Son of the Night

by Mark Alder

  Charles inclined his cat ear. This boy was an oaf, for sure, a galumphing, tactless oath who sought to buy him with bribes of preferment. Good. When you have been torn in half, stitched back together by a trembling drunk coward, and then corseted in iron like the hull of a ship, your patience wears thin. The Dauphin was a great asset to him and might prove more so.

  ‘You are more inclined to the chapel than the hunt,’ said Charles. ‘My Lord, My Lord,’ said the Dauphin,. ‘only so I might understand the will of God, to see what He requires of us to rid ourselves of the English, of weak men at court, and return France to its former glory.’

  ‘Does God answer?’

  ‘Of course.’ The Dauphin picked up a capon, split off its tiny wings, and returned it to the plate in front of him. The boy hardly ate. Again, Charles wanted to find that irritating but he had to confess, it made him marvellous cheap to keep. His retainers could hardly go to it like pigs in the byre while their lord nibbled half a nut a day.

  ‘And what does he say?’

  ‘Kings cannot see men as others do. A king has no friends. A king has no allies. He has only resources. A king, a true king, cannot be a sentimental man. Your Edward of England knows this well. See how he keeps with him the sons of those he hates. Montagu, who betrayed him in what way we cannot guess, but who those of us who like a wager would say “He did travel where Edward emerged, the route of his mother’s skirts.”. Mortimer, grievous killer of his father, tyrant who stole Edward’s royal power. And yet there is his grandson as part of Edward’s garter knights. There, I think to myself, is a wise king.’

  Charles licked at a kipper. If he tasted it on one side of his mouth – the feline – it was delicious. When the taste moved to the other, however, he found he did not care for kippers.

  ‘A wise king to reward treachery?’

  ‘No. Do you know the game of Tarot?’

  ‘I have seen it played. It is new, is it not?’

  ‘Quite. And yet fascinating. When one has in one’s hand the trump of the Moon, one does not say: “How now, Moon? The last game you were in my enemy’s hand and quite undid me, when you shone your light on my poor Hermit and sent him from the game. I do not forgive so quick. I shall not use you. Get away!”’

  ‘I am at a loss to your point, My Prince.’

  ‘How many able men does my father have around him?’

  ‘Few. He prefers fools.’

  ‘Not quite. Does he not know the worth of La Cerda?’

  ‘He knows it.’

  ‘And does he know your worth?’

  ‘I believe he does.’

  ‘Who else, then, might be constable?’

  ‘There is no lord he trusts so well as we two. Him, me or no one.’

  Now the Dauphin did lift the capon to his lips. He tore off a morsel of flesh and swallowed it.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I don’t suppose he’d opt for no one.’

  Charles looked out of the little window at the cold Norman moon – a sickle, God’s fingernail pointing down at him. He glanced at the wasp devil and did a quick calculation. La Cerda dead. The English betrayed. France saved. Him as constable. It was attractive. But surely him as king looked better.

  ‘Would that you were king, Dauphin. God saving your father’s life and all, of course.’

  ‘I will be one day. I shall tell you a secret about this land of France, if you like. It is this: The English will never be our masters. They will ruin the land, they will despoil, and they may hold large parts of our kingdom for a while but the game of it – the pushing of men as counters, of angels and devils as trumps or pyramids – that cannot be won. All the English will alter is whoever is their eventual vanquisher.’

  ‘Edward is a powerful king.’

  ‘From over the sea with an army he only half controls, hated by half the nobility of France, distrusted by a third, and relying on bowmen who one day aspire to cut his throat. Why has England declared for Satan, My Lord Navarre?’

  ‘For the devils, for the power—’

  ‘From desperation. They have declared for Satan like a shipwrecked man declares for a piece of wood that floats by. Because they can do no better. My Lord, God will rule again in this land.’

  ‘The sooner you are enthroned the better,’ said Charles.

