The King Without a Kingdom Read Free Page B

appetite but not the mind, and leads to heavy eating and drinking rather than clear thinking, of the sort I often need to engage in when I have to inspect, rule or negotiate from the moment I arrive.
    Many kings, first and foremost the King of France, would run their states more profitably if they wore their backs out less and exercised their brains for a change, and if they didn’t insist on conducting their most important affairs over dinner, at the end of a long journey or after the hunt. Take note that one doesn’t travel any slower in a palanquin, as I do, if one has good wadding in the stretcher, and the forethought to change it often. Would you care for a sugared almond, Archambaud? In the little coffer by your side. Well, pass me one would you?
    Do you know how many days it took me to travel from Avignon to Breteuil in Normandy, in order to join King John, who was laying a nonsensical siege there? Go on, have a guess? No, my nephew; less than that. We left on the twenty-first of June, the very day of the summer solstice, and none too early at that. Because you know, or rather you don’t know what happens upon the departure of a nuncio, or two nuncios, as there were two of us on that occasion. It is customary for the entire College of Cardinals, following Mass, to escort the departing officials for a full league beyond the edge of town; and there is always a crowd following them, with people watching from both sides of the route. And we must advance at procession pace in order to give dignity to the cortège. Then we make a stop, and the cardinals line up in order of precedence and the Nuncio exchanges the kiss of peace with each one in turn. This whole ceremony takes up most of the morning. So we left on the twenty-first of June. And yet we were arrived in Breteuil by the ninth of July. Eighteen days. Niccola Capocci, my co-legate, was unwell. I must say, I had shaken him up no end, the spineless weakling. Never before had he travelled at such a pace. But one week later, the Holy Father had in his hands, delivered by messengers on horseback, the account of my first discussions with the king.
    This time, we have no such need to rush. First, even if we are enjoying a mild spell, days are short at this time of year. I don’t recall November in Périgord being so warm, as warm as it is today. What beautiful light we have! But we are in danger of running into a storm as we advance to the north of the kingdom. I plan on taking roughly one month, so that we’ll be in Metz by Christmas, God willing. No, I am not in nearly as much of a hurry as last summer; despite all my efforts, that war took place, and King John was taken prisoner.
    How could such ill fortune befall us? Oh! You are not the only one to be flabbergasted, my nephew. All Europe felt not inconsiderable surprise and has since been arguing about the root causes and the reasons. The misfortunes of kings come from long ago, and often one takes for an accident of fate what is really the fatality of their very nature. And the bigger the misfortunes, the longer the roots.
    This whole business, I know it all in great detail – pull that blanket over towards me a little would you? – and I might say I even expected it. I expected a great reversal of fortune, a humbling, would strike the king down, and thus, alas, bring down his kingdom with it. In Avignon, we in the Church need to know all that may interest the courts. Word of all the scheming, all the plotting, finds its way back up to us. Not a single marriage could be planned that we don’t know about before the betrothed themselves. ‘In the event of lady such-and-such accepting the hand of lord so-and-so, who is in fact her second cousin, would our Most Holy Father bestow upon us his permission to thus join their two crowns?’ Not a single treaty would be negotiated without our receiving visits from agents of both sides; not a single crime committed without the instigator coming to us in search of