The Prophecy of Death: (Knights Templar 25)

by Michael Jecks

  He patted a book nearby. It was a fascinating book, this. A history of England written by that great man Geoffrey of Monmouth. He had an appreciation of the importance of history, and of keeping an accurate chronicle of events. Monmouth had set down all the great events since the arrival of Brutus after the sack of Troy, through the great period of King Arthur, and beyond. It was clear from this that those who were bold and firm in their resolve, as well as dedicated to God, of course, were the men who would achieve great things. Other books in his stacks told the same story. Alexander did not conquer through laziness! No! He was a proud, chivalrous adventurer.

  But that poor friar was not built from the same clay. He had failed, and because of his failure, the King was sent greater distress, because he had hoped for this late release.

  It was all because of the prophecy, of course. The prophecy of St Thomas’s Holy Oil. He had it here.

  Richard moved his books about until he had a space before him, and then he blew dust from the aged parchment, smiling as he did so. Merely handling these ancient pages was enough to give his heart a sense of warmth and excitement.

  He had not heard of the prophecy until some four years ago, when rumours of this came to him. The friar himself had told him.

  There had been a dream given to St Thomas Becket while he was exiled in France. The Holy Virgin sent it to him, and in the dream she told him that there were to be six kings after his own. She showed him a marvellous Holy Oil, which he must keep safe, for the King who was anointed with it would be a lion among men: he would conquer large tracts of France once more, and throw the heathens from the Holy Land.

  The oil had been secreted in a phial safe from danger, in St Cyprian’s Monastery in France. It was to be kept there, secure, concealed, until the coronation of the fifth King after Becket’s own king: Henry II. That meant it must be brought out now, for Edward II.

  Even so, the King had not been anointed with the special oil. And King Edward II blamed all the misfortunes of his reign on that failure. The friar who had brought this matter to his attention was suddenly the King’s best companion. Anything the friar wanted must be provided. And all he had to do was help the King. He had sent Nicholas to the Pope, to tell the story and explain the importance of the oil. And to ask that a cardinal might be sent to anoint King Edward with the Holy Oil – the use of such a high-ranking cleric must give the oil additional potency.

  But the pontiff had demurred, saying that any of the King’s bishops could perform the service. It was plain enough what his reasoning had been: the King was enormously unpopular already, and wasn’t aiding the Pope in his attempts to bring peace between the English and French kings, so why should he help Edward? The King was thwarted in this one act which could, so he believed, save his reign and bring him the fortune he deserved.

  And the messenger who had brought this news? That friar was no longer the King’s favourite, of course. Failure was never rewarded in England.

  But this matter of the oil. It was interesting, nonetheless. Richard gave a fleeting frown, patted his book again, and set it aside, but as he did so, his eyes narrowed and he wondered whether, just whether it was possible that the oil was genuine.

  That would be a powerfully effective oil if it truly had been given to St Thomas by the Blessed Virgin.

  Tuesday before Easter,3 eighteenth year of the reign of King Edward II

  Assart in Forest near Crowborough

  Agnes set down the milk and leaned back, hands at the pain in the small of her back where the muscles were so tense, and then took up the butter-churn’s paddle and began the laborious work of converting the milk.

  There was a time when she had been small and wisp-like, she remembered, but childbirth and the famine had stopped all that. When first she had been married, she had been a child, really. Only fourteen years old, and yet old enough to wed and conceive. She hadn’t needed too many muscles in those days. All she had known was some easy cookery, a few chores about the house, and then the grim effort of suckling her boy. And then the girl, too, and another boy.

  The priest had been a great support at first. She told him about her vow when her father kicked up a fuss, and the priest listened to her and Matthew, and checked with all the witnesses to make sure, before declaring the marriage perfectly valid. After all, a marriage wasn’t something that was a Church matter. If people wanted the blessing of the priest at the church door, that was fine, but it didn’t invalidate the wedding if they chose not to have it. No, and so Agnes was married.

