The Iron King (37 page)

With Lombard at its heels, it entered a copse of beech-trees and remained in it. And now the King heard Lombard’s baying take on that higher more sonorous note, at once furious and poignant, that hounds give tongue to when the hunted beast is at bay.

The King went into the copse; the rays of the sun filtered through the branches but without heat, turning the crisp, frozen snow to rose.

The King came to a halt and loosened the hilt of his short sword. Lombard was baying continuously. There was the stag, his back to a tree, at bay, his head lowered and his muzzle almost touching the ground, his coat running wet and steaming. Between his enormous horns, there was indeed a cross, as high as the cross upon an altar. It was shining in the light. For an instant the King was aware of this vision, for in that moment his stupefaction turned to appalling fear; his body had ceased to obey him. He wished to dismount, but his foot would not leave the stirrup; his legs were like two marble boots against the horse’s flanks. Then the King, terrified, wished to call for help upon his horn, but where was it? He no longer had it, he could no longer remember where he had lost it, and his hands, loosing the reins, were immovable. He tried to shout, but no sound came from his throat.

The stag had raised its head and, its tongue hanging, looked with huge tragic eyes upon the horseman from whom it expected death, the horseman upon whom sudden petrification had fallen. Among his horns the cross shone out again. Before the King’s eyes, the trees, the ground, the whole aspect of the world were taking on a new shape. He felt an appalling bursting sensation in his head, and then he subsided into total darkness.

A few moments later, when the rest of the hunt reached the copse, the body of the King of France was found lying at his horse’s feet. Lombard was still baying before the hunted stag, whose tines were seen to be laden with two dead branches, caught up doubtless in the undergrowth. They had assumed the shape of a cross and shone in the sunlight because of their coating of frost. But there was no time to lose with the stag; while the whips stopped the pack, it galloped off again, somewhat rested now and followed only by a few of the keener hounds which would hunt it till nightfall, or drive it into the lake to drown.

It was Hugues de Bouville who arrived first at Philip the Fair’s body. He realised that the King was still breathing and cried, ‘The King lives!’

With two poles cut with their swords, and belts and cloaks, they produced a makeshift stretcher upon which the King was laid. He but moved a little to vomit and to void from every orifice like a duck that is being strangled. His eyes were glazed. Where was the athlete who but a short time ago could make two men-at-arms bend low merely by placing his hands on their shoulders?

He was carried thus to Clermont where, that night, some of his power of speech returned. The doctors, sent for hurriedly, had bled him. To Bouville, who was watching by his bedside, his first words, painfully articulated, were, ‘The cross … the cross.’

And Bouville, thinking the King wished to pray, went and fetched him a crucifix.

Then Philip the Fair said, ‘I am thirsty.’

At dawn he stammered out that he wanted to be taken to Fontainebleau where he had been born. The similarity between the King and Pope Clement V who, when dying, had also wished to return to his birthplace and had died upon the journey, was remembered.

It was decided to carry the King by water that he might be less shaken; and the following morning he was taken on board a large flat-bottomed boat which floated down the Oise. The courtiers, the servants and the archers of the escort followed in other boats or on horseback along the banks.

The news travelled quicker than the strange boat, and the dwellers upon the riverside gathered to see the huge, fallen statue pass. The peasants took off their caps, as they did when the Rogation processions passed by their fields. At each village archers went in search of braziers which were placed upon the boat to warm the air. Above the royal eyes the sky was uniformly grey, heavy with snow-clouds.

The lord of Vauréal came down from his manor, which commanded a loop of the Oise, in order to salute the King; he saw that there was a look of death upon his face. The King answered him only by moving his eyelids; but he was beginning to recover some slight use of his limbs.

Night fell early. Huge torches were lit in the bows of the boats and their red dancing light shone upon the river banks so that the procession looked like a cave of flame moving through the night.

In this way they arrived at the junction with the Seine, and from there went on as far as Poissy. The King was carried to the castle where his grandfather, Saint Louis, had been born. The Dominicans and the two royal convents set themselves to pray for his recovery.

He stayed there for some ten days, at the end of which he seemed somewhat recovered. Speech had returned to him; he could stand, but his movements were numbed and restricted. He insisted on going to Fontainebleau, which appeared to be a fixed determination, and, making a great effort of will, he demanded to be placed on horseback. In this way he went gently as far as Essonnes; but there, for all his courage, he had to give up: the royal body no longer obeyed the royal will. He was placed in a litter, and it was thus that he finished the journey. Snow had begun to fall again and muffled the horses’ hooves. Couriers sent in advance had had fires lit on every hearth in the castle and a greater part of the Court had already arrived.

As he went in, the King murmured, ‘The sun, Bouville, the sun …’

9

A Great Shadow over the Kingdom

F
OR A FORTNIGHT THE
King seemed to be wandering in his mind like a lost traveller. At times, though he was quickly tired, he seemed to be recovering his former activity, became anxious about affairs of state, insisted on dealing with financial matters, demanded with authoritative impatience that all letters and edicts should be presented to him for signature; he had never shown so great a desire to sign documents before. Then, suddenly, he fell into a curious sort of idiocy, from time to time uttering pointless and disconnected remarks. He would pass his hand across his forehead, a hand grown feeble with fingers grown stiff.

It was murmured in the Court that the King was out of his mind. In fact, he was beginning to take his way out of the world.

Illness, in so short a time, had made of this man of forty-six a senile figure with sunken features, but half-alive, at the end of a huge room in the Castle of Fontainebleau.

