Painted in Blood

by Pip Vaughan-Hughes

  ‘Oh! Well, yes, it was, it was,’ I said, allowing myself to be charmed. Another of the ladies had thrown a cushion at my feet and sunk down upon it. I glanced over at the two men, who were leaning against the hearth. They gave me an encouraging smile. Earl Richard had laid this on for me, I guessed. How nice of him, and how surprising. No doubt there would be an invitation to luncheon, and there the earl would make his appearance. Meanwhile I decided to enjoy myself. A gilt ewer of malmsey wine had appeared, and dishes of honey cakes. The sunlight beaming through the glass was warm, and the fire purred like a great orange cat curled in the hearth. I knew that these lovely women were not really flirting with me, but I had come to appreciate the courtly arts and my new companions were delightfully expert. I let myself be drawn out, and told them the stock of tales that I kept for such occasions. Some of them were even true.

  They were good tales, and I had a polite audience. The men were even kind enough to interrupt every now and again and make me repeat some of the bloodier details, and I was glad to oblige them. The two of them, I guessed, were too young to have seen a battle; but like all of their kind they had been trained in nothing else but the arts of war since they could stand upright, and so life held no meaning to them beyond fighting, swiving and honour. Hard times for men like this, the slack tide between crusades and wars, and the frustration was part of what I felt when I walked through the palace. It makes barons fight kings or each other, and squires liable to attack anything that moves. The common folk have their football games to shake out the demons in their blood, but the knightly classes, when they are bored, tend to reach for their blades. Pope Urban, so I had been taught many years ago, had preached the first crusade just to keep the noblemen of Christendom from killing each other and anyone else who happened to get in their way. Much better to vent one’s anger against the benighted infidels. But England had been at peace for more than twenty years, and that was downright unhealthy. So while I was glad I had gained the respect of these fellows, I was also wondering if it would be so very hard to send this country to war.

  The dark-haired woman, Lady Blanche, was making a great show of concentration, seeming to pluck my words from the air as if each were a rare gem, and though she was overdoing it I let myself be seduced. She was beautiful, and I was alone in a city that does not favour the lonely. I took a sip of wine and let my eyes dally with hers over the lip of the goblet.

  ‘… and you have come to England because … ?’

  One of the young men, whose name was Rocelin, had let that question hang in the air. He looked innocent enough, leaning to refill my goblet.

  ‘I have matters to discuss with Earl Richard,’ I told him. He was a good enough courtier not to press me, and I turned back to the ladies.

  ‘Surely you have more entertaining things to do here in this great palace than bandy words with a road-stained traveller?’ I asked the dark-haired girl.

  ‘It is so dull here,’ she protested, and the others all agreed with her.

  ‘How long are you in London?’ asked Lady Alicia, prettily plump and blushing from the heat of the fire. ‘Say it is for a while – we feel so abandoned in this old place!’

  I was just assuring them that I indeed meant to stay a while longer – a barefaced lie – when the doorlatch clacked. Lady Blanche glanced over my shoulder and her face changed. The corners of her mouth tightened, and her face seemed to harden, as if an icy wind had caught it. I turned to see who had come in, and saw, in the doorway, a tall woman wearing a plain dress of fine grey linen. Her hair was long and silver grey, with the burnish that can only come from hours of brushing, and it hung like spider-silk around her shoulders. She wore no adornment save for a wedding band on her finger and a thin circlet of pale gold around her temples. She was not young, not even in the mid span of her years, but her face was quite unlined, and hauntingly beautiful. It was very pale and quite long, and her mouth was still a young girl’s curving rosebud. Only her lips, once full and now beginning to wither; and her skin, finely stretched across the bones of her face, betrayed her age. I realised that the room had gone utterly quiet save for the low hissing of a damp log in the hearth. The woman raised a long white hand and at her silent command my companions rose in one movement and padded to the door, heads bowed. None of them gave me so much as a sideways glance. One by one they filed past the old woman until we were alone. I saw Sir Edward’s hand reach out of the shadows for the handle of the door. It swung to, and the two of us were alone in the chamber.

  I stood, not knowing who this personage might be but realising at once that she held a deal of importance, and bowed gravely. She said nothing, but her eyes, hazel-green, fixed themselves on mine. She walked towards me, and her back was so straight and her steps so precise that she seemed to glide. There was a high-backed chair near the window that I had not noticed before. The woman lowered herself into it and settled her long hands on the curved armrests. She gave me no sign, and I dared not move a muscle.

