by Mark Alder
Edward thumped the wall. ‘It cannot be that the high lord in his castle is struck down by this Pestilence the same as the peasant or the thrall wallowing in his shit. God would not do that. He put me here! Why would he strike at me?’
‘He strikes at all Europe. The great families have lost members everywhere – Valois and Capet, Plantagenet and Habsburg. It is an evil killer, without godly distinction.’
‘We have no army. Those not dead of the Plague have gone to join the Luciferians in Calais. Those who abandoned Lucifer are going back to him for fear of the disease.’
‘Rule against that. Prevent them from leaving.’
‘I have. It makes no difference. Keep them here and we breed ferment at home or die like summer flies. And who can issue an edict against death? If I could, I would have banned Joan from ever dying. Where is the rightness? Where the proper respect for degree and royalty? This must be a thing of the Luciferians – by any standard of decency it should only strike low men!’
‘Imagine how our Joanna would have shone beneath the sun of Castile.’
‘Her glory would have matched that magnificent orb,’ said Sloth.
Edward did not hear them, it seemed. He was doing what he always did: turning his mind to practical matters to avoid being overwhelmed by grief. He’d done so whenever a child of his had died, and there had been many. William, Thomas, and William of Windsor again within the last year, the little boy dead of Plague. Blanche too, dead before her first year. Each loss she felt keenly and she knew he did in his way but he was a man and a king. He did not dwell on grief but threw himself into action, to forget his pain.
‘We rely on devils. They are all we have. So we are in my mother’s power,’ he said.
‘They owe fealty to you.’
‘We are still in her power. I do not like it.’
A messenger came in, a boy. He hesitated in front of the king but Edward waved for him to speak.
‘The Lady Alice,’ he said. ‘Travelled from Coventry.’
‘My mother’s girl?’
‘Not today,’ said Philippa. ‘Don’t let’s see her today.’
She had been a childhood companion of Joanna’s – raised in the same household, along with Prince Edward. The reminder was too sharp.
Edward touched her arm. ‘The state goes on. Our family goes on. England, whatever that means, goes on. My mother is our protection. We must discover what she is up to.’
‘Then we are protected by a wolf.’
Edward took her other hand, looked into her eyes. ‘The angels are gone. France has its sorcerer and its devils. We have my mother’s sorceries and a handful of pacts with people who should be our sworn enemies, the stinking dogs of Lucifer. We cannot do without her.’
The girl Alice was shown into the room. She broke Philippa’s heart. She was a lady from Cambridge, brought up with Joanna by Marie de De St Pol among books and scholars. They had been friends until the princess’s duties had called her back to court and Philippa could not bear to see her now, expecting to see little Joan scurrying in behind her, still eight, still five, still twelve – still any age but dead.
The lady bowed.
‘You know the news?’ said Edward.
From the tears on the girl’s face, Philippa knew that she did. Alice inclined her head.
‘You have news of my mother?’
‘She has met Eu’s ransom price. I have the money and the deeds with me. He is on his way to France.’
‘What? Why? Wait, I can’t take this in. My mother has given me her castles?’
‘Along with the county of Guisnes in France, which belonged to Eu.’
‘For what purpose?’
‘She is aiming to become a saint.’
Edward actually laughed, incredulous.
‘Why ?’
‘She has not said, but her devils have gone. She has become a nun and seeks God’s guidance. She will travel to see the Pope, when the Pope is a man who will see her. Clement has refused her request but she says popes do not live for ever.’
Edward shook his head. ‘She must be stopped. No good will come of that.’
‘She sailed yesterday.’
‘For which convent?’
‘She did not say.’
‘And Eu ?’
‘Gone too. He has taken a boat from Dover.’
Edward looked to Lord Sloth.
‘Can you catch him?’
‘Where is he headed?’
‘Calais is not available to him. He will not risk Flanders. Further south, then ?’
‘You should intercept your mother too,’ said Philippa.
