Mathilde 01 - The Cup of Ghosts

by Paul Doherty

  We left just after dawn the following day, a bitterly frosty morning, the ground slippery underfoot. Ap Ythel came armed except for his helmet. Beneath his hooded cloak he wore a war-belt with sword and dagger and carried an arbalest, the pouch of bolts fastened to his belt. I’d taken a dagger, pushing it into the sheath on my waistband. Sandewic himself let us out from the postern gate and we made our way out of the Tower, through stinking, needle-thin alleyways and on to the broad thoroughfare leading into the city. I was determined to visit Seething Lane and discover who that mysterious person was and if he could help in our present sea of troubles. The Welshman whispered that we could always take a barge from the quayside, but I had not forgotten Paris and did not wish to go swimming again.

  Chapter 10

  Those who were once very powerful

  now fall by the sword.

  ‘A Song of the Times’, 1272-1307

  We made good progress. The frost had hardened the slime and mud on the cobbles whilst the sewer channels, which cut like ribbons down the street, were thickly frozen. The city bells were ringing for prime but the market horns had yet to herald the start of trading so the shops and stalls remained shuttered. Lanterns and candles glowed at windows. The different-coloured signs creaked in the morning breeze. It was so reminiscent of Paris: the smells, that feeling of expectancy before the day begins. The wards’ scavengers and rakers were out to clear away the refuse, their great carts moving slowly down the street under banners hung out in preparation for the coronation. Dogs barked and yelped. City bailiffs, in the blue and mustard livery of the corporation, were busy stalking a pig caught wandering from its yard, a strict violation of civic ordinances. Other officials, armed with staves and halberds, were collecting the nightwalkers, strumpets, drunkards and other violators of the curfew, marshalling them into line, fettering their hands before herding them up to Cheapside and the great prison cage on top of the conduit. Beggars shivered on corners. Luckless whores called out vainly from darkened doorways or the mouths of runnels. Fritterers, the sellers of second-hand clothing, were already laying out their makeshift stalls, trying to attract the attention of workmen in their shabby cloaks and hures, caps of shaggy fustian, who were making their way noisily across the cobbles in their wooden pattens shod with iron against the slime-strewn ice.

  I had told Ap Ythel where we were going. He knew the city well and advised me to stay on the broad thoroughfares and not become lost in the alleys and runnels, the haunt and hunting ground of rifflers, battlers and other violent felons. We hurried up Cornhill then into Cheapside, which was fairly deserted except for the noisy prison cage. In the stocks a hapless baker sat fastened, shivering despite the pan of charcoal pushed beneath his legs by his anxious family. The placard round his neck warned against such tradesmen putting tablets of iron in their loaves to weigh them more heavily. On one occasion I became breathless and unsteady on my feet, my wits playing tricks on me. I felt, for a heartbeat, that I was not in London but Paris, hurrying through the alleys on some errand for Uncle Reginald. Ap Ythel noticed this and insisted we stop at a cookshop which had opened early to attract workmen with the sweet smell of its baked bread and tasty pies.

  We broke our fast with pots of musty ale. Sitting on a bench outside the shop, I glanced back the way we had come, searching for any sign of pursuit. I could see none, though Ap Ythel had also grown uneasy. He did not question me on what I was doing; Sandewic’s word was good enough for him, but he too kept staring back. On one occasion he rose, feet bestriding the frozen sewer channel, gazing narrow-eyed back up Cheapside. He muttered something in Welsh, but when I questioned him he shook his head, drained the ale pot and said we should move on.

  We hurried along, past gloomy Newgate and into the alleyways round St Paul’s. I stopped to admire its weathercock, a huge eagle, its outstretched wings carved out of copper, or so Ap Ythel told me. The Welshman, however, insisted that I did not tarry long, explaining that the cemetery around St Paul’s was the haunt of outlaws and sanctuary men. We reached Seething Lane, a dark tunnel snaking between shabby, overhanging houses, deserted except for wandering cats, their hideous squalling echoing along the street. As in Paris, the shop, beneath the sign of the Palfrey, was much decayed, a tawdry store house with peeling paint and oiled paper covering the windows. It stood on a corner of an alleyway with outside steps along the side, a place a fugitive could easily flee from. I told Ap Ythel to wait and watch. As I went up the outside steps, they creaked ominously, proclaiming my approach. I reached the top; the door was off the latch and I pushed it open. Inside, a heavy drape billowed out, catching me in its folds. I extricated myself and stepped into the chamber, a twilight place of moving shapes. No candlelight glowed yet the air smelt of wax and incense. I glanced at the bed; its coverlet was neatly pulled up. In the centre of the room stood a table with a white cloth, a silver paten from an altar and two small candlesticks. As I stepped closer, an arm circled my neck, the point of a dagger pricked my cheek.