  ‘You are the relic dealer,’ she said at last.

  ‘Yes, madam. I am, indeed, a finder of relics,’ I said carefully. I had no idea who this beautiful but terrifying person might be, but every nerve in my body was telling me not to make even the tiniest mistake in front of her. ‘Certainly not a dealer. Holy Mother Church does not allow …’

  ‘Simony. A mortal sin. You must tread a very fine line, Master Petrus Zennorius.’

  ‘If one serves the Lord, the line one must follow is clear,’ I replied, as piously as I could.

  ‘And you serve the Lord.’ The green eyes blinked coolly. ‘Which lord?’ she demanded, abruptly. A pale oval fingernail tapped sharply on the wood of the chair.

  ‘Our Lord …’

  ‘Of France. Tell me, what is your business here, and why is it with Earl Richard and not the king himself ?’

  ‘Madam, I do not know what you mean. King Louis has concluded his business with my company. My errand to the Earl of Cornwall is a private matter, and just as I do not buy and sell holy relics as if they were turnips, nor do I betray the confidence and privacy of my company’s clientele.’ I was bristling now. Who was this woman? A mad old countess, perhaps, hoping to scare a complimentary relic out of me? I drew myself up to show her I did not care for her tone.

  ‘You are impatient, sir. Are you keen to unburden yourself ? Of something you have found?’ She narrowed her eyes. Then she smiled. The change in her face was startling. ‘Tell me, how did you like your wine?’ she asked.

  ‘It was very good,’ I said, caught off guard.

  ‘Yes. My supplier finds me the best barrels,’ she said. ‘Monsieur de Fouras is a very clever man. He lives near your lodgings, I believe. In Candlewyck Street.’

  The world did an odd dance before my eyes, and the sunlight gleaming through the leaded panes seemed to flicker. I must have been blinking like an owl as I realised that I was talking to the king’s mother. The Queen Mother. This ageless, silvery creature was Isabella of Angoulême.

  ‘I humbly beg forgiveness, Your Majesty,’ I stammered, dropping to one knee, my blood sinking into my boots.

  ‘For what? You have nothing to hide, do you? You are a famous man, Master Petrus Zennorius: a famous relic finder. Doubtless you have come to find something for us. There are things that we should be most sorry to see found by – found for – anyone else.’

  So that was it. Queen Isabella thought I had come to spy for King Louis. That was why she had had my room searched. Well, poor Stevin had found nothing, for there was nothing to find.

  ‘Your Majesty, please believe me when I say that I have nothing but matters of finance to discuss with your noble son. King Louis has been a customer, as, I might add, has His Holiness the pope, among others. I can offer you credentials and references if you wish …’

  ‘Do not trouble yourself.’ She was studying me from under her silvery lashes. ‘You have been useful to our noble cousin Louis. But we are not in France now, sir. To begin your business here you must br
eak your ties with France. It would be such a shame if it were not so, don’t you agree? As an Englishman yourself ? Of course you do.’ She raised her hand, palm down, fingers straight, and rested her chin upon it. ‘My sons are not here today. You may go. But any business you conclude with my sons, either one of them, will reach my eyes and ears. I have no such scruples about confidentiality, and I expect you to bring them no less a prize than you would fetch for Louis Capet. No less a prize. Do you understand me? Now go, and tread your fine line.’

  Without truly remembering how I had arrived there, I found myself back in the corridor, back to a closed door, Sir Edward regarding me as if I were a dead cat he had found on his doorstep. I brushed past him and stamped back down the passageway, kicking through the rushes, heedless of what the man behind me thought of my manners. May God take Westminster and all who reside within and cast it down into the fissures of Hell, I was thinking, and I was still calling down fire and smoke as I reached Lud Gate, for I found myself tangled in a snare I had not anticipated, I seemed to have made an enemy of the Queen Mother though I was no nearer to fulfilling my mission for the company, and ahead stretched another empty night to fill in this city that seemed to have rejected me.

  But when I got back to my lodgings I found that a letter had arrived for me. It bore the Captain’s hand, and the stamps of the company’s offices in Lyons and Paris.

  Petroc,

  I am writing this in haste, although the matters I wish to explain deserve time and care. Alas, I have neither. I earnestly hope that these words reach you before you leave Paris. You will, I expect, have met with Matheus, for he is a swift and doughty traveller. The task he offers you is well within your capabilities, indeed it could have been done by any promising clerk. I wanted you, though, for there might be difficulties and in any event I desire you to learn as much as you can about the English court and about the money marts of London. It is not about this that I am writing, for I have no doubt that you will manage things.

