31 - City of Fiends

by Michael Jecks

  Paffards’ House

  Sir Charles was led through to the hall. Claricia and Agatha were there, Claricia sitting, Agatha standing at her back.

  ‘You are Madame Paffard? Henry Paffard’s wife?’ Sir Charles asked.

  He was aware of the old man behind him, but was unconcerned. John wore no knife. If need be, he could have the elderly bottler dead before he could turn and run to the door. Sir Charles knew his abilities only too well, even after his mistake with Sir Richard. ‘I am. Who are you?’

  ‘I am a friend of his. Sir Charles of Lancaster.’

  ‘I do not know you. If we owe you money, sir, I—’

  ‘More than mere money, my lady, but it will do for now.’

  ‘Then you will be disappointed. There is none.’

  ‘Your husband promised me and my companions plenty, if we were to—’

  ‘He could have promised you the sun and the moon and all the stars in the heavens, but it wouldn’t change the fact that we have nothing. His business has failed in recent months, and while he was hoping for something to rescue him,’ Claricia said, ‘it too failed.’

  ‘I was the rescue,’ Sir Charles said. ‘It was my business that was to have helped. And there is still time.’

  He was unsure how far to unburden himself. This woman looked frail and agitated, while her daughter was a hard-faced harpy, from the look of her.

  ‘My husband is in prison for murdering two women. He will never be released.’

  ‘He may be proved innocent in court.’

  ‘He has already confessed.’

  Sir Charles shrugged. He had known others walk free after being found at the scene with the blade dripping blood still gripped in their hands.

  ‘Where is he being kept?’ he asked.

  Marsilles’ House

  William was still standing in the chamber when there came a loud knock on his door. With a sigh of annoyance, he opened it wide. ‘Well?’

  There were three men outside, all rough, hardy-looking types. One pushed past William and snorted as he looked about him. ‘Come on!’

  ‘Who are you? What are you doing?’ William demanded.

  ‘You’re being thrown out. Don’t piss us about or it’ll be painful.’

  ‘No, Master Paffard told us we could stay. You’ve made a mistake. We’re allowed to stay!’ William said with desperation.

  ‘Well, we’ve been told to get you out. We were told today. Now, out of my path, boy.’

  ‘It’s a mistake. Come with me now and speak with Master Gregory. Leave my things and come with me!’

  William had grabbed the man’s wrist, where he had taken hold of a chair. This man must surely see it was a mistake! The Paffards wouldn’t throw them from here, not really.

  The man turned lazily and swung his other fist into the side of William’s head.

  It was as if he’d been hit with a club. A dull thud set his teeth rattling, and his legs wobbled as though their muscles were turned to blancmange. He collapsed to his knees, gripping the table, eyes wide.

  ‘You don’t listen, do you? We were called to Paffards’ place and told to get you out. You’re not wanted any more, boy, so like I said, piss me about and you’ll regret it. Now, out of my way!’

  Talbot’s Inn

  Gregory Paffard had remained in the tavern for an age after Father Laurence left him, but he didn’t touch the ale before him. It tasted sour, just as did everything that touched his tongue today.

  Until only a short while ago, he had been a contented, successful young man. What, was it a year, or more, since he had realised? Perhaps longer, but it was not until he and Agatha had met with Father Laurence that he truly understood the horror of his situation. He could never be happy. Laurence had told him. The bastard didn’t even shed a tear, showed no sympathy. Nothing. Just a blank face that concealed his true feelings.

  Gregory groaned. He was cursed! All his life he had craved love, and now he had found it, now he had learned how glorious and fulfilling it could be, he was to be deprived of it. That was what Laurence said: Gregory must part from his lover forever. They must be separated, Laurence told him, for the sake of their eternal souls. Perhaps a life of penance could save them.

  He was himself God’s finest joke. A man with free will who willingly chose a path of heretical crime.

