The King Without a Kingdom (23 page)

A sovereign who on the one hand claims to see to everything, down to the very last ceremonial detail, and on the other hand seems not to worry any longer about anything, not even the most important matters, isn’t a man who will guide his people to great things.

On the second day the dauphin’s vessel was moored at Pont-de-l’Arche when the king saw the prevost of the Paris merchants, Master Étienne Marcel, riding at the head of a company of fifty to a hundred lances beneath the town’s blue and red banner. These bourgeois were better equipped than many a knight.

The king didn’t get off the boat, nor did he invite the prevost on board. They spoke to each other from deck to riverbank, both equally surprised to find themselves face to face with one another. The prevost clearly hadn’t expected to meet the king in this place, and the king wondered what the prevost could possibly be doing in Normandy with such an equipage. There was surely some Navarrese intrigue afoot behind it all. Was it an attempt to free Charles the Bad? The matter seemed rather swift in the making, just one week after his arrest. But it was possible. Or was the prevost part of the conspiracy revealed by John of Artois? The machinations he told of thus gained in verisimilitude.

‘We came to salute you, sire,’ was all the prevost said. The king, rather than making him talk a little, answered out of the blue and in a threatening tone that he had had to seize the King of Navarre against whom he held serious grievances, and that all would be revealed in the broad light of day in the letter that he was intending to send to the pope. King John also said that he expected to find his town of Paris in good order, and both peaceful and busy, upon his return … ‘And presently, Messire Prevost, you may yourself return.’

A long way indeed for so few words. Étienne Marcel left, his tuft of a black beard sitting up on his chin. And as soon as the king had seen the banner of Paris disappear between the willows, he sent for his secretary to modify once more the letter to the pope … Ah, that reminds me … Brunet? Brunet! Brunet, call Dom Calvo to my window … yes, if you please … dictating something like ‘And once again Most Holy Father, I have established proof that Monseigneur the King of Navarre attempted to rouse the merchants of Paris against me, making contact with their prevost who came to Norman country without warning, accompanied by a company of men-at-arms so great they could not be counted, in order to help the evil members of the Navarrese faction put the finishing touches to their perfidy, seizing my very person and that of my eldest son, the dauphin …’

For that matter, in his head Marcel’s cavalcade was to grow by the hour, and soon would count five hundred lances.

And then he decided to move on immediately from that mooring and, having had Navarre and Fricamps extracted from the Castle of Pont-de-l’Arche, he ordered the boatmen to head for Les Andelys. As the King of Navarre was following on horseback, stage by stage, surrounded by a solid escort of sergeants who kept him on the tightest of reins and had been given the order to run him through should he look set to flee or should there occur any attempt to rescue him. He should always stay within sight of the boat. In the evening, he would be locked up in the nearest tower. He had been held prisoner in Pont-de-l’Arche. He was to be held in Château-Gaillard … yes, Château-Gaillard, where his grandmother of Burgundy had so early ended her days … yes, more or less at the same age.

How was Monseigneur of Navarre bearing up under all this? Frankly speaking, rather badly. Now he has probably got more accustomed to his status as prisoner, at least since he found out that the King of France himself is prisoner of the King of England and thus, as a result, he no longer fears for his life. But in the early days …

Ah! There you are, Dom Calvo. Remind me if the word light figures in the gospel reading next Sunday, or some other word that evokes the idea … yes, the second Sunday of Advent. It would be most surprising not to find it somewhere … or in the epistle … the one from last Sunday obviously …
Abjiciamus ergo opera tenebrarum, et induamur arma lucis
… Let us therefore reject the works of darkness and cloak ourselves in the light … But that was last Sunday. You don’t have it in mind either. All right, you will tell me later on; I would appreciate it …

A fox cub caught in a trap, turning round and round in his cage, panic-stricken, eyes ablaze, muzzle sullied, body starved thin, whining, and whining … This is how he was, our Monseigneur of Navarre. But it has to be said that everything was being done to frighten the life out of him.

