by Paul Doherty
‘Insane,’ Sandewic growled. ‘Moonstruck, out of his wits, but mon seigneur the king has judged him. He is to hang tomorrow just before noon on the common gallows at St Katharine’s Wharf.’
The madman’s head came up; just for a heartbeat I saw the shift in his eyes.
‘Mad,’ I agreed, ‘crazed. I knew a man caught in a similar mood, Gaston de Preux,’ I said loudly, ‘that was his name. He believed he was a priest. I did all I could for him . . .’
‘Pretty lady.’ The prisoner stared up at me. I moved so I was between him and Sandewic. The mad look was replaced by a stare of sheer desperation. ‘Pretty lady,’ the voice mimicked the madness, ‘I need the Consolamentum – I need the cross.’
I leaned down, ignoring Sandewic’s protest. ‘I shall see what I can do.’
Sandewic took down the cresset, unlocked the door and ushered me out.
‘Sir Ralph,’ I forced a smile, ‘let me give the poor wretch some consolation.’ I took the Ave beads from my purse and, before Sandewic could object, slipped back into the cell and crouched before the prisoner.
‘Gaston?’ I whispered. He nodded.
‘Tell Bertrand,’ he murmured, ‘Consolamentum – I look for the cross.’
I dropped the Ave beads into his hands and fled the dungeon. Outside Sandewic stared at me curiously, murmured that I was strange and locked the door. As we left the Tower, Sandewic tugged at my cloak.
‘Mathilde,’ he drew me close, ‘I do not know what you are doing. I keep a still tongue and watch.’ He peered up at the grey sky. ‘That prisoner, I’ve met enough madmen, I am beginning to wonder if he is as witless as he pretends.’
I leaned closer and kissed him on the cheek. ‘Sir Ralph, what is now in the dark will one day be revealed in the full light of day. I need Owain Ap Ythel again.’
Chapter 11
Almost all the nobles spend their
time contriving evil.
‘A Song of the Times’, 1272-1307
A short while later, with the Welshman full of questions about what had happened earlier in the day, we left the Tower and made our way down to the Prospect of Whitby.
The tavern stood on a corner of an alleyway looking out on to the quayside and the grim three-branched scaffold from which hung the corpses of river pirates. According to placards fastened to their lifeless hands, the three thieves had robbed the Church of St Botolph’s in Billingsgate of a pyx and two candlesticks. They’d been hanged at dawn and swung eerily in the stiff breeze, creaking and twisting on their oiled ropes. I stared at them, thinking about Gaston, and walked into the spacious tap room. It was a pleasant, welcoming place with a low ceiling, its timber beams blackened with smoke from which hung hams, cheeses and freshly baked bread in wire cages. A communal trestle-board dominated the room, stretching from the barrels on either side of the counters to the far wall; other small tables stood within the window enclosures. The floor was cleanly swept and strewn with supple green rushes, the air rich and savoury from a leg of pork, basted with juices, roasting above the fire. A tap boy, I have good reason to remember him, tousle-haired and gap-toothed, waved me to a table. Ap Ythel stood at the doorway, staring curiously in. I ignored the boy and went across to the counter where the tavern-master, a beanpole of a man almost covered by a heavy leather apron, was filling tankards for fishermen who’d just sold their day’s catch. I asked about Master Arnaud the bowyer and said I’d return at the hour of vespers. The taverner looked at me and glanced heavenwards.
‘Bordeaux!’ he exclaimed. ‘The best Bordeaux? Of course we have it, mistress, do come and see a tun.’ He held a hand up. ‘Unbroached, fresh from Gascony, come, come, your lady will be pleased!’
I had no choice but to follow him into the back of the tavern and down the cellar steps. All the time he kept chattering about ‘the best of Bordeaux’. He reached the bottom, threw open the cellar door and ushered me in. I waited whilst he lit tallow candles in their lantern horns.
‘Smugglers used this,’ he explained, moving a mock barrel to reveal the door behind. He knocked, the door opened and Demontaigu stepped out. The tavern-master bowed and left the cellar. The Templar moved into the dim pool of light.
