Painted in Blood

by Pip Vaughan-Hughes

  ‘Here, Señor Petrus: the butifarra of Carcassonne.’ He closed my hand around the package, then looked me straight in the eyes. ‘It is unmannerly to take back a gift once given, but I should love to try one of these, for I am homesick for the south,’ he said, and an eyebrow twitched fractionally. ‘There is a man over by Saint Eustachius’ church who will grill a couple for us. Shall we go?’ And without waiting for my reply he plunged back into the throng, even thicker now that the morning was growing older. I glanced down at the sausages in my hand: I could already smell the wine and garlic in them, and my stomach gave a cautious rumble. Breakfast, at least. Then I noted something white among the brown leaves. It looked like a little roll of parchment. I looked up again. The buyer of sausages was waiting for me, peering around a pair of portly Franciscans who were buying duck eggs. I started after him.

  There was a line of braziers glowing under the wall of the church, where sooty men were cooking up food for the folk who were too hungry to get their purchases home. My grey friend walked up to the first cook who hailed him.

  ‘Here,’ he said over his shoulder to me. ‘Let us have two each. Be careful with the package – look how well they are wrapped.’

  I loosened the twine and pulled out a sausage, palming the tube of parchment as I did so. The sausages were tied together, and the cook leaned over with his knife and cut four away from the chain. He threw them on his griddle and at once a pungent, spicy smoke rose up. Pretending to wipe my eyes, I unrolled the parchment, and hiding it in the shadow of my sleeve, scanned it quickly.

  Patch,

  Trust the bearer of this. On the subject of religion, he is as good a Christian as any in the lands of Mother Church. He has words for you. Once you have heard them, you are free to decide. Know, my friend, that I would not ask this of any other man. It can be done by another, but not well, I think.

  De M, ex Cormaranus

  I let the message roll itself back into a tube, and slipped it through the bars of the grill. It flared briefly and shrivelled into a black twig. The cook did not notice, but my companion did, and gave the smallest of nods. Another funeral procession was coming down the Rue Montorgueil, and I pretended to watch it as I pondered what I had just read.

  ‘As good a Christian.’ That was clear: the bearer of the message was a Cathar, for that was what they called themselves – Good Christians. But why the secrecy? We were distressingly legitimate businessmen these days. And who was this strange, faded man? Someone the Captain trusted, plainly, but I had never seen him before, and I had been close to the centre of the company’s business these past three years. Not from Venice, not from Florence, nor Bruges, nor … well, he was from the south, from the Languedoc, for he had told me so himself. I looked up, to where the kites were wheeling in the blue sky. Could this be some return to the work we used to do, with its deceptions and secrecy? But we had no need for that any more. What if, though … I had found, lately, that I missed those days, for there had been a kind of desperate joy to them, a thieves’ comradeship. That was why I recognised the look the tripe washer had given me: I had been inside the secret, guarded world of our company and our trade, and now I could not help feeling that I was just another rich passer-by come to amuse himself among lives he would never have to live.

  The cook had speared our sausages and was holding them out to us on buckled plates of rough bread. I took mine, lifted it to my mouth without thinking and singed my lips. The Good Christian had paid the cook and was watching me solemnly.

  ‘Shall we mourn?’ he said, inclining his head towards the funeral, still struggling with its coffin through the crowds of shoppers. And without waiting for a reply he strolled off, nibbling at the edge of his bread. The coffin – plain quarter-sawn oak, but nicely done, so its occupant had, I guessed, been a burgher of the middling rank – bobbed and swayed down the aisles of the market, brushing against hanging meat and herbs. Every now and again a stallholder swore at the pallbearers, but others crossed themselves or spat noisily. At last we had followed it beyond the market’s roof and were kicking through the debris of vegetable trimmings, feathers and all the other leavings of the day’s business towards the gate of the Cemetery of the Innocents. I thought my companion would turn aside, but to my dismay he passed inside. With a muttered curse I did the same.

