Son of the Night

by Mark Alder

  ‘Well, I can’t say until you tell me what he wants.’

  ‘You will find all the keys to Hell. And then you will let Satan out.’

  Osbert smiled the smile of a man who did not feel like smiling.

  ‘And where do I find these keys?’

  ‘You’ve got one.’

  ‘How do you know I’ve got one?’

  Pastus twitched his nose.

  ‘I can sniff it. It is the Key of Blood. It will open the door in Hell’s third wall. Satan could be free.’

  ‘If you could get the other two.’

  ‘We’ve seen the Antichrist use one other. There’s only one more to find.’

  No secret about where that was, thought Osbert. He’d seen Montagu take it at Caesar’s Tower in the Temple – the Knights Hospitallers’ nook at Paris. He wasn’t about to burden Pastus with that information.

  ‘Surely two more. There are four gates of Hell.’

  ‘Lucifer is beyond the final gate. We only wish to release Satan.’

  ‘And you can’t find this other key yourself?’

  Pastus spread his hands wide. ‘No.’

  ‘Then what makes you think I can?’

  ‘You have achieved many things. You have torn angels from the sky, you have killed a great devil, you have been to Hell and returned. Satan believes you may have God on your side. Or you may have been in God’s plans. When He had plans.’

  ‘Well if He does, He’s got a funny way of showing it. Can’t Satan get out himself?’

  ‘Clearly not.’

  ‘But his lower devils can.’

  ‘So God deemed it. Satan is a mighty devil. God would not allow him into the world. He set him above the angels to keep Lucifer in Hell.’

  ‘But if he gets out, doesn’t Lucifer?’

  ‘Let Satan handle that.’

  ‘And what,’ said the pardoner, in the manner of a goodwife returning faulty cloth to a market stall, ‘has God to say about all this?’

  Pastus looked around him and sniffed. Corpse fires were on the air. Osbert had not noticed them before.

  ‘God is gone, it seems,’ he said. ‘Someone must restore order to this realm. Perhaps then He will return.’

  ‘Someone like Satan?’

  ‘Yes.’ Pastus poked Osbert hard in the chest. His finger felt as sharp as a bodkin and Osbert glanced down to check he wasn’t bleeding. ‘And someone like you. I tell you this. God is absent. Perhaps the day of the Devil is coming. Is a devil king not a king as much as a human king? The day of the Devil is coming. God is gone. Man may follow. Who remains? Who remains?’ Now Pastus thumped himself in the chest.

  ‘And I am to be offered salvation?’

  ‘Freedom from the torments of Hell.’

  ‘I want more.’

  ‘What ?’

  ‘Gilette,’ he said. ‘She has been, ummm, fimbling and fumbling with me out of marriage.’

  ‘A grievous sin,’ said Pastus. ‘I can only imagine what torment awaits her.’

  ‘No torment. She is spared damnation too. She comes with me, if she chooses, or goes her own way. But no devils, no Lake of Fire. Nice things for her.’

  ‘You are a presumptuous and forward fellow.’ The devil drew himself up, a smell of sulphur pervading the air.

  Osbert steeled himself. Devils were not so very frightening when you realised that, like everything else in creation, they had their desires and wants, could be bargained with, deceived, or even used.

  ‘Well, if I was a shrinking poltroon you wouldn’t be after my services, would you? Men like me are rare or you wouldn’t be here. A sight rarer since the Plague, I’d guess.’

  ‘A bargain, then. Yes. Salvation for her. I will convey the message through the walls of Hell.’

  ‘Half time,’ said Osbert. ‘I want something more from you. There is an enchantment on the king. Lift it.’

  ‘I cannot speak of that.’

  ‘Why not ?’

  ‘If I told you, I’d be speaking of it, wouldn’t I? There are those so great that their works cannot pass low lips such as mine.’

  ‘You’ve just told me Satan’s plans for the earth. There is someone higher ?’

  ‘Shhhhhh!’ said Pastus, looking left and right. ‘Seek the keys.’

  ‘Where ?’

  ‘You are a sorcerer, use your art.’

  ‘I’m a piss artist,’ said Osbert. ‘Though a drink might be useful.’