‘I knew you’d come,’ he murmured. ‘I told Master Thomas to bring you down here immediately. Ah well, Gaston is taken, he’d shaven his head so I did not recognise him.’ Demontaigu’s eyes searched my face. ‘We came so close.’
I told him how Gaston was acting frenetic, witless, that he wanted the Consolamentum and would look for the cross when he was hanged at noon the following day.
‘He wants to be shriven,’ Demontaigu replied, ‘God help him. He’s acting the fool so as not to be questioned. Look, when you go back,’ he urged, ‘send him a message, that you’ll find him a crucifix. Gaston will understand.’
‘And here?’ I asked. ‘You are safe?’
‘The tavern-master’s son was a Templar squire in Bordeaux; he is no Judas man.’ Demontaigu walked up the cellar and brought back a small cask; the seal on the bung proclaimed it to be Bordeaux, from a vineyard close to St Sardos. ‘Give this to your mistress.’
‘She knows what you meant,’ I replied, taking the cask, ‘when you asked me to reflect like a nun: you want to do the same as me, shelter in her household.’
I looked at him so earnestly, Demontaigu laughed and kissed me on the brow.
‘I am a priest, Mathilde, yet you look at me . . .’ He shook his head. ‘Tell your mistress I will be her loyal clerk; I’ll be true to her as long as she is true to me.’ He kissed my brow again. ‘Go, Mathilde, and do not come back here tomorrow.’
Of course I ignored him. I returned to the Tower nervous and agitated. If Demontaigu wanted to be present at the hanging, that might make him vulnerable. Isabella agreed. Demontaigu could enter her household as a clerk, but he would have to survive the dangers of the hanging day. If Marigny and the others suspected the truth, if they, like Sandewic, began to believe the assassin was not the idiot he pretended, the Secreti and the Noctales would swarm like ants.
The next day I left the Tower, again accompanied by the Welsh captain, now accustomed to such duties. He gave me all the gossip. Apparently Isabella had sent the prisoner a crucifix the previous evening. Early that morning a summary court comprising of Sandewic, Casales and Baquelle had been appointed by the king as justices exercising the full powers of Oyer and Terminer. The court had sat in St Peter’s ad Vincula but the prisoner had refused to plead; he’d gibbered and moaned before starting his wild dance. He did not deny the attempt on Marigny so he was condemned and handed over to Casales for punishment.
As the Welshman and I left, the execution was already underway. The prisoner had been dragged up from the dungeons, stripped of his ragged brown robe and, wearing only a loincloth, securely fastened to a hurdle attached to a carthorse. The poor man was then dragged on his back across the cobbles of the Tower yard, out through the Lion Gate and into the streets towards St Katharine’s Wharf. The executioner led the horse, as his assistant, dressed in black, followed behind. A good crowd gathered, the news of the execution being proclaimed by heralds. Marigny and his coterie were present on a specially erected scaffold draped with cloths. They had come to witness retribution. By the time the prisoner reached the gallows he had already paid in full, his back being cruelly shredded and bloodied by the cobbles. Nevertheless, he was shown no mercy, but released and pushed up the gallows steps, a filthy, bent figure still pretending to be mad.
I scrutinised the crowd. I could not see Demontaigu, but I glimpsed the tap boy from the Prospect, and around him hooded figures. Casales, his injured arm dangling by his side, was supervising the grisly business of the execution, standing at the foot of the scaffold shouting orders up at the executioner now bestriding the gallows’ arms. I glanced across at the royal enclosure. Gaveston had joined Marigny and was leaning against the rail watching proceedings intently. The prisoner reached the top of the ladder and half turned to gaze out over the
crowd. The hangman fitted the noose around his neck. Casales made a sign, a roll of drums and a blare of trumpets created an expectant silence. This was when the condemned man could shout his last words. Casales bellowed that the prisoner was witless, and was about to give the sign for another drum roll and the removal of the ladder when the prisoner raised his head and, leaning against the scaffold, hands bound behind him, shouted out:
‘Good citizens!’
Casales, surprised, stepped back.
‘Good citizens,’ the prisoner repeated.
