The Strangled Queen (18 page)

The anxious, silent questioning still lay behind her eyes. And Guccio suddenly felt ashamed of his good health, his furred
clothes, the heedless weeks he had spent in travelling. Ashamed even of the Neapolitan sun and of the vanity which had filled him till an hour before of having lived among the great of the world.

She stretched out her beautiful emaciated hand towards him; and Guccio took it in his; and their fingers met once again, wonderingly, and at last were
intermingled in
a clasp, a surer promise of love than any kiss, as the two stranger hands were joined in the same prayer.

The dumb questioning faded from Marie's eyes and her eyelids drooped.

They stayed thus a moment without speech; the girl felt that she was drawing renewed strength from Guccio's fingers.

"Marie," he said suddenly, "look what I have brought you!"

He took from his purse two stars of wrought gold encrusted with pearls and cabuchoan precious stones, which it was at that time fashionable for, rich people to sew into the collars, of their coats. Marie took these jewels and carried them to her lips. And Guccio
felt a tightening of the heart, for gold, however exquisitely wrought ht by the most cunning of Venetian g
oldsmiths, 'I
cannot
relieve hunger. "
A pot of honey or preserved
fruits would have been a better
present today," he thought. He was seized with a great longing to act.

"I am going to find something to cure you," he cried.

"That you should be here, that you should have been thinking
of me, I ask for nothing more ... Are you going already?," "I shall be- back in a few hours."

He was at the door.

"Your mother, does she know?" he asked in a low voice. Marie shook her head.

"I was not certain enough of you to reveal our secret," she murmured; "I sha
ll do it only when you wish me
to."

Going down into the Great Hall, he found Dame Eliabel with her two sons who had just come in from hunting. Their faces unshaven, their eyes bright with fatigue, their clothes torn and ill-prepared, Pierre and Jean de Cressay also bore about them the marks of distress. They showed Guccio all the joy they felt in
seeing a friend once more. But they could not escape a certain jealousy and envy in seeing the young Lombard's prosperous appearance, particularly, moreover, as he was younger than they were. "Clearly a bank gets on better than the nobility," thought Jean de Cressay.

"Our mother will have told you everything, and you have seen Marie ..." said Pierre.

"A crow and a field
-
mouse are the only resul
ts of our hunting this morning.
And a fine soup for a whole family we shall make out of them!' But what can you expect? There are snares everywhere. One
can promise a peasant
a beating for hunting as much as one likes, but they would rather be beaten and have a little game to eat. One can well understand it; in their place we should do the same."

"I hope at least that the Milanese falcons I brought you last autumn render you good service? asked Guccio.

The two brothers looked away in embarrassment. Then Jean, the eldest and more surly of the two, at last brought himself to say, "We had to surrender them to Provost Portefruit so that he would
leave
us

our last pig.; Besides, we no longer had anything to set them on."

He was
ashamed and ve
ry unhappy to have to admit the
use to which they had put Guccio's present.

"You were perfectly right," the latter said; "when I have a chance, I will try and get you others."

"That dog of a Provost," cried Pierre de Cressay in fury, "I can promise you he has not improved since the time you snatched us out of his clutches. By himself he is worse than the famine and doubles its disastrous effects."

"I am very ashamed, Messire Guccio, of the stringent fare I am asking you to share with us," said the widow.

Guccio refused with the utmost delicacy of politeness, alleging that he was awaited for dinner at the bank of Neauphle.

"The important thing is to find proper food for your daughter, Dame Eliabel," he added, "and not to let her die. I am going to get some."

"We are extremely beholden to you for your thought, but you
will find nothing, except grass along the roads," replied Jean de Cressay.

"Oh well!
" cried Guccio, tapping the purse that hung from his
belt, "I am not a Lombard if I don't succeed in doing something." "Even gold is useless now," said Jean. "That's what we shall see.

It was fated that Guccio, whenever he met this family, should play the role of, knight-errant, rather than that of the creditor he still was for a debt of three hundred pounds, which remained undischarged since the death of the late squire of Cressay.

Guccio rode towards Neauphle, persuaded that the clerks of the Tolomei branch would arrange things for him. "If I know them, they will have hoarded prudently or at least know where to
go
if one has the means of paying.

But he found the three clerks huddled round a peat fire; their faces were waxen and their heads hung low.

"For
the last two weeks there has been no business, Messire Guccio," they said. "We don't even have one client a day. Loans are not being repaid and there would be no advantage in
ordering distraint:
you can't seize nothing.' Food?" They
shrugged their shoulders.

"We are shortly going to feast off a pound of chestnuts," said the manager, "and lick our lips for the next three days. Is there still salt in Paris? It's the lack of salt above all from which people are dying. If you could only send us a bushel! The Provost of Montfort has some, but he won't distribute it. He lacks for nothing, I promise you; he has plundered all the neighbourhood as if the country were at war."

