Son of the Night

by Mark Alder

  Her tone almost made Philippa laugh – indignant, as if someone doubted her. She thought hard, though, on what Goedelle had seen in her dream.

  Eventually she stood and went back to the window, listening for the night birds, the call of the owl or the nightingale.

  Down by the river she saw a flash of blue, like a piece of the day let in to the night. It came and went in a blink, so quickly she wasn’t sure her eyes weren’t playing tricks on her. But no, the flash again, only longer.

  She crossed herself. What was it? Some devil? A will-o’-the-wisp? She thought to send word to her husband in the morning, to tell him to prevent his devils wandering the land at night, terrifying whoever remained alive. She thought to return to her bed but something stopped her. The light flashed again.

  She felt drawn to it. The colour of blue was too lovely, too fascinating to be something of Hell, she thought. Behind her one of the ladies turned in her sleep. The room suddenly felt unbearably stuffy, the air too close and heavy. She would go for a walk, she thought, take in the night air. She knew, of course, what she planned to do but could not yet admit to herself she had in mind such boldness. The light, though, had ignited something in her. It had called and she felt compelled to answer.

  She got out of her nightdress and pulled on a pair of hose that had been designed for a tourney – one that had been called off because of the Plague. It was a man’s jacket, plain and green, too. By the day of the contest – whenever that came – it would be decked in glittering stones, but they had yet to be attached and lay in a pot by a chair. She took, too, one of the boys’ swords that had been commandeered for the costumes, and stole out of the room.

  France was in disarray and no threat, the land at peace, and no guards stalked the corridors of the castle nor set much of a watch at the walls. She moved down the stairs without encountering a soul.

  She went out of the tower and across the courtyard to the first bailey. There was no guard there, or on the second. The whole castle looked in a state of ruin at present – Edward’s mania for building sweeping the castle. A new chapel was to be erected in thanks for the Crécy victory. And, it was to be hoped, to entice the English angels back. One of Sloth’s leopard men was asleep on top of the gatehouse but didn’t wake as she passed through. The third gate was locked and the guards all asleep, so she lifted the latch on the postern gate and slipped through. She felt vulnerable now, the cold air of the river wafting up at her.

  Another blue flash, and she made her way down the river bank towards it. In the dark of the trees she suddenly felt very foolish. What if this was some robber’s trick?

  Then, right next to her, his filthy face briefly illuminated by the blue – a broken man and a vagabond, hanging in rags. She wondered she hadn’t smelled him. He was terribly thin, his head like a skull. It was all she could do not to cry out but she was in no danger. He fell immediately to his knees, his eyes very white in his sun-browned face.

  ‘You are the one?’

  He spoke thick French.

  She didn’t know what to say.

  ‘I am.’

  ‘He said you would come. Here, give me reward. I am starving. I am starving.’

  He put out his hand. In it was a fragment of blue glass, as big as a fingernail. It shone with the light of a summer sky.

  ‘Sir!’ said the man. ‘Sir, your noblesse oblige, sir !’

  Tears streamed down his dirty face and he reached towards Philippa as if towards a vision, as if he could not quite believe her to be real.

  ‘You are not of this country?’

  ‘Not, sir, but I am . . .’ He seemed to struggle to say what he was. ‘You are ?’

  ‘I am come from there. From Gâtinais, and the church of Gâtinais. I am Tancré. All dead there, no food. This spoke to me and said come here. Do not punish me, sir, I only convey the truth.’

  The light from the glass was enchanting, fascinating.

  ‘Have you food, sir?’

  She took the glass and looked closer. Inside the blue something was moving. A shadow, a fire . . . something. And then, unmistakably, the outline of a finger, pressed to the glass.

  ‘He is trying to get out,’ said Tancré. ‘He is trying. An angel is coming back to France. At Gâtinais, in the church. He is coming. Have you food?’

  Philippa crossed herself and stared into the glass. She saw a vision. It was her son, Edward, the Black Prince as they called him. He was himself, though horribly changed. On his head were horns, at his back a long and pointed tail. She nearly dropped the fragment, such was her shock.

