‘The Crown shall rest here,’ Louis was saying, tapping the plan, ‘and the other treasures here and here. And these shall be the finest windows in the world, for they must light what Our Lord Himself touched and gave forth his own blood upon.’
‘It shall be the finest reliquary the world has ever seen, and will ever see,’ I said piously.
And so it should be, I thought. Christ alone knew what he was spending on this chapel, but I knew what he had paid for the treasures he was placing there, for he had paid me. One hundred and thirty-five pounds of gold for one thing alone, the Crown of Thorns. And then he had proceeded to buy up everything else on the shopping list my company had given him – no, not buy, but receive as tokens of gratitude, for Louis would not commit the sin of Simony, and thanks to the company of the Cormaran he did not need to.
Louis was lost in his plans, no doubt seeing the ink turning to stone and glass and lead and rising from the parchment before him. But my mind had turned again to those three heads. I had looked inside their boxes – of course I had looked, for one always checked the merchandise – and lifted each head, light as balls of stale bread. I had unwrapped the brittle linen from them and seen the black skin clinging to yellow bone, seen the shrunken, bitter leer of each mouth, the dry blindness of the eye sockets. Saint Simeon was no more than a skull, but the others let me have a glimpse of what they must have looked like before their flesh met with such ruin: men, at least, with mouths that let in the sweet air and let it out again, eyes … God’s wind, enough of this! It was no more than the ruin that comes to us all. Three heads, twelve pounds of gold. The blessings of the saints indeed.
Louis always got a strange look on his face when he beheld a relic – I had seen it often enough, for in the three years since I signed over the Crown of Thorns to him at Troyes I had brought him another twenty-one items, and for each he had paid far above the going rate. I had conveyed these things as gifts from Louis’ cousin Baldwin of Constantinople, the sad and desperate youth who perched upon Constantine’s throne much as a crippled seagull clings to storm-blown flotsam. And I had conveyed to Baldwin the expressions of Louis’ gratitude, which had so far kept the dispossessed Greeks from taking back their beloved city from the Frankish occupiers, the Latins who had conquered in the name of the Church of Rome, although in this year of 1242 the Greeks were almost at its walls and Baldwin had opened his holy treasure-house for the last time. He had no more relics to sell, now, and there was nothing else that could be stripped from his empire, if a ruined city populated by unpaid soldiers and ghosts could be called that.
But Louis was happy. He had done all he could to shore up the Church of Rome’s pitiful bastion in the east, and now he could turn to the enjoyment of his treasures with a clear conscience. When I had said farewell to Baldwin, standing on a freezing quay on the Golden Horn three months ago, he looked like a man left to die on a lonely shore, despite the Frankish banners that waved bravely above him, and perhaps he was. But here in France, with its oak trees, its plump, blushing girls and its bottomless treasury, his cousin was happy.
‘How, by the by, is your employer? How is dear Monsieur de Sol?’
‘The last time we saw each other, he was well,’ I replied.
‘That is good,’ said Louis, picking up a goblet of wine and strolling lazily towards the window. ‘He is in Venice, I suppose?’
‘In Florence, Your Majesty,’ I told him. ‘Our company has founded a bank there, as you know. He divides his time between Florence and the Serenissima these days.’
‘He was always a wandering soul,’ said the king, resting a long finger pensively against his cheek as he leaned on the window ledge. ‘And you, my dear Monsieur Petrus, have inherited his travelling cloak.’
I bowed. ‘Would that I were fit to wear it,’ I said.
‘Oh, come come. You are a worthy protégé. De Sol swears it was you who foiled that Venetian scoundrel …’ He clicked his fingers, brow furrowed.
‘Querini.’
