It was very nearly full dark on that warm summer night by the time I reached the top of the tower and found a little shelf that served as a seat for the lookout. I could see for miles in each direction. To the south was Paris and, while I knew that it held as many as sixty thousand souls, I was still surprised by its size and its strange beauty when I saw it first that night – the watch fires in the streets, and as-yet-uncovered family hearths, and candlelight leaking from a thousand windows, where earnest young clerics were hard at their books after supper. It looked like a carpet of stars, spread out before me, or a vast field of burning embers.
Somewhere in that sprawling mass of humanity was the answer to the mystery that tormented me. Half of my heart told me that Robin could not truly be the ‘man you cannot refuse’, and the other half told me I was fooling myself because I cared for him. I knew that Robin had some feeling for me, too: he had saved my life on several occasions, at very great risk of his own – and therefore he could not be the man who had sent those knights of the blue cross to kill me. Yet the evidence against Robin was there; and had been there all along. Had I been so blinded by my affection for my lord that I had failed to see it?
I fell to my knees in that high bell tower, bowed my head and prayed to St Michael, that Robin might not prove to be the man responsible for my father’s death, and that my old friend would not be revealed to me as my secret enemy. I would find the truth in Paris, I vowed, and I swore a holy oath to St Michael, alone, in the darkness above the edge of Paris, that I would not leave that city until I had found out the truth. I am certain the saint heard me, for having so sworn, I felt eased in mind and spirit and descended the tower with a much lightened heart to seek out my bed. And for the first time in weeks, I slept like a newborn.
For me, Paris shall always be associated with the acrid smell of masonry dust and the shrill ringing of metal chisels on hard stone, for the city that we rode into early the next morning seemed to be one huge builder’s compound. The chink-chink-chink of tools cutting into limestone blocks began shortly after dawn, drifting on the cool air from the new headquarters of the Knights Templar that the Order was building a quarter of a mile to the east of the Priory of St Martin, in the broad fields there outside the city.
As we approached the half-built wall of the city of Paris, the metal-stone chinking sound intensified and mingled with the cries of workmen, the sharp crack of axe on wood, and the rumble and crash of falling rubble. At the Porte St Martin, I announced myself as a pilgrim wishing to pray at the cathedral of Notre-Dame before a most sacred relic, a lock of the Virgin’s hair. I paid the toll to the Provost’s men-at-arms and entered the city itself. As we emerged from the gatehouse, I looked to my right and beheld a huge finished wall, four times as high as a tall man and dotted with strong round towers every sixty yards, which curved around and down to the right towards the River Seine. It was a fortification to daunt even King Richard’s mighty castle-breakers. To my left, however, there was a stretch of half-built wall, thirty yards long and teeming with workmen even at that early hour, and then, almost shockingly – nothing; only the wide vegetable gardens of the householders of this suburb of Paris, open to the world, with no obstacle to an invader more impressive than an occasional sheep hurdle, low garden wall and rickety wooden hut.
We rode almost due south down the Rue St Martin into the city of Paris, our horses making easy progress on the broad stone-paved road, which Matthew told us had been laid down hundreds of years ago by the Romans, although the stones were now covered with a thick layer of dried black mud. This part of the French capital, to the north of the River Seine, sometimes called the Right Bank, or the Ville de Paris, was its mercantile heart – and evidence of the city’s trading wealth was everywhere. The houses that lined the street on either side were mostly tall, well-built structures of wood, wattle and lime-plaster, two and sometimes three storeys high, the wooden beams and corner posts carved and decorated in neat geometrical patterns. There were numerous churches too, the wealthier ones, and the grander houses, being built of pale local stone. Sudden wafts of incense made the horses snort, and the singing of monks could be plainly heard as we passed these houses of God and clopped along down the Rue St Martin.
