The Templar, the Queen and Her Lover: (Knights Templar 24)

by Michael Jecks

  Baldwin bridled, and Cromwell noticed.

  ‘I am not blaming you, Sir Baldwin. But you are more experienced than any others here in investigating murders.’

  ‘I am sorry, my lord. It’s just that every so often I catch a sidelong look from someone I’ve never met which seems to suggest they think I did it. In truth, I know nothing about him. All I know is, he and I had words on the way here. That is all.’

  ‘No one has given us any trouble over his death, anyway, which is a relief,’ Lord John said. ‘It could have become embarrassing were someone to have taken it into his head to accuse you of murder.’

  ‘There are many who consider I did it.’

  ‘Damn their souls! It doesn’t matter, in any case. It was an odd event, though. I’ve never heard of a similar one. Firing a charge of powder, then stealing your knife – that is strange.’

  ‘There is nothing new under the sun,’ Baldwin said with a grin. ‘When there has been a murder, I always tend to find that it was because of some obvious reason. Usually it’s money, or a desire for power, and sometimes a lover removes a competitor for some woman’s affections. Only rarely is it a chance encounter.’

  ‘This wasn’t chance, then.’

  ‘No. Clearly somebody had planned something. They had the powder there before they took my dagger to thrust into the Count’s chest.’

  ‘Was it your knife that killed him?’

  ‘No. His throat was cut, and I believe that was done some while before the murderer realised I was there. I think I heard the man die. By the time I reached the scene he was already dead; my dagger was only a distraction.’

  ‘I wonder what he was doing there, then.’

  ‘So do I. I was called out there by a weak bladder, but he was a much younger man. And there is that one thing that concerns me.’

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘My lord, the assassin had an elaborate explosive set up. Surely if someone desired to kill a man like the Comte de Foix, they would have to ensure that he came along at the right time.’

  ‘The assassin knew he would be there that night?’

  ‘Not just that night. He must have known that the Comte would be there at that time. Which implies an arranged meeting.’

  The lord was silent for a few moments as he absorbed this. ‘I understand you have had much experience of inquiring after murders?’

  ‘I have had some success.’

  Lord John nodded. ‘Do you have any suspicions as to who might have wanted to do this?’

  ‘I hardly knew the man, and don’t know his enemies. However, I think I know how the assassin planned to kill him: he intended to cut his throat, and then make it look like an accident with a hand-cannon. He had the powder and the board. He cut the Comte’s throat, and was going to position him over the board to make it appear that the powder had been fired up into his throat. How would anyone have shown otherwise?’

  ‘There was no gonne.’

  ‘Taken away when the plan went wrong. When I turned up, the killer had to distract me, so he fired his board in a hurry, and that gave him a swift idea: to take my dagger and make it seem as if I had stabbed the Comte. He had no way of telling it was me, but my dagger was a useful device. Then he snatched up his gonne, but forgot to collect the board, and was off.’

  ‘I see. An interesting theory. Be careful, Sir Baldwin.’

  ‘I shall,’ Baldwin said. He watched the lord walking away, and in his mind there was a feeling that Cromwell had been trying to put him on his guard all through that conversation. Perhaps he was warning him that the matter of the Count’s murder was not yet over. Someone wanted to punish him for it still.

  Jean had to hurry to keep up with le Vieux. There was something in his movements that spoke of anger. It was just a relief to Jean that his story was believed. He’d expected to have to argue for much longer, but, thanks to Christ, le Vieux had realised he was not lying almost immediately.

  Then they were inside. Le Vieux took him up a tiny staircase that wound round and round inside a tower, the stone flags crisp and perfectly cut, unworn. They came out through a narrow doorway, and then they were out on a brief walkway at the top of the main walls, before diving into another, larger tower. Here they descended one flight, and passed along a short corridor to a door. Le Vieux knocked, then walked inside, beckoning Jean to follow.

  It was a good-sized room. A wealthy-looking man stood inside reading a scroll behind a table, a large window behind him. Jean didn’t know who he was, and looked over his shoulder enquiringly to see why le Vieux had brought him here. As he turned, something made him move.

