Falconer and the Death of Kings

FOUR

Paris, May 1273

Edward finally reached Paris, where he came to do homage to the French King Philip for the lands he held in Gascony. He stood at the window of his guest apartments in the Royal Palace on the island that sat in the middle of the River Seine. He watched as the waters were split by the end of the Ile de la Cité. It felt like standing in the prow of an enormous ship barging its way downstream to the English Channel. He sighed deeply. The burdens of kingship were beginning to feel heavier on his shoulders the closer he came to England. Which might begin to explain why his progress from the Holy Lands had been so slow. He had spent some carefree and pleasure-filled months in Sicily and Italy, and had taken joy in fostering the myth of Eleanor’s part in his rescue from the Assassin in Acre. It had begun at the banquet laid on by Charles of Anjou in Sicily.

After sampling some of the crane bird meat suggested by his wife, Edward had turned to her and whispered in her delicate ear.

‘Why do we have to sit with this man? He was diverted by a mere storm from continuing the Crusade after Louis’ death. He left me to campaign on my own.’

Eleanor stroked his hand.

‘You should feel sorry for him. Look at his wife.’

She inclined her head to Charles’s rather plump and sour-faced spouse, who was sitting further down the table. Edward laughed.

‘You are right. But, if I had a wife like that, I would not have hurried back from combat so quickly.’

Eleanor joined in his laughter, rousing the curiosity of Charles, who sat the other side of Edward.

‘What amuses you, Edward?’

Edward grinned mischievously.

‘I was reminding Eleanor of her prompt action when the Assassin stabbed me in Acre. She did not hesitate to lay her pretty lips on the wounds and suck the poison from me.’

He looked at the smiling face of his wife, admiring the full red lips to which he referred. She, meanwhile, put on a solemn look. In fact, she had been carried weeping from the room when she saw him covered in blood after the attack, the wounds already beginning to turn black with poison. But Edward was into his stride, and embellished the story, which later was to precede them across Europe.

‘Yes, she sucked it from my many wounds, and spat it on the floor, not caring for her own safety. Would you not like your wife to have done similar?’

Charles looked down the table at his wife’s thin lips, topped with the suspicion of a moustache. He smiled wanly and turned back to his other guests. Edward cheerfully shovelled more crane meat into his mouth.

The next time he heard the story retold had been in Burgundy. The Count of Châlons had challenged him to a tourney while he was still in Italy. As a responsible king and crusader, he should have declined. As a man still in his prime, and mindful of the burden he was facing back in England, he accepted. Making sure he called many barons and earls to be at his side when he reached Châlons, he was ready. It had been just as well. There had been a feast the night before the tourney at which the count asked if it was true what he had heard about the attempt on Edward’s life.

‘And what was that?’ asked Edward with a faint smile on his lips.

‘That your wife struck the assailant down with the tripod stand of a table.’

Edward maintained a straight face at the obvious and extreme exaggeration of the story he himself had begun. The very thought that the slender Eleanor could have lifted the heavy metal tripod off the ground at all was to him ridiculous. But he was happy to allow the myth to grow.

‘Oh, indeed. She may appear a small and weak woman, but childbearing has strengthened her beyond imagination. She lifted the tripod and brained the man.’

The count’s eyes widened, and he looked at Eleanor with fresh admiration. Soon Edward could see that the story was being repeated along the table among the count’s guests. He felt a sudden sharp pain in his ankle, and he turned to look at his wife.

‘My dear, why did you kick me?’

Eleanor made a moue with her lips.

‘Because you are beginning to make me sound like a muscly Amazon from the legends.’

Edward leaned towards her.

‘That is because you are a legend, my dear. And don’t forget the tales say the Amazons bared their breasts in battle.’

He felt the sharp pain in his ankle again.

The next day the count had singled him out during the fray and had tried to drag him from his horse. The fighting, which was supposed to have been a display of chivalry, became serious. It was only the fact that Edward had his barons by his side in numbers that had saved the day. Edward miraculously escaped with hardly a scratch.

Now, in Paris, he began to wonder if there had been a more sinister motive to the affray. He thought back over the recent attempt on his own life in Acre. And the members of his own family who had died in the last few years, beginning with his eldest son, John. Too many deaths to let things lie. There were matters here to resolve, but he didn’t yet know how to begin.

William Falconer hurried through the Porte St-Victor and made his way through the narrow streets of Paris towards the Franciscan friary near Porte St-Germain. He had news that at last permission had been given for Roger to see him. It was about time. He and Thomas Symon had been in Paris for almost two months now, and Falconer was tired of endless debates with the French masters about Aristotle and Bishop Tempier’s rulings. Just before learning of Roger, his latest encounter had been with Girard d’Angers in the cloister of the Abbey of St Victor that very morning. The tall, etiolated master had bristled at Falconer’s accusation of his succumbing to conservative oppression over his teaching of Aristotle.

‘How dare you! Do you not agree with Bishop Tempier that Aristotle must be wrong to assert that the world is eternal, when we know God created the world? Or that God does not know things other than Himself.’