Nicolas Braque had obtained a deferral for his execution by arguing that the King of Navarre should be made to feel like he is dying every day; this did not fall on deaf ears.

At Château-Gaillard, not only did King John order that he be specifically incarcerated in the chamber where Madame Marguerite of Burgundy had died, and this he was well made to understand … ‘The shamelessness of his rascally wench of a grandmother it was that produced this evil breed; he is the offspring of a harlot’s offspring; he must be made to think that he will end up like her …’ what’s more, over the handful of days that he held him there, the king announced on numerous occasions, even during the night, that his demise was imminent.

‘Get yourself ready, monseigneur. The king has ordered your scaffold to be mounted in the castle’s courtyard. We will come and get you shortly.’ During his sorry stay, Charles of Navarre was told this by the King of the Ribald, or le Buffle, or any number of other sergeants. A moment later, Sergeant Lalemant would appear, to find Navarre with his back against the wall, gasping for breath, eyes terror-stricken. ‘The king has granted you a reprieve; you will not be executed before tomorrow.’ Upon which Navarre got his breath back and collapsed on a stool. An hour or so went by, when Perrinet le Buffle returned. ‘The king will not have you beheaded, monseigneur. No … He wants you hanged. He is erecting the gallows now.’ And then, once salvation until the morrow was declared, it was the castle governor’s turn, Gautier of Riveau.

‘Have you come to get me, messire governor?’

‘No, monseigneur, I have come to bring you your supper.’

‘Have they erected the gallows?’

‘What gallows? No, monseigneur, no gallows have been prepared.’

‘Nor any scaffold?’

‘No, monseigneur, I have seen nothing of the kind.’

Six times over. Monseigneur of Navarre had been beheaded, and hanged, drawn or quartered as many times again. Perhaps the worst trick was leaving a large sack of hemp in his cell and telling him that during the night he would be tied up in it and thrown in the Seine. The following morning, the King of the Ribald came to recover the sack, and went away smiling when, turning it over, he saw that Monseigneur of Navarre had made a hole in it.

King John constantly asked for news of the prisoner. This helped make him wait more patiently while his letter to the pope was altered. Was the King of Navarre eating? No, he scarcely touched the meals he was brought, and his plate came back down exactly as it had gone up. He was certainly afraid of being poisoned. ‘Is he losing weight? A good thing, a good thing indeed. Make his food bitter-tasting and foul-smelling, so that he thinks that we really want to poison him.’ Is he sleeping? Badly. During the day, he was sometimes to be found slumped over the table, his head in his hands, starting like someone suddenly pulled from his sleep. But at night, he could be heard walking without cease, round and round his circular chamber … ‘Like a fox cub, sire, like a fox cub.’ He certainly dreaded someone coming to strangle him, just as his grandmother had been, in the same place. Certain mornings one could tell that he had been crying. ‘Ah good, ah good,’ said the king. ‘Does he speak to you?’ But of course he spoke! He tried to strike up conversations with those who entered his lodgings. And he attempted to wear them down, starting with their weaknesses. He promised the King of the Ribald a mountain of gold if he would help him escape, or just agree to sending letters to the outside. He offered Sergeant Perrinet the chance to come with him and become his King of the Ribald in Évreux and in Navarre, as he had noticed that le Buffle was jealous of the other man. To the fortress’s governor, whom he had judged to be a loyal soldier, he pleaded innocence and injustice. ‘I know not what they hold against me, as I swear to God that I have harboured no evil thought against the king, my dear father, nor have undertaken anything at all to harm him. He was misled about me by perfidious traitors. They wanted to send me down in his esteem; but I can bear all the punishments that he cares to inflict upon me, because I know that they are not really of his doing. There are so many things I could advise him of for his safeguarding, so many favours I could do him and that I will not be able to do him should he have me killed. Go to him, messire governor, go and tell him that it would be to his advantage to grant me an audience. And if God wishes that I return to good fortune, rest assured that I will take care of yours, as I can see that you are sympathetic to my cause as much as you are concerned about the true wellbeing of your master.’

