by Mark Alder
He felt a great tenderness towards her. She had battled for him, raised him well, protected him from enemies and taught him to cultivate the right friends. She had made him subtle and thoughtful. But she had underestimated him. He could not be controlled. A cat cannot be herded, much less a king. A king needs to be cruel. He kissed her on the forehead.
If only she would submit to him. She stirred in her sleep, her lips parting. What had his father known? Had she enjoyed her time with the devil? He wanted to touch her but the feeling disturbed him. Instead he leant across and touched the Norman girl on the shoulder. She did not stir. He slid his hand down and touched her breast. He felt angry, violent, alive. Why?
Because he held the power. Silent, unobserved, looking in at a window, he controlled everything – to stay, to leave, to kill if he’d ever had the urge. But she, even asleep, commanded him, called his cock to attention, made him want to please her so she would say what an excellent fellow he was to satisfy her so.
He turned his attention back to his mother. She was a truly beautiful woman, or had been. She was thirty-five now. Dry forage, as the poets said, on the cusp of old age. She looked peaceful as she slept, one of those faces that seemed made to be rendered in stone on a tomb. She would wither, become like the dried out old hen who slept at the bottom of her bed. What had she to live for? The next two or three years, before men would trust him to run his own affairs? And was she not a saintly woman? She had built churches, gone on pilgrimages and now had protected the grave of a great king from desecration. She would go to Heaven, she had done penance for her sins.
He had strangled his mother before he had time to stop himself. Later he would try not to remember it, try not to enjoy it: the sensation of the pulse at her neck, racing and then fading; the sudden kick that almost woke the girl; his mother’s eyes opening, calm. His mother was a royal lady until the end – she would show no dismay, no fear, as she faced death. The death throes were sweet to him, sweet as the surrender of the pigeon is to the cat. Her neck was already blooming into red welts as he crossed himself.
What I am now? What am I now? He flexed his muscles. The lady-in-waiting stirred. He would have to go.
He trembled, alive, the taste of salt in his mouth. He had killed a queen. No devil could do that, no snivelling jailer of the Pit. Royals killed royals and never without the blessing of God. He felt like the child he had never truly been, exultant and terrified all at once. His eyes filled and he crossed himself again. He thought to cut out her heart there and then. It would be a powerful relic. But he had no knife. He would leave that to other, lower, lesser men.
‘Good night, Mama,’ he mouthed, and kissed her on her red lips. Then he slipped from the window, swinging down to his own room and his snoring, drunken grooms to wait for the screams.
5
Through lowlands and highlands, fields and wood, Dow played his little pipe and the carcass creature followed, black with flies and fleas. Through crystal dawns and ruby sunsets, seasons of snow and seasons of sun, he walked and it followed – the fleas, and death in their wake. Dow gave his odd companion a name – Butcher, for it reminded him of the carcasses you see on a market stall.
He visited rich towns and laid them to waste, little villages and tiny farmsteads. When he walked in he found the bloom of life. When he walked away again the bloom was withered to the stem.
His ympe Murmur was long gone, appalled by the destruction. But Dow did not see destruction. He saw the corpses as seeds from which would grow the new Eden. Sometimes he lost his way, returned the way he had come. When he did so he saw wild flowers and brambles snaking over the farmers’ tilled laines, walls crumbling, thatch fallen in. All this in just a year. Within ten years the earth would be as it was again when the first humans walked upon it. Those that survived would have learned Lucifer’s lesson of justice and comradeship, learned to work together without greed or wish to better a neighbour, to be truly glad of the gift of breath the bright angel breathed into them at the first.
Champions came to face him – some, anyway. He knew what he was – a rumour, a story on the breeze, spread by penitents and frightened children, whoever Lucifer allowed to survive an encounter with him and his monster. He saw the whipping men, marching in lines down the old pilgrim routes, thrashing their backs raw. Man had sinned and must return to God, punish himself. Dow had smiled at that. As if corruption was a devil that could be thrashed out with a scourge.
When God had risen up against the creator Lucifer, he had offered to put some men above others, make some kings and and cast others down as beggars, if only they would worship him. Dow had imagined that only the kings had agreed to this bargain and worked to oppress other men. At Calais, and other places, he had seen that God may have offered all men a choice: I will raise some, lower others; you will not know where you stand until I say so. Men would accept that, he thought, the chance of rising up above their brothers enough to accept the risk of being cast down beneath them. That same impulse had not died when God set His order in place, the desire to rise on the backs of others, be it in ever such a small way. Humanity was irredeemable.
So start again. Kill the men and the women, the fathers and mothers, the child on the breast, the old man in his bed. Kill the pigs in the byre and the sheep in the fields. Kill the dogs who ate their corpses, if that is what it took to restore Eden.
Knights came to face him but died before they could fix a lance, spluttering from their horses, collapsing in a crash of mail.
‘You are Death,’ said one.
‘No,’ said Dow. ‘I am life. I am rebirth. I am the winter that comes before the spring.’
‘These are the final days,’ he said. ‘This is the apocalypse.’
‘God is not coming. I am preparing the earth for one much greater than he.’
