by David Gilman
Nothing had ever explained that moment. Her green eyes flashed in alarm and then quickly understood when she saw the purse. She had said something about not causing the beggar harm and while de Marcy held him she took back her purse and pressed a coin into the old man’s still-open palm. Under the girl’s beseeching gaze de Marcy released the beggar. She smiled and thanked him and then turned to go about her business, her fingers tucking a strand of auburn hair beneath her cap. Like a prisoner held in a dark pit who sees a shard of light, a glimpse of sky, and then has it taken away, he reached out and caught her arm. She turned again and before he could utter the words that fought his tongue those same eyes blazed with anger. She saw the bloodied hand that gripped her and he realized he had not cleaned the gore that clung to it after the murder he had committed in the alleyway only minutes before. She pulled free, her shout of alarm alerting others. Reality brought de Marcy to his senses; a hue and cry would have him cornered and at the end of a rope before the day was over. He pulled his hood over his face and escaped into the crowd.
The months passed and de Marcy tracked her down. His persistence in his pursuit of her was met with increasing hostility from her father and those who served him. The threats held no fear for de Marcy. He offered what inducements he could – even marriage – but then one day she was gone, spirited away to a place of safety. And now she was being used to draw him in. How he did not yet know, but here was an opportunity to be welcomed back into the nobility and an offer of wealth with the bonus of a woman he had once coveted. He grimaced at the soiled messenger.
‘Your stench offends me.’
He barely raised his eyes to the man behind the kneeling victim. The mercenary rammed his spear into the man’s back and forced his body into the fire. Flames leapt as the squirming man was pinned like a writhing insect, his screams smothered by the searing embers.
‘Tell your master what you have seen today,’ he said to the second messenger who was staring in horror at his companion’s fate. ‘And tell him that I am coming.’
11
Simon Bucy, the King’s adviser and friend, observed, when he arrived at the church, that a dozen men loitered in various parts of the cloisters. They were not grouped together, but stood separate, and he could see that they acted as guards for the man who was waiting inside. Bucy had agreed to meet the Savage Priest and it was obvious that the mercenary did not trust those he was dealing with. Had it been a trap set by King John, using Bucy and his offer as bait, then it was clear that the mercenary had planned his escape.
As Bucy strode along the uneven flagstones towards the iron-studded doors, the men’s casual demeanour changed and the brigands became more alert. Bucy’s escort of a half-dozen soldiers moved closer to his shoulder, but Bucy raised a hand.
‘Captain, you will wait here.’
The captain of the guard hesitated; it was easy to kill someone of importance in the gloom of a church and, from what he had heard of the man that Bucy was about to meet, his fears might well be justified.
‘I am charged with your safety,’ the captain insisted.
‘And you will stay here until I call you. I am on the King’s business, and no ill fortune will befall me today. Do not approach any of those men; I want to create no opportunity for anyone to cause trouble. So keep your men here and keep them silent.’
The captain was unhappy about the order, but the powerful Simon Bucy was not to be contradicted. He nodded his understanding of his orders and watched as Bucy went on ahead without him.
Bucy had so far managed to keep his fear under control but as the arched doors swung open it felt as though he was stepping into a beast’s lair rather than a place of worship. One of the brigands nodded him through the archway and then pulled the door closed behind him. Bucy moved no further into the near darkness. It was a windy day; heavy clouds darkened the sky, and the church’s windows were dull with grime. He shivered beneath his woven cloak and pulled the fur collar around his neck, clutching it tightly for a moment, forcing his hand to stop trembling. He moved further into the gloom and tried to make out if there were figures in the side chapels, but he could see no one. As he turned to face the transept a hooded monk appeared at the far end carrying a candle as thick as a man’s arm and placed it on a spiked stand. In the yellow light that it cast was the cloaked figure of a man hunched in prayer. Bucy squinted, trying to focus on the man’s back, unable to see whether it was his traitor or the man he had come to meet. He glanced nervously left and right, his mind playing tricks. These Normans were all treacherous bastards. A sudden panic gripped him. What if he had been played like a fish on a line and they had planned his capture or murder all along? That would give them one of the King’s advisers, a man who knew what the King thought and planned to do. Simon Bucy was a source of information that could be of great value to Charles of Navarre and the Norman lords. My God, he thought, I’ve been a fool. It was all he could do not to call out for the soldiers to rush into the darkness and get him back to his accustomed warmth and luxury.
