by Mark Alder
‘He does that.’
‘Nergal said the boy was half a devil himself,’ said Osbert, ‘though you can only believe so much devils tell you, for though they follow God, they hate sinners and will mislead us how they may.’
La Cerda gestured to Osbert’s belly.
‘What’s that?’ he said. Osbert looked down at the scarred circle.
‘A devil put it there. Despenser had him burn it on to me. It is a magic circle.’
‘What for ?’
‘For the summoning of devils.’
La Cerda leant forward, pinching his nose to avoid the smell.
‘That is indeed what it looks like.’
‘You have seen many?’
‘I have seen enough. These things pretend to be holy, of God, but they are not of God. Devils, demons, they are all the same to me. Hell is full of lies, and because a devil says he is a jailer and a demon speaks to the poor telling him that one day he will rule, it does not make either of them truthful. They are things of the pit and must be removed from France, and from the world. God has punished us for invoking such forces. Only when the land is rid of all of them will we see angels here again, will the dragon that beset us at Crécy be banished from the world and God’s order restored.’
‘Yup,’ said Osbert. ‘Reckon that’s about right.’
He wondered if he should tell La Cerda what he had done with the box with the dragon banner in it. Probably not. Always good to keep some grain back for winter.
‘I am God’s avenging sword,’ said La Cerda.
Osbert would have laughed if he hadn’t been in such pain, and so acutely aware of how little nobles liked being laughed at. If La Cerda was God’s sword, what was Osbert? God’s fool, he thought. He imagined the clouds parting and the face of God looking down at him, laughing at his antics and capers, wondering what stupid predicament to place him in next.
‘But first, to excise the rot of Hell from the land we must use its ways against it.’
‘Seems wise,’ said Osbert.
‘Can you summon me a devil?’
‘If you can get me the ingredients.’
‘I can.’
‘And I’ll need a base to work from, somewhere I can be undisturbed.’
‘Where ?’
‘That castle looks good. No one will ever notice you taking over such an insignificant pile, and you can get its master to provide my needs. You could set him to gather the ingredients.’
‘No. We don’t want word of this leaking beyond these, my trusted brothers.’
‘Best kill him, then.’
‘No need for flamboyant gestures.’
‘Yes, Lord. But how will we prevent the lord of this manor spreading word of it?’ said a horseman.
‘He will not be allowed to leave until our work is done.’
‘He won’t like that, sir.’
‘I’m not expecting him to like it. We’ll clap him in his own dungeon if we have to.’
Osbert suppressed a smile, crushing it down into a simple ingratiating smirk.
La Cerda put his hand on the hilt of his sword.
‘You’ll get what you require,’ he said. ‘And we’ll see if your claims are true.’
‘I have spoken only the truth to you, Lord.’
‘Good. Then I want you to rid me of a devil. A particular devil. I want you to dismiss it. Send it to Hell.’
‘Name it.’
‘Charles of Navarre,’ said La Cerda. ‘He is the fount of all corruption in France and I will show it to be so.’
‘He’s only half a devil,’ said Osbert.
‘Then send half of him to Hell. That would suit me down to the ground.’
Osbert wanted to cry out that it was an impossible task. Things could be called through the cracks in the walls of Hell, but you couldn’t push a living man through them. And why not kill him? Wouldn’t that be the quickest way of sending him to Hell? It was a question Osbert might ask later. For the moment, he was under La Cerda’s considerable power and would not yet dare to question such a great lord.
‘Clean him, feed him, and then we’ll take Mass,’ said La Cerda. ‘Get him out of those irons.’
The horsemen fell upon him, pulling down his hose, cursing him as a filthy sack-a-shit and a dabbler in devilry.
‘Don’t take my breeches,’ said Osbert. ‘Don’t take my breeches!’
A squelch as the hose, the precious feather in them were thrown into his arms. He was prodded and kicked through the woods.
‘Is there water this way?’ he cried out.