Edward turned to her. For the first time in her life she saw scorn on his face.
‘She is a queen. No devil will raise its hand against her.’ He softened. ‘And she is on a pilgrimage. How would that weigh with God ?’
‘Then Eu ?’
‘He must die. Sloth, see to it.’
‘People will say you took his ransom and betrayed him,’ said Philippa.
‘I will kill him off the coast of France. He will be released from my pleasure by the time he dies.’
‘If he reaches France we cannot touch him. Philip is forbidding devils on the coast. He is the king,’ said Sloth.
‘I am the king of France!’ screamed Edward. The lion bowed its great head.
‘I recognise that,’ said Sloth. ‘But others may not. It will not make things easy.’
‘So you go and kill him now, then!’
‘Edward, if your lieutenant butchers him then people will call you betrayer again. No one will ever pay a ransom in future,’ said Philippa.
This time, Edward kicked a chair, smashing straight through its back.
The Alice girl lowered her eyes. Philippa didn’t quite like her. Too clever for her own good, like all the de Châtillon women. Her mother, they said, had been maid, wife and widow all on the same day when her first husband was killed during a joust at their wedding celebration. She had been left with a massive fortune and a taste in weak, rich husbands who died too young.
‘And why did you not tell us of this as soon as it happened? Does not my husband furnish you with winged devils to relay information?’
‘The queen placed a circle around the lodge in Coventry. No devil could approach. She refused to release me or any of her other ladies from her sight.’
The queen had a lump in her throat.
‘But she didn’t take you with her?’
‘She has gone alone with only two knights for protection.’
‘It’s us that will need the protection!’ said Philippa. ‘What can this mean ?’
Alice bowed her head. ‘I heard her talking to Count Eu. I pressed my ear to the wall and heard what she would do.’
‘Which is ?’
‘They will use magic to draw Prince Edward to Paris. There they will slaughter him.’ Everyone in the room, the lion included, crossed themselves.
‘What magic could compel a prince of the blood?’ said Edward. ‘If such were possible, half the crowned heads of Europe would be disappearing, their children with them.’
Philippa crossed herself. A prince could not be summoned by magic. But a devil? Yes. So Isabella knew. Had she always known?
‘I cannot say, for fear,’ said Alice, ‘though I know it might be done. Let me tell you in a roundabout way, as befits one bearing bad news to a king and fearing their majesty. Let me show you by story and hint what I mean.’
‘You can speak plainly here, child, no one will harm you.’
Alice’s eyes went to the splintered chair. She dipped her knees.
‘My lady Isabella has books.’
‘What books ?’
‘Of contracts. With devils.’
‘We know that certain queens of the great houses of Europe have always possessed certain magical arts. You know her ability with devils,’ said Edward.
‘I have no such art!’ said Philippa.
‘You’re from Hainault,’ sai
d Edward. ‘I married you for your beauty, not for sorcery.’
‘Particularly of line Capet, which is tangled with your own. The Valois queens lack such art.’
‘My mother is an accomplished sorceress,’ said Edward. ‘Only a fool would deny it.’
‘Well, where did such powers come? Where did they strike bargains with devils in the first place?’
‘There is the rumour about the count of Anjou. His wife was said to be a devil. She flew through the window of the church at Gâtinais when they tried to baptise her children.’
‘Why would a devil fear such a thing? They are God’s servants.’
‘Not all devils are content to serve any more, it seems.’ Alice opened the little bag she had with her.
‘I took this from your mother’s secret drawer. She has many such books and this is the littlest and least read of any of them, though she keeps it in her travelling chests. By night at Coventry she flew through the window, but first beguiled her ladies with a sleep magic. She had done it before and I, who suspected her, took the precaution of anointing my eyes with holy oil from the martyr’s tomb at Canterbury that night. I did not sleep and I stole this from her.’
‘Thou shalt not steal!’ said Philippa.
