by Angus Donald
The sky was darkening as we entered the palace by a door opposite the south transept of Notre-Dame; it was perhaps a mere hour before Vespers and I realized that I had spent far longer in the cathedral than I had realized. We were greeted at the door of the palace by a young monk, who asked our business and then conducted us into a chamber off the main hall. While we waited, a servant brought us cups of green wine and delicate sweet pastries, a Parisian speciality, and I ran over in my mind what I would ask the prelate, if he should be good enough to grant me an audience that very day.
After a wait of perhaps a quarter of an hour, a tall thin man came into the room. His hands were folded across his slim waist and tucked into the sleeves of his long brown monk’s robe and his dark hair was neatly cut in the tonsure.
‘I am Brother Michel,’ he said, smiling, ‘I have the honour of serving the Bishop by helping to make his appointments, among other matters. I understand that you seek an audience with His Grace, is that right?’ He had a kind face with intelligent bright blue eyes and a frail, youthful air — in truth, when he first came into the room I had thought that he was a young man, but as he drew near to us, I saw that he was a man in his late thirties, with a scattering of pockmarks and the first lines of care only now beginning to appear on his lean, handsome face.
‘I need to speak to His Grace the Bishop on a private matter, a family matter,’ I said. ‘It is also a matter of some urgency.’
‘I see,’ said the monk. ‘Is there perhaps some way in which I could help you? If it is a question of alms, or perhaps a small advance…’
I flushed, embarrassed that this man of God should think that I had come to the Bishop seeking money. He pulled out his right hand from its sleeve and indicated a long table at the side of the chamber. ‘Why don’t we sit, make ourselves comfortable, and you can tell me what the problem is,’ he said. I trusted him instinctively — he radiated a kind of inner strength and goodness that was truly comforting to a troubled man — and before I knew it, I was seated on a stool across from him and telling him the tale of my father’s time at Notre-Dame twenty years ago, and of the visit by Bishop Heribert, and of the theft of the candlesticks, and my father’s expulsion from the cathedral, his exile in England and his mean death at the hands of Sir Ralph Murdac. The tale came pouring out of me like a torrent, and I realized how much I had wanted to confide in someone sympathetic and helpful. Of course, I had told Hanno and Thomas the nature of our business in Paris, but they were in no position to help me solve the mystery. This kindly man of God, I believed, might hold the key.
Brother Michel nodded and frowned and looked at me, his clear blue eyes now filled with compassion. When I had finished my tale, he sighed deeply. ‘So much suffering,’ he said. ‘So much pain.’ And I swear I saw a gleam of a tear in his eye.
‘Well, Sir Alan,’ he continued, ‘I have no doubt that His Grace will wish to hear about this matter in full from you personally. And I am sure that he will do his utmost to help you in your quest to find the real thief. I will speak to the Bishop this very evening and I will urge him to find the time to see you; but he is an extremely busy man, as I’m sure you must know, with a great many calls on his good nature. So I think the best thing might be for you to tell me where you are lodging and I will have a servant bring you a message when His Grace is at liberty to attend to this. Would that be acceptable to you?’
I nodded, and he smiled, and I felt a wave of relief flow through me, now that this godly man had shouldered my burdens.
‘It may take a few days, I’m afraid,’ said Brother Michel, as he ushered us out of the chamber, ‘but I pray it will be no more than a week or so. Be patient, be strong, and trust in God that we may bring this matter to a happy conclusion.’ And he gave me another smile before he left us in the care of the hall servants.
As I walked back over to the cathedral, flanked by Thomas and Hanno, to say an extra prayer for the soul of my father, I was satisfied that Brother Michel would champion my cause to the Bishop. Between us, through reasonable discussion, and with God’s help, we would unravel the mystery of the Heribert theft and exonerate the memory of Henry d’Alle, once and for all.
