Son of the Night

by Mark Alder

  As he sweated and fretted he became aware of another pair of eyes looking at him. It was Prince Charles, now known as the Dauphin, since his father had bought the right to be named after a fish – and collect some taxes – off some extravagant southern lord. He wore a rich blue velvet tunic embroidered with the vaunting dolphins that gave him his name. Osbert bowed, sweatily.

  ‘Navarre scares you?’ the Dauphin said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I took you for a fool but now I see you are a wise man.’

  ‘Will you not plead with him for me? Or is there bad feeling between you ?’

  ‘I love him. It is wise to love him and to be loved. Those he hates come to no good ends. Look at Eu. Cynics might say Charles plotted the entire thing.’

  ‘Your Highness’s eye is keen and his wit penetrating.’

  ‘Yes. Perhaps I have misjudged you. Perhaps you are a man who sees what needs to be done.’

  Osbert could not help but note this opinion had come from precisely nowhere. Flattery. Why?

  ‘What needs to be done?’ said Osbert, very much hoping it would not be him who was required to do it, whatever it was.

  The Dauphin said nothing, just regarded him with that even blue gaze.

  ‘What does one do when a diseased stray cat haunts your door?’

  ‘Beat it to death,’ said Osbert.

  The Dauphin gave a little laugh.

  ‘Well, one gets rid of it, at any rate. Perhaps you should speak to the count of Eu.’

  ‘Why don’t you, Lord?’ For an instant, Osbert thought he had spoken out of turn, but the Dauphin smiled.

  ‘And what would I say? That my father is an idiot who may lose all France between false friends and bluster? That La Cerda means well but imagines he can deal with Navarre when he cannot? That I can save him? Well, sorcerer. None of these things are true. And besides, it is not politic for me to be seen there. Eu’s friends would say that I goaded him on his last night on earth – his enemies might think I gave him comfort.’

  ‘And what can I do?’

  ‘I have a feeling the count should be given a chance to express all his lies. I would be interested to hear them, for my instruction, so – like a base foil around a bright gem – they might better show me the light of truth.’

  ‘You are a subtle man, sir.’

  ‘I am a boy. And I am direct in what I say. Never doubt me. Eu is a traitor and a liar because my father says so. My father the king stands in place of God and cannot be wrong.’

  ‘And what will you say if you stand in the same position?’

  The Dauphin crossed himself.

  ‘God protect my father. And such speculations are for another day.’

  ‘They won’t let me in to see him,’ said Osbert.

  The Dauphin took off a ring. It was silver, inscribed with a leaping dolphin.

  ‘This is my authority. You are court sorcerer. Eu is a conspirator, a friend of the English, a devil himself in all but reality. You should inspect his cell to ensure the Count had no magical tricks up his sleeve. That is your duty, is it not? What if he were to escape by magical means, as the sorcerer Montagu once did? Think of the problems that might give the ambitious men of the court. Half the nobilfy is on Eu’s side.’

  ‘Very good, sir. God’s bones, I wish you could give me your wit, along with this ring.’

  The Dauphin smiled. ‘If my wit was something I could give away, sorcerer, I would serve France better than by giving it to you.’

  He turned away, not even waiting for Osbert to bow.

  Quickly Osbert made his room and took his most impressive robe, his wand and his chalks and philtres. The wand did no good but reminded others that he was a magician, appointed by the king and so deserving of respect. He ran to the tower of the palace and swept up the stairs towards the count’s prison. The guards let him in without question, though he had no doubt they would report his visit.

  The room was well-appointed, wood panelled, with a deal of gilt picking out stag designs on the deep bed. Nobles, he had forgotten, lived better in dungeons than ordinary men in their own houses.

  Eu had risen to meet him.

  ‘You are in league with Navarre. I ought to kill you,’ he said.

  Osbert, being somewhat accustomed to this reaction, bowed.

  ‘I am not in league with that catty fellow. It would be a mistake to kill me.’

