The Templar, the Queen and Her Lover

Chapter Seven

Château Gaillard

The castle smelled like a charnel house, Père Pierre thought as he wandered about the great court.

Once it would have been a magnificent place. The walls were all limestone, white and gleaming, but at some time in the pastit had been sacked and many of the walls were in poor repair. Still, it was a place of happiness to him. It would hopefullymark the end of a long journey.

‘In here, Père!’

The sergent had the brains of a goat, but he was reliable enough. Père Pierre climbed up and crossed the bridge from the outer fortressinto the upper, main section, to where the sergent stood waiting. ‘It’s not a pretty sight, Père. Are you sure you are ready for this?’

‘Oh, I think so,’ the little man said with a deprecating smile. His amiable blue eyes were sad as he took in the place.

He was used to the sight of bodies. From that first journey down to the south with the madman Arnaud and the scruffy man-at-arms,the man all knew simply as le Vieux, he had been in close communion with the dead. So many over the years. He had helped dearBishop Fournier with the Inquisition, writing down the testimony in his careful, small but neat hand, and then going withso many to hear their last words and praying with them.

Better than most, too, he knew exactly what sort of man Arnaud was. From the day when the poor woman had died, he had known. Arnaud had demanded that they leave instantly, desperate to run from that place. And later in the prisons, whenhe looked after the women in their cells, Pierre had felt sorry for the women as he heard them weep, sob, or scream as Arnaudleft them. All had the same end, the pyre. Agnes in particular had died badly, he recalled. Arnaud had been cross with her,because she had not been nice enough to him, so he had let her death come as slowly as possible. Shameful.

So many memories, so many dead. He only hoped that today there would be just one more. The world would be a safer, betterplace without that one face, he thought.

He took a deep breath, and fingered his rosary, murmuring the prayers as he crossed the court towards the guard’s building.Here the bodies were sprawled in undignified postures, the flies all over the sightless eyes, the gaping mouths. There werealready little white clusters of eggs in the wounds. Early, he thought, for flies, but the damned things were always present.

Praying, making the sign of the cross, muttering the words that should aid the souls’ passage to heaven, he made his way aboutthe dead men. He pulled a face at the smells and sounds of buzzing, but continued on his way.

‘And the others?’ he asked.

‘There aren’t any more,’ the sergent replied.

‘There must be!’ Dear God! Don’t say that the madman has escaped! Pierre prayed silently. Please, not that!

Second Thursday of Lent ⁷

Louvre, Paris

The work was tedious, but Cardinal Thomas d’Anjou was glad of it. He polished the gold and silver at the altar of the little chapel with a vigour that was entirely absent from his usual demeanour.

A taciturn man, he usually displayed little feeling, but in a church or chapel he could enjoy submitting to the service ofGod. It was an essential part of his life, this careful cleaning of all the paraphernalia of his religion, and he enjoyedit all the more the higher up the ladder of authority he climbed within the Church. There were some who said that he mightbe the next pope. Well, perhaps so, but he would not worry himself about that. He had two masters: God and the king of France.Fortunately the latter was as religious as he was himself, and service to one meant satisfying the other.

The knock at the door was an unwelcome distraction. He pursed his lips, frowning down at the jewel-encrusted cross he hadbeen cleaning, and then sighed. ‘Yes?’

Two men walked in, and he looked from one to the other. ‘François?’

The older of the two, a narrow-featured man with the appearance of a hawk, with greying hair over hard, piercing brown eyes,nodded. ‘I do not think you have met Père Pierre?’

‘Ah, you are the father from the Comté de Foix?’

The father, a chubby man with the face and figure of a man unused to travel, bowed delightedly at being recognised. His clothingwas stained and worn, with many loose threads and muddy patches. He looked, as he was, the latest in a long line of peasants,the cardinal told himself.

His face betrayed none of his disgust for the tatty fellow. Instead he looked at François enquiringly.

‘It is done,’ François said.

‘Good. Then there are only a few loose ends remaining which need to be tied.’

