorder and, in the bilges, beneath the open joints of the planking, water was sloshing.

The hatch which gave access to the bridge opened and a coarse voice cried, ‘Hi, there, Signor! Did you manage to have a good sleep?’

‘Sleep?’ answered Guccio rather angrily. ‘I might be dead for all you’d care.’

They let down a rope ladder to him and helped him up on deck. He felt a strong, cold breeze that made him shiver in his wet clothes.

‘Couldn’t you have told me that there was going to be a storm?’ said Guccio to the captain of the ship.

‘Good God, my fine young gentleman, we have had something of a bad night! But you seemed in a hurry. For us, you know, it’s nothing much out of the ordinary,’ replied the captain. ‘Anyway, we are now close to land.’

He was an elderly, fine-looking man with little dark eyes. He looked at Guccio rather mockingly.

Pointing to a white line that was taking shape in the mist, the old sailor added, ‘That’s Dover over there.’

Guccio sighed, wrapping his cloak about him.

‘How long before we get there?’

The other shrugged his shoulders and replied, ‘Four or five hours, not more. The wind’s in the east.’

Three sailors were lying on deck, obviously exhausted. Another, clasping the helm, was eating a piece of salt beef, without ever taking his eyes from the ship’s bows and the English coast.

Guccio sat down next to the old sailor, in the shelter of a little wooden deckhouse which protected them from the wind and, in spite of the day, the cold and the swell, fell asleep.

When he awoke, the harbour of Dover was spread before him with its rectangular basin and its rows of low houses with thick walls and slate roofs. To the right of the channel the Sheriff’s house was to be seen, guarded by a number of armed men. The quay, littered with merchandise, sheltered beneath pent roofs, swarmed with an English crowd. The breeze was charged with the smell of fish, tar and rotting wood. Fishermen were going to and fro, dragging their nets and carrying heavy oars upon their shoulders. Children were handling sacks larger than themselves across the cobbles.

The ship, its sails furled, entered the harbour under oars.

Youth quickly regains both its strength and its illusions. Danger overcome but serves to increase its confidence in itself and to encourage it to further enterprise. A few hours’ sleep had sufficed to obliterate Guccio’s fears of the night. He was not far from attributing to himself the merit of having outridden the storm; he saw in it a sign that his star was in the ascendant, and a proof of his cleverness in choosing competent sailors. Standing upon the bridge, his attitude that of a victor, his hand clasping a stay, he watched the approach of Isabella’s kingdom with passionate curiosity.

Robert of Artois’s message, sewn into his coat, and the iron ring upon his forefinger, seemed to him to be gauges of a great future. He was about to enter the intimate circles of power, meet kings and queens, learn the contents of the most secret treaties. His mind was excitedly running ahead and he saw himself already a subtle ambassador, an adviser with the ear of the rulers of the world, someone to whom the most distinguished personages would bow respectfully. He would take part in the councils of princes. Had he not the example of Biccio and Musciato Guardi, his compatriots, the two famous Tuscan financiers whom the French called Biche and Mouche, who had been for more than ten years the treasurers, ambassadors and confidential advisers of Philip the Fair, the austere? He would do better than they had, and one day the history of the illustrious Guccio Baglioni would be told, how he had made his start in life by nearly knocking over the King of France at the corner of a street.

The noises of the harbour seemed already to reach him as the acclamation of a crowd. The old sailor threw down a plank, joining the ship to the quay. Guccio paid the cost of his passage and left the sea for dry land; but his legs had become accustomed to the movement of the swell and, reeling, he very nearly fell down on the slippery road.

Since he had no merchandise he did not have to pass through the customs. He asked the first guttersnipe, who offered to carry his luggage, to lead him to the Lombard of the town.

The Italian bankers and merchants of the period had their own postal and transport system. Organised in huge companies, bearing the name of their founders, they had places of business in all the principal towns and ports; these houses of business were like the modern branches of a bank, but to each were also joined a private post office and a travel agency.

The agent of the branch in Dover belonged to the Albizzi company. He was happy to receive the nephew of the head of the Tolomei company, and entertained him as well as he could. In his house Guccio washed, had his clothes dried and ironed, changed his French gold into English gold, and ate a good meal while a horse was made ready for him.

While he was eating, Guccio told the story of the storm, and gave himself a somewhat distinguished role.

There was a man there who had arrived the day before; his name was Boccaccio, and he was travelling for the Bardi company. Four days earlier he had been present at the execution of Jacques de Molay; had heard the curse and recounted the tragedy with a precise, macabre irony which delighted the Italians present. He was a man of about thirty years of age – to Guccio he seemed elderly – had an intelligent, witty face, thin lips and eyes that seemed to be amused by all he saw. As he was also going to London, Guccio and he decided to travel together.

They left in the middle of the day accompanied by a servant.

