Морис Дрюон – The Royal Succession (страница 8)

‘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.⁴

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;⁵ 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.

‘You know well, Monseigneur,’ continued Duèze, ‘that at one moment we ran the risk of schism; and indeed we still do so. Our Italians refused to meet in France and they let it be known, but a little while ago, that if a Gascon Pope were elected, they would refuse him recognition and would set up a Pope of their own in Rome.’

‘There will be no schism,’ said the Count of Poitiers calmly.

‘Thanks to you, Monseigneur, thanks to you. I am happy to recognize it, and I tell everyone so. Going, as you have, from town to town with sage advice, if you have not yet found the shepherd, you have at least gathered the flock.’

‘Expensive sheep, Monseigneur! Do you know that I left Paris with sixteen thousand livres, and that only the other week I had to have as much again sent to me? Jason was nothing compared to me. I hope that all these golden fleeces won’t slip through my fingers,’ said the Count of Poitiers, screwing up his eyes slightly to look the Cardinal in the face.

The Cardinal, who had done very well out of this largesse by roundabout ways, did not take up the allusion directly but replied: ‘I think that Napoléon Orsini and Albertini de Prato, and perhaps even Guillaume de Longis, who was Chancellor to the King of Naples before me, might be fairly easily detached. Avoiding schism is worth the price.’

Poitiers thought: ‘He has used the money we gave him to acquire three of the Italian votes. It’s clever of him.’

As for Caetani, though he continued to play an implacable game, he was not in so strong a position since his practice of sorcery and his attempt to cast a spell on the King of France and the Count of Poitiers himself had been discovered. The ex-Templar Everard, a half-wit, whom Caetani had used for his devilish work, had talked rather too much before giving himself up to the King’s men.

‘I am holding that matter in reserve,’ said the Count of Poitiers. ‘The smell of the faggots might, at the right moment, make Monseigneur Caetani a little more pliant.’

At the thought of seeing another Cardinal grilled, a very slight and furtive smile passed over the aged prelate’s thin lips.

‘It seems that Francesco Caetani’, he went on, ‘has quite abandoned God’s affairs to devote himself entirely to Satan’s. Do you think that, having failed with sorcery, he managed to strike at the King, your brother, with poison?’

The Count of Poitiers shrugged his shoulders.

‘Whenever a king dies, it’s asserted that he was poisoned,’ he said. ‘It was said of my ancestor, Louis VIII; it was said of my father, whom God keep. My brother’s health was poor enough. Still, one must take the possibility into account.’

‘Finally,’ Duèze went on, ‘there is the third party, which is called Provençal because of the most turbulent among us, Cardinal de Mandagout.’

This last party numbered only six Cardinals of diverse origin; southerners, such as the brothers Bérenger Frédol, were allied in it with Normans and with one member from Quercy, Duèze himself.