Vigil of Feast of Piranus ⁸

Queen’s chamber, Westminster

The Queen nodded and thanked the company. All was arranged, then. She was to be leaving the next day.

At least she would not appear to be a pauper begging at her brother’s door. Her worst fears had not been realised, thanksbe to Christ. She would have with her a train of more than thirty people all told. True, all had been selected by her husband- or more likely Despenser — but that would scarcely matter. She had her own plans, after all. Did everyone really think herso stupid?

Perhaps they did. They could not cope with the idea that a woman might have a brain of her own. Despenser had fully surrenderedto her, in so far as he had stopped attempting to have her destroyed. No, he was content for her to leave the country andachieve a diplomatic treaty with her brother, provided Despenser and the King did not have to go to France themselves. Thatwould be too dangerous. Despenser knew full well that his life would be forfeit, were he ever to set foot on French soil.That was the price of his piracy when he had been younger, when he had overwhelmed a French craft and stolen it, killing thecrew. Now he was persona non grata in France.

However, she still found it astonishing that the fool believed her when she pretended to have forgotten his insults, his lies,his mendacious treatment of her. He thought either that she was so dim she had not noticed, or that she was so foolish thatshe had forgotten and forgiven. He had himself forgotten that she was a woman of the royal house of Capet of France. She would never forgive an insult. Never!

When Queen Isabella first arrived here in England, she had been a young and naïve child, ready to do her duty by her new husband.At the time they had both been little more than pawns in the great game that was diplomacy. Neither had been given any choicein their partners. Their futures were set upon their joint path by their fathers, the kings of France and England, to cementa peace between their bickering nations. The Pope agreed, and thus the life of the seven-year-old girl had been welded tothe nineteen-year-old man’s at a betrothal ceremony in Paris. Her husband-to-be, Edward of Caernarvon, was not there. Shewas not to meet him for another five years, when he took her hand in the cathedral of Our Lady of Boulogne. Soon afterwardsthey left France for England.

‘Your royal highness? There are some men here to meet you.’

The esquire bowed so low, for a moment she thought that he would beat his brow upon the paved floor.

That was one of the aspects of her life which was so confusing. In all her years as a child she had been treated with therespect due to a queen. It was fitting for a woman of her position in the world. But when she reached England her life hadchanged. As she watched the men being brought in, she could remember that time so clearly. The shame, the dishonour she felt,how demeaned she had been.

When she was wedded, her father had showered gifts on Edward, rich jewels and rings, and had sent more for Isabella as partof her dowry. She was a queen in her own right, after all. There was an agreement that when they were married, Isabella wouldhave lands dowered to her from the king of England’s French territories. But when they had been living together for a little,the twelve-year-old queen was disturbed to find none of the promised money appearing. There was nothing with which to supportherself, let alone her household of knights, squires, servants … She was forced to resort to resentful letters to her father. And then she sawthat the rings and trinkets promised to her had appeared on the person of the unlovely Piers Gaveston, her husband’s ‘friend’.

It made her cold with rage to learn that her husband could prefer the company of that vain, arrogant, sneering Gascon. He made those first few months — nay, years — miserable for her. By her husband, she was treated as a child. As hissister, perhaps. Ignored, unloved, and only occasionally summoned to royal events.

Perhaps it was understandable. Now a woman of almost thirty years, she was better able to see how a man like her husband mighthave viewed her. He, a grown adult of five and twenty years, she a small girl of only twelve. It was no surprise, in truth,that he would seek the companionship of others closer to him in age. After a time she had grown to appreciate this. She didnot grudge her husband his affairs with other women, even when one gave birth to his bastard, and she was able to feel willingto console Edward when the lad died on his first campaign.

When the barons finally grew so disaffected with the repellent Gaveston that their rage could not be controlled, and he wasslaughtered, it was to her that the king turned for sympathy and comfort. And for a while, for a little while, they were trulyhusband and wife, a fruitful union that gave her four children — the princes Edward and John, and then Eleanor and littleJoan, her darling. In those years Isabella had felt her life was fulfilled. She had a merry companion in her king, and a contentedlittle family.