  The cemetery was a wide square of churned earth and patchy grass mounded everywhere with the humped pillows of graves. My earlier guess had been right: a band of sextons were digging in the raddled soil, pitching up bones with their shovels. The odour of earthworms and decaying mushrooms was cloyingly heavy in the air. Around the burial ground towered high walls which were roofed to form cloisters, and there in the shadows were piled the bones of countless Parisians. A sexton was taking more from the jumble in his barrow and arranging them with scant care, pausing now and then to knock the earth from a leg-bone, or from the eye-sockets of a skull. In a far corner, a pitiful little funeral party was standing around an open grave, a small shape wrapped in sacking lying at their feet.

  ‘Over here,’ said the grey man. ‘The bones are oldest. They do not stink.’ I let him lead me into the far corner of the cemetery. He was right, after a fashion: the smell was not so bad here, nothing worse than a dry mineral breath that spoke, nonetheless, quite eloquently of the despair and finality of death. Ignoring the serried ranks of dismembered skeletons behind us, he leaned against a pillar and took a careful bite of a sausage.

  ‘Delicious – really,’ he said, eyes closed with pleasure.

  ‘I’m not all that hungry, somehow,’ I told him. The stench of the place, and all the bared teeth around me, had somewhat taken my appetite away.

  ‘Dear man: what better place to eat a blood pudding?’ he answered with a shy grin. There was something of the Captain in that, and I knew I had been right to trust him, as the Captain had told me I should. ‘Go on, señor: tasting the simplest pleasure in a charnel house – is that not like life?’

  Reluctantly I bit into one of my sausages. A rich spurt of warm liquid filled my mouth, salty and hot. I chewed, watching the funeral party lower their burden to the ground. A priest began to shake holy water into the grave, and a professional mourner began to wail out a psalm in a cracked old voice.

  ‘Delicious,’ I agreed, grimly. ‘Shall we talk, then?’

  ‘Certainly.’ He chased a cube of white fat from his moustache with the tip of his tongue. ‘You may call me Matheus. I have come from Michel de Montalhac in Toulouse. We travelled together from Florence. That is where I live – you might know that there are many of us in Italy, Good Christians, that is. I am from Michel’s own country, though, and we were comrades in arms once, a very long time ago. But never mind that. Michel has a task that he wonders whether you would care to undertake for him. It is somewhat …’ He licked a finger. ‘… weighty.’

  ‘I would welcome something like that,’ I said, finding, as I said the words, that I meant them with all my heart.

  ‘Michel was sure that you would. And that you would like to go home.’

  ‘Home?’ I blinked at him. Out in the burying ground, the coffin was sinking into the earth.

  ‘England. I can see he was right. Well then. Listen carefully.’ He stepped closer to me and leaned on the pillar. ‘Michel de Montalhac is … perhaps you will be surprised, but he is still joined, in many ways, to our land. I will call that land Toulouse, for that is what it is today, I am afraid. The Good Christians are being scattered, those who are not burned by the black-cloaks, and many have gone to seek shelter with their brothers and sisters in Italy, for is it not amusing that in the pope’s own garden, if you will, his challengers find greater safety than they do in Toulouse? Michel has become, since he settled down, something of a leader for those scattered souls, myself included, and through his business he keeps news flowing to us, and money, and a little hope along with that.’

  ‘Settled down?’ I said, with a laugh. ‘Well, I suppose he has.’

  ‘Ah. Perhaps n
ot, after all. Do you know anything of Count Raymond of Toulouse?’

  ‘I know a fair amount, thanks to the gossip and complaints I have been listening to at court in Vincennes.’

  ‘Complaints?’

  ‘A thorn in the flesh, is how he is usually described.’

  ‘Hmm. Well, here is Michel’s message to you.’ He took another bite of his sausage, chewed for a moment, eyes closed. Then he drew himself up and stepped into the shadows of the cloister, beckoning me with a flutter of his hand. The bones were indeed ancient here, dry and white, and stacked to the roof with some care, so that skulls and pelvises formed a kind of crude pattern facing outward, keeping watch on the burying-ground. I noticed that the floor was thick with dust and the leavings of pigeons and bats, and that ours were the only human footprints. There had been a doorway in the wall once, long ago. I could still see its outline in the stained, mossy stones. But the bones had been stacked when the door still functioned and had been piled into knobbed pillars formed of skulls, jaws, scapulas, that jutted out into the cloister like the gateway to some minor Hades, and between them there was a little space, a thumbprint of shadow upon the implacable white of the bone-wall. Matheus stepped into it and all but vanished. My flesh crawling, I followed him. The shadows swallowed us, cool and sharply dry. There was no odour of death here. The smell was of nothingness.