  No, it is to make a confession. From Matheus you will have learned what is going on. As you are no fool, you will also have divined that this matter is personal to me. Please do not be dismayed when I explain how personal!

  Count Raymond has built an alliance that can, without any doubt, tear his lands out of the grasp of the French. Louis Capet’s southern vassals are itching to revolt against him. The Count has been two years at preparing this. Louis is strong, but Toulouse, with his new allies, will beat him. Why do I – why do we care, for as you will have gathered, the company is involved in this? At last I can tell you. The time for which I have waited and prayed has come. I have returned to my home.

  Gilles left before me. He will be at Montségur by now, and perhaps he has found his heart’s desire and taken the Consolamentum. I will join him soon. I am putting my share of the company’s treasury, and that of Gilles, at the disposal of Toulouse. It is a hazard, but I earnestly hope you will see it as a business opportunity, as an investment, if you will, for I do not believe that Toulouse will fail.

  As I wrote those words I thought of you reading them, and trust that you are not discomfited too greatly. My dear Patch, this need not concern you at all. Your share of the business is yours to do with what you will. In the event that I am wrong about what lies ahead, you will not be implicated, for I have taken care that no blame will attach itself to you. I would ask this, though: when you are done in London, make your way to the city of Toulouse and seek me out. If you are quick you will be ahead of the storm. I will explain things more fully and hope that I may set your mind at rest, for if I know you at all, you are brimming over with questions, and my letter not even done.

  There is one more thing, and perhaps this will shock you most of all. I can tell you in one word why I have taken this road, and that word is faith. The faith of my father and mother, my brother and sisters, my uncles, my friends and my land. That it should come to this: I rejoice that I have lived long enough to see the great wrong done to my people avenged, and to play my part. I cannot ask for your understanding, but if I must have your forgiveness, I earnestly beg you for that.

  Until we meet in Toulouse,

  Michel de Montalhac, ex Cormaranus

  I read the Captain’s words again, and then again, and forgot all about the palace until the bells of London began to tell the tenth hour of the morning. I studied the curling sheet of vellum, black with its dense burden of ink, and at first I wondered if the Captain had written it at all. It did not sound like him. It sounded like a much younger man, a Christian, if that were possible, all wide-eyed and pious. A fool. Dear God. After I had admitted that to myself I threw myself on the letter and read it again, scanning each curlicue and flourish, each dot. I divined it, I dowsed it for any clue at all, for it made no sense to me.

  The Captain’s affection for his homeland was no surprise, for he and Gilles had often told me little things about it. The lands of Toulouse, in their telling, were a paradise of waving corn and vines heavy with grapes that burst in the mouth already transformed into the finest wine. The roads were full of poets, and even the thrushes sang brave songs of love from the olive trees. But that was all past. That world had ended, and at its ending had sent men like Gilles and the Captain spinning into chaos and the unknowable future, like the embers that fly up when a burning house falls in upon itself. There had never been any going back for them save as something wished for but impossible, as the Jews long for Jerusalem in their Sabbath prayers. Exile had held us all together, and even when the Cormaran’s crew had dissolved, Gilles, the Captain and I had remained, for our home was where we were. And now this.

  The Captain had been right. It was the word faith that shocked me most of all. I had never heard it on his lips save to explain the reason why some new fool had been gulled into buying a preposterous and vastly expensive relic. No, that was not true: he had spoken of his Cathar faith to me twice: the first time in Greenland, in Gardar, that cursed town dying of the cold that rose over the edge of the world; and the second time in the pope’s own palace. That was all. He freely admitted neither he nor Gilles were diligent in their practice, and Gilles had certainly not been, for he swore with relish and had a twinkle in his eye that I would not have expected to find on the face of a Cathar perfect. Jesus. I stood up and paced about the room, cursing bitterly. All this slack-jawed nonsense about faith. Gilles taking the Consolamentum? Impossible and grotesque! I paused and tried to calm myself by looking out of the window. Below me in Knight Rider Street a trio of prostitutes walked arm in arm, doing their best to look respectable. A black pig, very hairy and with one broken tusk, rooted about in the muck of the kennel that ran down the middle of the street. The whores brushed past a young cleric – he could have been me seven years ago, in his Benedictine habit and his raw, newly scraped tonsure – and he turned his face pointedly to the wall. There’s faith, I thought. You sniff in disgust at the tarts that you long to swive, but doubtless you are off on an errand from some priestly master who has each hand up a different apron every night except Sunday. Much good it will do you, my son. Much good it did me.

