Son of the Night

by Mark Alder

  ‘My Lord,’ it said in a cultured Parisian accent.

  ‘You are ?’

  ‘Simon Pastus, late of Hell,’ he said, ‘an ambassador sent to survey the state of the realm of men after so many summonings.’

  ‘Sent by whom?’

  ‘By Satan, Majesty. He whispers through the walls to me.’ He bowed again, the maggots writhing foully. Charles’s puffball mouser circled around his feet nervously.

  Charles smiled a neat little smile.

  ‘And what will you tell Him?’

  The ambassador mirrored Charles’s smile perfectly.

  ‘What one always tells kings. Exactly what he wants to hear.’

  ‘You are a wise creature.’

  ‘I won my wisdom the way the true knight wins his spurs – in scars,’ said Pastus.

  ‘As all good servants must. Can you convey us to the king?’

  ‘The king is at Vincennes,’ he said, ‘but John has braved the city and is upstairs. I was told to stay here, to deter any foolish pilferers. It’s been quiet work, I tell you, none has come through.’

  ‘My men will hold the hall, and you may convey me to the prince. Which of his nobles are with him?’

  ‘Mainly lower men. Those of greater quality are staying out of the city. The younger and less favoured accompany John, the risk being worth the reward.’ He coughed and struck a vaguely theatrical pose. Odd things these devils, thought Charles. Odd thing I. One of them. He would not ask about La Cerda, though he burned to do so.

  ‘Lead,’ said Charles. He told his men to stay.

  They walked through the splendid but filthy palace. There were servants about, but not many, and they soon scuttled away as the royal party came through.

  ‘New souls for Hell!’ shouted Pastus as he went through the corridors. ‘Who will come with me to the Lake of Fire where your sores and boils will seem as blessings?’

  He smiled again at Charles. ‘It alleviates the boredom.’

  ‘The people are afraid.’

  ‘There has been a mighty winnowing.’

  ‘Is the Pestilence from Hell?’

  ‘Good Lord no. Hell groans under the weight of souls who are coming to it. We of the infernal regions are a bureaucracy. We are not set up to deal with so many. Hell is becoming unbearable.’

  ‘Isn’t that rather the point?’

  Pastus giggled and put his hand over his mouth, like a nun hearing a naughty secret.

  ‘If not Hell, then where does it come from?’ said Charles.

  ‘Only God knows that.’

  ‘Perhaps he does. Have you ever met God?’

  ‘No. I, a low devil, no. Why do you ask, sir?’

  ‘Oh, I was just wondering what he was like.’

  The devil glanced left and right and said, as if conveying a naughty secret at a dance, ‘Well, he knows how to handle a plague, doesn’t he? We’ve seen that before. Blood magic. Ohhh!’ He gave a shiver.

  ‘Blood magic ?’

  ‘All that smearing the blood of the Paschal lamb on the door, the first plague too. “By this you will know that I am the Lord: With the staff that is in my hand I will strike the water of the Nile, and it will be changed into blood. The fish in the Nile will die, and the river will stink and the Egyptians will not be able to drink its water.” It’s all about blood with God – it holds a fascination for Him, I think.’

  ‘Blood of the martyrs, blood of Christ.’

  ‘Streaming in the heavens, as the good book says.’

  Charles liked this devil. He was sophisticated, knew how to talk to high men in an interesting way without bowing and scraping or setting himself up as an equal. Much better than the country clod soldiers he’d endured during the journey down. If he hadn’t needed them for appearance’s sake, he’d wish them dead along with the other multitudes.

  He remembered his childhood at this palace, when it had teemed with bustle and the urgency of servants and messengers about their business, aristocrats lounging against the splendid walls. Now he passed through as if in a dream, its familiar corridors altered and strange.

  There were other devils there too – one with a hundred tiny human heads, another a lump with legs and no head at all. That’s luck for you, thought Charles.

  ‘These came with you?’

  ‘No. They were left here when the late Hugh Despenser went to Crécy. They were to guard his treasure.’

  ‘He has treasure?’

  ‘Had. All taken by the crown, I’m afraid, that which wasn’t lost to the English.’

