The King of Thieves:

by Michael Jecks

  ‘What’s your name?’ he asked.

  ‘They call me Le Boeuf.’

  ‘Well, Boeuf, if you get out of that cell because you tell me you know something, and then I learn you don’t, you’ll be straight back inside – and next time you ask to see me, it’ll be a week before I come down here. Got that? I dislike having my time wasted, and looking at you, I have to ask myself: “What can this piece of shit know that can possibly help me?”’

  ‘Please!’

  Pons studied him a moment longer, wearing his ‘dicing’ face. An expressionless face was particularly useful when gambling with some of the sailors at the riverside, but now Pons was using it to intimidate. Making a decision, he span on his heel and was off up the stairs, the guard hurrying behind him, while Le Boeuf screamed after them.

  ‘That man, you know him?’ Pons asked the guard as they reached the street level.

  ‘He’s just a low-life. I suspect him of cutting a few purses, pocketing a few trinkets, perhaps. But mostly he’s just a nuisance because of his attempts at begging. I’ve seen him before now, with a patch over his good eye, pretending to be blind, grabbing at any matron who passed.’

  ‘So it’s hardly likely he has anything of use,’ Pons said.

  ‘I doubt it,’ the guard agreed. He was a large, broad man with swarthy features and a face that had been scarred badly by a sword or dagger blow many years before. The scar tissue had marred his face, a great horizontal mark that reached from one cheek almost across to the other, breaking his nose on the way. His face was enough to scare Pons, let alone the men downstairs.

  ‘Have you had any deaths in that cell yet?’

  ‘No. But there’s a couple who’re coughing badly. Could be they’re getting the prisoners’ disease.’

  Pons reflected. ‘Ach, we had them all taken so that we could listen to their tales. I may as well learn what I may. Bring him up here to me.’

  ‘Sieur.’

  The man called Le Boeuf had been punished before, Pons saw. His right ear had been heavily clipped. The entire lobe and much of the rear of the ear was gone. That was good. He knew what he might suffer, then.

  Pons said nothing for some moments, considering the man. Le Boeuf had great manacles on his wrists, and the heavy chain dangled almost to his groin. At his ankles were more chains, hobbling him most effectively. The blood was staining his bare feet where the metal bands chafed his flesh.

  Apart from that, he had only terror in his eyes. It was there in the way that his eye avoided Pons’s own, the way that he kept looking longingly over Pons’s shoulder towards the daylight outside, but also in the wideness of his eye and his panting. This was no ordinary terror. Perhaps he suffered from that fear of small, dark spaces which afflicted so many?

  ‘Well?’ Pons said sternly. ‘You said you had something to tell me.’

  ‘Will you release me from that cell if I tell you all?’

  ‘If you can tell me who killed the Procureur, I will have you freed and see that you are well rewarded too.’

  The young man glanced over his shoulder as though stiffening his resolve by reminding himself what the alternative was.

  ‘Then I will tell you. There is a group in Paris which runs all the crimes.’

  Pons lifted an eyebrow.

  ‘It is true, Master. The man in charge, he is called the King, and he has many men at his command. Those who cut purses or rob, or the others who break into houses, they all have to pay him. He takes what they steal and sells it for them, and they receive a part for themselves. If they steal money, they must pay him. If they have whores, they must pay one-fifth of their takings to him. All the crimes in Paris are to his profit.’

  ‘You tell me that the thieves of Paris have a King?’ Pons said cynically. ‘Guard! Put this man back with the others!’

  ‘No! He lives in rooms near to the eastern wall, down by the river. The thieves go to him at night. Those who disappoint him are taken to a warehouse at the river itself, and their bodies thrown in.’

  ‘I suppose he kills them himself?’

  ‘No. He has his own executioner, just like our King Charles. It was that executioner who slew the Procureur.’

  Pons felt his breath stilled in his breast. ‘This executioner killed the Procureur? How do you know?’

  ‘I saw him. I was in the alley when it happened.’