  He went back into the kitchen. Only Pascal, the king’s dogsbody, was in there and he lay sleeping against a bench. Of course, the king’s bodily functions – his stool and his bed, his dressing and his undressing – were all taken care of by noblemen, who would suffer any indignity to be near to the king. Well, not quite. The king might have given the job of emptying the bedpan to a favoured noble, but the actual emptying was done by Pascal.

  Osbert took a scoop from the wine vat and glugged it down.

  A hand on his shoulder. A whisper at his ear. A knife, sharp as a razor, shaved the hair from the back of his neck.

  ‘The Lord of Castile is not patient,’ said a voice.

  Osbert swallowed.

  ‘It is in hand,’ he said. ‘The matter is in hand. Only today I spoke with a devil.’

  ‘By Christmas,’ said the voice. ‘If you want to see the New Year.’

  The knife fell away and Osbert stood staring into the blood-red liquid of the wine vat.

  Footsteps walked away and, when he was sure they were gone, he turned to the empty kitchen.

  ‘Anyone else?’ he said. ‘Come on, I’ve only got three impossible tasks, surely someone has another one for me? Sweep the forest clean of leaves? Find the rainbow’s end? Lick my own elbow? Come on, Pascal, all it takes is the threat of death or eternal damnation!’

  But the room was quiet. Pascal had stopped snoring.

  Osbert approached him.

  ‘Pascal !’

  He shook the dogsbody by the shoulder. No reply. A ribbon of blood crawled from Pascal’s nose. Was he dead? He was.

  Osbert glanced around him. Such chaos – so many dead, a king who could do nothing but swive and sleep, a court in disarray. If he said he’d been appointed dogsbody, nobody was going to remember if he had or he hadn’t; the master of the king’s household had died a month before and no replacement put in. Where to get some smarter clothes? Pascal was himself a stout man.

  ‘Thank you, Pascal,’ he said. ‘Your dying wish that I should have your clothes and take your place. You cleared it with the higher-ups, you never had chance to tell me who, but I thank you.’

  He dragged Pascal’s corpse into the pantry and stripped off his doublet, in the king’s livery, and his hose too.

  He put his own clothes on Pascal and put the dogsbody back where he had lain. He stretched himself up tall. He was now the king’s dogsbody, as far as anyone knew or would care to remember. He made his way through the palace, up to the king’s rooms to wait outside the door until he was called.

  14

  The gaggle of nobles who would normally attend the king were not waiting outside his rooms, having decided – Osbert concluded – that the king was unlikely to be in a condition to be influenced by anything but the swing of his wife’s tits for quite a while. He wondered where they had gone. Dead? Maybe. Chasing after Charles of Navarre, perhaps, the present big noise at the court, or sucking up to Prince John.

  However, sucking up to Prince John was being seen as an increasingly risky activity. You might actually attract his favour and then, if Charles noticed, you were likely to find yourself in the same condition as La Cerda – banished, or worse.

  Osbert glanced around. He didn’t much fancy bumping into Navarre. The last time he’d seen him he’d treated the king to a faceful of angel’s blood – something Charles’s devilish nature had found intolerable. It had burned like quicklime. He allowed himself a little smile at the thought.

  The rhythmic sound of the amorous couple beating butter came through the door. Osbert di
d a little dance to it.

  ‘Hey, ho, we’re ankle to toe. Hey he, we’re shin to knee Hey hi, we’re hand to thigh Hey hock, did someone knock?’

  He waited a long time. Odd thoughts came and went. That bed in there had withstood a powerful thumping. The king had been ploughing her furrow for weeks and the bed didn’t so much as squeak.

  ‘What craftsmanship,’ said Osbert. ‘I bet that bed is English. No Frenchman could build joints to support such a fearsome knocking.’ He knew this to be untrue but was overtaken by a sudden wave of nostalgia for England. The busy markets, the credulous townsfolk, the poverty that guaranteed a stream of willing prostitutes.

  He remembered the Southwark stews. When he was a lad you could get a bath, a tug in a back alley, and still have change for a pie on the way home. Good days. He wondered what England was like now. Full of corpses, he supposed. The available whores could charge what they liked. Mind you, the gentlewomen might be starving so it was as good as it was bad.