  ‘Is he in Hell again now?’

  ‘I should say so. Much demoted, too.’

  ‘Good.’ Charles hadn’t liked the arrogant Despenser, particularly after the English lord had inhabited the body of a dead angel and gone crawling all around the tower Charles lived in, in pursuit of the English killer Montagu.

  Finally they came to the throne room.

  A sweet gittern strummed and the smell of incense percolated under the doorway. Finally, thought Charles, civilisation. There were guards at the door here, well dressed but unimposing. The ambassador immediately instructed them to knock and announce the king of Navarre. This they did in a thick-tongued, mumbling sort of way. What if the Plague went on? Could the servants and soldiers really get any worse? Any enemy who could muster a force to invade now would win with ease. But none could. Not in the whole disease-eaten world.

  As his name was called he heard a shriek from the other side of the door which he recognised as John’s voice. Then the doors flew open and there was the great lumbering John, the gittern in his hand. My God, he was playing it himself. Were all the minstrels dead?

  ‘Cousin, you live!’

  John threw his big, clumsy arms around Charles and the young man feared for an instant he might be crushed or battered by the gittern. It was as if the nightmare of the last three years had never happened and he was the prince’s closest friend and confidant yet again.

  ‘By the grace of God, sir, as I see you do too.’

  ‘Yes, but it spares no one, this plague. It kills all, low and high, without discrimination. That I think is its most fearful aspect. It is no respecter of rank.’

  ‘Doubtless an emanation of the Luciferians, those English vermin,’ said Charles.

  ‘Oh, quite,’ said John. ‘Come in, sit down. Wine! Bring my lord wine, he has been away too long and has been sorely missed.’

  A dirty-looking – and to Charles’s eyes rather drunk – servant stood and bowed, lolloping towards the door. Was this how the last days of Rome looked? No, no barbarians. The palais could be improved by a decent fire, he thought. Perhaps he’d start one. And perhaps not. Behind John the normal crew of musicians and poets sprawled, along with his wife Bonne. She looked promisingly pale. She would have to go, so Blanche could marry John and Charles’s influence be secured for the future. With Blanche in the prince’s bed, Charles would have an advantage La Cerda could only dream of.

  ‘Your father is not here?’

  ‘He will return in the morning. La Cerda has taken him hunting to get him out of the foul air of the city.’

  ‘I wonder you all don’t go,’ said Charles.

  John shrugged miserably. ‘Everywhere’s the same. You never know whether you’re running towards or away from this plague. Might as well sit tight in the relative comfort you’re used to, rather than face Nature in all her foulness. May as well die happy.’ He raised his own glass. Charles’s mouth watered. The cellars at the palais were famed throughout Christendom.

  ‘I have brought my sister,’ said Charles. Blanche, in her veil, curtsied behind.

  ‘Charming,’ said John. ‘Have you met my wife Bonne?’

  ‘I have not.’ Blanche curtsied and Charles gave the queen an extravagant bow.

  Bonne trotted over to meet them. She was still an attractive woman for her age – thirty-four, Charles calculated. He kept a mental note of the birthdays of most monarchs, the better to assess their chances of popping off any t
ime soon. She was careworn, her face gaunt. That look had been quite fashionable until the Plague had taken hold.

  Charles lowered his head.

  ‘I saw your father die at Crécy,’ he said. ‘He fought like a lion.’

  ‘It is good of you to say it,’ said Bonne. ‘He might be a live lion had the day been better accomplished.’

  Charles nodded. ‘The Genoese, ma’am. They carry the same flag as the English and may as well have been fighting for them, so knavishly did they conduct themselves.’ He couldn’t help but notice a slight waspishness to Bonne’s comments. Still he was blamed! He was struck by a great sense of injustice. He was guilty as he had been accused, more guilty for he hadn’t just been rash in leading the army forward but deliberately foolhardy. It was wrong they should think such a bad thing of a prince, though.

  Bonne inclined her head.

  ‘Let us see your face then, girl,’ she said to Blanche.

  The girl reached up and drew back her veil. Her beauty was unearthly, shocking, staggering.