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Louvre

  Baldwin was relieved to be told that Richard of Bury had the Duke fettered that morning. Instead of the usual chase about the King’s parks hunting deer, or the apparently endless round of engagements and feasts in his honour, the Duke of Aquitaine was to be left with his tutor to learn more about the position of France in Christendom, and the politics of his new estates.

  ‘It is time he learned what his new responsibilities are,’ Bury had said, overruling the arguments of Sir Richard, Sir Henry de Beaumont and the Duke himself. Fixing Duke Edward with a steely eye, he continued, ‘Because Princes who do not study their realms with due diligence and care may find that they lose them!’

  Baldwin would have smiled, but for the expression on the Duke’s face, which consisted of a mix of resentment and shock, from the idea that his hold on Guyenne and the other parts of his territory could be as precarious as his father’s had been.

  ‘Come. You had better teach me all you may, then,’ Duke Edward said at last. And as he walked from the room in Richard of Bury’s wake, Baldwin heard him add, ‘And mind you teach well, Master Bury, for if I lose my lands because of a failing on your part, I will have my payment from you directly!’

  It made Baldwin grin to hear it. The Duke was far too young for such an awesome responsibility, but he did have the intelligence to keep himself from arrogance, and the humour to win friends.

  ‘What you grinnin’ about?’ Sir Richard asked.

  ‘Just reflecting on our Duke.’

  Simon snorted and gazed quizzically at the door through which the Duke had left. ‘Was Bury serious when he said the Duke could lose the lot?’

  ‘His father did,’ Sir Richard pointed out.

  ‘But I think the young Duke is stronger in temperament,’ Baldwin said. ‘I can recall listening to tales of the King with his father, Edward the First. The two Edwards were often at loggerheads, I heard. And at one time, the old King grasped his son by the head and tried to pull his hair out, he was so frustrated. King Edward the First was a long-lived King. It must have been a sore trial to his son, our present King, to have waited so long in his father’s shadow.

  ‘Ha! So you think he may do the same to his own son in his turn?’ Sir Richard enquired.

  ‘No, I don’t think so,’ Baldwin said thoughtfully. ‘I think our King was a more turbulent youth. He was forward and headstrong, while this Duke of ours is much more aware of his responsibilities than his father ever was. The latter sought only the trappings of power so that he might enjoy his leisure in whatever manner he wished. Our Duke seems much more thoughtful, and considerate of other people’s feelings and desires.’

  Sir Richard grunted, but then his mood lightened. ‘Well, now, since we’re free for the morning, what do you two say to a walk to the kitchen to see if they’ve got a honeyed lark or two for us? I could happily eat a snack.’

  Simon reflected warily that the way to the kitchen also took them past two very good wine shops and a tavern, but the idea of a slab of meat and a hunk of bread was most appealing. And a quart of ale to wash it down would be pleasant, too.

  Baldwin was behind the other two when they reached the kitchen. He had enjoyed a dream of his wife the night before – just a fleeting gallery of little memories, a snap of her smile, the impression of her body, her hair in a breeze – and it had left him feeling vaguely melancholic and unsettled. Thus it was that when Sir Richard and Simon blundered their way into the kitchen, Baldwin himself waited outside.

  There was a curious weeping noise coming from somewhere, he noted, and he wondered where.
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br />   Like all kitchens, this was built close to the main hall where any feasts would be held, but was a completely separate building in case of fire. All castles, all halls, had separate kitchens for this reason.

  This was a large rectangular block, which was clearly quite old. Built of stone, it had a tiled roof against the risk of sparks erupting from the chimney and setting fire to a thatch. The weeping seemed to be coming from behind it, so Baldwin, frowning slightly, peered around the corner.

  And there slumped on his backside, head bowed, was a boy who could not have been more than eight years old. He was dressed in old linen, with a blue stripe of some cheap dyestuff which had already begun to fade.

  ‘Are you well, boy?’ Baldwin asked.

  With a squeak the lad sprang to his feet and backed away, farther into the gap between the kitchen and the castle wall.

  ‘Don’t worry, I am not here to harm you,’ Baldwin said soothingly.

  ‘I should bloody hope not!’ came a voice from behind him. It was the cook. The big man stood looking suspiciously at Baldwin, his hand close to his knife.