  ‘Give me reward,’ said Tancré. ‘I am starving.’

  ‘Apply at the gate tomorrow. Tell them the queen orders you fed. There will be coin for you there.’

  She crossed herself and ran back towards the castle, clasping the fragment of glass.

  8

  It was cold on the barge. The sky was an unseasonable grey, spitting with rain. Charles smelled corpse fires on the air. Paris was reeling beneath the Plague and people hurried past on the banks of the river, stooping and ducking as if expecting a bolt from Heaven. Another bolt, maybe. 1349 had proved no better than 1348, and in some ways a great deal worse.

  The journey by cog to the mouth of the Seine had been perilous – English pirates were in the waters, Gascon pirates, Castilian pirates. Useless truces had been struck by Philip and Edward during the Plague but no one had told their men. The duke of Lancaster was scorching a black mark across the south, burning villages and castles to no apparent purpose; Philip dithered, refusing to send men from his attempted blockade of Calais. He spoke uselessly of a ‘contagion’ – not that of the Pestilence, but that of the Luciferians in their Calais slums. Paris would be next, he said, the poor and undeserving rising up against their masters in ungodly rebellion. He was more afraid of his own people than the English, it seemed. All in all, Charles concluded, things were looking up.

  Charles had no fear of the common man. The people had always liked him and now those that were alive to see him had turned out to wave.

  ‘Spare us from the affliction!’ shouted a voice.

  ‘I am here to cure you!’ shouted Charles. ‘I have brought with me an angel in the flesh.’

  Blanche drew back her veil and the people gasped. On that grey day she did seem to glow slightly, or not exactly glow. It was as if the day had been painted by a poor artist using dull paints but she had been rendered separately, by a master using the finest, sharpest colours available.

  Everyone bowed, crossed themselves, cried out to God for the mercy he was bringing. Blanche put down her veil and the barge sailed on.

  ‘How are you going to deliver that one?’ said Count Ramon at his side.

  ‘It’s a charlatan’s trick,’ said Charles. ‘If the Plague stops, well, didn’t I say it would?’

  ‘And if it doesn’t?’

  ‘The dead won’t remember I lied.’

  ‘I wonder you bother so much about the opinion of the mob.’

  ‘Where do we get our armies? Who do we need to suffer and sweat so we might live in luxury?’

  ‘I despise them.’ Ramon shivered at the thought of the common people.

  ‘Of course, so do I. But it doesn’t mean I can’t use them.’ He bowed extravagantly to the people on the bank. ‘They may prove useful yet.’

  Smeared on the walls of buildings, even on those of a ruined church, was the three-pronged cross of Lucifer. It seemed the people were turning to what comfort they could get.

  ‘Would you meet with the Luciferians?’

  ‘Not that class of mob,’ said Charles. ‘Traders, merchants, small craftsmen. These are the bricks on which palaces are built. If those bricks are removed, palaces can fall.’

  ‘La Cerda’s flag, Lord!’ One of the pages had become rather excitable, pointing up at the formidable white walls of the City Palace.

  Charles, who had been elated to come to Paris, felt a skip in his stomach.

  There it was, the st
inking yellow castle of Castile on its blood-red background, floating alongside the fleur-de-lys. His own flag, the chains of Navarre, was nowhere to be seen. If La Cerda actually had any influence left in Castile Charles could have understood John’s love for him. But the man was an outcast. All he had, he had through John. All he had, he had taken from Charles, supplanting him as favourite.

  Charles remembered when, ten years earlier, he’d travelled down this river with his mother. Then the flags of Navarre had been everywhere and a king and prince turned out to meet him. No longer. He had been raised to grow to influence in the French court, to learn what he could before overthrowing the idiot Prince John. And all had gone well, until Crécy. He’d been too confident, thought he could get away with anything.

  He smiled to himself. Well, that was a mistake he intended not to make again. Lesser men might have found caution, lesser men might have backed down. Not Charles. If one roll of the dice went badly for him, he doubled his stake on the next. If that lost, double the next and the next after that, then stake your own life if needs be.

