‘Devotions?’ the earl asked, looking at Thomas.
‘Murder, my lord.’
‘Righteous execution!’ the cardinal thundered. His finger quivered as he pointed at Thomas. ‘This man is an excommunicate. He is hated by God, loathed by man and an enemy to Mother Church!’
The earl looked at Thomas. ‘Are you?’ he asked, sounding thoroughly disgruntled.
‘He says so, my lord.’
‘A heretic!’ The cardinal, seeing an advantage, pressed it hard. ‘He is condemned! As is that whore, his wife, and that whore, an adulteress!’ He pointed at Bertille.
The earl looked at Bertille, a sight that seemed to lift his evil mood. ‘You were going to kill these women too?’
‘The judgement of God is just, it is sure, it is merciful,’ the cardinal said.
‘Not while I’m standing here, it isn’t,’ the earl said belligerently. ‘Are the women under your protection?’ he asked Thomas.
‘Yes, my lord.’
‘Stand up, man,’ the earl said. Thomas was still kneeling. ‘And you’re English?’
‘Indeed, my lord.’
‘He is a sinner,’ the cardinal said, ‘and condemned by the church. He is outside man’s law, subject only to God’s.’
‘He’s English,’ the earl said forcefully, ‘and so am I. And the church does not kill! It hands men over to the civil power, and right now I am that power! I am the Earl of Warwick and I won’t kill an Englishman for the church’s benefit unless the Archbishop of Canterbury tells me to.’
‘But he is excommunicated!’
The earl mocked that claim with laughter. ‘Two years ago,’ he said, ‘your goddamned priests excommunicated two cows, a caterpillar, and a toad, all in Warwick! You use excommunication like a mother uses a birch rod to correct her children. You can’t have him, he’s mine, he’s English.’
‘And right now,’ Sir Reginald Cobham added softly, and speaking in English, ‘we need every English archer we can find.’
‘So why are you here?’ the earl asked the cardinal and, after a deliberately insulting pause, added, ‘Your Eminence.’
The cardinal grimaced with anger at being denied the revenge he sought, but controlled it. ‘His Holiness the Pope,’ he said, ‘sent us to beseech both your prince and the King of France to make peace. We travel under the protection of God, recognised as mediators by your king, by your prince and by your church.’
‘Peace?’ The earl spat the word. ‘Tell the usurper Jean to yield the throne of France to its rightful owner, Edward of England, then you’ll have your peace.’
‘The Holy Father believes there has been too much killing,’ the cardinal said piously.
‘And you were about to add to it,’ the earl rejoindered. ‘You’ll not make peace by killing women in an abbey church, so go! You’ll find the prince that way.’ He pointed north. ‘Who’s the abbot here?’
‘I am, sire.’ A tall, bald-headed man with a long grey beard stepped out of the apse’s shadows.
‘I need grain, I need beans, I need bread, I need wine, I need dried fish, I need anything men or horses can eat or drink.’
‘We have very little,’ the abbot said nervously.
‘Then we’ll take what little you’ve got,’ the earl said, then looked at the cardinal. ‘You’re still here, Your Eminence, and I told you to go. So go. This monastery is now in English hands.’
‘You cannot give me orders,’ Bessières said.
‘I just did. And I have more archers, more swords, and more men than you. So go before I lose my temper and have you carried out.’
The cardinal hesitated, then decided prudence was better than defiance. ‘We shall leave,’ he announced. He gestured to his followers and stalked down the nave. Thomas moved to intercept Sculley, then saw that the Scotsman had vanished.
‘Sculley,’ he said, ‘where is he?’
The abbot gestured towards a shadowed archway beside the apse. Thomas ran to it, pushed the door open, but there was nothing outside except a strip of flame-lit cobbles and the monastery’s outer wall. The sword of the fisherman had gone.
There was a fitful moon sliding between high clouds, which, with the torches, gave enough light to see that the cobbled yard behind the church was empty. The hairs at the back of Thomas’s neck prickled and, fearing that the Scotsman was in deep shadow waiting to ambush him, he drew his sword. The long blade rasped on the scabbard’s throat.
‘Who was he?’ a voice asked, and Thomas turned fast, heart racing, to see it was the bloodied Black Friar who had spoken.
