Philip Augustus; or, The Brothers in Arms

by G. P. R. James

CHAPTER VIII.

The particulars of De Coucy's journey to Paris are not worth recording. He paused for two hours at a village near Meulan, with his followers and his royal companion, for the purpose of resting their weary horses; but neither of the knights took any repose themselves, though the fatigues they had undergone might well have called for it.

The conduct of De Coucy somewhat puzzled the king; for it evinced a degree of calm respect towards him, which Philip judged the young knight would hardly have shown had he not recognised him by some of those signs, which, when seized on by a keen and observing eye, render disguises almost always abortive.

At the same time, neither by indiscreet word, or meaning glance, did De Coucy betray that he had any absolute knowledge of the quality of him whose limbs that plain armour covered. He spoke frankly and freely on all subjects, started various topics of conversation himself, and in short, took care to bound his respect to grave courtesy, without any of that formal reverence which might have directed the attention of others to what he had observed himself.

There was one, however, in the train not quite so cautious.

Gallon the fool--though we left him last at the top of one of the highest oaks in the wood, whither he had carried, piece by piece, the rich armour he had stripped from Guillaume de la Roche Guyon, together with a well-lined pouch of chamois leather--had since taken care to rejoin the victorious party, with all his acquirements nicely bundled up on the crupper of his horse, forming a square not unlike the pack with which wandering minstrels travelled in those days.

On the road he was very still and thoughtful. Whether it was that he was calculating in silence the value of his plunder, or that he was sullen from fatigue, his companions could not well tell, but when the party stopped, Gallon watched his opportunity, when De Coucy was alone, gazing at the pale moon, and indulging in such dreams as moonlight only yields. Stealing up to his lord, the juggler peered cunningly in his face, saying in a low voice, "Oh, Coucy! Coucy! I could show you such a trick for taming a lion;" and at the same time he bent his thumb back over his shoulder, pointing to where the monarch stood at a few yards' distance.

"Silence, fool!" said the knight, in a deep stern voice, adding, a moment afterwards, "What mean you, Gallon?"

"Did you not hear him cry, 'Denis Mountjoy! Denis Mountjoy!' when he joined the fight?" demanded Gallon.--"Coucy, Coucy! you might tame a lion, an' you would!"

De Coucy caught Gallon by the arm, and whispered in his ear a stern menace if he kept not silence. After which he turned at once to the king, saying aloud, "We had better to horse, fair sir, or it will be late ere we reach the city."

"Haw, haw!" shouted Gallon,--"Haw, haw!" and bounding away, he was the first in the saddle.

When they were within sight of Paris, the king thanked De Coucy for the pleasure of his fair company; and, saying that they should doubtless soon meet at the court, he took leave of the young knight, as if his road lay in somewhat a different direction, and rode on, his horse putting forth all his speed to reach the well-known stable. The young knight followed more slowly; and, proceeding across the bridge, directed his steps to the palace on the island.

In the court he found a crowd of inferior ecclesiastics, with robes, and stoles, and crosses, and banners, and all the pompous display of Romish magnificence, mingled with the king's serjeants-at-arms, and many a long train of retainers belonging to several of the great vassals of the crown, who seemed to be at that moment at the court. The young knight dismounted in the midst of them, and sent in to crave an audience of the king, giving his business, as it well deserved, the character of important.

A reply was soon returned, purporting that Sir Guy de Coucy was ever welcome to the king of France, and the knight was instantly marshalled to the presence-chamber.

Philip stood at the further extremity of the magnificent Gothic hall, a part of which still remains in the old palace of the kings of France. He was habited in a wide tunic of rich purple silk, bound round his waist by a belt of gold, from which hung his sword of state. The neck and sleeves were tied with gold, and from his shoulders descended a mantle of crimson sendal, lined throughout with ermines, which fell in broad and glossy folds upon the floor. On his head he wore a jewelled cap of crimson velvet, from under which the glossy waves of his long fair hair fell down in some disarray upon his shoulders. In any other man, the haste with which he had changed his apparel would have appeared; but Philip, in person even, was formed to be a king; and, in the easy grace of his figure, and the dignified erectness of his carriage, hurry or negligence of dress was never seen; or appeared but to display the innate majesty of his demeanour to greater advantage.