  ‘Pax et bonum,’ the voice whispered. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Mathilde de Clairebon.’

  ‘The truth, Mathilde de Ferrers!’

  ‘Mathilde de Ferrers,’ I confessed.

  ‘Niece of Sir Reginald de Deyncourt?’

  ‘True.’

  ‘What rank did he hold?’

  I replied. The questions continued thick and fast like a hail of arrows. I was not frightened, the grip was not tight and I recognised that same voice, loud and clear, echoing up the gloomy steps of the infirmary of St Augustine’s Priory. The man released his arm.

  ‘Tell your escort you are safe.’

  I hastened to obey, my belly tingling with excitement. When I returned to the chamber the candles were relit and the stranger, dressed in dark fustian, a stole around his neck, a maniple over his arm, was continuing with the mass he had been celebrating. He stood at the table, head bowed, reading the canon of the mass from the small breviary open on its stand. He held up the unleavened bread, a circular white wafer, and breathed over it the words of consecration, then took the pewter cup and consecrated the wine. I knelt before the table and studied this strange priest. He was a youngish man, slender, about two yards in height. He had a long, rather severe face, slightly sallow; his nose was straight, his lips full, the mouth marked by laughter lines which also creased the most beautiful grey eyes. He had black hair, flecked with grey, parted down the middle. When I first saw him in the Oriflamme tavern in Paris it had been shorter, but now it fell below his ears. High cheekbones gave him that severe, rather ascetic look, yet when he gazed at me, those eyes would crinkle in amusement. He offered me the Eucharist, long, slender fingers holding part of the host, followed by a sip from the chalice, Christ’s blood in a pewter cup. After the ‘Ite Missa Est’, he quickly cleared the altar, placing the sacred vessels in bulging leather panniers. He plucked his cloak from a peg on the door, and also took down a thick, heavy war-belt with its sword and dagger scabbards. He looped this over his shoulder, glanced quickly round the room and came to stand over me.

  Ah, sweet Jesu, the memory is as clear as yesterday. He was dressed in a cote-hardie with dark blue leggings of the same colour; his boots, slightly scuffed, were tight-fitting. He smelt fragrantly of mint and groundnut. He just stared at me. I gazed back. God and all his saints help me, I loved him then. There you have it! After Uncle Reginald, Bertrand Demontaigu was the only man I ever truly loved! You’ll dismiss such a tale as the embroidering of troubadours. Do so! I tell the truth. You might, you can, fall in love in a few heartbeats and only later become aware of it. On such occasions the heart doesn’t beat faster or the blood surge more strongly. I only experienced a deep peace, a desire to be close to him, to look, to talk, to touch. The schoolmen, when they describe the soul, talk as if it is contained within the flesh. Who says? Why cannot the flesh be contained within the soul and why cannot souls kiss and merge, become one when they meet? The minstrels sing a song, I forget the words, about how our souls are
like unfinished mosaics; by themselves they are incomplete, but when they meet the other, they attain a rich fullness all of their own. Bertrand Demontaigu was mine. If he is in hell and I am with him, I shall be in heaven, and my heaven without him would be hell enough. If I close my tired old eyes he is there, serene, calm-faced, with that slightly lopsided smile, and those eyes, full of humour and rich in love, gaze on me. If I sleep he comes; even in the morning, just as I awake, he is always there. I can go through the busy cloisters, I catch a flash of colour. Is that him? On that freezing February morning, so many years ago, he touched my face as he did my soul.

  ‘Mathilde, little one, we must go. Your arrival may bring great danger. The Noctales might have followed you.’

  ‘The who?’

  He touched my cheek again. ‘Never mind, we must leave.’

  ‘I have an escort, Ap Ythel, he’s—’

  ‘Leave him,’ Demontaigu replied, stretching out his hand. ‘I am Bertrand Demontaigu, you’ll be safe with me.’

  I clasped his hand.