The ground floors of many of the larger dwellings we passed served as shops, with a counter opening on to the street displaying the wares of the owner: wrought gold and silver trinkets, bright orange Scandinavian amber, fine Spanish swords and costly armour, exquisite Italian glassware for the table, fat beeswax candles and pungent spices from the Orient, beautifully worked leather goods – all were on offer, should we have a mind to buy. Pastry sellers, with huge square trays hung around their necks, strutted through the crowds, offering delicious-smelling savouries of chopped ham with pepper or soft cheese and egg in fragrant flaky casings. The shouts of a dozen wine-criers from the taverns filled the air, promising the delights of such-and-such a wine available at such-and-such a price at such-and-such a tavern. One of these men, beating loudly on an earthenware jug of wine with a stick to bring attention to his wares, lifted the jug towards Thomas for a sniff of the deep red liquid, and I saw my squire blanch and gag – almost to the point of vomiting up his breakfast. He was suffering this morning after a night of revelry with the students – although the young clerks themselves seemed to be unaffected by their drinking bout, which had kept them up long past midnight.
We were within a bow-shot of the Seine by now, and we turned sharply right on to Ruga Sancti Germani, the long road that ran almost parallel with the river. After two hundred yards, riding past the bloody reek of the shambles, a wide open space where the city’s meat was slaughtered, its stalls bedecked with swinging carcasses and red-raw joints encased in creamy fat, we stopped at a crossroads where the other great north–south road of Paris, the Rue St-Denis, crossed the Sancti Germani. To my left, a short way down the Rue St-Denis, was the mighty Seine and ahead of it rose the strong tower of the Grand Chastelet – the fortification that guarded the northern part of the Grand-Pont, the gateway to the water-lapped, beating heart of Paris, the Île de la Cité.
The Grand-Pont was where Father Jean had last set eyes on my father Henry, before he had set out for England. But it was no lonely spot for a tearful leave-taking between friends who would never meet again, as I had imagined it in Normandy. As we rode through the portcullis under the imposing bulk of the Chastelet tower and on to the bridge itself, I saw that the Grand-Pont was a hive of activity, even busier than the merchant-teeming Ville de Paris that we had just ridden through. About eighteen foot wide and a hundred yards long, the bridge was lined with narrow, shallow houses on each side; a few, a very few had the look of dwelling places, most were given over to the changeurs, the men who made their living by exchanging foreign coins into Parisian silver pennies. I stopped my horse and, digging a handful of the Tourangeaux silver out of my money belt, perhaps half a mark, I changed it into deniers parisis – frowning at the fee that the Frenchman demanded for this slight but essential service.
There was a constant stream of traffic crossing the bridge; a few men like us on horseback, but many others afoot – traders leading pack animals, one fellow herding a flock of unruly sheep northwards towards the slaughter yards we had recently passed, dozens of clerics in their black robes, students or young priests, it was hard to tell. Packs of filthy street urchins dodged between our horses’ legs offering more services than the ear could comprehend – and some involving their sisters that it is better not to contemplate, if you wish one day for a reward in Heaven. Even with Thomas and Hanno between me and the crowds, and our student friends waiting patiently a few yards ahead, I was jostled by the throng of passers-by, buffeted and bustled; the noise of a hundred throats dinning in my ears. I had a strong sensation of being in a strange, disorientating world – an unreal place, almost like a dream battlefield. It was not a pleasant feeling. Not for the first time I longed for the broad open dales of Yorkshire or the clean woodland of Westbury. Then my eye a
lighted on a knight, or rather on the departing back of a knight. He was at the north end of the bridge, about fifty yards away, pushing his horse through the throng, preparing to ride under the arch below the Grand Chastelet and out of sight. He was in full mail covered by a white surcoat, and he had his shield strapped to his back, a normal way to carry it when the prospect of battle was remote. But it was a shield I knew: a blue cross on a white field with a black border.
It was the device of the knights who had tried to kill me at Fréteval. And the sight of an enemy brought me back into the real world like a dash of icy water in the face.
Chapter Twelve
I shouted ‘Hoy!’ and pointed at the back of the knight, just as he was passing under the Chastelet portcullis and away north into the Ville de Paris. Hanno followed the direction of my arm and nodded to himself.
‘Shall I follow him?’ he asked me, pulling his palfrey with difficulty around to face the direction we had come from.
