The King of Thieves

Chapter Fourteen

Second Tuesday following the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary^*

Bois de Vincennes, near Paris

Simon was almost prepared to believe in the superiority of the French race as he approached the great manor of Vincennes.

It wasn’t the size and the wealth that struck him here. Rather it was the extreme elegance of all he saw. Ever since they had landed at the coast, the people all over the country had turned out in their hundreds to see the young Duke who would become King of England. There was an immense proprietorial pride in him, as though he was actually a Prince of France, not of England. All knew that his mother had been a Princess of France, after all, before she became Queen of England. Perhaps it made sense.

The country was rich. There were little vills spread all over, and he knew that the churches were filled with precious plates, jewels and cloths. No matter that the peasants looked more cowed than those whom he knew in England, their religious houses waxed rich.

It was noticeable, though. In England, the peasants were shifty, untrustworthy churls for the large part. He would never have wandered alone in darkness in England, and even in daylight there were many places which a man would be sensible to avoid. Here in France he had a different impression. It seemed safer, somehow. Perhaps it was just the tension he felt because of the threat to his home and his wife, but there was definitely something about this land which made him feel comfortable.

And the people were so welcoming. Women came and gazed at Duke Edward, some spreading flowers beneath the hooves of the knights as they passed by, others calling and waving as though they fully expected him to become their own King before long. It was very peculiar.

Perhaps it was partly the presence of Queen Isabella. She was a pretty little thing, sitting on her horse in such a gracious manner.

She had looked a little surprised when she saw all the men with her son on the ships. Simon was not the most observant man in the world, as he would happily admit, but even he saw how her smile became glassy and brittle when she saw Bishop Walter Stapledon stand at the gangplank. She had been waiting there patiently, Simon could easily imagine, without any outward display of fretting, all the long wait until the ships came into view. And then, when she saw them she must have been overwhelmed with excitement, but all would have been concealed behind that firm, reserved exterior. Until her son was in her arms, naturally. And then the others appeared and strode up to greet her. All welcomed with a polite nod of the head, all bar Stapledon.

The Queen detested Stapledon. Simon had been aware of it before, but never before had he realised just how deep that hatred ran. And it was a shock to him to see that her feelings were reciprocated. It was all Stapledon could do to nod to her, and even then he didn’t so much as smile. Nor did he bow in the manner that was customary when a subject met his Queen. Simon noticed that, and more. But he wasn’t alone.

‘Did you see that?’ Baldwin whispered.

‘He should be careful!’ Sir Richard said. ‘A Bishop is still a man, and a man who insults his Queen is insulting his King as well.’

Baldwin gave Simon a brief but significant look. They were both of the same mind: a man might insult this Queen with relative impunity. The King had no love for her any more.

But if there was safety from the King, Simon soon realised that others were less inclined to tolerance. The English men-at-arms were unbothered, watching as the stevedores began offloading horses, boxes and trunks, together with bales of cloth and gifts, but the French warriors felt that their King’s sister had been snubbed, and there were mutterings among them, and many dark scowls passed over towards the Bishop.

Their journey to the south and east from Boulogne had been slow, but only because there was no need to hurry. All was planned meticulously. In fact, as soon as the ship was docked and all were on land again, Simon and Baldwin were asked to attend the Queen in a conference to discuss just that.

Sir Henry de Beaumont and the Bishop were already there, as was Sir Richard de Welles, who grinned broadly at the pair of them, while a little distance behind the Queen, Richard de Bury, the Duke’s tutor, stood warily, his eyes shifting from one man to another as people spoke. He looked nervous to be in such company.

‘Sir Baldwin, Bailiff,’ the Queen said. She was sitting on a small chair with delightful carved arms, a comfortable little seat for travelling, that would fold up in half for packing. She sipped from a silver tankard of wine. ‘I am glad to see you again.’

At her side stood her son. He had a stiffness about him, and Simon regretted that the boy who had been so keen and eager on the ship, was now restrained, like a hound freshly muzzled.

On board ship, he had been filled with excitement at the great craft. The rolling and plunging that made Simon’s belly roil, seemed to thrill the boy. He walked from the castles fore and aft to the ratlines and stood with his arm through the ropes, laughing at the spray that dashed in his eyes. He appeared to come alive still more when the wind blew a little harder, and although the Bishop and his own tutor begged him to go with them at least so far as the decking, and ideally to the cabin aft, he refused point blank. There was no need, he declared. If it were dangerous, then their whole journey was also insanely dangerous, and he would prefer to be up here on deck to see the looming rocks than below, where the ship could be crushed for a man’s lack of attentiveness.