  ‘Ah, dogsbody,’ said Charles of Navarre. ‘I have a job for you.’

  Three retainers stood at his side.

  ‘Sir,’ said Osbert, burying his chin into his chest and making a great study of the floor.

  ‘He’s ill, sir,’ said a retainer, jabbing a finger at Osbert as if to check him like a baked cake.

  ‘Plague, I suppose. No bother to me, I’m protected by God. Do you think he’s got an hour’s service left in him? There might be a bit of labour left in him before he dies.’

  ‘I am the king’s servant, sir,’ said Osbert, feigning a thick Parisian accent.

  Charles kicked him hard and he fell forward onto his face. Osbert was used to agonies and this was very much of the lesser, trifling sort. Navarre, Osbert felt sure, had some more serious torments up his sleeve, should he care to use them. He kept staring at the floor, which had the happy outcome of disguising his face and making it appear that he was grovelling.

  ‘How dare you?’ said Charles. ‘I asked you a question, wretch, how dare you?’

  ‘Don’t know,’ said the servant into the floor.

  ‘Well, get up. You need to run an errand for me. I need some perfume brought from my chambers. This place stinks and you are making it no better. An amber bottle about so big.’ He measured a space with his thumb and forefinger. ‘If you die before you return I shall . . .’ He ummed and ahhed for a second, clearly trying to think of a punishment that would be worse than the Plague. ‘Miss out. And that is an offence before God. You would go to Hell.’

  ‘Where shall I find you, sir?’

  ‘Within, within.’

  Osbert scuttled off. He knew better than to ask Charles himself where his rooms were. Instead, he simply tore around the palace until he encountered a devil like a great bat with a bald ape’s head hanging upside down from a chandelier above some stairs. ‘Do you know where Charles of Navarre’s rooms are?’ he said. ‘You summoned me, did you not?’ said the devil.

  ‘Shhhhhh! Let’s not go on about that. Can’t any of you fiends keep a secret? What’s happened to standards of discretion in Hell?’

  ‘There are no secrets in Hell.’

  ‘Well, there are here. Shut it. Now where does Charles of Navarre lodge ?’

  ‘Rooms royal, rooms public, rooms private or rooms personal?’ said the devil.

  ‘Any of them. Rooms!’

  ‘The one he’s in most is up there, third on the left. That’s his room personal.’

  Osbert shot up the stairs, thanking God for the arrogance of the nobility. Charles almost literally did not see servants of his rank, as so few nobles did. They called them all Jean or Jeanne to avoid having to learn their names and never looked twice – well, not at the ugly ones, of whom he accounted himself one.

  Idiot devil! There were only two doors that way but one did bear the crest of Navarre. He went to the door. There was no guard on it – such men were now scarce in the days of the Plague and many of the nobility complained to their servants that their wage demands were usurious.

  He knocked. He tried the door. It was locked. Great. This was the new way, of course – locks and bars. In a time when no one who woke with the dawn knew if they’d be alive to see the dusk, theft was rife. The penalty for stealing from a nobleman was death but, then, the penalty for breathing seemed to be death nowadays.

  So Charles had locked the door. He knew the nobility, however, and doubted Charles would accept that as an excuse for not returning with the perfume. He took out his angel’s feather and waved it at the lock. The lock simply disappeared. Years before, this would have caused him consternation but he knew that it would soon return as quickly as it had gone. He went within. It was an unusually small and dingy chamber that smelled strongly of cat piss. An ordinary table stood at one side and on it, ink and writing vellum. There was a chair and a locked chest but very little else. There was a small glass pot of something.

  Osbert picked it up. It didn’t smell much like perfume and when he held it to the light of the one slit of a window, he saw that it more resembled tadpoles swimming in a jar than ink. Whatever was in it appeared to be alive. A quill lay on the desk, too. Was this some sort of ink? He didn’t care. He had to find perfume; this wasn’t perfume, there was no obvious perfume, so that was that. He glanced down at the vellum. Three words were upon it, in French. At first, they seemed to swim before his eyes. Then they took shape to form words: ‘Our dearest cousin . . .’ No need to worry who that was to. None of his business. Osbert looked at the locked chest, then up to Heaven. Surely God would not have put him here if He hadn’t meant him to at least look in the chest. If it was gold, there might be a lot of gold. Then no one would notice one coin or small bar gone missing for a while. And might not the perfume be in the chest? The angel’s feather waved again and the lock on the chest disappeared.

