‘What is the matter with them?’ Hal asked.
Mark made a snarling noise. There was nothing for them to make all this row about. It was the contrariness of hounds, that was all. If he had his way, the things would be loosed tomorrow and the devil take them. All Mark wanted just this minute was his bed again. The thought of the well-stuffed mattress, the roped frame, the soft pillow filled with hens’ feathers, was all enough to make him scowl and want to kill a man.
There had been other little disturbances as well, of course. A couple of days ago there had been the arrival of the envoys from France on their way to find the King. Prior Henry had been able to direct them to Beaulieu, where he had heard the King had descended. God be praised, the envoys and their assorted train had departed yesterday, Monday.
At the door to the barn, he passed his candle to Hal before struggling with the great bolt. It should have been greased, and he reminded himself again to see to it. The old timbers of the doors had dropped, and the iron bolt was firmly fixed in its slot. He was forced to haul and jiggle it, gradually making it move side-to-side before he had loosened it enough to draw it free, and then he had to pull at the door while trying to lift it at the same time, the ancient timbers scraping across the paved entrance way.
Inside they had fenced off the left-hand side. This was where the hounds were supposed to live, while opposite was being used for hay storage. The two were cautious with their candles in here, for all knew the dangers of lighted candles and hay, and Hal’s wick was already spitting dangerously. Mark made a mental note to trim it in the morning.
The noise was deafening here. Baying and howling, some of the beasts jumping up at the partition, while others prowled, heads low and suspicious.
Mark took up a switch from a peg by the door. He never liked dogs, and certainly wouldn’t trust them. The first time he had been bitten by one was when he was nothing but a youngster, and the experience of seeing that enormous gaping jaw in front of him, smelling that foul breath, and feeling the teeth clench over his puny forearm, was one he would never forget. All he could recall was screaming in a high tone, like a hog feeling the knife open his throat. The memory was enough to make him shudder, and now, as he stood there in the gloom, candle high overhead, switch in his other fist, he was taken with an urge to destroy the lot of them. Just toss his candle into the hay, and all the hounds would soon be gone. Burned to ash, all of them.
Except he couldn’t. The Queen would delight in repaying the priory for such dereliction. And Mark himself would be blamed. He was the man responsible, after all.
So no. He would have to see what the problem was.
Hal had taken hold of a small whip, and flicked it at a dog trying to leap the partition. It fell back, yelping. Another took a cut across its nose, and fled to the rear of the pack, howling – although whether with rage or pain, Mark couldn’t tell.
‘What’s the matter with them?’ Hal demanded, trying to speak over the noise.
‘They’re beasts! Just hounds. They don’t need a reason to make this row. They do it for fun,’ Mark shouted back. God, but it was so tempting to throw his candle down and …
His eyes caught a glitter in the straw even as the enticing thought caught at his imagination. There was something there, he thought, and peered more closely.
‘What is it?’ Hal called, his attention split between the hounds leaping at the screen and his master, who had crossed the floor and stood staring down at the straw. ‘Master?’
He cast a glance at the hounds once more, but then something made him walk over towards his master. ‘Master?’
‘No! Keep back, Hal!’ Mark exclaimed urgently, and tried to stop the lad. But he was too late.
‘Oh, Christ! Oh, God! Gilbert, no! What’s happened to him? Gilbert …’
Mark tried to turn and shield Hal from the scene, but the boy turned and retched against a sack of grain, face white-green, clearly visible even in the warm light from the torches. He had already seen the obscene gaping wound, the pale, yellow cartilage, and the blood that lay all about Gilbert’s body, smearing the hay in foul clots and puddles.
Run! He had to run! The noise of the hounds behind him was swelling all the time, and he had to escape the row. He didn’t think they were after him, but the noise – Christ Jesus! He had to get away from the town as fast as he could. The castle was a short distance in front now, and he could see its battlements. There were only a few yards to the door, and then he was inside, panting with fear and exertion, feeling his heart pounding, the sweat cooling on his forehead. Or was it the blood? God’s body, but there had been so much blood!
Three men waited just inside. They said nothing. There was nothing to be said, only a nod of mutual recognition, all aware of the great danger they ran. All knew that if their act tonight was discovered, they would certainly perish. Painfully. He gave them the small phial, and that was his part done.
Soon he was bustled out, still no time to rest. A man took him swiftly, all the way from the castle’s outer gate, back into the town, quietly now, the pair of them scurrying like mice through the deserted streets, and out to the little postern. There was no guard here – it was the castle’s men who were supposed to look after this doorway, so close to the castle itself – and then he was outside, in the open, the sky a purple velvet cloth overhead, sprinkled with clouds and shimmering sheets of silken mist. It was a strange sensation, standing there in the open, suddenly still, with no animals, no sense of urgency, no need to run …
Except there was. He would be running for the rest of his life now, unless the plan succeeded.
Of course, if that happened he might even win a great reward. Become a knight, even. Either that, or he’d be found dead one day in a ditch for his perfidious behaviour. The King would have his balls for what he’d done.
