The Devil is Loose

by The Devil is Loose (retail) (epub)

  ‘Hell, yes,’ Marshal laughed. ‘She can always be sent to one of her holdings, when I’m not there. If I was to marry a woman for her looks, I’d be hooked by now. Hooked but not landed, so to speak.’

  ‘Have you never been in love?’

  ‘Yes, my inquistive friend, I’ve been in love. And brokenhearted. But such emotions are easily come by. A slice of England is not.’

  ‘Are you so suddenly hungry for power? You never were before.’

  ‘Well, let’s say I’ve worked up an appetite.’ There was a note of finality in his voice, and Malchat decided to let it go. Even so, he hoped Isabel de Clare was reasonably presentable. For her sake.

  * * *

  When it came to it, John Lackland was not hard to find. On 14th July, exactly one week after Henry’s burial, Richard’s scouts reported that his brother, along with Belcourt and Canton and ten others, had made their home in a derelict water-mill, near the village of Sablé-sur-Sarthe. Richard immediately took his leave of King Philip, having agreed to rejoin him at Rouen within the month, and set out for Sablé. He was accompanied by a strong bodyguard of knights, but when the riders reached the outskirts of the village he told them to wait, and went on alone.

  They settled themselves in a riverside meadow and sent two of their number in search of wine. It was already too dark for archery, or stone-throwing contests, so they contented themselves with six-dice, and impromptu recitations. One of their favourite poets was Guillaume of Aquitaine. He had been dead these past sixty years, but had left a wealth of poetry, ranging from the courtly to the obscene. Knights revered his work, for, although they were often the butt of his mordant humour, they were also extolled as the real champions of liberty. He dismissed clerks and priests as unworthy of a lady’s attentions, and advised the heroine to find herself a bold young knight. In his less spiritual moments, he had composed works of unparalleled obscenity, and these could always be relied upon to enliven the evening. Many of the young knights recited the poems by rote, aware that their memory far outstripped their experience. Was that really possible between a man and a woman? Would even the lowest whore submit to this? Well, apparently so, as Guillaume described it.

  On his way through the village Richard accosted a late-returning farmer, who said yes, he did know of the water-mill; it was beyond the last house, just north of a poplar grove. ‘Do you know how many are in there at present?’

  ‘I have never visited the place, master, not since they—’

  ‘What? Since they what?’

  Terrified, the man edged against the street wall. ‘We were warned off when they first came. I think there are twelve, but—’

  ‘Do they get their food from you?’

  Again the man hesitated. He had never before set eyes on the red-haired monster, and he did not know if he was there to join the occupants. It was best to be cautious. And to improve his mode of address. ‘Yes, my lord, they take their food from us.’

  ‘Take it? And pay for it?’

  The farmer said nothing, then suddenly shook his head. If the rider became angry, or called him a liar, he would say he’d had a fly on his face. It was a feeble excuse, but it was all he could manage.

  Richard urged his horse closer to the wall. ‘How much do they owe you, those at the mill?’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Yes!’ he snapped. ‘How much money?’

  ‘It’s not easy to say, my lord.’ He wanted to push the horse away, but he knew better than to touch it. ‘I would have to ask the others.’ He glanced along the street and saw two more strangers, loaded down with wine-skins. Now where were they going? The mill was the other way.

  Richard said, ‘I’m not here for a conference. Would five Angevin marks balance the scales?’

  ‘Balance the scales? I don’t— Oh, you mean— Yes, my lord, yes, more than enough for the bread and meat and things we gave them, that they took. Yes.’

  Richard sighed at the man’s stupidity, and dug a handful of coins from his purse. He intended to give five marks, but when the coins were in his hand he could not bring himself to pick them out, one-and-two-and-three. That was clerk’s work. But neither would he pass them directly to the farmer, as though he acknowledged the debt. This was to be an act of largesse, not settlement of a bill.

  He glanced at the money, guessed that there were ten or eleven Angevin marks, plus an assortment of smaller coins, then tossed them at the man. They hit his legs and bounced off the wall, rolling back beneath the horse.