  A decade before, the water had been bright as he’d passed under the last bridge before the palace. He recalled the reflection of the sunlight on its underside, like snapping mouths. He’d thought he would be the one snapping, but it seemed now as if Paris was a trap for him. A taint of poison ran through these waters and he knew who had put it there. La Cerda. If he was there, then Charles’s access to Prince John might be limited. Charles adjusted the crown that sat on his head. It would be necessary to remind everyone exactly who had been set on high by God, and who below, when he arrived at court.

  As they entered the city, scraggy gangs of people stood and stared, pointing at his colours, pointing at him, begging alms, forgiveness, curses, begging – he thought – for relief at having someone to beg to. Charles felt a shiver. Who did he have to beg to? Traditionally a king only had God but the king of Navarre wasn’t even sure that option was open to him. Beg to yourself, he thought. At least you can be certain of a sympathetic hearing.

  He’d written to tell Prince John he was coming but La Cerda might have got wind of it and come in from whichever of his rich lairs he was laid up in. Charles’s spies had been able to find out very little. His enemy was away on his estates, hunting. Really? Was La Cerda the kind of man to work for an advantage so hard and then turn his back on it as soon as it arrived? Personally, he thought his aunt’s tales of La Cerda’s sorcery more believable. He expected to run into La Cerda sooner rather than later.

  Still, perhaps he was skulking away in the countryside while the Plague raged in Paris. Charles himself had taken to the countryside of Navarre – the disease had finally torn through the crowded streets of Pamplona, killing so many. He wept for his people, for the service and taxes they brought him. The only consolation was that France had suffered as badly.

  Every port they tried to dock at refused them entry, or was so stricken with the Plague that it would have been unwise to set down. Charles was unconcerned by the Great Pestilence – he felt the combination of royal and devilish blood would keep him from it. Blanche was possessed by some sort of angel, so should be all right.

  While they had waited to return to Paris, he had kept Blanche in a nunnery. But then the nuns began dying and they moved her up into the mountains. She would sit for hours staring out at the moon, which gazed blankly down on her like the face of yet another, yellow-faced, pox-ridden corpse.

  His petitions to be allowed into Paris had finally been successful three years after Crécy. The English had been swallowed by the Pestilence too, and truces were struck to leave killing to God for a little while. Of course, this left bands of soldiers unemployed in France and they still scoured the countryside bringing plague and war as before, but without the pretence of a kingly banner to hide beneath. Until they too succumbed. Death was everywhere, stalking the land.

  Some blamed a conjunction of planets, others foul humours rising up from the earth, displaced by earthquakes in the east. Still others spoke of a living carcass that strode the land, a demon that resembled a side of beef on a butcher’s hook and that breathed contagion wherever it went. Whatever had caused the Plague, Charles was warming to it, now he saw the handsome country of France reduced to wreck. He wondered if Philip could get the Plague. As a king, maybe not, but perhaps his son might contract it – or La Cerda. There was a thought. Maybe his enemy would fall to become part of the Great Mortality.

  Sometimes Charles wondered if he himself had been responsible for the Pestilence, in a good way. He had wished ruin on France, hadn’t he? Was God fulfilling his wish? It seemed possible and made him feel bolder. More than could be said for his retinue.

  His men were a dishevelled looking bunch. Most of them were not the first choice for an elite guard but with so many dying, what could he do? He’d had to double their pay just to get them to come. All over the lands of Navarre and France, and other places too if he guessed right, the usurious poor were taking the opportunity to demand an increase in wages. With stonemasons or woodworkers dying by the hovel-full, those who remained were in high demand. By God, this was a good plague for some, a very good plague indeed. He did consider that he might be one of those lucky few. He had damned France to ruin when the angel told him he would never be its king. That had come to pass. If he had caused this devastation then he had reason to smile indeed never mind the list to the purse.

  Here at the centre of the city, bodies bobbed in the water. The people just threw them in rather than bothering to bury them, it seemed.

  The smell was far from pleasant.

  They came to dock at the quay of the palais.

