The Royal Succession

‘Do you know if the message concerns the Conclave?’

‘Oh, no, Monseigneur! It’s about the King’s death.’

The Cardinal leapt from his chair.

‘King Louis is dead? But why didn’t you say so at once?’

‘Isn’t it known here? I thought you would have been informed, Monseigneur.’

In fact, he wasn’t thinking at all. His misfortunes and his fatigue had made him forget this capital event. He had galloped all the way from Paris, changing horses in the monasteries whose names he had been given, eating hastily and talking as little as possible. Without knowing it, he had forestalled the official couriers.

‘What did he die of?’

‘That’s precisely what Messire de Bouville wants to tell the Count of Poitiers.’

‘Murder?’ whispered Duèze.

‘It seems the King was poisoned.’

The Cardinal thought for a moment.

‘That may alter many things,’ he murmured. ‘Has a regent been appointed?’

‘I don’t know, Monseigneur. When I left, everyone was talking of the Count of Valois.’

‘All right, my dear son, go and rest.’

‘But, Monseigneur, what about the Count of Poitiers?’

The prelate’s thin lips sketched a rapid smile, which might have passed for an expression of goodwill.

‘It would not be prudent for you to show yourself; moreover, you’re dropping with fatigue,’ he said. ‘Give me the letter; and so that no one can reproach you, I’ll give it him myself.’

A few minutes later, preceded by a linkman, as his dignity required, and followed by a secretary, the Cardinal in Curia left the Abbey of Ainay, between the Rhône and the Saône, and went out into the dark alleys, which were often made narrower still by heaps of filth. Thin and slight, he seemed to skip along, almost running in spite of his seventy-two years. His purple robe appeared to dance between the walls.

The bells of the twenty churches and forty-two monasteries of Lyons rang for the first office. Distances were short in this city, which numbered barely twenty thousand inhabitants, of whom half were engaged in the commerce of religion and the other half in the religion of commerce. The Cardinal soon reached the house of the Consul, where lodged the Count of Poitiers.

3 (#ulink_fe008293-5ffd-5992-be89-4bcb33fa2e99)

The Gates of Lyons (#ulink_fe008293-5ffd-5992-be89-4bcb33fa2e99)

THE COUNT OF POITIERS was just finishing dressing when his chamberlain announced the Cardinal’s visit.

Very tall, very thin, with a prominent nose, his hair lying across his forehead in short locks and falling in curls about his cheeks, his skin fresh as it may be at twenty-three, the young Prince, clothed in a dressing-gown of shot camocas, greeted Monseigneur Duèze, kissing his ring with deference.

It would have been difficult to find a greater contrast, a more ironical dissimilarity than between these two figures, one like a ferret just emerged from its earth, the other like a heron stalking haughtily across the marshes.

‘In spite of the early hour, Monseigneur,’ said the Cardinal, ‘I did not wish to defer bringing you my prayers in the loss you have suffered.’

‘The loss?’ said Philippe of Poitiers with a slight start.

His first thought was for his wife, Jeanne, whom he had left in Paris and who had been pregnant for eight months.

‘I see that I have done well to come and tell you,’ went on Duèze. ‘The King, your brother, died five days ago.’

Philippe stood perfectly still; his chest barely moved as he drew a deep breath. His face was expressionless, showing no surprise or emotion – or even impatience for further details.

‘I am grateful to you for your alacrity, Monseigneur,’ he replied. ‘But how have you managed to hear the news before myself?’

‘From Messire de Bouville, whose messenger has ridden in haste so that I may give you this letter secretly.’

The Count of Poitiers broke the seals and read the letter, holding it close to his nose for he was very short-sighted. Again, he betrayed no sign of emotion; when he had finished reading, he merely slipped the letter into his gown. But he said no word.

The Cardinal also remained silent, pretending to respect the Prince’s sorrow, although he showed no great signs of affliction.

‘God preserve him from the pains of Hell,’ said the Count of Poitiers at last, to complement the prelate’s devout expression.

‘Yes … Hell,’ Duèze murmured. ‘Anyway, let us pray to God. I am also thinking of the unfortunate Queen Clémence, whom I saw grow up when I was with the King of Naples. So sweet and perfect a Princess …’

‘Yes, it’s a great misfortune for my sister-in-law,’ said Poitiers. And as he said it, he thought: ‘Louis has left no testamentary disposition for a regency. Already, from what Bouville writes, my Uncle Valois is at work …’

‘What are you going to do, Monseigneur? Will you return to Paris immediately?’ the Cardinal asked.

