Painted in Blood

by Pip Vaughan-Hughes

  Chapter Ten

  That night I sat within speaking distance of Earl Richard, who in turn had the king at his right hand. Between Richard and I sat a young knight who proved to be Guy de Lusignan, son of the Count of Poitou, and next to him another older nobleman who spent the night complaining about his teeth. The place next to me was empty, but not for long. A strong hand landed upon my shoulder and steadied its owner as he climbed over the bench and settled next to me, apologising as he did so in a deep and steely voice.

  ‘Think nothing of it,’ I began to say, turning to greet my new neighbour. But the words lodged in my throat as I saw a thick crop of almost white hair cut close like a helmet spilling out from under the purple biretta of a bishop, a pair of close-set eyes the colour of the sea in February, a peregrine’s beak of a nose and a tight, sickle mouth.

  ‘Who are you?’ he said, a trifle shortly, when he found he did not know his dinner companion.

  ‘Petrus Zennorius, sir, of Venice,’ I uttered through a windpipe that could not have been more frozen if it had been packed with snow. ‘I am delighted to make your acquaintance, sir, although you have the advantage of me …’

  ‘Ranulph,’ said the man, as I knew he would. I bowed my head, reached out my hand and kissed the cold amethyst of the Bishop of Balecester’s ring.

  ‘Zennorius … Zennorius?’ said the bishop, a slight frown upon his brow. ‘Devon?’

  ‘Cornwall, my lord,’ I said hurriedly.

  ‘The name is familiar. Might I ask as to your presence here?’

  ‘He came with me, Ranulph,’ Earl Richard called down the table. ‘I put him next to you on purpose, dear man. You will see why.’

  ‘Will I?’ The bishop turned to me, eyebrows raised sceptically. I found it hard not to cringe from his eyes, but instead I inclined my head modestly.

  ‘If my memory serves me right, my company assisted with the translation of a most holy relic to your cathedral, my lord.’

  ‘Oh, by God’s throne! You are of the … what was it called? The company of Jean de Sol!’ He struck the table and the platters hopped obediently.

  The company you sent your bastard son to destroy, I agreed in the silent place behind my eyes. The company you plotted to usurp, using a young nobody as bait after turning him into a monster in the eyes of the whole country. Yes indeed, my lord bishop.

  ‘The translation of Saint Exuperius of blessed memory was a little before my time,’ I said out loud. ‘But I understand that he has blessed your cathedral and your city.’

  ‘Indeed he has, indeed he has,’ nodded the bishop, greed turning his face even more into the likeness of a baited hawk. I winced, and pretended to chase a thread of meat about my mouth with my thickened tongue.

  ‘For I believe there were some unpleasant circumstances attendant to that translation,’ I said at last. ‘Appalling sacrilege of some kind – a murder in the cathedral?’

  ‘You are well acquainted with our city,’ said the bishop. He accepted a goblet of wine, never taking his eyes off me. Could he possibly know me? It seemed impossible. He had met me once, long ago in a candlelit room, and I was not the innocent young fellow I had been then. Life had put its marks on me, and there was not much innocence left.

  ‘I studied at Oxford under Magister Jens, who had just come from the cathedral school in Balecester,’ I said. ‘And who has not heard of the Gurt Dog?’ I shrugged. ‘For myself, I give no credence to tavern hysterics,’ I went on, taking a moment’s refuge behind my own goblet. ‘It gets in the way of business.’

  ‘Ah. Business,’ said the bishop. ‘Your master …’

  ‘I am a partner in the company, my lord,’ I said, as firmly as I dared. His brow furrowed momentarily, and his eyes focused yet more closely upon me.

  ‘Well, well. And what brings you to court?’

  ‘Business, naturally,’ I said with a smile. ‘Very minor business, but it appears I have garnered some unlooked-for but most welcome favour. I am to ride against the French with Earl Richard.’

  The grey eyebrows went up even further, fluttering like martens under the eaves of the bishop’s biretta.

  ‘Then we will ride together, my son,’ he said. ‘How very interesting.’

  ‘You are going to the wars, my lord?’ I asked in disbelief.