  ‘No, that would be treason. I dread the thought of my father’s death. And yet, if the English have another Crécy, I fear his valour and his fearlessness may cost us. Only your stalwartness stands between him and defeat, cousin. I swear to the saints that, if the English could land easily here, France would be won by you in a week. My father does nothing, or nothing effective, against the roaming bands of brigands that have plagued the country since the last incursion and, were the people of Paris so provoked, they might rise up against him in hope the English king would take over and bring it to a stop.’

  Charles had to admit, there was more to this boy than perhaps met the eye. He would send the wasp devil back to England with a ‘yes’. Normandy and Navarre would stand with England. La Cerda dead, King John slain or captured, the Dauphin here in Normandy under Charles’s power. The future looked fine. He would have a mouse to celebrate. He would enjoy that, if only he could stop it crawling to the human side of his mouth.

  ‘We would not like to see Edward on the throne.’

  ‘Of course not, but I fear that with La Cerda’s counsel and my father’s inaction, that is what would happen. Unless a more able man stood in the way of the English once my father was gone. They couldn’t hold the country after Crécy. So even if they, God forbid, killed my father then they would simply create a void into which someone else would step.’

  Charles stroked his whiskers. He saw what the boy was saying. Chaos in the country; the English take Paris with the mob at their backs. Of course, no Frenchman would really stand a single summer of English domination so, with John out of the way, someone ideally placed to strike, such as Charles with his Norman armies; someone loved by the Parisians, again Charles who had brought in his sister, the white angel, and ended the Plague – that was truly what the idiots said – might throw out the English and put the Dauphin on the throne. It was good reasoning and only faulty in its last part. It wouldn’t be Charles Valois that was put on the throne but Charles of Navarre.

  ‘La Cerda is safe in Paris,’ said Charles.

  ‘Is anyone safe anywhere?’ said the Dauphin. ‘Often I wonder why someone with so many enemies isn’t simply killed.’

  ‘I would but for the repercussions.’

  ‘Really, sir, with La Cerda gone and the English at the gate, do you think my father could afford to do without you?’

  Charles smiled, wincing with pain. Yes. Yes. Why not just act directly? The pain of his splitting had made him irritable, permanently. He often felt the need to kick someone and often did. But why not kick La Cerda, and hard? Very hard.

  A young page made his way across the smoky room, bowed before the lords.

  Charles nodded to indicate he might speak.

  ‘There is someone at the gate, sir,’ he said.

  ‘There is always someone at the gate,’ said Charles. ‘That is why we have a gate. If there was no one at the gate all the time we wouldn’t need a gate and so there could never be any one at it. As it is, there is always someone there, so we put a gate there meaning there is someone always at the gate. Gates are placed, in my experience, where people tend to be “at”.’

  The boy coloured, dipped his knees.

  ‘It is a devil, sir. At least I think so.’

  ‘What makes you say so?’

  ‘He has the face of a man but maggots writhe at the back of his head.’

  ‘Not a suitable supper companion,’ said Charles. ‘If he wants work, let him see our Master of Devils.’

  That was a poor name for what they had – an eel devil from the first level – well, eel-bodied but with the head of a man and an unaccountably large genital area. Devils had been coming to the castle seeking direction sinc
e the ban of devils in France proper, and he had done his best to accommodate them. They had been a poor lot. It was said the best of the French devils were going over to England, thinking Edward the best chance of them finding employment doing God’s work. France wouldn’t have then anymore – John had dismissed all his under La Cerda’s influence.

  ‘He says he has news. News you will like to hear.’

  The Dauphin stirred the pile of sucked capon bones with his middle finger. ‘It would be good to get news. Isn’t the maggoty man Simon Pastus, late of the court? A man of good manners.’

  ‘I recall him very well,’ said Charles, ‘but keep him facing forwards. I can’t bear maggots. Well, half of me can’t. The other half finds them fascinating and I cannot deal with the headache tonight.’

  ‘You can come in,’ said the boy and, in a blink, the devil Simon Pastus stood before them – fine brocade robes, a sable muff covering his hands, bowing just low enough for a writhing maggot to appear on the top of his head.