"What, that man again! He's a
disaster, that Portefruit!',' cried Guccio. "I shall go and find him. I've already checkmated him once, the thief."

"Messire Guccio said the manager, wishing to persuade the young man to prudence.

But Guccio was already outside and mounting his horse. He felt a surge of hatred in his breast such as he had never known before.

Because Marie was dying of hunger, he suddenly found himself
on the side of the poor and suffering; and he might have guessed from that alone that his love was real.

He, a Lombard, born with a silver' spoon in his mouth, had taken u
p his position beside the poor.
Now he noticed that the walls of the houses seemed redolent of death. He felt himself at one with these families staggering behind their coffins, with these men
whose skin
was drawn tight across their cheekbones and whose, eyes had become like those of beasts.

He was going
to strike his dagger into Provost Portefruit's stomach; he had made up his mind. He was going to avenge Marie, avenge the whole' province and accomplish an act of simple justice. Of course he would be arrested, he wanted to be, and the affair would make a great stir. Uncle Tolomei would move heaven and earth; he would go and see Monseigneur de Bouville and Monseigneur of Valois. The case would come before the Parliament of Paris, even before the King. And then Guccio would
shout aloud, "Si
re, that is why I killed your Provost ..."

After galloping for some three miles his imagination grew somewhat ca
lmer. "Remember, my boy, that a
corpse pays
no interest," Messire
Tolomei was in the habit of saying. And in the last
resort
people fight well only with weapons that are proper to them, and if Guccio, like every Tuscan, knew how to manage a short blade reasonably well, it was not his speciality.

He slowed his, pace, therefore, at the entrance to Montfort l'Amaury calmed both his horse and his temper and went to the Provost's office. As the sergeant of the guard did not show him all the courtesy he should have done, Guccio took from his
pocket the safe-conduct, sealed
with the private seal of Louis X, which Tolomei had obtained through Valois for his nephew's mission to Italy.

It was drawn up i
n pretty wide terms: "I require
all my bailies, seneschals and provosts to give aid and assistance . . ." Guccio counted on being able to use it for a long time to come.

"On the King's service!
" said Guccio.

At the sight of the ro
yal seal the Provost's sergeant
immediately became courteous and zealous, running to open the doors.

"You will feed my horse," Guccio ordered.

People over whom you have once had the advantage nearly always consider themselves defeated in advance when they find themselves in your presence again. However difficult they may wish to be, it is no use'; water always flows in the same direction. This wa
s t
he situation between Master Portefruit and Guccio.

His flesh quivering like brawn, his mind in
a state of some anxiety, the
Provost came to greet his visitor. Reading the safe
-
conduct, "I require all my bailies ..." did nothing to decrease his anxiety. What could this young Lombard's secret business be? Was he come to make enquiries, to inspect? Philip the Fair had in the past had these mysterious agents who, under cover of some other business, traversed the kingdom, making their reports, then suddenly a
head
would fall, a prison door open.

"Ah, Messire Portefruit, before going any further I wish to inform you," said Guccio, "that I have made no mention in high places of the matter of the Cressay succession duty, which brought about our meeting a year ago. I looked upon it as a mistake. This to allay your anxiety."

It was indeed an admirable method of reassuring the Provost! It was to tell him clearly and at once: "I am reminding you that I caught you out in flagrant dishonesty, and that I can make it known whenever I wish."

The Provost's fat moonlike face
paled
a little, except for the birthmark, violet and prominent, 'which grew disgustingly at the corner of his forehead. His; eyes were small
and yellow. The man must
have had some liver disease.

"I am grateful to you, Messire Baglioni, for the view you take," he replie
d. "It was indeed all a mistake Besides, I
have had the accounts erased."

"Did they need erasing?" remarked Guccio.

The other realised that he had uttered a dangerous folly. Decidedly
this young Lombard
had the gift of confusing him.

"I was just about to sit down to dinner," he said, in order to change the subject as quickly as possible; "will you do me the honour of joining me?"

He was beginning to show himself obsequious. Dignity impelled Guccio to refuse; but cunning suggested his acceptance;

P
eople never give themselves away so easily as at dinner. Besides, Guccio had eaten nothing and come far since morning. So, having left Neauphle in order to kill the Provost, he found himself sitting comfortably next to him, and using his dagger only to carve a beautifully roasted sucking-pig submerged in exquisitely thick, golden gravy.