Remembering his uncle’s advice, Guccio made his companion talk, who indeed desired nothing better. Signor Boccaccio appeared to have seen a good deal in his time. He had been everywhere, to Sicily, Venice, Spain, Flanders, Germany, even the Orient, and had survived many adventures with extraordinary presence of mind; knew the customs of all these countries, had his own opinion about the comparative values of their religions, held monks in some contempt and loathed the Inquisition. He was, too, extremely interested in women; he let it be understood that he had loved a great deal in his time, and recounted curious anecdotes about a great many of these affairs, both illustrious and obscure. He appeared to have no regard for women’s virtue, and his language, when he talked of them, was redolent with anecdotes that made Guccio pensive. Moreover, he seemed to possess as much audacity as cunning. A free spirit was Signor Boccaccio and out of the common run.

‘I should like to have written it all down if I had had the time,’ he said to Guccio, ‘the harvest of stories and ideas I have garnered upon my travels.’

‘Why don’t you do it, Signor?’ asked Guccio.

The other sighed as if he were admitted to some unattainable dream.

‘Troppo tardi, one does not start writing at my age,’ he said. ‘When one’s profession is making money, one can do nothing else after thirty. Besides, if I wrote everything I know, I should run the risk of being burned at the stake.’

The journey, in intimate companionship with an interesting fellow-traveller, across a beautiful green countryside, delighted Guccio. He breathed delightedly the air of early spring; the sound of horses’ hooves seemed to lend an accompaniment of joyous song to their journey; and he began to have as exalted an opinion of himself as if he had shared every one of his companion’s adventures.

In the evening they stopped at an inn. The halts upon a journey tend to the making of confidences. As they sat before the fire, drinking cans of mulled ale, strong beer laced with Geneva rum, spices and cloves, while a meal and a bed were being prepared for them, Signor Boccaccio told Guccio that he had a French mistress by whom he had had, the previous year, a boy who had been baptized Giovanni.

‘They say that bastard children are more intelligent and have more vitality than others,’ remarked Guccio sententiously. He had several admirable clichés at his disposal to make conversation with.

‘Undoubtedly God gives them gifts of mind and body to compensate them for the advantages of inheritance and position that He withholds. Or perhaps, more simply, they have a harder row to hoe in life than others, and do not expect to become famous but by their own efforts,’ replied Signor Boccaccio.

‘This one, however, will have a father who can teach him much.’

‘Unless he comes to owe his father a grudge for having brought him into the world in such unfortunate circumstances,’ said the commercial traveller with a slight shrug of the shoulders.

They slept in the same room, sharing the same pallet. At five o’clock in the morning they set out once more. Wisps of mist still clothed the ground. Signor Boccaccio was silent; he was not at his best at dawn.

The weather was cool and the sky soon cleared. Guccio saw about him a countryside whose beauty delighted him. The trees were still bare, but the air smelt of sap working and the earth was already green with young and tender grass. Ivy clothed the walls of cottage and turreted manor house. Fields and hillsides were criss-crossed with innumerable hedges. Guccio was delighted by the undulating wooded countryside, by the green and blue reflection of the Thames seen from a hilltop, by a group of huntsmen and their pack of hounds met at the entrance to a village. ‘Queen Isabella has a beautiful kingdom,’ he kept repeating to himself.

As they passed on through the land, the Queen who was to give him audience took a more and more important place in his thoughts. Why should he not, he thought, try to please as well as to accomplish his mission? It might well be that through Isabella’s interest Guccio would reach that high destiny for which he felt himself designed. The history of princes and empires had many examples of stranger things than that. ‘She is no less a woman because she is a queen,’ Guccio told himself. ‘She is twenty-two and her husband does not love her. The English lords dare not court her for fear of displeasing the King. Whereas I am arriving as a secret messenger; to get to her I have braved a storm. I go down on my knee, I salute her, uncovered, with a deep obeisance, I kiss the hem of her robe …’

He was already composing the phrases with which he would place his heart, his intelligence and his right arm at the service of the fair young Queen. ‘Madam, I am not of noble birth, but I am a free citizen of Sienna, and I am worthy of my condition of gentleman. I am eighteen and have no greater desire than to gaze upon your beauty and offer you my heart and soul.’

‘We are nearly arrived,’ said Signor Boccaccio. They had come to the suburbs of London without Guccio being aware of it. The houses had drawn closer together and formed long lines each side of the road; the fresh smell of the woods had disappeared; the air smelt of burning peat.

Guccio looked about him in surprise. His uncle Tolomei had told him how extraordinary the city was, and he saw nothing but an interminable succession of villages, consisting of black-walled hovels and filthy alleys in which thin women, carrying heavy loads, passed to and fro with ragged children and ill-conditioned soldiers.

Suddenly, amid a great crowd of people, horses and carts, the travellers found themselves at London Bridge. Two square towers marked the entrance, between which, in the evening, chains were fastened and huge doors closed. The first thing Guccio noticed was a bloody human head fixed upon one of the pikes which surmounted the gateway. Crows fluttered about the eyeless face.