  ‘My Lords,’ said Pastus, ‘I am here, a friend to your friends, a bane to your enemies.’

  ‘Swear before God that we can trust you,’ said Charles.

  ‘I so swear, on my allegiance to the Father of Creation.’

  ‘And which of my enemies would you be a bane to?’

  ‘Name them, Lord.’

  The king of Navarre leant forward stiffly, his movement inhibited by his corset and steel collar.

  ‘La Cerda.’

  The devil smiled, his mouth a chasm of jagged teeth.

  ‘Give me a moment to consider. Yes, I have considered. That should be eminently possible.’ Clearly this devil had lost his place at the French court and was looking to do his ambassadoring somewhere else to avoid going back to Hell. Even devils hate Hell.

  ‘He never leaves Paris,’ said the Dauphin. ‘How can you harm him, surrounded by his men, by charms and wards, protected by the great sorcerer Osbert?’

  ‘The sorcerer too. Bring him. He can undo what he did to me!’ Or die trying. Charles had long ago concluded that, had Eu wanted him split in two, he could have done it with his sword when he had the chance. The sorceror was the most likely user of sorcery. His request to have Osbert delivered to him had met with no answer.

  ‘Put it in my hands,’ said Pastus. ‘Everything can be done. The sorceror is the key? La Cerda fears that France might fall without him and worries what might happen should such a powerful servant fall into the hands of his enemies?’ He gestured to Charles.

  The Dauphin studied the devil carefully.

  ‘Do devils have agendas beyond those of their masters?’ he said.

  ‘I have no instruction from Satan,’ he said. ‘No pact has been brokered with England yet. It hardly could with Satan still locked in his own prison, unable to sign it.’

  ‘Is Satan your master? Do not devils ultimately take orders from God ?’

  ‘When God issues orders,’ said Pastus, ‘I shall be delighted to obey them. Until that time, I am left to follow his appointed lords of Hell and earth.’

  ‘Give me La Cerda,’ said Charles, ‘and I will make you my head devil. All you do approved and blessed by an anointed king. But you cannot get a French devil to him. They are all banished by France.’

  ‘He cannot banish human weakness,’ said Pastus. ‘And it is that which will deliver you La Cerda.’

  3

  The rush of nobles, secretaries, attendants, ladies-in-waiting, and even two hawk handlers leaving the hall, birds asquawk had subsided, and Isabella stood in the great hall. In front of her was a tall reliquary of gold and ruby. Alongside that, in the brown habit of a monk, sat a scribe. The hall was lit entirely by candles and was warm and stuffy enough that she felt hot even in her pauper’s gown.

  Isabella walked forward down a long, deep blue carpet to approach the scribe. As she did, she saw that what she had taken for a reliquary – a structure of gold and precious jewels – was in fact a man. He wore the white habit of the Pope but about his shoulders was a rich cloak of red velvet, trimmed with brocade; his shoes were encrusted with jewels, and he wore a golden crown on his head. As she drew nearer, she saw that he was sweating, though he drew his cloak about his shoulders. He was a brown little man, tanned by the sun, his eyes a watery blue, calm in his puffy face. Pope Innocent, that complex, practical man, Father of the Church.

  She knelt before him and he extended his hand for her to kiss the Fisherman’s Ring. As she did so, a cold tingle spread throughout her as if each hair on her body had a life of its own and was suddenly awakening, as the shoots of a flower beneath the spring sun. She had known that feeling before – as a girl before angels in her father’s court. Jegudial had made her feel like that in the Sainte-Chapelle, St Denis at the Basilica, others too.

  ‘Your Holiness.’ She said it, and she meant it. She had heard the Pope was a man of great luxury, someone who – as kings said – ‘knew how to be Pope’, with great feasts, entertainments and indulgence. Here was another son of the nobility who had stabbed and bribed his way to St Peter’s throne just to spend the Church money on living like a god on earth. And yet . . . And yet, the feeling she had, before him on her knees, was one she had only ever experienced in the presence of God’s own messengers.

