The Poisoned Crown

Sitting amid the leaders of his ‘banner’ on a camp-stool, his sword, his shield, and his helmet within reach, Philippe of Poitiers asked one of the bachelors

of his staff, who acted as his secretary and aide-de-camp, ‘Adam Heron, have you read, as I asked you, the book by this Florentine – what does he call himself?’

‘Messire Dante dei Alighieri.’

‘That’s it, the man who treats my family so badly? He is under the special protection, so I’m told, of Charles Martel of Hungary, the father of this Princess Clémence who’s arriving shortly to be our Queen. I should like to know what his poem says.’

‘I’ve read it, Monseigneur,’ Adam Heron replied. ‘This Messire Dante imagines at the beginning of his Comedy that, at the age of thirty-five, he loses his way in a dark forest where the road is barred by terrifying animals, from which Messire Dante realizes that he has strayed from the world of the living.’

The barons surrounding the Count of Poitiers at first looked at each other in surprise. The King’s brother never ceased to astonish them. Here they were in the middle of a warlike camp and in considerable chaos, and he suddenly had no concern other than talking of poetry, as if he were by his own fireside in his Paris house. But the Count of Evreux, who knew his nephew well and who, since he had been under his command, admired him more every day, had understood at once. ‘Philippe is trying to take their minds off this trying inaction,’ he said to himself, ‘and instead of allowing them to fret and fume, he is leading them to dream while waiting to lead them into battle.’

For already Anseau de Joinville, Goyon de Bourçay, Jean de Beaumont, Pierre de Garancière, Jean de Clermont, sitting about on chests, were listening with bright eyes as the bachelor Adam Heron told them Dante’s story. These rough men, often so brutal in their way of life, were charmed by the mysterious and the supernatural. Legends enchanted them; their minds were always ready to accept the marvellous. It was a strange spectacle to see this steel-clad company passionately following the Italian poet’s masterly allegories, longing to know who this Beatrice was who inspired so great a love, trembling at the memory of Francesca da Rimini and of Paolo Malatesta, and suddenly guffawing because Boniface VIII, in company with some other Popes, was to be found in the eighteenth circle of the inferno, in the pit reserved for cheats and simoniacs.

‘The poet’s found a good way of avenging himself upon his enemies and relieving his own feelings,’ said Philippe of Poitiers, laughing. ‘And where has he put my relations?’

‘In purgatory, Monseigneur,’ replied the bachelor who, at the general demand, had gone to fetch the book which was copied out on thick parchment.

‘Very well then, read us what he has written, or rather translate it for those of us who don’t understand Italian.’

‘I hardly dare, Monseigneur.’

‘Yes, go on, don’t be afraid. I must know what people who don’t like us think of us.’

‘Messire Dante pretends that he meets a shade who groans loudly. He questions the shade upon the source of his pain and this is the answer he gets.’

And Adam Heron began to translate the following passage from Canto XX:

I was root

Of that ill plant, whose shade such poison sheds

O’er all the Christian land, that seldom thence

Good fruit is gather’d. Vengeance soon should come,

Had Ghent and Douay, Lille and Bruges power;

And vengeance I of heav’n’s great Judge implore.

‘Well, that seems prophetic enough and is completely in accord with our present circumstances,’ said the Count of Poitiers. ‘Clearly the poet is perfectly aware of our troubles in Flanders. Go on.’

Hugh Capet was I hight: from me descend

The Philips and the Louis, of whom France

Newly is govern’d; born of one, who ply’d

The slaughterer’s trade at Paris. When the race

Of ancient kings had vanish’d (all save one

Wrapt up in sable weeds) within my gripe

I found the reins of empire.

‘This is completely false,’ the Count of Poitiers interrupted, uncrossing his long legs. ‘It’s a wicked lie that has been spread abroad in recent times to our prejudice. Hugues le Grand was descended from the Dukes of France.’

