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 camocas, greeted Monseigneur Duèze, kissing his ring with deference.
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?’
‘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