  Leaving the ale, he rose and staggered from the room. The coolness of the air outside acted upon him and he felt as though he was a little mad. People looked at him differently, he was sure, with a kind of horror, as if he wore the leper’s cloak. There was nothing for him. Better to go and hang himself. Suicide was a sin, true, but no worse than the one he had already committed.

  Standing at the corner of the High Street and Cooks’ Row, he had to clutch hold of the nearest wall to support himself. A wave of nausea washed through his body and he wanted to spew. It was only the looks of curious passers-by that stopped him. He forced himself upright, and was about to walk off, when Benjamin hurried up to him.

  ‘Master Henry wants you to go and visit him, sir. He said it’s very important you go right away.’

  Paffards’ House

  Thomas kicked the ball again.

  There was nothing he liked as much as this. A sunshiny day, with a ball and a wall to kick it against. He booted it hard, and it catapulted behind him, narrowly missing his head, which made him laugh in exhilaration as he chased the ball, and kicked it again. It went high, hit the wall and fell in among the herbs. He looked quickly over his shoulder to make sure Sal hadn’t seen it, but there was nobody there in the doorway, and he scuttled over to it, his quick pang of guilt soon forgotten.

  He played a while longer before the ball soared high, and then landed again beside the bottler’s store-shed.

  Thomas walked to it, and knelt again. That broken board was so tempting.

  Joan said, ‘So, still trying that piece of wood?’ She had come out quietly with an armful of clothes, which she was soaking in water from the well, and she chuckled to see his look of comical alarm. Both were recovering from their fears of the last few days.

  He sprang up and clutched his ball to his breast as though it was a shield against any adult recrimination.

  ‘Don’t worry, Tommy. I won’t tell him. I don’t think it’s as dangerous as he says anyway.’

  Gradually the hunted look left his face, and he wiped at his cheeks, aware that they felt very hot after his exertions. He returned to kicking the ball, but every so often his eyes went to that appealing gap in the timbers, and at last he couldn’t resist another look.

  He went and peered inside. There was something gleaming dully in the gloom. Perhaps if he just got his arm in . . . But no, it didn’t reach.

  With a look at Joan, he began to squirm his legs in first, to get in there and find out what it was that lay beneath.

  And then he screamed.

  Marsilles’ House

  Philip had given up. He had followed Gregory and Laurence up the street to Bolehill Lane, but there he lost them among the milling crowds. Giving up, he walked into an alehouse and drank a quart of strong ale, then bought a meat coffin from a cookshop and ate it on his way back down the road. That was the last of his money, so carefully saved.

  On entering the alley to his house, he stopped, aghast. ‘Whatever’s happening?’ he cried.

  All their furniture – the chairs, table, cupboard, everything – was sitting out there in the filth. ‘Will! Where are you? What on earth is going on?’

  There was a rattle at a door, and he saw Emma de Coyntes peering at him.

  ‘Philip, I am sorry,’ she said. ‘I had nothing to do with this, you have to believe that. They have ordered that you be evicted. You haven’t paid them rent for a long time, and they are demanding that you leave.’

  ‘Who is this “they”? The Paffards wouldn’t do this to us. No! Is it Gregory?’

  It made no sense. Had Gregory ordered their eviction before he left his house, before Philip started to follow
him down the road?

  ‘I don’t know. William was here, but he’s run off, I don’t know where he’s gone.’

  ‘Will’s gone?’ Philip was staring at her. He could not understand what was happening, and then it was as if a hammer had struck inside his brain, and he was filled with a righteous fury. ‘Who said they could do this? Isn’t it enough that they have already seen us ruined?’

  ‘It wasn’t their fault, Philip,’ Emma argued. ‘Look, come inside with us for a little while. There’s nothing out here for you. You know that Henry—’

  ‘Not their fault? No, but they haven’t helped as much as they could have,’ Philip snarled. The anger was making his heart feel hot, like steel at the forge. It seemed to him that it must burst from his chest at any moment. ‘My father was a good friend to Henry Paffard, and where does it leave us? Deserted, left in the street, our belongings all gone. What sort of a friend would treat his friend’s family in such a way? My father thought he was leaving us in the care of someone who would protect us. Now my mother’s dead, my brother’s fled, and look at me! No future, no trade, no chances of making a life for myself, let alone for any other. Not that there is another, now Alice has died.’ His voice broke with grief.