But for now, he must escape. He moved swiftly along the roadway, keeping the castle on his left, until he reached the cross on the Wincheap way, and there he turned south and west, heading towards the leper house of St Jacob. A short distance before that, he found the track off to the left into the trees, and met with the men who had the horse.
He took the reins, and with a sense of relief to be safe again, the man in the King’s herald tabard sighed and clapped spurs to the beast. There were many miles to cover before he could rest properly again.
Since getting here from France he felt as though he had been in the saddle all the time. He only prayed he might find some peace soon.
Chapter Two
Tuesday following Easter6
Château du Bois, Paris
Baldwin sipped his wine and tried to look appreciative.
The musicians were not all bad. Some were really quite talented. That fellow Janin was rather good with his vielle, and Ricard was a competent gittern player, although he did tend to make a little too much of a show with his playing for Baldwin’s taste. He seemed to wave his instrument about overmuch when the women were watching him. Still, at least he was making a pleasing sound. Not soothing, but definitely pleasing.
But it was soothing which his soul needed just now. He had been here in France for a month or so, which meant that it was … what? Two months, no, three since he had left his wife and children back home at Furnshill. However long it was, it felt a great deal longer. That was certain. His son was only a matter of three months old when the King’s summons had arrived to call him on this journey, travelling to France with the Queen, protecting her from dangers on the road, so that she might arrive safely at the French court.
Queen Isabella was a strong-willed woman. She had come through many disappointments with her husband and his choice of friends. In recent years she had seen all her properties confiscated, her income taken, her servants exiled and even her children taken into custody. All this while her husband ignored her and took to carousing with his favourite adviser, Sir Hugh le Despenser.
Many women would have been broken by such cruelty, but not Queen Isabella. Baldwin reckoned tha
t at the heart of her there was a baulk of English oak, resilient, impervious, unbending. She grew more resolute with every setback, he thought. For all the hardship and the sadness which it must have brought to her, still she acted like a Queen. There was no apparent rancour in her spirit as she conducted her embassy with the French King. King Charles IV, her brother, was a man of great intellect and enormous cunning, Baldwin felt – but he tended to feel that about any king. Men with such enormous power were best avoided, in his opinion.
She was here today, sitting at her chair, listening to the music with enthusiasm as the players cavorted, her eyes sometimes straying to the little boy who sat at the back with the covers for the instruments, discarded along with the musicians’ paraphernalia.
To Baldwin’s relief the lad was playing quietly with a ball and causing no trouble. He was the adopted son of Ricard of Bromley, the musician with the gittern, and seemed content enough with his life just now. That itself was good to see.
Baldwin glanced across at his friend of so many years, Simon Puttock. A tall man, some ten years younger at nine-and-thirty or so, Simon was a strong man, used to long hours in the saddle. He had been a bailiff on Dartmoor, responsible for upholding the King’s peace on the moors. His grey eyes were set in a calm, sunburned face and had seen their share of violence in over ten years of trying to seek out felons. His reliability had led to his promotion to the post of officer of the Keeper of the Port of Dartmouth, but the reward had been bitter, as it meant leaving his wife and family behind.
And now he did not even have that post, for his Patron, Abbot Robert of Tavistock, had died, and arguments had arisen over the abbey’s choice of successor. Simon had no idea what his job would be.
Baldwin’s face twisted wryly. Unlike him, he thought. His own position was fixed: he was the Keeper of the King’s Peace, a Justice of Gaol Delivery, and most recently, a member of the king’s parliament, a council which even the king distrusted. He only used it to raise revenue.
For Baldwin, such a post reeked. He had been a Knight Templar, a member of a holy and honourable order, which had been attacked by an avaricious French king and his partner, the Pope. The Templars had been destroyed by those two, to their dishonour. Baldwin had been fortunate enough not to be in the preceptories when all were arrested, and was never caught. Yet the experience of seeing the persecution and deceit had left him with an abiding hatred of politicians and the clergy. He could trust neither entirely. Only his friend Simon seemed absolutely trustworthy.
Simon was now standing at the other side of the room – naturally all those in the chamber here listening with the Queen, the knights, the men-at-arms, the ladies-in-waiting, were all standing; none might sit in the Queen’s presence – and was stifling a yawn. Baldwin felt his own jaw respond, and vainly attempted to conceal it, sensing his mouth puckering like an old hag’s who had bitten into a sloe, before he managed to cover it with a forearm.
The Queen displayed no such weakness. She remained upright in her chair, listening with every indication of enthusiasm, as though all the tribulations of the last months were dispelled by the music, hard though Baldwin might find it to believe. And yet, he knew, for much of the time, she was bitter. She concealed her anger at, and detestation of, Despenser, the principal architect and cause of her misery, but for Simon and Baldwin, who had grown to know and understand her moods and behaviour in the last few weeks of travelling with her, the fact was that her mood was generally easy enough for them to read. It was clear that she was here to do the very best deal she could for her adopted country and her oldest son, so that he might inherit a good kingdom, but for all that, if there were any means by which she could embarrass or offend her husband, she would surely not hesitate to grasp it with both hands.
‘That,’ Simon said as they walked away from the Queen’s chamber to their own, ‘was boring in the extreme. I don’t know about you, but I’m not sure how much more of this I can bear.’