‘A Scotsman,’ Thomas said. He stared back into the shadows. ‘A dangerous Scotsman.’
‘He has la Malice,’ the friar said flatly.
A noise in the bushes made Thomas turn, but it was just a cat that stalked from the low-hanging branches and crossed towards some far buildings. ‘Who are you?’ he asked the friar.
‘My name is Fra Ferdinand,’ the friar said.
Thomas looked at him, seeing an older man, his weathered face bloody. ‘How did your nose and lip get broken?’
‘I refused to say where la Malice was,’ the friar said.
‘So they hit you?’
‘The Scotsman did, on the cardinal’s orders. Then the abbot told him where she was hidden.’
‘In the tomb?’
‘In the tomb,’ Fra Ferdinand confirmed.
‘You were at Mouthoumet,’ Thomas said accusingly.
‘The Lord of Mouthoumet was a friend,’ the friar said, ‘and good to me.’
‘And the Lord of Mouthoumet was a Planchard,’ Thomas said, ‘and the Planchard family were heretics.’
‘He was no heretic,’ Fra Ferdinand said fiercely. ‘He might have been a sinner, but which of us is not? He was no heretic.’
‘The last of the Dark Lords?’ Thomas asked.
‘They say one still lives,’ the friar said, and crossed himself.
‘He does,’ Thomas said, ‘and his name is Vexille.’
‘They were the worst of the seven,’ Fra Ferdinand said. ‘The Vexilles knew no pity, showed no mercy, and carry the curse of Christ.’
‘My father was called Vexille,’ Thomas said. ‘He didn’t use the name, and nor do I, but I am a Vexille. Lord of God knows what and Count of somewhere or other.’
Fra Ferdinand frowned, looking at Thomas as though he were some dangerous beast. ‘So the cardinal is right? You are a heretic?’
‘I’m no heretic,’ Thomas said savagely, ‘just a man who crossed Cardinal Bessières.’ He thrust the sword back into its sheath. He had just heard a gate being slammed and barred and he reckoned Sculley and the cardinal were gone. ‘So tell me about la Malice,’ he demanded.
‘La Malice is Saint Peter’s sword,’ the friar said, ‘the one he used in the Garden of Gethsemane to protect our Lord. It was given to Saint Junien, but the Dark Lords found it and, when their heresy was burned from the land, they hid it so their enemies could not find it.’
‘They hid it here?’
Fra Ferdinand shook his head. ‘It was buried in a Planchard tomb in Carcassonne. The Sire of Mouthoumet asked me to find it so the English wouldn’t discover it.’
‘And you brought it here?’
‘The sire was dead when I returned from Carcassonne,’ the friar said, ‘and I didn’t know where else to take it. I thought it would be safer hidden here.’ He shrugged. ‘This is where it belongs.’
‘It will never have peace here,’ Thomas said.
‘Because it isn’t hidden any more?’
Thomas nodded.
‘And is that what you want?’ Fra Ferdinand asked suspiciously. ‘That it should have peace?’
Thomas took one last look around the monastery grounds, then walked back towards the abbey. ‘I’m no Dark Lord,’ he said. ‘My ancestors might have been Cathars, but I’m not. But I’ll do their bidding anyway. I’ll make sure their enemies can’t use it.’
‘How?’
‘By taking it f
rom that bastard Sculley, of course,’ Thomas said. He went back into the abbey church. The monks were leaving and the candles were being snuffed out, but there was enough light left to see into the half-opened stone casket that stood in its place of honour behind the altar. Saint Junien lay there, his hands crossed and the yellow-brown skin of his face stretched tightly across his skull. The eye sockets were empty and the shrunken lips pulled back to show five yellow teeth. He wore a Benedictine habit, and in his hands was a simple wooden cross.
‘Rest in peace,’ Fra Ferdinand said to the corpse, and reached in to touch the saint’s hands. ‘And how will you make sure your enemies can’t use la Malice?’ he asked Thomas.
‘By doing what you wanted to do,’ Thomas said. ‘I’ll hide it.’
‘Where?’
‘Where no one can find it, of course.’
‘Sir Thomas,’ Sir Reginald Cobham called from the far end of the nave, ‘you’re coming with us!’