  John’s jaw fell.

  ‘Madame,’ he said. ‘You are beyond . . . Beyond . . .’ The words choked in his throat.

  Bonne put her hand to her neck. She was flushed, almost staggering.

  She pointed at Blanche. ‘You will have him,’ she said, and dropped to the floor as if her bones had been turned to jelly.

  John looked at her body, looked at Blanche.

  ‘She is dead?’

  Courtiers rushed over, felt for a pulse, pushed a tiny mirror beneath her nose.

  ‘Dead!’ said a foppish young man who knelt before her. ‘Dead!’

  ‘By God’s bones,’ said John, as if in a stupor. ‘I must marry this lady, if she will have me.’

  ‘I would be delighted, Most High Prince, appointed by God,’ said Blanche.

  Charles looked down at the corpse. Well, he said to himself, That went better than I thought.

  9

  Osbert had been colder, he was sure. In a life of great trials, he certainly must have been more uncomfortable. But he could not rightly recall exactly when.

  The mule should have provided some warmth but it proved a begrudging animal in that way. Every time he put his numb hands into its mane it simply stopped, causing much shouting, abuse, and the occasional smack from the knights he travelled with.

  He had not actually believed they were going to attempt to travel in that snowy country, but they had said it would be easier than autumn or spring. Frozen roads, frozen rivers were preferable to mud and ooze. Staying put in the cosy castle, fiddling about with magic sigils and demanding ingredients that included wine, bread and a good fire was preferable to him. Sorcery could be a marvellous warm practice.

  He rarely took out the key to Hell but when he did, it exerted a great fascination for him. When he had first seen it, he had thought it changed between emerald and ruby, forming itself as if from a mist. Now it seemed both emerald and ruby at the same time. That is to say, if he’d have been asked the colour he would have said emerald, but then thought it was ruby. Or he might have said ruby and then thought it was emerald.

  When he was not looking at the key he was sitting wrapped in blankets in his room in front of a little brazier he’d put by the window. It was a nice life – snow without, a glow within.

  In fact, he had just been in the process of imagining himself as a hibernating bear when he had suddenly been banned all food. He didn’t understand why, but he was used to being hungry and it was only three weeks into his denial when the knock had come from La Cerda’s men telling him he was due to travel north. ‘Why ?’

  The knight who had delivered the message replied by slapping him hard across the face and saying, ‘Less of that! It’s your duty!’

  The journey north was horrible – over frozen rivers and fields, through towns so deserted they used the doors of houses for firewood. Everything dead, everything gone from the earth.

  ‘Where are we going?’ he asked, but he got no reply. They were travelling north, that was easy to see. Paris? Oh no, not Paris. He wondered what sort of reception he would get there – having killed the major ally of France, Hugh Despenser, albeit by accident and in self-defence, and having scalded the king of Navarre. Perhaps Navarre would not be there. And perhaps he would. Would La Cerda protect him?

  Annoyingly, no one would let him eat on the journey and he had only water to drink; no beer, which risked a belly complaint.

  At night, locked in some barn where the horses of the local people had died standing where they had been tethered for want of someone to free and feed them, he dreamt. In his dreams he reintroduced himself to King Philip, got his fine robes and quarters back. He toured the palaces, chasing the servant girls, eating, drinking, dealing with the odd devil, doing a little summoning if he could get the ingredients. But always in his dreams was the youth Navarre, stalking him like a great cat, looking for vengeance for the hurt Osbert had inflicted on him at Crécy.

  He awoke to a blue dawn, hungry, cold and sober. The men called him ‘sorcerer’ and he did not stop them. It did not make them respect him but it made them fear him at least a little, though they would not let him eat.

  They did not go to Paris. Instead they swerved north-east, to a little village tucked among hills. It was here that he encountered La Cerda.

  His men had taken the village over completely. There were no French folk here, just Castilian soldiers extravagantly wrapped against the cold, beating their arms as they trotted between the houses.