  ‘More than twice your price,’ Richard told him. ‘So you will never forget me.’

  The man nodded blindly and found sense to blurt, ‘No, never, I swear it.’ Had he known the identity of his benefactor, he would have been even more astonished, for to get money from the Lionheart was to get wine from a stone.

  Bathed in the light of his own generosity, Richard left the man with a tale he would tell and embroider the rest of his life. ‘… Appeared without warning, out of the dark… Just unstrapped his purse and handed it to me… The Duke of Aquitaine, there’s only one that looks like him… Coming through the village, and I stopped him and said we could not afford to keep those… Yes, he was surprised when I stepped in his path… Vowed he would never forget me…’

  Richard saw the trees silhouetted against the evening sky and heard the rush of the river, and led his horse up to the silent mill. The windows were shuttered, but candlelight leaked through the weather-warped boards.

  He tethered the palfrey and rapped on the door.

  It was opened by Peter Canton, who immediately sprang back, shouting the alarm. Richard frowned, annoyed that Canton had failed to recognize him.

  ‘I’m no demon,’ he snapped. ‘Don’t you know your suzerain by now?’ He stepped forward, so the idiot could see him better, and panicked Canton into drawing his sword.

  ‘What is this?’ Richard roared, his anger mounting. ‘You’d show a blade to me?’

  But his warning was lost on Canton, who made a desperate lunge at him. It was a fatal mistake, for in one well-practised movement, Richard unsheathed his own sword, parried the blow, then slashed his assailant across the neck. Canton fell sideways, spraying blood in the doorway. The young duke stared, unwilling to believe what had happened. Employing his favourite oath, he muttered, ‘God’s legs! I came to find my brother…’

  The alarm had alerted the household, and men were approaching around both sides of the disused grinding-stones. Richard braced himself in the doorway, his mind in turmoil. Canton was mad, no doubt of that. He had shouted, ‘John, take guard, he is here!’ But surely, that meant he had recognized the caller. So why strike out?

  And the others, those who were coming past the stones, were they also afflicted? The mill was a mad-house! Somehow, they had been bewitched, and—

  ‘Stop short!’ he bellowed. ‘You, Belcourt, we are known to each other. Are you possessed?’

  There was a heavy thud above their heads, and the knights turned towards a sagging wooden staircase. Marking their positions in his mind, Richard followed their gaze. He heard footsteps on the floor above, saw high-heeled boots, the hem of a linen shift, bejewelled fingers and bare arms, and then the jaw and face and head of John Lackland.

  ‘You?’ John mouthed. ‘You.’ Then he clutched the stair-rail and gaped at the blood-spattered doorway.

  Richard, in turn, stared past his brother’s head at a woman’s naked legs. They seemed appropriate to the mad-house.

  * * *

  The young prince had drunk a lot that day, brought a willing girl from the village, then fallen asleep across her. When she realized he could not be aroused, she had squirmed free and crouched disconsolately on the bed, wondering if she would get paid. She had been to the mill before, so perhaps one of the prince’s companions would make use of her. That would at least ensure her some reward for her labours. Then she could return to him before he had slept off the effects of his wine and, if he was sufficiently refreshed when he woke, she might
double her earnings.

  But she was still weighing the risks when Canton shouted from below.

  The girl had not understood what he said, but he had called John by name, so she had swung round on the bed, pummelling at him. He had come blearily to his senses and allowed her to pull him upright. Richard’s challenge to Belcourt had been lost on him, yet there was something familiar about the roar. His head throbbing, and uncertain how long he had slept, he had started stiff-legged down the stairs. To discover Canton dead in the doorway, and his brother with blood on his boots.

  He put a hand to his head, fingers splayed, and scraped his tongue against the roof of his mouth. ‘What have you done?’ he croaked. ‘Why have you killed him?’

  The girl descended another step, and Richard turned his attention to the knights. ‘Clothe your blades,’ he commanded, ‘or bear the penalty. Now!’