  ‘Ap Ythel will be safe too, they’re not hunting him. They’ll leave him alone once they have this house surrounded.’

  ‘But I saw no one.’

  ‘Of course you didn’t, you never do.’

  He took me on to the stairwell. I never questioned, I never wondered. I followed him out through a narrow door and down a makeshift ladder into the street. He moved purposefully. We left the foul alley, turned a corner, and a figure, cowled like a monk, slid out of an alcove about two yards ahead of us. Demontaigu pushed me back, dropped the panniers and drew his sword and dagger. His opponent lunged but Demontaigu parried the blow from the long Welsh stabbing dagger. Our attacker, face hidden, crouched in the stance of a street fighter, stabbing dagger in one hand, poignard in the other. Both men closed and clashed, stamping their feet in a silvery clatter of steel. Demontaigu abruptly broke free but, instead of stepping back, lunged swiftly, driving his sword deep into his opponent’s belly. The assassin collapsed, spitting blood.

  Footsteps echoed, a horn blew. We fled on down alleyways and runnels. Demontaigu, hindered by the heavy saddlebags, dragged me by the hand. I stopped, rucked up my skirt and grabbed one of the panniers. Demontaigu, drenched in sweat, clasped my hand and we ran on, a deadly, fiercesome flight through the needle-thin runnels of London, shabby, filthy places, the ground choked with stinking offal and every type of rubbish. Dark shapes clustered like wraiths in doorways and alley mouths. Whores, faces painted chalk-white under dyed red hair, glared at us; beggars, filthy and crippled, waved their clack dishes; thin-ribbed yellow dogs snarled at us; naked children scattered at our approach. Refuse was hurled at us from windows and doorways. We twisted and turned like hares, going deeper into the slums around Whitefriars, London’s hell on earth, with its decaying houses and hordes of evil ones. They did not hinder us; they believed we were felons fleeing from the law, whilst Demontaigu’s sword-belt warned them off.

  Eventually I could run no further. My body was clammy with sweat, pain shot through my side, my legs and feet ached heavy as lead, my eyes were cloudy with tears. We turned down a track-way. Demontaigu pulled me through a rotting lych-gate into an overgrown cemetery of crumbling crosses and tangled undergrowth. We raced up towards the chapel door. Demontaigu kicked it open and we threw ourselves into the mildewed porch, taking shelter in a recess near the devil’s door. We crouched between the baptismal font and the wall, fighting for breath, wiping the sweat from our faces. Demontaigu remained tense, straining like a lurcher for any sign of pursuit. At first he just sat sprawled, legs out, head down. I recovered first, my life-breath slowing. I stared at the crude drawings on the walls, a popular fresco to instruct the faithful about the ladder of salvation to the other world. I remember that so clearly; it suited my own mood after such a furious flight. In the righthand corner of the picture stood Eden’s tree of knowledge with the serpent wound about. Above this a bridge of spikes across which cheating tradesmen were being shepherded by a cohort of demons. Below that a usurer being tortured by fire. In the centre of the picture Jacob’s ladder, with souls climbing towards Christ. Some reached the top but the rest were snatched by demons for a grisly array of tortures in hell: a dog gnawed a woman’s hand because of her concern for it rather than the poor; a drunken pilgrim was imprisoned in a bottle; demons boiled murderers in a frothy cauldron; a griffin-like creature chewed the feet of lewd dancers. I got up to study it more closely, trying to distract myself. My chest still hurt, my belly pitched. Eventually I ran out into the wasteland to ease myself, the cloying cold chilling my sweat. I washed my hands in a pool of ice and returned to the church.

  ‘What is this place?’ I asked.

  ‘The Chapel of Dead Bones,’ Demontaigu replied, standing with his back to me staring at the wall painting. ‘A great cemetery once covered the entire area. This was built as a chantry chapel where visiting priests could sing the requiem for the dead who throng here.’ He turned, beckoning me forward.

  I slammed the door behind me. Demontaigu opened one of the saddlebags, took out some bread wrapped in linen, broke it and offered me some.

  ‘Eat,’ he urged. ‘The bread is dry, it will settle your belly. Eat, wise woman, or I shall quote the old saying, medice sane teipsum - physician heal thyself.’

  We squatted down, sharing the bread. Demontaigu was now more composed, studying me carefully.

  ‘You’re a priest,’ I asked, ‘yet you killed a man?’