‘Thou shalt not do a hundred things,’ said Edward.
‘God lists but ten.’
‘He lists far more than that, as you know, and men still do as they please.’
‘Edward!’ She had never seen him like this. He was often angry but this was something more. He looked as if he was boiling from the inside.
‘What does the book say?’ he cried out, as if in anguish.
‘You need to read it yourself.’ Alice pressed it into his arms. ‘Read it and then decide if you can let its contents be known. The murder of the prince is not the limit of your mother’s ambition.’
‘What else does she want?’
Alice curtsied. ‘My Lord, I fear to tell you.’
‘Is it worse than the murder of our son?’ said Edward.
Alice kept her eyes on the floor and said nothing.
‘Speak, girl!’ said Edward.
‘I do not know how, but she seeks to bring Mortimer back from the dead, as the French brought back Despenser.’
Philippa looked to Edward. His face was white with fury. The meaning of that was clear. Isabella intended to be queen in her own right again, with Mortimer beside her as king.
‘She was ever an unnatural woman,’ said Philippa.
‘Can she do it?’ said Edward quietly.
‘Ask the friars of Coventry or the priest at St Michael’s of that town. There was some strange business there. Monks died, devils ran riot, and the queen hurried to make her confession,’ said Alice.
Edward looked to Sloth. ‘Bring the priest of St Michael’s.’
‘He won’t break the vow of confession,’ said Philippa.
‘He will break it,’ said Edward. ‘The Lord Sloth will see to that.’
Philippa touched her husband’s arm.
‘What will you do?’
‘What needs to be done,’ he said.
‘You cannot hurt a priest! Edward!’
He turned away from her. ‘Call the prince – he needs to be warned about this attack upon his person,’ he said to his retainers.
Philippa ran from the courtyard. She needed to get a message to St Michael’s as soon as she could. The priest would have to hide.
4
New joys, or old joys experienced in new ways. Charles had always loved to prowl the rooftops, to look in on people in their most private moments, unseen. To watch a child sleeping in its bed, or an old man snoring hard enough to wake Heaven. To see a girl comb her hair, or even a grown man piss in a bowl, was to have something no one else had – to be like God, sharing in moments that his people imagined they shared with no one.
Now, at Pamplona, in the heat of the summer night, he felt restless. A storm had ambled in during the day – a half-hearted affair that had failed to clear the air and left big clouds obscuring the moon. It was dark – though his eyes were keen. Spatters of rain fell still. Charles was on the roof of the Plaza de Castillo– the central ‘palace’ of Pamplona. This was no true palace but in reality a sparsely furnished castle. Pamplona was a fighting town, clinging to the bowl of its valley like a burnt pastry to a pan as the Moors, the Castilians and God knew who else tried to chip it away. He had come south to avoid the Plague that was sweeping the country. Inaccessible little Navarre had so far avoided the worst of the carnage that was happening elsewhere. Charles took heart from the Pestilence, felt emboldened. Had he not vowed destruction on France? And now that destruction had come, turning the unforgiving, craggy landscape of his kingdom into a fortress against the disease that was sweeping the world.
Still, it offered no sort of luxury to one born in Paris. Thick walls, high towers. Charles was hot and stripped off his fine shirt, his boots too. His cats were restless, nervous of the weather but keen to seek out the pigeons and doves of the roofs, winding around his legs as if to push him on, hold him back, impel and impede him all in the same movement.
He had left his perfumed kerchiefs behind, for the world smelled clean up there. The wet smell of the rain thrilled him, the warm splat on his bare skin, even the mild breeze. It was an itchy night, a night that wanted things done.
He stretched, thin and lithe like a cat, or like the cat devil his mother had lain with rather than extend his father’s weak and subservient line.
