The King of Thieves

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Outside Paris, north of the Louvre

Hélias heard running feet and looked up in time to see Bernadette pelt in through the door.

‘Hélias! Hélias!’ she gasped.

‘Well? What have you found out?’

‘There was a contract between the Cardinal and the King, and the King had his best killer put on the job. A man called Jacquot.’

Louvre

In the castellan’s chamber, Hugues was startled by the sudden opening of his door. He rolled over to grab for his sword, and Amélie squeaked as she was thrown from him.

‘Get rid of the whore, Hugues — we have business,’ the Cardinal said coldly.

Second Tuesday following the Feast of the Archangel Michael^*

Courtyard of the Louvre

Baldwin and Simon were outside as dawn broke, and they watched as the small party of pilgrims walked across the grounds to the gate as it was opened by Arnaud. He paid no attention to them as they set off on their way.

‘That is that, then,’ Simon said.

‘Yes. Godspeed to the Bishop,’ Baldwin said with feeling. ‘I only pray that he makes it safely to the coast. It would be a dreadful disaster, were he to be found on his way and killed.’

‘I would miss him,’ Simon said.

‘I too,’ Baldwin said, but with less sympathy. The truth was that Walter Stapledon had been an ally of the Despenser for too long now, and Baldwin was not certain where the Bishop’s loyalties lay. He was worried that Sir Walter’s main interests were all too self-centred. Only earlier this year, when Baldwin and Simon had found evidence which showed Sir Hugh le Despenser in a less than attractive light, the Bishop had promised to hold it in safe-keeping, and then had given it to Despenser himself, who had promptly destroyed it.

But no matter what his thoughts of the Bishop’s personal actions and his integrity in matters of politics, the man had the gift of inspiring others. All too often in the past he had inspired Baldwin himself. It was only more recently that Baldwin had found his blandishments more easy to ignore — or try to. Somehow the Bishop usually managed to get his own way.

Not here in Paris, though, Baldwin reminded himself.

‘Baldwin?’ Simon nudged him out of his reverie. ‘Yesterday, while we were talking to the cook, you seemed to think you were getting an insight into the killings here. Is that right?’

‘Partly, I think, yes. I have some idea about the boy Jehanin’s death. He was at the gate when de Nogaret entered the castle, and when de Nogaret asked where to go, the boy was told to show him there. And here we have the mystery: all at the gate must know where the Cardinal’s chamber was, so why instruct the lad to take a guest so far away from it — unless the motive was murder.’

‘True — which means that de Nogaret must have been known to his killer. Someone inside the castle knew he was coming, and knew the time — thus was able to plan to have the man directed to the chamber.’

‘Precisely, Simon. The killer did know de Nogaret was arriving. And he had his victim brought to the room where he would be able to slay him in peace. He couldn’t afford to take him there himself, as it would have been witnessed. And that, I think …’

‘… Is why the poor lad was murdered in his turn. Just to keep his mouth shut,’ Simon breathed.

‘I believe so. This killer is cold-blooded enough to remove any who could prove to be dangerous to him. First de Nogaret, then the kitchen knave, then Madame de Nogaret, and I think probably Jean the Procureur. Perhaps because Jean was getting too close to the truth.’

‘Did he not make any notes in the scroll?’

‘I have looked at it in detail,’ Baldwin said regretfully, ‘but I can find nothing important. I think our only hope is that this appalling King of Thieves will finally tell us what he knows.’

‘It is possible, I suppose,’ Simon said without conviction.

‘Yes. Just,’ Baldwin sighed. ‘Ach, come, Simon. Let us go to the Temple and see what the good Pons may show us. We may even be granted some uplifting news there — one never knows.’

Chamber near St Jacques la Boucherie

Jacquot was moderately happy with the way his takeover had gone. The sudden removal of the King was achieved with a minimum of fuss, the transfer of power to him had been implemented, and most of the men in the gang were happy to see some form of continuity rather than out-and-out gang warfare between rivals. That would be bad for business.

‘How did you alert the officers to the King’s location?’ he asked Amélie.

The chamber was small, low-ceilinged and cold. They had been forced to light a small brazier, and the coals glowed reassuringly in the dull light.

She was standing at the side of it, clad in a soft linen material with a heavier woollen robe of red velvet over the top. Looking at him, she smiled. ‘It was easy. I told the officer I knew where the killer of the Procureur was to be found.’