  ‘Of course. One may serve the Lord with the mace as well as with the crosier,’ he said, contentedly. ‘Now, as my lord Richard has brought you to us, there are one or two matters that you might be able to advise me upon …’

  The bishop had lost none of his avarice, it seemed. He probed me for the next hour, trying to tease out as much as he could about Jean de Sol and the Cormaran. I treated him as I would any powerful customer: with friendly respect and extreme caution. Words that the Captain had spoken to me a thousand times – ‘Patch, pay attention!’ – sounded in my head like an orison. But how often does a man confront a demon from his nightmares made flesh, and discover that he is no worse than a score of other men of his acquaintance? For compared to Nicholas Querini, or the departed pope Gregory, or even to his own bastard son Hugh de Kervezey, I found Bishop Ranulph to be a lesser species of monster. He was older – as old as the Captain, perhaps – and some of the terrifying will and ambition that had cowed me when I had met him on the night of the killing had been sloughed away by the years, but not all. Not by any means: I could never let down my guard with this man. For he still wanted something, needed something – and it must have been this need, that maybe had no real goal but was simply a terrible, animal hunger, that had brought him the power he now grasped – and I knew, before the next filling of our goblets, that the lodestone of his need had settled itself upon me.

  That was not a comfortable thought to take to my bed, which I made close beside the companionable huddle of deerhounds. I had gathered, from our conversation, that Bishop Ranulph was high in the king’s favour and expected a cardinalship when the next pope was elected. He had brought with him a large company of knights and soldiers from the countryside around Balecester and a large sum of silver to place in the king’s money chest, for I had learned from the man sitting to my left, a French knight called Pierre de Moings, that Henry was bringing coin as well as soldiers to the Poitevin cause. That was what had upset the barons, and why Westminster had been so angry. I guessed that the gold I had brought to Earl Richard would not be going into Henry’s chest. Well, that was no concern of mine.

  A hound snuffled me gently and settled his long back against my stomach. Try as I might, I could not drive the bishop’s words from my mind. I had been so careful to guard my own tongue that I had not paid the closest attention to what he had said, for there had been much of it, but now that I tried to sleep, something kept troubling me. Balecester had let slip that his great friend at court was a man likely to become the most powerful baron in the kingdom – short of Earl Richard, to be sure – he was the Earl of Leicester, and his name was Simon de Montfort.

  It is comforting sleeping with dogs if they are well-behaved, and I was not too stiff when I awoke the next morning. The Earl of Leicester was still on my mind, and so I went in search of Letice. I had first heard of him from her friend John Curtesmains, after all. It was a little embarrassing, but the affairs of England had not been uppermost in my mind for the last few years. I had been shuttling back and forth between Paris, Venice and Constantinople, and the politics I had concerned myself with had been, perforce, those of the lands I passed through and dealt with. The pope – and latterly the lack of one – along with Frederick the Holy Roman Emperor and Louis of France had been my focus. What happened on the edges of this world, in England, the kingdoms of Spain and the principalities of Germany, was a blur that I only paid attention to if and when there was something to be concerned about, and that was rare. Letice was in the great hall, and with some difficulty I drew her away from a party of noblewomen with whom she was gossiping, loudly.

  ‘The Earl of Leicester? De Montfort – you mean you haven’t heard of him?’


  ‘He is the son of the Crusader, though?’

  ‘The famous father. Yes, that’s him. He is the prodigy of the kingdom. The king’s brother-in-law, no less.’

  ‘Sir John said that Earl Richard hates him – I remember now. Why?’

  ‘Simon is even more ambitious than he is.’ She shrugged. I understood completely.

  ‘But he is more favoured by the king than Richard?’

  ‘Ah! No, there was a mighty falling-out between Henry and Simon a few years ago.’ She lowered her voice to a fluttering whisper. ‘Henry is … some call him a simpleton, some a child. He is not soft in the head, really, but he does take a child’s view of things. Simon owed a lot of money to the Count of Savoy, and apparently – only apparently, mind you – named Henry as security. When our king heard, he went off his head and all sorts of things came out. He even accused Simon of tricking him into giving away his sister’s hand. Anyway, Simon took off to France until Henry calmed down, and then went away on crusade with Richard. He’s back in France now, and in the meantime Henry’s forgotten all about it and is praising Simon up to the heavens. Bloody ridiculous if you ask me.’

  ‘Have you met him?’