‘Querini! Exactly so.’ The king turned his face to the sunshine. He loved this story that he had bought his way into: the relic beyond price, the failing empire, the Venetian adventurer who had stolen his prize, and the English lad who had mended all. It was a good story, a king’s story, and he was welcome to it. For my part in it had been as nothing more than a creature of fate, pulled hither and yon by the schemes of great men as I saw my friends die around me. And I had lost someone … but no, I did not think of that any more. If I had triumphed, it was because in the end I had used the greed of one side to pull down the other, nothing more. If Louis knew how much blood was on my hands and on his Crown of Thorns – fresh blood, mind, not the ineffable stuff that gave that horrible tangle of black sticks and spikes its value – he might not like his story half as much. But then again, he probably would. Blood, greed and betrayal: a king’s story after all.
Food was brought in, and we gossiped a little more about Jean de Sol and Constantinople, and Venice, and old Pope Gregory, who had died last year, and his successor Clementine, who had lasted a mere three weeks on the throne of Saint Peter before he too had keeled over from the shock of it all. I had become accustomed to these royal chats, for Louis had made me his relic-finder, and to a king prepared to pay half of everything in his kingdom’s treasury for one frail coronet of twisted wood, that was a not unimportant title. And besides, Louis Capet was a strange sort of king. He did not care for the pomp and trappings of kingship, but liked to deal plainly with his courtiers and subjects. His favourite place to conduct the business of state was where we had lately been sitting, underneath his oak tree in the park of Vincennes. While I still found it strange and not a little terrifying to be chit-chatting with the King of France as if we were two burghers in a tavern, he did not. So I nibbled at the food, which was the simple stuff Louis preferred: bread, cheese and garlic sausage; sipped the wine, and offered token suggestions for the Sainte Chapelle, until all of a sudden there came a curt rap at the door and a young man entered, a disturbed look upon his exquisitely barbered face.
‘Your Majesty, I humbly beg pardon for this disturbance, but there is some news I thought it best to bring.’ He paused, and shot a meaningful glance in my direction, but Louis leaned across the table and patted my hand to let the man know that I was a confidant.
The man – scarcely a man, for he could have been no more than eighteen summers old, and his beard was still soft and innocently curled – drew himself up and placed one foot before the other. When he was satisfied that he had struck an impressive enough pose, he cleared his throat.
‘Your Majesty, the news is from the south,’ he said. Louis raised his chin.
‘Oh, yes?’ he said, evenly.
‘Two messengers arrived today, one from Poitou, one from Languedoc,’ said the youth. ‘Count Raymond of Toulouse has been taken ill at Penne and is not expected to live. From Poitou news comes that Hughues de Lusignan has renounced his ties of fealty to Your Majesty.’
‘That, at least, is not unexpected,’ said Louis, calmly. He sighed, sounding more disappointed than angry. ‘Lusignan is a viper, but we have always known it. He wishes to go to war with us. No doubt his appalling wife will bring the English across to help him. If Raymond is dying …’ He rubbed his brow and frowned. I realised that he had forgotten I was in the room. ‘The alliance Raymond has been trying to make with Aragon against us will be forfeit, but how strong is Lusignan?’
He set down the goblet he held, taking care not to spill anything on the plans. Then he turned to me, and I saw his eyebrows flicker with surprise before he remembered who I was. I hastily formed my features into an appropriate display of outrage.
‘This is most vexing news, Your Majesty,’ I said. ‘I will leave you, if I may, with the humblest thanks for your kindness and generosity to your most lowly servant.’ I thought I might have overdone it – the honeyed words demanded by other princes were wasted on Louis, or so he at least pretended – but he gave me a smile of
gratitude and patted my shoulder.
‘We will talk tomorrow, Petrus,’ he said. ‘There is much …’ But he had lost his train of thought, and the courtier was watching me with ill-concealed impatience, so I bowed my way from Louis, turned elegantly in front of the bearer of ill news, and removed myself from the royal presence.