Falconer had snorted and turned away from the skinny cleric. In truth, he could not deny that it was an insidious pressure that the Church was putting the teachers at Paris under. If any of them were found to have knowingly taught any one of the thirteen propositions that Tempier had banned, the master could suffer automatic excommunication. And the threat of the Inquisition if he persisted. But Falconer’s intellectual rigour was offended by the craven nature of such as Master d’Angers at the university. He came back at the man like a ravenous dog savaging a bone.

‘Your bishop also denies Aristotle’s proposition that human acts are not ruled by the providence of God. Do you agree with him?’

D’Angers, with a face like thunder, stood his ground.

‘Naturally.’

Falconer smiled sweetly at the springing of his trap.

‘Then tell me if the death of that young student yesterday was an act to be found within God’s providence.’

It was fortunate that, at that very moment, Thomas Symon came scurrying along the covered cloister of the abbey. Or Falconer may have said something that got him further into trouble. D’Angers wasn’t above passing on this conversation to those who would be less tolerant of this English master’s intemperance. Even though Thomas Symon, as scribe to Falconer’s meetings with the Paris masters, had not been present at this informal dispute, its content could still be reported. But now it seemed that Thomas had news for his master, and he drew Falconer away from d’Angers. As they retreated along the cloister, the French master tossed his head and stormed off in the opposite direction. For his part, Falconer did not regret the intervention.

‘Tell me. What have you learned about the dead student?’

He had been unable to resist finding out about the incident as soon as he had been told of it. Though he was in a foreign country, and had no authority at the University of Paris, a suspicious death aroused all the usual instincts in him. He had required Thomas to ask around, and to listen to the gossip that no doubt already filled the narrow alleys of the university quarter. But Thomas was now waving away his enquiry.

‘William, it is not the murder that I have come to tell you about. It’s Friar Bacon. He has sent a message. He can see you now.’

‘Roger? Then let us go to him’

The streets of the university quarter, which took up most of the city south of the river, were narrow. And the houses’ upper floors hung out either side, making the streets like tunnels. Falconer was reminded of the back lanes to the south and east of the main thoroughfares of his home town, Oxford. Except for one specific difference. The streets of Oxford could be muddy and clinging when it had rained. In Paris, the streets had been paved with stones at the order of the old king, Philip Augustus. It made getting about so much easier. The same monarch had built the city walls that loomed over them right now. Once through the gates at Porte St-Victor, Falconer turned towards the Place Maubert with Thomas Symon in hot pursuit of his gangling gait.

The Franciscan friary was across the other side of the quarter that housed the schools and lodgings that made up the university. Paris was more or less split in two by the River Seine, which ran east to west. To the north of the river the commercial city huddled within Philip Augustus’s walls. On the south bank sprawled the tentacles of the university. And in the centre of the river lay the beating heart of the city, dominated by the Royal Palace and the great cathedral of Notre-Dame. It was from the top of the cathedral that the boy — Paul Hebborn — had plummeted yesterday.

As Falconer reached the square and turned west towards the convent of the Mathurins, he asked Thomas about the incident.

‘The English boy — Hebborn — what do the rumours say about his fall?’

Rendered breathless by the pace of their walk, Thomas did his best to summarize what the students he had spoken to had said.

‘For many it is just an accident, though why he came to be at the top of the tower no one could say. But there are some who say he was lured there and pushed off.’

‘And did they give any justification for his murder?’

Thomas stopped and shrugged even though it was a pointless gesture as Falconer wasn’t looking at him. He was way ahead of Thomas and already crossing the Rue de la Harpe towards St-Cosmé. Thomas lifted the hem of his black robe and scurried on. He had to shout to make himself heard over the bustle and noise of the great avenue.

‘Now as for the cause of the murder, you can have as many theories as there are stars in the firmament. Some of them quite gory.’

He had to shoulder his way through a knot of men standing around a game of knuckle bones being played out at their feet. Money was changing hands, and one ruffian elbowed Thomas away, cursing him in such coarse French that the educated clerk hardly understood a word. Thomas held his hands up to the red-faced gambler in a palm-out gesture of peace, and hurried on. Falconer, meanwhile, had reached their destination — the great edifice of the house of the Friars Minor, wherein Friar Roger Bacon was incarcerated. It stood hard by the western wall of the city and was as severe and stark a building as the order could build. The church stood on the road, but it was down the side lane that Falconer went, followed by Thomas Symon, to knock on the door of the friary itself. They were admitted by a solemn-faced friar in a brown robe, who had barred their passage before. Now he did not seem at all surprised that they had come to see Roger Bacon. He simply led them through the cloister to where the friars’ individual cells were arrayed. It seemed that, after being stonewalled for two months, the door was to be opened with no explanation for the delay. The friar did indeed indicate a door that already stood ajar on the far side of the cloister, and simply walked away. Falconer walked over, his heart in his mouth, pushed on the door and called out.

‘Roger?’