  ‘There is a war coming,’ said Matheus. ‘The people of Languedoc have waited long enough, and now they will rise up and drive off the French wolves for good. Count Raymond has made a secret treaty with the English king, with the King of Aragon, the King of Castile and of Navarre. He has the word of the Emperor Frederick himself. There is no pope in Rome. The time is upon us.’ He paused, and picked something from between his front teeth with a thumbnail. ‘Treason – are you thinking that?’

  I shook my head. ‘No. I am no Frenchman. Are you?’

  ‘Oho, no, my friend.’

  ‘My loyalty is to Captain de Montalhac,’ I said. ‘But as I am taking luncheon with the King of France in a short while, you might explain the Captain’s part in this.’ He was silent, and studied me with eyes that were no more than smears of shadow. The shadows in a score of empty sockets joined in this bland scrutiny, until I bowed my head in reluctant surrender.

  ‘Good Matheus, I mean that seeing as I am dining with the king this very noontime, it might be useful for me to know the manner in which I am to undermine his authority.’ I tested him with the hint of a smile, and got one in return. ‘But how …’ I would have unleashed a juicy oath here, but bit it off short, for one of the many peculiarities dear to the Good Christians was that they did not swear, and there was little point in doing so in front of them unless you wished to receive a mild, faintly pitying look in reply. ‘But how is Captain de Montalhac involved in this? He is – we are – bankers now.’

  ‘Who else pays for wars?’ shrugged Matheus. He leaned back against the wall of bones, and they creaked faintly, the susurrus of the dead that the living try not to hear, although the dead have much to teach us if we would but listen.

  Chapter Four

  As soon as the gates of Paris were behind me I kicked the mare into a gallop. At first the lurch and shock of her motion made my head ache and my stomach roil, but she was a good horse with a smooth gait, and soon I was enjoying myself, kicking up dust and speeding past the cursing foot traffic. I could not afford to be late for King Louis, and I needed to clear my head after my morning’s work. For I had agreed to do what Matheus had asked. It was nothing so very complicated, and the Captain had known, of course, how I would jump at a chance to relieve the boredom of my present employment. And known, somehow, that I had been suffering from a thirst to see my homeland again, for I was a foreigner everywhere, and while I had learned to be at home wherever I found myself, that is an exile’s skill, and I was growing weary of exile.

  Nothing complicated about my task: it would be simple, in fact. I was to deposit the gold that Louis had paid for the heads of the three saints with our agents in Paris, deduct our commission – Matheus was most clear on that – draw up letters of credit for the balance, and ride with all speed to the coast. I was to take ship for London, hasten to court and sign over the letters of credit to Richard, Earl of Cornwall and the King of England’s brother. Matheus had given me a sealed letter from the Captain to the earl which would explain matters for me. After that I was to make my way back to Venice at my leisure and take over the offices of the Cormaran there. So much for the what. As to the why, Matheus had leaned out into the cloister and casually glanced up and down to make sure we were quite alone before he told me.

  Count Raymond of Toulouse had, as King Louis guessed, been promised the support of England. Even better, Henry Plantagenet had an excuse for war, for his brother Richard was not only Earl of Cornwall but also Count of Poitou, that lush, sunny land that stretches down the coast of France from Brittany to Bordeaux, and there the trouble lay. For last year Louis of France had decided that he was the overlord of Poitou, and to that end had dismissed Richard’s claim and made his brother Alphonse count in his stead. Richard must surely be upset, went the gossip at court, but it was his mother, Isabella, who felt the insult most keenly and had pushed her sons into winning back the county. The whole world knew Isabella for a proud and vengeful schemer. She had survived her marriage to King John Lackland, after all, and kept her little son Henry on a shaky throne until he came of age. Now her husband Count Hughues de Lusignan was itching to rebel against Louis, and no doubt Isabella had made the itch unbearable. Hughues and Raymond had made a treaty, and the Count of Toulouse was now looking forward to the landing of a great English army on Louis’ western flank.