  ‘Follow them back to Gropecunt Lane,’ I called, but no one heard me save the pig, who eyed me contemptuously and went back to rootling for turds. The whores swayed out of sight, no doubt on their way back to the brothels of Fleet Street beyond the wall. A tinner came by with his barrow, and a rag picker and his son. A gang of children chased a hoop, angering the pig, who scolded them with a shriek. Then an old woman came in sight, leaning on a staff, white curls spilling out from a badly tied coif. The children came back with their hoop, and she leaned back against the wall of a house to give them room. When they had passed she gazed after them, and I thought I could see a smile. Then she looked down. At her feet lay something round: a turnip, perhaps, or a beet. She prodded it with her staff. The pig stopped rooting and stared at the thing. With a surprisingly energetic kick the old woman sent the turnip spinning at the beast. It splashed into the filth of the kennel and
ran up against its front trotters. The hog gave a squeal of joy and fell upon the turnip, nosing it out of the gutter and onto the flagstones, and out of my sight. The old woman looked after it for a moment, then lifted her head. Over the distance our eyes met and she smiled at me. Then she leaned on her staff and shuffled away. I stared at the place where she had stood long after she had gone, remembering her smile. She had not been addled, or any of those slanders the young heap upon grey heads. But she was no longer bound by the desires that made the children chase, the whores shake their arses and the young monk quiver, I realised. She was not really walking down the same Knight Rider Street that they had been. And then I saw the truth. The Captain was not a fool. No, he had opened his eyes and taken a step outside the world. He had simply grown old.

  Chapter Six

  It took me until luncheon, which I snatched from an eel-seller near Queen Hithe Wharf, to work out what I should do next. I ate, and watched the gulls hopping up and down the steps where Anna and I had come ashore years ago. The Captain had told me not to worry, but it seemed all too clear that a great deal depended on getting King Henry to fight. I had read the letter a last time and saw that the Captain had not taken leave of his senses, as I had feared, but was instead setting out on another adventure. Only this time, the goal was not to find some arcane thing, some hidden remnant of the past with which to trick a prince or a cardinal. My master was off to win back his lost life. Spitting out an inch of eel-spine for the gulls to fight over, I decided that was a good thing after all. Did I want anything more, when all was said and done, than to lie back on the rough grass of Dartmoor and watch the larks rise and fall above me, and be sure that no hunting party was out seeking the Gurt Dog of Balecester? I did not. Well then, I needed to find Richard of Cornwall, and there was someone in this city who might be induced to help me.

  I would not find Letice Londeneyse by that name. She had returned to the city of her birth with a fortune, for the Captain had been as good as his word and given her a partner’s share of the Pharos Chapel commission. She had arrived in London as the Lady Agnes, just returned from the Holy Land. Her husband, a knight from Essex, had won a trading concession from one of the ports there – I had heard these details from the Captain, and had feigned an indifference I did not, in my heart, really feel – and the couple had been returning with a company of ships laden with the wonders of Outremer when her poor husband had caught sick and died. Being his sole heir, she had put in at Venice and sold the lot, and with the proceeds had come back to London and bought herself a warehouse and the controlling interest in several trading ships. Thus she had managed to conjure a thriving business from thin air. Her cruel master, Nicholas Querini, had amused himself by letting his whore, for so Letice had been, advise him on his many schemes to turn gold into power, and vice versa; and so Letice had turned misery into profit, for during those years she had kept her eyes and ears open, and many of her former master’s trading allies were stored up in her prodigious memory. In no more than a brace of years she had set up a web of trade that stretched from Hamburg to Constantinople. It was modest – for if I knew Letice, she would not wish to draw attention to herself, and she knew better than to take too much money away from powerful men, lest they turn around and crush the upstart woman out of spiteful pride. She even did business with the company of the Cormaran, for we were happy to serve as bankers to the Lady Agnes. I say we, but I did not interest myself in her affairs. I saw the letters come and go, and the entries in our ledgers, but that was all. It would have been easy to send a letter of my own, but I was angry and proud, and as I always told myself, I was much too busy with my own magnificent life.