  ‘Master cook, there is nothing for you to fear,’ Baldwin told him. ‘I heard this knave weeping, and sought to help him.’

  ‘He’s fine.’

  ‘Is he?’ In some circumstances, Baldwin might have thought that the cook had been bullying the boy, but now, seeing how the knave ran to the man and hid behind him, gripping his shirt tightly, and how the cook himself ruffled his hair fondly, he grinned. ‘That lad looks as though he’ll be a sore trial before he’s a grown man.’

  ‘He already is,’ the cook admitted. He looked down and jerked his head. ‘Go on, Raff! Get back inside. I’ve been hunting for you.’ He sighed with exasperation when the lad had disappeared. ‘I am sorry, sir, I thought you might be …’

  ‘Yes?’ Baldwin enquired. And then he flushed a little as he realised. ‘You thought I could have been seeking to hurt that boy?’

  ‘Well, we have had a lad from the kitchen taken and murdered,’ the cook said bleakly. ‘I wish I could learn who did that. Whoever it was has no soul and no humanity. That bastard took a little boy with the sweetest nature in this city, and slaughtered him like a pig.’

  Baldwin unbent a little. ‘I saw the body. I was here when the Procureur was taking the child from your chest. I had forgotten, may God forgive me. There has been so much happening, with the Procureur being killed as well. So, tell me, the murderer was never found?’

  ‘No. Little Jehanin died without justice. Now he’s in his grave, and no one will bother to learn who did that to him. Who cares about a fellow like him when he’s not the son of a baron?’ His voice thickened, and he looked away.

  ‘Friend cook, I am truly sorry. Perhaps it was merely an accident, as I first said?’

  ‘His throat was stopped by a cord, you remember? How could that be an accident?’ the cook sneered.

  ‘I have known such accidents. In my own lands I investigate deaths and try to make sense of them,’ Baldwin said. ‘Was the cord a type that you use in the kitchen?’

  ‘No. I have several cords which I use to bind carcasses – small for poultry, larger ones for venison and the bigger animals. There are ropes too. But this was none of them.’

  ‘You are sure?’

  The cook looked at him. ‘The cords in the kitchen are all good quality, fine linens and the like. That which killed the boy was a rough one, made out of hemp or flax, I think. It was unlike anything I have in my kitchen, I can swear. And what sort of accident would lead to a boy being throttled like that?’

  ‘At home, I found a miller’s boy who’d been playing with a rope, and it became snagged on the hoist without his realising. When his father used the hoist, it lifted the boy as well, and there was nothing the father could do. A terrible accident. Then I saw a boy who was playing at swinging on a tree’s bough with some string. Not high, he had to bend down to the rope, but he slipped, and his neck fell on to the rope, and he swung about, the rope tightening, and as he panicked, the rope choked his life away.’

  ‘Jehanin was not playing on a tree, though. And there is no hoist in my kitchen.’

  ‘I merely demonstrate that accidents can happen. Was he unpopular?’

  ‘No, he was a lovely lad. All liked him.’

  ‘I know you did, for I saw your distress at his death. But could one or two others among the staff have been jealous of your affection?’

  ‘No. He was not a favourite, if that’s what you mean. I merely liked him. But I like all my charges. I would be a poor master to them if I hated them all,’ the cook said with asperity.

  ‘You speak truly,’ Baldwin agreed. Then, ‘So could this have been someone who had a reason to detest you, and sought an easy means of upsetting you through the boy? I have known weakly men try to do just that.’ Into his mind there sprang a picture of Sir Hugh le Despenser. It made Baldwin wonder whether he had taken Simon’s house in order to get back at Baldwin.

  ‘I am only a cook! Who would hate me? All I do is make people’s lives more pleasant by cooking for them. I could not have offended anybody like that.’

  ‘Is it possible that you might have had something valuable in your kitchen? Perhaps someone tried to steal something and was seen by the boy, so he killed the witness?’

  ‘The only items of value in my kitchen are my meat and spices, and I’d swear that nothing’s been stolen.’

  ‘And you are convinced that Jean could find no reason for the lad’s death? The Procureur was a most competent-looking man.’

