Son of the Night

by Mark Alder

  ‘God bless you, sir.’

  ‘And you. Recommend me to the masters of your Third Estate and tell them they always have a friend in Navarre!’

  He took the belt and passed it to Sangiz.

  ‘Ride beside me, Sangiz,’ he said.

  The knight, almost boiling with rage, did as he was bid and the procession turned towards the Louvre.

  ‘Pay it no mind,’ said Navarre. ‘In five years we’ll have recovered from the Plague. There will be leatherworkers aplenty and I promise you, I’ll have you a belt made from his hide.’

  ‘It’s not right to yield to such low men.’

  ‘Did you have poachers on any of your estates?’

  ‘We did.’

  ‘And how did they trap a boar? Did they fly through the woods as we do, shouting and hooraying, chasing their hounds?’

  ‘They would have been hanged if they had.’

  ‘Then how ?’

  ‘They dug a pit near its common places of forage and covered it with thin branches and soil. Then they baited it with acorns and waited.’

  ‘And did not those branches yield to the boar’s foot? Yet it was not much good for the boar. We yield a little, sir, only to increase the force of the fall. We take what allies we can while we must. When the wind changes, so does the setting of the sail.’

  At the Louvre, his banners were not flying. Well, he would hardly expect that.

  He strode as best he could up the steps to the Louvre. God’s balls, he hoped that sorcerer was going to be in the palace. He’d have him working day and night to put right the harm he had done.

  Trumpets sounded, drums were beaten. The king’s guard were out in force.

  ‘If it looks like trouble . . .’ said Charles.

  ‘Oh, it looks like trouble,’ said Philip.

  ‘If it—’

  ‘If it looks like trouble, brother, we are sarded. Up the rear with a red-hot poker the way old English Edward went.’

  ‘Come in and get me,’ he said.

  ‘Well, I’ll try. Shouldn’t I come with you?’

  ‘He won’t murder me in the palace,’ said Charles. ‘His wife doesn’t like the sight of blood. Well, the last one didn’t, and I don’t suppose the latest is much different.’

  Such a familiar place – the mosaics of unicorns, the gold and the blue of the halls. Already he saw that he was accompanied by armed men, though only in the style of an honour guard. He hoped to God that the Dauphin had done his job for him.

  He paused at the door of the throne room. The air was thick with incense. He was announced: ‘Devil, traitor and servant of evil, Charles the Bad of Navarre.’ Not promising.

  He stepped forward to go inside but found he could not cross the threshold. Through the smoky air, he could make out King John and the Dauphin at the other end of the throne room. John made an impatient gesture with his hand and a servant came to the door. He took down a plaque that was hanging there. Relief swept over Charles. A magic symbol. A name of God? That sorcerer, he was sure.

  Charles walked in and bowed to the king. John stood, furious.

  ‘I commend you on your bravery on coming here, cousin, and on nothing else. Is it true what they say you have done?’

  ‘True as you like,’ said Charles. ‘Yes, I butchered him with my own fair paw. Swack, snick, tick, scritch, scratch!’ He illustrated by waving his paw about, its long claws exposed.

  John shook his head.

  ‘For what ?’

  ‘For leading you astray, cousin. Listen to me carefully. Your realm is in peril. Bandits roam the land, killing what the Plague left. The English gather on their shores waiting to invade, their armies bolstered by devils who accept Edward as king of France, who will fight against your men. The only thing that has stopped the Luciferian heresy spreading through every town and farm is the number of dead in the Plague. You need to impose yourself on the land. You need to wipe away the English bandits, summon men to defeat the English when they come.’

  John snorted.

  ‘What do you know?’

  ‘I know more than La Cerda and that is why he had to die. Why do you not come forward like a lion to save your realm? Why hide here like a sheep?’

  Charles enjoyed the force of his words. This idiot would not dare harm him and would bend to his will.

  John stiffened.

  ‘He said that if we endured God’s wrath, that if we took our punishment in all humility and contrition, then the angels would return.’

  ‘So where are they?’