I glanced around; a pole with a crucifix lashed to it was being lifted up into the air and a strong voice intoned:
‘We adore thee, Oh Christ, and we praise thee.’
The reply from the prisoner was equally lucid:
‘Because by thy Holy Cross you have redeemed the world.’
The exchange took the onlookers by surprise.
‘Brothers,’ the prisoner shouted, ‘can I have absolution?’ He immediately began to recite an Act of Contrition, whilst from the crowd echoed that clear, strong voice I’d come to know and love, ringing back the words of absolution.
‘Absolvo te a peccatis tuis in nomine Patris, et Filii et Spiritus Sancti’ – I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father . . .
Casales, now beside himself with curiosity, walked away from the foot of the ladder; a soldier handed him a crossbow, already primed. Marigny and his party, equally startled, were staring out across the sea of faces whose mood, fickle as ever, had turned in a wave of sympathy for the prisoner. Casales recovered himself. I watched the soldiers milling around the scaffold; memories pricked my soul only to swirl away in the excitement and fear brimming in my heart. Gaston was making his final confession, the Consolamentum, whilst absolution was being cried back across the crowd. Casales, God be thanked, at least waited for that to finish. He then made the sign; the executioner’s assistant quickly moved the ladder and the prisoner began his macabre dance, twisting and turning on the end of the rope, hideous to watch.
Suddenly the tap boy I’d glimpsed in the tavern came hurtling out of the crowd; the soldiers were facing the other way, and no one stopped him as he leapt on to the prisoner’s legs, pulling him down. The soldiers went to drag him off, but the crowd roared: ‘Let him be! Let him be!’
The soldiers stepped back, and Casales shouted an order to leave the boy alone. Even from where I stood I heard the final gasps as the prisoner hung motionless whilst the boy raced away to be lost in the crowd. I immediately returned to the Tower and reported all to my mistress.
‘He deserved a better death,’ she commented and filled two goblets with fresh apple juice. She sipped from hers swaying from side to side as if listening to some distant music. ‘Soon, Mathilde, we shall be away from here. I shall be queen and the storm will gather.’ She saluted me with her cup. ‘My father’s secret desires, and my husband’s, will reveal themselves in all their sinister colours. Only then, Mathilde, can we join the dance, but for the moment . . .’ she sighed and, chewing her lip, stared hard at me, ‘we’ll act like young ladies all overcome by what is happening.’
We acted that role during those busy days, with clerks and clerics rehearsing the coronation ceremony and describing the ‘Ordo’ from the Liber Regalis. Isabella was also organising her household. Once crowned, she would move to Westminster Palace and assume all the status, duties and honours of Edward’s queen even though the future was uncertain, as the rumours seeping in from the city were highly unpleasant. The great earls were now meeting openly at tournaments, reiterating their demands that a parliament be called, Gaveston be exiled and the king ‘take true counsel’ from those born to give it. The French added to these demands; broadsheets and letters dictated by Marigny, still furious at the assassination attempt, were nailed to church doors and the Great Cross in St Paul’s churchyard. These documents proclaimed that anyone who supported Gaveston would be Philip of France’s mortal enemy. The leading bishops intervened to mediate and arrange a ‘love day’ so that Edward and his earls could meet at St Paul’s to discuss and resolve their mutual grievances in a sealed pact before the coronation.
Edward rejected all these approaches. He issued writs under the privy seal from his chancery room in the Tower declaring any such meetings hostile to him, treasonable and a threat to his rights. The King ordered the great earls to disperse their retinues and not bring them within five miles of the bars and city gates of London. At the same time more royal troops arrived, swelling the garrison at the Tower – so many they had to camp out on the lonely wastelands to the north. Battle barges patrolled the river and cogs fitted with all the armour of war gathered in the mouth of the Thames. Meanwhile Edward and Gaveston feasted in the Tower, or went hunting in the forests and woods around. They openly ignored Isabella, though both men sent her secret messages and tokens of their love on almost a daily basis.
