Falconer and the Death of Kings

TWENTY-TWO

Thomas Symon, hastening back to the abbey before it got too dark, was surprised to see Falconer standing in the Place Maubert. And with him was the comely person of Saphira Le Veske, locks of her lively red hair escaping from her snood as they always did. Falconer touched her arm and spoke as Thomas approached them.

‘There, I told you that, if we waited long enough, Thomas would pass by.’ He winked at her. ‘I think he can’t resist the charms of the tavern of the Withered Vine.’

Thomas fell into the trap before realizing he was being teased.

‘I most certainly can do without the filthy vinegar such a place sells in pretence it is wine. I…’ He took a deep breath, and began again, bowing his head to Saphira. ‘I am most pleased to see you again, Mistress Le Veske.’

‘Oh, please, Thomas, we don’t need to be so formal, do we? William was only just saying how much more relaxed you had become since discovering the joys of unwatered red wine.’

Thomas began to blush, and would have protested had he not seen the broad smile on Saphira’s face. He was not going to be caught out again.

‘Indeed, Saphira. Though I cannot compare in consumption of such a treat as my good drinking companion, Master Falconer. Do you know the gentleman?’

Saphira gave a little curtsey.

‘I believe I have heard of the fellow. A ruffian, by all accounts.’

Falconer held up his hands in defeat.

‘Very well, I am rebuffed. But there is a purpose in our waiting to intercept you, Thomas. We need to talk, but I think here is too public to discuss what I have in mind.’ He cast a glance at Saphira. ‘Perhaps you can accommodate us in Pletzel?’

Saphira nodded her agreement.

‘That would be acceptable, good sir. Though I have not got enough wine on tap to satisfy two such great topers as I see before me.’

Falconer waved his finger at her.

‘Take care or what you jest about may come to pass. This errand of the king is becoming more and more exasperating. It is enough to drive a pious cardinal to drink.’

They all three walked back the way Thomas had come towards the bridges across the Seine. The young man was curious.

‘Pletzel? Where’s that?’

Falconer smiled at him.

‘You will see.’ Noticing they were passing Adam Morrish’s school, he asked Thomas about his progress. ‘Have you determined if the clerks have been dabbling with substances they shouldn’t?’

‘Yes, we have. Friar Bacon helped me find hashish stored in Master Adam’s chest.’ He gazed at Falconer as they crossed the Petit Pont. The sun was dipping below the buildings either side of the bridge, and it felt suddenly cold. ‘He’s an extraordinary fellow is Friar Bacon. For a pious man, he has much devilment in him.’

Falconer burst out laughing at Thomas’s bewilderment.

‘Roger is an enigma and a genius rolled into one. Never underestimate him.’

Having crossed to the Right Bank, they walked through the hiring square, which was now almost empty of people. Falconer and Thomas then followed Saphira through a maze of lanes until they stood in a neat courtyard hard under the walls of Paris. Saphira held her hands up.

‘Pletzel.’

‘The Jewish quarter,’ explained Falconer, indicating that Thomas should follow Saphira into the house outside which they stood. The kitchen fire was already lit, and it banished the chill of the encroaching evening. Saphira broke some bread and poured three goblets of red wine.

‘It is watered a little, Thomas. Though, as it is Le Veske wine, it is far superior to the vinegar purveyed at the Withered Vine.’

Thomas took the proffered goblet and sipped cautiously. It was a delicious wine. Falconer settled down in a chair by the kitchen fire and drank deeply of Saphira’s wine. The others sat too, and a companionable silence ensued while they drank. Finally, Falconer spoke.

‘I would like to hear about your findings, Thomas. And any conclusions you may have come to. I have ignored Hebborn’s and Fusoris’ deaths too long. And Saphira may have some insights to offer too.’

Thomas might have been offended at William’s suggestion that he couldn’t solve the case on his own. But truth to tell, he was floundering and was glad to have someone else examining the evidence. It may help to unravel the knots. He repeated all he knew about the deaths, concluding with his suspicions about the students with whom Hebborn and Fusoris had consorted.