  Ten years before a phalanx of minstrels had greeted him, the king and Prince John in their best clothes – in their better clothes, as in markedly and pointedly better than his.

  Now the streets were almost deserted. In Pamplona, as the Plague had descended, all order had gone with it too. The merchants and the nobles couldn’t sleep easy in their beds for fear the plundering poor would come in to steal their goods and rape their daughters. With all his enemies in disarray this did not concern Charles too much. He would wait out his time in France or in the countryside and then return to punish the perpetrators, or anyone who he thought looked like a perpetrator, and take the goods for himself. Yes, it was working out as a very good plague indeed.

  There were three corpses on the steps of the palais. Two men and a little girl, paupers by the look of them. If he’d not helped kill the angel in the Sainte-Chapelle perhaps it would have come out and spared France. And perhaps not. The Dragon of Crécy might have driven it off, too.

  He stepped from the barge and gave a tip to the tillerman. He felt like making a joke, saying, ‘Thank you, Charon,’ because the Seine really was like the river Styx now, truly a river of the dead. Still, he didn’t. He didn’t speak to lesser men unless it was strictly politic.

  Blanche stood beside him in her veil. She was dressed in scarlet – to suggest sauciness – though Charles was certain she would sway John’s heart had she been dressed in a serf’s smock. There would be the impediment of John’s current wife, but that could be seen to. So many deaths nowadays, one more would hardly be noticed.

  It was September. Surely the Plague must soon be over. It had slowed in the winter the last year. Half of him hoped yes, half of him no. Typically, Paris enjoyed colder winters than Pamplona. Yet another advantage God had seen fit to bestow on it. It would be good to find that Philip’s famous cooks at least had survived.

  ‘This is a fine welcome,’ said Ramon.

  ‘The kingdom is weak,’ said Charles. ‘It needs a strong hand.’

  ‘None stronger than yours, Lord.’

  Charles smiled his cat’s smile.

  ‘But first the subtle paw, eh?’

  His men assembled in front of him and they marched up the steps to the Palais. One young boy stood guarding it. My God, did the mob know what stood between them and the riches of the Sainte-Chapelle?
Did the mob even exist any more?

  ‘Announce the king of Navarre!’ said one of his men.

  The boy looked on uncomprehending.

  ‘Announce the king of Navarre!’

  Charles rolled his eyes to the grey heavens. ‘He doesn’t speak our language.’

  My God, he was going to have to address this trembling child himself. In the days before the Plague his travelling companions had been knights, well versed in diplomacy and languages. Now he hovered at the door like a stinking debt collector. Which he was, in a way.

  ‘Announce the king of Navarre,’ said Charles, in French.

  The boy gulped and nodded.

  ‘To who ?’

  ‘To Prince John, or his footmen or . . . to the court.’

  ‘I must stay here, that is my task. There’s no one to announce it to.’

  ‘The king isn’t here?’

  ‘I don’t know. I was told to stand here, and raise the alarm if anything happened.’

  ‘Who to ?’

  ‘The captain.’

  ‘Then announce me to the—’ Charles could hardly believe he was going to say such a thing. Announced to a captain! What next? A serving girl? A palace dog? His temper snapped.

  ‘Get out of my way.’

  ‘Gladly, Your Majesty.’

  Charles pushed into the splendid interior. Christ’s stones, it hadn’t been cleaned for a month by the look of it. Discarded chicken bones lay on the floor and a rat ran down the corridor. Glass and jewels, gold and beautiful tiles, and in the middle of it all a pile of shit left by who knew what or whom. Charles had to smile to himself. How well sits your crown, Philip, that you stole from my family? How well? Look around you and ask whose side God is on. He is on mine.

  He was surprised the interior had not been entirely stripped. But who was there to strip it? And did the people still think angels dwelt in there? Ah! He saw why. Standing next to an exquisitely rendered motif of a unicorn was a immaculately dressed young man. His tunic was of the finest green satin picked out with yellow swallows, his robe of fur magnificent and his trousers fashionably tight. Only when he bowed low was it clear that the back of his head was eaten away and writhing with bright white maggots. A devil, then.