The King's Spies

by Simon Beaufort

  ‘Very well,’ said Roger reluctantly. He wiped rain from his eyes and attempted to engage his friend in conversation. ‘Bellême is due to appear before the King’s Court tomorrow, you say?’

  Geoffrey nodded. ‘That is why we should be in Winchester tonight, to get the feel of the place.’

  ‘Have you got a plan?’ asked Roger. ‘You said you would by the time we reached Winchester, in case we are obliged to act immediately. And do not say the plan is to visit Bellême while the rest of us are on our way to Normandy. We are staying with you.’

  ‘All I can think of is to go to Bellême and claim the King tried to kill me – it may even be true, given what happened in the woods near Westminster – and hopefully Beaumais will support what I say. He did warn me it might happen.’

  ‘You have a wound to prove it,’ said Roger, nodding at Geoffrey’s shoulder, still bruised from where Mabel had struck it with her mace. It looked worse than it felt, and Geoffrey supposed it might make a suitably impressive injury to show Bellême. Of course, he would have to hope Mabel was not on hand to point out that it was her handiwork.

  ‘I will say I have nothing to lose by joining him, and will go with him when he leaves for Arundel.’

  Roger was not happy. ‘But what if he wins this dispute with the King? You may find yourself bound to his service forever. Tancred will be furious.’

  ‘Tancred is the least of my worries.’ Bellême was the kind of man to kill petitioners, so simply marching up to him and offering allegiance was risky to say the least.

  Roger’s blunt face creased into a worried frown. ‘Perhaps you should let me pretend I am you. I am not impeded by a stiff shoulder, and …’

  ‘He knows me, Roger. But we should discuss the rest of my plan. Do you remember the system we devised in Jerusalem for sending messages at night? We used lamps to speak to each other, by moving them up and down.’

  ‘Of course. You want me to look for waving lamps at Arundel?’

  Geoffrey nodded. ‘I will pass you two pieces of information from the battlements or a tower: first, which of the gates is the weakest in terms of its structure, and second, which is the weakest in regard to its defence.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Arundel will have a main entrance. We shall call that number one. The one to its west will be two, and so on until we reach the beginning again. So, if I make two flashes, followed by three …’

  ‘It means the gate immediately to the west of the main entrance is the weakest in structure, but the one to the west of it is the least well defended,’ said Durand, who had been listening and was keen to show he had grasped the essence of the discussion.

  ‘I am glad you understand,’ said Geoffrey. ‘If anything happens to me, you must do the flashing.’

  Durand stared at him. ‘But that would mean I am inside with you.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Geoffrey, surprised that he should think he would not be. Durand was his squire, and it was his duty to be at Geoffrey’s side.

  ‘But I do not want to meet Bellême,’ whispered Durand, appalled. ‘It is common knowledge that he is in league with the Devil, and, as a man of God—’

  ‘You are not a man of God,’ interrupted Geoffrey. ‘You lost that honour by tampering with a butcher’s son, and you are now supposed to devote yourself to becoming a warrior.’

  ‘Tampering with a peasant does not sound overly serious to me,’ said Roger. ‘I always thought abbeys turned a blind eye to that sort of thing.’

  ‘It was more than that,’ said Geoffrey shortly, unwilling to reveal the grisly details of Durand’s misdemeanour to Roger, who would certainly not understand. ‘You must come with me, Durand. Bellême will be suspicious if I appear without a squire. But none of this may be necessary; Bellême might not flee to Arundel at all.’

  ‘He will,’ said Roger grimly. ‘His other option is to hand all his estates to Henry and leave England like a beaten dog. Of course he will fight.’

  ‘I am not going with you,’ said Durand, white-faced with fear. ‘You ask me to step into the lion’s den, and I will not do it.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Geoffrey firmly, ‘you will.’

  The Conqueror had visited Winchester soon after his invasion of England, because it was the Saxon capital and the place where the treasury was held. He had seen no reason to change this, so the city had been allowed to remain England’s administrative and financial centre. Henry also kept his treasure at Winchester. To make sure it was all there, and properly bulked up by taxes and fines, an army of scribes and monks worked for him, labouring as long as daylight would allow, and sometimes using the unsteady light of candles.