He ran across the roofs, almost silent, delighting to slip and regain his balance, teetering above the wet cobbles, so far below. Should he jump? Would he land? He knew he could leap from a high tree without hurting himself – as a boy, he’d dared the count of Amiens’ son to follow him and the idiot had broken a leg. Charles had not associated with him so much after that. He wanted friends who were . . . springier.
His cats followed him along the rooftops. This pleased him. He had been working on a motto that he would adopt when he took full control of the kingdom from his mother: Qui sequitur me non sequi. Those who follow no one, follow me. Or something like that. He’d written it himself and all the scholars he’d asked to check it were too scared to correct him, even if it was wrong. That was pleasing. Charles was beginning to think that the threatened exercise of power was more appealing than to exercise it for real.
He stopped at a window. There a whole family of eight slept in a single bed, boiling each other up. They had cast back the shutters, careless of biting flies, in order to gain a little cool. It felt good to sit and know that he could step in, light a candle and burn them all to death; to know he had that power. He would never use it, but he could use it. It sat snug in his pocket, so to speak, a little secret he shared with no one.
He needed the release from tension. His aunt Isabella had given him the words by which a great magic might be done and the itinerary of Joan’s progress to Castile. He had dispatched assassins to intercept her. But at Bordeaux, Joan, her entourage and his assassins had all been taken by the Plague, walled in to the port, and burnt before her heart could be taken. To Charles, this seemed a cruel waste.
Later, he would not remember when the idea to visit his mother occurred to him. It was by chance, if anything. The windows of the castle were designed for war, not comfort, and he had barely been able to wriggle out of the one to his chamber. His mother, however, had a more luxurious lodging, higher than his.
He stood on the edge of the highest parapet of the fortress, looking out over the night. A few lights still burned, the odd candle here and there, but the town largely lay grey like something undersea – the sea of Northern France, not the Ethiopic Ocean of the south. For the first time he felt like he had something in common with the place. It was like a dark flower, waiting to bloom, a wash of seaweed waiting to be beached and show its colours to the sun.
The rain grew stronger and he scaled down the outside of the keep, using the big stone waterspouts as platforms, hopping eac
h to each.
He swung easily into his mother’s room. It was only then he realised how wet from the rain he was and that he had left his shirt on the roof.
The room had a rich aroma of perfume and fart. One lady lay in the bed with his mother, the thin little girl – well, girl of his own age – sent down by the Norman lords. The other ladies lay on a broad pallet at the bottom of the bed. They were lightly clothed in their pale nightdresses. Charles studied their forms, the sweep of their torsos in a grand S, listened to their soft breathing. He had never cared much for women, nor for men, in the carnal sense. His mind had never run that way before. But now he wondered what it would be like to put his hands on the soft sweating form of Lady Escors or on that of Lady Aumale; to rearrange her dress so that her big breasts were visible; to strip and pose these women in their sleep, to see how their various curves fell together, in what patterns and what new shapes.
He padded to the side of his mother’s bed. The Norman girl was dark and pretty, her mouth pursed as if she might whistle as she slept. She had a fine down on her top lip, red lips, olive skin, as smooth as an olive’s as well. His mother, asleep, looked old. Her mouth was lined and her jaw slack. Her skin had darkened in the sun of the south, despite her best efforts, and now her startlingly blonde Capetian hair seemed even whiter by contrast. What was she capable of? Of calling a cat devil from the pit of Hell and fucking it right there on the bed.
He wondered how he had been conceived. What was the arrangement? Did it go behind her? Did she pleasure it in some other way and rub its seed into her? He wondered exactly what this devil had looked like. He had never asked. A great cat? A man cat? A man with a cat’s head? Had it been Sloth, the English lion? No, she had specified cat. He laughed silently to himself. His mother should have asked for a lion, a mighty leopard. Perhaps he then would have turned out three yards tall like Sloth, with breath like a blow from a mace. He licked his teeth and pulled down the front of his mother’s nightdress to expose the top of her chest. It was white, pale. Yes, she had darkened in the sun and no mistake.