But then the King developed a passion for this latest favourite, Sir Hugh le Despenser.

The man whom she would wish to see dead.

‘Your highness, your servants.’

She smiled at her husband’s men, the men whom Despenser had selected to watch her every step of her way on the return to her homeland, and managed to fit a graceful smileof welcome to hide her revulsion.

New Palace Yard, Westminster

‘So what do we do about him, then?’

Ricard looked at Adam with exasperation. ‘Look, I’m not going to leave him behind with someone I don’t know. Poor bratchet!’

‘Be a bleeding sight poorer if he comes with us to France and dies from the food or something,’ Adam said.

‘He comes.’

‘Fine. You thinking to use him to replace Peter?’ Janin asked reasonably.

‘Come on! Peter was good with the tabor, I know, but we don’t need a man with a tabor to make our music.’ Ricard looked downat Charlie. The child was resting in the crook of his arm as they spoke. He seemed a remarkably contented little boy. ThankGod he hadn’t seen his parents in that state, even though he had been scared enough of something to bolt from the house andhide in the hutch. Was it the noise of Ric and his mates turning up late at night? They hadn’t been that loud, had they? Butthey’d all slept through the murder of the man and his wife. They’d been pretty ruined, then. And this little boy had beenwoken by them, probably, and sought the only safe place he knew, somewhere he played regularly, no doubt.

‘It was his harp I’ll miss most,’ Janin was saying. ‘You remember how he used to be able to get that crispness from his strings?Very good.’

‘He was all right,’ Ricard conceded, stung. ‘But I think I can play my gittern well enough to make up for it.’

‘I didn’t mean …’ Janin protested hopelessly, but there was no point apologising. Ricard was upset, but so were they all.‘I just miss him, that’s all.’

‘We all do,’ Philip said.

‘And tomorrow we’re off?’ Adam asked again.

‘That’s what the comptroller said,’ Ricard acknowledged.

The day before, he had been taken to William de Bouden, the Queen’s Comptroller.

‘We shall be leaving in two days. Prepare your men to be in the New Palace Yard at dawn with all their instruments packedfor a journey.’

‘Where are we going?’

De Bouden was a square-set man for a clerk. He had a gruff manner, with steely eyes that brooked no nonsense. ‘You honestlymean to say you’ve been walking about the palace with your ears closed? The whole place is discussing the Queen’s missionto her brother. Are you deaf?’

‘I just wasn’t sure where in France we’d be going.’

‘To see the King. But perhaps I was mistaken. Have you been to France?’

‘Um. Well, no.’

‘But you can read a map of the land? You know where towns are?’

‘Um.’ Ricard grinned helplessly.

‘Then why do you want to know? You will be travelling with the Queen, that is all. And you will be careful to ensure thatyour other musicians are well behaved and don’t misbehave on the way. We have letters of safe conduct, but they won’t protecta randy stallion who tries to mount a French filly. Is that clear?’

Ricard could still remember that freezing stare, as though the man was gazing through his flesh at all his innermost desires.Someone must have told him about the way the men had behaved last time they’d played before the Queen. He could kick Peterfor what he had tried. Poor bastard. ‘They’ll be-’

‘Good. Now go! I have a thousand little matters to sort before we leave.’

Ricard shook his head now at the memory. The man had dismissed him with a wave of his hand and turned away instantly as though refusingto become concerned with any matters relating to the musicians. Hardly surprising. The fate of Ricard’s motley little groupwas irrelevant to him. He had provisions, travel arrangements and route planning for a group of thirty to forty men and womento see to, as well as the headache of all the horses, wagons and carts which would be needed to transport the necessary victualsand other supplies to Dover or wherever they were going to sail from.

There was nothing much else for them to do just now. All their instruments were here with them, as usual. His old citole wasbeside him, ready to be wrapped first in a soft cloth, then in an oiled blanket to protect the strings and the wood.

