The End of the World is Nigh

by Tony Moyle

  The roads were almost exclusively tracks of mud, about as suitable for carriages as a colander was as a drinking vessel. Sometimes they might strike lucky and find themselves following the now almost unnoticeable route of the Roman roads that originally linked the most important communities of their empire more than a millennium ago. Horses could travel on both at a decent speed if nothing untoward impeded their progress. This was almost never the case. Weather would affect the animals’ moods and the progress of the coaches was constantly hindered by broken axles or wheels that got stuck in streams of thick mud.

  It was in one of these coaches that Philibert and Chambard were forced to travel. A rickety, four-wheeled carriage with a round, white fabric roof open to the elements at the front and back. The view to the front was obstructed by the back-ends of two horses, so mostly they looked backwards to watch their past disappear over the horizon.

  If the journey had been in June it would have been a rather pleasant way to travel. But it wasn’t. The bitter midwinter winds swarmed in through the coach’s rear entrance like a plague of locusts. It clung tight to their skin before shooting out the front end and being recycled to the back for another pass. The roof fabric was not strong enough to protect against the constant showers. The rain collected on its roof and intermittently dripped through onto their heads or down their necks.

  To Chambard’s obvious joy, Jacques had decided he didn’t want them riding horseback in case they decided to abscond. He was right, too, because this was the very first ‘escape plan’ they’d considered, rapidly scrapped before they’d even left Marseille. In order to keep her from fraternising with the enemy, Annabelle travelled in a separate coach at the other end of their convoy. The rest of the party, which consisted of a dozen of Jacques servants and comrades, either rode their own mounts or drove the pairs of horses that pulled the coaches.

  Phil had never travelled like this before. His journeys with Chambard had generally been on foot. Even though they were still a rarity, Phil had seen coaches many times as they trundled past him. One day, he thought, he’d gather enough funds to buy his own. A pipe dream that certainly didn’t resemble the reality of their current journey in which they were prisoners in all but name.

  Almost a month would be endured like this. Riding for fifteen hours a day, stopping frequently to help remove the coaches from ruts in the road or to fix damage sustained, occasionally stopping at an inn or water trough to rest the horses. Every town looked the same. Poverty-stricken locals, just glad to see someone new who might buy their goods or offer some meagre token of charity, would surround their party every time they stopped. The rest of the journey consisted of conversation. Week one was the easiest.

  “Do you remember Agen?” said Chambard, attempting to pass the time as he watched another impoverished town, identical to the last, pass by the rear exit of their coach.

  “How could I forget that one!?” said Phil.

  “That was when we used to pull the orphaned child routine,” added Chambard fondly, a little smile breaking out on his face.

  “The first trick you ever taught me, it must have been shortly after I met you. What was I, about fourteen?”

  “Yeah, but fortunately for us, you looked about eleven. Skinny, malnourished urchin you were back then.”

  “Agen wasn’t our finest moment using that scam, though, was it?” laughed Phil, remembering the circumstances. “As I recall the bishop we pulled it on was a little too fond of young boys and showed me the type of charity I wasn’t expecting. Dirty bugger.”

  “It was hilarious to see you break character so quickly. You thought it was better to announce that you were playing him, rather than wait until he played with you! Taught you a valuable lesson, though, didn’t it?”

  “Yes, don’t trust bishops,” replied Phil immediately and quite seriously.

  “Yeah,” chuckled Chambard. “Not just that, though. It also taught you how it felt to get caught.”

  “Not something I ever want to repeat.”

  “Exactly and since then we haven’t, well, not until Marseille of course. We learnt that in order to convince a mark you have to know their strengths and weaknesses. If we’d known about the bishop’s sick habits we wouldn’t have pulled that scam on him. Always be one step in front of the enemy, that’s what I’ve taught you. Everyone is corruptible, if you know which buttons to press.”

  “And that’s my worry. We don’t know anything about Catherine de Medici or the young King. We’re playing in a league we’ve never been tested in.”

  “I know. It’s the ultimate challenge. You and I have always tried to stretch ourselves. To see if we can cut it against the most powerful people in this world, to fool them into believing that we belong amongst them. To prove that two insignificant peasants can outsmart men of academia, position and power.”

  “But the royal family. That’s something different altogether,” replied Philibert.

  “There’s no greater test, Phil. If you pull this one off you’ll become a legend.”

  “I don’t want to be a legend, Chambard. I just want to have the opportunity to live my life as they do. The freedom to study, marry, own property, learn, and make a difference.”

  “But you will make a difference if you pull this off. For generations to come the improvised and oppressed will know your name and you’ll open the sluice gates for all to follow.”

  “How?”

  “Because the common man will see what is possible. It might not happen immediately, but I predict that in, say, a couple of hundred years from now the masses will revolt in collective anger at the monarchy’s excess. I wouldn’t be surprised if the poor miserable ones don’t overthrow the royals completely.”

