by Paul Doherty
Isabella listened attentively to their courtly speeches and replied in kind. Down the table the scribe’s pen scratched the parchment. I recall jumping at a harsh sound from one of the windows behind me. I glanced round and glimpsed the shape of a raven pecking at the hardened glass. Isabella smiled at this and brought her speech to a close, trailing her pretty white fingers across her forehead. My mistress then expressed her deep condolences at the death of Sir Hugh Pourte. Casales nodded.
‘Our visit,’ he smiled crookedly, ‘has been much marred by tragedy. One of my clerks, Matthew of Crokendon, was found stabbed in the Cemetery of the Innocents, no one knows by whom. He was last seen leaving a tavern with a wench, a whore, but no one can recall her.’
I set my face like flint as Casales proceeded to discuss the removal of Sir Hugh Pourte’s corpse back to England. Isabella, her features schooled, listened attentively and offered her help. Only when Master Crokendon was mentioned again did those angelically innocent blue eyes shift quickly to me, a look of mock sorrow on her face.
At the end of the meeting the scribe asked if the white wine and doucettes should be served. Isabella shook her head and rose quickly. I followed. My mind seethed like a bubbling cauldron with images of Narrow Face spitting blood, falling against the charnel house wall, and my uncle being thrust up the gallows ladder to the waiting noose. In truth I was frightened, but Isabella touched me comfortingly, a swift caress across the wrist as I followed her to the door.
‘My lady?’
Isabella turned.
‘My lady,’ Casales scraped a bow, ‘I understand from your father that you are leaving on a visit to the city.’
‘Why yes,’ Isabella replied. ‘I have several purchases to make. I need to visit the markets. I must write to my betrothed. I need certain parchments.’ She gestured at the scribe hastily collecting his pens and papers. ‘I need to go to the Rue des Ecrivains.’
‘In which case, my lady,’ Casales scraped another elegant bow, ‘may we accompany you? My lord has asked me to describe to you what I can about England, London and Westminster.’ His voice took a teasing turn, and Isabella replied in kind. Casales again expressed a wish to join us, explaining that the sudden death of his colleague Sir Hugh Pourte must be mourned but that the tasks assigned to him by the King of England had to be carried through.
Isabella could not refuse such pleasantry. She came back to the table gesturing at both men to sit, and asked the scribe to serve the wine and the plate of doucettes. Isabella was a mistress at that, skilled and adept in dealing with people. She soon drew Casales and Rossaleti into conversation about themselves, asking questions about Casales’ service in Scotland and other places. Afterwards she turned to Rossaleti, expressing her deep regret for the tragedies which had occurred in his life. Although she was only thirteen, Isabella was definitely her father’s daughter. She could, when she wished, be charming, kind, understanding, listening attentively, nodding at the appropriate places. Both men, experienced and skilled in their own affairs, chattered like children, but then, at the time, we were no different. Both my mistress and I had a great deal to learn. Only when the wine and sweet cakes were finished did Isabella point at the window, murmuring how the day was drawing and that we must leave soon. She welcomed them joining us, and a short while later we all left the palace.
It felt so strange, leaving the royal precinct, crossing the bridge into the city. Isabella and I, swathed in cloaks, rode palfreys, Casales and Rossaleti beside us. Our entire party was circled by a troop of mounted Genoese crossbowmen in their red and green livery, steel morions on their heads, their heavy arbalests strapped to their backs or hanging from saddle hooks. Heralds and trumpeters carrying their gleaming silver instruments and the blue and gold banners of the royal household went before us in their splendid tabards to keep back the crowds. The smells and the sounds of the city greeted me like a strengthening breeze, recalling all the memories of my long youth with Uncle Reginald. I tried not to reflect, even as I murmured the Requiem for him and Monsieur de Vitry. I owed both of them my life, so my deep debt to them would last for ever. Reflecting on Marigny’s speech at the banquet, I realised how both Uncle Reginald and de Vitry had surmised correctly. Anyone associated with the Templars, be he knight or hireling, had been swept up by Philip’s edict. If my uncle had not been so careful, and Monsieur de Vitry so generous, I would now be in a dungeon at the Châtelet or, perhaps, a corpse swinging on some rope from the public gallows. Such thoughts chilled me. I again vowed to act the part assigned to me: to pretend to the present, be fiercely loyal to the past and, if necessary, seize what opportunities the future offered to take justice and revenge.