‘I don’t know,’ said a horseman.
‘You’re not going to kick me until we find some?’
‘Aren’t we,’ said the horseman, booting Osbert in the back and then wiping his shoe on the grass.
‘Better find some quick then,’ said Osbert, as he broke into a hobbling run.
9
The ape had opened a door for her and she was back in the circle, her jewels and taffeta filthy with the muck of the grave.
The friar lay curled upon the flagstones, gibbering of a stink of sulphur, a blast of heat, of dark wings and the face of death.
She stood up. The first light of dawn was splintering the dark of the crypt, lighting up the stairs as if they led to Heaven. Her gargoyles clacked and chirped outside the circle. Her head spun and she felt the powerful need to vomit.
‘I am damned,’ she said, in an underbreath. ‘A queen, anointed by God, a royal among royals, damned.’
The church, though not cold, chilled her after the heat of Hell. She felt tricked, angry, though she had only tricked herself. How had God taken Mortimer, a usurper, to His Heaven? It was not possible, right or reasonable. God hated usurpers. Yet Mortimer’s remains had not rotted. How had she not seen it? He was a saint. Had the Church announced him so? The Pope at Avignon had been a Frenchman. Had they canonised Mortimer without her knowing? But was it even possible to canonise a usurper? She glanced back into the grave. If she ever went there, she had seen a glimpse of the torments waiting. And what lay behind those other doors that led from the Hungry Garden?
Isabella felt a tear roll down her cheek. She wiped it away. Hell, for ever. That terrible wall, that stinking, crapping ape.
Most of all she felt the loss of Mortimer. She was separate from him now, finally. It was one thing to open the gates of Hell, another entirely to open those of Heaven. Isabella kicked a gap in the magic circle. She felt dislocated, uncertain. Could she live for ever? Were there enough angels to bleed for her to live so long?
The gargoyles chattered and cheeped.
Isabella gestured to her lover’s remains.
‘Gather them up, put them in the coffin,’ she said. ‘I command you as queen.’
But the gargoyles would not obey. Of course, they were things of the Pit and God had made them and put them in the Pit. They could not touch holy relics – not out of fear but out of reverence. A door opened above. The moth magic had worn off. The monastery was awaking, the bell-ringers coming in to announce what? Terce? It must be already.
She paid them no mind, scooping up the remains of her lover and transferring them back into the casket. She had held him so tight when he lived, his kisses like wine to her. Now, this offal, this holy offal, was all that connected her to him. Isabella wept as she returned the head, the legs, the lights.
‘I have glimpsed my own damnation.’ The friar moaned to himself, still curled in, grasping his knees.
‘Be quiet. Your damnation is nothing. You are a low man. How much worse for a queen?’
‘Who’s there?’ A voice from above.
‘Fiends and devils. I had not expected the smell. Such rot,’ said the friar.
A monk appeared at the top of the crypt stairs, framed by the light. If Isabella had never seen an angel she might have imagined he looked like one. He did not. He was a shadow. Angels were made of light.
‘Lady, what has happened here?’
‘Who are you?’
> ‘Monks of the abbey.’
‘And what are you doing here?’
‘We’ve come to ring the bells.’
‘Then ring them. I’m not stopping you.’
‘Hell is wide and vast. The men there have no skin!’ said the friar.
The men did not move, just stood gaping.
‘The grave. She opened the grave and the grave was the gateway,’ said the raving friar.
‘Oh, shut up. I put him in there, I can take him out.’
‘You are Queen Isabella?’ said a monk.
‘Your queen. Your mistress.’
The monk bowed.
Still the friar rattled and gibbered. He had seen a glimpse of his own damnation. She, though made of sterner stuff, trembled within. She had cast her soul away, denied her right as queen to Heaven and for nothing. If Mortimer had been there she would rule, search the world for the blood of angels and live with him for ever. Mortimer was not there. He was untouchable. And yet . . . There, in his relics, was the way to commune with him. She did not want some light presence in her mind, or some song no matter how heavenly. She wanted him there, her fingers in his thick hair, his mouth on hers. She wanted his children, to be free of the devilish Plantagenets, to start a dynasty that would live for ever. Never, never, only damnation. She needed to think.