  But things were not proceeding quite as the anxious Raymond had planned, and it was because of this that I had reluctantly been eating blood sausage with a stranger in a Paris charnel house. For though King Henry of England, not the most resolute of monarchs at the best of times, was to everyone’s surprise ready for war, his brother was not. From the intelligence gathered by the Captain, it seemed that Richard did not see things quite so starkly as his mercurial dam. Richard, it seemed, was not convinced that the prize was worth the cost of another war and the displeasure of the English barons. More intelligent than his pious brother, he was also more cautious, and his skills at diplomacy, not with the sword, had made him a hero in the recent crusade to Jerusalem. But meanwhile the English army was in place and could be aboard their transports within a week, if the earl would make up his mind. Some well-placed gold would surely do the trick, the Captain felt, for Richard, despite his caution, was as avaricious as any king.

  Simple. I had my excuse to visit London, for Earl Richard was a sometime customer of the company, and he had bought a number of items from us over the years – nothing very grand, but connoisseurs’ things, always expensive, always with good provenance. ‘He competes with his brother,’ I had heard the Captain say once, ‘but Henry is the pious one. Richard likes to collect things that will impress his dinner guests, and that means he is the more difficult customer, for he does not revere his relics, but enjoys them. We cannot sell him trash – his brother, mind you, would buy the pizzle of an ass if it were styled membrum virile Sanctus Christophorus – so we offer the good stuff, and he is happy to pay.’ Which meant that Richard would be pleased to receive me. As for my mission, I was to call my present a token of earnest intent and of steadfast alliance, or some such flowery nonsense, from his cousin Raymond. Dear God, all these cousins who rule over us.

  Dusty and breathless, but punctual, I arrived at the palace of Vincennes a little before noon. The young courtier who had brought yesterday’s unwelcome news was waiting to escort me to the king’s chambers. He was as stiff-necked as he had been yesterday, but he greeted me with effusive politesse – indeed with all the careful enthusiasm of a schoolboy showing off a skill recently learned – and I allowed myself to be charmed, a little, by his youth and zeal.

  ‘His Majesty is expecti
ng you, Monsieur Petrus,’ he said with a perfectly executed bow.

  ‘And are you to accompany me?’ I asked, forcing back a smile.

  ‘With your permission,’ he said.

  ‘My dear sir, I am at a disadvantage …’ I told him, as we set off.

  ‘Jean de Joinville, at your humble service,’ he said, turning and favouring me with a tooth-white smile.

  ‘I have not had the pleasure of seeing you before,’ I said.

  ‘No, indeed! I am lately come from the court of Champagne,’ he said. ‘I was with the king just lately at Poitiers, where he was treating with the Comte de la Marche.’

  ‘Hughues de Lusignan?’ I asked, surprised.

  ‘The very same. There was some matter between him and the Count of Poitiers that needed to be put right, and King Louis brought his wisdom to heal things. But there are some upon whom kindness is thrown away.’

  ‘The people of France are blessed to have such a wise and just king,’ I said, agreeably. ‘And you are newly at court?’

  ‘Yes, but for a little while only, to my regret. I am Seneschal of Champagne, and ought, by rights, to be back in Troyes, but my lord the Count graciously allowed me to accompany His Majesty back to Paris for a few weeks, and I am so happy – nay, overwhelmed, if you will allow me – to have been providing my king with some meagre service.’

  I knew the ways of courtiers, and this Jean would no doubt rattle on in this obsequious vein for hours if I let him. I decided, for the sake of my ears, not to do so.

  ‘Such trying news from the Languedoc,’ I put in.

  ‘The swine,’ he spat, turning to me again. There was the taut anger of yesterday. His lips were tight amongst the fledgling curls of his beard. ‘The south is rotten with heretics and Jews … like … like …’ he stopped, blinking. Evidently his schooling in bows and posturing had been flawless, but in metaphorical discourse, not as thorough.