  ‘De Montfort? No, he was gone when I got back to London. But he’s waiting for us across the Channel, so we’ll both make his acquaintance, no doubt.’

  ‘His father … you know it was de Montfort the elder who killed the Captain’s family?’

  ‘No.’ Letice shook her head. ‘I did not. I thought Michel was from Toulouse?’

  ‘From Montalhac. A little town and a castle where he was born. His father was a vassal of Toulouse, and a Cathar. Simon de Montfort – this one’s father – destroyed Montalhac along with everything else down there.’

  ‘And Michel’s parents?’

  ‘Something horrible. He almost told me once.’

  ‘Dear Lord. So what became of Simon the elder?’

  ‘He had his head knocked in by a woman at the siege of Toulouse,’ I said. It was my turn to shrug. ‘Or that is his legend. A stone from a mangonel worked by ladies on the city walls.’

  ‘There’s justice for you.’

  ‘A bit late for justice, my sanguine Lady Agnes. Now, am I not keeping you from your fun?’

  ‘Oh.’ She sighed. ‘Fucking hell. I am the only widow here, and so every last one of them has sworn to find me a husband.’ She was smiling, though. ‘I will be wedded and bedded even before the French have surrendered. I’ve been assured of that.’

  ‘So many eligible men, and who more so than the Earl of Cornwall’s new friend from Venice?’ It was a joke, and she gave me a sisterly shrug, the kind I had learned to accept with good grace. I left her to it, and went back to where I had left my bags. A young man, freckle-faced and with a mop of flaming ginger hair – a page by the looks of him – was standing over the place where I slept, and he seemed to be fiddling with my gear, but when I came up to him I saw that he was fussing one of the dogs who still lay there. I gave him a warning look nonetheless and he excused himself. The dog looked sad to have been abandoned, so I squatted down and rubbed his soft ears, and made plans to avoid my lord the Bishop of Balecester if I possibly could.

  But the good bishop found me soon enough. I had decided to go out and exercise in the field in front of Kings Hall, where butts for archers and lists for mock-jousts had been set up. I was swinging my sword, trying to loosen my shoulders, when I saw a tall, white-haired figure striding towards me across the grass. He was bareheaded, and walked like a much younger man. I had a sudden and horrible sensation of dread, as when one is feeling inside a bird’s nest for eggs, and one’s fingers find, not the smooth, warm oval they expect, but spiky bones or crawling maggots. For Bishop Ranulph walked like his son, the same stalking self-control, head up, spine taut with arrogant defiance. A strange gait for a bishop. But then the prelate in question was holding a long, stout, steel-crowned mace. He pointed it at me like a sceptre.

  ‘Zennorius! Let me see your blade.’

  Astonished, I handed it to him without a murmur. He inspected it critically – it was an excellent sword of German make, with a watered blade that tapered sharply and balanced back towards the hilt, and I had learned to fence with it and a dagger or little buckler shield in my left hand – and handed it back to me.

  ‘New-fangled. Are you a new-fangled sort of fellow, Zennorius?’

  ‘When it suits my purpose, my lord. I believe that one should use every gift that God provides, the better to thrive and thus praise Him,’ I answered, tersely.

  ‘Amen, amen,’ muttered the bishop, impatiently. ‘Well, let’s see you use it.’ He whistled to a squire who was leaning against a tree exploring the caverns of his nose with a busy finger, and commanded him to fetch a training shield. Then he stood, leaning a little upon his mace, while I made the poor wretch skip and gasp, feeling, as I knew the lad must also, like a performing ape dancing for the amusement of the hawk-faced priest. He grew tired quite soon, the squire, for I had been schooled over the years by many teachers, some subtle and some vicious but all of them deadly. When I feared that he would drop his guard and cause me to lop off his arm by accident I let him go, and sheathed my sword.

  ‘Have you killed?’ It was a bald question, incurious, purposeful. I wiped the sweat from my forehead and bowed my head modestly.

  ‘As I said, I believe one should use the Lord’s gifts …’

  ‘To suit your purpose. Amen again. Let us walk.’