I hitched my cloak closer about me, comforting myself with such thoughts, reins in one hand, the other gripping the high saddle horn. I stared out across the sea of faces: women in their veils and wimples, florid-cheeked merchants, the apple-sweet faces of children held up to see the spectacle of royalty passing, the lean white faces of cowled friars, the bleary eyes of the poor, all gathering to gape as the great ones processed into the city. Isabella whispered something to the serjeant-at-arms, the leader of our escort. The man looked surprised but shouted an order and our cavalcade swung off the main thoroughfare and down busy side streets. Houses loomed over us, their upper storeys leaning so close to each other they blocked out the sunlight. We passed darkened doorways which housed their own silent watchers, white-eyed beggars, garish whores, women with their children. Signs creaked eerily, the clatter and hubbub of the small workshops dying away as the craftsmen hurried to stare at our gorgeous procession. Only once did we stop, to allow passage to a shabby funeral procession preceded by boys swinging censers and a ragged friar holding a cross. The filth and stench of the runnels forced Isabella to use a spikenard, yet such smells, rank though they were, brought back memories of my joyful days as Uncle Reginald’s messenger in the city.
We debouched into a square where ointment- and perfume-sellers had their stalls, the sweetness of their produce doing something to mask the pungent odours of the gutters full of dirt and refuse. Across the square rose the sombre Church of the Forgotten Souls, surmounted by a dramatically carved tympanum of Christ harrowing hell. Casales and Rossaleti expressed surprise, but Isabella declared she wished to arrange masses for the soul of the dead Hugh Pourte. We entered the walled enclosure around the church. Casales said such charity wasn’t necessary but Isabella was already calling for a page to help her dismount. Escorted by two of the Genoese, we pushed open the iron-studded door and stepped into the candlelit darkness. Before us a long, ghostly nave swept up to a raised sanctuary where the high altar stood at the top of steep steps, a place of worship, of moving darkness with the sanctuary lamp gleaming like a beacon. Taper lights fluttered beneath shadow-wrapped statues. From the oratories on either side of the nave came the chanting of the requiem masses, their ghostly refrains drifting on the incense-laden air:
‘I John saw a new heaven and a new earth . . .’
‘Eternal rest grant to them, O Lord and let perpetual light shine upon them . . .’
Isabella swept down the nave towards the mercy seat, where a monk sat like the Angel of Doom behind a high table. The Genoese bowmen wandered off to view a painting near the gallery porch. Isabella paused, plucking at my cuff.
‘I come here,’ she whispered, ‘to have masses said for my murdered mother. I shall now pay for one for Hugh Pourte.’ She opened her hand to show three silver coins, ‘and one for your uncle.’ Isabella crossed herself and continued on to the mercy seat, a cushioned bench with a high back. We sat down. The monk opposite, his face half hidden by a deep hood, picked up his pen and opened the casket ledger before him. On either side of this two candles poured pools of light. The monk did not greet us, but immediately consulted the calendar of saints and inscribed the three masses for the names Isabella whispered. She was careful about my uncle, only whispering, ‘Lord Reginald.’ The monk murmured in reply, arranging the masses for certain da
ys, and indicating in which of the oratories they would be celebrated. Isabella took little note of this; we would never be able to attend them. In a whisper that monk of death, the Recorder of Forgotten Souls, provided other details, talking softly to us as if he was delivering absolution for our sins.
I became distracted by the arras hung over the screen behind the monk, its scenes brought to life by the glowing candles. The arras proclaimed a vision of purgatory, with souls in every posture of physical torture, suspended by meat hooks driven through their jaws, tongues and groins frozen hard in ice or boiling in bubbling vats of liquid metal like fish in hot oil. A clever device! It must have forced all visitors to this church to concentrate on the Last Four Things, their own meeting with death and what secret sins they were guilty of. The painting showed how the promiscuous had fire burning between their legs whilst drunkards were forced to drink scalding vermin. It did make me wonder about the love of Jesus and the fate of Uncle Reginald. Such a man, surely, had suffered all his purgatory in the dungeons of the Châtelet. And, if Christ was good and God was compassionate, Lord Reginald would be welcomed into paradise without suffering such pains.
