Falconer and the Death of Kings

ONE

Westminster. The Feast Day of St Edmund Rich of Abingdon, the Sixteenth Day of November 1272

The old man lay dying, his breath coming erratically with the desperate heaving of his sunken chest. He was but a shadow of the powerfully built man he had been in his prime. Now he was gaunt, his skin yellow and resembling parchment. His skeletal hands lay limply on top of the ornate cover that was draped over his shrivelled body. Another painful breath rattled in his chest as he sucked air in, only to expel it soon after in a long deep sigh. By the side of his bed stood three anxious physicians, none of whom were able any longer to suggest a remedy. What cure was there for the ravages of old age? But still they argued among themselves.

Master Roger Megrim stood inches taller than his fellow physicians, a stature that emphasized his precedence. At least in his own eyes. Megrim’s height made it seem as though he had been stretched on the rack. His limbs were unusually long, his chest concave and his stomach protuberant. He hunched over to disguise his height, and his beak of a nose poked forward like a bird’s bill. He was once again pontificating on the causes of his patient’s illnesses, though in more uncertain tones than normal. Brother Mark, a Dominican monk of medium height and nondescript features, had adopted his usual pose of dark disdain, half-turned away from the voluble Megrim. The third member of the group, however, was apparently hanging on to Megrim’s every word. John Rixe, short, fat and of a jolly aspect, fawned on the Cambridge-educated man. But then he would as easily denigrate Megrim to the Dominican once out of the Cambridge master’s hearing. As a mere guild apothecary, Rixe depended on the approval of the educated clerics for his very existence. But that did not mean he was not ready with a strong recommendation for his own pills and potions.

Their patient took another deep and painful breath, and his eyelids fluttered. He had been recognizable by a lazy, drooping left eyelid that gave him the appearance of always winking conspiratorially with his fellows. Now both eyelids, dark and bruised-looking, were closed, only briefly fluttering at each drawn-in breath. Megrim made a suggestion.

‘I could bleed him. Using the phlebotomic method of revulsion — tapping the patient’s blood vessel at an extremity — I could relieve the black bile of melancholy.’

For once John Rixe expressed his disagreement.

‘Don’t be stupid, man. He is barely alive as it is. To bleed him would be catastrophic. No, I have a parchment here with some powerful names written on it. He should wear it around his neck.’

Brother Mark merely sighed at the bickering of his fellow physicians and fell to his knees in fervent prayer. The bedroom’s air was thick with the rank and oppressive smell of death and with the sweat of other men’s bodies. The room had become crammed with earls and nobles, and not a few prelates in heavy brocaded robes. In its furthest corner, separate and alone, stood another witness to the dying man’s struggle to stave off eternity. A grizzle-haired man, in a plain black robe that contrasted starkly with the splendour of those others in the room, hung back in the dust-laden shadows as though trying to distance himself from the events playing out before him. For a time he held his own breath, waiting for the old man to catch another himself. It seemed forever before it came, and it was shallower this time. It was as if the old man was now resigned to his fate, slowly drifting down the darkened vale towards his death. An elderly prelate began to murmur words of absolution, his ear pressed close to the old man’s lips to catch his dying confession. The plainly dressed man did not bother to strain his ears to hear what might be said. History would provide the text. Regent Master William Falconer stood silently in the Palace of Westminster and caught his own breath again, as King Henry, the third of that name to rule England, finally gave up his struggle and died.

It would be fully a week before William Falconer found himself back in Oxford. The snow lay heavily on the ground, hampering his journey back to his duties as regent master at the university. And he was to return alone. Saphira would not return with him. She had received a message from her son Menahem urgently requesting her presence in France to sort out a problem with the Le Veske wine business. As Jews, Saphira Le Veske and her son had a rather precarious existence in a Christian world. In England, Jews were supposed to deal only with the lending of money at interest, a business proscribed to Christians and therefore conveniently foisted on to the Jews. In France, matters were a little more relaxed, and when Saphira had taken over her dead husband’s finance house in Bordeaux, she had changed the emphasis of the business. Wine shipping became the undercurrent of transferring financial resources between England and France.

When her errant son had been finally convinced to take over the family business, Saphira had been able to concentrate on what had tied her to England recently. Master William Falconer. They had met, and, despite his vows of celibacy, she had made her home in Oxford. Now a simple problem with a ship’s captain in Honfleur had ruined everything. The letter demanded she take passage to France. She passed the message to William, who read it in silence. Glumly, he looked at Saphira, her glorious cap of red hair crowning her head like a fiery halo.

‘Can’t Menahem sort this out himself?’

Saphira pulled a face.

‘Don’t make this harder than it already is, William. You can see he says that he must stay in La Réole at present. And I am closer to Honfleur than he is.’

‘And a whole dangerous stretch of water stands in your way.’

Saphira tilted her head back and laughed out loud, the chimes of her voice echoing down the gloomy corridors of the palace.

‘You are being like a protective and overbearing husband.’

Falconer was getting angry without realizing it. Simply because Saphira spoke the truth, it did not make her chiding any more bearable. He returned truth for unpalatable truth.