‘There is a group of them who definitely ate potions that affected their minds, and perhaps their actions. The same type of opium was in Master Adam’s chest as that which we found, William, in Hebborn’s scrip. But whether the master allowed the hashish to be used, or it had been stolen from him by Malpoivre, I don’t yet know.’

It was Saphira who leaned forward first to throw a question into the ring.

‘Hashish, you say? The Assassins’ drug?’

Thomas nodded. After all, that was the very response he had made to Bacon a little earlier. Saphira turned to Falconer, a quizzical look on her handsome face.

‘And you still say these cases are unrelated?’

Falconer frowned and stared hard at Saphira.

‘I still cannot see it.’ But yet there was something that troubled him, and he decided to tell the others what he had learned from Odo de Reppes. ‘It is true that Edward was attacked in Outremer by an Assassin behaving wildly. However — and this is almost certainly a false direction to go in concerning the students — let me tell you what I know, and what the Templar said to me today.’

He told them all he had learned before speaking to Odo de Reppes about Edward’s close encounter with death at the hands of Anzazim. He then summarized all that de Reppes had said about the de Montfort brothers.

‘He said that he and the brothers had drunk too much wine before the murder of Henry of Almain. That afterwards it all seemed to happen in a dream.’

‘Could they too have been drugged?’

It was Saphira’s question, and it demanded an answer. But Falconer was not certain enough what the answer should be.

‘I once ate khat leaves by accident. I don’t think I could have killed a fly in the state I was in afterwards. Besides, why would the brothers need to eat hashish in order to carry out the murder, if as is said they were angry enough anyway?’

Thomas threw his question in then.

‘Would they have been so incensed as to do something so openly outrageous and stupid? Why kill Henry so publicly? Would they not have needed someone or something to egg them on?’

Falconer remembered Odo de Reppes’ final words before Guillaume had returned with his water. The warning about the other brother — Amaury de Montfort.

‘I keep coming back to the thought that someone has been manipulating things without revealing himself.’ He looked at Thomas. ‘What do you know of Amaury de Montfort?’

‘The youngest brother?’ Thomas racked his brains — he had been a youth during the Barons’ War ten years earlier. ‘He must be thirty years of age by now. He was a clerk, not a warrior, certainly, and his father made him treasurer of York. But it was an empty appointment, for soon after the Battle of Evesham King Henry denounced it and replaced him. When he fled to the Pope to plead his case, I believe he continued his studies, but I don’t know where.’

Falconer filled in the gaps.

‘I do. It was at Padua, and he went in for medicine. The rumour in Oxford was that he was so lazy it took him two years to get round to returning three medical treatises he had borrowed from the abbot of Monte Cassino. But the name of de Montfort was not a popular one in university circles by then.’

This piece of information gave Thomas an uneasy feeling in his gut, but before he could speak out Falconer carried on.

‘Talking of names, Odo de Reppes told me something else that would have meant nothing to him, but struck a chord with me. He was telling me of the disinherited — those families in England that lost everything due to siding with Earl Simon — and one of them was Hebborn.’

Thomas was startled by the revelation.

‘Paul Hebborn’s family lost everything during the Barons’ War? No wonder he was struggling to finance himself at the university here.’

Saphira chipped in too.

‘And from what you tell me, it is no surprise, then, that he allied himself with the young moneybags, Malpoivre, despite being bullied unmercifully by him. He did it just to survive.’

Both she and Thomas looked expectantly at Falconer now, imagining he had some revelation to offer concerning the coincidence. Falconer, however, simply shrugged his shoulders.

‘Don’t look at me like that. I cannot make any more of the information than you can. I merely mentioned it in case it has some significance to Thomas’s investigations. It surely has no bearing on mine.’

‘What conclusions have you come to concerning your travels down those cold trails?’

Thomas was reminding Falconer what he had said when first he had been asked to look into the assaults on Edward’s family, scattered as they were throughout the world and time, the oldest being already some years in the past. Falconer smiled ruefully.

‘That it is far more difficult to determine the cause of death of an old rotting corpse than one that is still warm. The Assassin Anzazim may have been in de Montfort’s employ, but I have no way of proving that as I have only hearsay to go on. And the words of a soldier to boot who owes his allegiance to Edward and may therefore have fed me lies.’