It was a three-mile ride back to Paris, and I let my horse trot when she wanted to, and walk when it suited her. The sun was shining on the river away to my left, and up ahead, the smoke of numberless cooking fires rose straight up, for the breeze that had ruffled the king’s oak had faded away, and it had become sultry. I should have been happy. I was happy, for I had concluded the company’s business with Louis and received the papers which would authorise a gift of twelve pounds of gold to be paid to Baldwin de Courtenay, Emperor of Constantinople. And I would carve off a fat slice of that gold as commission and send it hurrying to the coffers of the Banco da Corvo Marino in Florence. Monsieur Jean de Sol would be happy with that. Baldwin would be ecstatic, if only for a month or so, before his money bled away through one of the many severed veins of his realm. Louis would be happy, playing holy families with his new heads. So why was I not utterly content? I was twenty-five years old with most of my teeth still in my head. I was on shoulder-slapping terms with the King of France, and I had the confidence of the wisest and most extraordinary man I knew, Monsieur Jean de Sol, otherwise known as Michel Corvus Marinus, and to a very few as Michel de Montalhac.
De Montalhac. There it was. A name of Languedoc. And Michel de Montalhac was a Cathar. Had he heard the news in Florence? He would be there with his deputy, Gilles de Peyrolles, also a Cathar. These two men had done business with almost every prince, spiritual or worldly, in Christendom, and had kept this deadly secret all through the long years. I had seen Captain de Montalhac treated as a friend by a pope, by countless bishops and cardinals. And Louis Capet loved to sit beneath his tree and speak of holy things with him. I wondered, not for the first time, what canker the king might fear to find in his own soul if he knew how many hours he had passed in discourse with a heretic?
And now this matter in the south, the lands of Raymond, Count of Toulouse. Everyone knew how much Louis hated the heretics who the rulers of Toulouse had let flourish, and likewise even the peddler pushing his creaking, jingling barrow on the road beside me knew that Count Raymond had been humbled, humiliated by the French, who had invaded his lands, all but usurped his patrimony, and now imposed the terrors of the Inquisition on his people. He had rebelled before, and it had only been a matter of time before he did so again, even if he was the king’s cousin. But now, perhaps, he was dying, and it seemed as if his last act would be to bring war down upon his country.
The South. You could not lift a cup in a tavern here in Paris without some young buck wearing his father’s stained silk cast-offs bragging about how he was going south to take some land from the heretics. Down there, where the wine flowed in the streams, corn grew in the winter and the girls … I put my horse into a canter and kicked up the dust for a mile, until the Temple marshes came in sight. I had been in Venice with the Captain when the last round of troubles had broken out. The young lord of Carcassonne – a lord without land, for the French had stolen it – had tried to take back his city, but had failed and had been forced to sign his birthright over to Louis. Now there was no pope on the throne to call a crusade, Raymond had plainly tried to seize his chance. He was getting old, and he might not have another. The news had meant something to Louis, without a doubt. But even more certain was that it boded evil times for the people of Occitania, or I had misread the look on the saintly king’s face. I decided to send a note along with the commission. The Captain rarely spoke of his homeland, but he still sought out the news, although it was never good. This would not cheer him, but he would appreciate it.
Inside the walls, Paris closed in around me. Sometimes in this teeming, vast city I felt as if I were a tiny adventurer on the scalp of a giant, pushing through the dense, stinking forest – and this particular giant was mightily infested with lice, the people who seethed everywhere, in everything. Or perhaps I was just another louse.
My lodgings, though, were not bad at all, for I could afford the best, and as the king’s provider of relics I had a reputation to uphold. So I had taken a set of rooms in the Cité near the palace: not far, in fact, from where Louis was planning to raise his astonishing chapel. I was in with the quality folk, the lords and ladies, and the truth was you could not have told me apart from them.