Fra Ferdinand put a hand on Thomas’s arm to stop him leaving. ‘Do you promise me?’
‘Promise you what?’
‘You’ll hide it?’
‘I swear on Saint Junien,’ Thomas said. He turned and put his right hand on the dead saint’s forehead. The skin felt like smoothed vellum beneath his fingers. ‘I swear I will lose la Malice for ever,’ he said, ‘I swear it by Saint Junien, and may he intercede with God to send me to everlasting hell if I break this solemn promise.’
The friar nodded, satisfied. ‘Then I’ll help you.’
‘By praying?’
The Black Friar smiled. ‘By praying,’ he said. ‘And if you keep your oath my work is done. I’ll return to Mouthoumet. It’s as good a place to die as any.’ He touched Thomas’s shoulder. ‘You have my blessing,’ he said.
‘Sir Thomas!’
‘Coming, Sir Reginald!’
Sir Reginald led Thomas briskly down the abbey steps to the cobbled street where two wagons were being loaded with beans, grain, cheese, and dried fish from the monastery stores. ‘We’re the rearguard,’ Sir Reginald explained, ‘which means goddamned nothing because we’re ahead of the prince’s army right now. But he’s up on the hill.’ He pointed north to where Thomas could see the tree-fringed loom of a high hill dark in the wan moonlight. ‘The French are somewhere beyond, God knows where, but not far.’
‘We’ll be fighting them?’
‘Christ only knows. I think the prince would like to get closer to Gascony? We’re short of food. If we stay here more than a couple of days we’ll strip the country bare, but if we keep going south the bloody French might get ahead of us. They march fast.’ He said all this as he paced beside the wagons, which were being loaded by archers. ‘But it’ll be the devil’s own job to get away from here. They’re close, and we’ll need to get the wagons and packhorses across the river without the bastards attacking us. We’ll see what the morning brings. Is that wine?’ He called the question to an archer heaving a barrel onto a cart.
‘Yes, Sir Reginald!’
‘How much is there?’
‘Six barrels like this.’
‘Keep your thieving hands off it!’
‘Yes, Sir Reginald!’
‘They won’t, of course,’ Sir Reginald said to Thomas, ‘but we need it for the horses.’
‘For the horses?’ Thomas asked.
‘There’s no water on the hill; poor beasts are thirsty. So we give them wine instead. They’ll be wobbly in the morning, but we fight on foot so it doesn’t matter.’ He stopped suddenly. ‘God, that’s a pretty woman.’ Thomas thought he was talking of Bertille who was standing with Genevieve, but then Sir Reginald frowned. ‘What happened to her eye?’
‘One of the cardinal’s priests tried to gouge it.’
‘Jesus God! There are some evil bastards in the church. And he’s been sent to make peace?’
‘I think the Pope would rather see the prince surrender,’ Thomas said.
‘Ha! I hope we fight.’ He said those four words grimly. ‘And I think we will, I think we’ll have to, I think they’ll make us fight, and I think we’ll win. I want to see our archers cut the bastards down.’
And Thomas remembered the bodkin striking Sculley’s breastplate. The arrows were made in their hundreds of thousands in England, but were they well made? He had seen too many crumple. And Sir Reginald thought there would be a battle.
And the steel of the arrowheads was weak.
The king could not sleep.
He had dined with his eldest son, the dauphin, and with his youngest boy, Philippe, and they had listened as minstrels sang of ancient battles full of glory, and the king had become ever gloomier as he considered what was expected of him. Now, wanting to be alone and have time to think, he walked in the walled orchard of a fine stone house that had been commandeered for his quarters. All around him, spread through a village whose name he did not know, the fires of his army glowed in the darkness. He could hear men laughing or shouting in delight when their dice or cards were lucky. He had heard that Edward, Prince of Wales, was a gambler, but how would that prince gamble now? And was he lucky?
The king walked to the northern wall of the orchard where, by standing on a bench, he could see the red glow of the English fires. They seemed to spread across the night sky, but the brightest glow outlined a long, high hill. How many men were there? And were they there at all? Perhaps they had lit the fires to persuade him they were staying and then marched away south, carrying their plunder with them. And if they had stayed should he fight them? It was his decision and he did not know how to make it. Some of his lords advised him to avoid battle, saying that the English archers were too deadly and their men-at-arms too feral, while others were confident that this gambling prince could be defeated easily. He growled to himself. He wished he were back in Paris where musicians would be entertaining him and dancers surrounding him; instead he was God knows where in his own country and he did not know what he should do.