The knight spat at him and died.
No true war in the country now – the odd English band passing by with fire and rape, then dying among the piles of its own booty. Surely now, surely, man must learn his lesson. Surely his eyes must open. But no. Still he saw looting, scenes of depravity and murder where people had taken the power of death into their own hands as the bow wave of the Plague approached.
Over one village, he saw the flag of Lucifer flying, the threepronged pitchfork, the symbol of oppression turned into one of liberation. Or so he had thought.
He approached at nightfall, for a moment leaving his pipe unplayed, Butcher standing beneath the dappled moonlight of a wood, a glistening horror in the silver beauty. He approached, walking in unchallenged. All the familiar sounds were about him – the weeping of women. No, not weeping. You could not call it that. It was a convulsion of grief, something beyond ordinary misery, the music of Hell.
It was summer, the air warm, fires dancing at the village centre, a tinge of smoke in the air. Bodies lined the main track between the houses; not the bloated victims of Plague but those of violence – red limbs, cracked skulls, entrails grey and wormy. It meant nothing to him now, or perhaps the sight pleased him. These bodies were the fertiliser for the shoots of the new world, the soil bed from which they would spring. All corruption purged, all weakness gone. He thought of the words of the Bible, spoken by Lucifer in his guise as Christ: ‘The meek shall inherit the earth.’ They would, indeed they would, because such a glut of violence would be visited on the earth that men could never think of violence or personal gain again.
Shadows across a bonfire. A woman was being chased – or rather shoved – from man to man, suffering the fate of women in war and its aftermath. A little boy was clinging to her, desperate.
Dow looked on with compassion but with no thought to intervene. A purge was happening, a letting of the world’s blood, and he was the barber with the razor. Such things would continue to happen until they happened no more, and then they would never happen again.
‘Hey !’
‘Hold up! Who in the name of the devil’s dick are you?’ He had been seen. Swords were drawn. The woman
and her son were not where they were before. He couldn’t tell where they were. ‘A friend.’
‘We’ve got no friends here, friend,’ said a voice. He couldn’t see the men; they were just shadows against the fire.
‘Not your friend,’ said Dow.
‘Then whose ?’
‘Lucifer’s. The original light.’
‘Then you are a friend,’ said the voice. ‘Come and join us at our fire.’
Dow walked forward. He was surprised to see that the men he had been speaking to were no more than boys, really. Fourteen years old, maybe fifteen. They were dressed in the booty of war: fine jackets, beaverskin hats. One wore a well-wrought silver bowl as a hat.
The woman had been caught again and recommenced her begging.
‘Cut her throat,’ said someone. The child, though it could not have spoken the English of its tormentors, caught the meaning and let out an enormous howl.
‘You are men of Lucifer?’ said Dow.
‘We march under his banner. It brings terror,’ said the boy in the silver bowl.
‘Doesn’t Lucifer preach love?’
‘We’re about to give her some love,’ said the boy. ‘Banners, flags. What of them? The lords have struck a truce so we must make our own war. We can do what we want.’
‘And this is what you want?’
The boy opened his arms, shrugged deeply. ‘Yes. What else is there ?’
Dow felt enormous compassion for him. This boy could not imagine himself in a merchant’s house, surrounded by servants. He could not imagine himself in Eden, giving and sharing companionship and love. He had been preyed upon, spat upon, trodden down by lords and masters. The only thing he could imagine was to tread and prey himself, to move through the world like a pestilence until physic cured him or there was nothing left to kill. You have come from nothing, you offer nothing and you are going to nothing, he thought. My poor, vicious child.
Dow watched the woman struggling against two youths.
‘I’m hungry,’ he said.
‘Plenty of food here,’ said the man-boy.
He offered Dow a small loaf. He took it, broke it. Someone killed the child, stabbed it, kicked it to the ground.
‘The bread’s fresh,’ said Dow, under the screams of the woman.
‘We were lucky here. The first in this village. Rich pickings! Though there are others behind us. They say there’s plague to the east.’
‘Yes. Do you have beer?’
They had the woman now, two holding, one on top of her.
The boy picked a bottle off the ground. It was sealed with wax and cloth. Dow broke it off. The yeast tasted good on his tongue. This wasn’t drinking beer, the everyday ale, but celebration beer – made to get you drunk.
‘Will you kill her?’ said Dow.
‘You can have a go before we do, if you’re worried.’
‘I’m not worried. There is no tenderness to it.’
The boy looked at him oddly. ‘You are a fighting man?’
‘Yes.’
The woman bit one of the men and he cursed terribly.
‘You have no band, no company?’
‘I did but they betrayed me.’
‘How so ?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Dow. ‘It’s a sweet night. We have a fire, food and companionship. Let me play for you.’
‘I would like that,’ said the boy.
‘So would I.’
He set his pipe to his lips and began his tune as someone beat the woman to death, fists thumping out a broken rhythm.
‘That is a sad air,’ said the boy.
Dow paused his playing. ‘Yes. But we hope for better times, do we not?’
‘What times could be better than these? We are lords of the earth.’