He stood with one foot rather advanced, and his chest and head thrown back, while his eagle eye fixed with a keen and somewhat stern regard upon a mitred prelate--the abbot of Three Fountains Abbey--who seemed to have been speaking the moment before De Coucy entered, Guerin the chancellor, still in the simple dress of the knights hospitallers, stood beside the king; and around appeared a small but brilliant circle of nobles, amongst whom were to be seen the dukes of Burgundy and Champagne, the counts of Nevers and Dampierre; and the unhappy count of Toulouse, afterwards sacrificed to the intolerant spirit of the Roman Church.

"How is this?" said Philip, just as the young knight passed into the hall;--"Will Rome never be satisfied? Do concessions wrung from our very heart's blood but stimulate new demands? What has Innocent the Third to do with the wars of Philip of France against his traitorous and rebellious vassal, John duke of Normandy? What pretext of clerical authority and the church's rights has the pontiff now to show, why a monarch should not in his own dominions compel his vassals to obedience, and punish crime and baseness? By the holy rood! there must be some new creed we have not heard of, to enjoin implicit obedience, in all temporal as well as spiritual things, to our moderate, temperate, holy father, Innocent the Third, and his successors for ever! We pray thee, my lord abbot, to communicate to us all the tenets of this blessed doctrine; and to tell us, whether it has been made manifest by inspiration or revelation."

"You speak scornfully, my son," said the abbot mildly, "ay, and somewhat profanely; but you well know the causes that move our holy father to interfere, when he sees two christened kings wasting their blood, their treasure, and their time, in vain and impious wars against each other, while the holy sepulchre is still the prey of miscreants and infidels, and the land of our blessed Redeemer,--the land in which so many saints have died, and for which so many heroes have bled,--still lies bowed down to heathens and blasphemers,--you well know the causes that move him to interfere, I say, and therefore need ask no new motive for his christianlike and holy zeal."

"His christianlike and holy zeal!!" exclaimed the king, holding up his hands. "Ay, abbot," he continued, his lip curling with a bitter smile, "I do know the causes, and Christendom shall find I estimate them justly. For all answer, then, to the mild good father pope his exhortation to peace, I reply that Philip is king of France; and that, though I will, in all strictly ecclesiastical affairs, yield reverence and due submission to the supreme pontiff; yet when he dares--ay, when he dares, abbot--to use the word command to me, in my just wars, or in the dispensation of justice unto my vassals, I shall scoff his idle threats to scorn, and, by God's will, pursue my way, as if there were neither priest nor prelate on the earth. Now, fair Sir Guy de Coucy! most welcome to Philip of France!" he continued, abruptly turning away from the abbot and addressing the young knight. "We were arming even now to march to deliver you and our fair cousin Arthur Plantagenet. What cheer do you bring us from him?"

"I had hoped, my liege," replied De Coucy, with a pained and melancholy air, "that fame, who speeds fast enough in general to bear ill news, would have spared me the hard and bitter task of telling you what I have to communicate. He for whom you inquire is no more! Basely has he been murdered in the prisons of Rouen by his own uncle, John king of England!"

Philip's brow had been cloudy before; but as the young knight spoke, fresh shadows came quickly over it, as we see storm after storm roll up over a thundery sky. At the same time, each of the nobles of France took an involuntary step forward, and with knitted brow, and eager, horrified eyes, gazed upon De Coucy while he told his news.

"God of heaven!" exclaimed the monarch rapidly. "What would you say? Are you very sure, sir knight? Not with his own hand? His nephew too! His own brother's child! As noble a boy as ever looked up in the face of heaven! Speak, sir knight! Speak! What was the manner of his death! Have you heard? But be careful that each word be founded on certain knowledge, for on your lips hangs the fate of thousands!"

De Coucy related clearly and distinctly all that had occurred on the day of Arthur's murder--all that he had seen, all that he had heard; but, with scrupulous care, he took heed that not one atom of surmise should mingle with his discourse. He painted strongly, clearly, minutely, every circumstance; but he left his auditors to draw their own conclusions.

The nobles of France looked silently in each other's faces, where each read the same feelings of horror and indignation that swelled in his own bosom. At the same time, the king glanced his keen eye round the circle, with a momentary gaze of inquiry at the countenances of his barons, as if he sought to gather whether the feelings of wrath and hatred which the young knight's tale had stirred up in his heart were common to all around.

"Now, by the bones of the saints!" cried he, "we will this day--nay this hour,--send a herald to defy that felon king, and dare him to the field. Ho! serjeant-at-arms, bid Mountjoy hither!"

"I have already, my lord," said De Coucy, "presumed, even before bearing you this news, to defy king John before his court; and, accusing him of this foul murder, to dare his barons--all, or any who should deny the fact--to meet me in arms, upon the quarrel."