  They looked to John for guidance, but he lifted his hand from the rail in a gesture of surrender. Night after night he had dreamed of this confrontation, but it had been he, and not Canton, who met Richard at the door. Sometimes he disarmed the duke with words, and in other dreams knocked his sword to the ground. Richard did not always come alone, but it made no difference, for John was more than a match for the callers, and they were glad to retreat.

  Those were the dreams, but each morning he awoke to reality and the knowledge that he would never thwart the Lionheart.

  His hand raised above the stair-rail, he said, ‘Do as he tells you. He has an instinct for killing.’ He watched his companions sheath their swords, then peered down at Richard. ‘Well, brother, you’ve won. We are at your mercy, what there is of it, so you’d better tell us what we’re to do.’ He was not interested in the reply. If Richard wished to punish him, as he had already punished those who had deserted Henry, let him get on with it. All that mattered to John was that his head ached abominably, and that he had failed to take the whore. He stood on the stairs, sweating and shivering, too preoccupied with his own sickly condition to care what form his brother’s vengeance would take.

  Richard’s frown deepened as he returned John’s question. ‘What you’re to do? Why, you must do whatever you please, boy. The war is over now, haven’t you heard? It’s over, and we’ve won, and I’m here to collect you.’ He nodded at the corpse in the doorway. ‘I don’t know what madness afflicted Canton, but he died for nothing.’

  It took a long while for his words to penetrate John’s pain-racked mind. Swaying on the stairs, he blinked with disbelief and clutched again at the rail. ‘Then you are— You are not here to persecute us?’

  ‘In God’s name, what for?’

  ‘But we heard— We heard the king was dead, and that you were taking revenge on all those who signed the list. That’s why Canton barred your entry. He was protecting me from you!’

  ‘But why?’ Richard exclaimed. ‘Is that what you believed, that I would hound my own brother?’

  ‘You hounded our father long enough. And my signature—’

  ‘That! It’s the scribble of an infant. You’re a foolish and stupid child, John. You bend with the wind, and dote on rumour. You always have. But a traitor? God, no; you do not possess the conviction for treason!’

  ‘Then you were never against me?’

  ‘No!’ he roared, ‘I was never against you. Would I have come here alone if I’d intended to seize you? They’re a motley bunch, your friends, but not even I would go single-handed against a dozen cornered rats.’ He swung round in exasperation. ‘Christ have mercy on us, boy, for you are as guilty of Canton’s death as I. You say he was protecting you, but who fed him the lie? Who persuaded him that I was your enemy? And who was first persuaded by some half-heard tale?’ He rammed his sword into its scabbard, then told John to come down from his perch.

  Watching from the stairs, the young prince realized fully for the first time that Coeur-de-Lion absolved him from normal judgement. Richard had always seen him as, yes, a stupid and vacillating child, but he had never before overlooked such a decisive act. John had signed the list voluntarily and spitefully, in order to bring King Henry to his knees, and had then retreated to await the outcome. He had not expected the sound of his name to kill the king, but later, when he had learned what had happened, he had thought himself the prime target for Richard’s revenge.

  And even in that he had been wrong.

  ‘Come down,’ Richard repeated. ‘You’ve nothing to fear from me, boy.’ He turned from the sight of the naked whore and so he did not see the expression that cooled like wax on Lackland’s face. It was compounded of pain and fear and suspicion, but the ingredient that gave it its flavour was a slowly widening smile. Never again would John question the value of brotherly love; it had a greater purchasing power than gold.

  He took his hand from his head and caressed the girl’s inner thigh. Then he stumbled down the stairs and knelt at Richard’s feet. ‘Please,’ he murmured. ‘Please.’

  Richard leaned down and laid his hand on John’s fine red hair. ‘Don’t fret,’ he growled. ‘I’ll take care of you. I’ll guide you along.’

  ‘Yes,’ John said, ‘I know you will.’

