The Maid and the Queen (4 page)

Distraught, Raymondin at first considered suicide, but, remembering that this was a sin against God, instead climbed into his saddle and rode despondently through the wood, not caring where he went. Eventually, his horse led him to a fountain known to be frequented by fairies. It was at this fountain that Raymondin encountered Melusine.

Melusine was a fairy in the guise of a beautiful woman. She was a mixed-breed—half human, half sprite—of regal lineage. Her father was the king of Albanie (the medieval name for Scotland); her mother, Presine, a fairy. When she was fifteen, Melusine punished her father for betraying her mother, and her mother in turn punished
her
for not showing enough respect to her father—fairies clearly took their parental responsibilities seriously—by casting a spell that turned Melusine into a serpent from the waist down every Saturday. But it wasn’t Saturday when Raymondin met her, so he
couldn’t tell that she was a fairy. To him, she was simply a well-dressed, extremely attractive woman of obviously high aristocratic birth.

At first, Raymondin, lost in his own grief, failed even to notice Melusine, but she soon succeeded in securing his attention by calling him by name and recounting the source of his sorrow, much to his astonishment. Then, in a speech extraordinary for its prescience, Melusine offered her aid to Raymondin:

“In God’s name, Raymondin, I am, after God, the one who can help and advance you the most in this mortal world, in whatever adversity befalls you…. And may you know that I well know that you think me some phantom or diabolical creation in my deeds and words, but I assure you that I am sent by order of God… and a true Catholic…. May you also know with certainty that without me or my advice you cannot accomplish your goals… for I will make you the most noble, most sovereign and greatest member ever of your lineage, and the most powerful mortal on earth.”

Melusine’s intimate knowledge of his predicament, her insistence that she was a messenger from God and a true daughter of the Church, and above all the confidence she projected persuaded Raymondin of her legitimacy. He agreed to marry her, accepting her condition that as long as they lived he was never to follow her on a Saturday but to leave her alone in privacy. After their marriage, as she had pledged, Raymondin, through his wife, became one of the greatest lords of his time. As one of her first acts as a married woman, Melusine built a mighty castle, with high towers and a strong dungeon, which she christened “Lusignan” after the latter part of her name; it was the first of many cities, towns, and castles in Poitou, including Parthenay and La Rochelle, that Melusine founded and gave to Raymondin. With Melusine’s aid, as prophesied by the stars, Raymondin eventually took over his cousin Aimery’s lands and estates, and became an even wealthier and more powerful lord than the former count of Poitiers.

Also as promised, Melusine gave Raymondin many sons, ten in all, ensuring an unbroken line of descendants. They were all strong, well made, and healthy, but, being of fairy ancestry, were also born with strange defects. The eldest had a “huge mouth and large great nostrils”; another had a complexion like fire; still another possessed only one eye (“though he could see more clearly than a person with two eyes, for all their plenty”). The sixth son, Geoffrey, had an immense tooth, while the eighth, Horrible, was born with three eyes and (perhaps understandably) a wicked disposition. These
abnormalities in no way inhibited Melusine’s sons from prospering in the world; most performed feats of great courage in battle, and consequently married beautiful princesses and became illustrious kings, further adding to Raymondin’s prestige. Only Geoffrey of the great tooth and Horrible of the three eyes brought shame upon their parents: Geoffrey by burning down an abbey filled with monks, one of whom was his brother, a member of the Order; Horrible for having so pernicious a temperament that Melusine was ultimately forced to advise her husband to have him killed, lest Horrible perpetually sow the seeds of war and famine among Raymondin’s subjects.

But Geoffrey and Horrible were not to be the cause of the family’s downfall; that distinction belonged to Raymondin. For despite all Melusine had done for him, eventually there came a Saturday when Raymondin, prodded by his father, the earl of the Forest, could no longer resist the urge to spy on her. Making a small hole in the door of her room with his sword, he peered through and, catching his wife in the bath, discovered her to be a large snake from the waist down. When in anger he later confronted her with this information, calling her a serpent, she cried:

“Evil was the hour and season wherein I first saw thy treason and falseness! Thine unmeasurable language has condemned me to eternal pain…. Had you kept your covenant truly, I should have been a woman at all hours, and, at death, the King of Glory would have borne away my soul, and I should have been buried with great honor. Alas! I must now suffer pain…. God pardon you for being the cause of my suffering torment.”

Thus tragically betrayed, Melusine assumed the form of a serpent and flew around her namesake castle of Lusignan, as a public warning to others who would violate a solemn oath. “Melusine came to Lusignan and circled it three times, shrieking woefully in a plaintive female voice. Up in the fortress and in the town below, people were utterly amazed; they knew not what to think, for they could see the form of a serpent, yet they heard the lady’s voice issuing forth from it.” Significantly, before she left, Melusine vowed to appear again in the future, “if not in the air, [then] on the earth or by this fountain,” whenever mastery of the castle was about to change hands, as a sign of the lawful rights of the new owner.