  Winchester was different from London. It was less vibrant and colourful, but more wealthy and grand. The houses were larger, and the ones in the centre were built of stone, rather than timber. The fact that large numbers of courtiers gathered there frequently meant there were plenty of merchants ready to sell them what they wanted – fine cloth from France, spices grown around the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, exquisite jewellery from Italy and Spain, and good wines from Normandy.

  ‘This is where we part,’ said Geoffrey to Roger, as they neared the gates. ‘We cannot be seen together from now on.’

  Roger clasped his outstretched hand. ‘I do not like this, Geoff, lad.’

  ‘I know,’ said Geoffrey. ‘Will you take my dog? The last time he met Bellême there was a near-exchange of bites, and I do not want the Earl to kill me because it cannot control its roving teeth.’

  ‘It is a good judge of character. Bellême deserves to be ravaged by wild beasts; he is one himself.’

  ‘It is possible that the Earl has forgotten the biting incident,’ suggested Durand timorously, loath to part with an ally, even the dog. ‘And we need all the reinforcements we can get.’

  ‘He will remember,’ said Geoffrey, who suspected Bellême never forgot any kind of insult or injury, and the nip the dog had managed to plant had been a vicious one.

  They parted, with Geoffrey and a sullen Durand heading for the centre, and Roger leading Ulfrith and Helbye to find a tavern – doubtless a seedy one – at the city’s edge. Geoffrey rode slowly, looking around with interest, and would dearly have loved to visit the merchant whose sign mentioned he sold books as well as pens, parchment and other clerkly supplies. But there was no point in going to Bellême carrying anything of value; the Earl would take anything that could be exchanged for gold.

  It was already late afternoon, so Geoffrey found a small, quiet inn near the great Benedictine abbey. He had intended to stay in the monastery itself, thinking it would be safer than a tavern, but the city was heaving with people who were to take part in the King’s Easter Court, and he realized there were unlikely to be vacancies. He paid for a chamber and sent Durand to buy food. He was bone weary, his shoulder throbbed and he wondered listlessly whether he would have the energy to play his part in the charade the following day. He lay down and waited for Durand to return.

  When he awoke the sun had set and the street below was thick with shadows. Durand was still out. Geoffrey felt a pang of anxiety, knowing his squire would not deliberately linger in the streets of a strange town after the curfew had been sounded; it was not safe, and Durand would prefer to be inside with the door locked. Geoffrey left the bedchamber and walked to the main part of the tavern, where tables and benches were provided for those who wished to slake their thirst with jugs of ale. Several people were enjoying the hospitality of the landlord, mainly scribes and clerics, but Durand was not among them. Puzzled and not very pleased, Geoffrey saw he would have to go and find him.

  He was still in full armour, so he fetched his sword, made sure there was a long stabbing dagger in his belt, and left the tavern. He had no idea where Durand might be, but hoped he found him fairly quickly, because he did not want to spend the entire night hunting for the man. He drew his cloak more closely about him, partly because it was cold, but mostly so it hid his distinctive surcoat. Crusaders were rare
in England, and he did not want to draw too much attention to himself.

  The streets were empty, and it seemed the curfew in the King’s richest city was vigorously enforced. Monks and scribes had retired to their abbey or quarters, and Geoffrey had the feeling Winchester, like London, became a different place at night. There was not a merchant to be seen, and those few folk who braved fines or imprisonment to go about their business after dark moved furtively, with their faces concealed by hoods or loose Phrygian caps with pointed tips.

  A slithering sound behind him made him duck into an alley, but it was only a beggar with no legs, whose wheeled trolley made a hissing noise in the muck of the street. Then he saw other shadows and tensed. These were not prostitutes, robbers or other children of the night, but liveried soldiers carrying drawn swords. They walked briskly and turned a corner. Moments later, another man appeared, wearing a thick winter cloak and with his own weapon at the ready. Geoffrey saw flashes of red on his garments, similar to those on the soldiers’ uniforms, and supposed he was their captain. He was tall and broad, and walked confidently, as though he was used to having his orders obeyed. A nobleman, Geoffrey assumed.