The call that I paid on my uncle Thibault, Seigneur d’Alle, was far less satisfactory than the encounter with Brother Michel. His house on the Rue St-Denis, next to the church of St Opportune, was a very grand edifice of timber and brick, three storeys high and set back a little from the road. It reeked of money. Thomas and I banged on the big front door in the middle of a violent rainstorm the afternoon of the day after my meeting with Brother Michel. We were admitted, well soaked by the downpour, by a richly dressed servant and shown upstairs to a solar on the second floor.
The Lord of Alle, my uncle Thibault, was playing chess with a much younger and very handsome fair-haired man when I was ushered, dripping, into the opulent room. A pair of long hounds snoozed by the fire at the end of the room. The men were seated at a table in the centre, hunched over the board. I saw that the board was inlaid with squares of ivory and ebony, and that the pieces were decorated with tiny jewels. As I came in, the younger man moved a piece and said: ‘There, I have you, Father; your king is dead!’
The Seigneur d’Alle’s face mottled with anger: ‘Again? God damn this cold-blooded, womanish game!’ And with a blow of his arm, he swept the board off the table, sending it crashing to the floor, the pieces skittering away across the wooden surface. One of the hounds lifted its refined, pointed head, gazed at me for a minute out of deeply stupid eyes, then went back to sleep.
‘Father,’ said the handsome young man, in a warning tone, ‘we have company!’
The Seigneur swung his large head round towards me: under a mop of brown hair, his face was ruddy, pouched and touched here and there by whitish, faded scars. He glared at me angrily, then rose from his chair, turned and stood facing me, his hands resting easily on his hips. He was a big man, taller than me, with broad shoulders and long legs, and while he was dressed in costly finery, a gold embroidered tunic and a black sable-lined mantle, and not equipped as if for the battlefield, I could tell from a glance that he was a fighter. This was no city-dwelling lordling with soft hands and mild manners — this was a seasoned French knight, a man of blood and iron. He seemed familiar, the resemblance with my father being apparent — but he also reminded me just a little of my beloved sovereign, King Richard. Not in looks, but in his belligerent masterfulness and total confidence.
‘My lord,’ I began, after making my bow, ‘I am Sir Alan Dale, the son of Henri d’Alle — I am your nephew.’
‘Are you now?’ said the Seigneur. ‘Are you indeed?’ There was a slight, uncomfortable pause while he stared at me. ‘And what is it that you want with me — nephew?’
I was taken aback; I had assumed that my ties of kinship, the fact that we shared the same blood, would be enough to guarantee some civility. Evidently, I was wrong.
‘What he wants,’ said the younger man, getting up from his seat and coming around the table to approach me, ‘is a dry towel.’ The young man, who was clearly the Seigneur’s son, looked beyond me to the servant hovering by the door of the solar. ‘Gaston, be so good as to fetch this gentleman a clean, dry towel. Immediately!’
Turning his gaze back to me, the fair-haired young man said: ‘I am Roland d’Alle. Perhaps you and your man would care for a glass of wine to warm your hearts on this miserable day?’ He smiled, but only with half of his face, and I saw then that the left-hand side of his head, which had previously been turned away from me, was disfigured by a large red mark, raw and ugly, a recent burn for sure, only partially healed — what had once been a remarkably good-looking face was now quite disfigured by that wound.
‘I asked you — Sir Alan, is it? — what you wanted here,’ said the Seigneur, his voice brusque, like a man accustomed to giving orders and having them instantly obeyed. ‘So — what do you want? You pop up out of nowhere and claim to be a long-lost relative; what could you possibly want, I wond
er? Could it be that you are hoping for a little advance to tide you over in a difficult time?’ His tone was very close to a sneer; and I bristled. This was the second occasion in my two days in Paris that strangers I had met had assumed that I had come to beg money. I peered down at my shabby, damp and travel-worn clothes. And then looked back up into my uncle’s brick-red face. I could feel the stirrings of a raw anger that I’d hoped so much to keep suppressed.