  “Maybe I should write a prophecy about that,” replied Phil smiling. “If the cosmic energy is in agreement of course! One step at a time. I think we might be running before we can walk. At the moment we don’t have the first idea of how we are going to get out of this mess.”

  The situation was complicated. It was way beyond anything they’d tried before. There were multiple marks who needed to be tricked for them to come out on top. Claude was sending them to Paris for information and so they would have to convince him that they were giving him some. But when they arrived at court and no one recognised them, it would be very obvious that Phil was no spy. So they’d need a way to keep Jacques from breathing down their necks. In order to keep that ruse going, they’d need another scam to prove their usefulness to the Queen or face a terrible death if they failed.

  “What are our options?” asked Philibert. “You’re the expert on convincers.”

  “What about pig in a poke?”

  “It’s a classic but what is the Queen of France going to want that she doesn’t already have? Pig in a poke only works if you know their innermost desires. And even then it’s a tough one to pull off.”

  “Foreign envoy?”

  “Would be effective if we knew who the envoys were so we could clone their identities, which we don’t. Plus France is at peace: envoys don’t just pop round for cosy chats.”

  “What about pigeon drop?”

  “I’m guessing we’ll need an element of that trick, there will definitely be a role for you to be the pigeon, but we’re not trying to take anything from them so the whole of that routine won’t work.”

  “Magic medicine,” suggested Chambard, scrolling through the long index of scams memorised in his brain. Some he’d learnt, some he’d invented and some were ideas yet to be attempted.

  “Who’s ill?”

  “I hear on the wind that the King is a sickly child, too weak to gain the respect of the nobles. Some say he’s an idiot with the mental capacity of a sparrow.”

  “But what medicine are we offering?” said Phil.

  “Who says it needs to be an actual medicine? You were going to convince Claude with a prophecy: why can’t you do the same with the King?”

  “But if I predict that the boy is going to get bett
er, you can’t really fake that.”

  “No, but who says the Queen wants him to get better?”

  “You’ve lost me. He’s her son, of course she does.”

  “That’s not what I’ve heard. I understand she’s quite the megalomaniac, wants to rule France in her own way. Perhaps we could predict what she wants to hear: that’s how a con works after all.”

  “So we predict that her son isn’t well enough to take the throne?”

  “Exactly.”

  “I suppose it’s possible. I’d need to know more about the Queen, though, before I wrote a prophecy down. And you’d still have to make it come true,” he replied.

  “As long as you keep all reference to animals out of it we’ll be fine.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “Why don’t you talk to Annabelle? Given the circles she moves in she must know more about the Queen.”

  “I suspect she will try to seek me out at some point on the trip.”

  “Then we have a plan. Only one piece of the puzzle to put into place,” said Chambard.

  “How do I get in front of the Queen in the first place?”

  “Right.”

  “I can’t just turn up unannounced, proclaiming to be some talented seer when no one has ever heard of me before. Our heads will be propping up the end of pikestaffs before you can say, ‘Excuse me, is the Queen in?’”

  They sat in silence for a bumpy mile or two as they contemplated which short con would unlock the longer one.

  “How attached are you to your name?” asked Chambard.

  “I’m the man of a thousand faces, my name can be anything you want it to be.”

  “Perhaps it’s time to retire Montmorency.”

  “I’m not following you.”

  “Anne de Montmorency is still in the court, isn’t he?”

  “I don’t know, but we’ll soon find out.”

  “If he is, maybe this is the ideal time to return his ring.”

  “Oh that’s risky. ‘I’m terribly sorry that I’ve had your prized heirloom in my possession for more than two years, but I just happened to be passing.’ It’ll need some thought.”

  “Don’t forget he spent quite a long period in captivity after the Battle of St. Quentin, so you couldn’t have returned it then anyway.”

  “Let me think about it,” said Philibert.

  The passage of conversation between the two continued in this vein for much of the first week. Ideas were scrutinised and often discarded. If they were kept on the table then detailed discussions were conducted to agree how it might play out and what information they still needed. If they still liked the idea after that they’d role play it between them to practise their approach and highlight all the possible barriers.

  The monotony of this scheming was broken in the second week by the meandering distraction of anecdotes or stories of their various exploits. They relived the story of Ville-France in which they stole the brass church bell by replacing it with one made of clay painted yellow. They’d successfully convinced the clergy that they were experts there to service it. They recounted the great chicken scandal of fifteen-fifty-one a scheme that involved Chambard pretending to have the plague and forcing the whole town of Rouen to be sealed off. Phil rounded up all of the poultry that lived outside the town’s walls and sold them to the next village. The only downside was having to wait months for Chambard to ‘recover’.

  By week three the topics of discussion became stretched. In a possible sign of madness the questions being posed had absolutely nothing to do with their past or current plots. There were hour-long debates about ‘why dogs never walk in their own poo, when humans seem incapable of avoiding it’, and ‘which came first: botulism or the plague?’ and ‘if a horse mated with a cow and had babies would they be called hows or courses’.

  And even those conversations ran dry by week four, making room for long, uncomfortable periods of silence and an increasing dislike for the person sitting opposite. Fortunately this deadlock was broken by a woman determined to talk to one of them.