"Ha!" cried Philip eagerly. "What said his nobles?--Did they believe your charge? Did they take up your gage, sir knight?"

"It seems, sire," replied De Coucy, "that the tidings of the prince's murder were already common amongst the English barons; and, from what I could gather, some of their body had already charged John of Anjou with it before I came. As to my gauntlet, several of the knights stepped forward to raise it--for, to do the lords of England justice, they are never backward to draw the sword, right or wrong--but Lord Pembroke interposed; and, taking up the gage, said that he would hold it in all honour, till the king should have cleared himself, to their satisfaction, of the accusation which I brought against him; hinting some doubt, however, that he could do so. Nevertheless, he promised either to meet me in arms in fair field of combat, or to return me my gage, acknowledging the king's quarrel to be bad."

"'Tis evident enough!" cried the king. "The barons of England--who are ever willing to support their monarch in any just cause," he added, with a peculiar emphasis, not exactly reproachful, but certainly intended to convey to the ears on which it fell a warning of the monarch's expectations,--"the barons of England are already aware of this hateful deed, or not one of them would for a moment hesitate to draw the sword in defence of his king. Poor Arthur!" he continued, casting his eyes on the ground, and letting his mind wander over the past,--"poor Arthur! thou wert as hopeful a youth as ever a mother was blessed withal--as fair, as engaging a boy--and now thine unhappy mother is sonless, as well widowed. I had hoped to have seated thee on the throne of thine ancestors, and to have made thy mother's heart glad in the sight of thy renewed prosperity. But thou art gone, poor child! and left few so fair and noble behind. In faith, lords! I could weep that boy's loss," continued the king, dashing a drop from his proud eye. "His youth promised so splendidly, that his manhood must have proved great.--Lord Abbot," he added gravely, turning to the abbot of Three Fountains, "you have marked what has passed this day--you have heard what I have heard,--and, if there needs any farther answer to him that sent you to preach me from my purpose of punishing a rebellious vassal, tell him that John of Anjou has added murder to treachery; and that Philip of France will never sheathe the sword till he has fully avenged the death of Arthur Plantagenet!"

"I have indeed heard what has passed, sire, with horror and dismay," replied the abbot; "but still, without at all seeking to impugn the faith or truth of this good knight, whose deeds in defence of the holy sepulchre have been heard of by all men, and warrant his Christian truth--yet still he saw not the murder committed."

Philip knit his brow and gnawed his lip impatiently, glancing his eye round the circle with a scornful and meaning smile; and muttering to himself, "Roman craft--Roman craft!"

Whether the abbot heard it or not, he took instantly a higher tone. "I irritate you, sir king!" said he, "by speaking truth; but still you must thus far hear me. The pope--the holy head of the common Christian church, finding himself called upon to exert all the powers entrusted to him for the deliverance of the holy city of Jerusalem, has resolved that he will compel all Christian kings to cease their private quarrels, and lay by their vindictive animosities, till the great object of giving deliverance to Christ's sepulchre be accomplished."

"Compel!" cried Philip, the living lightning flashing from his eyes. "By heaven! priest, the king he can compel to sheathe the sword of righteous vengeance out against a murderer is formed of different metal from Philip of France. So tell the pontiff! Let him cast again the interdict upon the land if he will. The next time I pray him to raise it, shall be at the gates of Rome with my lance in my hand, and my shield upon my breast. My supplication shall be the voice of trumpets, and my kneeling the trampling of my war-horse in the courts of the capitol.--What say ye, barons! Have I spoken well?"

"Well! Well! Well!" echoed the peers around, enraged beyond moderation at the prelate's daring protection of a murderer; and at the same moment the Duke of Burgundy laid the finger of his right hand upon the pommel of his sword, with a meaning glance towards the king.

"Ay, Burgundy, my noble friend! thou art right," said Philip; "with our swords we will show our freedom.--Look not scared, sir abbot, but know, that we are not such children as to be deceived with tales of holy wars, when the question is, whether a murderer shall be punished. Away with such pretences! This war against the assassin of my noble boy, Arthur of Brittany, is my holy war, and never was one more just and righteous.--Ha, Mountjoy!" he added, as the king of arms entered, "we have a task for thee, fitted for so noble a knight and so learned a herald. John of Anjou has murdered Arthur Plantagenet, his nephew, in prison. Here stands in witness thereof. Sir Guy de Coucy--"

"Good knight and noble! if ever one lived," said the herald, bowing his head to De Coucy.

