by Mark Alder
‘I would see you naked, my darling.’
‘There’s none so naked as them that are half-clothed.’
‘If it please you.’
She lifted off the fine mail shirt, soft as cambric but a deep silver that intensified the firelight, sparkling like the heart of a jewel. She put it on. It was too big for her. She let it fall over her body and Osbert slid his hands beneath it to hold her tits, his thumbs caressing her nipples.
‘A knight must have a shield and sword,’ she said. The little house rocked like a boat on the sea, floating on the ocean of drink Osbert had guzzled.
‘Take them and let us ride for the dawn.’
Aude picked up the Sacred Heart shield and the scabbarded sword.
Osbert remembered little after that – the sensation of her on top of him, her rocking back and forth, a feeling between sickness and wild delight.
He slept heavily and woke as if from a fall. Harsh voices rattled his head. The morning was warm.
‘D’Ambret ! D’Ambret !’
He stood. He appeared to have become more drunk during the night. He leant to support himself against a wall, but it cruelly withdrew and he fell to the floor, a winding, stomach-heaving blow . . .
‘D’Ambret ! D’Ambret !’
He looked up to ask for a cup of beer to straighten his head. The hearth was cold and no one was around. Only one suit of the armour he had captured lay before him and with it a sword. Where was his mail? Where were the villagers? Where his shield and sword ?
‘There’s no one here, Lord!’
Osbert turned his head.
There was one there. Him.
‘D’Ambret! D’Ambret! Come out and face us, you ill-nurtured maltworm !’
Osbert clawed his way up the wall and stood again. ‘The whole place has fled, sir.’ A young voice from outside. ‘The serfs are cowards and their champion too, it seems.’ He heard the whicker of a horse, the jingle of mail.
No mail, no sword, no shield – just the armour he had won.
That might not even fit him and he wouldn’t know what to do in it, even if it did. He was in a fever of dithering.
‘Look inside. Root them out.’
‘Lord above! Preserve me. Preserve me!’ He took up the sword.
What, exactly, was he going to do with that? With the angel’s sword he had just held it loosely while it tugged his arm about.
The ordinary blade seemed heavy in his hand.
The door of the hut opened and there stood a blond young knight in armour, a surcoat of red checks on a black background. ‘Aha!’ He drew his sword.
‘Have you come to die, young man?’ said Osbert. ‘I am d’Ambret, a sorcerer and warrior without compare.’ He was sick a little in his mouth, the taste of stale booze retching up into his nostrils in a way that was not entirely displeasing.
‘We’ll see who’s the better man!’ The young knight leapt at Osbert, but had not seen a low beam in the darkness of the hut. He smashed his head into it and fell back onto his arse, dazed. Osbert planted a big kick into his face, knocking him cold to the floor. Another, bigger, man was in the doorway, rattling in mail. ‘So rude of you to call before I had a chance to dress,’ said Osbert. ‘Will you be the second man I slay this morning?’ The man-at-arms stepped back.
‘My Lord, he’s in here. I suggest we pull him into the open where he can’t work his tricks.’
He couldn’t outrun horses. He couldn’t get out the back. All he could do was wait in the hut and hope they’d all be too scared to come in.
‘Burn him out.’
That path no longer open, it seemed.
He took up a shield. He had been a cozener and a deceiver all his life. No time to change that now.
He stepped from the hut. He had a thundering sound in his head, like the drumming of great hooves.
‘I apologise, gentlemen, that I was not awake to greet you but I am at your disposal now. Which among you shall I send to Hell first?’
The thundering really was awful, almost unbearable. ‘Come, I—’ He caught a movement from the corner of his eye and turned.
He only actually discovered that he’d been struck by a lance, and then a warhorse, later. Reconstructing the event from his place in the Château Richard dungeons, he realised he had, in some ways been lucky. He’d deflected the lance with his shield – by pure accident – and that had pushed him out of the direct path of the warhorse. That had struck him a glancing blow, knocking him cold but only breaking most of his ribs on the left side.