He nodded. It was all a game to her. This was her attempt at subtlety, no doubt, to remind him that she knew what he had done, that he had killed the Procureur. With information like that, she could try to run the whole of the gang, if she wanted. But she couldn’t, because by some mysterious quirk of fate, she had been born a woman. Despite having been given the mind of a cruel and unfeeling man, she could never rule the Parisian underworld because none of the men would accept a female ruler. Therefore, she must have a figurehead — a puppet to rule in her stead — and he was the one she had selected.

‘You would betray me without blinking, wouldn’t you?’ he said rhetorically.

She smiled at him, that slow, feral twitch of the lips which he had seen so often before. It was the practised smile of the whore, he thought, that signified the slow awakening of desire. She had beguiled the King with it, just as she had sorely tempted other men in the gang.

He shrugged. ‘Don’t bother. You know it doesn’t work with me.’

‘No? Why not? Other men love me — don’t you?’

‘As much as I’d love a snake. You are as smooth, and as lethal.’

She smiled more broadly now, and began to lift her linen skirts. ‘You mean you’d refuse me?’ she murmured.

‘I would not dare to trust you.’

‘You are so hurtful,’ she laughed. The skirt was already about her waist, but she held the material in her hands, bunched before her belly, so that the cloth hung down concealing her sex. ‘Don’t you want this?’ she taunted him, gently waving it from side to side.

‘When I want a whore, I’ll go to old Angeline,’ he said without rancour.

She dropped her skirts. ‘Why not. The raddled old cow could do with a man again. What do you intend now?’

‘Now?’ he repeated. ‘I have the business to continue, woman. The old King was adept at all forms of work. I needs must emulate him.’

‘Well, do not work yourself too hard, will you?’ she said. ‘I have great plans for us while we rule the gang. I wouldn’t want you to be too exhausted.’

As she turned and made her way from the chamber, he was sorely tempted to reach for his knife and put an end to her there and then. There was something about her that grated on him all the time. She was so knowing, so ruthless, so bloodthirsty. There were none of the feminine traits in her; only those of violence and destruction. If she had been born a man, he was confident that she would be the new King — and that he, Jacquot, would already be dead.

At the gate to the Louvre

Sir Richard caught up with them as Baldwin and Simon were leaving the castle, Wolf bounding at his side.

‘You trying to avoid me?’ Sir Richard demanded, only half-joking.

‘Not at all,’ Baldwin smiled.

‘Has he gone?’

They had spoken to Sir Richard as soon as they had been able, late the previous night, so he knew that Bishop Walter was intending to leave that morning.

Baldwin looked over his shoulder at a pair of French guards who appeared a little too interested in them. ‘Let us go and meet with our friend Pons at the Temple as he suggested. We can speak on the way.’

It took them only a short while to confirm that the Bishop had indeed left at first light.

‘Hmm. A shame. When Bishop Walter was here, a man could always lay his fist on a good pint of wine. What will we do now? Perhaps we’ll even have to resort to buying our own barrel or two.’ With that thought, the knight’s mood lightened considerably, and he began to look about him with a great deal more interest. Not from any desire to see more of the splendid city in which he found himself, Baldwin was convinced, but more from a wish to spot the first wine merchant’s building with a view to ordering as much stock as he could.

They were soon outside the city’s northern walls, and before them loomed the great blank-sided towers of the Temple. There was one towering donjon, with four turrets about it, so far as Simon could see, and the whole was clad in a dark grey stone that dominated the sky all about here, while also intimidating the city itself. It lay in the midst of wild swamplands, with tussocks of greying grasses and bright reeds. Occasional tufts of white showed where the reeds had grown their beards, just like Raybarrow Pool in Simon’s Dartmoor, the landscape where he felt most at home.

This was no soft undulating landscape. Here was the great Templar castle; further along was the hill of Montfaucon, where the French King had erected his magnificent gallows, on which he could hang sixty-four felons simultaneously. It lent a grim, lowering air to the whole area.

Simon was not surprised to see that his friend Baldwin was growing more and more tense as they approached. This was the place in which the Templars had been arrested on that fateful Friday, and in which so many had been tortured, some so brutally that they died of their wounds or were forever crippled. It was mere good fortune that he himself was not present in the Preceptory on that day, and thus evaded the arrest and subsequent punishment.