Now, though, his eyes were dulled as he stood and listened. It might have been a different fellow entirely. Not surprising, though, Simon reckoned. The lad had come here keen to see his mother — and now he had, he must realise that there was no chance of her returning to England with him to try to force a reconciliation with the King. His hopes of peace in his family had been dashed.

‘I am glad indeed to see you both again,’ the Queen said. ‘I was unsure who might be sent to guard my child.’

‘He has been the soul of good manners and behaviour,’ Baldwin said.

‘That would be a change for him. It was ever the case that my son would play in the trees and at any sport that was most dangerous,’ Queen Isabella said lightly.

‘Madam, your son is educated now to appreciate mature behaviour,’ Stapledon said. He did not look in her direction as he spoke, but eyed Simon and Baldwin.

‘I am glad to hear it,’ the Queen said shortly. She too would not look at the Bishop, but instead moved on immediately to discuss the route they must take, the deployment of the men, the stores which would be needed. Once she was content, she dismissed the men, somewhat haughtily, Simon felt, but that was no surprise. After all, she probably wanted some private time with her son. And he with her, too, from the look of him. He kept giving her little sidelong looks, at her hair, at her profile, at her hands on the arms of the chair. All as though he didn’t believe she was really here with him. As though he had thought she was dead.

However, this was not the end of the discussion for the Bishop. ‘There is one last matter, your Royal Highness,’ he said, and produced a small roll sealed with the King’s mark.

‘What is that?’

‘The King has written to you, I think. This is a safe conduct for you to return home.’

The Queen stood, her face suddenly pale. ‘You think to send me away just as my son arrives in this land? You think you can order me to leave just as my son needs my help?’

‘With the greatest respect, your Highness, the Earl of Chester needs the help of professional diplomats, such as myself and Sir Henry.’

‘With respect? Well, Bishop!’ It sounded as though she spat the word. ‘I say to you, without respect, that I have been born as a diplomat, that I have been raised as a diplomat, and that I have been raised in the Royal Families of England and France. There is nobody I do not know, and there are many from whom I can demand — not ask, but demand — help. You, on the other hand, are not a popular man in this country. You will not presume to command me to do anything.’

‘No, my Queen. But this letter …’

‘You may keep it. I will not look at it now. Mon Dieu! Do you realise that this is the first time I have had an opportunity to speak with my son in months? And you would have me leave the country as soon as he arrives.’

‘The King was expecting you to return to your home, my Queen,’ Stapledon tried one last time.

‘The King should have been a little more considerate. I shall return shortly, no doubt. But in my own good time. Now, you may leave us.’

And that had been that at the time. The men had all walked away to leave the Queen with her son and his tutor, while her eyes, red-rimmed and gleaming with anger, remained fixed upon the back of the Bishop.

However, Simon was sure that the affair was almost over. The Queen would have to take the note from her husband soon. No wife could think to ignore her man’s legitimate commands, not for long. Soon she must submit and go home. And then the serious negotiations could begin.

Furnshill, Devon

Margaret heard the hooves clattering up the path to the house from the hall, where she sat trying to concentrate on mending an old blouse, and for a moment she felt a curious mingling of trepidation and excitement, torn between the hope that it could be her husband and Baldwin, and terror that it was another man sent by Despenser, this time to ruin Baldwin.

‘Margaret? Here is the man who was to live at your house,’ Jeanne said, entering.

‘Sir,’ she said, falteringly.

The man before her was a heavy-set priest. He wore only a rough tunic, but he was clearly a monk, and looked at her with that slight dispassion that was the normal manner of a senior churchman who never usually encountered women. After the introductions were over, he shook his head with some confusion and asked why she was there at Furnshill. ‘Were you not going to wait for me at your house?’

‘I am very sorry, but the house was taken from me,’ Margaret said, and the words made the tears flow again. She had to bend and wipe at her eyes, her apron bunched in her fists, while Jeanne explained what had happened. As she spoke, the man’s face hardened.

‘This is true?’ he asked.

Margaret nodded, still not trusting her voice.

He waved imperiously at Edgar, who stood in the doorway. ‘Wine!’ He had a curious accent, a Roman-sounding tone from all the Latin he had spoken over the years. ‘Very well. Then I shall have to evict this man, whoever he may be.’

Margaret was tempted to laugh. ‘You don’t realise, sir. This man is very dangerous. He attacked my husband with a sword, and would have slain him.’

The man stood up. ‘Really? He had best not try such a thing with me, or he will find himself in great danger.’

‘I think that this man doesn’t worry about danger.’

‘Then he will learn quickly! I am Raymond, Cardinal de Fargis, in the service of God and the Pope. If he tries to threaten me, he will find himself in gaol faster than a whore in a cathedral.’

Temple, Paris

The cell was a large one, sixteen-feet long and as many wide, set into the north-west corner of the great keep.

