Three royal sergeants-at-arms, in blue coats and carrying in the crooks of their arms the staves surmounted with lilies that were the insignia of their office,7 followed the stroller at a distance, but without ever losing sight of him, stopping when he stopped, moving on again as soon as he did.
Suddenly a young man in a tight-fitting tunic, dragged along by three fine greyhounds on a leash, debouched from an alley, jostling the stroller and very nearly knocking him over. The hounds became entangled about his feet and began barking.
‘You scoundrel!’ the young man cried in a noticeably Italian accent. ‘You nearly trod on my hounds. I wouldn’t have cared a damn if they’d bitten you.’
No more than eighteen, short and good-looking, with dark eyes and finely chiselled features, the young man stood his ground in the middle of the street, raising his voice in simulated manliness. Someone took him by the arm and whispered a word in his ear. At once the young man removed his cap, bowing respectfully though without servility.
‘Those are fine hounds; whose are they?’ asked the stroller, gazing at the boy out of huge, cold eyes.
‘They belong to my uncle, Tolomei, the banker, at your service,’ replied the young man.
Without another word, the man in the white hood went on his way. As soon as he and the sergeants-at-arms who followed him were out of sight, the people standing round the young Italian guffawed. The latter stood still, apparently having some difficulty in recovering himself after his mistake; even the hounds were still.
‘Well, well! He’s not so proud now!’ they said, laughing.
‘Look at him! He nearly knocks the King down and then adds insult to injury.’
‘You can count on spending the night in prison, my boy, with thirty strokes of the whip into the bargain.’
The Italian turned upon the bystanders.
‘Damn it! I’d never seen him before; how could I be expected to recognise him? And what’s more, citizens, I come from a country where there’s no king for whom one has to make way. In my city of Sienna every citizen can be king in turn. And if anyone feels like mocking Guccio Baglioni, he need only say the word.’
He uttered his name like a challenge. The quick pride of Tuscany shone in his eyes. A carved dagger hung at his side. No one persisted; and the young man flicked his fingers to put the hounds in motion again. He went on his way with more apparent assurance than he felt, wondering whether his stupidity would have unpleasant consequences.
For it was indeed King Philip the Fair whom he had jostled. This sovereign, whom none other equalled in power, liked to stroll through his city like a simple citizen, informing himself upon prices, tasting foodstuffs, examining cloth, listening to people talking. He was taking the pulse of his people. Strangers, ignorant of who he was, asked him the way. One day a soldier had stopped him to ask for his pay. As mean with words as he was with money, it was rare that in a whole outing he said more than three sentences or spent more than three pence.
The King was passing through the meat-market when the great bell of Notre-Dame began ringing and a loud clamour arose.
‘There they are! There they are!’ people were shouting.
The clamour drew nearer; the crowd became excited, people began to run.
A fat butcher came out from behind his stall, knife in hand, and yelled, ‘Death to the heretics!’
His wife caught him by the sleeve.
‘Heretics? They’re no more heretics than you are,’ she said. ‘You’d do better to stay here and serve the shop, you idler, you.’
They began quarrelling. A crowd gathered at once.
‘They’ve confessed before the judges!’ the butcher went on.
‘The judges?’ someone replied. ‘They’ve always been the same ones. They judge as they’re told to by those who pay them, and they’re afraid of a kick up the arse.’
Then everyone began to talk at once.
‘The Templars are saintly men. They’ve always given a lot to charity.’
‘It was a good thing to take their money away, but not to torture them.’
‘It was the King who owed them most, that’s why it was.’
‘The King did the right thing.’
‘The King or the Templars,’ said an apprentice, ‘they’re one and the same thing. Let the wolves eat each other and then they won’t eat us.’
At that moment a woman happened to turn round, grew suddenly pale, and made a sign to the others to be quiet. Philip the Fair was standing behind them, gazing at them with his unwinking, icy stare. The sergeants-at-arms had drawn a little closer to him, ready to intervene. In an instant the crowd had dispersed; those who had composed it ran off shouting at the tops of their voices, ‘Long live the King! Death to the heretics!’
The King’s expression remained perfectly impassive. One might have thought that he had heard nothing. If he took pleasure in taking people by surprise, it was a secret pleasure.
The clamour was growing louder. The procession of the Templars was passing the end of the street. Through a gap between the houses, the King saw for an instant the Grand Master standing in the wagon surrounded by his three companions. The Grand Master stood upright; in the King’s eyes this was an irritation; he looked like a martyr, but undefeated.
Leaving the crowd to rush towards the spectacle, Philip the Fair passed through the suddenly empty streets at his usual slow pace, and returned to his palace.
The people might well grumble a bit, and the Grand Master hold his old and broken body upright. In an hour the whole thing would be over, and the sentence, so the King believed, would be generally well received. In an hour’s time the work of seven years would be finished and completed. The Episcopal Tribunal had issued their decree; the archers were numerous; the sergeants-at-arms patrolled the streets. In an hour the case of the Templars would be erased from the list of public cares, and from every point of view the royal power would come out of the affair enhanced and reinforced.
‘Even my daughter Isabella will be satisfied. I shall have acceded to her plea, and so contented everyone. But it was time to put an end to it,’ Philip the Fair told himself as he thought of the words he had just heard.
He went home by the Mercers’ Hall.
Philip the Fair had entirely renovated and rebuilt the Palace, preserving only such ancient structures as the Sainte-Chapelle, which dated from the time of his grandfather, Saint Louis. It was a period of building and embellishment. Princes rivalled each other; what had been done in Westminster had been done in Paris too. The mass of the Cité with its great white towers dominating the Seine was brand-new, imposing and, perhaps, a little ostentatious.
Philip, if he watched the pennies, never hesitated to spend largely when it was a question of demonstrating his power. But, since he never neglected an opportunity of profit, he had conceded to the mercers, in consideration of an enormous rent, the privilege of transacting business in the great gallery which ran the length of the palace, and which from this fact was known as the Mercers’ Hall, before it became known as the Merchants’ Hall.8
It was a huge place with something of the appearance of a cathedral with two naves. Its size was the admiration of travellers. At the summits of the pillars were the forty statues of the kings who, from Pharamond and Mérovée, had succeeded each other at the head of the Frankish kingdom. Opposite the statue of Philip the Fair was that of Enguerrand de Marigny, Coadjutor and Rector of the Kingdom, who had inspired and directed the building.
Round the pillars were stalls containing articles of dress, there were baskets of trinkets, and sellers of ornaments, embroidery and lace. About them were gathered the pretty Parisian women and the ladies of the Court. Open to all comers, the hall had became a place for a stroll, a meeting-place