He suffered from perpetual thirst and ceaselessly asked for something to drink.

To people from outside who inquired for news, it was answered that the sovereign had fallen from his horse and been charged by a stag. But the truth was beginning to spread and it was whispered that the hand of God had made him mad.
²⁹

The doctors asserted that he would not recover, and Martin the astrologer, in prudent and ambiguous terms, announced that towards the end of the month a powerful monarch in the Occident would undergo some appalling ordeal, an ordeal which would coincide with an eclipse of the sun. ‘Upon that day,’ wrote Master Martin, ‘a great shadow will fall over the kingdom.’

And then suddenly, one evening, Philip the Fair once again felt in his brain the immense sensation of bursting darkness followed by the appalling fall into the night that had come upon him in the forest of Pont-Sainte-Maxence. This time there was neither stag nor cross. There was but a tall body lying prostrate on a bed, unconscious of the attentions that were being lavished upon it.

When he emerged from this dark realm of the unconscious, he did not know whether it had lasted one hour or two days. The first thing the King saw was a large white figure leaning over him. He heard, too, a voice addressing him.

‘Ah, it is you, Father Renaud,’ the King said feebly. ‘I recognise you very well … but you look as if you were surrounded by a mist.’

Then, at once, he added, ‘I am thirsty.’

Father Renaud, of the Dominicans of Poissy, Grand Inquisitor of France, moistened the patient’s lips with a little Holy water.

‘Has Bishop Pierre been sent for? Has he arrived yet?’ the King then asked.

By one of those curious whims so frequent in the dying, leading them back to their earliest memories, it had been during the last few days an obsession of the King’s to send for Pierre de Latille, Bishop of Châlons, a companion of his childhood, to come to his bedside. Why Pierre de Latille in particular? People wondered about this particular request, looked for hidden motives, whereas they need only have seen in it an accident of memory. And it was precisely this obsession that seized upon the King as he came out of the coma, following his second attack.

‘Yes, Sire, he has been sent for,’ replied Brother Renaud, ‘and I am surprised that he has not already arrived.’

He was lying. A messenger had certainly been sent to the Bishop of Châlons but, in agreement with Monseigneur of Valois, he had been sent so that the Bishop would be warned too late.

Brother Renaud had a part to play and he could not agree that any other ecclesiastic should share it. Necessarily, the King’s confessor had to be Grand Inquisitor of France. They had too many secrets in common to risk the danger that, at the moment of the King’s death, they would be imparted to other ears. Thus the all-powerful monarch could not obtain the services of the friend he desired to help him upon his great journey.

‘Have you been speaking to me long, Brother Renaud?’ the King asked.

Brother Renaud, his chin lost in his mountainous flesh, his eyes small and dark, his naked skull surrounded with a thin coronet of straight yellow hair, was charged, under cover of his religious offices, to make known to the King what the living still desired to get from him.

‘Sire,’ he said, ‘if God were to call you to Him, as indeed He may call any of us at any time, you would be happy to leave the affairs of the kingdom in good order.’

For a moment the King did not answer.

‘Have I made my confession, Brother Renaud?’ he asked.

‘Yes, Sire, the day before yesterday,’ the Dominican replied.

‘A beautiful confession,’ went on Brother Renaud, ‘which we have all greatly admired, as your subjects will. You said that you repented having laid too many taxes upon your people and particularly upon the Church, but that you had no need to implore forgiveness for those who have died as a result of your actions, because fate and justice must be given every assistance.’

The Grand Inquisitor had raised his voice so that those present might hear him clearly.

‘Did I say that?’ asked the King. ‘Did I really say that?’

He no longer knew the truth. Had he really said those words, or was Brother Renaud inventing for him that edifying end which all great personages should make? He merely murmured, ‘The dead …’ but he no longer had the strength to argue. He knew that he was going to join them.

‘You must make known your last wishes, Sire,’ continued Brother Renaud patiently.

He moved a little from in front of the King’s eyes, and the latter suddenly realised that the whole room was full of people.

‘Ah!’ he said, ‘I recognise you very well, all of you gathered here.’

And he seemed surprised that the power of recognising faces should still be his. They were all there about his bed, his three sons, his two brothers, and the doctors with their basins and their lancets, and the Grand Chamberlain, and Enguerrand de Marigny. The end of the room was filled with the Peers of France, the great lords of the kingdom and other people of less importance who happened to be there by hazard of their duties. There was a great whispering among the crowd.

‘Yes, yes,’ he whispered, ‘I recognise you very well.’

But he saw them through a fog.

Who was that over there, leaning against the wall, whose head rose above all others? Ah, yes, that was Robert of Artois, that blunderer who had caused him so much concern. And that strong-looking woman close by, who turned up her sleeves with the gesture of a midwife? He recognised her too; it was his cousin, the terrible Countess Mahaut.

The King thought of all the things he was leaving in a condition of suspense, of all the opposing interests that make up the life of a people.

‘The Pope has not been elected,’ he murmured.

Other problems chased and jostled through his tired mind. The affair of the Princesses had not been settled: his sons were without wives, but unable to take others; the business in Flanders had not been settled …

Every man believes to some extent that the world began when he was born and, at the moment of leaving it, suffers at having to let the Universe remain unfinished.

The King moved his head to look at Louis of Navarre who, his hands hanging down beside his body, his chest hollow, seemed never to take his eyes off his father, but was thinking only of himself.

‘Weigh well, Louis, weigh well,’ Philip the Fair murmured, ‘what it is to be the King of France! Learn as early as you can the state of your kingdom.’