He had always been inordinately proud of the device, ever since he had first seen it. It had been in a small workshop backin his home town of Bromley, and his eyes had been drawn to it immediately. The wood had a lovely sheen to it, giving thebody a golden glow. It had the shape of a young woman’s figure, with the broad hips at the base, with a slender waist andnarrow upper section. From here the neck projected, leading to the large head in which the four keys holding the strings wereinserted. He stroked the neck gently. The instrument had been with him for almost fifteen years now, and it was still hisproudest possession, which was why he would never take it to a tavern like the Cardinal’s Hat. Too much risk of some drunkenarse trying to break it in a place like that.

Carefully setting Charlie down on the bench beside him, he picked it up and started to strum. He always found that music aidedhis thoughts, and just now his thoughts were black — as he knew his friends’ were.

Peter the Waferer had never been a particularly close companion of his. The man was always a little over-arrogant about his position in the King’s household — a man who could command an income with the kitchen staff and still earn a littlemore from his ability on the tabor was, so he thought, a man of some substance. He didn’t make too much of it, but every sooften he would make some little comment or other, and Ricard usually felt that it was directed at him. It pained him to hearit.

A man shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but Peter was, truth be told, probably the one from the band whom he would miss least.He was always thinking of his family — fair enough, true, but no good for a team like theirs. And he wasn’t that essential.There were only a couple of tunes where they needed his kind of drumming.

‘What’s that tune?’ Janin asked, eyes narrowed as he listened, his head set to one side like a hound.

Ricard hesitated. In truth, he didn’t know what he was playing. Perhaps a mixture of songs he had heard or played in his life,or something he’d heard so long ago it was outside his memory. ‘Call it “Peter’s Tune”, or “The Waferer’s Biscuit”,’ he saidwith a grin.

‘That’ll do for me,’ Philip said, tapping his knee in time to the music as Ricard began to play again.

Janin eased his hurdy-gurdy out of its leather bag and set the rosin to the wheel. Soon the three were playing, and Adam drewa grimace and reached inside his tunic, pulling out his little whistle to join in.

As usual, a small gathering formed about them as they played. Music was always a comfort to those who had little else to helpthem relax. A pair of young women lifted their skirts and started to dance to the music, and one carter held out his elbowsto them both. They linked arms, and were soon swinging around together, laughing and shouting as they whirled about.

One man in particular was lounging near the alehouse at the gate, Ricard saw. He watched them all for some while as they played, and then strolled towards them as the dancing fragmented,one girl giving up and tottering away breathlessly, dropping exhaustedly on to a stool.

When Ricard felt that they had played enough and exhausted that tune, he glanced over at the others, indicating it was timeto end. Janin nodded back at him, Philip closed his eyes in acknowledgement, and Adam grinned, his lips still about his littlewhistle. After one more round of the tune they all stopped together.

There was a sudden burst of applause, and Ricard stood to take a bow. He swept off his hat, intending to hold it out for acollection, but folk saw his move and began to leave hurriedly before they could be asked to donate. All except the man Ricardhad noticed. He remained, although he ignored the proffered hat.

‘Very good. You lot play well together. You could do with another drummer, though.’

‘We had one. He died.’

‘Oh, that was your friend, was it? I heard about a man found up at the London ditch.’

‘Someone killed him up there.’

‘He was drowned in the shite, wasn’t he? Why’d someone do something like that to a fellow?’ the man wondered aloud.

Ricard didn’t like this conversation. He replaced his hat on his head and turned away to put his citole back in the bag.

‘Have you found anyone to replace him?’ the man asked.

Ricard gazed at him. He had an odd accent. He certainly wasn’t from round here, not from London — and not from Surrey or Kent,as far as he could tell. The fellow was not overly tall. He had calm grey eyes, a pleasant smile, and crows’ feet that showedhe was a man who enjoyed life. His grey hair was cut short in the old fashion, and he was cleanshaven. His clothes were clean,his linen shirt so spotless it was almost painful to look at. ‘Why are you so interested?’

‘I was thinking, if you needed another drummer, perhaps a bodhran player could come along with you?’

Ricard eyed him up and down, considering. He was about to answer when he heard a call from the hall behind him, and they werecalled to the Queen’s presence.