  Eu smiled a cold smile. ‘Well, God forbid that I should make one of those.’

  Osbert checked the door was shut.

  ‘How did you get in?’

  ‘I have convinced the king that you may be a sorcerer like Montagu who cursed the king of Navarre.’

  ‘Montagu was no sorcerer.’

  ‘Well, which leaves us with another interpretation in order to explain Navarre’s feline tendencies.’

  ‘Which is ?’

  ‘The king of Navarre is a devil. Or half a devil, as it is said. My lord La Cerda seemed convinced of that.’

  ‘So how can he get into this court? You have sealed it against them, have you not?’

  ‘I have, as best I can. However, the work is simpler than you think. My circle is of little use. It is the word of the king that keeps the devils away. All he had to do was order them to go and all I had to do was pass that order on.’

  ‘And Navarre ?’

  ‘Expressly invited to stay. And I suspect his royal blood gives him more independence than your ordinary fiend.’

  ‘Your point ?’

  ‘None, My Lord. Though the King of Navarre has taken a rare dislike to me. Only my own vigilance and the protection of King John save me from . . .’ He made the gesture of someone being strangled with a noose.

  ‘I cannot see how this concerns me the day before my death.’

  ‘Well, it occurred to me that, in return for your protection and swift removal from this court, I might be able to arrange your own departure. You have friends in France? I could help you reach them. You could chop Navarre to bits as your first priority!’

  He produced the angel feather, which glowed faintly in the gloom of the chamber.

  ‘This will open a hole in the wall. It will also allow you to float to the ground.’

  Eu was impassive.

  ‘My king has ordered me to die. That is his will. It is the will of God enacted by His appointee on earth. I cannot go against it.’

  Osbert breathed out through his teeth.

  ‘Think of your lands, your family.’

  ‘I think of my soul. Navarre may win here but he condemns himself before God.’

  ‘You are a true servant of France.’

  ‘I am that.’

  There seemed nothing more to say. Job attempted, he’d report back to the Dauphin and hope to pick up a tip. Wine, Gilette and sleep, in that order, to follow. Lock the door against catty kings.

  ‘Well, I bid you goodnight, Lord.’

  Eu looked Osbert up and down.

  ‘You are a sorcerer?’

  ‘I have summoned many devils.’

  ‘Then you can do France a favour.’ He went to his bags. Again, Osbert marvelled that he had been allowed to keep them. Still, there was one law for the rich, another for the poor, which was how God had ordained it.

  He opened the bag, took out a small scroll and offered it to Osbert. The sorcerer took it and unwrapped it. It bore a magic circle upon it. Around the edge of the circle were Hebrew letters – Osbert recognised them as such. He counted them, lost count, started again. Seventy-two.

  ‘This is the seventy-two-letter name of God,’ he said.

  Eu shrugged.

  ‘I have heard of it but it is known only to the highest of the high, revealed in insight and dreams,’ said Osbert.

  ‘I received it from the highest of the high. The prince of England is a devil. You are to call him here and trap him in that circle. My sword Joyeuse will be swinging at La Cerda’s side. He can kill him with that or die trying. There are enough holy weapons to do for him
.’

  ‘This will aid France?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Osbert sat down on the bed. Eu’s eyes widened at the affront but Osbert held up his finger to beg leave to speak.

  ‘I have a better idea. I have the liberty with this feather to come and go in my Lord Navarre’s rooms.’

  ‘Then you should kill him.’

  ‘I have thought of that, My Lord, but he is a wonderful climber and chooses to sleep these summer nights atop the highest tower of the Louvre. No ordinary man could get there. However, I have seen certain documents that confirm your view that he is conspiring with the Black Prince.’

  ‘He will have burnt them by now. He is no idiot.’

  ‘Indeed he has, or I should have contrived to have dropped them in the throne room. However, England’s last invasion – for all the slaughter of Crécy – was a failure. They have one port, which it is very hard to leave by land, half given over to the rebellious poor. They need allies. What if one of those allies was to disappear? You may be content, My Lord, to go to your death, but what if you could rid France of your enemy and betrayer, as well as dealing the English a terrible blow as you remove their ally?’

