It was remarkable, also, that he always indulged in a system which consisted of asking for the maximum so as to obtain a little. In this way he had tried to exchange his command of the crusade and his pretensions to the throne of Constantinople against the little kingdom of Arles by the Rhône on condition that Viennois was added to it. He had negotiated with Jean of Luxemburg about this at the beginning of the year; but the transaction had come to nothing owing to the opposition of the Count of Savoy, and that of the King of Naples who, since he owned lands in Provence, had no wish to see his turbulent relative create an independent kingdom for himself on the borders of his states. So Monseigneur of Valois had resumed plans for the holy expedition with more enthusiasm than ever. It was clear that he would have to go in search of the sovereign crown, which had eluded his grasp in Spain, in Germany, and even in Arles, at the farther ends of the earth. But though Robert knew all these things it would have been unwise to mention them.
‘Of course, all the difficulties have not yet been overcome,’ went on Monseigneur of Valois. ‘We are still in negotiation with the Holy Father over the number of knights and how much they shall be paid. We want eight thousand knights and thirty thousand footmen, and each baron to receive twenty sols a day and each knight ten; seven sols and six deniers for the squires and two sols for the footmen. Pope John wants me to limit my army to four thousand knights and fifteen thousand footmen; he has, nevertheless, promised me twelve armed galleys. He has given us the tithe, but is looking askance at twelve hundred thousand livres a year, during the five years the crusade will last, which is the sum we are asking, and above all at the four hundred thousand livres the King of France requires for ancillary expenses.’
‘Of which three hundred thousand are to be paid to the good Charles of Valois himself,’ thought Robert of Artois. ‘At that price it’s worth while commanding a crusade. But to cavil at it would be unbecoming, since I shall get my share of it.’14
‘Oh, if I had only been at Lyons in the place of my late nephew Philippe during the last conclave,’ cried Valois, ‘I should have chosen a cardinal – though I wish to say nothing against the Holy Father – who understood more clearly the true interests of Christianity and did not require so much persuading.’
‘Particularly since we hanged his nephew at Montfaucon last May,’ observed Robert of Artois.
Mortimer turned in his chair and looked at Robert of Artois in surprise. ‘A nephew of the Pope? What nephew?’
‘Do you mean to say you don’t know about it, Cousin?’ said Robert of Artois, taking the opportunity to get to his feet, for he found it difficult to remain still for long. He went over to the hearth and kicked the logs.
Mortimer had already ceased to be ‘my lord’ to him and had become ‘my Cousin’, on account of a distant relationship they had discovered through the Fiennes family; soon he would become simply ‘Roger’.
‘Do you mean to say,’ he went on, ‘that you have not heard of the splendid adventures of the noble lord, Jourdain de l’Isle, so noble and so powerful that the Holy Father gave him his niece in marriage? And yet, when I come to think of it, how could you have heard about it? You were in prison at the time through the good offices of your friend Edward. Oh, it was a little affair that would have made much less stir had it not been for the fellow’s alliances. This Jourdain, a Gascon lord, had committed a few minor misdeeds, such as robbery, homicide, rape, deflowering virgins and a little buggery with the young men into the bargain. The King, at the request of Pope John, agreed to pardon him, and even restored his property to him on a promise of reform. Reform? Jourdain returned to his fief and we soon heard that he had begun all over again, and worse than ever, that he was keeping thieves, murderers and other bad hats about him, who plundered priests and laymen for his benefit. A King’s sergeant, carrying his lilied staff, was sent to arrest him. Do you know how Jourdain received the sergeant? He had him seized, beaten with the royal staff and, just to complete things, impaled on it, of which the man died.’
Robert uttered a loud laugh that made the window-panes rattle in their leads. How gaily Monseigneur of Artois laughed, and how, in his heart of hearts, he approved, even envied, except for his sad end, Messire Jourdain de l’Isle. He would have liked to have had him for a friend.
‘One really does not know which was the greater crime,’ he went on, ‘to have killed an officer of the King, or to have befouled the lilies with a sergeant’s guts! For his deserts, my lord Jourdain was judged worthy to be strung up to the gibbet at Montfaucon. He was taken there with great ceremony, being dragged at the horse’s tail, and was hanged in the robes with which his uncle, the Pope, had presented him. You can still see him in them should you happen to pass that way. They have become a little too big for him now.’
And Robert began laughing again, his head thrown back, his thumbs in his belt. His amusement was so sincere and infectious that Roger Mortimer began laughing too. And Valois was laughing, and his son Philippe. The courtiers at the farther end of the room gazed at them with curiosity.
One of the blessings of our lot is to be ignorant of our end. And these four great barons were right to seize any opportunity to be amused; for one of them would be dead within two years; and another had but seven years to wait, almost to the day, to be dragged to execution in his turn at the horse’s tail through the streets of a town.
Laughing together had made them feel more friendly towards each other. Mortimer suddenly had the feeling that he had been admitted to Valois’s inner circle of power, and felt a little more at ease. He glanced sympathetically at Monseigneur Charles’s face; it was a broad, high-coloured face, the face of a man who ate too much and whom the duties of his position deprived of the opportunity of taking enough exercise. Mortimer had not seen Valois since various meetings long ago: once in England during the celebrations for Queen Isabella’s marriage, and a second time, in 1313, when he had accompanied the English sovereigns to Paris to pay their first homage. And all this, which seemed but yesterday, was already in the distant past. Monseigneur of Valois, who had been a young man then, had since become this massive and imposing personage; and Mortimer himself had lived, on the best expectation of life, half his allotted span, if God willed that he should not be killed in battle, drowned at sea or die by the axe of Edward’s executioner. To have reached the age of thirty-seven was already a long span of life, particularly when you were surrounded by so many jealousies and enemies, when you had risked your life in tournaments and in war, and spent eighteen months in the dungeons of the Tower. Clearly, he must not waste his time, nor neglect opportunities for adventure. The idea of a crusade was beginning to interest Roger Mortimer after all.
‘And when will your ships sail, Monseigneur?’ he asked.
‘In eighteen months’ time, I think,’ replied Valois, ‘I shall send a third embassy to Avignon to make a definite arrangement about the subsidies, the bulls of indulgences, and the order of battle.’
‘It will be a splendid expedition, Monseigneur of Mortimer, in which the people one sees about at courts, who talk so much and so valiantly of war, will be able to show what they can do outside the tournament ground,’ said Philippe of Valois, who had so far not uttered a word and now blushed a little.
Charles of Valois’s eldest son was already imagining the swelling sails of galleys, landings on distant shores, the banners, the knights, the shock of the heavy French cavalry charging the Infidel, the Crescent trampled beneath the horses’ hooves, Saracen girls captured in the secret depths of palaces and beautiful naked slaves in chains. And nothing was going to prevent Philippe of Valois from slaking his desires on those buxom wenches. His wide nostrils were already distending. For Jeanne the Lame would remain in France. He loved his wife, of course, but could not help trembling in her presence, for her jealousy burst out into furious scenes whenever he so much as looked at another woman’s breast. Oh, this sister of Marguerite of Burgundy