by Dan Davis
“Surely, that is not my doing,” I said, smiling at her.
Seeing Ameline’s face smile at me in return made me feel as if I was at home.
“You saved another one, sir,” she whispered to me. “Surely, you are working miracles.”
“I wish only that I could have come last year,” I replied.
She took a deep breath and placed her hand on my arm, looking up at me through her lashes. “I wonder, now that you have come, whether you put any consideration in staying longer.”
I was saved from having to answer by her father bellowing for her from upstairs and she went to attend to him. The servant Paillart came in with an armful of wood which he dumped by the hearth and began tending to the fire.
“I hope you ain’t playing on her heartstrings,” he muttered with his back to me. “She be an honourable girl, who deserves to be treated so.”
My instinct was to tell him to mind his own damned business but I sensed no malice in his words. It was more like an old soldier offering advice to the younger man he perceived me to be.
“I will not dishonour her,” I said, softly.
He peered at me over his shoulder, as if wondering if I meant I would not lay with her or if I meant that I intended to marry her. In truth, I wished I could have either, or both, but such a thing could surely never be.
The next day, Jean le Fevre came to claim his son. He fell to his knees at his boy’s bedside and his happy weeping sounded through the house. When he came down, his throat was too tight to speak and all he could manage was to shake my hand with both of his while he looked me in the eye, tears flowing from his.
“You must rest longer,” Ameline said. “Stay and eat with us. I know my father would like it.”
“Nothing would give me greater joy,” I said. “But we have rested the night through and now I must get the prisoner to Nantes. With his confession, we can take Gilles de Rais and truly put an end to this nightmare.”
Poor Ameline. Her nightmare was far from over.
Two weeks later, on Tuesday 13th September 1440, we went to arrest Gilles de Rais.
11. The Arrest of Gilles
September 1440
We rode south under the black banners of the Bishop of Nantes, for it was on his authority that we finally acted, in partnership with Jean the Duke of Brittany.
Roger de Briqueville had confessed all.
I was not present for his questioning but I am told the words spilled from his mouth faster than the Inquisition could record them. He told a tale of continual murders, depravity and sinful lusts, and worse even than all that he told of heretical acts of worship and demon summoning and the invocation of Satan himself. And all throughout Briqueville’s long, desperate confessions he named the deviant, the criminal, the heretic, as his lord Gilles de Rais.
It was to Castle Tiffauges once again that we rode. The Marshal had returned to his most favoured home and fortress just days before from Machecoul. The Bishop believed he was attempting to confuse us as to his true whereabouts but we had enough agents by then watching his nests and reporting back to Nantes to know where he was at all times.
And yet to me it seemed less like a cunning ploy and more like desperation. It rang of the frantic oscillations of a beast caught in trap that it does not understand. We were coming for him and he did not know what to do about it.
Our company was a large one, almost eighty men. Some were soldiers, all were armed, although Stephen and the other lawyers were armed with writ and warrant rather than brigandine and blade.
“It is not enough!” I had said to the Bishop. “His personal army is two hundred strong. Less a score or two, perhaps. They will outmatch us in number and in skill.”
“God will protect you,” the Bishop had insisted, raising a soft, fat palm to the sky. “And anyway, there are no more men.”
“The Duke can raise thousands,” I replied.
“And if you find that thousands are required,” the Bishop said, “then he will raise them.”
“That will be marvellous for you and the Duke, my lord, but in the meantime me and my men will be long dead.”
“I have every confidence in you all.”
We purchased what additional armour we could from the best merchant in Nantes. I found a new coat of plates in Nantes made from the finest steel plates riveted between two layers of thick linen. Somehow, he knew that we were associated with the Bishop in some way and constantly attempted to entice us into purchasing absurdly overpriced nonsense instead of the robust forms we required.