Just the atmosphere made Jean feel chilled as he entered the place. There were marks scrawled into the walls here, the despairing words of prisoners who knew that their time was almost over; men who had entered this place as rich as any knights, who had loyally served their master, only to see him turn against them for a simple financial reward.

The Templars had been held in this room, and in others, their hands in manacles, chains at their ankles, and they were forced to stand by and watch as, one by one, their comrades were dragged forward to be tested by the inquisition. Jean had seen the records of some of the trial, and he knew the details that would not have been noted down: the way that a man’s scream could rise sharply to the ceiling when his flesh was being scorched; how a man would whimper and weep, even the strongest, when he was slowly beaten, his bones broken one by one; the little ‘click’ of a tooth breaking its link with the jawbone as it was drawn out; the soft squelch of blood and gristle as a nail was pulled from a finger. The sizzle of cooking meat as a foot or hand was thrust over a brazier, after a pat of butter had been smeared over a slash in the flesh to make it fry more efficiently. Oh, the monks wouldn’t be involved in the brutality, of course. That was a matter for the secular arm of the law. No, the monks would merely ask the questions, ever so softly and gently, and watch and listen and smell as the prisoners were slowly broiled, burned, broken before them.

And now he was instigating his own little process of torture. All in the name of the King.

The prisoner had been hanging there from the butcher’s hook for over a day now. His arms must have been in agony, especially since they were so tightly bound. His ankles had swollen to an alarming extent, and Jean seriously wondered whether they would ever reduce to an ordinary size.

‘You will have to talk sooner or later, Nicholas,’ he said.

They had learned his name with embarrassing ease on the first day. That was the day on which they merely beat him with fists and ropes. Fists were good at first, but when the two men with him wanted to kick the man as well, Jean had shaken his head. He wanted information from this man, not for him just to become a third corpse. The questioning had begun. ‘Who are you? Why did you want to kill me? What do you know of the man in the Louvre? What was his name? What of the woman who died?’ On and on, he asked the same questions, and for the first day he had a policy of not believing a word he was told.

On the second day, he believed the man when he gave his name. ‘Nicholas. They call me the Stammerer.’

He had looked at Jean with his face screwed up against the light of the candles. Jean thought — a strange idea, this — that the boy was actually speaking like someone talking to an ally or confederate. There was no complicity in this room, though, except for that which lay between torturer and questioner. The men who wielded the metal and stretched this poor scrawny body, breaking pieces of it, little by little, and him, Jean, the Procureur.

‘Why did you want to kill me? Who was the man in the Louvre? What was his name?’

It was the same questions, repeated. Each time a response was given, he made a note of it. And then, when the answers seemed to be falling into a pattern, he would change the order of the questions, trying to catch Nicholas out, snapping them out and waiting to see how long it took for the reply, listening for that pause that said Nicholas was having to think, to remember something he had invented, or whether the fellow was responding honestly.

‘He was de Nogaret. That is all I know.’

‘And the woman?’

‘His wife. We were paid to kill her …’

This was the first time that it wasn’t ‘I’. It was interesting. More interesting, if he was honest, than much of the slobbering, self-justifying ox-shit he had been forced to listen to. Jean stood, his legs and arse aching from spending too much time on a stool. Crossing the floor, he leaned down, hands on thighs, and peered up at the dangling head.

Blood trickled from a wound over his temple. Both eyes were puffed and blued from the regular beatings, and there was a reddened welt on his shoulder where a heated rod had been lain. The rest of his back was thankfully in darkness, and Jean needn’t look at that, nor at the man’s grotesquely swollen genitals.

‘Why?’ he asked quietly. ‘What would it serve you to kill me?’

‘The King was paid. Just like he was paid to kill de Nogaret.’

‘Who paid him?’

‘Someone from the castle. Don’t know who. Servant came to pay.’

Jean nodded. ‘Who is the “King” you talk of?’

‘I can’t say.’

‘You can. You will.’

‘I can’t say.’

Jean rose and shook his head. Looking over the boy’s head, he saw the two torturers. Neither was an expert at this art. Both were trained in the fields of Montfaucon among the great poles that stood there. The old wooden uprights were gone, replaced with stone in the last year. Now there were sixteen uprights, the King could have a full complement of sixty-four corpses swinging in the wind when he so desired. And all were on view from the north of the city. When space was needed, the bodies could be cut loose, and then the rotting flesh was cast into the city’s midden that lay close by. On a hot summer’s day, when the wind came from the north, Jean would cover his face with a cloth against the noxious fumes.

These two had learned their arts there, stringing up the boys and men who were guilty of foul, degenerate crimes like stealing a loaf. Better that a man should starve than rob his fellow. Jean had lived through the famine. He knew what it was like to see people starve to death. If a man had managed to keep a small store of foodstuffs, and another sought to rob him of it, that man deserved his fate at Montfaucon, so far as Jean was concerned.