The walls were tall and strong, much like those Baldwin had described in the Holy Land, all built to the glory of God and for the protection of pilgrims, but Simon felt no easing of his spirit as he walked in through the main gate. No, he was aware only of a heaviness of spirit, as though the souls of all those who had died in here were calling out to him.

Pons was sitting on a bench near a stable-block. He sat up at the sight of them, tipping his broad-brimmed hat back over his head, and rose to welcome them. ‘You are earlier than I’d expected.’

‘We have much to do today,’ Simon said.

‘Where is the man?’ Baldwin demanded more bluntly.

‘Follow me,’ Pons said. He took them around the main tower and out to a smaller series of chambers at the northern wall. A door opened into a dingy little staircase that wound downwards. ‘I would have kept him in the same room as normal, but since the murder of the Stammerer, I’ve been reluctant to stick to the old rooms.’

Simon was not particularly scared of narrow spaces, but that journey was one which would remain with him a long time. There was a lingering damp chill to the air, and the sound of drips. He had enough experience of lands like this to know that the water was seeping through the walls from the marshlands beyond. Foul eruptions of sodden vegetation stood in every available crack. Puddles pooled on the ground, and where there were lanterns flickering with candlelight, water gleamed from every surface. The cold was deadening to the body, but also to the soul.

It was with great relief that he saw Pons had stopped. The man was opening a door that gave onto a new corridor — and this looked more like the passage between gaol cells. On either side were doors, and Pons strode down until he reached one on the left, roughly halfway along. He took out a key, inserted it, and opened the door. ‘Here, masters, is the man you wanted to see: Paris’s own “King of Thieves”.’

Bare-chested, the prisoner sprawled on the floor, his hands yoked to a beam that lay across his shoulders. A scabbed beard marked his jaws, while his right eye was blackened and swollen, the cheek beneath grotesquely deformed where a blow had broken his cheekbone. Blood marked his thighs and breast from a multitude of wounds where tiny squares of his flesh had been systematically cut away, and now all wept in unison.

‘No more! No more! You swore!’

‘No,’ Pons said calmly. ‘You begged. I didn’t promise anything, King.’

Baldwin was frozen in horror at the sight. It was as though he was seeing for himself — and for the very first time — the result of the attacks on the Templars themselves. The knights had been held in rooms like this, in all probability, and tortured before each other in the same way, so Baldwin had heard tell, just as the Muslims had tortured, mocked, and executed their predecessors at Safed.

‘Release him,’ Baldwin said, in a voice like death itself.

Street near St Jacques la Boucherie

Jacquot was aware of them as soon as he left his room. Used to following others without detection, he was perfectly aware when someone else was trailing him.

There were three of them — that he was certain of. Two behind and one up ahead on the left. This lane was narrow, little more than an alley, really, and he could have sworn at himself for being so careless. He’d thought himself safe enough, but now he realised his error. The bitch Amélie had put them on to him and he had walked merrily into her trap. Not again, though. This was the last time she would seal a man’s death warrant.

He would have to escape these three first, and the very first thing to do was bunch them up so he knew where they all were.

There was a short alley back behind him, which led up west to the Grande Rue; he would have to get to it somehow. Turning, he marched swiftly towards the two. One displayed no interest in him, but the other was younger, less experienced. Jacquot was surprised Amélie didn’t pay a little more and get a more competent set of men. Be that as it may, he had a good look at both, committed their faces to his memory, and then swiftly turned again and shot up the little alley.

Behind him there was a cry, then a patter of boots on the filth of the alley. He threw a quick look over his shoulder, already feeling the pain in his chest from shortness of breath. He was too old for this sort of activity. She would pay for this.

Louvre

Hugues was not up early. The discussion with the Cardinal had taken some while, and by the time the man left him, Amélie had disappeared. Probably returned to her little pit in the city itself. No matter.

Today, though, he had business. He would have to trail after the Bishop and wait for a suitable opportunity to kill him, but that wouldn’t be too hard. Even if his assassination was seen, the King himself wanted the troublesome priest out of the way, so it was likely that witnesses would hold their tongues.

The large block allocated to the guests and their servants was to the west of the main castle, inside the enormous curtain walls, and he walked along the building idly, keeping an eye open for the Bishop. Surely this was the time he would be returning from his morning prayers in the chapel? But there was no sign of him as the people poured from the little church. After some while, Hugues went to the door to peer inside, but there was no one there, and when he asked the priest inside, he was told that the Bishop had not appeared.