Abruptly the murmured conversation between Isabella and the monk changed. Isabella was leaning over the table, speaking in Navarrese, a tongue she’d learnt from her mother and one she lapsed into whenever she was troubled or agitated. She was pushing across a second purse. The monk swiftly took this and handed over small pouches which disappeared into the voluminous pockets of Isabella’s robe. Again the monk spoke, this time not in whispered French but harsh Navarrese. Isabella replied just as quickly. I caught the phrase ‘Frater Marco’. The monk sketched a blessing. Isabella rose, bowed to the high altar and left.
We were halfway down the nave when Isabella paused. She pointed up to the hammer-beamed roof where the artist had fixed roundels depicting the serene faces of angels. She acted as if she was describing them to me.
‘Brother Marco is a Crutched Friar,’ she murmured. ‘He was once a member of my mother’s household. He too knows the God-given truth about the past. He is also a herbalist, a skilled one; he gives me certain powders.’
I caught my breath as Isabella’s strange blue eyes glanced sideways at me. ‘Poor Mother was tended to by three of my father’s physicians. Mathilde, I know the truth.’ Her voice grew fierce. ‘In the last two years all three have died with the cramps, a seizure or,’ she pulled a face, ‘something else?’ She hastily made the sign of the cross. ‘No one,’ she hissed, ‘will pray for their souls.’
‘And the fresh powders?’
‘Mathilde, Mathilde, we may not go to England. If not,’ she glared at me, ‘what protection do I have?’ She left the words hanging like a threat. She called out to the Genoese, and we left the church. Casales and Rossaleti helped us mount and we rode out of the enclosure. The Rue des Ecrivains was close by, a broad alleyway where the sellers of unscrubbed and untreated vellum, ink powders, pumice stones, leather bindings, seals and wax had their stalls and shops. A cluster of colourfully scrolled signs proclaimed the different merchandise available. A noisy, merry place thronged by scholars from the halls garbed in all kinds of tawdry finery, short cote-hardies, ragged cloaks, with cheap jewellery glittering on their fingers and wrists. The scholars jostled busily with apprentices in their sombre fustian. Street-walkers and whores lurked at the corners of alleyways and in doorways, waiting sly-eyed for custom.
Isabella’s arrival caused the entire street to be cleared. We stabled our horses in the courtyard of a spacious tavern, and Isabella busied herself as I slipped further down the street on the pretence of doing some errand. I found the sign of Ananias, hurried down the runnel beside it and up the rickety outside staircase, and knocked at the door at the top. Footsteps sounded, followed by the noise of chains being released and bolts being drawn. The door swung open, and a dwarf, garbed in dark brown, glared up at me, his small villainous face shrouded by a close-fitting hood. He reminded me of some malignant goblin.
‘Your business?’ his voice squeaked. He forced a smile at the coin I held up and waved me in. The chamber was strange, almost ghostly. It had been stripped of everything except a few items: a stool, a table and a bed with a straw mattress beneath a crucifix. It was clean and sweetly smelling. I brushed by the dwarf and walked into the centre of the room. Despite the grey chill outside, the chamber was warm and welcoming. I felt something strange even then, a presence pleasing to me. I walked over to the table and stared down at the circled imprints on the two sides and the one in the middle. Had this served as an altar? Was the man sheltering here a priest? But why celebrate the mass in a garret when there were churches on every corner? I wondered who he could be. I recalled the man I’d glimpsed in the Oriflamme, the one with the far-seeing gaze. He had been studying me but had then disappeared. A coincidence? A figment of my fevered mind? One of the Secreti following me through Paris? But why had be been looking at me so sadly? And why disappear?
‘He’s gone!’
I turned. The dwarf was staring greedily at the coin, one hand on the rough handle of the knife pushed into the shabby leather belt about his waist.
‘I mean no harm,’ I replied, walking back to stand over him. ‘I have men outside.’ The hand fell away, and I crouched down. ‘Who was here?’
‘A stranger, hair all shorn,’ the dwarf gabbled. ‘Solitary, close-faced, he hired this from the master, he came then he went, perhaps a scholar?’ He spread his hands. ‘He paid his rent and, three days ago, packed his panniers.’ He pointed to the wooden spigots driven into the wall. ‘Then he left.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t know who he was, why he left or where he’s gone.’