  Osbert’s mind was on something La Cerda had said when he was first introduced.

  ‘How would you achieve that?’

  ‘Navarre is a devil, or so they say. This is powerful magic indeed. There is the matter of the ingredients, we would need something powerful and holy to hold such a devil, to compel it to come.’

  Eu went to his bag again. He removed a wooden cylinder, sealed at the top. ‘Dust from the tomb of Becket.’

  Osbert smiled. ‘That will help. It is a holy relic.’

  ‘Can you be certain it will work?’

  ‘Magic is never certain. It’s one thing to have the ingredients, another to work the art. Though the men may assemble on a chessboard, it’s in the movement of the pieces that the game is won and lost. It might work.’

  Eu puckered his lips.

  ‘You are an Englishman?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘But you work for the French.’

  ‘They have treated me better than ever the English did. In France I am a sorcerer, dressed in fine robes, eating fine foods. In England, I am a beggar. Well, then, shall I be English and a pauper? No, I’ll be French and prosper. Hang the English, for that’s what they’d do to me.’

  ‘It is hard to be loyal to France in these times. But God does not set this land in such great estate for nothing. Why else are we so blessed with the riches of the earth, the glory of the sun, such a wide and prosperous estate, while England lies dismal under fogs, ravaged by winds and rains that fall like the judgement of Heaven.’

  ‘What?’ said Osbert.

  ‘Navarre must not prosper. Whatever happens, he must not. Your hate for him reassures me.’

  ‘It is a necessary hate. When a great man like that hates a low man like me, the low man must hate in return for, if he loves, then he obeys the Lord’s wishes and must die. As I love myself I must hate him.’

  ‘Then do God’s work,’ said Eu.

  ‘Well, let us try.’

  ‘I will need my sword to kill him.’

  ‘I have a feeling you will not,’ said Osbert.

  17

  The Plague ran ahead of Dow. From the towns and the villages of the north, people came fleeing south, meeting those fleeing north like two mighty flows of water. The dispossessed were everywhere and Dow was sorry to see them. The dying children, the bloated corpses of all stations of men by the roadside, knights, rich merchants, yes, but poor men and women too who had never had anything but their lives and now had those snatched from them.

  ‘This is right,’ he told himself. This was the price of rooting out corruption, but it had broken his heart to see it. He thought of England. Had the disease, which had a life of its own beyond him, reached England? He hoped so. It would be a blessing on the land, a new start. A year cannot turn from autumn to spring without a winter between.

  He had paused a while in Paris – it was too cold to continue, he would have died himself if he had tried. He could not do that with the world only half way to Eden. He took refuge for the winter in an abandoned church – the priest dead of Plague, the churchyard so full of bodies that new ones were piled in stacks rather than buried. He made a fire in the centre of the nave, hacking the wooden rood screen to pieces, tearing down the sculpture of Christ on the Cross. He lit it with the robes he found in the vestiary, watching as the limbs took light. Christ was Lucifer, returned to bargain with the savage God who had usurped him. It felt right to release the light within this image, to watch the fingertips glow the colour of a setting sun, the body illuminate to become the heart of the fire.

  The smoke went high into the beams of the church, little sparks flying up like souls to Heaven. No, not that. There were too many. The multitudes went to Hell, one impure thought unconfessed being enough to secure an eternity in torment. Once he had thought he would open the gates of Hell, allow all the sinners back to earth. But wasn’t he cleansing the world? Could the murderers, the thieves, be allowed back once Eden was re-established? He shivered, despite the warmth of the fire. He could not yet fathom the answer to that one. Some judgement might be required, some test to allow access to Paradise.