It was pitch-black but he knew the smell of cells well enough – piss, shit and whatever else comes out of the human body. He feared that he might very well have been a contributor to that stench himself. Damp and cold. He breathed in and it was as if someone was thrusting knives into him. His ribs! Manacles were at his hands and feet. He tried to move but he was secured to the wall on a short chain.
Having spent many years in one form of prison or another, the idea of being confined again filled him with dread. The mad priest Edwin had imprisoned him – or refused to release him – in a magic circle for years; the insane Hugh Despenser had kept him slaving to summon devils to stock his army for years more. He wondered what brand of insanity he was likely to encounter here. He felt around his cell. A damp floor, tight walls, a door. Lord, the pain. Did Christ suffer such torments?
‘Don’t forgive them, Father,’ he said, ‘they know exactly what they’re doing.’ His ribs hurt as he coughed out a laugh.
He thought of Aude. She’d taken his armour – or rather, he’d let her. Why had she betrayed him? What had he done to her? Had he not treated her kindly?
He put his hand to his belly, where the dreadful Despenser had burnt a magic circle. Not that, not even in his darkest hour, not even if he could. That circle had been activated by angel’s blood, and he had used his last curing hangovers. There were other ways to conjure devils but he knew none and was grateful for it. He’d rather die in the dark than face any again. He’d had too much of them.
He lay there for a long time. He was parched, his head ached. As he got used to the pain in his ribs he realised that other areas were aching – his shoulder, for instance, had taken a fearful bash. Was it broken?
A voice in the darkness.
‘What damned soul lies in here?’
That made his ears prick up. Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh deary dear. Oh dear with a dear on top.
‘Are you ready for your torments, you mocker of great men? Are you ready to answer for your crimes at the Lake of Fire?’
Osbert crossed himself, painfully. He was in Hell. He had travelled there once before, or rather been sent there. But then he had been alive. Now, the evidence strongly seemed to suggest, he was dead. Remembering his Aristotle and trying to look at things logically, he had been struck by a charging warhorse. That, it was generally accepted, did nothing for the health. His experience of Hell had taught him one thing, however. With a little ingenuity, making oneself useful to the right people, then an eternity of torment could at least be made bearable.
‘I know people here,’ said Osbert. ‘The merchant De la Pole is my friend. I’m sure if you lead me to him, he would handsomely reward you.’
‘There is no De la Pole here. I am de Baux, lord of this castle since you killed my uncle.’
Still, Osbert did not quite understand.
‘Then what part of Hell is this? If it is Free Hell, then know I died as poor as any man alive. If you ask Lucifer, I’m sure he would see that I’m one of you. Is Sariel here, the fallen angel? She would protect me.’
The door opened and Osbert’s eyes were starred by a blaze of torchlight.
‘There is no one here to help you. This is not Hell, but you will soon wish you were there. Take him. Let’s stretch him on the wall a bit and see how he likes it.’
Oh God, it was the knight who had run from him. A coward’s revenge is a terrible thing, he thought.
Rough hands grabbed him, his chain u
nlocked and he was kicked and punched and dragged from the cell.
5
The stone saints in the church sang to welcome her – high, soaring plainsong. She smiled to herself. A mark of royalty; those statues didn’t sing for just anyone. The friar, bobbing along beside her with his lantern, could not hear them. For all his scraping before God, all his studies and prayer, he was not so favoured. Her gargoyles stood next to her, squat little things no higher than her waist. It was a miracle they had the power to fly at all, let alone lift her.
‘There is a small matter to attend to before we commence,’ said the friar. One of those vain men who affected a slight Italian accent to suggest time spent in Rome. Well, the Pope was now in Avignon, Rome a festering sore on the banks of the Tiber, its people returning to tilling the soil rather than the city trades that had sustained them in the days of the popes’ excess.
