The King of Thieves:

by Michael Jecks

  ‘He was de Nogaret. That is all I know.’

  ‘And the woman?’

  ‘His wife. We were paid to kill her …’

  This was the first time that it wasn’t ‘I’. It was interesting. More interesting, if he was honest, than much of the slobbering, self-justifying ox-shit he had been forced to listen to. Jean stood, his legs and arse aching from spending too much time on a stool. Crossing the floor, he leaned down, hands on thighs, and peered up at the dangling head.

  Blood trickled from a wound over his temple. Both eyes were puffed and blued from the regular beatings, and there was a reddened welt on his shoulder where a heated rod had been lain. The rest of his back was thankfully in darkness, and Jean needn’t look at that, nor at the man’s grotesquely swollen genitals.

  ‘Why?’ he asked quietly. ‘What would it serve you to kill me?’

  ‘The King was paid. Just like he was paid to kill de Nogaret.’

  ‘Who paid him?’

  ‘Someone from the castle. Don’t know who. Servant came to pay.’

  Jean nodded. ‘Who is the “King” you talk of?’

  ‘I can’t say.’

  ‘You can. You will.’

  ‘I can’t say.’

  Jean rose and shook his head. Looking over the boy’s head, he saw the two torturers. Neither was an expert at this art. Both were trained in the fields of Montfaucon among the great poles that stood there. The old wooden uprights were gone, replaced with stone in the last year. Now there were sixteen uprights, the King could have a full complement of sixty-four corpses swinging in the wind when he so desired. And all were on view from the north of the city. When space was needed, the bodies could be cut loose, and then the rotting flesh was cast into the city’s midden that lay close by. On a hot summer’s day, when the wind came from the north, Jean would cover his face with a cloth against the noxious fumes.

  These two had learned their arts there, stringing up the boys and men who were guilty of foul, degenerate crimes like stealing a loaf. Better that a man should starve than rob his fellow. Jean had lived through the famine. He knew what it was like to see people starve to death. If a man had managed to keep a small store of foodstuffs, and another sought to rob him of it, that man deserved his fate at Montfaucon, so far as Jean was concerned.

  ‘Leave him until morning,’ he said now, considering the broken and ravaged figure before him. ‘But show him the brazier and all the implements. I want answers by the end of tomorrow. Show him and let him dream of them tonight. And cut him free. He can’t run anywhere tonight, and the freedom will hurt more than leaving him hanging.’

  He left the chamber and the stench of sweat, piss and faeces, with relief. With every step he took away from that revolting room, he felt a little of the foulness falling away from him, until he found himself up in the open, and took in deep lungfuls of the fresh air. He was no torturer. The whole process made him feel sick. But the job worked – that was the trouble. It achieved results.

  Louvre, Paris

  The castellan strode into his room to find her there, waiting as usual. ‘What are you doing here?’

  Amélie stood and walked towards him languidly. ‘Don’t you want me any more?’

  It was tempting. Galician born, she had the body of a heathen harlot, but the face of an angel. Black hair that gleamed, an oval face with lips as red as a rose, she was utterly beautiful. Christ knew, it was tempting … but he didn’t have time. ‘You have to go to your master. To the “King”,’ he said harshly. ‘Tell him that one of his men has been taken, yes? He’s being held in the Temple, where they’re torturing him.’

  ‘What of it? Nicholas will break and die,’ she said, reaching up to his neck and placing her cool, cool hand behind his head. Her black eyes stared into his.

  ‘Get off me, wench! Sweet Jesus! You think this is the time for that? If this man is taken, we’re all in the midden, you understand?’

  ‘The “King” is no fool, Sieur Hugues. He has already sent a man to deal with Nicholas. The boy will stammer no more!’ She drew away from him as she spoke, and walking to the shelf on which lay his jug and cups, she poured two, and brought them to him. ‘Come, drink, relax, and then do what you want with me. I have all the time we need.’