‘It’s all right for some,’ Baldwin admitted. ‘Fine wine, good food—’
‘Too damned rich.’ His friend grunted. ‘Give me some plain rabbit roasted over an open fire rather than all this coloured muck.’
‘… and yet I want to be at home to see my son. I worry about Jeanne,’ Baldwin finished. His wife had been so tired when he left her to set off for London, and all he could recall was that paleness about her features and the pinched look she had worn, as though his beautiful lady was overtired and cold.
‘I’d like to see my Meg again, too,’ Simon said sharply, adding, ‘and my daughter should have been married by now. All this wandering about France and back has delayed her nuptials. I doubt whether she, or her mother, will be too happy about that.’
It was true. Simon’s daughter, Edith, had been betrothed for an age – certainly more than a year – but she was almost seventeen now. He would have to allow her to marry as soon as he could, and that may well mean as soon as he returned home to Lydford. He had kept her waiting too long.
‘Simon, I am sorry. I have been growing irritable without my own wife and children. I forget others may have the same regrets.’
‘How much longer do we have to stay here?’
Baldwin shook his head. He had no answer to that. They had been sent here on the orders of the King, and their duty was to remain to ensure the Queen’s safety.
It was a most peculiar situation, though, and one fraught with dangers for a rural knight and bailiff.
Prior’s Hall, Christ Church Priory
The Prior rubbed at the bridge of his nose and ran through the events again, from the moment the idiots had woken him.
It was not only him. Mark and Hal had woken the whole priory. All had been deeply asleep, waiting for the bell to toll for Matins, and instead they were jerked awake by the screams of those two. Old Brother Anselm had thought that the end of the world was coming and nearly expired on the spot, poor devil. In truth, it was a miracle the deaf old stoat had heard anything.
All had rushed to the barn as soon as the fools had announced their discovery, and the priory had been all of a twitter ever since. It would have been bad enough if the man was just one of the brethren. Yes, that would have been dreadful. But worse still was the fact of who he was: a friend of Sir Hugh le Despenser. No one disliked poor brother Gilbert. The man was a pleasant fellow, bright, studious, and keen to please.
What was he doing there in the hounds’ barn? The man should have been asleep, like all the other brethren. Yet there he was, in the hay, with his throat cut. Something must have awoken him and made him rise and walk outside. A disturbance? No, surely not – if there had been something of that nature, someone else would have heard it. Another monk would have woken.
Prior Henry swallowed uncomfortably as this thought rattled about in his head. Because perhaps another monk had woken. Perhaps it was a brother monk who had slain the poor fellow?
But that would mean that someone had hated him enough to all but hack his head from his body. Surely that was no monk from Christ Church.
No. It couldn’t be.
Château du Bois, Paris
It was while Baldwin and Simon were settling down in their chamber that the messenger arrived to ask them to return to the Queen’s rooms.
‘What now?’ Simon muttered as they trotted across the courtyard. ‘She wants a brief demonstration of sword-play to help her sleep?’
‘You grow impatient with our Queen?’ Baldwin said with a flash of his teeth.
‘Not impatient with her – just with our position here,’ Simon protested.
‘Yet you think she seeks our company for a diversion?’
‘She appears to enjoy little diversions,’ Simon grumbled.
It was true – and yet she was also possessed of an intellect which was quite the match of any man’s, as Baldwin told himself. The mere fact that she was here, in Paris, at her husband’s expense, was proof of her wiliness. She was no fool. When she wanted something, she tended to win it.
‘Sir Baldwin, Bailiff Puttock, I am glad to see you return,’ Isabella greeted them as they walked in. She was still in her seat, while, instead of the ladies-in-waiting, William de Bouden, her comptroller and personal adviser, now stood at her shoulder.
Bowing, his face to the ground, Baldwin could not see her face. ‘My Lady, naturally we came as soon as you commanded us.’
‘There is no need for formality just now. Please, stand, both of you,’ she said, graciously motioning with her hands for them to rise. ‘I called you here to hear what my good friend William has to say. William, tell them too.’
The comptroller was a slightly chubby man, but square set for a clerk. He had eyes that were grey, steely and determined. He had the appearance of a fighter who had somewhat gone to seed in recent years. Now he looked at Baldwin and Simon with some doubt in his face. He had not come to know either of them during their journey here, and since arriving in Paris there had been too many calls on all their time.
‘As you know, we are all here to negotiate a lasting peace. We have the objective of having all the King’s territories returned. We cannot lose lands such as Guyenne.’
‘It’s a matter of pride,’ Simon said, trying to sound as though he understood perfectly.
William turned his eyes on Simon, and when he spoke, his voice oozed contempt. ‘You could say that. On the other hand, when you appreciate the fact that Guyenne brings more to the King’s purse than England, Scotland and Wales combined, you may understand that it is more than mere pride which makes it an attractive territory.’
‘What!’ Simon blurted, and gaped.
De Bouden pursed his lips, then, seeing he had their full attention, continued in more detail, explaining the history of the disputed territories.
The Prophecy of Death: (Knights Templar 25) Page 4