They proceeded through the great church, the gorgoyles nervously waiting for her permission to enter. In the religion she had been brought up in, she might have expected her devils to have shrunk from such a holy place. Now she knew the truth – the devils were the jailers of God, keeping the upstart Lucifer locked in Hell, beneath the command of the jailer-in-chief – Satan. Devils, though God had made them hideous to terrify the souls of the damned, were His servants too. Like all servants, they were despised but useful.
‘We are going beyond this world. We must do so with a clear conscience. Have you been confessed?’
‘My confessor is not here.’
‘I can fulfil the office.’
She stopped on the stair down. This man would have her in his power, know her secrets. Did he imagine that if he knew them he would live beyond morning?
She needed no confession. Other women might have trembled at the thought of their sins. Isabella had thrown down a king, arranged for his murder; she had opened the gates of Hell to allow devils into the world; she had drunk the blood of angels to keep her young and beautiful, cast spells, bewitched men. Still God loved her. How did she know?
‘I am a queen,’ she said.
If her husband Edward had been so loved by God, he would still be a king. But Edward had offended Him. She had been His instrument in removing him.
The friar bowed his head.
‘Of course. I didn’t mean to . . .’
Isabella studied him, slightly puzzled. Why was he telling her what he did or did not mean? Did he imagine she could be interested in his thoughts? Low men mean or do not mean whatever their betters decide.
To the lowest part of the crypt, where they’d buried him as if they feared he would rise again. They’d been right to be scared.
‘The monastery is asleep?’
‘Beneath the velvet wings of night,’ said the friar.
Isabella regretted that men willing to sell their souls for gold and earthly power so often tended to the flamboyant. The abbot had proved unswayable. He had some sort of amulet, perhaps to save him from her magic, or perhaps he was as holy as they said. The friar had proved more pliable but she had swayed him with the offer of gold and knowledge, not bothering to employ her supernatural power of charm. It would demean her to use it on such a low man and besides, if the abbot was resistant to her magic, then it was not impossible he could recognise its effects in one of his monks.
‘“Yes” would suffice,’ she said. Mortimer had not been flamboyant, but that was right for a man of his birth.
Mortimer. She remembered him when he was young, at the court in France. He was not as tall as her husband Edward, didn’t have the broad shoulders and the proud nose of the Plantagenet men. He was dark and compact, said little but watched her in a way that no man had ever looked at her before. She was beautiful, the beauty of beauties, and was used to inspiring desire, though more usually awe, in men. Mortimer, though – his eyes said something else, something between amusement and reproach. ‘Did you ever think there could be anyone else?’
Importantly, Mortimer did things. He didn’t dither like her husband, or listen to counsel or sit spooning with his favourites. Everything about him had been purposeful and direct. She recognised what he was immediately – the right arm she had been looking for. A hammer, to smash her enemies. She’d never wanted anyone else like she wanted him, before or since.
She could not charm him, use the strange – almost supernatural – power she had over men, because she didn’t want to. She wanted him to love her as nearly an equal, not as the victim of a spell. He had loved her more fiercely than she had thought possible. He had thrown down her husband the king for her, controlled her son and made her ruler of England. That was before that night at Nottingham Castle, when the hated Montagu had led his men into the castle, stolen away her love and had him killed at her son’s behest. She could not blame her son – he was a king and acting as a king – but she could blame Montagu. His instrument. She had done for him all right, seduced him and warped his mind, got him to bring her what was in her casket. He’d gone to damnation and gone gladly, for she who despised him.
She wished she’d been there to see his death – at Crécy, she heard, dressed in the rags of a pauper, speared through by her grandson. Or rather, the thing that had taken her grandson’s place. Well, needs must. The Black Prince, as they were now calling young Edward, would be dealt with in time.