By this device did the author, Jean of Arras, cleverly complete the task assigned to him by his employer. For at the end of
The Romance of Melusine,
the fairy reappears in the bedroom of the castle of Lusignan, both as a serpent and as a beautiful woman, “to tell the last English tenant… that it
must be handed over to its besieger, the duke of Berry,” thereby justifying the duke’s claim.

Jean of Arras’s book was not a completely original work. The legend of the fairy Melusine had been around, in various incarnations, for decades. Jean in fact based his story partly on some old writings purporting to recount Melusine’s exploits found in the castle of Lusignan by the duke of Berry when he moved in. But what Jean of Arras did, to brilliant effect, was to seamlessly weave together fact and fiction, past and present, for the express purpose of lobbying public support for a piece of partisan shenanigans. “It is in Jean d’Arras, for perhaps the first time in vernacular European literature, that we find the fairy realm joined to the contemporary, political world for the purpose of making political allegory,” observed Professor Stephen G. Nichols, a specialist in medieval French history and literature.

Raymondin breaks his vow and spies on Melusine on a Saturday.

The Romance of Melusine,
written in Latin but translated promptly by the author into French, was a phenomenal success. Because of its overwhelming popularity, versions of the book appeared in England, Spain, and Germany. Nearly a century later it was one of the very first volumes (after the Bible) printed in Geneva in 1478 with Gutenberg’s newfangled invention of movable type. In France, Jean of Arras’s work acquired such a huge, enthusiastic, and loyal readership that it was almost impossible for a literate person not to be aware of the book. The novel was distributed at festivals as a mark of special favor. Significantly, in 1444 the court of Lorraine ordered the production of a beautifully bound copy that was presented as a gift to Charles VII, king of France. With the arrival of the printing press,
The Romance of Melusine
went through twenty editions in French in the fifteenth century alone.

The great strength of this work was that it managed to flatter both parties in the dispute. The story recognized and celebrated the Lusignans’ history of great men and stirring deeds, immortalizing the family by providing them with a genealogy that traced their antecedents to royalty, a tactic that at the same time augmented the duke of Berry’s achievement in taking their castle away from them. Moreover, by associating the previous occupant of the fortress with the English, Jean of Arras lent to his patron’s otherwise selfish actions the stirring aura of French nationalism. Everyone who read
The Romance of Melusine
at the time it was written understood its political implications, and support for the duke of Berry’s position increased proportionately. The duke was very pleased with his secretary.

This book, so admired throughout Europe, was of even greater importance to the princess Yolande of Aragon and her family. For although Jean of Arras had written the romance at the request of the duke of Berry, he had dedicated the work to the duke’s sister, Marie, duchess of Bar. “And to the pleasure of my Right high and mighty lord John, son to the king of France, duke of Berry… the which history [Melusine’s] I have begun after the true chronicles which I have had of him… and because his noble sister, Marie, daughter of the king of France and duchess of Bar, had Required my said lord to have the history,” Jean of Arras inscribed in the opening to his book. In fact, according to French scholarship,
The Romance of Melusine
was written not only “for the amusement of Marie of France” but also to aid in the
“political education of the children” of the duchess of Bar.
^*
Jean of Arras even based two of the characters in the romance on Marie’s eldest daughter, the queen of Aragon, and her husband, King John. Everyone associated with Marie—friends and family—received copies.

That the novel was dedicated to her grandmother and that her parents were a source of inspiration to the author would have only increased the value of the work in Princess Yolande’s eyes. This was the book of her family.

And so, decades later, when Joan of Arc, claiming to be a messenger from God, appeared at the royal court of Chinon and approached the dauphin with the words, “Very noble lord dauphin, I have come and I have been sent from God to bring aid to you and to the kingdom,” the resemblance to Melusine would have been immediate and profound. As a result, Joan did not have to overcome resistance in order to convince Yolande of Aragon of the genuineness of her mission.

On the contrary. Yolande was waiting for her.

C
HAPTER
2

To Be
a
Queen

ESPITE HER PARENTS’
preoccupation with troubadour culture, Princess Yolande’s education was not limited to poetry, books, and music. She also gleaned the fundamentals of rule and government through firsthand observation of the workings of the court. On his ascension to the throne, her father had inherited a vast empire that required a significant degree of political wrangling with the various representative assemblies, known as
cortes,
from Catalonia, Valencia, and Majorca as well as Aragon.