  - Chapter 20 -

  Poverty

  The town of Nemours had fallen on particularly hard times. A difficult summer had succumbed to a harsh autumn and an even tougher winter, currently raging around them in full blizzard. Snow lay in thick heaps on the forest canopies that encircled the town, and disgruntled livestock foraged amongst the frozen sod for the merest sign of something edible. Along the road only a few of the icicle-inflicted wooden houses had the welcoming sight of wispy clouds from the tops of their chimneys. The rest huddled together to retain an ounce of insulation.

  The road, if you could call it that, with its deep ridges and fractured craters that made the coaches shake irregularly and without warning, followed the Loing River as it carved the town in two. On its banks an intimidating stone castle with a central keep and four rounded towers advertised its confrontational history through its reinforced defences and damaged stonework. In the shadow of the keep the recently completed wooden spire of the church stretched impressively into the sky like a beacon that no one wanted to follow.

  The coaches pulled up in front of a small inn adjacent to the castle to allow the horses a much-needed rest. The sun, slung low in the west, was in its last throes of daylight, four o’clock in the afternoon by Phil’s reckoning, and this wouldn’t be their last stop for the day. As soon as the coach pulled up and the men dismounted to set about their responsibilities, Chambard and Phil alighted from the relative comfort of their coach to stretch their legs and take in their surroundings.

  A subdued and dejected procession of local people gathered around them. The company certainly hadn’t had it easy on their journey from Marseille. Food was limited to what they’d brought or could purchase along the route. Sleep had been difficult and uncomfortable. The demons of winter had been an irritation rather than a genuine threat to life. But here the people had not been so lucky. It was the first week of December and desperation had gouged its mark on the faces of men, women and children.

  The arrival of travellers to the town presented them a tiny window of opportunity. If they got there first then perhaps they might find charity from those more fortunate than themselves. A small loaf, a coin, or even perhaps, in the rarest of circumstances, employment. Traders and tanners joined smithies and simple labourers in a cacophony of boisterous shouting in an attempt to gain the attention of Jacques’ men. The healthier and fitter young men didn’t even wait to be asked, immediately helping to lift and shift supplies, or jostling to be the first to tend the horses in the belief their assistance would be rewarded.

  Around them old women in tattered rags and faces ravaged by a lifetime of just surviving, held out timid hands in search of a miracle. Most were no older than forty but would easily be mistaken for pensioners should they have lived in more affluent times. Waifish children, who by rights should have been free to run and play without pressure or burden, sat shivering on heaps of frozen mud weeping from the hunger that invaded their bellies. Their malnourished limbs barely had the strength to hold up their tiny bodies, and all over their skin the marks of disease and ill health were universal.

  A small girl, no more than two years of age, toddled alone through the crowd. Lumps of dirt and animal faeces were matted between locks of beautiful blonde curls. Tears rolled down her face, but her mouth made no sound. Even at this tender age she’d learnt that wailing had no effect on the hearts of men and would only result in sapping her energy further. Where her family were, or whether any still survived, was neither an obvious nor an important question on the lips of the swarm of human catastrophe that battled selfishly to be the lucky ones to gain favour. Almost everyone ignored her. Helpless, lost and alone, just another disposable soul from the ranks of an invisible army that counted in the millions.

  Annabelle rubbed her eyes in disbelief. From the safety of her privileged position at the back of the coach she witnessed a scene from another world. The real world. A world where life
and death played out in front of her very eyes and no one so much as blinked. A world where survival was acquired only by those willing to step over a neighbour to reach it or by nothing more random than an encounter with fate. God had already forsaken these people, but what broke Annabelle’s heart most was the realisation that so had those with the means to fix it. She watched the small girl with a mixture of fascination and dismay. Every fragile step the girl took drew her instinctively towards a small crowd that had gathered in a circle by the bank of the river.

  More people forced their way towards it, barging through the toddler as if she was nothing more than an obstacle. Whatever was happening down by the river it was calling to them like a subliminal noticeboard of hope posted on their hearts. Annabelle watched from a distance before intrigue eventually got the better of her. Jacques had insisted that she was not allowed to leave the coach when they were in a populated area, but rules were meant to be broken, and as he’d disappeared inside the inn for his own refreshment it was worth the risk. She carefully descended from the coach by the rear exit.

  The black and white scenery suddenly had an injection of colour. She held up her brightly coloured gown, intricately embroidered with fine silver thread and beautiful blue fabric, to avoid the hem dragging along the frozen ground. It was a divine sight for the villagers. An angel had fallen from the heavens and was carefully floating along amongst them. For a split second they forgot about their own strife and were held captive by the explosion to their senses.

  The crowd parted like a hot knife sliding through butter as almost without thinking they made way for her. In the centre of the melee she watched as two men she recognised distributed items from a dirty sack. Small gold coins, trinkets of fine craftsmanship, silks, small hunting weapons and dried beans in small pouches.