The hunched figure stood and turned, the cowled face still in darkness. Whoever it was raised a hand and gestured him forward. Bucy caught his breath as if Death’s emissary beckoned him. He faltered, unable to make one foot move in front of the other. It was not the traitor – it was the killer who was here to do the King’s bidding. Bucy’s eyes had become accustomed to the shadows and saw that this man was of a bigger and heavier build than the Norman lord.
‘Come closer into the light,’ the man said, his voice echoing as he stood waiting.
Without realizing it Bucy had started to walk towards him. He felt drawn to do the man’s bidding without question and his actions caught him by surprise. He stopped halfway. It was time to compose himself and exert his own authority – only that could dampen the fear.
‘Declare yourself,’ he said, pulling himself up, trying to feel as tall as possible, knowing the figure who waited in front of the altar stood head and shoulders above him.
The man tugged back the hood of his cloak and stepped closer to the candlelight.
‘I am the man sent to do your bidding, my lord. I am Gilles de Marcy.’
Bucy could not help himself from moving closer to see the man’s features. ‘Are you alone?’ he asked nervously, his eyes drawn to the gaunt, sallow features of the man who had not yet made any other move towards him. Bucy was transfixed by the man’s eyes, which seemed not to reflect any of the light, but appeared as black obsidian stones pushed into their sockets. He shuddered, imagining that face close to a victim’s, the last vision of hell on earth.
He felt foolish the moment the question passed his lips: ‘You are le Prêtre sanguinaire?’
‘Is that what I am called?’ de Marcy answered.
Bucy felt the irritation rise at his own pathetic demeanour. ‘You know damned well what you are.’ That was better. He was getting back some control now. Being sent to a freezing cold church to meet a creature discarded by all that was holy was a duty he had begged the King not to send him on. But King John refused to have the man brought to the palace. And he would have no personal contact with the mercenary leader. There were conditions that John would insist upon even if the man succeeded in the task of killing Thomas Blackstone.
Bucy felt some comfort returning to him as he thought of his role as the King’s envoy. He took a few more purposeful strides, trying to show that he was not afraid of the black-cloaked figure and that he was the one controlling the meeting.
De Marcy took a step back allowing Bucy to settle himself on one of the benches on the other side of the aisle. Bucy flicked his hand in a frustrated gesture of having a lesser being in his presence. ‘Sit. The sooner this is done with the better.’
De Marcy did as he was instructed, but showed little concern for the older man’s status. They were both there to serve a purpose. A contract would be agreed upon and both parties sought the same conclusion.
‘We have failed to kill Thomas Blackstone. He nestl
es in the heart of Normandy. We have sent routiers, men who cannot be linked to the King, but they fail. Every time,’ Bucy said, exasperation tinging his words.
Bucy waited for a response from the dark creature, for that was how he seemed, half-shadowed, wearing the darkness like a sorcerer’s cloak, but he remained silent, letting the King’s trusted ally squirm a little longer. Like a man beneath his boot and a sword through his throat.
‘You do not kill a man like that with brute force, unless God favours you in battle,’ he said.
‘Can you kill Thomas Blackstone?’ Bucy asked.
‘I can.’
‘Then you will tell me how before I go any further.’
‘I will not risk my plan by telling you or anyone else. Secrets seep away in the King’s court like a leaking privy. Enough for you to know that I will draw Blackstone away, without his men, isolate him and then he’s mine.’ He smiled. ‘You will let me have him so that I can determine how long it takes for him to die.’