Petroc of Auneford, the farmer’s son, the outlaw monk and penniless fugitive, was a rich man. I still found it hard to believe sometimes, when something in the air reminded me of Dartmoor and my boyhood, or when hunger grabbed at me and I found that I had money enough in my purse to buy myself whatever I desired. But mostly I found that I was quite comfortable, for I had grown used to this new life. And I had fought for it. In many ways I was no different from the nobles who strutted around me, noses on high, paying no mind to the scuttling masses of the struggling, the ordinary. But I was different, of course. I was Petrus Zennorius, official of the company of the Cormaran, toast of Venetian society. To become this creature I had seen my dearest love die in my arms. I had dragged myself through sewers, and pilfered things that most men would fear to touch lest they be struck dead on the spot by their furious God. And I had killed a man in cold blood, to save my own life but also to make myself who I was now: someone who was known, who garnered respect and even fear. Petroc of Auneford was dead as far as the world knew, for he had not been seen in England since the night, seven years ago, when Captain de Montalhac had found him bleeding on the wharf at Dartmouth and carried him aboard his ship, the Cormaran. In England I was an ogre, for it was believed I had cut open a priest’s throat in the cathedral of the town where I was a novice monk, and drunk his blood upon the altar. The Gurt Dog, they called me, the Devil’s hound, and I could scare a child beneath the blankets as well as any witch or hobgoblin.
I had been innocent then, but I was not innocent now. That is to say, I had been shown the world from every side, and had peered into every dark corner, or so it seemed. It was as if the Captain, in the seven years I had known him, had held up the world and turned it for me in his hand – for like Ptolemy he believed our world is a great ball hanging in the void – and revealed that it was like nothing more than one of the saintly heads I had just sold Louis Capet, full of corruption and sadness. I had not wished to believe him, but the paths I had taken, some of my choosing, others not, had shown me that he had at least touched on the truth. So I was not innocent, as the Captain was not. But I had tried to remain true to myself, to Petroc of Auneford as he had been that night in the city of Balecester, just before he stepped through the cathedral doors.
And the world is still beautiful, I thought now as the swallows swooped below me through the wooden span of the bridge. I was crossing the Seine just as the sun was beginning to sink below the rooftops, and the lovely knife-winged birds had come out to feast upon flies, and dance in the evening air. It would be a fine night, I was thinking as I stepped into the courtyard of the building where I had taken a set of rooms. The doorkeeper stepped out of his alcove and bowed respectfully, holding out a folded note.
‘Gentleman left this for you, sir,’ he said, touching his hand to his forehead. I bid him thanks with a nod and a coin, and climbed the tiled stairs to my rooms. The doorman had alerted the servant, and he was already there, lighting the candles and pouring water into a basin. I gave him my dusty riding cloak and washed my hands and face. I had not asked for food, but here was a tray of country cheese, sweet butter, ham and sour, peppery pickles. A silver ewer held dark Cahors wine, and there was a silver goblet with a gold-washed bowl from which to enjoy it. I dismissed the servant and he bowed deeply as he left. Pouring myself a draught of wine I sank down onto the bed. The smell of clean straw and sun-bleached linen rose up to meet me.
The evening sang through the open windo
w, and I wondered what I would do with it. I had been in Paris for a week, and would be here for another, before starting back to Venice. There was the king’s business to be concluded – all but done really, save for tomorrow’s audience. I had some bank business to do with the Commander of the Paris Temple, and a bishop in need of a relic to justify the new altar he had added to his personal chapel. Then an easy ride south, to Lyons where there were more bankers to meet, and then across the mountains. I would be home before the apples ripened.
Then I remembered the note. No doubt a dinner invitation. I looked around for it, and found it under my breeches on the floor. Tearing off a chunk of ham I broke the plain black seal and carried it over to the window, holding it up to the last beam of rosy light.
Greetings to Petrus Zennorius,
From a friend of the Cormaran.
I carry instructions and words from Sol that must needs be delivered in person. Pray forgive my insistence, but I would meet you with all urgency. Today being Tuesday, I will be at the market of Les Halles by the pump where the andouillette makers wash their tripes, at the fifth hour after noon, or at the same place on Wednesday at Prime if you do not come today.
Fear not. I shall know you.
Painted in Blood Page 2