“That piece is of course excellent,” the armour merchant said as I tapped the rivets and plates all over with my knife. “But it is rather heavy and unrefined. For a man of your obvious taste and means, I would recommend this remarkable item newly arrived from the armourer in Milan. The steel is lighter and the outer layer is this splendid red velvet and the rivets are well gilded, as you can see.”
“I would rather suffer the extra weight for the added protection of the thicker steel,” I said. Rob was rapping his knuckles against a series of helms behind me and I had to raise my voice. “And the Milanese piece is hideously gaudy.”
“I’ll take it,” Walt said, grinning.
“No you bloody well will not,” I said. “I will not have you at my side all tarted up like a whore on May Day. You shall have that coat of jacks from Nuremberg and you shall be grateful, sir.”
I got for myself an open-faced sallet which left my face exposed but would enable me to see, while Walt and Rob made do with a pair of old bascinets that had the long, pointed skulls which had been popular thirty or forty years earlier.
“I always liked these,” Rob said, grinning at the helm that he held in his hands.
“Only because they add four inches to your height,” Walt grumbled.
For all our new armour and dozens of companions, approaching Tiffauges across the plain that September day, I found my heart was in my mouth. If our company of soldiers, palace guards, bailiffs and lawyers clashed with the Marshal’s army, our side would collapse and flee, and they would be cut down.
“Wait here while we go on ahead,” I said to Labbe, the Duke’s captain of arms, who was in command of our troops.
“It is I who must serve the warrant,” Captain Labbe replied. “Personally.”
“You will serve nothing if you are lying dead on the field,” I replied and galloped off with my men, Stephen included.
“I been thinking,” Walt said as we approached, slowing our horses to a walk. “Has anyone considered that this Marshal, the Baron Gilles de Rais, might be your brother William in disguise?”
The wind grew colder every day and it cut into every inch of exposed skin and between gaps in my armour. It was turning to autumn without ever being summer and the crops all around were stunted and diseased and I knew none of the sheep and goats scattering at our approach would live to see Christmas.
“Of course I have considered it,” I said. “But I saw the Marshal in battle, at Orléans and at Patay. It was at a distance but I would have recognised my brother even so. It is not him.”
“Besides,” Stephen said. “William promised to leave Christendom for two hundred years and it has been merely a hundred and fifty.”
“A hundred and eighty years,” I said, correcting him. “And I never believed he would commit to the letter of the agreement. I have often doubted whether he would keep to the spirit of it either, come to that, and yet he seems to have done so. We have had no word of him ever since.”
“Perhaps he died,” Rob said. “In the East.”
“Perhaps,” I admitted. “Though I somehow doubt that we will be so blessed. He will return one day soon and when he does, we shall kill him. But first we will take this lord and if he is one of William’s, we shall see him destroyed.”
I spoke with complete confidence but I still wondered if it could be true. Certainly, I would not put such a thing past William. He could certainly have taken the identity of one of his immor
tals and then ruled the land in his name. The depths of depravity had the ring of William’s evil to it. Indeed, the first horror that I had seen him inflict was when he murdered my half-brother’s little children and consumed parts of them.
Will I soon see William again? I wondered. Is he almost within my grasp once more?
There was no army drawn up and waiting on the plain before Tiffauges. There was no one at all, in fact, and the gateway to the castle was fully open and the Marshal’s gold and black banner hung from the tallest tower, declaring to the world that he resided within.
“That’s a trap,” Walt said, pointing up at it.
“Nonsense,” I said.
“Got to agree with Walt, Richard,” Rob said. “Too good to be true, ain’t it?”
“I think not,” I replied, though I could never have explained why. It was merely a feeling that Gilles had given himself up.
“But where’s his army?” Rob insisted. “Waiting within?”
“Perhaps he has dismissed them entirely.”
“Why in the name of Jesus Christ and all His saints would he go ahead and do something as stupid as all that?” Walt said. “Don’t make any sense.”