  The heavy cudgel missed his head by a scant inch. ‘Le Vieux! What are you doing?’

  ‘What in the name of heaven is going on!’ the man at the table shouted.

  ‘This is the man we told you of. The last guard to survive,’ le Vieux snarled.

  To Jean’s horror, the man looked at him with empty eyes and began to draw his own sword.

  He was almost a third of the way into the room. Le Vieux was between him and the door. If he tried to leap for it, he would never make it. Le Vieux would knock him down, and if he failed, there was that sword at his back.

  But Jean had been a fighter for many years. He sprang into the room even as the stranger swept his sword from the scabbard. Jean lifted the front of the table high, thrusting forwards, and slammed it against the man. He was crushed against a mullion, and the air left his lungs even as a crunching sound told Jean that at least one rib was broken. The sword fell from his hands.

  Jean moved quickly away, to his left, further away from le Vieux, even as the cudgel came down again. It splintered fragments from the table as it hit the old beech, and then Jean was against the wall. There was a fireplace here, and his questing fingers found a steel poker. He kept it behind him.

  Le Vieux had recovered already – he had great powers in a fight. Now he was approaching a little crabwise, left flank and arm forward, cudgel high in his right.

  Jean could think of nothing else. He switched his hands on the poker, and leaped forward, aiming a fist at le Vieux’s face. Le Vieux caught hold of the fist with a fierce smile, the teeth shining in his brown face. Then he brought down the cudgel.

  Too late he saw the poker. It crashed into the side of his head, and as it thudded dully, Jean saw an explosion of blood spray outwards. Le Vieux’s eyes rolled up instantly, and he fell to his knees, the cudgel falling to crack on Jean’s shoulder with little force behind it. Jean tried to move away, but he seemed fixed there. His hand was on the poker, and he remained staring down at le Vieux, the older man apparently peering back at him, but with eyes fogged and dull.

  Le Vieux was dead. Attempting to retrieve the poker, Jean found that it was stuck in his head somehow. When he tried to wrest it loose, le Vieux’s head moved with it. It would have been comical if it weren’t hideous. He was forced to push le Vieux to the ground, set a boot on his cheek, and tug hard.

  At last the poker was free, and Jean went to the other man. He was breathing harshly, trapped by the weight of the table over his legs. One was twisted at an impossible angle, and he looked at Jean with an expression of horror and the terror of a trapped animal.

  It was sickening. ‘Why?’ Jean demanded. ‘Why did you want to kill me?’

  There was no answer. The man stared back at him but said nothing, and Jean could already hear steps approaching. Someone must have heard the sharp encounter. He swore to himself, then clenched the poker in his hand and went to the door. Opening it, he could see no one about, and he darted out, bolting back the way he thought they had come, but he had only gone a short distance when he realised he had missed the stairs to the top of the wall. He ran on, blindly, praying that he would find an alternative, but there was nowhere obvious.

  And then, behind him, he heard the shrieks from the man trapped under the table.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Baldwin heard the screams from the court where he was still sta
nding, contemplating Lord John’s words. As soon as he heard the noise, his first thought was to run to the source, but a moment’s reflection told him that would be pointless. Others would be running there. Instead he turned left to head for the Queen’s chambers to make sure that she was safe.

  He found her in the main hall, pale and anxious.

  ‘What is that, Sir Baldwin?’

  ‘I do not know, your highness. I heard the first cry and came here to assure myself of your safety.’

  ‘I am most grateful, Sir Baldwin. It sounds like an animal in pain.’

  ‘It is a man,’ Baldwin said coldly. He had heard similar cries of agony often enough in battles.

  There was a heavy knocking at the door, and Baldwin went to it, calling, ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Me.’

  Baldwin unbolted and opened the door to Lord Cromwell, who stared at Baldwin fixedly as he came in. Baldwin lowered the point of his sword and closed the door as the noble spoke quickly to the Queen.

  ‘Sir Baldwin. Would you go, please, and see what is happening out there?’ Queen Isabella said.

