A Distant Mirror_ The Calamitous 14th Century - Barbara W. Tuchman [273]
Following the marriage, a new northwest wing almost as grandiose in scale as the renowned donjon was added to the castle, along with many domestic improvements.* The new wing housed a grand banquet hall measuring 50 by 200 feet, called the Salle des Preux or Hall of the Nine Worthies, the heroes of history most admired in the Middle Ages. They were three ancients—Hector of Troy, Alexander the Great, and Julius Caesar; three Biblical Jews—Joshua, King David, and Judas Maccabeus; three Christians—King Arthur, Charlemagne, and the crusader Godfrey of Bouillon. An adjoining hall 30 by 60 feet, was dedicated to the feminine worthies, Hippolyta, Semiramis, Penthisilea, and other legendary queens. Each hall had an immense mantled chimney at either end, a high vaulted ceiling, and wide arched windows which let in broad bands of sunlight, unlike the narrow slits in the older walls. A raised tribune from which great personages and their ladies, separated from the crowd, could view the dances and entertainments was built into the Salle des Preux. Behind it stood the row of Nine Worthies in bas-relief, “carved by a hand so fine,” wrote an admirer, “that if my eyes had not been witness I would never have believed that leaves and fruits and grapes and other delicate things could have been so perfectly fashioned in hard stone.”
Among other additions were a fireplace and chimney for the lady’s boudoir, now tucked into an angle between the new wing and the old; an indoor tennis court with carved wooden ceiling; a new stable in the lower court; parapets extended the length of the terraces; a double-arched space beneath the terrace to keep wood for fuel; a kennel with latrines “to make room for Bonniface and Guedon to lie”; a water tank six feet by eight and sixteen feet deep to supply water by four large stone conduits to the kitchens. New wooden ceilings were installed in the donjon, roofs throughout the castle were re-covered, gargoyles and gutters cleaned, and the windows of the upper chamber “which the Dame de Coucy’s monkey had damaged” repaired.
Craftsmen of every specialty were hired—a carriage-maker to cut down the carriage brought from Lorraine by the new Dame de Coucy, which was too wide for the gates and had to be reduced by a foot; wood-carvers to panel the ceilings of the Eagle Chamber and the oratory and dressing room of the Sire de Coucy, and to make two extension leaves for the banquet table for the new hall; iron-workers to replace old keys, locks, bolts, and hinges, in particular to make a new lock for the casket in the oratory of the Seigneur; plumbers to weld the kitchen sinks and drainage pipes; painters from Paris to decorate the walls and “to redress the white-and-red hoods of the Coucy livery with new quilting.”
Much of the non-rented land, it appears from the accounts, was in vineyards, requiring considerable expense in planting, cultivating, and harvesting, and producing considerable income for the Seigneur. Other expenses went for the wages of bailiffs and tax-collectors, offerings to the chaplains of two chapels, charges for curing fish, replenishing livestock, cutting wood, mowing and haying the fields, providing the clothes and equipment of the Seigneur and his retinue. Coucy’s journeys to Soissons and other places show him generally accompanied by about eighty mounted knights, squires, and servants, and an astronomer, Maître Guillaume de Verdun, to carry out “certain necessities for him.”
The second marriage like the first was not very prolific, which may reflect something about Enguerrand’s marital relations or merely his prolonged absences. No son to carry on the dynasty and maintain the great barony was born, and only one daughter. Named Isabelle for her mother, she ultimately married the second son of the Duke of Burgundy. At an unknown date, probably some years later, the much desired son was finally born to Enguerrand