‘I don’t know, I don’t yet know,’ replied Poitiers. ‘I shall wait for more information. I shall hold myself at the disposition of the kingdom.’

In his letter Bouville had not concealed the fact that he wished for Poitiers’s return. As the elder of the dead King’s brothers, and as a peer of the kingdom, Poitiers’s place was at the Council of the Crown in which, at the very first meeting, dissension had broken out over the appointment of a regent.

But, on the other hand, Philippe of Poitiers felt regret, even reluctance, at having to leave Lyons before he had completed the tasks he had undertaken.

In the first place he had to conclude the contract of betrothal between his third daughter, Isabelle, who was barely five years of age, and the Dauphiniet of Viennois, the little Guigues, who was six. He had negotiated this marriage, at Vienne itself, with the Dauphin Jean II de la Tour du Pin and the Dauphine Beatrice, sister of Queen Clémence. It was a good alliance, which would allow the Crown of France to counterbalance the influence of Anjou-Sicily in this region. The document was to be signed in a few days’ time.

And then, above all, there was the papal election. During the last weeks Philippe of Poitiers had journeyed backwards and forwards across Provence, Viennois and Lyonnais, interviewing each of the twenty-four scattered Cardinals in turn;

assuring them that the aggression of Carpentras would not be repeated and that they would be subjected to no violence; giving many of them to understand that they might have a chance of election and pleading for the prestige of the Faith, the dignity of the Church and the interests of the States. Ultimately, as a result of much effort, talk and money, he had succeeded in gathering them at Lyons, a town which had long been under ecclesiastical authority but had passed recently, during the last years of Philip the Fair, into the power of the King of France.

The Count of Poitiers felt that he was on the point of reaching his goal. But if he left, would not the dissensions begin all over again, personal hatreds flourish once more, the influence of the Roman nobility or that of the King of Naples supplant that of France, while the various parties accused each other of heresy? Would not the papacy return to Rome? ‘Which my father so much wished to avoid,’ Philippe of Poitiers said to himself. ‘Is his work, already so much damaged by Louis and by our Uncle Valois, to be destroyed completely?’

For a few moments Cardinal Duèze felt that the young man had forgotten his presence. But suddenly Poitiers asked: ‘Will the Gascon party maintain the candidature of Cardinal de Pélagrue? Do you think that your pious colleagues are at last prepared to sit in Conclave? Sit down here, Monseigneur, and tell me your thoughts on the matter. How far have we advanced?’

The Cardinal had seen many sovereigns and ministers during the third of a century he had been concerned with the affairs of kingdoms, but he had never before met one with such self-control. Here was a Prince, aged twenty-three, to whom he had just announced the death of his brother and the vacancy of the throne, and he seemed to have no more urgent concern than the complications of the Conclave.

Sitting side by side near a window, on a chest covered with damask, the Cardinal’s feet barely touching the ground and the Count of Poitiers’s thin ankle slowly moving from side to side, the two men had a long conversation. It appeared from Duèze’s summary of the situation that they were more or less back where they had been two years ago, after the death of Clement V.

The party of the ten Gascon Cardinals, which was also called the French Party, was still the largest, but not large enough by itself to ensure the necessary majority of two-thirds of the Sacred College: sixteen votes. The Gascons considered themselves the depositories of the late Pope’s thought. They all owed their hats to him, held out firmly for the see of Avignon and showed themselves remarkably united against the other two parties. But there was a good deal of secret competition among them; the ambitions of Arnaud de Fougères, Arnaud Nouvel and Arnaud de Pélagrue all flourished. They made mutual promises while scheming for one another’s downfall.

‘The war of the three Arnauds,’ said Duèze in his whispering voice. ‘Now let’s have a look at the Italian Party.’

There were only eight of them, but divided into three sections. The redoubtable Cardinal Caetani, nephew of Pope Boniface VIII, was opposed to the two Cardinals Colonna by a time-honoured family feud which had become an inexorable hatred since the Anagni affair and the blow in the face Colonna had given Boniface. The other Italians wavered between these adversaries. Stefaneschi, from hostility to Philip the Fair’s policy, supported Caetani, whose relation moreover he was. Napoléon Orsini tacked about. The eight were only agreed on a single point: the return of the papacy to the Eternal City. On that point they were fiercely determined.