He mounted his horse again and left for Cressay as if he were going to take a fortress single-handed. ‘My gold or distraint, my gold or distraint,’ he kept repeating to himself. ‘And they can pray to God and his Saints.’
The trouble was that someone had had the same idea before him, and that someone was Provost Portefruit.
Cressay, which is a mile and a half from Neauphle, is a village built on the side of a valley by the bank of the Mauldre, a stream which is not too wide for a horse to jump.
The castle Guccio came in sight of was in fact no more than a large manor house in somewhat poor repair. It had no moat, since the river served it for defence together with low towers and a marshy approach. The whole place was redolent of poverty and decay. The roofs were collapsing in several places; the pigeon-loft appeared ill-stocked; there were cracks in the mossy walls, while wide gaps in the neighbouring woods revealed hundreds of stumps sawn off close to the ground. There was a considerable bustling in the courtyard as the Siennese entered it. Three royal sergeants-at-arms, their be-lilied staves in their hands, were harrying some ragged-looking serfs to gather the livestock, fasten the oxen in pairs and bring sacks of grain from the mill to load on to the Provost’s wagon. The shouting of the sergeants, the running to and fro of terrified peasants, the bleating of some twenty sheep and the screeching of chickens together produced an astonishing hubbub.
No one paid any attention to Guccio; no one came to take his horse, so he tied the bridle to a ring. An old peasant passing by merely said, ‘Bad luck has fallen upon this house. If the master were alive, he’d die a second death. It’s unjust!’
The door of the building was open and from it came the sound of a violent argument.
‘It would seem that I have not come on a very propitious day,’ thought Guccio, whose bad temper was increasing all the time.
He mounted the steps to the threshold and, guided by the sound of the voices, entered a long, dark chamber, with stone walls and a beamed roof.
A young girl, whom he scarcely bothered to look at, came to meet him.
‘I have come on business and wish to speak to someone belonging to the family,’ he said.
‘I am Marie de Cressay. My brothers are here and so is my mother,’ replied the girl in a hesitant voice, pointing to the far end of the room. ‘But they are very busy at the moment.’
‘No matter, I’ll wait,’ said Guccio.
And to show that he intended doing so, he went over to the fireplace and extended his boot to the flames, though he did not feel cold.
At the far end of the room, the argument was still going on. With her two sons, one bearded, the other beardless, but both tall and ruddy, Madame de Cressay was stubbornly holding her own with a fourth personage whom Guccio soon realised was Provost Portefruit.
Madame de Cressay – known as Dame Eliabel in all the surrounding district – had a bright eye, a fine bust, and bore her forty years buxomly in her widow’s weeds.
‘Messire Provost,’ she cried, ‘my husband got into debt in order to equip himself for the King’s war in which he gained more wounds than profit, while the domain, without a man to look after it, got on as best it could. We have always paid our tithes, our State benevolences and given charity to God. Who has done more in the Province, may I ask? And is it to enrich people of your sort, Messire Portefruit, whose grandfather went barefoot in the gutters hereabouts, that we are to be robbed?’
Guccio looked about him. A number of rustic stools, two chairs with backs to them, benches fastened to the wall, some chests and a great pallet bed with curtains which, nevertheless, revealed the palliasse, made up the furniture of the room. Above the hearth hung an old shield with faded colours. The war-shield, doubtless, of the late Squire of Cressay.
‘I shall complain to the Count of Dreux,’ went on Dame Eliabel.
‘The Count of Dreux is not the King, and I am acting upon the King’s orders,’ replied the Provost.
‘I don’t believe you, Messire Provost. I will not believe that the King orders people who have formed part of chivalry for two hundred years to be treated like malefactors. Indeed, if that were the case, the kingdom would cease to function.’
‘At least give us time!’ said the bearded son. ‘We will pay by instalments. You cannot strangle people like this.’
‘Let us put an end to this argument. I have already given you time,’ interrupted the Provost, ‘and you have paid nothing.’
He had short arms, a round face and spoke in a sharp voice.
‘My job is not to listen to your complaints, but to collect debts,’ he went on. ‘You still owe the Treasury three hundred and twenty pounds and eight pence: if you haven’t got them, that’s too bad. I shall seize your belongings and sell them.’
Guccio thought, ‘That fellow is using exactly the tone I intended to use myself and, by the time he’s finished, there’ll be nothing left to seize. This is a peculiarly useless journey. I wonder if I should join them straight away?’
He felt angry with the Provost who had appeared so inopportunely and was taking the wind out of his sails, stealing the very part he had intended to play himself.
The girl who had received him remained standing not far away. He looked at her more closely. She was fair and had beautiful waves of hair showing beneath her coif, a luminous complexion, great dark eyes and a slender, straight and well-turned figure. She seemed very embarrassed that a stranger should be present at the scene. It was no everyday occurrence to see a young cavalier of agreeable appearance, whose clothes testified to a certain wealth, pass through those parts; it was most unfortunate that this should occur upon the family’s most disastrous day.
Guccio’s eyes remained fixed on Marie de Cressay. However ill-disposed he felt, he realised that he had thought badly of her without knowing her. He had not expected to find so attractive a girl in such a place. Guccio’s eyes slid from her breast to her hands; they were white, well-formed and slender, altogether in keeping with her face.
At the far end of the room the argument was still going on.
‘Isn’t it bad enough to have lost a husband without having to pay six hundred pounds to keep a roof over one’s head? I shall complain to the Count of Dreux,’ repeated Dame Eliabel.
‘We have already paid three hundred,’ said the bearded son.
‘To seize our possessions is to reduce us to hunger, to sell them is to condemn us to death,’ said the second son.
‘The law is the law,’ replied the Provost. ‘I know the law and I shall sell you up as surely as I am levying distraint.’14
Once more these were the very words that Guccio had prepared.
‘This Provost seems an odious man. What grudge does he owe you?’ Guccio asked in a low voice.
‘I don’t know, and my brothers know little more: we understand very little about these things,’ replied Marie de Cressay. ‘It is something to do with inheritance tax.’
‘And is that what the six hundred pounds are due for?’ said Guccio.
‘Disaster has overtaken us,’ she murmured.
Their eyes met, held for a moment, and Guccio thought the girl was going to burst into tears. But on the contrary, she was brave in the face of adversity, and it was only from modesty that she turned her beautiful dark blue eyes away.
Guccio thought for a moment. His anger against the Provost was beginning to mount, precisely because the man was showing him the disagreeable part that he had been prepared to play himself.
Suddenly,