The press of the populace around us was too thick and the knight of the blue cross had already disappeared from sight into the maze of streets in the Right Bank; knowing it was useless, I shook my head.
‘It is well that we know that these fellows are in Paris, too,’ I said to my Bavarian friend. ‘We are forewarned. And one day, Hanno, we’ll have a reckoning with them.’
Matthew the student called over to ask what we were so excited about: but I had not yet told them of my quest in Paris, and for some reason I did not wish to speak of it then. So I merely said that I had admired the knight’s helmet and wished to possess one similar myself. Then we all moved off the bridge and entered the Île de la Cité – the pulsing heart, the very core of Paris.
Paris had two masters in those days, each almost the other’s equal in pomp and power: the temporal lord, Philip Augustus, the King, and his spiritual counterpart, Bishop Maurice de Sully. And just as the city of Paris was shared between these two puissant lords, so too was the Île de la Cité. The western part of the island was the preserve of the King and his court: a vast palace for Philip himself, apartments, private chapels and grand halls for his family and servants; the eastern half of the island belonged to Bishop de Sully, and was dominated by the cathedral of Notre-Dame – only as yet half completed – but it also contained the episcopal palace, where Bishop de Sully and his people lived and worked, and a hospital, or Hotel-Dieu as it was called, as well as innumerable smaller churches, and a never-ending complex of cloisters that housed the throngs of clergy belonging to the cathedral. It was Notre-Dame, of course, that I was most eager to see: this great godly edifice was the Bishop’s life’s work. It was also the place where my father had made his music, and perhaps been briefly happy before his descent into peasanthood, poverty and ignominious death.
As we came off the Grand-Pont and on to the island, the royal palace, with its high tower and fortified walls was directly to my right, but we turned almost immediately left into the Rue de la Draperie – a bustling street filled with sellers of all kinds of cloth, from shining samite in peacock colours to drab fustian, from soft oriental silks to rough workman’s canvas. The mason’s-yard chinking once again echoed through the streets, above the animal hum of thronging humanity conversing, disputing, buying and selling. The drapers cried: ‘What do you lack; what do you lack, mistress?’ to every goodwife who hurried past their shopfront. Porters, struggling under the weight of vast bundles of coloured cloth tied to their backs, forced their way through the press, shouting for passage, their language sharp when their way was blocked, their elbows even sharper.
Up ahead, I could already catch brief glimpses of the high slanting roof of the choir of Notre-Dame above even the tallest houses. We turned right and rode on for a hundred yards through a slightly less populated street that had once been the Jewish quarter, Matthew told us, until Philip had expelled the Jews fourteen years previously and confiscated their wealth. The street was now the preserve of the furriers, and rich pelts of sable, mink and fox – and skins of cat and squirrel, too – hung from the stalls we passed. Then we turned right again and came into a broad space, entirely cleared of shops and houses, and I checked my courser and stared, agog at what lay before me.
There were huge piles of creamy limestone blocks, both dressed and rough hewn; groups of men clustered around the great stones, sometimes drawing on them with lead, carefully, precisely, sometimes a lone man chinking away delicately with his chisel or a muscular pair laboriously sawing the larger blocks into smaller ones. Dust puffed and plumed in the air, occupying it in dense clouds along with workmen’s cries, the shouts of the overseers and the harsh creak of a giant windlass as a finished block was winched ponderously via a network of pulleys and ropes towards the sky. Rough, very dirty workmen bustled hither and yon, some burdened with heavy bags of sand and rare earths on their shoulders, bundles of wood, or long, well-cared-for cutting tools. A scaffolding of logs and tree branches, lashed together with rawhide, crawled up the half-finished north wall of the nave like a sprawl of brown ivy or the veins on an old man’s hand.