  ‘Come in here,’ she said again. ‘Please, calm yourself before the bailiffs hear you and have you taken for breaking the peace.’

  ‘Go with you? It was you who complained to Paffard about us in the first place. It was you telling tales about my mother that us caused to be threatened with eviction, wasn’t it?’

  Emma flinched.

  ‘Well, I congratulate you, Mistress de Coyntes. You’ve succeeded! You are rid of us at last.’

  She bridled, her own rage ignited in the face of his attitude. ‘You want me to apologise? When your mother was so rude to my little Sabina that she cried for an hour afterwards? You expect everyone else about here to run after you – to dish out money and food and gifts – but when your friends try to have a quiet time of things, what do you do? You insult us and annoy us, and think you can just get away with it, don’t you? Well, you can’t.’

  ‘That’s it, is it? You asked me in because you were feeling guilty about us, nothing more. No sympathy or genuine Christian charity, just scared for your own soul. Well, I hope you can live with yourself after this, woman, because you’ll get no sympathy from me when your life is altered.’

  ‘Our life altered?’ she jeered. ‘My husband is a good provider for us.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ Then he gasped. ‘Do you insult my father now? Have you no shame, mistress? You would insult a dead man to his son?’

  ‘Oh, in God’s name, boy, take a look at yourself. Listen to yourself! A beardless boy with no means of earning a living, and all you can do is snarl and make a show. If you were half a man, you’d go out and achieve something without others constantly having to do it all for you!’

  ‘Do what for me? Forcing me to lose my home by complaining to my landlord?’ he demanded.

  ‘Oh, get out of here, boy! Go on! Take your rubbish and clear off. This isn’t your home, not any more,’ she spat, pointing down the alley.

  He turned from her and strode away, ire lending wings to his feet, but as he reached the road, the tears were already stinging. There was no way Philip would allow them to fall. He was too proud for that. It was little enough, perhaps, but his pride was all he possessed now, and he would not give it up.

  There was a cart rolling past the entrance to the alley, and he waited until it had gone, and then marched on resolutely to the Paffards’ house, where he ascended the steps and knocked loudly on the door.

  John the bottler appeared in the doorway after a long wait, and Philip swallowed and asked to see Gregory.

  ‘He’s not here just now, master. He went out this hour past.’

  ‘Then may I speak to Claricia?’

  John nodded thoughtfully, and shut the door. After another wait, he returned and jerked his head inside, down the passageway.

  Philip followed him along the flagged way until they came to the hall. Inside Philip saw Claricia sitting huddled.

  ‘John said you wanted me,’ she said without looking up.

  ‘Mistress, all our belongings are in the alley. Your son had men throw us from our house . . .’

  ‘Not Gregory, no. It was me,’ Claricia said. There was no emotion in her tone.

  ‘But why? We cannot survive without a home, mistress.’

  ‘Remember the old friary up beyond Saint Nicholas’s Priory? Since the friars moved out beyond the walls, there are places to sleep there.’

  He knew that area. The friars had taken down the stones to move them to their new friary. What was left was a miserable collection of rough chambers constructed of old boards and planks, with sometimes a waxed cloak thrown over the top. The poorest of the city lived there, the beggars and drunks who could find no other place to rest their heads.

  ‘You would leave us there? What have we done to you?’ he pleaded.

  ‘You have done nothing,’ Claricia said. She lifted her faded eyes to him, and he saw that they were red from weeping. Her cheeks were sunken, and she looked as though she had become an ancient crone in the last two days. ‘It is not you, master, it is us. My husband. He has ruined you. When your father died, Henry took the money left for you, and invested it for his own advantage. I know it has happened before, and it will again, but today it means you have nothing because my husband took it all. And I cannot repay you. That would impoverish my son. It would take my daughter’s dowry and leave her without a husband. So, for my family to survive, yours must be utterly ruined.’