  Baldwin nodded. He listened a moment, then opened the door. ‘Lord John, bolt this after me.’

  Cromwell agreed, and Baldwin was away.

  The noise came from the tower over the main entrance, so far as he could tell. He hurried along the path, entered the tower, and climbed the stairs. It did not take long to reach the chamber. Robert de Chatillon was slumped on the floor, his breath rasping in his lungs, and the body of an aged warrior lay over by the fireplace, close to a heavy-looking cudgel. Blood was splattered over his shoulder, and there was a foul, matted mess at his skull just above his ear.

  ‘What has happened here?’ Baldwin asked wonderingly. He recognised the man-at-arms he had seen crossing the yard earlier.

  ‘Someone came here and attacked me and this man,’ Robert said haltingly. He was very pale.

  ‘Did you see who it was?’ Baldwin asked. Perhaps it was the same man he had seen following after this fellow. There had been two.

  ‘A guard from the Château Gaillard. This man was another of the guards from there,’ Robert said, motioning feebly towards le Vieux. ‘He broke in here and attacked us both.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘All I know is there was a small garrison there to protect the castle, and some weeks ago that man went insane. He took a knife and slew all the other guards in the château. We don’t know why. Le Vieux was the only survivor at the time. Clearly the fellow learned where le Vieux was, and came here to finish his task.’

  ‘But why would he do so?’

  ‘Who can explain madness?’ Robert demanded with a ferocious anger. There was a fevered gleam in his eyes now, and if it were not for the twisted and broken leg, Baldwin could have feared that he might leap up and set upon him for asking ridiculous questions. ‘Just find him, Sir Baldwin. Find him and kill him, in God’s name, before he murders anyone else.’

  Baldwin nodded. ‘What does he look like?’

  Yes. It was the same man.

  As he left the chamber, his brow was furrowed. The killer and the dead man had walked happily together across the courtyard, and then come to blows in the chamber with Robert. Robert had lied for some reason, Baldwin felt, but he was unsure why.

  Jean had found his way to an undercroft, a crowded storeroom filled with barrels of food and drink, with bales of other goods set over the top to keep them dry. He bolted along it, hoping to find an escape, but the only way in was the one by which he had entered. He ran at the farther wall, and crashed into it, his arms up, still gripping the poker, his eyes firmly closed. The crash forced him, sobbing, to his knees, and he crouched there a while, gasping with shock and terror, before reaching out with his hands and touching the stonework before him, fingers rippling over the plaster, seeking crevices as though he could have insinuated himself into the rock and passed through it. But he was human. Such feats were for God, not for him.

  He relaxed, easing himself down again, and as his eyes grew acclimatised to the darkness in the chamber, he stared at the poker. It was a long log-poker, with a one-inch spike protruding to one side. That was what had hit le Vieux. It had punctured his head as easily as a pin bursting an inflated pig’s bladder.

  Jean was not upset at the thought of killing a man. Once he would have been, but he had fought in enough battles since then to know that sometimes a man must kill. Le Vieux had wanted to murder him … and he had no idea why! That was what had so shocked him: not the attack, but the man who had launched it. He had thought le Vieux was a friend, a comrade and an ally. All he’d tried to do was warn him about Arnaud.

  The only thing that made any sense was that Arnaud had convinced him that Jean had killed all the other men at the château. Le Vieux must have believed him implicitly.

  Jean groaned to himself. The thought that Arnaud could be so persuasive hadn’t occurred to him before. And it wasn’t only le Vieux who was convinced, either. That other man had obviously been persuaded as well. Jean was marked out for death. If he was seen or captured, he would be sure to be killed. There was no escape for him.

  ‘Who was he?’

  The man behind the table. He had drawn his sword when le Vieux had said that he was the last of the men from the château, hadn’t he?

  Suddenly Jean started to wonder if his initial impression of that last day at the château was as clear as he had thought. Le Vieux had been hit, surely, for there was no faking that bloody seeping wound, but that didn’t necessarily mean he had been hit by Arnaud. Now it seemed to make more sense for him to have been hit by one of the other men as he and Arnaud together tried to kill the guards. But why would they do that?