  ‘The right of self-defence,’ he replied, ‘is enshrined in canon law as well as the rule St Bernard gave our order. The assassin was an enemy of our order. I did not ask him to give up his life.’

  ‘You are a Templar priest?’

  ‘Yes, wanted dead or alive. I come from the preceptory of Amiens.’ He continued evenly, ‘I am the son of a French knight and an English lady. When I was a boy,’ he bit a mouthful of bread, ‘I fell seriously ill. My mother, God rest her soul, made pilgrimage, crawled on her knees up the nave to the statue of Our Lady of Chartres. She vowed that if my life was spared I’d become a priest. My father was a warrior; he was opposed to that, as was I,’ Demontaigu laughed softly, ‘until I met Jacques de Molay and your uncle Reginald de Deyncourt; good men, noble Templars, they are, they will be, welcomed by le bon seigneur as martyrs of the faith.’

  ‘I saw you in the tavern Oriflamme.’

  ‘As I saw you,’ Demontaigu pointed back, ‘with that English clerk whom you killed. There again, if you hadn’t,’ he took another mouthful, ‘I would have done the same. He too beckoned up his own fate. Death always responds.’

  ‘Why were you there?’

  Demontaigu swallowed the bread. ‘Listen,’ he began quietly, ‘and then you will know at least some of the truth. Yes, I was in that tavern. I was also in the priory.’

  ‘Who attacked me?’

  ‘I don’t know. Look at you, Mathilde, with your mop of black hair and your clear eyes. Your uncle said you had a comely face. He was wrong. I think you are beautiful, but there again, I’m a knight. I know the courtly ways of troubadours.’ His smile faded. ‘But no more song. Now, Mathilde, I have vowed on the sacred face to exact God’s justice, His vengeance on the destroyers of my order.’ He paused. ‘Your uncle, Reginald de Deyncourt, was a good friend, a comrade. I fought with him at Acre when the sky turned to fire and the ground swirled in blood, but that was in my youth. I am now in my thirty-sixth year. I returned from Outremer to France to become henchman to Jacques de Molay, Grand Master of our order; when he rose, I rose with him. I know about his dealings with that silver-haired, blue-eyed demon Philip of France.’ He chewed on the bread.

  ‘Do you know why he attacked your order?’

  ‘No, not the true reason. I truly don’t understand it, except for one thing.’ Demontaigu waved a finger. ‘On one occasion de Molay referred to what he called “The Enterprise of England”, but then the sword fell. Templars were arrested all over France. I was fortunate; de Molay often sent me as
a messenger to our houses in Aragon and elsewhere. There was no real description of me. I could hide under my mother’s name, be it as a friar or an English clerk. I always keep to the shadows.’

  ‘And Monsieur de Vitry?’

  ‘He was frightened, Mathilde, a good man, honourable and wise; your uncle chose well. Monsieur de Vitry’s assistance to you was invaluable. He was correct, the safest place for you was the French court. However,’ Demontaigu wiped the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve, ‘Monsieur de Vitry felt guilty. He also felt very frightened. God knows what he was doing. He once came to me and asked to be shriven. I agreed and heard his confession. I can’t tell you what he said, that is kept under the secret seal, but he was very fearful for the future.’

  ‘Why did he feel guilty?’

  ‘He felt guilty about you. He described you as a dove being left amongst the hawks; he wanted to do something more. I offered my protection, hence his letter.’

  ‘So why was he murdered?’

  ‘Again, I don’t know. He asked me to look after you, which I did. I followed you to that tavern, I saw what happened to the English clerk, then you fled.’

  ‘I went to de Vitry’s house.’

  ‘And you found him murdered?’

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘But I know nothing else.’

  ‘Neither do I.’ Demontaigu breathed out. ‘I did hear of the massacre. I offered a mass for all their souls.’

  ‘And who was responsible?’

  ‘A sinister mystery!’ Demontaigu snapped. ‘I became frightened for my own safety. Philip has hired bounty-hunters, the Noctales, the men who walk by night. They hunt other men down for the price on their heads. The Noctales are a guild to be found near the Church of St Sulpice in Paris. They are led by a Portuguese, Alexander of Lisbon.’ Demontaigu shrugged. ‘I’ve come across the type before. I’ve even been one of them, a messenger sent by the Templars to claim unresolved debts.’