Saphira poured them all another goblet of wine and asked the obvious question.

‘Why should he lie to you, when it was his master who set you on your course in the first place?’

Falconer drank deep of the good wine and wiped a dribble of it off his chin.

‘That is a good question, Saphira. But let me go on a little further first. My next nuggets of information came from Odo de Reppes and concerned his part in the murder of Henry of Almain. He too implicated the de Montforts, and more specifically Amaury, hinting he egged his brothers on in some way. But I saw the Templar only by courtesy of his Grand Master, who himself once fought with Edward in the Holy Lands.’

‘But you say that Guillaume de Beaujeu is your friend.’

‘Yes, Saphira. But he is no longer just my friend. He is Grand Master, and obliged to consider the good of his order over all other things. And he was more uneasy with me yesterday than I have ever seen him.’

Saphira sat back down and stared pensively into her goblet of wine. Falconer continued his story.

‘Odo also told me of the death of King Henry’s brother, Richard, in Berkhamsted.’

‘Which Sir Humphrey Segrim said de Reppes was the cause of.’

‘Yes, Thomas. Segrim says he saw Odo at Berkhamsted Castle, and that he was pursued by the Templar all the way to Oxford. De Reppes, on the other hand, has another story. He claims barely to remember Segrim and that he didn’t even know he lived at Botley. He also reminded me that Richard was half dead anyway, being paralysed down one side.’

Thomas was indignant.

‘That does not excuse him from guilt. He killed the old man, even if he was near death already.’

‘And it seems Amaury was implicated in it as the prime mover. Whoever I speak to tells me to seek out Amaury de Montfort.’

‘Then your case is proven, and you can go to the king and tell him so.’

Thomas was emphatic, but Saphira still had a question for Falconer.

‘And what of the king’s son, John? Have you learned anything of his death? After all, it was that death that seemed to have affected Edward most strongly from what you have told me. That is what started off this enquiry of yours.’

Falconer pointed a finger at Saphira in triumph.

‘Exactly. Everyone I have spoken to has given me just what I wanted in the case of the other three murders — or attempted murder, in Edward’s case — but no one has yet spoken a word about Prince John. I should like to learn more about his death, and whether Amaury was involved in that too, before I go to Edward. And where is Amaury now? I have never before been unable to speak to the chief suspect in a murder. If I could trace him, I might learn the truth finally.’

Thomas was hesitant about speaking up now. He had a dread that the seed that had been growing in his mind was nothing more than a fantasy. But then he could not ignore it, could he? What if he didn’t say what he thought and it turned out to be true? He had been leaning back in his chair, almost in shadow, while Falconer and Saphira eagerly debated points about the other killings. He was deeply involved with Paul Hebborn’s death, and more recently John Fusoris’. Did he now see a link between them and the heady matter of the death of kings that obsessed Falconer so much? William had begun by asking him about his enquiries, but he had soon enough got sidetracked back on to his own investigation. As if the deaths of a few noble-born men were more important than those of a couple of simple students. A few years ago, William would not have thought so, but it seemed to Thomas as though his mentor’s head had been turned by his association with kings. He resolved to determine the truth of his growing fears before he risked Falconer’s derision if he were wrong. So he just smiled when Falconer spoke to him.

‘Thomas, you are very quiet. Thinking about what you will do next about your own case, I would guess. Listen to Roger; he will come up with something, I am sure. And when I have unburdened myself of Edward’s case, I will help you too. Saphira has persuaded me to tell the king what I have learned so far, so that I can find out more about his son from him. So we are going to the Royal Palace tomorrow.’

Saphira sat up with a start.

‘We? I didn’t say I would come with you. Don’t you recall what happened last time I met the King of England? I almost got accused of murder myself.’

Falconer waved his hand dismissively.

‘That was Henry. His son is younger and more open-minded. Besides, I need you to talk to Eleanor, if it can be arranged.’

Saphira laughed out loud at Falconer’s nerve.

‘So we are to walk into the palace of the French king and ask to have a word with their royal guest from England. And while you chat with Edward, I am to get up and say, “Just going to have a gossip with your wife”?’

Falconer looked at her with wide, innocent eyes.

‘What a good idea. I wish I had thought of that.’