  The only person whom he could ask was probably the one whom he was most keen to kill. He would have to catch Arnaud to question him. But just now the likelihood was that he wouldn’t even be able to escape the castle, let alone run off and later find Arnaud to learn what had actually happened.

  Then again, he considered, there was less need to run away to hide when you were already in a large undercroft filled with barrels of food and drink. This was probably as good a place to hide as any other, and it had the added attraction of being cheap.

  He would stay and formulate a plan to gain his revenge.

  Louvre, Paris

  King Charles IV was not known for his patience, but the reputation was unfair. There were times when he was capable of explosions of rage, just like any other monarch, and others when he was content to be still and watch other men’s actions. This was particularly true when he felt sure that someone had failed in their duties to him.

  ‘Alive?’

  The cardinal smiled, but warily. Thomas of Anjou knew when the King was displeased, and today the man could have frozen a sea with his stare. ‘I am afraid, so it would seem.’

  ‘I seem to remember you telling me that the entire matter of the château was over,’ King Charles said, his attention moving to the face of his adviser.

  François de Tours nodded, his eyes fixed on the floor. ‘I relayed the news to you as soon as I was told. The men of the town went up there and found all the guards dead, or so I thought. Now it would seem that one of them has miraculously returned to life. He found Robert de Chatillon and killed one of his men in front of him, as well as hurting Robert.’

  ‘He killed my executioner?’

  ‘No. The other one. An old soldier of Enguerrand’s.’

  ‘Oh, I recall. Well, he was to die as well soon enough, wasn’t he? But my man is not hurt?’

  ‘Not yet. However, if we do not act to remove any other witnesses, matters could become more difficult.’

  ‘See to it. And François? No more slip-ups, my friend. All witnesses, all of them, must be removed. I want no surprises in the future.’

  Poissy

  ‘D’you hear that?’ Adam asked.

  ‘What?’ Ricard demanded, staring into his cup. On his lap Charlie was resting, snoring softly
with his mouth open. He had started snuffling today, and Ricard hoped it was only a cold. He had grown rather fond of the little boy.

  ‘He’s right,’ Philip said. ‘There’s some sort of disturbance up there.’

  ‘So what?’ Ricard belched. ‘There’s always something going on. It’s a bloody castle, isn’t it? Some fight between men-at-arms, I dare say. I’m not getting up to go and look.’

  Philip scowled. ‘And where’s our friend? Eh?’

  Ricard looked up at him. His eyes were bloodshot and he was finding it hard to concentrate. ‘If you mean our illustrious companion, Philip, I don’t know, and I don’t care. The arsehole has left us alone. Far as I’m concerned, that’s good news. You won’t find me complaining. In fact, I think that rather than complain we ought to celebrate. Yes. Let’s have another drink!’

  ‘Before you do that, let’s make sure he hasn’t gone and killed someone else,’ Adam said nervously.

  Janin leaned back on his seat. ‘What makes you say that? Adam, what is it with you? You always have to bring out something unpleasant, don’t you? There’s nothing to say that anyone’s died, is there? And nothing to say Jack’s involved anyway.’

  ‘I told you all when he arrived,’ Adam said. ‘I’m sorry, but that’s how it is. He’s a bad one.’

  Ricard frowned and shook his head without looking at Adam. ‘No, actually you didn’t, Adam. You never said he was bad. In fact, I seem to remember you were the only one of us who wanted this fellow to join us, because with your usual grasp of the unimportant, you thought it was essential that we had another drummer to replace Peter.’

  ‘I didn’t!’ Adam declared, and shot a look at the others. They studiously avoided his gaze. ‘Oh, if you’re going to be idiots, then blame me. You always do anyway.’

  ‘No one’s blaming you for anything,’ Janin said soothingly.

  Philip pulled the corners of his mouth downwards in a gesture of denial, shaking his head slowly. ‘No. We aren’t blaming you, Adam. But we all wish you’d stop blaming us for everything.’