  I could have refused. I could have told him that I had indeed killed, and that one of my first victims was his own son. And while I was about it, I could let slip that his pride and joy, the blessed carrion he knew as Saint Exuperius of the Theban Legion, was that very son, hung and smoked like a ham until he looked a thousand years dead. I could have told him all of that and more, but instead I suffered him to take me by the arm and lead me in the direction of a line of clipped yew trees.

  ‘You are the Constantinople expert, I hear,’ he said, when we were away from the men who still went at each other grinning with swords and sticks, and the ladies who watched them, blushing and fanning themselves with their hands.

  ‘If you heard it from Earl Richard, I can hardly quibble,’ I replied.

  ‘Well, then. You have heard the rumours, my son. I am curious to know if they are true.’

  ‘Rumours?’ I said, properly surprised.

  ‘The burial cloth of Our Lord,’ he hissed, suddenly, and his hand on my arm became a hawk’s claw for a second, grasping, implacable. Then he let go. ‘Was it found in Constantinople?’ he said. I flicked my eyes towards the mace, but it hung loose in his other hand. ‘Is it real?’

  ‘The King of France has received everything that lay in the Chapel of Pharos,’ I said levelly. ‘That included diverse burial cloths and what was termed, in the Inventarium, the shroud of our Lord Jesus Christ. That is hardly rumour, my lord. It has been trumpeted the length of France and many miles beyond, at that.’

  Bishop Ranulph cocked his head at me. His hard mouth puckered up beneath his beak of a nose until I beheld a great, white-haired buzzard, ready to rip, to tear.

  ‘Not those,’ he uttered, as if his throat were strangling the words as they escaped. ‘The Mandylion.’

  I fought to keep my face impassive, using an old trick of tightening my calf muscles until they hurt. I managed a very slightly condescending smile that was the very opposite, as the moon is to the sun, of what my face sought to make of its own volition. I was wondering, as I did so, if he had not sent someone, an equerry for instance, to search through my bags.

  ‘That is not a rumour,’ I said lightly. ‘But it is perhaps a myth. You are talking of the miraculous image seen by many Crusaders in the church at Blachernae? Raised up with poles until the congregation beheld the very image of the standing Christ? From a purely professional standpoint, my lord, I wish as you clearly do that the so-called Mandylion existed. In fact I do not doubt that something of the sort did once dwe
ll in Constantinople, for that place was once a storehouse of miracle the like of which our minds can hardly imagine. But like almost everything else it was burned or looted, or destroyed in ignorance or carelessness by the common soldiery. I searched, I assure you.’ I paused, and scratched my chin, earnestly. ‘But I found nothing. Not a trace. No living man or woman in the city would admit to seeing it. The knight de Clari, who wrote of it, is dead. If it existed it is gone, my lord – as appalling and blasphemous as it sounds, the Crusaders committed many an act of desecration, and although the destruction of the Mandylion of Edessa would count amongst the greatest of those, no doubt it was done heedlessly and without a thought.’

  ‘That is not what one hears.’ If the bishop’s mace could have spoken, it would have used that voice.

  ‘Then those rumours have not reached my ears, and that in itself troubles me,’ I replied. ‘What, my lord, has one heard?’

  ‘That the Mandylion is at large. That it is in the hands of … of …’ His voice sank to a whisper that hissed like sleet. ‘Heretics.’

  ‘My lord!’ I said, drawing away from him. ‘Forgive me, but that sounds … I mean, if it were true it would be blasphemy. And what would heretics want with a holy relic? It is a contradiction, surely?’

  ‘The Cathar crucifix,’ said the bishop, darkly. ‘I have written to young de Montfort about it, for he was raised in those cursed heretic lands that his father gave his life to save from the damnable Albigenses. He has been back there, just this year. The heretics have been parading some ghastly mockery of Our Lord’s passion, the painted image of Christ upon cloth. They say it proves He was a man, and therefore not the Son of God – dear Lord, what dupes of Satan these vipers are! Now you know as well as I that Constantinople, before the true Christians saved it, was a nest of Bogomils and Cathars and every other kind of vile schismatic and sodomite. Well, do you see it? One of those vipers conveyed the very Mandylion that your Clari saw, to his brothers in error: yes, in the lands of Toulouse.’ He was staring at me fixedly, and there was a faint line of white all around the grey irises of his eyes. His son had had his father’s eyes. I took a deep breath and smoothed my face into something like acceptance.