As the reading proceeded, he commented calmly, sometimes with irony, on the ferocious attacks the Italian poet, who was already famous in his own country, made upon the French princes. Dante accused Charles of Anjou, the brother of Saint Louis, not only of having assassinated the legitimate heir to the throne of Naples, but also of having poisoned Saint Thomas Aquinas.

‘Our cousins of Anjou are well peppered,’ said the Count of Poitiers in a low voice.

But the French prince whom Dante attacked with the greatest violence, for whom he reserved his worst curses, was another Charles, who had gone to ravage Florence and had pierced it in the stomach, the poet wrote, ‘with the lance with which he fought Judas’.

‘Ah, that’s my Uncle Charles of Valois he’s talking of there!’ Poitiers cried. ‘That’s why he’s so vindictive. My uncle seems to have made us a lot of friends in Italy.’

Those present looked at each other, not quite knowing what attitude to adopt. But they saw that Philippe of Poitiers was smiling, rubbing his face with his long white hand. They therefore dared to laugh. Monseigneur of Valois was little liked in the Count of Poitiers’s circle.

The encampment of Count Robert of Artois gave a totally different impression from that of the Count of Poitiers. Here, in spite of the rain, was a constant coming and going, a confusion so universal that it seemed deliberate.

The Count of Artois had let to the merchants accompanying the army stands close to his own tent, which could be recognized from afar by its red cloth and the banners surmounting it. Whoever wanted to buy a new baldrick, replace a buckle on his helm, acquire new iron elbow-pieces or have a coat of chain-mail repaired had to come there. It was as if a fair were going on before Messire Robert’s door; and he had arranged for the prostitutes to be in his neighbourhood too, so that every amenity might be under his control and he could make his friends free of them.

As for the archers, crossbowmen, grooms, servants, and camp followers, they had been kept at a distance and were taking shelter as best they could in the houses of the peasants who had been turned out, or in huts made of branches, or even under the wagons.

They were not talking of poetry inside the great red tent. A cask of wine was constantly on tap, goblets circulated in the hubbub, dice rolled on the lids of the great chests; they played on credit, and more than one knight had already lost more than his ransom would have cost him.

One fact was particularly to be remarked: while Robert had under his command the troops from his County of Beaumont-le-Roger, a great number of knights from Artois, who were part of the ‘banner’ of the Countess Mahaut, were permanently in his camp where they had, militarily speaking, no business to be.

With his back to the central tent-pole, Count Robert of Artois dominated the whole turbulent scene with his colossal height. Wearing a scarlet surcoat upon which fell his lion-like mane, he was amusing himself by playing with a whole array of weapons. Nevertheless, there was a crack in the giant’s spirit, and it was not without intent that he wished to distract himself with drink and noise.

‘Battles in Flanders have never done my family any good,’ he confided to the lords about him. ‘My father, Count Philippe, whom many of you knew well and served faithfully ...’

‘Yes, we knew him! He was a pious and a brave man!’ the barons of Artois replied.

‘Well, my father received a mortal wound at the Battle of Furnes. And my grandfather, Count Robert ...’

‘Oh, he was a brave man and a good suzerain! He respected our good old customs! One never asked justice of him in vain!’

‘He was killed four years later at Courtrai. Two never go without a third. Perhaps tomorrow, Messeigneurs, you’ll be burying me.’

There are two kinds of superstitious people: those who never mention disaster, and those who speak of it so as to defy it and put it to flight. Robert of Artois was of the second sort.

‘Caumont, pour me out another goblet of wine; let’s drink to my last day!’ he cried.

‘No, we won’t do that! Our bodies will be your rampart,’ the barons cried. ‘Who but you defends our rights?’

They looked upon him as their natural suzerain, and his strength and vitality had made of him a sort of idol.

‘Yet see, my good lords, how one is rewarded for so much blood spilt in the service of the Kingdom,’ he went on. ‘Because my grandfather was killed after my father, yes, for that reason alone, King Philip took the opportunity of doing me out of my inheritance and of giving Artois to my aunt Mahaut who treats you so well, with all her ill-omened Hirsons, the chancellor, the treasurer, and all the rest, who crush you with taxes and deny you your rights.’