  It was the famine that did for her, though. All the children starved during the winter of the second famine year. One after another, as though they couldn’t bear to stay alive amid so much sorrow. There was no food for anyone, but it was one thing to see men and women with their gaunt features and swollen bellies, their arms and legs withering, eyes sinking, teeth falling out, until only skeletons clothed with a thin layer of skin appeared to remain and another to see the children suffer.

  All suffered, but families in the woods suffered more than most. Their scrappy land wouldn’t support much by way of crops in good years, and they must depend on the grain they could buy from those with better land. But during the famine, they lost their animals, for there was nothing for them to eat. The animals that could eat, succumbed to a murrain before long. All were dead. And with them Agnes and Matthew’s wealth.

  Matthew had never been particularly demonstrative. He’d not taken to beating her before the famine. Only a couple of thrashings a week was his norm. But it had eroded her confidence even then. When Matthew’s father had roared at her for making his pottage too thin, too garlicky or too cold, Matthew had taken his side, and would slap her face to show his discontent. But that was nothing to the pain she endured when she must pay the marriage debt. After her third babe, it was unbearable, but he wouldn’t listen to her, and forced her to take him. That was why she grew to hate him. The routine manner of his beating her was one thing, but forcing her to open her legs each night when it felt as though there was a dagger in her belly already, made her despise him.

  The sound of hooves came clearly, and she leaned on the paddle, listening, before continuing with her work again, the paddle thudding more heavily as the cream began to separate into buttermilk and butter.

  ‘Maid, you look good enough to eat!’

  She turned and felt her face break into a broad smile. ‘Richard!’

  The King’s herald grinned and opened his arms, and it was then that she heard her husband’s roar, and she saw him hurtling towards them with a billhook in his fist, and she screamed as it rose and sliced down at Richard’s head.

  Chapter One

  Monday following Easter in the eighteenth year of the reign of King Edward II4

  Eltham Palace

  He was not yet thirteen years old, but he could still remember the horror of those days. Three years had passed, but he would never forget them. Not if he lived to be a hundred.

  At first he had been confused. Only a boy, he had grown to appreciate the men of his household, great men, good men, who were entirely trusted. Knights, squires, even lords, had been his companions all his life, and he admired them, all of them. Everyone did. They were the pinnacle of nobility.

  Many great men lived in his own private household: Damory, Audley, Macauley – they were the men he could look up to. Other than the King, they were the men he respected most in the world.

  But his world was about to collapse about him.

  It was no sudden shock. He knew that now, but to a lad of only nine and a half years it had come with the vast speed of a river in spate, washing away all before it. He had listened in horror to the tales of death and torture with utter incomprehension. In truth, the catastrophe was a long time building, had he but known it. But he was so young when the civil war began, he couldn’t see that this was a ponderous disaster that had been constructed on the foundations of hatred over ten years – before his birth. It was the result of the King’s capriciou
s nature. King Edward II had long resented the attitude of the men who thwarted his whims. To the King’s mind, he had the inalienable right of the Crown. God had made him King. None other. So no man had the right to overrule him. There was no one with the right to stand against him, and yet many tried.

  The first rebellion, so the King said, was when his close friend Piers Gaveston was captured and murdered by the earls of Hereford, Lancaster and Warwick. Gaveston had been the recipient of too much of the King’s largesse, and the earls resented royal generosity at the expense of others who had more noble birth. So they took the King’s adviser and killed him.

  When Gaveston was removed, the King seemed to settle and willingly spend his time with his other friends and his family. The birth of his first son gave him enormous pleasure and pride, so they said. But the King was not content. And soon he found a new favourite – a man of such rapacious greed that he set all the land against himself and the King: Sir Hugh le Despenser. It was his fault that there was a fresh civil war.

