He threw himself onto the boar, grabbing its razor-sharp tusks with his hands. His last conscious memory was of the knife blows of his venerers raining down beside his head.
3
Amauri de Bale, Count of Hyeres, spent the next sixteen years of his life in involuntary exile from the Court.
The Queen Mother, Blanche de Castile, had never forgiven him for what she saw as the encouragement of her son, the King, to commit an act whose folly was only outweighed by its pointlessness. The fact that de Bale had saved the young King’s life at considerable risk to his own counted for little in the Queen’s estimation – although it had undoubtedly protected de Bale from a regicide’s agonizing death by quartering.
The King had been forbidden by his mother ever to communicate with de Bale again, and he had acceded to this request out of duty and affection for his mother, whilst stopping just short of agreeing to the actual administration of a formal oath.
But the King was a profoundly pious man, and renowned throughout Europe for his sense of fair play. Over the years of their enforced separation he had become increasingly convinced that Amauri de Bale had been marked out by God to save him from the machinations of the Devil. And furthermore that the great St Benedict boar, far from assuming the guise of one of the very symbols of Christ, had in fact been Lucifer himself.
In the late summer of 1244, and following a near mortal illness, King Louis, to his mother’s horror, had unilaterally declared his intention to take the crusader’s vow. After considerable soul-searching, and with the guidance of his confessor, Geoffrey of Beaulieu, and of his chaplain, William of Chartres, it was decided that it would be impossible for the King to take the cross without first acknowledging God’s part in his decision. And this, in turn, could not be done without recognition of some sort for the man who had clearly been chosen by God Himself to protect the King from the Devil.
The problem was further aggravated by the fact that a number of the King’s squires – many of whom, sixteen years on, were now holders of important Offices of State – had clearly heard the King, that morning back in 1228, explaining to Count Amauri de Bale that he, Louis, Rex Francorum and Rex Christianissimus, Lieutenant of God on Earth, Lord High Protector of France (the Eldest daughter of the Church), had been personally instructed by God that if he ever wished to secure the permanent annexation of Jerusalem, Nazareth, and Bethlehem to the Holy Mother Church, he must first go out and kill a wild boar with his axe.
Thanks to his ever more profound understanding of the scriptures, the King – and via the King, his counsellors – now understood that God had had a further and less obvious motive in mind that day. And that this motive involved the selection of Count Amauri de Bale to be the King’s sole champion. To act for him and on behalf of him, in other words, in the gratification of God’s wishes.
As a direct consequence of this fact, and in the teeth of the Queen Mother’s vigorous disapproval, the King issued a formal summons to de Bale to present himself at the Basilica of St Denis, next to the tombs of the King’s father, Louis VIII, and of his grandfather, Philip II Augustus, on the exact day, and at the exact moment, of the sixteen-year anniversary of his God-driven intervention.
4
At first Amauri de Bale had been tempted to avoid what he suspected was a trick invitation by impulsively volunteering to serve in the army of Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor. But he knew that if the Queen Mother truly wanted her revenge on him, she could reach him in Germany just as easily as she could have reached him at any time during the past sixteen years within the tenuous security of his chateau and estates.
That he owed his life – and the non-severance of his extremities – to the King’s grace was in little doubt. De Bale shuddered to think what the Queen Mother would have ordered done to him had he not changed his mind at the very last moment and leapt in to save the King’s life. His – on the face of it – perverse decision that day had not been prompted by any unlikely eruption of random human charity, however, but rather by a trained warrior’s reactive instinct, twinned with the sudden realization – triggered by the King’s sublime jeu d’esprit – that Louis might yet prove to be a credit to France, rather than merely another Capetian burden on its soul.
The upshot, of course, had been that de Bale had fallen foul of the Duke of Brittany, with all that that entailed in terms of loss of influence, a less advantageous marriage, and a dramatic narrowing of his political ambitions. But he had decided, in the general scheme of things, that this was the lesser of two evils – Mauclerc was bad, but the Queen Mother was awful.
De Bale knelt, therefore, before the King’s father’s sarcophagus, his head bowed, his forearms resting across his single upraised knee, and waited for the King’s pleasure. His entire life had consisted of a series of often impulsive gambles, and he now felt a fatalistic sense of his own insignificance in the magnificent new Rayonnant Gothic setting of the St Denis Basilica.
The King, flanked by his confessor, Geoffrey of Beaulieu, and his chaplain, William of Chartres, watched de Bale from the lee of one of the twenty statue columns adorning the portal of the Basilica’s west facade.
‘Look,’ said the King. ‘It is Our Lady.’
The two counsellors fell back, staring at their King. ‘We see nothing, Sire.’
The King turned to them. ‘You see nothing?’
‘No, Sire. We see nothing. What do you see?’
The King turned back in the direction of his father’s crypt. ‘I see Our Lady, the Mother of God, raising my champion’s cloak and laying it tenderly across his back so that he should not take cold.’
The two men covered their faces with their hands. Then they fell to their knees and prostrated themselves on the flagstone flooring of the nave.
The King, after only a brief hesitation, strode towards the kneeling figure of the Count.
De Bale heard the King’s approach, but chose not to look up. The King’s words had carried to him through the echoing Basilica, and de Bale understood that, at this exact moment, his own and his family’s future was being decided forever.
He felt the tip of the King’s sword touch him on the back of his right shoulder. ‘You saw the Devil, de Bale?’
‘I did, Sire.’
‘And you protected the King?’
‘With my life, Sire.’
‘And you will always protect the King?’
‘Always, Sire.’
‘And this realm of France?’
‘I and my family, Sire. Throughout eternity.’
‘Then you shall be my Corpus Maleficus.’
Louis turned away. He raised his voice, so that it echoed throughout the Basilica. ‘I have the Bishop of Reims to crown me. The Bishop of Laon to anoint me. Langres to bear my sceptre. Beauvais my mantle. Chalons my ring. And Noyons to bear my belt. I have the Duke of Normandy to hold the first square banner, and Guyenne to hold the second. I have Burgundy to bear my crown and fasten my belt. I have the Count of Toulouse to carry my spurs. Flanders my sword. And Champagne my Royal Standard. But who do I have to protect me from the Devil? Who to be my champion?’
De Beaulieu and de Chartres had risen up from their prone positions. Both men recognized a fait accompli when they saw one. ‘You have the Count of Hyeres, Sire.’
Louis nodded. ‘The Count of Hyeres is now the thirteenth Pair de France. My father’s and my grandfather’s bones are witnesses to this fact. Bring me the Seal and my crusader’s cross.’