I handed the coin over and rejoined the princess’ party reassembling in the tavern courtyard. Isabella summoned me over to show a quiver of pens and some costly parchments she had purchased. As I examined these, I murmured what had happened. Isabella looked surprised, but shrugged and moved away to converse with Rossaleti. A short while later we left the city streets as the church bells rang for afternoon prayer. The bright, cold sunlight was quickly fading and the freezing air made us move briskly through the noisy streets. We crossed the river bridge, making our way through the mist-strewn parkland which surrounded the palace. Casales and Rossaleti, who had been describing to us the glories of Westminster, now moved to the front gossiping together, letting their horses find their way.
I glimpsed the black shapes flittering between the trees and bushes alongside the track-way just before the crossbow bolts tore through the air. One of the heralds screamed as a quarrel bit into his arm. Another volley clattered before we recovered and the black-garbed figures, swords drawn, swirled out of the trees. Their intended quarry seemed to be Casales, whose horse reared in fright, but that one-handed knight was a killer born and bred. He drew his sword in a flash of silver, turning his horse to meet his opponents, striking skilfully to the left and to the right. Our startled escorts recovered their wits and hastened to help, as did Rossaleti, driving his horse forward to protect Casales’ back. Our attackers faded away as quickly as they’d arrived, black figures fleeing like demons at the appearance of the Holy Rood. The serjeants-at-arms shouted for order, forbidding any pursuit, which would have been fruitless amongst close-packed trees with the mist thickening and the daylight fading. Casales and Rossaleti dismounted and turned over the corpses of four of their attackers. I urged my horse forward as Casales removed the hood and mask of one of the surviving assailants, who had received an ugly sword wound to the side of his neck. He was young, his unshaven face a tapestry of bruises and scars; some footpad from the slums. Rossaleti questioned him, but the man’s lips only bubbled blood, so the clerk, losing patience, drew his dagger and cut his throat.
He and Casales remounted. I remember Casales’ apparent fury at how such an attack, so close to the royal palace, had been aimed at him. No one dared to protest. Instead the Genoese lashed the feet of the dead attackers and dragged them behind us as we continued int
o the palace. The alarm was raised, and even the king and his coven of ministers hastened down to the courtyard. Casales kept his voice low, but from his face and the way Marigny and Nogaret were nodding their heads, he was developing his tale that Pourte’s death might also have been caused by the coven which had attacked us. King Philip himself examined the corpses before ordering them to be stripped, disfigured and gibbeted on the great gallows outside the palace gates.
Chapter 5
The Care of this wicked race is blind.
‘A Song of the Times’, 1272-1307
Isabella and I had little time to reflect or discuss what had happened. In preparation for her possible departure for England, the princess’s household had expanded to include more servants. Many of these I simply cannot remember. Reflecting on the past is like standing at the mouth of an alleyway eagerly waiting for someone, or something, to appear. You are aware of many others but your soul, your heart, your eyes search only for what you want. So it was with the people about the princess, porters, maids, soldiers, retainers. Moreover, I always avoided them, remembering the power of the Secreti as well as the popular adage that Judas always has a smiling face and kissing lips. I could trust no one.
On that same evening of our return from the city, both Isabella and I were summoned to the tribunal chamber where King Philip sat enthroned behind an oval oaken table. The king was dressed in a blue robe or coat emblazoned with golden lilies, a relic of St Louis hanging on a chain around his neck, fingers brilliantly decorated with precious rings. On either side sat Marigny and Nogaret, garbed in black like crows. Behind the king hung an exquisitely embroidered arras demonstrating how his great ancestor St Louis approached the port of Damietta, a vigorous, striking picture of armoured knights on snorting destriers beneath gorgeous banners. In the background was a pure blue sea, and guiding it all, the Holy Spirit in the form of a snow-white dove with eyes of amethyst and wings edged with gold. The Holy Spirit, however, did not hover close in that council chamber. King Philip was seething with anger (though he could dissemble with the best) after his confrontation with Casales, his icy-blue eyes hard as glass. He kept tapping the table, head slightly cocked as if listening to the crackling from the braziers. Knight bannerets stood around dressed in royal livery, their hands resting on their swords. One, however, his sword-belt between his feet, sat on a stool to Marigny’s right, a handsome-faced man with oiled black hair, neat beard and moustache. In looks he reminded me of Rossaleti. He sat slightly forward, smiling at the princess. The more I stared, the more certain I became that I had met him before.