He sat on the bench. ‘Wine, Your Majesty?’ A servant spoke from the shadows.
‘Thank you, Luc, no.’
‘The Lord of Douglas is here, sire. He wishes to speak with you.’
The king nodded tiredly. ‘Bring a lantern, Luc.’
‘You’ll speak with him, sire?’
‘I’ll speak with him,’ the king said, and wondered if the Scotsman would have anything new to say. He supposed not. Douglas would urge an attack. Fight now. Kill the bastards. Attack. Slaughter them. The Scotsman had been saying the same thing for weeks. He just wanted a battle. He wanted to kill Englishmen, and the king was sympathetic to that wish, but he was also haunted by the fear of failure. And now Douglas would harangue him again and King Jean sighed. He was frightened of Douglas and, though the man was never anything but respectful, the king suspected that the Scotsman despised him. But Douglas did not have the responsibility. He was a confident brute, a fighter, a man born for blood and steel and battle, but King Jean had a whole country to tend and he dared not lose a fight to the English. It had taken a huge effort to raise this army, the treasury was empty, and if the king suffered a defeat then God only knew what chaos would descend on poor France. And poor France was already raped. English armies roamed the country burning, plundering, destroying, killing. And this army, the prince’s army, was trapped. Or nearly trapped. And there was a chance to destroy it, to cut down the pride of the enemy, to give France a great victory, and King Jean allowed himself to imagine riding into Paris with the Prince of Wales as his captive. He imagined the cheers, the flowers being thrown in front of his horse, the fountains running with wine, and the Te Deum being sung in Notre-Dame. That was a beguiling dream, a wonderful dream, but its nightmare brother was the possibility of defeat.
‘Your Highness.’ Douglas appeared under the pear trees carrying the lantern. He went onto one knee and bowed his head. ‘You’re awake late, sire.’
‘As are you, my lord,’ the king said, ‘and please, my lord, stand.’ King Jean was wearing a blue
velvet gown, fringed with gold, embroidered with golden fleurs-de-lys and draped with a thick collar of silver fur. He wished he was wearing something more martial because Douglas was impressive in mail and leather, all of it scarred and battered. He had a short jupon showing the faded red heart of his family, and a thick sword belt from which hung a monstrously heavy blade. He was also carrying an arrow. ‘Some wine, my lord?’ the king offered.
‘I’d prefer ale, your highness.’
‘Luc! Do we have ale?’
‘We do, Your Majesty!’ Luc called from the house.
‘Bring some for the Lord of Douglas,’ the king said, then made a great effort and smiled at the Scotsman. ‘I suspect, my lord, you have come to encourage me to attack?’
‘I trust you will, sire,’ Douglas said. ‘If the bastards stay on that hill we’ll have a rare chance to crush them.’
‘It seems, though,’ the king said mildly, ‘that the bastards are on the top of the hill and we are not. Does that not seem pertinent?’
‘The slopes to the north and west are easy,’ Douglas said dismissively, ‘long, gentle, easy slopes, sire. In Scotland we wouldn’t even call that a hill. Nothing but a stroll. A crippled cow could walk up there without losing a breath.’
‘That is reassuring,’ the king said. He paused as the servant brought a great leather pot of ale, which the Scotsman gulped down. The gulping sound was horrible, as was the sight of ale trickling from the edges of Douglas’s mouth and soaking into his beard. A brute, King Jean thought, a brute from the edge of the world. ‘You were thirsty, my lord,’ he said.
‘As are the English, sire,’ Douglas said, then casually tossed the leather pot back towards Luc. The king sighed inwardly. Did the man have no manners? ‘I talked with a farmer,’ Douglas went on, ‘and he tells me there’s no damned water on that hill.’
‘A river flows past it, I think?’
‘And how do you carry enough water for thousands of men and horses uphill? They’ll carry a little, sire, but not enough.’
‘Then perhaps we should allow them to expire of thirst?’ the king suggested.
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