Casales brought us the news. He paced up and down the queen’s chamber nursing his mangled wrist, describing the growing crisis with increasing foreboding. Rossaleti, now so quiet and reserved, would sit at the chancery desk nodding in solemn agreement. Isabella remained unperturbed. She reminded me of a cat, watching and listening attentively. She was waiting for that turn of the sea, the opening which would allow her, as she put it, the opportunity to test her claws. I was equally determined, just as resolute.
Old Sandewic continued to watch me carefully. The cold weather and onerous duties weakened his health. I renewed the phials of vervain and other potions to relieve his symptoms, advising caution that he did not take too much. I should have been more prudent about what he actually drank. The constable seemed deeply touched by my care and attention, responding with little gifts. He boasted openly of what he called my prowess in physic. Much to Isabella’s amusement, the garrison, its soldiers, servants, wives and families, started to present themselves on a daily basis in the inner ward for help and assistance. Sandewic, God assoil him, opened the stores and provided powders and dried herbs, even dispatching messengers to buy more from the city apothecaries. The ailments were, in the main, mild. I never forgot Uncle Reginald’s aphorism, that his patients usually healed themselves despite the best efforts of their physician.
The onset of winter ailments allowed me to observe, treat and learn. I dispensed ver juice for sores in the mouth, ivy juice for inflammation of the nose, pimpernel boiled in wine for the rheums and sweet almonds for earache. There were the usual cuts and scars to clean and treat; fractures to be fixed and contained, poultices applied. I advised on the need to be clean, and when complaints of sickness and looseness of the bowels increased, I examined the meat stores, salted and pickled for the winter, to discover some so soft and putrid they were alive with maggots. Sandewic was furious and the flesher responsible sat in the Tower stocks for a day with the filthy mess he’d sold tied around his neck, the rest being offered to passers-by to throw at him.
More importantly for me, Demontaigu entered Isabella’s household, slipping in easily without provoking any suspicions. Petitions had flooded in from many scribes and petty officials, clerks from the halls of Oxford and Cambridge, all seeking placements. Demontaigu was one of these. Armed with false papers, as indeed many applicants must have been, he presented himself before Casales, Sandewic and Rossaleti. He proved himself fluent in English, French, Castilian and Latin. He described himself as a soldier, a scholar who’d studied at Bologna and Ravenna, a Gascon by birth, who had wandered Europe and become proficient in the courtly hand, very skilled in the preparation and sealing of documents, who now wished to seek advancement in the royal service. Since going into hiding Demontaigu had given up using his father’s name, hiding behind his mother’s so he could mix truth and fable. When he was questioned, he acted respectful and courteous so the recommendation to Isabella to hire him was unreserved, Demontaigu was appointed as a Principal Clerk of the Red Wax in the Office of the Queen’s Wardrobe. I felt deeply comforted by his presence. Nevertheless, I acted on Isabella
’s warning to walk prudently and allow the day-to-day workings of her household to draw him deeper in.
Demontaigu acted the part, being friends to all and allies to none in the petty factions and squabbling for precedence which constantly dominate any great household. When we did meet in some store room to make a tally or supervise the release of goods, we would talk and gossip in whispers. Demontaigu had changed; no longer concerned about his own situation, he seemed more fascinated about what happened to me. Oh Domine Jesu - it was he who prompted me to begin my own journals, written in cipher. I still have these today.
‘List,’ Demontaigu urged, ‘list what happens; they are the symptoms, Mathilde, look for the cause. In the end, all things drain to their logical conclusion; there must be, there will be, a solution to all this.’
I often reflected on that in the days before the coronation. I divided my time between assisting the princess, dispensing medicine and recalling the past. Demontaigu spoke the truth and spurred me into action. The shock and pain of the last few weeks were diminishing. Why should I stand like some pious novice and be attacked, threatened, cowed and bullied by the great ones? I could fight back. Uncle Reginald had been a hard taskmaster; he’d always insisted I keep a book of symptoms.
‘Write down,’ he’d order, ‘everything you observe about an ailment or a herb. Study what you record, reflect, look for a common pattern, and for changes which are not logical. Two things, Mathilde, rule your life: passion and logic. They are not contradictory, they complement each other.’ He would stroke my brow. ‘I love you, Mathilde, like a daughter, therefore I also want you close. So the first part of my statement is what?’