It was noisy, filthy, chaotic, and yet breath-stealing – the exquisite beauty of the finished part of the cathedral, the choir at the eastern end with its huge columns, standing like stone trees, their branches curving out impossibly high to meet and support the vaulting roof; the round apse, dim and cool beyond the choir, lit only by the slim candles of pilgrims; the transepts, which gave the building the holy shape of the cross, had their spreading masonry worked and carved in wonderful designs; the vast windows along each side of the church, filled with coloured glass and glowing like jewels in the shafts of summer sunlight; even the half-built nave before me so majestic and elegant, gigantic and yet delicate – its buttresses outside the walls sprawling like massive spiders’ legs supporting the tall thin body of the cathedral itself … The sight of it all, the bustle and the ethereal beauty, the squalor of the building yard and the soaring wonder of Notre-Dame, made my head spin. I felt tiny in comparison to that wondrous, enormous, heavenly building – as if I were an ant in the presence of a mighty bull; and humble, just as one should feel in the presence of God. And I felt His presence then; as surely as I now feel this smooth parchment under my calloused fingertips.
I was gawping, transfixed, as I gazed upon a grand project that had already been in the building for more than thirty years. The men I saw, those grubby workmen, the shouting overseers, the burly middle-aged masons, those folk would never see their cathedral completed, not if they lived to be three score and ten. It was a staggering, awesome monument to man’s skill and sweat, his perseverance and ingenuity – a most fitting offering to the divine creator of the Universe himself.
‘Big, isn’t it?’ said a voice at my elbow; it was Matthew. ‘And it must cost a king’s ransom to keep all these workmen on, year after year – but I am afraid, Sir Alan, that we may not tarry. We need to be at the widow’s house before the dinner hour. You can come back and gawp at this dusty madhouse anytime you care to. But for now, sir, we need to keep moving along, if you please.’
I suppressed my irritation at Matthew’s interruption: he was right, I would be in Paris for some time, and I would come here again, at my leisure, to gaze at this miraculous House of God. Right now it was more important to secure suitable lodgings for myself and my men.
* * *
The Widow Barbette’s house stood at the beginning of the Rue Garlande on the Left Bank of the Seine, a hundred yards from the Petit-Pont that connected the Île de la Cité with the southern portion of Paris. The house was close to the church of St Julien-le-Pauvre, where I went to hear Mass as often as I could over the next few weeks. Matthew had a connection of some kind with the widow; I believe his family in England were involved in some sort of commerce with hers, and while he and two of his fellow students took one large room on the second floor of her big timber-framed house, Hanno, Thomas and I took another and we all shared a common salle, where we took our meals, and which had a big fireplace and a single
scribe’s chair and desk for the students. Two of the students, Luke and Henry, would also sleep in the salle at night on light, low beds that they dismantled each morning.
Our room was spacious and comfortable, with a cool black-and-white tiled floor, a set of green velvet curtains, finely embroidered with red and gold silk, drawn around the walls of the room to keep out the draughts, and a large bed of intricately carved wood in the centre of the room with a huge wool-stuffed mattress, which seemed to me luxurious after months of hard campaigning. A shuttered window opened out on to the street below, and as I poked my head out, I could see a groom leading our horses away to the stables at the rear of the building. Hanno and Thomas had simple straw pallets made up for them on the floor of the chamber, which could be stored under the big bed in the daytime. The room contained a strong carved oak chest with an iron lock, a chair, a table, two stools and a long pole suspended from the ceiling from which we could hang our clothing; the ceiling itself was painted with weird and delicate depictions of the signs of the Zodiac. I must admit it was one of the most elegant chambers I have ever occupied: I felt more like a visiting prince than a man seeking vengeance on a murderer.
Although I never got to know her well, the Widow Barbette seemed a respectable woman, round, neat and always busy, and she was certainly an accomplished cook. She occupied the kitchen and storerooms on the ground floor, and for a modest payment provided a meal for all of us twice a day: dinner shortly before noon, and supper in the early evening. On that first day, once we had settled the rent, she served a fine meal of roast saddle of mutton with a garlic sauce, fresh bread and a large dish of boiled peas. Her manservant León, a near idiot, was induced to go out and buy wine for us and we made a convivial meal with the five students in the salle – before taking a short nap, as Matthew assured me was the custom in Paris, and then rising again and setting out to see some of the city in the late afternoon.
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