  ‘I will lock you away for this. You were my special delight as a child but I saw in you things you didn’t even see in yourself. You turned bitter and ambitious. Men, take him to Le Châtelet.’ Charles shrugged.

  ‘As you wish, cousin. But how am I to help you, then? You are to need my help, I take it. The English are currently sailing for the Norman coast. My men will naturally oppose them vigorously. However, when it is learned – as it is always learned, as it must be learned if I am to be made an example of – that you have imprisoned me or killed me, then they may well be inclined to side with the English. What say you, cousin?’

  He extended his hand to the Dauphin.

  Now the boy stood.

  ‘I would do what I can for you, cousin, for all the help you have rendered me,’ he said. ‘I have cried salt tears over your fate but I can see no way round it. You have killed a constable of France.’

  Charles bristled.

  ‘Explain to your father clearly what happens if harm befalls me.’

  The Dauphin addressed the king.

  ‘Sire, if Navarre is allowed to advise you then we are secure from the west and the English cannot dare face us without his support. They cannot rely on their devils once they see your banners in the field. They may well bow down and accept your God appointedright, even turn to side with you. They need Navarre.’

  Navarre bowed deeply.

  ‘Furthermore,’ said the Dauphin, You require good advice. Navarre is full of it.’

  ‘I brim!’ said Navarre.

  The Dauphin bowed to him. Navarre did not like this. There was something in the boy’s manner. A regret? No. Something. Navarre sensed a ‘but’ coming, and one he thought he might not much like.

  ‘But,’ said the Dauphin, ‘all this is by the by.’

  ‘By the what?’ said Navarre.

  The Dauphin gestured to the throne. Charles had taken very little notice of the veiled figure sitting beside John. He had thought it was a handmaiden or a maid, some low woman brought in because the Plague had killed anyone of better breeding. But now he saw by her bearing that this was a very different kind of woman indeed. She stood tall, possessing the room.

  She drew back her veil. My God, it was his aunt Isabella! ‘France is the domain of God, not devils. I have defeated one English army and can defeat another.’ She removed the veil to reveal a five pointed crown, each point tipped with a brilliant diamond. The light in the room grew fine and bright, like a snow field in the sun.

  ‘The angels are back in France. England will fall and a true line take its place. I’m sorry, little Charles, but there is no place for fiends like you in this bright future,’ she said.

  ‘I am a king!’

  ‘Half of you is,’ she said. ‘The other half is a cat. And, like a cat, it shall be put out!’

  ‘I have shown you what he is, father,’ said the Dauphin. ‘Now act upon it putting all sentiment aside.’

  ‘Remove him,’ said King John.

  ‘You have betrayed me,’ said Charles.

  ‘Those who deal in betrayal are paid in the same coin,’ said the Dauphin. ‘Eu wa a noble man. In one strike I avenge him on you and the English.’

  Charles tried to run, tried to draw his sword, then tried to struggle as strong hands gripped him but it was no good. He heard the angel’s name ‘Jophiel’ and his limbs would not do as they were bid.

  ‘This is God’s day,’ said King John. ‘Through Isabella, we will
restore his order on earth and vanquish the line of devils that have stolen the English throne!’

  10

  Philippa looked out over the Pale of Calais from the high watchtower, out over the road through the marshes. A camp had sprung up there, refugees from the Plague and from the routiers – the gangs of unemployed English soldiers who had been ravaging the French countryside since the truce imposed on England and France by the pestilence. A swarm of ympes – the tiny demons of the Luciferians – turned and wheeled above the throng; for what? For joy? Or were they, like she, just trying to work out how best to help these poor people?

  Edward was beside her. Since Normandy, he would not let her from his side.

  ‘You persuaded the angels away,’ he said. ‘By your holiness, outweighing my corruption, you saved England.’

  Philippa felt sick. She did not know what she had done. In truth, she had panicked and simply prayed by instinct. ‘This was always known,’ said Edward. ‘Now I see the wisdom of the old King Philip who took lame Joan for queen of France. Her piety was his protection and so yours is mine and, through me, England’s.’