“What about this man’s actions makes sense, Walt? Nothing he has done has any reason to it. His magnificent play in Orléans that was so lavish it almost ruined him. The needless murdering of this great host of children when he could have quietly supped on living men’s blood, undiscovered and safe for centuries more. Charging from one castle to another with no pattern nor reason. They are the acts of a man who has lost his mind and lost his will besides. He seems already defeated, does he not?”
From the corner of my eye, I saw Rob and Walt raise their eyebrows at each other.
“Whatever you say, Richard. After you, then.”
I cleared my throat. “Perhaps we will allow the Duke’s captain of arms to go in first.”
In spite of my confident words, I was still on edge as our party approached the gate. We all watched the narrow slits of the windows in the towers flanking the gatehouse and in the walls. Every loud clop of a hoof on the cobbles caused me to flinch, expecting a crossbow bolt to come shooting down right after. I watched Captain Labbe’s men file in through the gate passage and half expected boiling water to be dumped down on them through the murder holes or for the Marshal’s soldiers to rush out from the courtyard.
But all was quiet.
In the courtyard, with the walls and towers now on all sides, I wished that I had a shield to raise over my head because surely it was the most perfect spot on earth from which to murder a company of men.
And yet the stable hands took our horses and we were shown in through the main door by the porter as if we were expected and escorted through the castle to the main hall.
“I bloody well knew it, you lying sod,” Miton the porter said to me, wagging his finger in my face before strutting off. No servants scattered from our path and the place was no longer illuminated throughout as it had been.
“Where is everyone, Miton?” I asked the porter.
“Dismissed,” he said, miserable. “Dismissed and sent home, never to return.”
“What of the soldiers?” I asked. Just behind us, Captain Labbe and his soldiers listened closely for Miton’s reply.
“Dismissed also,” he said, shaking his head.
“He lies,” Captain Labbe said. “They are here, lying in wait to protect their master, are they not?”
“If they are then no one’s told me nothing about it,” Miton said, glumly.
I did not know what to think. It certainly seemed as though the Marshal was capitulating but that may have been part of the ruse.
“Make ready,” I said to my men. “String your bow, Rob, and have a good arrow ready.”
Miton paused by an enormous set of doors and spoke before heaving one of them open and stepping aside. “My lord the Baron of Rais awaits you, sirs, in the lower hall.”
The lower hall was very grand in scale but quite spare in decoration. The floor was paved in stone but it was rather rough and no rushes had been spread. The walls had sconces for suspending tapestries and yet the walls were bare. Open doors on both flanks and a gallery showed just darkness beyond and I wondered what was lurking there.
But we filed in and spread out and approached the far end.
For there he was. Finally, I saw him in person.
It was not William.
Gilles de Rais stood raised above us all on the dais at the top of the hall, dressed in a magnificent black and gold samite robe, with long sleeves and an elaborately embroidered hat upon his head, woven with bands of red silk and cloth of gold. The Marshal was tall and slim, with wide shoulders and black hair. At his hip, he wore a sword with silver inlay encrusted around the hilt in chevrons and knots, and the scabbard was covered in shining black silk with rubies around the top and a line of them all the way down to the point, like shining droplets of blood.
Rarely have I seen kings so majestically attired.
His face, though, was drawn and miserable. Around his eyes, his skin was pink and raw as if he had been awake for days. Those eyes cast around over us as we trooped in and advanced on him up the hall.
By the Marshal’s side were his servants Poitou, Henriet, the priest Blanchet who I had met weeks before, and the sorcerer-alchemist Prelati, who had fled from us when we had rescued the boy. They each of them looked terrified, and well they might, for we were two score angry soldiers and bailiffs bearing down on them and their master, it seemed, was offering them no protection.
“Gentlemen,” the Marshal said, his voice remarkably loud and clear and commanding. A magnificent voice, truth be told, and one used to being obeyed. “No need to be so fearful. You may approach and state your business without threat or hindrance.”