‘I have played for lords before.’ Again he played, the firelight dancing on the face of the boy. Two other youths came back, one nursing his hand.
‘The bitch bit me,’ he said. ‘You have a minstrel here? You play well, friend.’
Dow carried on. One of the boys, drunk, danced a comic jig, his breeches still around his ankles from his moment of fun.
Then: ‘There’s something moving out there!’ The boy in the bowl hat pointed back down the main track of the village.
‘Who’s there?’ Another youth had an axe in his hand. ‘If these are friends of yours, piper, say so. And be sure that if they bear us ill will I’ll split your skull before ever you stand.’
Dow kept playing.
‘Who’s there?’ The boy pulled up his breeches. He looked so young, thought Dow, so young.
‘Who’s there?’ The boy with the axe had his hand on Dow’s shoulder. Others emerged from the darkness. An older man. ‘Raiders? French?’ he said.
‘Ah!’ The boy with the axe smacked his neck with his hand. Dow kept playing.
‘Shut that pipe up,’ said the older man. A big fly smacked into his forehead and he moved to swat it, too late.
‘Something’s moving, something—’
More flies thumped against the men. Other things too.
‘Fleas! I’m lousy with fleas. Ah! Ah!’
Dow played on, the same simple tune repeating itself again and again.
‘Are you doing this? Are you a sorcerer? Are you—’ He never finished his sentence, his eyes rolling in his head as he fell.
Only the boy with the silver bowl for a hat survived the night and, Dow saw, he would not see midday. He was soaked in sweat, a great pustule under his chin, his eyes sunken, blood at his nose. He scrunched up his eyes, tried to turn away from the sight of Butcher.
‘Who are you?’ he said to Dow.
Dow did not answer him.
‘Save me.’
Dow shook his head. ‘I cannot. You were lost the day you were born. Be happy. We are starting the world anew. And when we have it new, we will empty Hell of those who deserve to be free. Perhaps you will be one of them.’
‘Lucifer says all will be free.’
‘That may no longer be possible. You came from Calais?’
‘Yes.’
Dow pointed ahead of him.
‘That road is the correct one?’
But the boy died before he could reply.
6
The cathedral itself could have been a fort – its sturdy square columns rising high into the afternoon sun, the arches of its windows small, looking better suited to keeping siege stones out than letting God in. Outside, the people of Pamplona thronged in the white sun, all the colours the poor little town could muster on display, like a field of fading flowers. The talk, of course, was of the queen’s death, but also of the Pestilence. It had yet to touch Pamplona and people said it was the king’s virtue that kept it away.
Charles’s coronation was to be combined with his mother’s funeral – emphasising the strength of his claim to the throne; no matter that the new king had the eyes of a cat and was attended by six prowling mousers.
Charles trembled, dabbed a vial of perfume on his handkerchief and breathed in, trying to lose himself in the smell of cloves. He could still feel the sensation of his mother’s neck under the pressure of his fingers, the brief moment she had put her hands to his forearms to fend him away before relaxing. Had she welcomed death? Had she realised at the last that the future of her line was more important than her existence? He thought of her, and he thought of the Norman girl who had lain in the bed next to her, the softness that seemed to radiate from her in her sleep. He felt hot and confused. He should ask for her to be brought to him. Perhaps, though, he shouldn’t. He didn’t like the way she made him feel.
He had thought that when his mother had gone, all uncertainty would be removed from his life. But the manner of her death – her neck in his hands, that girl besides her, the female smell of rosewater, lavender and musk . . . Everything before had been clear, and everything after too. But it was as if the moment of his mother’s death had a life beyond the instant it occurred. Ever since, he had always been in that cham
ber, the Norman girl’s breath in his mind, the dim arch of the windows, shapes that would be unseen by ordinary eyes. He would never forget it. Would he ever want to? Charles flexed, stiffened every muscle in his body, and relaxed. It seemed something beyond his power to decide about, more like a lingering taste in the mouth than a thought.
His brother had come: solid Philip of Longueville, only thirteen years old, four younger than Charles, but so imposing physically – big, muscular, his forehead jutting low over suspicious eyes. He was dressed in blue and yellow, as fine as a peacock. Philip gave the impression of spoiling for a fight even asleep in a chair. Charles was pleased to see him after so long, and embraced him.
‘I take it the restraint of our mother’s years is now over,’ said Longueville.
‘We will tread carefully,’ said Charles. ‘But our enemies will sleep less easily in their beds tonight.’
‘I’d help them sleep,’ said Longueville, patting the big sword he wore on his hip.
‘You will have every chance, brother.’
Longueville gripped Charles’s arm. ‘You have nothing to fear from my direction. I know well we are a small kingdom and stand or fall together. You are clever, brother. I would benefit from that. I am strong. You can benefit from that. Think of me as your instrument. I will be your sword.’
Charles wondered if his brother had been put up to that speech by an adviser. If so, it was a good one. Could he trust his brother?
He’d see. There would be a task for him when he was old enough to perform it, something to bind them.
‘Is my sister here?’
‘I saw her train behind me.’