‘What has happened here? Is that Friar Talbot? And what are these creatures? Has he raised the fiends of Hell?’ said the monk.
The sun was strong in the summer morning, stained glass casting frozen ripples of blue and crimson on the stairs, like light through water, like the light of angels. She felt like some night-bred hag, shrinking from the rising light.
The monks hovered in the doorway, uncertain before her. Her son would hear of this, no doubt.
‘Get to the bells,’ she said. ‘Are you so easily shaken from your duties ?’
‘Lady, I must report this to the abbot.’
Had Isabella been less shaken by her journey to Hell, had she been thinking straight, she would have never given her order.
‘Kill them,’ said Isabella to the gargoyles.
Clatters, screams – the gargoyles leapt upon the monks, grabbing two at a time and smashing them into the wall of the crypt before falling upon them to rip and tear. The deaths were swift and merciful, she thought, for those who had thought to question a queen. No bell for Terce yet; perhaps the rest of the monastery would still be asleep.
‘I have seen fire and fiends and heard the cries of the tormented. I have known His wrath,’ said Friar Talbot.
‘Kill him too,’ said Isabella. This was no time for half measures.
The gargoyles fell on the friar. The man screamed, torn and battered by the monsters of stone. Isabella crossed herself. It was nothing to the damnation that awaited him.
‘Put the casket back in the earth and rebury it,’ she said.
The doors flew open. Ten – maybe more – monks, armed with spears, two with swords. She had recovered her wits.
‘You arrive too late,’ she said. ‘I have discovered a foul sacrilege here.’
The abbot pushed to the front of the throng.
‘What has happened?’
‘You have happened, Abbot. Your friar here is not content to remain a friar but would open the gates of Hell and pull fiends from the pit to do his bidding.’ A taste like burnt hair was in her mouth. The wall of flesh. Oh God, the living wall.
‘Are these the fiends?’
The abbot looked terrified at the sight of the gargoyles.
‘They are, but they bow to my majesty, as all such must. Your fellows have paid the price for their unholy curiosity.’
‘They disinterred Mortimer?’ He had a look of suspicion about him she did not much like.
‘Do you think I did it?’
The abbot’s pink little tongue flicked at his lips.
‘I, er. No.’
‘Bring your monkish priest. Say the Mass. Bury him again with the full honours of Christ, for I tell you that is a sainted man. And remove these fellows who stain God’s house with their blood.’
‘These were good brothers,’ said the abbot. ‘Is it true that London now seethes with these devils?’
‘God made devils to guard the fallen souls and angels He cast into Hell. They are servants of God, servants of Edward and friends of all true Englishmen.’
‘Then why ever did they kill these good monks?’
‘They are not good monks. They are the ambitious, the grasping, those who seek forbidden knowledge. They have mixed the names of God with those of demons, they have taken upon themselves authority that rightly belongs only to kings. Now send for my men, send for my ladies. You will entertain me here until this wrong has been righted.’
She crossed herself and knelt before Mortimer’s casket. She could sense him there, present in his remains. His quiet, strong voice seemed to speak to her, though she could not tell what it said. She prayed to God, to Mortimer himself as a saint. The monks now crowded the crypt, some wailing, some praying.
Isabella closed her eyes and put her hand on the coffin, calling out in her mind to God to recognise her queenly right and allow Mortimer to speak to her. There were mumblings, there was song but the song was cracked, the voice not quite carrying the tune.
The monks saw her praying and all knelt too, praying to God to take the souls of their brothers, asking forgiveness for whatever sins they had committed.
‘Mortimer, Mortimer, is there redemption? If you cannot join me on earth, how can I join you in Heaven?’