  ‘My Lady,’ he said, ‘I wondered when we would be seeing you. I apologise for the heat. My doctors advise it to keep away the Pestilence. It protected Clement.’

  ‘No thing of Hell could touch you, Holy Father.’

  ‘It may be so. I have worked among the victims of this monstrosity and come to no harm. But even if I am blessed by God, my people may not be and it is wise to take precautions.’ The scribe scratched away, recording every word.

  She bowed her head further.

  ‘You have had some strange bedfellows, Queen. You have called friend those who call God their enemy.’

  She looked nervously at the scribe.

  The Pope seemed to read her thoughts.

  ‘We record everything,’ he said, ‘though it will go to the archives, not for the eyes of men. At least of these times. You have dealt with Hell ?’

  He saw her astonishment.

  ‘I . . .’

  ‘Lady, there are three angels in the chapels of this palace, unmoved by the events of Crécy field, still sparkling in our light. And there is greater than they here for those who are deemed worthy.’

  ‘Do angels reveal such things?’ In her experience she had found they talked largely gibberish.

  ‘To those who have spent generations working to understand them.’

  She prostrated herself. She had never done such a thing in her life.

  ‘I have only traded with devils, Holiness. God’s servants. I have never had commerce with the demons nor other prisoners of Hell.’

  ‘You have traded with God’s enemies. Though you do not know it. And perhaps neither do they.’

  She turned her face up to him, completely at a loss.

  ‘Satan,’ he said.

  ‘I understood he was God’s servant, His jailer who keeps the rebel Lucifer under lock and key.’

  ‘So he was. But now he seeks to open the gates of Hell for himself. He would make this world his own.’

  ‘Why does God not order him to stop?’

  The Pope’s face remained impassive.

  ‘What is the Church for?’ he said.

  ‘For . . .’ she struggled to say. The Church had been such a natural part of life that its function had not really occurred to her.

  ‘To stand between man and God,’ she said. ‘Connecting them.’

  ‘It is that,’ he said. ‘But also is it not to defend the faith?’

  ‘Yes. Of course.’

  ‘Why should it need defending? It is of God. Can God not look after His own faith?’

  Isabella said nothing. She had never thought about these things before. The Pope went on.

  ‘Why do evil men prosper? Why does this world, made by God under the will of God, contain so m
any who defy His will?’

  She kept silent still. She sensed the Pope wasn’t looking for her to answer.

  ‘I will tell you, Queen. It is because God is wounded. In the struggle with the bright angel Lucifer, all those years ago, the evil one put a sword into the Lord of all creation.’ The scribe had stopped writing. The Pope smiled. ‘God is not what He was.’

  ‘How could God, who is all-powerful, be wounded by something He made ?’

  ‘Perhaps it was His will,’ said the Pope. ‘Perhaps, He who knew everything did not know one thing. What it is to suffer. He who controls everything did not know what it was to lack control. And so He allowed it. And He allowed it again on the Cross, where He died for our sins. Why are you here, Lady?’

  ‘You do not know?’

  ‘Yes. I do. But I fear you do not.’

  Isabella’s knees were painful from kneeling for so long; she felt sick with the heat of the great room.

  ‘I want you to hear my confession. And sanction and enable a way forward.’

  The Pope waved away the scribe and she told him: the murders, the killings; the deals with devils; the corruption of an already corrupt line; how she had caused the good Montagu to be damned, but how it had all been – had she but known it – the will of God.

  The Pope thought for a time, his flabby face as still as a tomb effigy’s.

  ‘I have heard troubling things about England. The future . . .’ He waved his hand.

  Isabella bowed her head, waiting for him to finish. He sat for a long time in silence.

  Then he said, ‘The angels have long said England might prove the Church’s most troublesome child. Its kings are too much their own men. It cannot be God’s will that they thrive. And, if they are devils . . . England must be brought to the field again. The whole line smashed.’

  Innocent stood evaluating her for a long moment, deep in thought.