  ‘He gave no reason. I think it was that very day that he died, though. Perhaps he would have learned more, had he not been murdered.’

  Louvre

  Cardinal Thomas d’Anjou left his little chapel and returned to his own room. A clerk followed after him, and, knowing his habits, brought a small tray on which were a bowl and a goblet. D’Anjou washed his hands, dried them on the towel which the thoughtful clerk had provided, and then took the goblet.

  It was one of his favourite pieces, this. A delightful cup of pewter on a solid stand, and with gilt to highlight the scene engraved around it. Faultlessly executed, it depicted the story of St Francis, from his early years rejecting his inheritance from his cloth-merchant father, to his preaching to the birds and his taming of the wolf of Gubbio, and the appearance of the stigmata.

  Sitting now, he sipped from the goblet and considered that life. That a man could be so devoted to God that he might throw aside all his father’s great wealth, was astonishing in such a backward age. It was two hundred years ago that St Francis had been born, while his parents were abroad in France, which was why he was named for the land. And he had heard a voice while he was in a shrine telling him to rebuild a church, so he had gone and sold some of his father’s cloth to pay for the rebuilding. And that, naturally enough, led to his father’s rage, and soon afterwards the two separated. Francis went so far as to throw off even the clothes which his father’s money had bought for him, and he had to rely on the charity of the Bishop just to clothe himself.

  He was clearly a deeply religious man. In the Cardinal’s view, he was almost certainly insufferable, too. He had met some ascetic, religious types in his time, and often they were the most difficult and truculent of all. There was no negotiating with them. Which was why the Pope generally preferred the slightly more worldly when it came to diplomacy. They were easier to deal with.

  The Cardinal sipped again, and was about to settle back to consider some messages recently arrived from the Pope, when there was a respectful knock at his door.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Cardinal, the Bishop Walter would like to speak with you.’

  Thomas d’Anjou pursed his lips. Then he nodded silently and finished his wine. There would be time later to read the letters.

  ‘Bishop,’ he said as Walter Stapledon arrived.

  ‘Cardinal.’

  The Bishop was feeling ever more anxious. The impression that men were looking a
t him askance was increasing, and had grown now to include almost all those in the English delegation, bar Baldwin, Sir Richard and Simon Puttock.

  ‘Cardinal Thomas, I am very sorry to trouble you again.’

  ‘What is it, Bishop? I am a little busy this evening.’

  ‘I am deeply concerned. The Queen has not responded positively to my discussion with her.’

  ‘Ah. But your difficulty with the accusation of being involved in the murder of that man – the Procureur – that has gone?’

  ‘Yes, I think I am no longer considered guilty of that, I thank God. Yet still, I do have the duty to act as guardian to the Duke while he is here, and then to take the Queen home. Yet she will not allow any discussion of such a—’

  ‘Then you must hold yourself in preparation against the day that she agrees at last.’

  ‘You have seen how she habitually wears a widow’s weeds? How easy do you think it would be to persuade her to come back to England when she refuses even to make the effort to show that she is willing to tolerate the Despenser?’

  ‘From all I have heard, your Despenser does not make it easy for her to return. And not he alone,’ the Cardinal said pointedly.

  ‘Sir Hugh acts in the best interests of the realm as he sees it.’

  The Cardinal eyed him steadily. ‘Let us dispense with polite forms, Bishop. The Despenser sees only his own interests and his own benefits. He does nothing for the good of the realm. That is clear enough even here in France. I would myself not command a dog to return to his power. And you want the Queen Isabella to submit to him? I find your demands upon her astonishing.’

  ‘I only submit the desires of her husband, my King,’ Stapledon said tersely.

  ‘Only him? Not the wishes of his great friend Despenser? And how convincing do you think that will sound to her?’

  ‘Cardinal, this is a matter of a husband and wife. A man and woman bound by holy—’

  ‘Matrimony, yes. I know. And it is also true, is it not, that your Sir Hugh le Despenser has already attempted to have the Pope annul the marriage? Sir Hugh, not the Queen’s husband. Sir Hugh sent his emissary to the Pope, did he not?’