Her vision swam, the babble of the monks’ voices like a stream washing away the sand of her thoughts. Someone had lit incense, sweet in her nostrils. His voice was indistinct, far off.
‘I love you,’ it said. ‘Come to God.’
Isabella crossed herself again. His voice was like the sound of rain after so long a draught to her. Yes, she would go back to God, not by right but by deed. And Satan, though he thought he might have a claim on her soul, would find her harder to capture than he imagined.
‘Fetch me a carriage,’ she said. ‘I am going to take confession at St Michael’s in the Bailey.’
‘You can take it here,’ said the abbot.
Isabella smiled. She was aiming to become a saint, not an idiot.
10
The world reduced to a box of light, impossibly hot in two padded gambesons beneath his mail, Eu shouldered his lance, feeling the sweat slick inside his gauntlets. He shifted his weight in the saddle. Before him at the end of the run was a shadow that packed the punch of a giant – his opponent – who, as soon as King Edward gave the signal, would charge towards him, attempting to put his weight, Eu’s weight and the combined weights of their horses and armour through the tip of a blunted lance no bigger than a child’s fist.
He had the urge to check the chinstrap on his great helm once again but dismissed it as nerves. Still, he pulled at his mail coif to make it scratch an itch on the top of his head and fiddled with the toggle that secured the helm to his shoulders.
He never saw the point of that in a joust – if your helm was knocked from your head then your page could just pick it up again – not like in a battle when you’d want it tied to you so you could put it back on again, provided your head wasn’t still inside it. Through the coif and the long-eared cap beneath it, the cries of the crowd were muted. The horse was restless beneath him, a proper charger waiting for his command to explode.
No matter how many times he jousted, Eu would never get used to this: every sense overloaded; the lance light in his hand, the shield secure on his arm; the smell of the horse mingling with cooking fires, roasting pork and onions from the tournament field kitchens; the taste of sweat on his lips. His shield-arm still ached, though it was largely mended, thanks to the skill of the English chirurgeons. He was in no hurry to break it again, though, that was for sure. He felt more vulnerable in the joust than he ever did on a battlefield.
Everywhere, the banners of Castile fl
ew. Edward’s daughter – Princess Joan, pretty and young as spring itself – was to be married to Peter of Castile. The alliance would be a formidable one and a problem for France. Here he was, like a monkey performing at a celebration of his own country’s misfortune. Well, what was Edward’s motto? It is as it is. It is as it is.
He needed to return to France, to take up the reins as constable again, but bad news came weekly. The boy Navarre told him that La Cerda had taken over the administration of his lands in Champagne, was acting as constable in all but name under the favour of Prince John. If John’s man had the King’s ear, where might that lead? The man was an idiot, a God-appointed idiot. The ransom was not forthcoming, though, and he feared dark forces at work in the court.
The tilt barrier separating him from his opponent was insubstantial cloth, and head-on collisions were unusual but not unheard of. There was some sort of lesson for life there, he thought, separated by a nail’s width of cloth from onrushing calamity. Like life, though, there was no opting out of it with honour. He thought of his daughters, of his wife. Coward thoughts, he cursed them. Though not too hard. He would charge, he would strike, he would uphold the honour of France even if it meant dying a less than entirely useful death.
He closed his eyes for a breath and imagined the wider day around him: the round table flags; the gaudily dressed courtiers who had come as Lancelot, Gawain or Perceval; Edward himself watching from his bench, dressed splendidly as King Arthur, a crown of burnished gold upon his head; the monolith of Windsor Castle rising in the early summer haze before Eu. Ladies had come all dressed as knights, riding coursers. The old people had called it unnatural. As if that was something that even meant anything in these days of devils and demons.
Time to go. He could not see the king and would have to wait for the page at the centre of the joust to drop his flag after the king had given the signal. There was a job – the flagman. Best be nimble. You wouldn’t want to trip and end up under a horse.