  ‘What do you want with me?’ he demanded, but with less anger, as she took his hand and led him to the back of his room where he had a palliasse rolled at the wall.

  She said nothing, but unrolled the bedding and knelt on it. As he watched, she crossed her arms and lifted her linen tunic over her head. Beneath it she was naked.

  Temple, Paris

  The figure at the doorway tapped quietly. ‘I have a livre for you if I can see the man they’re torturing.’

  ‘What do you want with him?’ the porter demanded, taking the little leather purse and reaching inside. He took up a coin and stared at it hard, before experimentally biting into it. Seeing the result, a grin of delight spread over his face.

  With directions, it was easy to find him. Through one open door, down some steep stairs, into a great vaulted room that might as well have been a hall, he thought. Inside, two men were using bellows to warm a charcoal brazier, while the Stammerer stared in horrified fascination from his ravaged face.

  Sighing, Jacquot strolled inside. ‘Gentlemen, this fellow was a friend of mine. Can I let him have some money for food and drink while he remains here at your service?’

  ‘Who are you?’ The nearer of the two men clearly had the sharper brain. Now he blocked Jacquot’s path, a length of chain swinging from his fist.

  Jacquot said nothing, but showed his second purse, a bloated little pouch. The man took it, then turned to his companion and showed him the contents. ‘This for us?’ he asked Jacquot.

  ‘If you give me a few minutes with him, yes.’

  ‘A few minutes, then. But we’ll be listening, mind.’

  The two walked out from the room, leaving Jacquot with Nicholas the Stammerer. They had not yet released him from his hook, and he swung gently, his head loose, a ball of exquisite agony.

  Seeing he did not have the lad’s undivided attention, Jacquot took a large ladle of water from the barrel near the door, and dashed it into Nicholas’s face.

  In the past such an insult would have merited an enraged response, but now Nicholas had sunk so far into despair that he could only mumble and avert his head.

  ‘So, Nicholas the Stammerer. How are you today?’ Jacquot said with mild enquiry. He looked at the wreckage of the man and shook his head. ‘You should not have tried to take my prize, little man. It was not a sensible course. I do not like to destroy, but when there is money at stake, and such money … well.’

  He already had his long, thin knife in his hand, and he weighed it in his palm for a moment. ‘You are dead, Nicholas, already. There is nothing anyone can do for you. But the King and I do not want our names mentioned. So I will stop your mouth.’

  ‘No!’

  The knife slipped down from above his shoulder, gently sliding in between the collarbone and the shoulder blade. Nicholas lurched to draw away, but that put strain on his hands. He screamed wildly, and thrust his body upwards. His mouth opened, madly, his neck muscles thickened and strained, his veins stood out like ropes, and his head swung from side to side in maddened denial, as his heart thudded with thunderous irregularity, working against all reason, as though his soul could contain the damage done by the skewer-like blade that had sheared through muscle and lungs to puncture it.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Second Wednesday following the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary*

  Louvre

  Hugues was tempted to go and see the ‘King’ and throttle the bastard. It was all very well, him being so cocksure about the danger posed by Nicholas the Stammerer, as Amélie had intimated, but that didn’t make the castellan any calmer. He had too much to lose, damn the man’s soul!

  Although he had not been so lucky as some. Hugues thought back to the
sack of Anagni, the capture of Pope Boniface VIII. When the others had found the man Toscanello, and taken the key from him, there had been no one about at Anagni. No one at all, and although Toscanello had denied finding anything, the shifty little shite had been unable to stop himself sweating. Anyway, Paolo had always hated him. That was why he’d wanted to search for himself. And found the chest.

  Most money chests were made of steel with more steel bands to enclose and protect them, and a great locking mechanism that was designed to keep all safe inside. Not this. It was a simple wooden box, not much larger than the chest a man might keep in his bedchamber. Perhaps two feet tall, two more deep, and a yard and a half wide. No decoration, just the enormous hole for the key.

  ‘See? It’s just an old chest,’ Toscanello had said, and had made as though to leave the room. But he was shaking.