  Just as he drew level with Geoffrey’s alley, the mournful call of the night watch echoed along the street. Geoffrey heard the man swear, then was almost knocked over when he decided to hide in the same place. The stranger was even more startled to discover he was not the only one skulking in the shadows, but nodded agreeably when the knight raised his finger to his lips to indicate they should both be silent. Neither wanted to waste time explaining his business – no matter how legitimate – to the King’s guards, who tended to turn such encounters into lengthy, ponderous occasions that involved exchanges of coins.

  The night watch marched past, and Geoffrey saw that several held wriggling captives who were destined for a night in prison. The guard at the front carried a lantern, and threw its light into doorways and along lanes to search for curfew-breakers as he went. Geoffrey eased farther back into the shadows, and thought that those who had been caught must have been singularly stupid, given the noise the guards were making. When the watchmen had passed, and the street was silent once more, the stranger addressed Geoffrey in Norman-French.

  ‘Why are you hiding in dark alleys at this hour?’

  ‘Looking for my squire,’ replied Geoffrey, thinking he could ask the same question himself. But he did not want to start an argument that might see the guards return and arrest them both, so he decided to overlook the man’s peremptory behaviour.

  ‘Probably looking for another master he thinks will treat him better,’ said the man bitterly, as if this was something that happened to him regularly. ‘None of them can be trusted. Name?’

  ‘His or mine?’ asked Geoffrey, trying to control his temper at the man’s abrupt manner.

  ‘Yours, of course,’ said the stranger haughtily. ‘I do not waste my time on servants. You are a knight and, although you have made an attempt to conceal it, a Jerosolimitanus, too. I saw your surcoat when the lantern went past. My brother was a Crusader, although he did not live to enjoy his glory.’ He fingered the material of Geoffrey’s tabard covetously. ‘It was a pity. He had promised to give me his holy armour when he returned.’

  Geoffrey peered at the man in the gloom, and could just make out dark hair and coal-black eyes. The stranger was not Bellême, whom Geoffrey would have recognized, but he was certainly a relative. Geoffrey supposed he was a brother – either Roger, Count of Marche or Arnulf, Earl of Pembroke. He considered his options. He could either lie about his name and escape to his tavern while he could, or he could tell the truth and insinuate himself into the Bellême household a little sooner than he had anticipated. He decided to take a chance.

  ‘My name is Geoffrey Mappestone, and I came to Winchester to lend my support to the Earl of Shrewsbury against the King.’

  The man regarded him in astonishment. ‘Why would you do that? You must have heard that my brother’s fortunes are waning, and that he is soon to lose all his possessions?’

  ‘Your brother?’ asked Geoffrey, pretending to be surprised.

  ‘I am Arnulf, Earl of Pembroke. I also stand to lose my property to the King tomorrow.’

  ‘Then you have my sympathy. Henry is a tyrant, who seized the throne that rightfully belongs to the Duke of Normandy. I was in the Duke’s service before I went on the Crusade, and any man who challenges Henry is a friend of mine.’

  ‘My House needs friends,’ said Arnulf keenly. ‘We will not have justice tomorrow. Will you stand with us against him? Lend your sword to our cause?’

  ‘Willingly,’ said Geoffrey. But it was all far too easy, and he did not think any of the Bellême clan would accept allies quite so readily, no matter how desperate they were. Arnulf, like his brother, would – should – regard any offer of help delivered in a dark alleyway with the suspicion it deserved. ‘But what makes you think you can trust me?’

  ‘Experience,’ said Arnulf with an engaging grin. ‘I pride myself on being able to differentiate between good men and bad ones. Come.’

  He led the way out of the alley and walked along the now-deserted street, far too fast and incautiously for Geoffrey’s liking. With serious misgivings, but not sure what else to do now he had committed himself, Geoffrey followed. They turned a corner and walked straight into the night watch, who had stopped for an illicit ale at someone’s house. The soldiers gave cries of excitement when they saw Geoffrey and Arnulf, and drew their swords.