‘And I am just a celibate teacher in holy orders who has no rights over you, I suppose.’

Now Saphira was seeing red.

‘Of course you have no rights over me, William.’

Suddenly, the natural chill of the room seemed to strike to Falconer’s heart. The woman was correct. He was a regent master of Oxford University in holy orders. He could not marry without losing his position and everything he had cherished for twenty years. True, each new bunch of students that had arrived in recent years seemed to annoy him more and more with their ignorance. But he still loved his role as their teacher and mentor, didn’t he? When Saphira had put in an appearance and diverted him from his daily tasks, he had managed to find a place for her. They met when they could, and were discreet about their amorous activities. What more could he offer?

He looked over at her as she began to pack her chest with her best dresses. She was worth every risk he took with the security of his post at the university. And their time away from Oxford over the last few weeks had been… exceptional. It had all come about because she had given Falconer a curiosity: a skystone with reputed healing powers. King Henry had got to know about it and had summoned Falconer to his court at Westminster. Falconer had persuaded Saphira to accompany him, and they had taken lodgings together. Perhaps that had been the problem. He thought maybe she now expected him to live with her permanently. Something that was an impossibility. Though she had said nothing more, and these thoughts had been all in his own mind, he found he was ever more annoyed with her. The trouble was he had already forgotten what the original argument was about. In fact, he got everything back to front.

‘Why can’t you just do as I say for once?’

Saphira looked at him, her emerald eyes shafting him like daggers. But she said nothing, merely sighing and returning to her packing. Falconer stormed out of the room in disgust. It was only when he was halfway down the gloomy corridor that led towards the king’s chamber that he began to feel like one of his own students after a prank had gone wrong. Foolish and contrite, but with no way back without being humiliated. He stood beside one of the tall candles that barely lit the passageway, picking at the runnels of wax, and groaned.

Sicily

Edward sat at the banqueting table, staring disconsolately at the lavish spread before him. His host, Charles of Anjou, King of Sicily, had laid on an extravagant feast, served in the highest of modern style. Each person at the table had their own page standing behind each chair. After Edward had sat down, the page had placed the salt at his right hand and a trencher of dry bread at his left. Then a knife had appeared at his left elbow, along with a spoon wrapped in a linen cloth. Edward had disgraced himself. When the soup bowls had been served, he had raised his to his lips and drunk in the old manner. It was only when he looked around that he saw that everyone else, including Eleanor, was using the spoon to ladle the soup up to their lips. He had blushed, but no one professed to have noticed his mistake. Charles eventually clapped, and the servants brought cooked heron and crane. Then their host had thrown up his hands in delight at the arrival of the central feature of the table. It was greyish meat that Charles had proudly explained was porpoise. Edward’s stomach had heaved at the thought, but he had smiled politely, if a little wanly.

He had still not recovered fully from the attack of the Assassin months earlier. He had been close to death for days, as the poison had slowly entered his body. The places where the blade had entered his body had gradually turned black, and finally his physician had insisted that he must cut away the poisoned flesh. Edward had groaned and acquiesced. The pain had been excruciating, and he would have rather faced the slashes of a horde of attacking Mohammedans than the probing slices of the surgeon. He had been bound up, and laid in a daze on his bed for weeks.

‘Come, eat, Edward. You look somewhat pale.’

Charles’s loud and stentorian voice dragged him back to the present. But not soon enough to prevent a shudder of horror racking his body as he recalled the attack and the subsequent butchery perpetrated on his body. Eleanor, his wife who sat at his side, knew what was troubling him. She gently squeezed his arm — the one that still bore the scars of his surgeon’s work — and slid a bread trencher in front of him.

‘The crane is a delicious and delicate meat, darling. I will eat some too.’

She slid her hand from his arm and touched her belly. He wondered if she was pregnant again. God knows, she was often enough. Edward counted up the score in his head. In the last eighteen years, Eleanor had given him eight children. And five were already dead, including his eldest son and one-time heir, John. Little Joan had been born in Acre and was not yet a year old. Could she be with child again? The trouble was, she was irresistible. He touched her golden hair, neatly arranged under her fashionable snood. Soon enough he would see it loosened and spread across their pillow. His loins stirred, and he squirmed in his seat. Eleanor’s big blue eyes, at once all innocence and knowingness, stared at him. She could always read his mind, and pursed her full, red lips in mock disapproval of his errant thoughts. She pushed a serving of white meat at him.

‘Crane, my dear. And try one of these coffins.’

Edward blanched a little at being offered the hard, crusty pastry. He had only just heard of the death of his father, Henry, and the thought of coffins did not sit well with his stomach. He was not yet used to the idea of being the King of England himself. For all his life, his father had been the king. It was a given, an immovable star in his firmament. Now his father lay in a coffin, and Edward was king. The thought, and that of Eleanor naked on their bed later, made him feel a lot better. He smiled and took a piece of crane in his mouth from Eleanor’s slender fingers, kissing the tips as he did so.