Bucy turned his face away. ‘I have the authority to offer you payment and recognition for the services that you will provide the King. Kill Blackstone and all the towns he holds are yours. You take the patis from those who pay it to him. You will control his land, take his home – everything.’
De Marcy said nothing for a moment. His silence was broken by the sound of the older man’s breathing. It was almost laboured. Like a man afraid.
‘Christiana de Sainteny. Where is she?’ the Savage Priest asked quietly, knowing he was handing back the advantage to the King’s adviser.
Bucy grinned. ‘You want her?’ he taunted.
‘Tell me,’ de Marcy whispered. The softly spoken demand carried an unspoken threat.
De Bucy held his nerve. He looked again at the killer, wanting his authority to be acknowledged. ‘Not yet. Our King makes another demand upon you.’
Bucy already felt the taste of bile at the back of his throat. Over the years of serving the King’s father, and now the King himself, he had played every political game in order to advance the King’s best interests as well as his own rewards. He knew brutality was common on a battlefield soaked in blood in order to secure a nation, but sitting here smelling the damp walls and the scent of sweat and woodsmoke from this man’s clothing brought him too close to the reality of it all. Bucy had never wielded a sword in anger. He realized that his gaze had drifted towards the spluttering candle. Like a moth, his mind had sought the flame and its comfort and, like the moth, he was perhaps also being drawn to destruction. He had advised the King to take this irreconcilable path of murder. It did not matter. The dice were thrown. Victory was the prize. So, better to stare at the mesmerizing flame than at the face of the Savage Priest.
‘What is it?’ de Marcy asked without concern or irritation, catching Bucy by surprise, making him avert his eyes from the flame and back to his face.
Bucy stood up; he wanted this day over. ‘Hundreds follow you. When the time comes you and your horsemen must serve the King in battle against the English. There will be a great need for fighting men. But you will receive no payment for this duty,’ he answered brusquely.
‘And if these terms are not suitable to me?’
‘Then you will never have the domains that Thomas Blackstone commands or the glory of having slain the Englishman. The woman you once desired will be warned that you seek her and she will disappear from your life forever.’
De Marcy shrugged as if he didn’t care. ‘It’s Blackstone I want. I keep the taxes; I keep the land and towns. And I am given the King’s pardon and brought into court.’
‘You wanted the woman once, and you are the kind of man who would not let a desire escape him.’
Bucy knew he was right and so did de Marcy. The old bastard held the line tight and the hook was deep. How long would he allow himself to wriggle on it?
‘As remote as the possibility is, what if Blackstone escapes me and I fail to kill him?’
‘You are still obliged,’ Bucy said.
‘And if I agree and then change my mind?’
‘There will be no hiding place for you in this country, or any other. And if you doubt that, understand that my sovereign lord can call upon others wherever you sell your sword, be it to the Holy Roman Empire, the Italians, the Germans – anyone. You will be seized and you will suffer a fate that will inflict the greatest pain.’
Bucy waited a moment longer. It was time to throw the vile creature his bone.
‘Christiana de Sainteny is Blackstone’s wife.’
Gilles de Marcy’s lips drew back, smiling like a rat baring stained fangs. ‘I accept,’ he said and extended his hand to seal the bargain.
Bucy glared down at the bony hand that extended from the cloak’s folds and saw that half of the little finger was missing. He had seen worse disfigurements before but for some reason the thought of taking that hand into his own made him recoil.
Without another word he turned on his heel and walked away as quickly as his dignity would permit, forcing himself not to break into a run, but unable to disguise the desperation in his voice.
‘Open the doors!’ he shouted. ‘Open the doors!’
12
William de Fossat had once been Thomas Blackstone’s enemy, and one of the group of Norman barons who had fought the English King a decade ago, but their simmering disappointment at the French monarch’s poor leadership had led him to side with Blackstone and fight the French at Calais. He was a man who seized opportunities, and admitted as much. For him there was no shame in waking from a stupor to realize that the honour of France no longer lay in the hands of a pathetic, indecisive King. That was why he joined other Norman lords who sided with Navarre.