  Paolo had stopped and stared though, less sure. Just because this was lying in an undercroft didn’t mean it was empty. He was keen to open it up. So he did. The great key fitted the lock, and they could all hear the mechanism moving four enormous lugs out of their slots. And then he lifted the lid.

  Hugues had never seen so much money. It actually hurt. There was a desire like a knife in his groin. He’d never known avarice like this, not since he’d craved another’s wife, and then he’d had to kill her man and rape her before killing her too. But this, this was different. It was so pure, this gold coinage, so shiny and bright, he could hardly bear the thought of touching it.

  In the chest itself there was the coin, but then as they searched further in the storage room, they came across other chests, other boxes. One contained a set of plates, all gilded and valuable as diamonds. Another contained goblets, another held jewels. All the wealth of a Pope was in here. All the money Boniface VIII had accrued from selling indulgences and promotions at the turn of the century, taking advantage of the centennial fever that struck Christendom, it was all here.

  And in the chamber, there were only the four of them: Paolo the leader, Hugues, Thomas and Toscanello. That much money was enormous, even split four ways.

  But all knew the risks. And any who was unaware would have realised the danger as soon as the detestable de Nogaret began demanding to know where all the booty was. He wasn’t here just for the better glory of the King of France; he was here at Anagni to make himself fabulously rich. And he would have the head and heart of any man who tried to prevent him.

  It was some while before they had reached Paris afterwards. De Nogaret was disappointed with his rewards, still fuming over his inability to find much of the Pope’s fabled wealth. He couldn’t. Hugues and Thomas had concealed it well. He soon learned to seek other means of gaining the money he craved. Hugues and Thomas later returned to the place where the money was hidden, and rescued their shares – which they were able to put to good use.

  It was twenty-two years since that fateful meeting at Anagni, and Hugues was damned if he would see all he had built up destroyed by a drunken sot who fancied himself ‘King of Thieves’ and dropped others in the shit from incompetence.

  Temple, Paris

  Jean stood in the room and gaped. ‘Who let the assassin into the chamber?’

  The executioner shook his head. ‘There are always people who try to get inside. Some are legitimate – they want to go and provide some food for the prisoners. You know how it is.’

  ‘Yes, but no one should have been allowed in there. Not there, where the King’s prisoner was being questioned. You know that, in Christ’s name! So how did this happen?’

  ‘As I told you, we found the prisoner dead in there this morning. Someone had stabbed his heart with a long, thin blade. It was only a matter of a spot of blood at his shoulder. I would have missed it myself, but one of the guards saw it there. There was nothing we could do.’

  Jean dismissed him angrily. All too often prisoners could suddenly die, he knew. Sometimes it was an angry guard who went over the mark when a man was complaining. Guards were not hired for their sense or kindness. If a weeping man carried on for too long, he could be given something to weep about. Occasionally prisoners could die for no other reason than disease. Or malnutrition, or the cold or wetness. All were natural enough in a dungeon. These deaths weren’t the result of particularly bad treatment.

  But this man’s death left Jean with more work.

  First he must find out more about the Stammerer, and then see if he could do the same about this man called the ‘King’.

  But first, perhaps, he should see if he could learn a little more about de Nogaret and his wife.

  Tuesday before the Feast of the Archangel Michael*

  Bois de Vincennes

  Baldwin took his place at the edge of the dais with an eye on the crowds all about. They were all in the courtyard of the great hunting lodge, and the arms of the French manor house reached out on either side, the fourth side being blocked by a large wall. Flags drooped in the still air; it was unseasonally warm for late September, and Baldwin could feel a trickle of sweat running down his back.

  There were so many people here. Wolf was behind him, and Baldwin kept turning periodically to make sure that he did not spring into the middle and cause a mêlée. He had no desire to see a fight break out because of his beast. Not on an occasion of such importance.