  The Lords Marcher allied themselves with the lords of the far north and rampaged over the territories owned by the Despenser. They burned and looted all the vast Despenser estates, and then marched upon London, forcing humiliating terms on the King, demanding that he exile his friend and agree to rule within limitations set by them. It was degrading for a man of pride; shameful for a King. So, at the first opportunity, the King took action, and the war was finally concluded when he encircled the rebels at Boroughbridge.

  If only he had shown tolerance and demonstrated that magnanimity which was the mark of a great man … but King Edward II was driven by baser motives. Instead of accepting apologies and forgiving those who had shown him such disregard, the King launched a ferocious attack on all those who had set their standards against him.

  His own cousin, Earl Thomas of Lancaster, was led to a field on a donkey, and there beheaded. The Lords Clifford and Mowbray were executed at York, and up and down the country lords, knights and squires were hanged. The tarred bodies were left there on the gibbets, pecked over and desiccated, for two years and more, proof of the vindictiveness of the man who ruled the nation.

  Except he didn’t. Not alone. He had left his wife, and it was he and Despenser who controlled the management of the realm together, for all the world as close as lovers. Both of them feared by his subjects; both of them hated.

  No king could be universally loved, of course. The boy may be just twelve years old, but he knew this; he had been well tutored, and he had read enough of the lives of Arthur, Alexander and others to know that a powerful leader would always have his enemies. But this was taking matters too far. It was one thing to alienate certain members of the nobility, but another entirely to turn even a wife against him. And her children.

  Especially, Edward of Windsor, the Earl of Chester and first-born son of King Edward II, told himself, when it meant losing the trust and love of your own heir.

  Night of Monday and Tuesday following Easter5

  Christ Church Priory, Canterbury

  It was the howling of the blasted creatures that woke him – again – and Mark of Faversham rolled over in his little cot with a grunt and a muttered oath, rubbing at his eyes.

  By the names of all things Holy, they were terrible. Here he was, a man in his middle forties, worn, old, and in need of his sleep, in God’s name, and each night the damned creatures would wake him. And if they could wake him, they could wake anyone. It wasn’t as though Mark was a light sleeper. If they could get through to him, they could wake half the monks in the cemetery.

  The things were worse than bloody wolves descending on an innocent flock. Locusts had nothing on them. He had managed this estate with efficiency, with economy, and with cautious good sense over some years now, and built it into a modern, profitable little manor. And it still would be, if it wasn’t for her damned hounds!

  The prior hadn’t wanted them. Hounds were an expense Henry of Eastry could well do without. Who on earth would want them eating the priory’s wealth week in and week out? Not Prior Henry. He knew the way that they could eat through food. It wasn’t as if you could throw them all the crusts from the table, either. Oh no. Dear God in Heaven, what would she say if she heard that? And she would. There was always someone looking for a small reward, and the hope of largesse to follow, by speaking out of turn.

  He pulled on boots and, without bothering to lace them, stomped over the floor to the truckle bed in the eaves, kicking it. Twice.

  The first served only to set the figure snuffling and grunting, which was at least better than the rumbling, discontented snoring, but at the second blow, there was a short rasping snort, and the fellow sat upright, bending over to the side of the bed so he didn’t brain himself on the rafters angled over his head. ‘Hey? Wa’?’

  ‘The bloody hounds again,’ Mark growled unsympathetically. ‘The Queen’s hounds.’

  ‘Not again! Sweet Jesus’ pains, can’t the things sleep like everyone else?’

  ‘Not everyone, Hal. Not you and me.’ Mark took the candle from the wall’s sconce, and set it on the floor beside him as he knelt, reaching for his tinderbox.

  ‘Thanks, Brother. Thanks for reminding me,’ Harry said.

  He flopped back on his bed as Mark struck again and again with flint and steel to light some tinder. It was hard in the dark. The flash of sparks illuminated the tinder at the first attempt, but that brief explosion of light blinded him for the next three, and he kept missing the target, sending sparks flying uselessly to the rough timber floor.