Cursing to himself, he wandered back to the block and leaned against a wall, prepared to wait, glancing up at the sun every so often.

Temple

The King of Thieves turned out to be quite a young man, perhaps only five-and-twenty years old. He may once have been mannerly, from the way in which he tried to bow when the yoke had been cut away from him, but all he could achieve was a vague flourish of the hand, before his legs buckled beneath him.

Baldwin wordlessly passed him a cup of water from the bucket near the door. The King peered into it with a grimace, but sipped at it, knowing and accepting that there would be nothing better in this life. ‘I am most grateful to you, my lords,’ he said in a cracked voice. ‘I suppose you have come to experience my hospitality here in my chamber? Pray, try the wine. It is exquisite, and the food is beyond compare, if you like weevils in your loaf and enjoy sharing it with the cockroaches each day.’

‘I want to know all you can tell me of the murder of the Procureur,’ Baldwin said.

‘Ah … him. And why not the others, Sir Knight? Was this one man so important that his death is worth mine — and the deaths of others? What, do you think, makes this man so important?’

‘He was an officer of the law,’ Baldwin said. Pons was silent, keeping in the shadows nearby, listening but making no contribution.

‘An officer?’ the King said with mild pain on his features. ‘What of it? Does it make him a better man? I think not!’

‘Perhaps not, but surely it made him more valuable?’ Baldwin said.

The King stretched back his head until all his tendons and muscles were taut, and suddenly gave a burst of laughter. ‘Valuable? Yes. In God’s name, yes! I was paid a great deal to remove him.’

‘You were successful. Did you kill him yourself?’

‘I am “King”, Sieur Knight. Do I look as though I get my own hands bloody?’

‘So you told one of your men to do it for you?’

‘I was contracted to kill him, I took the money, and passed some on to the assassin. But he was greedy, and demanded more, so I tried to have him punished for his presumption. He hurt several of my own guards, the son of a hog!’

‘There was a body in the Seine …?’ Pons murmured.

‘It was one of my men, whom the assassin killed.’

‘This assassin is no friend of yours,’ Baldwin said.

‘He is the cause of my suffering today.’

‘Will you tell us who he was?’

‘No. I want my own justice for him,’ the King spat. He stood, not quickly with his wounds, but with determination. ‘And it’s not him you want, it’s the priest who paid for the Procureur to be killed, as well as the girl.’

‘What girl?’ Baldwin asked.

‘The one over at the Grand Châtelet two months ago.’

‘She was one of your victims, too?’

‘Yes. I was paid for her killing, and I always fulfil my contracts.’

‘You did it personally?’

‘No. As I said, my way is to always pay another.’

‘What,’ Baldwin asked tentatively, ‘about the man de Nogaret in the Louvre?’

‘That was nothing to do with me. I wouldn’t kill in the King’s own palace,’ the other King said. ‘What, do you think me a fool? To antagonise King Charles can only lead to destruction. I wouldn’t risk that.’

‘So who did?’

‘If I knew that, I’d trade it for my release,’ the King of Thieves spat.

‘You see the problem with him?’ Pons grumbled when they were back in the open air once more. ‘He will wander in his mind, and then dry up and refuse to speak any more, and it takes all the effort of more torture to make him get to the point again.’

‘And yet there were some useful pieces of information he gave us. He said that the same priest ordered the death of the girl as well as that of Jean,’ Baldwin said. ‘And that means it could not be Bishop Walter. He was not in the country when Madame de Nogaret was killed.’

‘Perhaps, but the word of a thief and murderer like that is hardly to be taken as entirely valid,’ Pons scoffed.

‘Not entirely, no. But why would he lie? He knows he’s going to die.’

‘So he finds he can distract us and make us look fools, too!’

Simon interrupted. ‘What of this man he mentioned — this assassin?’

‘One of his own men gone bad, I dare say,’ Pons said. He considered, and then shrugged. ‘If the King in there has decided the man will end his days in the Seine, that’s what’ll likely happen to him.’

‘So he wasn’t responsible for the death of de Nogaret himself, but he did kill the wife,’ Baldwin noted. ‘Which is interesting, eh, Pons?’

‘Why?’

‘Let us return to the Louvre. There is a man I wish to speak to — the messenger who brought news of the visitor to the Cardinal.’