  Edward scared Joan now. She had borne him so many children, and yet he was becoming someone she didn’t know – feverish, angry. His moods were dark and he sometimes was full of regret. ‘If we had not declared for Satan, the angels would still be with us.’

  ‘It is not too late to renounce,’ she said. He squeezed her hand.

  ‘Satan is of God. When Lucifer rose up against Him, God threw Lucifer down and put Satan as jailer of the Pit. He is His most trusted servant and, through Satan, we serve God.’

  ‘As you are my king, and my husband, appointed by God as my master, I believe you.’ She had to. The alternative? Madness.

  Whatever Edward’s mood, he needed her. She would use that to her advantage if she could.

  ‘Can we not let these poor people in, my love?’

  Edward laughed, too hard for her liking. ‘Well, we wouldn’t have gone to all the bother of driving them out if we were going to do that.’

  ‘These are not the people of Calais. They’ve come from further afield.’

  ‘They should stay where they are. Half of them are serfs and you can bet what you like that they have no permission from their masters to move. It’s unnatural that they should be here.’

  ‘Yet they are here. And in part because of us.’

  ‘Nothing to do with me!’

  ‘It is our men who ravage the country.’

  ‘Not on my orders,’ said Edward. ‘I brought them here to take France and to hold it. If God does not provide enough work for them at home and the Plague means there is no war for them here, what are they to do? You cannot control it and I will not share what I have won. These are the poor, are they not? Let the Luciferians look after them.’

  ‘They are starving themselves from what I hear. Could you not at least send them some bread?’

  ‘I can do that. Though you are too soft.’

  A page came up on to the roof of the tower, bowing deeply and going down on bended knee. He bore in his hand a note.

  ‘You read it, Philippa,’ said Edward. ‘You know how I struggle.’

  She took it.

  ‘The Luciferians want a conference with you.’

  ‘Do they? Tell them to whistle for it.’

  She looked at him oddly. ‘I thought we were here to gain Luciferian support ?’

  He waved the page away.

  ‘My love, we are here to strike when Philip marches south to meet the Black Prince. Our army will attack his undefended rear at Paris.’

  ‘You will never hold it.’

  ‘The people of that city bear him no love. With encouragement and a little chastisement, they will recognise me.’

  Philippa studied the note.

  ‘The note bears a mark. What do you make of that? I haven’t seen that in years.’

  There was a seal on the note showing two knights on a single horse. The Templars. They’d been put down years ago by the last of the Capetians, their castles given away, their lands sold. She passed the note to him.

  Edward studied the seal. He passed it back. ‘Read it.’

  ‘They want to meet you.’

  ‘Where ?’

  ‘At Fort Nieully.’

  The Luciferian headquarters. She shivered. It was a den of thieves and murderers, she was sure.

  ‘Does he think I come crawling like a dog?’ said Edward. ‘If the Templar wants to meet me, he can come here.’

  ‘What Templar ?’

  ‘He is a man, a useful man, I once knew. Page, send back and tell him the king of England does not come running on the command of a beggar. I have fulfilled my bargain and given them their stinking Eden, for what it’s worth. I have no more need to deal with him.’

  The page scampered away.

  They spent the day walking the city, taking Mass at Notre Dame, visiting the fort that Edward had built to stop supplies getting in to Calais by sea during the siege, dining in the warm open air by the riverbank, the courtiers sprawled out beside them. This was a rich court now, dressed in all the glory of the plunder of France, their raids into the surrounding lands, and not least that they had from Calais itself. In their russets, greens, reds and golds the courtiers reminded Philippa of leaves spread out on the riverbank, the fall of an exquisite autumn.

  It was here that the page returned, quaking. Another note, clearly intended for a king because it bore no words to tax his reading. On it were simply scrawled images of three keys and the words “Hell is ours”.’

  Edward’s eyes widened.

  ‘With me!’ he shouted. ‘With me.’