  * * *

  They reached England, Marshal and Malchat, and exchanged a grimace of agony. Throughout the crossing the ship had dipped and rolled, bruising the tethered horses and hurling the men about the open deck. Marshal had been the first to drape himself over the bulwarks, though the steward’s complacency had been short-lived. With Dieppe still in sight, Malchat had found his own place at the rail and hung over it, as though awaiting the executioner’s axe.

  Six hours later they were still at sea, drenched and exhausted. It did not comfort them to know that both King Philip of France and Richard Lionheart were prone to seasickness, nor that the sailors aboard were astonished at the bad weather. Mid-July, when the Channel was normally calm beneath a cloudless sky. Extraordinary. Had you waited until tomorrow, messires, or crossed over yesterday… Like a duck-pond it was, yesterday…

  More than nine hours after leaving Dieppe, the blunt-prowed buss had entered port at Dover, and the passengers had been helped ashore. The ship’s captain directed them to a waterfront tavern and, while they huddled morosely in front of the fire, the tavern-keeper arranged for the care of their horses. Neither man could summon the strength to eat, though they managed to keep down a bowl of warm goat’s milk spiced with herbal wine. They fell asleep in their chairs, aware that their weak stomachs had sentenced Eleanor of Aquitaine to another night in her prison suite at Winchester.

  * * *

  With a protective eye on his brother, Richard rode north towards Rouen. He had already told his escort that they were never again to use the term Lackland. Why should they, he asked them, when he intended to give John control of the English counties of Somerset and Cornwall, Devon and Nottingham, Derby and Lancaster? Why should they, when the youngster was to obtain the honours of Eye and Wallingford, Tickhill and Marlborough, Gloucester and Ludgershail?

  Why would they, when his contrite brother was to secure the homage of the Welsh princes and be firmly established as Lord of Ireland and Count of Mortain?

  In the face of that, Richard’s entourage masked their expressions and drove the term from their minds. Among themselves, they marvelled that the Lionheart could be so easily hoodwinked, but they never again referred to John as a man without property. As Richard had said, why would they, when his brother had come into possession of half England and the better part of Ireland? John Lackland? Oh, no. He was now John Lavishland.

  * * *

  Six days later, Queen Eleanor’s rescuers reached the palace at Winchester to discover that she was already at liberty. News of King Henry’s death had encouraged her sympathetic gaoler to unbolt the doors of her suite, though she had shown no immediate desire to leave.

  ‘I’ve grown used to this place,’ she told him. ‘I know it so well, I could mend clothes in the dark, or walk about without touching the furniture. Besides, Master Blet, sudd
en freedom is as upsetting as abrupt imprisonment. You mustn’t evict me without fair warning.’

  This was not what Blet had expected, and he began to regret his decision. No one had authorized him to free the queen. He had done so of his own volition, and in the hopes that her gratitude would keep the hangman’s rope from his neck. But if she intended to remain in prison, he might as well re-bolt the doors.

  ‘How long will you—? I mean, should you not go straight to London, and—?’

  ‘Don’t be piqued,’ she smiled. ‘You’ll be rid of me soon enough. Just allow me to stay on as your guest for a while. If I have any friends left in England, they will look for me here.’

  He managed to combine an obedient nod with a shrug of resignation and withdrew to the door. From habit he started to close it, then remembered and pushed it wide open. Eleanor watched him, amused by his manner, but aware that he had put his life at risk. ‘One moment,’ she called. ‘You’ve been gentle with me, Master Blet. As you know, I have savoured a dozen prisons in this country, but I was never treated so well as here. It’s courageous of you to slip the bolts, and it would be easier for you if I was to pack my bags and leave. You could say I had been released by men-at-arms, and I’d back your story. But I must see who comes, now that my husband is dead. Time is pressing, and I have no wish to make my friends trail after me. Now, if you please, you may lock me in again.’

  He squeezed his knuckles while he thought about it. His own quarters were nearby, but he could drag his bed into the passageway, so he’d be better placed to hear any knock. For that’s all she’d have to do, just knock. Day or night, whenever she chose. And then he’d unlock the doors and let her out. Any time at all. That way, his neck would stop itching in anticipation of the rope. But…