The crypt smelled damp, a hint of urine. What a place. There Mortimer was, in image on top of his tomb, as he’d been in life. He was a stone now. She touched the cold features, the strong chin, the sharp nose – far sharper than in life. Mortimer had been a warrior and he had fought too much in the mêlée and the tournament to have hoped for anything other than a squadge of dough for his nose. It was almost as if he was standing there at her side, his solid presence like a fortress, like a great ship. She hated to think of him in Hell, but that was where he had to be. She had been a queen, was still a queen. God had showed her He favoured her by overthrowing her husband. But God had favoured her son, helped him overthrow her lover. So, Hell. It was possible to slip through the cracks in its walls, with the right magic, the right connections, the right offerings.
‘Unearth him.’
The gargoyles fluttered up to the tomb. Their nails drove into the concrete of the base, as loud as any mason’s chisel. The friar flinched at the noise.
‘Don’t fear,’ said Isabella. ‘Your fellows are safely sleeping. And if they awake, then what? I am queen. Who here will question me?’
‘None. But your son will discover what you are doing.’
‘That would be a problem. Though not if I am successful.’
The gargoyles scraped and shook the base of the tomb, the muscles straining beneath their stony skins. What were they made of? The friar seemed to express her thoughts.
‘Can God truly breathe life into stone?’
‘God can do anything.’
‘We all fear His power.’
She smiled.
‘Even those of us he entrusts it to.’
The base came free and the gargoyles slid it aside. The smell of wet earth. There it was, a rectangular patch of soil – all Mortimer, who once ruled all England, now commanded.
‘Dig,’ she said, and the gargoyles plunged their nails into the soil, flapping and cawing as they burrowed down to where her great love was buried.
His corpse, of course, had suffered foul abuses. When they’d killed him at Tyburn, he’d died a traitor’s death – his entrails cut out and burnt in front of him: hanged, drawn and quartered.
They cracked open the lead coffin. By the lantern’s light she could see something very strange. He had lain in the dirt ten years but it was as if his body had been placed there yesterday – the ribs white and red, like something found on a butcher’s hook, the arms flayed like hams, the head raw-jawed, the mouth having had a good deal of the flesh torn away. But he had not rotted; there was no smell, even as she had anticipated. She held his head in her hands. He was still handsome, despite his wounds, his black hair as shiny and sh
orn as the last night she had held him living in her arms.
‘Lay him out,’ she told the gargoyles, but they fluttered back from the coffin, crossing themselves. Beasts of the pit! They feared to touch such a noble man, so she did the work herself, assembling the jumble of bone, limbs and entrails as near to the shape of a man as they could. Her throat felt tight. How had that happened? How had she allowed it?
Montagu had dragged her love away, Montagu wrested England from her power. She almost wished she could damn him again. Perhaps she would be allowed to see him in Hell.
The friar chalked the magic circle on the flagstones around the ruined grave, scratching in the names of angels, of demons, of the spirits of the four winds. The gargoyles clattered, nervous, and Isabella put her hand on to the stony shoulder of one of them to calm it.
She placed the casket in between the sides of Mortimer’s ribs. They had split his sternum in two when they quartered him. In a way, it was a compliment. Such a thorough punishment, the recognition of the level to which he had aspired. Ambition was a clear sin but she would argue that he had only supported her, a queen of France, not sought to set himself up as king. She knew that, in her heart, to be untrue.
‘Should I open the casket now?’
‘You will know when.’
‘How ?’
This was a saucy man. A fragment of the anger she felt towards Montagu fell towards the friar, as a seed flies from a mighty tree. One day she might call him to account for his presumption in asking questions of his betters.
For now she needed him.
‘Begin,’ she said.
The friar called the names of the angels of the north, south, east and west. He marked out the circle with holy water. He had access to the arm of St Augustine, and should have dipped the fingers in the water, if he had followed her instructions. He had. A gargoyle pressed at the edges of the circle, as if against an invisible wall. It could not enter, and let out a dry croak to express its unease. It was commanded by the names of the angels and respect for the sacrifice of the saint to stay where it was.