  There was a noise at the poor door of the church. Looking into the body of the fire, he wondered why some people survived the Pestilence, though most did not. The mercy of Lucifer? No. Lucifer would forgive everyone. He knew that sometimes, to serve a cause justly and well, that cause must in some ways be betrayed. The stronger metal from the blacksmith’s fire contains impurities; the strongest steel endures many hardships, heated and quenched until such pain toughens it to resist all breakage. So he put the world through this fire of Plague, so he quenched it in blood. Lucifer never demanded obedience. He would see, when he returned, that the sacrifices had been worth it.

  ‘It is done.’

  A voice behind him. He turned. A poor man, in rags; beside him a woman wrapped in a thick cloak of the sort a merchant’s wife might wear. He was surprised by the clothes of the poor man. When he encountered living people nowadays, he saw so few in the clothes of the poor. The houses of the rich were there for looting – why walk around with holes in your clothes when a rich man’s wardrobe lay open to anyone who had the guts to go past his body to steal from it? He wondered himself why he was not harmed by the Plague. Protected by Lucifer? Perhaps. He knew his mother had been a fallen angel. Perhaps that was it.

  ‘What is done?’

  ‘Your task. You have accomplished it. Lucifer wants this. I have seen.’

  ‘You have seen what?’

  ‘The reason for all this. The Pestilence, the destruction. You, my friend.’

  Dow said nothing.

  He heard the man approaching behind him. He felt no fear, no reason to defend himself. Why rob or kill someone like him? Men with purses stuffed full of gold lay dead on any street – why waylay a poor man with nothing more than a reed pipe to take?

  The man came and crouched beside him.

  ‘Two knights, one horse. That is my upbringing. That is my banner and my nature.’

  Dow kept watching the fire. He wondered if this man would drop dead in front of him like so many others or if he would go home to die. Or would he survive? Some did.

  ‘I am a Templar. A poor-fellow. A soldier of Christ Lucifer. I am the one they call Good Jacques. Jacques Bonhomme. Everyman.’

  ‘Good for you,’ said Dow.

  The woman came now and knelt on the other side of him. She opened her cloak. Within was a flash of silver like the sun on a lake. He had seen it before. The mail of the archangel Jegudiel, liquid, enchanting.

  ‘You have killed enough,’ said Good Jacques.

  ‘And Lucifer tells you so? How? He does not speak to me.’

  ‘He speaks to you. That thing you have in the shadows. He spoke to you about that.’

  ‘I do
his work. I hope to. I do not know. I do not know.’

  ‘I do. And I tell you this thing is over now. Stopped, as much as it can be stopped.’

  ‘And are you the one to stop it?’

  ‘I am that.’ He touched his forehead. Dow saw that it was marked with deep cuts, as if inflicted with sharp needles. ‘I have worn the crown. I have seen. You must too.’

  Dow now noticed that Jacques had a bag with him. He opened it and took out a cheap wooden box, two spans wide and deep, a span tall. The lid was tied down with rough string and Jacques took out a small knife to cut it.

  ‘You have seen this before, I think. At the Sainte-Chapelle where the angel died.’

  He opened the lid. Inside was a circle of thorns. The Crown of Thorns.

  ‘I have worn this.’

  ‘And ?’

  ‘When the old god Ithekter – you call him the Horror, whatever you will – when he cast Lucifer into Hell, did not Lucifer escape?’

  ‘He returned as Christ to bargain for the freedom of the world.’

  ‘He did. And what did he get for it? Nailed to a tree and sent back whence he came. His glory stolen. The Horror told men it was him on the Cross, so men would call Lucifer’s appointed servant – you – Antichrist when he came. You are not an antichrist. You have more of Christ Lucifer in you than all the legions of the dark god. Tell me what will happen when Lucifer returns?’

  ‘No more bargaining. No more concession. God dies. The age of Eden restarts. None are ruled. None are rulers. So Lucifer vowed on the Cross.’

  ‘He did. And this is the crown he wore. The world’s crown, the crown of pain. This is how he saw and through this, you can see him still.’