‘Monsieur Hugues,’ he said haughtily, ‘your duty is to watch over the stomach, not to decide where the royal family shall reside, nor to defend the whole kingdom on your own.’
Not in the least perturbed, Bouville replied: ‘I must also remind you, Monseigneur, that the Queen cannot appear in public until forty days have elapsed since her bereavement.’
‘I know the custom as well as you do, my good man! Who said that the Queen would show herself in public? She shall travel in a closed coach. Really, Niece,’ Valois cried, turning to Clémence, ‘anyone would think that I was trying to send you to the country of the Great Khan, and that Vincennes was two thousand leagues from Paris!’
‘You must understand, Uncle,’ Clémence replied weakly, ‘that living at Vincennes is my last gift from Louis. He gave me this house, in there, and you were present’ – she fluttered her hand towards the room in which Louis X had died – ‘that I might live in it. It seems to me that he has not really departed. You must understand that it’s here that we had …’
But Monseigneur of Valois could not understand the claims of memory or the imaginings of sorrow.
‘Your husband, for whom we pray, my dear Niece, belongs henceforth to the kingdom’s past. But you carry its future. By exposing your life, you expose that of your child. Louis, who sees you from on high, would never forgive you.’
The shot went home, and Clémence sank back in her chair without another word.
But Bouville declared that he could decide nothing without the agreement of the Sire de Joinville, and sent someone to look for him. They waited several minutes. Then the door opened, and they waited again. At last, dressed in a long robe such as had been worn at the time of the Crusade, trembling in every limb, his skin mottled and like the bark of a tree, his eyes with their faded irises watering, Saint Louis’s last companion-at-arms entered, dragging his feet, supported by his equerries, who tottered almost as much as he did. He was given a seat with all the respect to which he was entitled, and Valois began to explain his intentions about the Queen. The old man listened, solemnly nodding his head, obviously delighted still to have some part to play. When Valois had finished, the Seneschal fell into a meditation they were careful not to disturb; they waited for the oracle to speak. Suddenly he asked: ‘But where is the King then?’
Valois looked crestfallen. So much useless trouble, and when time pressed! Did the Seneschal still understand what was said to him?
‘But the King is dead, Messire de Joinville,’ he replied, ‘and we buried him this morning. You know that you have been appointed Curator.’
The Seneschal frowned and seemed to be making a great effort to recollect. Indeed, failure of memory was no new thing with him; when he was nearly eighty and dictating his famous Memoirs, he had not realized that towards the end of the second part he was repeating almost word for word what he had already said in the first.
‘Yes, our young Sire Louis,’ he said at last. ‘He is dead. It was to himself that I presented my great book. Do you know that this is the fourth king I have seen die?’
He announced this as if it were an exploit in itself.
‘Then, if the King is dead, the Queen is Regent,’ he declared.
Monseigneur of Valois turned purple in the face. He had had appointed as Curators a senile idiot and a mediocrity, believing he could manage them as he wished; but he was hoist with his own petard, for it was they who were creating his worst difficulties.
‘The Queen is not Regent, Messire Seneschal; she is pregnant,’ he cried. ‘She cannot in any circumstances be Regent until it is known whether she will give birth to a king! Look at her condition, see if she is in a fit state to carry out the duties of the kingdom!’
‘You know that I see very little,’ replied the old man.
With her hand to her forehead, Clémence merely thought: ‘When will they stop? When will they leave me in peace?’
Joinville began explaining in what circumstances, after the death of King Louis VIII, Queen Blanche of Castile had assumed the regency, to the satisfaction of all.
‘Madame Blanche of Castile, and this was only whispered, was not as pure as the image that has been created of her. It appears that Count Thibaut of Champagne, who was a good friend of Messire my father’s, served her even in her bed …’
They had to let him talk. Though the Seneschal easily forgot what had happened the day before, he had a precise memory for the things he had been told as a small child. He had found an audience and was making the most of it. His hands, shaking with a senile trembling, clawed unceasingly at the silk of his robe over his knees.
‘And even when our sainted King left for the Crusade, where I was with him …’
‘The Queen resided in Paris during that time, did she not?’ interjected Charles of Valois.
‘Yes, yes …’ said the Seneschal.
Clémence was the first to give way.
‘Very well, Uncle, so be it!’ she said. ‘I will do as you wish and return to the Cité.’
‘Ah! A wise decision at last, which I am sure Messire de Joinville approves.’
‘Yes, yes …’
‘I shall go and take the necessary measures. Your escort will be under the command of my son, Philippe, and our cousin, Robert of Artois.’
‘Thank you, Uncle, thank you,’ said Clémence, on the verge of collapse. ‘But now, I ask you, please, let me pray.’
An hour later, the Count of Valois’s orders had set the Château of Vincennes in turmoil. Wagons were being brought out of the coach-house; whips were cracking on the cruppers of the great Percheron horses; servants were running to and fro; the archers had laid down their weapons to lend a hand to the stablemen. Since the King’s death they had all felt they should talk in low voices, but now everyone found an occasion to shout; and, if anyone had really wished to make an attempt on the Queen’s life, this would have been the very moment to choose.
Within the manor the upholsterers were taking down the hangings, removing the furniture, carrying out tables, dressers and chests. The officers of the Queen’s household and the ladies-in-waiting were busy packing. There was to be a first convoy of twenty vehicles, and doubtless they would have to make two journeys to complete the move.
Clémence of Hungary, in the long white robe to which she was not yet accustomed, went from room to room, escorted always by Bouville. There were dust, sweat and tumult everywhere, and that sense of pillage that goes with moving house. The Bursar, inventory in hand, was superintending the dispatch of the plate and valuables which had been collected together and now covered the whole floor of a room: dishes, ewers, the dozen silver-gilt goblets Louis had had made for Clémence, the great gold reliquary containing a fragment of the True Cross, which was so heavy that the man carrying it staggered as if he were on his way to Calvary.
In the Queen’s chamber the first linen-maid, Eudeline, who had been the mistress of Louis X before his marriage to Marguerite, was in charge of packing the clothes.
‘What is the use of taking all these dresses, since they will never be of any use to me again?’ said Clémence.
And the jewels too, packed in heavy iron chests, the brooches, rings and precious stones Louis had lavished on her during the brief period of their marriage, were all henceforth useless objects. Even the three crowns, laden with emeralds, rubies and pearls, were too high and too ornate for a widow to wear. A simple circlet of gold with short lilies, placed over her veil, would be the only jewel to which she would ever have a right.
‘I have become a white Queen, as I saw my grandmother, Marie of Hungary, become,’ she thought. ‘But my grandmother was over sixty and had borne