  Opposite him were a large contingent of French nobility, all watching the English visitors with suspicion. Baldwin was glad that he was wearing a new red tunic. His old one would have made him feel too much like a country churl in the midst of all this splendour. Armour gleamed with a blue light, the French nobles’ clothing was clearly the best available, and even in his new tunic, he felt slightly shabby.

  In the event it was all over quite quickly. Simon Puttock and Sir Richard de Welles, the Coroner, turned up just as Duke Edward, Earl of Chester, arrived and strode to the throne where the King of France waited, Edward’s mother at his side. Before all the men present, the King held out his hands. The Duke knelt before him, and raised his own hands in that universal symbol of fealty, his palms pressed together as if in prayer. The King placed his own hands on either side of the Duke’s and looked about him at the audience of witnesses as the Duke spoke in his high, unbroken voice. And it was done. Immediately the King announced that his warriors would be withdrawn from all the lands held by his nephew, and control would revert to the Duke.

  Baldwin glanced at Sir Richard. He had conspired to bring a small haunch of ham with him, and was surreptitiously chewing at it as he listened.

  ‘Well, Sir Richard, was the ceremony to your taste?’

  ‘To me taste? Not so fine as a good jug of English ale, eh?’

  Simon squared his shoulders and stretched. ‘Maybe now we can soon return home, Baldwin. Surely the Queen’s business here is done and we can serve her on her way home.’

  ‘That is to be fervently desired,’ Baldwin agreed, but even as he spoke there was a sudden noise.

  It was the Bishop of Exeter. Walter Stapledon strode forward and bowed to the King. ‘Your Royal Highness. I have here a letter from King Edward, which demands that the Lady Isabella, his Queen, should return at once to England.’ Stapledon waved the note high, and then held it out to the Queen. ‘Your Royal Highness, the King says that he will tolerate no delay. I have money to pay your outstanding expenses, but I have been commanded only to pay if you will come straight back to England with me to return to your husband, as you are obliged to do. I am afraid the King does not offer you an option, your Royal Highness. He demands your obedience.’

  There was a complete silence for a moment. It was as though all the world was waiting to see how the Queen would react to this rudeness.

  She responded coolly, staring at the note in his hand with some contempt. And then she looked at the Bishop with eyes that seemed to dart fire.

  Sir Richard gave a low whistle. ‘If he was hoping for a quick service of his own, I’ll wager he’ll need a new filly.’

  His crudeness about the Queen was shockin
g to Baldwin, who was about to remonstrate, when the Queen spoke. Her voice shook with rage, beginning so quietly that all must strain their ears to hear her words. And then her voice grew, swelling, until all could hear, and her disdain and anger were clear to all present. It lay there in her perfect enunciation and slow, deliberate speech.

  ‘I feel that marriage is a joining together of man and woman, maintaining the undivided habit of life, and that someone has come between my husband and myself, trying to break this bond. I protest that I will not return until this intruder is removed, but discarding my marriage garment, shall assume the robes of widowhood and mourning until I am avenged of this … this Pharisee!’

  Stapledon held the little roll high overhead, then turned to the King for support. ‘My Royal Lord, you know that a man’s first duty is to his wife. Surely no wife can look for support when her husband has determined that she must go to him?’

  The King of France looked to Baldwin as though he might explode with fury himself.

  ‘D’ye think the Bishop knows of the King’s past?’ Sir Richard said to Baldwin. ‘Poor devil – his first wife was found playing the dog with two tails with a knight, after all. Won’t like to be reminded, I reckon.’

  ‘I don’t think he could be unaware,’ Baldwin retorted. ‘Why he has chosen such a high-handed manner is beyond me.’

  Simon was more sanguine. ‘Because he’s never had a wife, Baldwin. If he had, he would understand the folly of such language and such a conspicuous venue for his demand.’

  The King looked at the letter, and then at Stapledon. His voice was cool, but calm. ‘The Queen has come to my court of her own free will. I will not send her away if she chooses to remain. She is a Princess of France and my sister. I will not exile her.’