‘I do not come seeking anything from you, my lord, least of all money,’ I said coldly. ‘All I require is some information. I wish to know about my late father, your brother Henri d’Alle. Who was wrongly accused of theft, and hounded from Paris, abandoned by his family ’ — I gave that word its due weight — ‘and, once outcast by the Church, lived in poverty in England until his death at the hands of an unknown enemy.’
‘You seem to think you possess all the facts,’ growled the Seigneur. ‘What more do you wish to know?’
‘I wish to know why you did not help him.’
‘That is no God-damned business of yours.’
‘My father, my family, my business,’ I said, struggling to keep my temper; fighting the growing urge to step over to my uncle and knock him to the floor.
‘And I have no more information about your father and his relations with my family that I care to give you,’ the Seigneur said. ‘Now, I will ask you-’
‘He was a fool,’ said a new voice, a woman’s voice, and I turned towards the door to see a servant carrying a tray of wine cups and a slim, elegant shape in a long green fur-trimmed silk robe offering me a large white linen towel. Thomas was already scrubbing at his damp head with a similar item.
This was the Lady of Alle, I assumed, and the first thing I absorbed about her was that she was truly, incandescently beautiful; even approaching her forties, as she must have been, she stole the living breath from my lungs: raven hair peeking from under a neat white coif, deep green eyes, pale, almost translucent skin, a swelling bosom above the waist of a sixteen-year-old. From half a dozen yards away I caught a waft of her perfume: something floral yet creamy — she even smelled utterly delicious. I found my anger at her boorish husband washing away as I drank her in, like a thirsty man downing a full jug drawn from an icy well. She kissed me on the cheek, a cool, brief touch of her lips that made the hair on my arms stand up, and said: ‘Good day, nephew, I am Adele — what a pleasure it is to finally meet you.’
And I found myself seated at the table, with the Seigneur and Roland and this heavenly creature in human form, while the servant poured wine for us all.
The rain rattled against the closed shutters of the solar, and brought me back into the world. When I had taken a sip of the wine, I turned to Adele and, trying to control my fluttering belly, I said: ‘Why did you call my father a fool?’
‘I’m afraid he was a fool. He could have come to us at Alle, and lived with us, after the… the incident. We could have found a way,’ she said. ‘I’m sure we could have found a way for all of us to live together. There was no need for him to run off to England like that-’
‘ You are the fool,’ the Seigneur d’Alle interrupted his wife brutally — and I glared at my host, hating him for his rudeness to the lady. The Seigneur completely ignored my look and continued: ‘After what had passed, there was no earthly way that I would have allowed Henri within a mile of the castle. And you know why!’
What sort of brother was he, this Thibault, this Seigneur d’Alle, to condemn a member of his own family for a trifling misdemeanour — without even ascertaining whether the accusation were true or not?
I got to my feet, and put my hand on my hilt. ‘I do not believe my father was a thief,’ I said. ‘By my sword, I say that he was innocent and wrongly blamed for this crime. And I have vowed that I will find the real culprit, and I will fight any man who says that Henri d’Alle was a thief — any man!’ And I looked at Roland for a moment, and then locked my gaze with the Seigneur. He stared back at me, his blue eyes unwavering — but I saw a mocking smile on his mouth. He said: ‘You would fight for his honour, would you?’ Then he said ‘Hmm-mm…’ a two-toned nasal grunt through closed lips but no more.
‘Come, Thomas, I can see that we are wasting our time here. These
… people… do not wish to help us clear my father’s name and we cannot force them to. Let us go.’
We were halfway to the door when Adele caught up with us. ‘Do not leave in anger,’ she said. ‘The Seigneur is always out of sorts on days like this.’
‘Days when his relatives come to call?’
‘No, only when it rains. He cannot go out; his old wounds plague him so in this weather, and he says he feels like a caged bear. He certainly has the temper of one. Please, I beg you, call again some other day. I would like… I would very much like to know Henri’s son.’ And her smile was so beautiful that I felt my heart melt. ‘Promise me that you will visit us soon,’ she repeated.