  ‘Put up your weapons,’ Geoffrey said sharply, not breaking his stride. ‘We are on the King’s business. Stand aside.’

  He was almost as astonished as Arnulf when the ruse worked, and the soldiers allowed them to pass. He shoved his way through them, spurred boots ringing as he walked.

  ‘The King’s business?’ asked Arnulf. He sounded amused.

  ‘Do you think they would have let us pass if I said we were with Bellême?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Arnulf, surprised. ‘Even in these terrible times no one wants to earn my brother’s disapproval. They would have stepped aside just as readily had you invoked the name of Bellême.’

  He led the way to the widest, grandest street in the city, and headed for its largest and most luxurious tavern. He pushed open the door and walked inside, indicating Geoffrey was to follow. The interior was brightly lit and full of people. Most wore the livery that people had learned to fear – that of the House of Montgomery-Bellême, which was black with flashes of red. It was said that the colours represented evil and blood. Geoffrey saw terrified pot boys moving around the tables, supplying the Earl’s retinue with ale and food, and saw a white-faced taverner standing near the fire and wringing his hands in despair. And at the centre of the tavern was Bellême himself, looking just as Geoffrey remembered him from their encounter two years before.

  Robert de Bellême, Earl of Shrewsbury and lord of vast estates in Normandy, was a large man with jet black hair and the same coal-dark eyes as his brother and sisters. He wore full armour, and the size of his retinue indicated he did not mean to go before the King as a sorry penitent the following day, but intended to put up a show of might. Geoffrey wondered what he would do if fighting erupted between Bellême and the King. Which side should he fight for? Then he sensed it might not matter, because just seeing Bellême in the flesh reminded him of how much hatred the Earl had mustered for him the last time they had met: he might not live to see the King’s Court the following day. He gripped his sword, determined that if he was to die, he would take some of the Bellême clan with him.

  Bellême was laughing rapaciously, while the landlord looked as if he was about to cry. Geoffrey soon saw why. The Earl had removed the man’s shoes and was waving a hot poker around his feet while two soldiers held his arms to prevent him from running away. It was the kind of thing Bellême liked to do for entertainment, and why he had earned his reputation for cruelty.

  ‘Brother,’ said Arnulf, striding towards him. Bellême
was not pleased to be distracted from his fun, although the landlord whispered a prayer of relief. ‘I have found someone who intends to speak in your defence tomorrow.’

  Geoffrey had offered to do no such thing, but it was too late to correct Arnulf, and he took a deep breath before staring into the malevolent eyes of the most hated and feared man in the civilized world.

  ‘Geoffrey Mappestone,’ breathed Bellême, as if he could not believe his eyes. ‘I thought you skulked in the Holy Land, away from King Henry and his usurping ways.’

  ‘You know him,’ said Arnulf in satisfaction. ‘I thought as much when he offered us his support. I am not often wrong in my judgements.’

  ‘And what do you judge from him?’ asked Bellême disdainfully. Geoffrey sensed that he and Arnulf disliked each other, and it was not just the sisters who were at loggerheads.

  Arnulf shrugged. ‘We cannot be overly fussy about who we recruit. Your temper has lost us too many friends, so we are obliged to take them where we can. He will do, as far as I am concerned.’

  ‘Like Bishop Giffard?’ asked Bellême coolly. ‘You trusted him, and look what happened.’

  ‘That was not my fault,’ said Arnulf. ‘You were the one who told him about Greek Fire, not me. It is your fault the King knows about our weapon.’

  ‘You told me he was sympathetic to our cause,’ snarled Bellême. ‘And instead I learn he is fanatically religious and believes Henry to be the rightful King of England. He was no use to us at all and, worse, he immediately informed Henry that we are working towards making Greek Fire.’

  ‘It does us no harm to be feared by Henry,’ said Arnulf, unrepentant, while Geoffrey thought his powers of observation were not as acute as he believed if he imagined the unsmiling, hair-shirted Bishop of Winchester was anything other than a deeply religious man. ‘It will make it more difficult for him to gather troops against us.’

  Bellême sneered, evidently thinking Henry had troops enough already. Arnulf became defensive.