  La Cerda had set up court in a good-sized inn that it was the village’s fortune – now its misfortune – to possess. It was ideal for billeting La Cerda’s retainers. Osbert wondered what had happened to the former inhabitants. Paid off or bumped off? Dead of the Plague? Sent to freeze? Death held such a rich hand of cards now; so many to choose from. There were gangs of Englishmen on the roads now – or people calling themselves Englishmen for the terror it inspired. One more burnt village, one more slaughter among the slaughter of the bandits and the Plague; no one was going to notice.

  Still, there was a good fire with something like a chimney, ale was served and there was bread on the table. These three things were, Osbert had often noted, the sole requirements of a happy life. His mouth watered – a long time without food now. His hose were slack at his belly, his head light.

  The knights shoved him forward towards La Cerda. The lord sat with his feet on a stool near the fire – plainly dressed as any soldier. Only the fine sword that was propped against the table marked him as a man of quality.

  ‘My Lord.’ Osbert bowed, wiping snow from his scarf. His eyes stung slightly with the contrast between the cold outside and the smoky interior of the inn.

  La Cerda hardly acknowledged him. For a while he sipped on his ale. Then he did turn his attention to Osbert, studying him as if he were a greyhound of uncertain parentage.

  ‘You have the key?’

  ‘My Lord, I do.’ He bowed.

  ‘You brought us nothing in the south,’ said La Cerda.

  Osbert thought it best to say nothing. In dealings with powerful men he had learned that any utterance at all could be misinterpreted so it was safer, when at all possible, to utter nothing. La Cerda jutted his chin towards him with an ‘eh?’ He took this as an instruction to reply.

  ‘The conditions were not ideal, My Lord.’

  ‘Well, the saints know, they’re a lot less ideal now.’

  Osbert bowed his head.

  ‘The key will not work?’

  ‘It is a matter of the right conditions – astrological, phenomenological, flubbilogical and wubbilogical,’ he said.

  La Cerda gave him a long, unwavering look.

  ‘Well, now things are flubbilogically, wubbilogically swived. Navarre grows in power.’

  ‘I am sorry to hear that, Lord.’

  ‘You should be, because if it goes on, I’ll spill your entrails and try to read my future in them.’

  Osbert grinned, nervou
sly.

  ‘Navarre has used his strumpet sister to enchant the prince. His influence grows daily.’

  ‘Say it is not so, Lord!’ Osbert sank to his knees. The grovelling may have been theatrical but theatrical grovelling was, in Osbert’s experience, something demanded by great men.

  ‘It is so. The enchantment must be broken. You will do it. My men are here at your disposal. Whatever you need, whatever unguent, bone of saint or tooth of martyr, we will obtain it.’

  Osbert felt panic rising in him.

  ‘And the . . .’ He looked around him. ‘Other thing?’

  ‘That too needs attention. But first rid us of this damned succubus.’

  ‘My Lord, it is not so simple. We do not know the nature of the enchantment, we do not know if it is demonic or diabolic. We know not if it takes its power from the spirits of north, south, east or west, we do not know—’

  La Cerda held up his hand to silence Osbert.

  ‘How would we know?’

  ‘I would have to see the lady. Or rather approach her and construct a charm first to protect myself from enchantment. Then and only then might I get to the prince.’

  ‘Very good. You’ll ride for Paris at dawn. Infiltrate the court, see what needs to be done and do it.’

  ‘But, My Lord, I am known to many there. I will be recognised. Navarre will kill me if he sees me.’

  La Cerda’s eyes were cold.

  ‘I have thought of that. It’s why I’ve been starving you. You need to be convincingly hungry. Go and offer yourself as a shit shoveller or a kitchen hand. No one ever looks at those. God knows there’ll be vacancies with the Plague.’

  ‘My Lord! That is beneath my dignity.’

  For the first time in his acquaintance, Osbert saw La Cerda smile.

  ‘You have some dignity? You are a stinking, grubbing man. Unfortunately you are a stinking, grubbing man I have to rely on. My men will escort you as far as the woods of Vincennes and then we will proceed to the court. We will watch you go in. I have a man among the servants there who will give a certain signal when you’ve arrived. You can choose to run away if you want but we will hunt you like . . .’ He searched for the right word. ‘A fat drunk. I doubt you’ll run for long.’