Free The King Without a Kingdom by Maurice Druon

judgement, their letters of remission … sprang up in the town from nowhere, led by Philip of Navarre, broke down the doors of the Spinning Sow and stormed the stairs up to the constable’s accommodations.
    The King of Navarre was not with them. In case things went awry he had chosen to wait on the outskirts of the town, beside a barn, in the company of his horse guards. Oh! I can see him now, my Charles the Bad, wound up in his coat, bounding backwards and forwards like a wisp of hell’s smoke the length and breadth of the frozen ground, like the devil who never touches the earth. He waits. He looks at the winter sky. The cold nips his fingers. His soul is twisted with both fear and hatred. He listens intently. He resumes his worried pacing up and down.
    First to appear from the direction of the town is John of Fricamps, known as Friquet, the Governor of Caen, his advisor and most zealous machine 15 builder, who tells him, gasping for breath: ‘The deed is done, monseigneur!’
    Then Graville, Mainemares, Morbecque arrive, and Philip of Navarre himself, and all the conspirators with him. At the inn, they pulled the handsome Charles of Spain out from under his bed where he had taken refuge, and now he was indeed dead, still dressed in his nightgown. They had wickedly run him through, stabbed him eighty times over; eighty body wounds would later be found on him. Each of Navarre’s men had wanted to stick his sword in four times … That is how, messire my nephew, King John was to lose his good friend, and how Monseigneur of Navarre would fall into rebellion …
    Now would you please give up your seat for Dom Francesco Calvo, my papal secretary, with whom I wish to converse before we reach our next stop.

7
News from Paris

    D OM C ALVO, AS I will be most busy upon my arrival in La Péruse, inspecting the Abbey to see if it has indeed been so badly laid to waste by the English as to justify the exemption the monks have asked of me, from paying me my prior’s benefices for a full year, I want to tell you forthwith what should appear in my letter to the Holy Father. I should be obliged if you would prepare the letter as soon as we arrive, with the fine turn of phrase that you are accustomed to using.
    We must let the Holy Father know of the news from Paris that reached me in Limoges, and that has been worrying me since.
    First of all, the scheming of the prevost of the merchants of Paris, Master Étienne Marcel. I learned that for the last month the prevost has been building fortifications and digging ditches around the town, beyond the old walls, as if he were preparing against a siege. And yet at the present juncture in the never-ending peace talks, the English have shown no intention nor sign whatsoever of threatening Paris, and such haste in building defences is beyond comprehension. But besides that, the prevost has been organizing his bourgeois into corps of municipal officers, whom he has armed and trained, with district commanders and their officers and their NCOs 16 to ensure that orders are followed, exactly in the image of the Flemish militia who take it upon themselves to govern their own cities. He imposed upon monseigneur the dauphin, the king’s lieutenant, to agree to the constitution of this militia, and, what’s more, while all royal taxes and tallage are generally the object of complaint and refusal, the prevost, in order to equip his men, managed to put into effect a levy on drink that is paid directly to him.
    Ever since the misfortune of Poitiers, this Master Marcel, who formerly made himself rich provisioning the king, but who was piqued four years ago when he lost this role as royalty’s most prestigious supplier, has been meddling in all of the kingdom’s affairs. It is difficult to gauge his designs, beyond making himself important; but he is hardly heading down the path of appeasement that our Holy Father wishes for. Also my pious duty is to advise the pope that, should any request from that