“They would think as much of you if only they knew you,” Jean de Bueil said staunchly. Louis stood up.
“You ought to concern yourself with reaching a good understanding with the people of Paris, my lord,” Boucicaut said in a low voice. “You will become regent if the King dies.”
Louis turned quickly and stared at the three men, his hands on his hips. “If the King dies, indeed,” he said finally. “May God grant the King a long and healthy life.”
He walked to a window and stood looking out, his back to the others. Beneath the windows in this part of the palace was an enclosed garden with a marble fountain in the middle, surrounded by galleries. The trees, to which a single half-shrivelled red leaf still clung here and there, loomed mournfully through the autumn mist. The turrets and battlements of the palace walls were barely visible on the other side of the courtyard. The Duke turned. The three young noblemen still stood near the table.
“You’re right, Messires. I joke too much,” Louis said. “And I must certainly not make jokes about such worthy gentlemen as the doctors of the Sorbonne. And now enough of these things.”
He took a lute from one of the tables and handed it to Jean de Bueil. “Play that song of Bernard de Ventadour’s,” he said, sitting down. In a clear voice de Bueil began to sing:
Quan la doss aura venta
Deves vostre pais
M’es veiare que senta
Odor de Paradis …
Two servants entered the room; the arms of Orléans were embroidered on the cloth over their breasts. One of them began to light the torches along the wall; the other approached the Duke and stood hesitantly before him because Louis sat listening to the song with closed eyes. Jean de Bueil ended the couplet with a flourish of chords; the Duke of Orléans opened his eyes and asked, “Why have you stopped, de Bueil?” Then he noticed the servant. “Well?” he asked impatiently.
The man slipped onto one knee and whispered something. The peevish expression vanished from Louis’ face; he smiled at the servant absently, absorbed in thought. Finally he snapped his fingers as a sign that the man could go and rose, stretching, as though to shake off every trace of lassitude. “Forgive me, gentlemen,” he said. “I am needed elsewhere.” He saluted them and walked swiftly to disappear behind a tapestry where the servant held a hidden door open for him.
De Bueil took up the lute again and softly played the melody of the song he had just sung. “Things are allotted queerly in this world,” he remarked, without looking up from the strings. “The King is a child who plays with sugar candy. And Monseigneur d’Orléans deserves a better plaything than a ducal crown. We are not the only ones who think so.”
Boucicaut frowned and rose to leave. “But it’s to be hoped that everyone who thinks so is sensible enough to keep quiet about it for the time being,” he said curtly. De Moras was about to follow him; he turned toward the young man with the lute.
“Don’t worry about it, de Bueil,” he said. “No man escapes his destiny.”
In one of the towers of the ducal wing was a small room to which few had access. Louis d’Orléans had turned this room over to his astrologers: two of them, Maitre Darien and Ettore Salvia, could carry on their experiments here in privacy, working with the powders and liquids which they were attempting to transmute into gold. Other, stranger things undoubtedly took place in this murky chamber into which, on the brightest day, little light seemed to filter through the small greenish windowpanes.
The usual appurtenances of the magic art lay spread upon a table shoved up against the window: parchments, shells, glass vials filled with liquids, rings, balls and mathematical symbols forged from metal. A pungent odor of burnt herbs hung in the air. In this room two men awaited the Duke. One was Ettore Salvia, an astrologer from Padua whom Galeazzo Visconti had sent to his son-in-law with warm recommendations. He sat hunched forward on a bench beside the table. His companion, a filthy fellow clad in rags, stood behind him, staring at the door with the tense look of a trapped animal. When he heard footsteps, Ettore Salvia sprang up. Louis entered the room.
“Have you been successful?” he asked the astrologer who fell to his knees before him. “Stand up, stand up,” he added impatiently, “and tell me what you’ve found.”
Ettore Salvia rose to his feet. He was taller than Louis; he stood between the hearthfire and the wall, his shadow extending over the beamed ceiling. He stepped aside and pointed to the other man who too had fallen to his knees at Louis’ entrance — his eyes, sunken under a bulging, scarred forehead, glistened with terror.
“Who is he?” Louis asked, seating himself. “Stand up, man, and answer.”
“He cannot do that, my lord,” Ettore Salvia replied swiftly and softly. “They cut out his tongue a long time ago — for treason.”
Louis laughed shortly. “You haven’t been squeamish about choosing an accomplice.”
Salvia shrugged. “There are not many to be found for the sort of mission you wished carried out,” he replied evenly, with downcast eyes.
A flush crept over Louis’ face; he was on the point of responding sharply, but he checked himself. “The important thing is that you bring me what I asked for,” he said coldly.
Salvia spoke some low words to the ragged man, who groped in the folds of his garment and drew out a small leather sack, wound around with cord. Perspiration stood on his forehead. “He is afraid of the consequences,” remarked the astrologer, handing the sack to Louis. “He hid for two days and two nights under the gallows and he thinks he may have been detected.”
Without a word Louis took a purse from his sleeve and tossed it onto the table. The mute snatched it up and concealed it among his rags. Salvia smiled contemptuously; he turned and stood watching the Duke of Orléans. Louis had opened the leather sack and removed a smooth iron ring; it lay now in the palm of his hand. He feigned a calm interest, but the astrologer knew better. To him the young man was as transparent as the figures of veined blown glass with which Venetian artisans ornamented their goblets — thus he anticipated the questions on Louis’ lips.
“There is no possible doubt,” he said mildly, without emphasis, as though he were giving the most trivial information. “This ring lay twice twenty-four hours under the tongue of a hanged man. This fellow here swears to it. He did not take his eyes off the gallows — no one apart from him touched the corpse after the execution.”
Louis raised his hand, signalling that enough had been said. Salvia fell silent. A trace of a smile gleamed under his half-closed eyelids. A ring which had undergone that treatment became a powerful amulet: it made its bearer irresistible to women. Apart from preparing a single potion, which had only served to strengthen a dormant inclination, Salvia had never been required to render the Duke this sort of service. Louis’ youth and charm had always smoothed his path to each bower in which he wanted to make an offering to Our Lady Venus. But now he desired Mariette d’Enghien, a demoiselle of Valentine’s retinue; she was still very young and had been in the service of the Duchess only a short time. The customs of Saint-Pol seemed strange to her; she came from the provinces. Her reserve excited Louis exceedingly, because he could not fathom whether what lay behind it was genuine modesty or a refinement of the art of seduction.
Her eyes, which she so seldom raised to his, were green: the grass in spring-time could not be greener, thought Louis, consumed by passion. The desire to possess Maret — her pet name — dominated him completely, so overwhelmingly that he had resorted to what was for him so revolting a measure as the ring which he held in the palm of his hand. This amulet, worn on a chain on the naked body, could not help but make the conquest easy for him.