De Fossat cared not. He had married a widow with land, and his honour and wealth was once again intact. There were nights, though, when he knew the price had been high as he lay in his bedchamber listening to his wife’s snoring, when her heaving carcass threatened to tear her nightdress like a snorting boar ploughing the forest floor. If his prayers were answered she would one day choke on a fish bone and he would be free to do as he pleased. He had sold his body to the widow, which gave him wealth, and the estates were secured under his protection, but there was hope yet to salvage his soul. The widow’s lands were now his and they nestled in the safety of the Breton marches, a place where the French King might still dare to venture should he dislodge the English from the south. De Fossat remembered with a mixture of regret and fondness his siding with Blackstone. War forged strange alliances, even friendships, and if it came to more fighting he would ride with the Englishman again.
As his horse meandered along the forest trail his thoughts flitted between past memories of those times and the Norman lords’ simmering conspiracy against the King. It was a good alliance between him and the Englishman even though Blackstone had once nearly killed him in a challenge. Despite being an opportunistic nobleman, de Fossat was bound by honour, driven by ambition and sworn to stand with the other nobles who secretly planned a conspiracy to remove the French King and replace him with his son, the Dauphin, Duke of Normandy – whose bequeathed title meant little to the Normans. As if clearing an unpleasant thought from his head, de Fossat leaned from the saddle and blew snot from his nostrils. It was not these thoughts of conspiracy and treason that now held his attention and which made him careless. In his mind’s eye he was already easing the undershift of Aloise, the eighteen-year-old girl he had been lying with this past year. Her freshness invigorated him and when he woke with arousal each morning it was because of the thought of her and not the demands of his wife insisting they attend church and kneel in humility on a cold stone floor for an hour so that some half-witted inbred, fit only to become a parasitic monk, could chant a pious litany. It was the thought of Aloise’s pink nipples and her unblemished skin, not the pock-marked battlefield of his wife’s arse, that seeped warmth into him and which lowered his guard.
He did not notice the well-travelled path through the forest,
a route that was seldom used except by himself and those of his household, or the trampled ferns beneath the bare branches – such obvious signs of horsemen making their way into the forest’s shadows.
The French King’s assassin waited patiently in the forest’s gloom as his victim rode towards the trap he had laid. The mercenary scum he led were anxious to spring the ambush, but fear of their leader stayed their hands. The sallow-faced horseman with the pinched features had the ear of a fearful King who trusted few of those around him. Even the King’s own son, the Dauphin, was suspect – more for the weakness the seventeen-year-old boy exhibited, naively believing the false promises of the Normans, than any blatant act of treachery. The son was the easy route to the King’s heart and throne. Like a diseased wound the Normans’ poison crept ever closer to the heart of France. De Marcy knew it was better to allow a routier like him to go where the King’s men could not and to do the killing for which the King could deny responsibility. Like a poacher in his own royal forests, he would bait the trap. Sooner or later Thomas Blackstone and those who secretly supported him would step, one by one, into the snare.
The undergrowth exploded as men leapt from their hiding places, launching themselves at de Fossat. The greed-driven fools underestimated the knight’s fighting skills and he reacted so quickly that his spurred horse trampled three of them underfoot. Bones crunched from the force of iron-shod hooves, and where moments before his hands held only the reins, he now wielded his sword. De Fossat had only ever been bested by Blackstone, and these carrion fighters would pay dearly in trying to take him alive. Heeling the horse he wheeled it around in a fast tight turn, caught another two, swung the sword and felt its edge bite into skull and shoulder. Men cursed; others screamed in pain. But as a pack of wolves pull down a stag their numbers soon overwhelmed him. Grasping hands held the horse’s bridle; knives plunged into the beast’s neck. It whinnied and fell as others beat down on him.