Морис Дрюон – The Royal Succession (страница 7)
‘Allora, lei è il signore Guccio Baglioni?’fn1 he said, when he had finished reading.
The young man started to hear himself addressed in Italian.
‘Si, Monsignore.’
‘The Count de Bouville recommends you to me that I may take you under my protection and conceal you from the enemies who are searching for you.’
‘If you will do me that favour, Monseigneur.’
‘It appears that you have had an unfortunate adventure which has compelled you to fly in that livery,’ went on the Cardinal in his rapid, toneless voice. ‘Tell me about it. Bouville says that you formed part of his escort when he brought Queen Clémence to France. Indeed, I remember now. I saw you with him. And you are the nephew of Messire Tolomei, the Captain-General of the Lombards of Paris. Excellent, excellent! Tell me your troubles.’
He had sat down and was toying mechanically with a revolving reading-desk on which were a number of the books he used in his work. He now felt calm and relaxed, ready to distract his mind with other people’s little problems.
Guccio Baglioni had ridden three hundred miles in less than four days. He could no longer feel his limbs; there was a thick fog in his head and he would have given anything in the world to stretch himself out on the floor and sleep and sleep.
He managed to master himself; his safety, his love and his future all made it necessary that he should control his fatigue for a little longer.
‘Well, Monseigneur, I married a daughter of the nobility,’ he replied.
It seemed to him that these words had issued from another’s lips. They were not those he would have wished to utter. He would have liked to explain to the Cardinal that an unparalleled disaster had overtaken him, that he was the most crushed and harrowed of men, that his life was threatened, that he had been separated, perhaps for ever, from the one woman without whom he could not live, that this woman was to be shut up in a convent, that events had befallen them during the last two weeks with such sudden violence that time seemed to have lost its normal dimensions, and that he felt he was hardly still living in the world he knew. And yet his whole tragedy, when it had to be put into words, was reduced to the single phrase: ‘Monseigneur, I married a daughter of the nobility.’
‘Indeed,’ said the Cardinal, ‘and what is her name?’
‘Marie de Cressay.’
‘Oh, Cressay; I don’t know it.’
‘But I had to marry her secretly, Monseigneur; her family were opposed to it.’
‘Because you’re a Lombard? Naturally; they’re still rather old-fashioned in France. In Italy, of course … So you wish to obtain an annulment? Well … if the marriage was secret …’
‘No, Monseigneur, I love her and she loves me,’ said Guccio. ‘But her family has discovered that she is with child, and her brothers have pursued me to try and kill me.’
‘They may do so, they have a customary right to do so. You have put yourself in the position of a ravisher. Who married you?’
‘Father Vicenzo.’
‘Fra Vicenzo? I don’t know him.’
‘The worst of it is, Monseigneur, that the priest is dead. So I can never prove that we are really married. But don’t think I’m a coward, Monseigneur; I wanted to fight. But my uncle went and asked the advice of Messire de Bouville …’
‘… who wisely advised you to go away for a time.’
‘But Marie is going to be shut up in a convent! Do you think, Monseigneur, that you will be able to get her out? Do you think I shall ever see her again?’
‘One thing at a time, my dear son,’ replied the Cardinal, still revolving his reading-desk. ‘A convent? What better place could she be in at the moment? You must trust in God’s infinite mercy, of which we all stand in such great need.’
Guccio lowered his head with an exhausted air. His black hair was covered with dust.
‘Has your uncle good commercial relations with the Bardi?’ went on the Cardinal.
‘Indeed yes, Monseigneur. The Bardi are your bankers, I believe,’ replied Guccio with automatic politeness.
‘Yes, they are my bankers. But I find them less easy to deal with these days than they were in the past. They’ve become such an enormous concern! They have branches everywhere. And they have to refer to Florence for the smallest demand. They’re as slow as an Ecclesiastical Court. Has your uncle many prelates among his customers?’
Guccio’s cares were far removed from the bank. The fog was growing thicker in his head; his eyelids were burning.
‘We have mostly the great barons,’ he said, ‘the Count of Valois, the Count of Artois. We should be greatly honoured, Monseigneur …’
‘We’ll talk of that later. For the moment you’re in the shelter of this monastery. You will pass for a man in my employ; perhaps we’ll make you wear a clerk’s robe. I’ll talk to my chaplain about it. You can take off that livery and go and sleep in peace; that appears to be what you need the most.’
Guccio bowed, muttered a few words of gratitude and went to the door. Then, coming to a halt, he said: ‘I can’t undress yet, Monseigneur; I’ve got another message to deliver.’
‘To whom?’ asked Duèze somewhat suspiciously.
‘To the Count of Poitiers.’
‘Give me the letter; I’ll send it later by one of the brothers.’
‘But, Monseigneur, Messire de Bouville was very insistent …’
‘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.
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
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?’