I nodded and mumbled something, and she warmed me again with her look. ‘Roland here will show you out.’ I saw that her son was standing, unnoticed, at her shoulder. ‘And you must not forget your promise to come again.’
Roland escorted us to the front door, opened it and stared doubtfully out at the rain, which was sheeting down. The Rue St-Denis was flowing with water, a raging black torrent in the centre of the broad road washing the filth of the city down towards the Seine.
‘Are you sure that you would not prefer to wait a little while before departing?’ he said.
For a moment I hesitated, imagining how pleasant it would be to rest in a cosy parlour by a glowing brazier with a cup of warmed wine, but then I thought of having to endure the company of the Seigneur, and I steeled myself and bid my host goodbye. Just as Thomas and I were about to step out into the downpour, I turned to Roland and said: ‘Forgive me for asking, sir, but how did you get that mark?’
‘This?’ he said, pointing to the raw oozing patch that covered half of the left-hand side of his face and a portion of his neck. ‘I got this in battle; I got this at the Castle of Verneuil in Normandy. It was made by the touch of burning oil dropped from above — this, Sir Alan, was your work, I believe.’ And he smiled at me, crookedly, painfully, with the unwounded half of his handsome face. I saw young Thomas’s cheeks go pale, and his eyes widen. But I could find nothing to say to an enemy in peacetime, a man who three months ago had been trying to kill me; so I merely shrugged and stepped out of the door.
‘I fear we must postpone a discussion of the fortunes of war until another occasion,’ Roland said. ‘God be with you, sir!’ And he firmly shut the door.
Chapter Thirteen
The rain fell like the Biblical deluge — on a day such as this, even Noah, snug in his ark, would have looked at the sky and been convinced that God’s wrath would never end. Thomas had had the foresight to bring thick oiled-wool cloaks for us, but they were sopping wet and heavy as lead copes before we had gone fifty yards. It was like walking under a waterfall. We stepped gingerly down the very edges of the Rue St-Denis towards the Grand-Pont, marvelling at the black river of refuse that poured down the centre of the street — muck, leaves, rags, old shoes and bones; I even saw a dead dog tumbling past me in the thick, dark porridge-like flow. The shops of the city had closed their counters when it became clear that the rain had set in for the day, and all honest householders were indoors warming themselves by their hearths. The streets were almost entirely deserted. It was hard to believe that it was August — high summer; it felt more like January — and though it was only mid-afternoon the dark clouds overhead made it feel as if dusk had fallen. We walked slowly down the Rue St-Denis, watching our footing on the rain-greased paving slabs and saw hardly a soul…
Thunder cracked, and a bright stab of lightning illuminated the rain-battered road with an eerie blue glow. Fifty yards ahead, on the far side of the road, I saw four figures lurch out from the shelter of the porch of the church of St Leufroy and into the fury of the storm; they began to forge
up the sloping street towards us. They were dressed in beggarly rags, hooded and very wet — and yet they seemed to be remarkably well-fed and able-bodied beggars, and the way they walked, with a springy purposeful stride, suggested men at the peak of fitness. I grabbed Thomas’s shoulder and pushed him behind me, between my body and the stone wall of a large house, then I drew Fidelity. I blessed God that I had chosen to wear my sword that day, reasoning that, as I was visiting my noble relatives, I should make the point that I, too, was a knight.
The beggar-men spread out and crossed the street, coming directly towards me: I could see weapons in their hands now: cudgels, knives, and one man had a short mace — all weapons that could be easily concealed beneath their rags, for who has ever seen a mendicant beg for alms with a long sword or a spear at his side?
Four soldiers — for they were very clearly soldiers — against one man and a boy whose voice had yet to break. They were not good odds, but I had faced worse and survived. The anger that I felt at the house of the Seigneur d’Alle was still lapping in my belly. The four men, their young, bearded faces peering at me intently from beneath their dripping hoods, paused for a moment, at a distance of five paces or so, spread out in a line in front of me, hemming me in against the wall behind. I did not wait for their attack but shouted: ‘Come on then!’ in English and leapt into battle.