"Go then to the false traitor John," continued the king, "defy him in our name! tell him that we will have blood for blood; and that the death of all the thousands which shall fall in his unrighteous quarrel we cast upon his head. Tell him, that we will never sheathe the sword, so long as he possesses one foot of ground in France; and that when we have even driven him across his bulwark of the sea, we will overleap that too, and the avenging blade shall plague him at his very hearth.--Yet hold!" cried Philip, pausing in the midst of the passion into which he had worked himself, and reining in his wrath, to guide it in the course of his greater purposes; as a skilful charioteer bends the angry and impetuous fire of his horses, to whirl him on with more energetic celerity to the goal within his view. "Yet hold!--------" and Philip carried his hand to his brow, catching, as by inspiration, the outline of that bright stroke of policy which, more than any other act of his whole reign, secured to the monarchs of France the absolute supremacy of their rule--the judgment of John of Anjou, the greatest feudatory of the crown, by the united peers of France.

If he made the war against John a personal one between himself and the king of England, he might be supported by his barons, and come off victorious in the struggle, it was true; but if he summoned John, as Duke of Normandy, to receive judgment from his sovereign court in a case of felony, it established his jurisdiction over his higher vassals, on a precedent such as none would ever dare in after years to resist. It did more; for, if John were condemned by his peers, of which Philip entertained not a moment's doubt, the barons of France would be bound to support their own award; and the tie between them and him would become, not the unstable one of voluntary service, rendered and refused as caprice might dictate, but a strictly feudal duty with which all would be interested to comply.

Philip saw, at a glance, the immense increase of stability which he might give to his power by this great exercise of his rights; and, clear-sighted himself, he hardly doubted that his barons would see it also, and perhaps oppose his will. Certain, however, that by the feudal system his right to summon John, and judge him in his court, was clear and undeniable, he resolved to carry it through, at all events; but determined, first, to propose it to his nobles as a concession that he himself made to their privileges.

What is long and tedious, as the slow eye or slower pen travels over the paper, is but the work of a moment to the mind; and Philip had, in the pause of one brief instant, caught every consideration that affected the idea before him, and determined upon his line of conduct.

"Hold!" said he to the herald--"hold! My lords," he continued, turning to the nobles, by whom he was surrounded, "in my first wrath against this base murderer, I had forgot that, though I have the indisputable right of warring upon him as a monarch, yet I cannot justly punish him as a felon, strictly speaking, without your judgment previously pronounced upon him. I would not willingly trespass upon the privileges of any of my noble vassals; and therefore, lords--you Dukes of Burgundy and Champagne, and whatever other peers of France are present, I resign the judgment of this John of Anjou into your hands. I will summon him to appear before my court of peers, at the end of twenty days, to answer the charges brought against him. The peers of France shall judge him according to their honour and his demerits; and I will stand by in arms, to see that judgment executed." The peers of France could hardly have refused to assist at the trial to which Philip called them, even had they been so willed; but, far behind the monarch in intellect, and indignant at the baseness of John of Anjou, they now eagerly expressed their approval of the king's determination; and again plighted themselves to support him in his war against the English sovereign, whether that war was maintained as a consequence of the judgment they should give, or as a continuation of that which had already commenced.

The herald, then, was instantly despatched to Rouen, for the purpose of displaying the articles of accusation against John at the court of Normandy, and of summoning him to appear on the twentieth day at Paris, to answer the charges to be there substantiated. At the same time, the legate of the holy see, very well convinced that, in the present case, the thunders of the church would fall harmless at the feet of Philip, though launched with ever so angry a hand, took leave of the monarch with a discontented air; and as he left the hall, the monarch's lip curled, and his eye lightened, with a foretaste of that triumph which he anticipated over the proud priest who had so darkly troubled the current of his domestic happiness.

"Beau Sire De Coucy," said the king, turning to the young knight with a bland smile, as he recalled his thoughts from the contemplation of the future, "notwithstanding the sad news you have brought us, you are most welcome to the court of France. Nor will we fail to repay your sufferings, as far as our poor means will go. In the mean while, we beg of you to make our palace your home till such time as, with sounding trumpets and lances in rest, we shall march to punish the assassin of Arthur Plantagenet. Then shall you lead, to aid in the revenge I know you thirst to take, all the fair host raised on the lands of the Count de Tankerville, full a thousand archers and two hundred knights. At supper, noble lords," continued the king, "I trust that all here will grace my board with their presence. Ere then, I have a bitter task to perform--to break to a fond mother the death of her noble boy, and to soothe the sorrows of a helpless widow."