‘Leave him until morning,’ he said now, considering the broken and ravaged figure before him. ‘But show him the brazier and all the implements. I want answers by the end of tomorrow. Show him and let him dream of them tonight. And cut him free. He can’t run anywhere tonight, and the freedom will hurt more than leaving him hanging.’

He left the chamber and the stench of sweat, piss and faeces, with relief. With every step he took away from that revolting room, he felt a little of the foulness falling away from him, until he found himself up in the open, and took in deep lungfuls of the fresh air. He was no torturer. The whole process made him feel sick. But the job worked — that was the trouble. It achieved results.

Louvre, Paris

The castellan strode into his room to find her there, waiting as usual. ‘What are you doing here?’

Amélie stood and walked towards him languidly. ‘Don’t you want me any more?’

It was tempting. Galician born, she had the body of a heathen harlot, but the face of an angel. Black hair that gleamed, an oval face with lips as red as a rose, she was utterly beautiful. Christ knew, it was tempting … but he didn’t have time. ‘You have to go to your master. To the “King”,’ he said harshly. ‘Tell him that one of his men has been taken, yes? He’s being held in the Temple, where they’re torturing him.’

‘What of it? Nicholas will break and die,’ she said, reaching up to his neck and placing her cool, cool hand behind his head. Her black eyes stared into his.

‘Get off me, wench! Sweet Jesus! You think this is the time for that? If this man is taken, we’re all in the midden, you understand?’

‘The “King” is no fool, Sieur Hugues. He has already sent a man to deal with Nicholas. The boy will stammer no more!’ She drew away from him as she spoke, and walking to the shelf on which lay his jug and cups, she poured two, and brought them to him. ‘Come, drink, relax, and then do what you want with me. I have all the time we need.’

‘What do you want with me?’ he demanded, but with less anger, as she took his hand and led him to the back of his room where he had a palliasse rolled at the wall.

She said nothing, but unrolled the bedding and knelt on it. As he watched, she crossed her arms and lifted her linen tunic over her head. Beneath it she was naked.

Temple, Paris

The figure at the doorway tapped quietly. ‘I have a livre for you if I can see the man they’re torturing.’

‘What do you want with him?’ the porter demanded, taking the little leather purse and reaching inside. He took up a coin and stared at it hard, before experimentally biting into it. Seeing the result, a grin of delight spread over his face.

With directions, it was easy to find him. Through one open door, down some steep stairs, into a great vaulted room that might as well have been a hall, he thought. Inside, two men were using bellows to warm a charcoal brazier, while the Stammerer stared in horrified fascination from his ravaged face.

Sighing, Jacquot strolled inside. ‘Gentlemen, this fellow was a friend of mine. Can I let him have some money for food and drink while he remains here at your service?’

‘Who are you?’ The nearer of the two men clearly had the sharper brain. Now he blocked Jacquot’s path, a length of chain swinging from his fist.

Jacquot said nothing, but showed his second purse, a bloated little pouch. The man took it, then turned to his companion and showed him the contents. ‘This for us?’ he asked Jacquot.

‘If you give me a few minutes with him, yes.’

‘A few minutes, then. But we’ll be listening, mind.’

The two walked out from the room, leaving Jacquot with Nicholas the Stammerer. They had not yet released him from his hook, and he swung gently, his head loose, a ball of exquisite agony.

Seeing he did not have the lad’s undivided attention, Jacquot took a large ladle of water from the barrel near the door, and dashed it into Nicholas’s face.

In the past such an insult would have merited an enraged response, but now Nicholas had sunk so far into despair that he could only mumble and avert his head.

‘So, Nicholas the Stammerer. How are you today?’ Jacquot said with mild enquiry. He looked at the wreckage of the man and shook his head. ‘You should not have tried to take my prize, little man. It was not a sensible course. I do not like to destroy, but when there is money at stake, and such money … well.’

He already had his long, thin knife in his hand, and he weighed it in his palm for a moment. ‘You are dead, Nicholas, already. There is nothing anyone can do for you. But the King and I do not want our names mentioned. So I will stop your mouth.’

‘No!’

The knife slipped down from above his shoulder, gently sliding in between the collarbone and the shoulder blade. Nicholas lurched to draw away, but that put strain on his hands. He screamed wildly, and thrust his body upwards. His mouth opened, madly, his neck muscles thickened and strained, his veins stood out like ropes, and his head swung from side to side in maddened denial, as his heart thudded with thunderous irregularity, working against all reason, as though his soul could contain the damage done by the skewer-like blade that had sheared through muscle and lungs to puncture it.