The Provost's doing himself so well in the middle of a starving countryside was utterly scandalous. "When I think," Guccio said to himself, "when I think that I came here to find food for Marie and that it is I who am doing the eating!" Every mouthful
increased his hatred
of Portefruit and as the other, thinking to conciliate
his visitor had
his finest provisions and rarest wines brought out, Guccio, at each bumper he was forced to accept, repeated to himself, "I'll pay him out for all this, the pig! I'll see that he swings for it:

Never was a meal eaten so hungrily and with such little advantage to him who. offered it. Guccio, missed no opportunity of putting his host ill at ease.

"I am told that you have acquired certa
in falcons, Master Portefruit
? " he asked suddenly. "Have you the right to hunt then, like nobles?"

The other choked in his goblet.

"
I hunt with the nobles of the neighbourhood, when they are kind enough to ask me, he replied
quickly.

He tried once, more to change the subject,
and added,
in order to say something, "You appear to travel a lot, Messire Baglioni? "

"Indeed, a good deal," replied Guccio off-handedly. "I' have just come back from Italy where I was upon the King's business to the Queen of Naples."

Portefruit remembered that at their first meeting Guccio had just returned from a mission to the Queen of England. Certainly this young man seemed to be much employed on expeditions to queens; he must he very powerful. Moreover, he somehow always managed to know the things one would have preferred to keep quiet.

"Master Portefruit, the clerks of the branch of my uncle's bank at Neauphle are reduced to great misery. I have found them ill
from hunger, and they assure me that they can buy nothing," declared Guccio suddenly. (And the Provost realised that they were coming to the object of the visit.) "How do you explain that in a country ravaged by famine you impose tithes in kind, taking and seizing everything there is left to eat?"

"Oh, Messire Baglioni, this is a very serious matter for me and an extremely painful one, I promise you. But I must obey orders from Paris. I have to send three wagon-loads of food every week, as do all the other provosts hereabouts, because Monseigneur de Marigny is afraid of a rising and wishes to keep the capital quiet. As usual it is the countryside that suffers.

"And when your Sergeants-at-Arms collect sufficient to fill three wagons, they manage at the same time to fill a fourth and you keep that one for yourself."

The Provost felt considerable distress. How very painful the dinner was turning out to be. He wondered whether he would manage to digest it properly!

"Never, Messire Baglioni, never! What will you think next?"

"Out with it, Provost! Where does all this come from? " cried Guccio indicating the spread before them. "I know very well that these hams do not grow in your herbaceous borders. Nor d
o your Sergeants-at-Arms wax as
fat as they are merely by licking the lilies on their staves!"

"Had I realised," thought Portefruit, "I would not have entertained him so well."

"The fact is, don't you see,"' he replied, "that if order is to be maintained in the kingdom it is essential that those employed to watch over it should be properly fed."

"Certainly," said Guccio, "certainly. You are speaking with great good sense. A man such as you, upon whom such important duties devolve, must obviously not reason like the common people, nor indeed act as they do."

Suddenly he had become approving, friendly and appeared to accept his
host's point of view entirely.
Unconsciously he was imitating Monseigneur Robert of Artois, whom he had seen several times and whose manners had made a considerable impression on him. He almost went so fat as to slap the Provost on the
back. The other, who had drunk a good deal to give himself courage, fell into the trap.

"It's exactly the same with the taxes, isn't it?" went on Guccio.

"The taxes?" repeated the Provost.

"Yes, of course! You farm them
don't' you? Naturally you have to live and pay your agents. So obviously you have to raise more than you hand over to the T
reasury. What do you do about
it? You double the tax, isn't that so?
- As far as I know, that is what every provost does."

"More or, less," said Portefruit candidly, since he believed that ', he was dealing, if not with an accomplice, at least with someone in the know. "We are obliged to, of course. You must know that in order to obtain my position I had to grease the palm of one of Marigny's secretaries."

"Really, a secretary of Marigny's?

"Yes, indeed, and I
-
continue to give him something o
n every Saint Nicholas's Day. I have to
share, too, with my receiver, without mentioning what the bailie,
my superior,
takes off
me.
So, when all is said and done . .
"

"There does not remain all that much for you, I see .. So, Provost, you are going to help me, as it is your duty to do, and I will propose a deal by which you will lose nothing. I must feed my clerks. Every week you will deliver to them salt, flour, beans, honey, and either fresh or dried meat which they need merely to exist, and for which they will pay at the highest Paris prices with a bonu
s of threepence in the pound. I
am even prepared to give you fifty pounds in advance," he said, shaking his purse till it rang.

The sound of the gold overcame the Provost's caution. He bargained a little, merely for bargaining's sake, and arranged the weights and quantities with Guccio,
- who calculated everything double in order to supply the Cressay family.

Since Guccio wanted to take some provisions away with him at once, the Provost led him into his larder which resembled a merchant's warehouse.