  Hal had been a Godsend to Mark. For too many years he had tried to manage this estate with the help that the lay brothers could provide during those odd moments when they had time to spare. But it was never enough, and when a man had a sudden emergency, like when he discovered that the shepherd had fallen and broken his head on a rock, and the sheep were all escaped, a man needed more than the promise of some aid towards the middle of next week, in God’s name!

  Prior Henry was good, though. When his steward went to him and explained about the problems, he listened sympathetically, and told him to leave the matter with him. Mark had thought he meant he’d to dispose of Mark’s complaints in the same way his predecessor always had, by ignoring his troubles and hoping that the problem would go away. It was often the way that priors would deal with their more difficult staff – tell them not to bring problems but solutions, and threaten punishment if they continued to bother their betters. And then Hal arrived, young, strong, keen, and eminently capable.

  At first Mark made the usual uncharitable assumption: that the boy was the love-child of the prior, and the prior had found him the best post he could while not admitting paternity. But more recently Mark was forced to consider that the lad was nothing of the sort. Apart from anything else, he came from a place some distance from the priory, and Mark had never heard that the prior had ever been up that way. Then again, the prior seemed to show no interest in the lad’s development. No, Mark was forced to conclude that Hal was nothing more than a boy whom the Prior had heard of, who happened to be bright enough, and who Prior Henry considered might be a useful additional body to have in the priory. He came from a good area – other novices had come from his part of Kent, like John, Simon and Gilbert. They were all from the same vill, almost.

  ‘Ah. Good. At last!’ he grunted as a tiny glow glittered in the tufts of tinder. It remained, golden, even as the flashes played with his eyes. Picking up the tinder in a bundle, he blew gently until a flame caught, and with his other hand he patted the floor looking for the candle he had placed there. At last he found it – it had rolled under his leg – and set the blackened wick to the flame. As soon as it caught, he carefully extinguished the tinder and replaced it in his box. Tinder took so long to find, to dry, and prepare, it was best not to waste it.

  The candle he set back in the sconce, and retrieved two more from the box beneath, lighting them. ‘Come on, boy!’

  Hal was more a man than a bo
y now, but he’d remain ‘boy’ to Mark. Maybe eighteen years, slender as a willowwand, tall, lanky and with the gangling clumsiness of so many youngsters, it was hard to think of him as ever growing up.

  ‘What is the matter with them?’ Hal demanded as he took the candle, shivering slightly in the middle-night chill.

  Mark went down the ladder, muttering, ‘Goddamned hounds. They’re no good to man or beast. If they were warning us of invasion or the end of the world, that would be one thing, but these monsters only ever bark at the moon. They were disturbed by a cat or something, I daresay. Blasted creatures.’

  It was a common enough occurrence. The cellarer had a cat, a promiscuous and undiscriminating little draggle-tail, who had just borne another litter. Several times in recent weeks the mewling things had irritated the hounds beyond restraint, and one kitten had fallen in among the pack. It didn’t live long. Perhaps this was another of the little brutes, sitting up on a ledge and taunting the pack below again. However, it could be something else. They had to check.

  The Queen’s pack had arrived unexpected and unannounced about a month ago, as she passed by on her way to the coast. The Prior had remained urbanely calm about it while she was there, but all knew how problematic looking after them was going to be. She left them no fewterer to look after them, and as for money … well, all knew that her own finances had been curtailed since the outset of war with her brother, the King of France, last year. Since then, it was said, the King and his main advisers did not trust her, and they wouldn’t let her have the income from her lands. So, in effect, she had nothing.

  That was probably why the French wench had deposited her beasts on the priory, Mark told himself grimly.

  They had been housed in the old tithe barn. It was a great building over at the farther side of the priory grounds, unused for some months since the new barn was completed. In time, they had planned to pull down the old building and reuse the stones and timbers for some new storage rooms nearer the priory itself. Now they’d have to wait for the blasted hounds to go first.