  He stared, uncomprehending, wondering how she could be inventing all this. And then he saw the papers on the table behind her. ‘You mean this? He stole all our money? What of the house? Our gold?’

  ‘It is gone, Philip. All gone. Henry took it all and lost it.’

  Exeter Gaol

  Gregory paid the gaoler to let him see his father, and was soon inside, wincing at the stench, but then he burped as some of the ale returned. He reeled a little passing down the ladder, but his father didn’t notice.

  ‘Father?’

  Henry Paffard looked at him and said nothing for a moment. Then, ‘I have been told that Sir Charles of Lancaster’s men were killed and that he’s gone on the run. Is this true?’

  ‘Yes. They were caught over east and mostly killed, from all I’ve heard,’ Gregory said.

  He could hardly believe the change in his father. Henry was grey about the face, and whereas in the past he had always been a strong, resolute man with the suave manner of a lord – because in many ways he was a lord to the people of Exeter – now he looked like a common churl from the streets. His was the first family among those of the rich men who ruled the city, and his assurance and patrician manner had served to add to that aura. And all now was gone.

  ‘Then we are ruined, Gregory. My money was invested in Sir Charles and the others. God’s ballocks, I was so stupid!’

  ‘I don’t understand.’ Gregory was close to hiccuping, and had to put a hand over his mouth as another wave of ale washed up through his system. The atmosphere in the cell made him feel as though he might choke.

  ‘You understand nothing, do you?’ his father groaned. ‘I promised to help the men who have released Sir Edward of Caernarfon from his prison. I was going to be repaid handsomely, and you would have gained a knighthood when he returned to the throne. Think of that, my son! The first of our family to be raised to the chivalry! And now Sir Charles – the man I thought would come here and save me – is dead, and that means all I paid to him is also gone. We are lost, Gregory.’

  ‘You have been a traitor to our King?’ Gregory said disbelievingly.

  ‘We only have the one King. This boy on the throne is no more our King than you are,’ Henry growled. ‘He deposed his own father, at the behest of that bitch his mother and her lover. They have no right to say the boy is King. Only God has that authority.
’

  Gregory passed a hand over his brow. He was sweating. ‘Why are you here, Father? Why did you confess?’

  Henry looked up at the ceiling of the chamber. Like him, it was old, worn, on the verge of collapse. ‘It seemed the best thing to do.’ Then: ‘Gregory, I know it was you – you who killed Alice. Why did you do that, son? She wasn’t hurting you, was she? I suppose you heard she wanted a house of her own. She would not have damaged our family. I thought if you were captured for the crime, you might be slain too quickly, but that if I confessed, I could count on the men of the Freedom to protect me, especially since I knew that Sir Charles was on his way. That was what I thought,’ he said bitterly.

  ‘You knew Sir Charles was here?’

  ‘Of course I did! I sent him messages with Ulric. How else do you think he would know when the Bishop was on his way to the manor at Petreshayes?’

  ‘But . . . you were going to set him upon the Bishop? Why?’ Gregory’s eyes were stretched wide.

  ‘Can you imagine how much money there would be in that? I was going to win back all I had paid with good interest.’ For one second, Henry looked animated.

  ‘But . . . a Bishop!’

  ‘Oh, I would have been pardoned on my deathbed. It was all arranged. The new Bishop would be approved by our King, once he had regained his throne and removed his son, and the new Bishop would be more amenable to my part in the overthrow of his predecessor.’

  Gregory could only stare. He had never realised that his father was so ruthless.

  ‘But I still don’t understand. Why did you confess in the first place, Father? Why not just deny it all?’

  ‘Because I couldn’t see you in gaol, Gregory. Dear Christ, don’t you realise? I know all about you, you’re my son. My son! I knew you killed them both. I couldn’t see why, but you were obviously guilty. If they’d arrested you instead of me, you would be dead by now!’

  ‘But I had nothing to do with any of it, Father. Please believe me: I didn’t kill them.’