  He opened the chest. A glow of gold, fierce and bright, illuminated only his imagination, not his face. The chest was full of pieces of vellum and parchment. There was the seal of the House of Plantagenet on one. Another he didn’t recognise. Three feathers.

  Wasn’t that John of Bohemia? He glanced up. No one coming.

  Some of the information might be useful here as a bargaining tool, should Navarre ever decide to move against him.

  He read – written by nobles themselves by the look of it; the handwriting was terrible. Anyone who can afford scribes doesn’t get the practice. Secret communications, however, could not be trusted to scribes.

  The three feathers seal was from someone with whom Charles was clearly making some sort of bargain. It was not addressed, nor did the writer refer to Charles by name:

  ‘We thank you for your gracious offer of safe landing for our men. We are pleased you recognise our father’s rightful claim to the throne of Charlemagne.’

  The letter was in French but it seemed the writer was someone in the English court – high up in that court.

  Then another one. This time with those quartered arms of Capet and England as its seal. Isabella of England? He feared to touch it, such was that lady’s reputation.

  ‘You shall have the means to do as you ask. We will send him to you. You shall build a mountain of dead and stand upon it, owner of all you see.’

  There was a small vial at the bottom of the chest. He held it up to the window. It shone with a deep ruby sparkle, the colour of foreboding sunsets one instant, of promising dawn the next. He would recognise it anywhere. Angel’s blood.

  Should he steal it? Yes! He could protect Gilette from the plague with it and be swived in thanks! And, if the worst came to the worst, he could give Charles another faceful and have it on his toes out of the palace before anyone could touch him. He stuffed the vial into his tunic.

  There was no perfume, though – none at all. Then he realised.

  The devil that had directed him had been upside down! Left meant right and right meant left! He sped along the corridor to find the king of Navarre’s door open. There, clearly marked on the table, was a
bottle of perfume in an amber bottle. He sniffed it. Yes, that was the stuff: rosewater and something deeper, he didn’t know what. He turned and ran to find the king of Navarre. Unsurprisingly, when Osbert returned with the perfume, Navarre was nowhere to be seen. He was accustomed to the whims of powerful men – Charles had, in all likelihood, forgotten about his request to Osbert. That is to say, ‘forgotten’ about it until he might suddenly remember and expect Osbert to have it immediately to hand. He was still nervous that Charles might recognise him. He was certainly younger-looking than when he had been court magician and now was dressed as a servant, his hair and beard shaggy, rather than a courtier. So perhaps he was safe. And perhaps not. He couldn’t run away – La Cerda would get word of it in a day or two and hunt him down. Beyond this, the situation could be said to be quite enviable. Yes, he was beholden to a great lord, in fear of being recognised by a cruel king, destined for Hell unless he could perform the impossible task of finding a spare key to Hell but, that said, he was warm, fed, clothed. Lots of people were facing impending death without any of those comforts and most were destined for Hell, if he could judge by what he’d seen on his visit there.

  So salvation was in his grasp as, presumably, was great reward if he broke the succubus’s hold on the king. He gripped the vial of angel’s blood inside his tunic. How would this devil, or demon, or whatever it was, like a faceful of that? Not much, he’d guess. Perhaps he could construct a circle using the blood, conjure the names of God, the angels of the four winds, spirits of the north and south, and then trap it within. Its power would not penetrate beyond the circle, for sure. No diabolic creature’s could. The king would be free, Navarre would be out on his ear, La Cerda returned, Osbert rewarded or back to summoning devils for a living. That profession, so lately odious to him, now seemed appealing in the extreme. Yes, what a plan! The king slept from Matins in the middle of the night to Terce in the middle of the morning, judging by the merciful silence that prevailed in the lodge before ‘bonk, bonk, bonk,’ resumed for the day. A tiny dab of angel’s blood on each eye should protect him from the succubus.