Other than Stephen, who was at the forefront, my men and I kept somewhat back and to one side, watching the doors for sudden assault. It was again a most perfect place for the Marshal’s soldiers to ambush us from all sides, surrounding us with their greater numbers before cutting us to pieces. Above, the gallery was dark and I imagined a score of crossbowmen hiding up there, crouched with their bows ready.
I nudged Rob and nodded at the gallery. “Use the door and find a way up that gallery. If it is clear, keep watch on us with your bow. If not, raise the alarm. Walt, go with him.”
They slipped across the hall and through the door.
As my men left, the captain at arms stepped up to the base of the Marshal’s dais, pulled off his armet and lifted his chin before raising his voice so that it echoed even from the shadowed timbers of the ceiling far above.
“My name is Jean Labbe, Captain of Arms for Jean V, the Duke of Brittany. I come to deliver this warrant to you, my lord.”
He glanced behind him and beckoned Stephen forward.
Stephen wore only robes and was practically unarmed and so when he stepped in front to become the foremost of our party, I was unsurprised to hear his voice wavering slightly as he spoke. Still, his voice was clear and loud and none in the hall would have missed a word.
“We, Jean Labbe, captain, acting in the name of my lord Jean V, the Duke of Brittany, and Stephen le Viel, lawyer, acting in the name of Jean de Malestroit the Bishop of Nantes, do hereby enjoin upon Gilles, Comte de Brienne, Lord of Tiffauges, Machecoul, Pouzages, and so on, the Baron de Rais, Marshal of France, and Lieutenant-General of Brittany, to grant us immediate access to his castle, whichever castle that may be, and to surrender himself to us as prisoner so that he may answer according to due process of the law to the triple charge of murder, and of witchcraft, and of sodomy, which is laid against him this day, the thirteenth of September in the year 1440, by the order of the Duke of Brittany and the Bishop of Nantes.”
Stephen’s voice echoed in the silent chamber.
All eyes were on Gilles de Rais. This man had been committing his crimes for years. Many of them in my company had friends or family who had lost sons or daughters.
But still, it had only ever been whispered of in the darkness, about kitchen tables after children were abed, and in the dark corners of alehouses. All those who whispered had known that the Marshal was beyond the reach of the law. It did not apply to such men. The distance was too great between the ordinary folk and the lords above them. Only when one lord crossed another, or acted against the king, would they find themselves in trouble.
But there it was. The long-awaited warrant read aloud in the demon’s presence, and the crimes named not in the darkness but in the full light of day.
The Marshal seemed to hardly react at all. I seemed to detect a small sagging in his stance, as if he had breathed all the air from his chest and but had not yet decided to breathe in once more.
Beside and behind him, however, the servants reacted. The priest, Blanchet, crossed himself repeatedly and prayed under his breath. Prelati the Florentine alchemist held his hands up to God as if beseeching him directly and personally, wailing softly in his mother tongue and in Latin. His Italian theatrics were quite repellent in their falsity. The scrawny monster Poitou sneered at me, glaring at me out of everyone in the crowd, because he knew that I was the main instrument in his destruction. His fingers grazed the dagger at his hip and I watched, ready in case he decided to throw it at me. Henriet hugged his arms about his fat body and rubbed himself up and down, as if trying to comfort his flesh.
“I deny the charges,” the Marshal said smoothly, his eyes narrowing.
“Of course you do, my lord,” Stephen replied, looking up at him. “And you may defend yourself against them in court.”
Gilles grinned at him before looking up and fixing me with the full force of his gaze. “I knew you would come for me again, one day. I knew it. And now it is that day. The day that I have imagined. For many years, I feared you would creep into my chamber and slit my throat as I slept, or perhaps you and your companions would assault me as I travelled or besiege my castles. Never did I imagine this.” He laughed. “Writs and warrants? Surely, all this does not become the likes of you, sir.”