All of this was of course reported back to the king who barked: ‘See the perfidy! See the traitor!’ as if it weren’t the way with all prisoners to bribe their jailers or seek to make them feel sorry for them. Perhaps even the sergeants insisted a little on the King of Navarre’s proposals, all the better to sell themselves. King John threw them purses of gold in recognition of their loyalty. ‘This evening you will pretend that I have ordered you to warm his jail cell, and you will light some straw and damp wood, and block up the chimney, to smoke him out.’

Yes, a trapped fox cub, the little King of Navarre. But the King of France was like a huge, raging hound circling the cage, a sly, bearded watchdog, his fur bristling, growling, howling, bearing his teeth, scratching at the dust, unable to reach his prey through the bars.

And that remained so until around the twentieth of April, when appeared two Norman knights, fittingly escorted, whose pennon bore the coat of arms of Navarre and Évreux. They brought King John a letter from Philip of Navarre, dated in Conches. Rather abrupt was the letter. Philip said how incensed he was at the great wrongs and abuse caused to his lord and elder brother … ‘Whom you took unlawfully, unjustly and without reason. But you should know that you have no occasion to think of his legacy, nor mine, in killing him through your cruelty, as you will never get your hands on a single inch of it. From this day on we will defy you, you and all your authority, and we will wage merciless war against you, as greatly as is in our power.’ If these are not the exact words, they at least convey the same message. The words were stamped with just such severity; and the defiant intention was very much present. And what made the letter all the more brutal, was that it was addressed: ‘To John of Valois, who calls himself King of France …’

The two knights that brought it saluted and, without further delay, turned their horses around and went away as they had come.

Naturally, the king didn’t reply to the letter. It was inadmissible, by its address alone. But war had been declared, and one of the greatest vassals no longer recognized King John as rightful sovereign. Which meant that he would not be long in recognizing the Englishman.

One would expect such a great insult would send King John into a blinding rage. However, he surprised his people by a fit of laughter. Somewhat forced laughter. His father had also laughed, and rather more heartily, twenty years earlier, when the Bishop Burghersh, Chancellor of England, had brought him the challenge of the young Edward III …

King John ordered that the long-cogitated letter to the pope be immediately dispatched, yes, as it was; having been amended so many times, it didn’t make much sense and proved nothing whatsoever. At the same time he ordered his son-in-law to be released from the fortress. ‘I will shut him up in the Louvre.’ And, letting the dauphin sail back up the Seine on his great, golden barge, he himself chose to take to the road at a gallop and regain Paris on horseback. Where he did nothing much of any importance, while the Navarrese clan got down to work.

Ah! I hadn’t realized that you had come back, Dom Calvo … So, you have found … In the gospel …
Jesus replied
… what then?
Go and tell John what you have heard and what you have seen.
Speak louder, Dom Calvo. With the noise of the cavalcade …
The blind see, the lame walk
… Yes, yes, I follow. Saint Matthew.
Coeci vident, claudi ambulant, surdi audiunt, mortui resurgent, et coetera
… The blind see. It is not much, but it will do. It is a matter of being able to build my homily around it. You know how I work.

I
WAS TELLING YOU
earlier, Archambaud, that the Navarrese party were proving themselves to be most active. From the day after the banquet of Rouen, messengers had gone off in all directions. First of all to the aunt and the sister. Mesdames Joan and Blanche; the Castle of the Widowed Queens began to hum like a weaver’s workshop. And then to the brother-in-law Phoebus … I will have to tell you about him; he is a strange prince indeed, but by no means insignificant. And as Périgord is after all closer to Béarn than it is to Paris, it wouldn’t be a bad thing that one day … We will talk again about this. Philip of Évreux was successfully standing in for his brother and taking matters in hand; he sent an order to Navarre to raise troops and to transport them over the sea as soon as they could. Meanwhile, Godfrey of Harcourt got together people from his clan in Normandy. And most significant of all, Philip sent to England Sires Morbecque and Brévand, who had taken part in former negotiations, to request aid.