  Every man of the court, and some women too, fell in behind him as he raced from the riverbank. Philippa’s heart leapt. She had no good presentiment about this at all. She chased the throng through the streets of the town, shoving through the barricades that separated the Luciferian quarter from Edward’s part.

  The guards had been told to let them pass, evidently, because they had no problem getting through – a relief, for Philippa well knew that anyone trying to deny her husband in that mood was likely to end up dead on the cobbles.

  Over the filth and the muck, lifting her skirts to keep them above the shit. Already this once prosperous side of town was turning into a slum – the commoners completely unable to keep any standards of decency.

  The fort lay by the side of the Strait of Dover, a low affair that seemed to peer across the water like the brow of an angry giant.

  Edward ignored the guards and strode straight in, ducking as he descended the stairs. His men tried to follow him but he barked at them to stay at the entrance and watch for trouble.

  ‘Philippa – with me. Only Philippa.’

  She followed him down. It was a dark and dingy place, a true military emplacement designed to hide crossbowmen and archers, to resist the hardest of gunstones or trebuchet attack. Inside its narrow corridors, picked out by torchlight, she saw the threepronged fork of Lucifer daubed on the walls. It made her shiver.

  ‘Jacques Bonhomme! Jacques the Good. Where are you?’ Edward was calling out.

  ‘This way.’ A man with a torch met them.

  Finally, Edward entered a mean and small inner room lit by a weak, fishy candle. At a table made of two upturned baskets and a plank sat a figure in a torn tunic, hose that were darned beyond guessing what the original colour had been. Two flags were behind him. One bore the image of a sun – the sign of the Free Legion of the Dawn Light, an irregular force of freed souls. The other bore the sign of an open hand. Some other hastily cobbled together band of refugees from the torments of Hell, no doubt.

  ‘Jacques,’ said Edward, almost with familiarity.

  ‘Edward,’ said the man. He did not bow but met Edward’s eyes squarely. ‘It would be best if this were a private meeting.’

  ‘You may speak to my wife as if you were speaking to me.’

  Jacques pursed his lips, a southerner’s ‘
as you like it’ expression. ‘André,’ he said to the man with the torch, ‘please close the door.’ The man did as he was bid.

  ‘We have a mutual problem,’ said Jacques.

  ‘Which is ?’

  ‘We both need access to Hell.’

  ‘It seems you do well enough,’ said Philippa, nodding to the banner.

  ‘Indeed. But you know such demons as we have at our disposal are won hard, by bargaining and by deceit. We pull them through the cracks in the walls of Hell, bribe the devils at a postern gate.’

  ‘I hear you have a key to the first level.’

  ‘We now have the keys to the first three levels, though we fear to use them. Open the big gates for too long and, though our friends emerge, so do our enemies. On balance we have restrained ourselves.’

  ‘Wise,’ said Edward.

  ‘Yes. But the time for wisdom is over. I am willing to do you a deal. Not even a deal. I am willing to make you a gift.’

  ‘What sort of gift?’

  ‘You have declared for Satan. The English race faces extermination if Isabella can persuade her angels to fight.’

  ‘She will persuade them,’ said Edward. ‘Persuasion is her art.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘So ?’

  ‘I offer you the greatest aid any king has ever had. I will help you call and bind Satan to your will.’

  ‘He cannot defeat angels!’

  ‘Can’t he? He keeps the brightest angel of all locked in a prison. He keeps Lucifer in Hell. I would suggest the angels your mother can employ are of lesser strength entirely.’

  ‘You cannot be bound to Satan!’ said Philippa. ‘It is one thing to invoke him, to use his devils, but to be bound entirely!’

  ‘You will not be bound. You will do the binding. I have in my possession certain items. The Crown of Thorns. The lance that pierced Christ Lucifer’s side. At a certain monastery I know there is a piece of the True Cross. All these things were made by God and pierced the greatest angel’s flesh. They are holy to God, invested with His power. We will use them to bind Satan. Or you will. The whole armies of Hell will be at your disposal, not the mere stragglers you have now.’