The King of Thieves

Chapter Twenty-Three

Louvre

‘Where did he die?’ Baldwin asked.

The short man was called Pons, he had learned, and now he and Simon were ensconced on a large bench while Pons and his companion, who turned out to be a quiet, self-effacing man called Vital, sat on stools at the other side of the table at the little tavern near the Louvre’s gates. Sir Richard had joined them as soon as he heard of the accusations against the Bishop, while Sir Henry de Beaumont had been asked to stay with the Duke and keep His Highness close to the Queen and her guards. The Bishop himself was remaining in self-imposed solitude in his chamber, away from the gaze of those who accused him with their eyes.

‘The Procureur was struck down a few streets north and a little east of here.’

‘His purse?’

‘Still on his belt.’

‘And witnesses?’

‘None whatever. At least, none who admit to seeing it.’

‘He was alone?’

‘No, he had his man with him, but the evil son of a Basque whore managed to have the man knocked on the head before killing poor Jean.’

‘His servant is alive?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. Perhaps he will remember something?’

‘When he can see straight and stop vomiting, perhaps,’ Pons said, permitting himself a faint smile.

Baldwin nodded. ‘This was no random attack, you think?’

‘No. It was premeditated. I am sure of it.’

Now Vital spoke up. He had a soft, singsong quality to his voice. ‘Jean was a most effective prosecutor. The city knew him well, and especially all those who live in the twilight. You know? The men who live and work and struggle in the alleys and cellars and rarely come up into the daylight.’

Baldwin looked at him briefly. There was a poetical turn to the man’s speech. ‘An assassination, then?’

‘It is how it looks,’ Pons said. He looked at his companion, then at Baldwin with a vague shrug. ‘There are few enough who’ll help us to seek out the killers.’

‘And yet you accuse a good Bishop whose sole offence is that he was in the same city?’

‘No. I will seek out and question all those who have ever shown any dislike for Jean. Any man who has had a dispute with him recently, any who has shown him disrespect, and any who has been arrested or found himself on the wrong side of Jean in recent years — all will be questioned.’

‘I wish to speak with his servant,’ Baldwin said.

‘That can be arranged,’ Pons said.

Jean le Procureur’s house

The rooms to which they brought Simon and Baldwin were set in a rougher part of the city, over towards the eastern gate.

Simon had never been to this part of Paris before. He was made to feel quite at home with the close-built dwellings, their jetties reaching out overhead just as they did in London. However, this was not an area of wealth and easiness. There were on every side the signs of people striving and failing to earn enough to live on. The doors were of timber that was rotting; hinges were rusted or bent; windows had broken shutters; the roadway itself was lacking many cobbles, and the path was puddled and filthy with shit and the stench of urine.

Yet for all that, there was a certain atmosphere among the people who lived there. Women shouted and cackled, young urchins ran barefoot, giggling and shouting, and even the men seemed to be cheerful enough.

‘Ha! Not a bad part of the city,’ Sir Richard considered. He stood looking about him with a satisfied smile, thumbs in his belt. His eye was drawn like a bee to honey to the small tavern only a few doors away.

‘It is not as poor as some districts,’ was Pons’s comment. ‘There are people here with a reasonable income. They may not be so rich as the merchants down nearer the river, but they are better off than many others.’

‘This was his?’ Simon asked when they stopped outside a house and knocked.

‘Yes. This is where the Procureur used to live,’ Vital said shortly.

‘His servant is here?’ Baldwin asked.

It was Pons who responded. ‘For now. I don’t know where he’ll go when he’s better.’

A watchman opened the door, a surly, ill-favoured man with a cast in his eye and a developing hunch-back. He took them up to a clean, bright solar where they found the servant. He was clearly not going to be leaving any time soon.

He lay on a good bed, and Baldwin assumed that in the absence of his master, the servant was installed in his master’s bed.

This Stephen was a very tall man, and well built. That much was obvious from the way that his feet were close to overhanging the bottom of the bed while his head rested on the wall. However it was clear that he had not always been known for his honour and integrity. His upper lip was split — a common enough punishment for criminals in Paris, Baldwin knew.

‘You were the servant to the Procureur, I hear?’ he began his questioning.

‘There was no one else would take me, Sieur.’

‘You were guilty of some offence here?’

‘Yes. I was a successful felon, I fear. However, Master Jean rescued me.’

‘How so?’ Baldwin said.

‘He met me in the street and beat the living daylights out of me. From that moment I thought it was preferable to work for him, than against.’

‘It didn’t help him two days ago, friend.’

A cloud passed over the servant’s face. ‘No.’

‘What do you remember?’

‘Of that evening? We were walking back as usual. My master often had me walk with him, because this is a dangerous city, just as any other.’

‘You were at his side? A little behind him? What?’

‘I was some thirty paces behind. My master was concerned because some short while ago he was almost killed by a man in the street. He felt sure that his life was at risk. And for that reason he wished me to remain some way behind him, so that if I saw a man try to assail him, I would have the space to attack, but the assailant himself might not realise that I was there.’

‘And yet the assassin clearly did know you were there — that was why he knocked you down so swiftly.’

‘It may be so.’

Sir Richard fixed the man with a steady gaze. ‘Did you see the assailant? Did you recognise him?’

‘No. I neither saw nor recognised him. If I did, there is nothing would keep me here in my bed,’ Stephen said.

‘Then can you tell us who it was your master was afraid of?’

‘Sieur Jean was working on a strange affair at the Louvre,’ Stephen said, and explained about the body of de Nogaret. ‘After that, his wife’s body was also found, and my master believed that there was some connection between the two deaths. When we started to investigate, a man began to follow my master — a thin man, wiry. Like one of those who had been forced to starve and never won enough food afterwards — you know?’

Baldwin kept his face carefully empty of all emotion, but he could not help a slight grunt at that name. Guillaume de Nogaret. A man so steeped in villainy, even the devil might refuse his companionship.

If the dead man was that same de Nogaret, Baldwin himself would have been happy to slit his throat.

Sir Richard glanced at Baldwin, hearing his intake of breath. ‘You all right?’

‘I was thinking of the famine,’ Baldwin said shortly. ‘Too many on our streets look like that — emaciated.’

‘Aye.’ They all knew of men like that, who had starved and been marked by it during the famine years. ‘A sad time.’

‘Tell us all you can about what happened,’ Baldwin said.

‘The fellow tried to attack my master twice, he thought, so after that he had me follow him wherever he went. He hoped to catch the man. As it was, he found another trying to kill him, a fellow known as Nicholas the Stammerer. We caught him and learned all we could, but then he was found dead. Someone had killed him with a thin blade slipped down from here,’ he finished, touching his finger just above his collarbone.

‘Not a normal place for a killer to strike, eh, Baldwin?’ Sir Richard commented.

‘Hmm? Not that I have seen, no,’ Baldwin said. It amused him to see how Sir Richard had immersed himself in this affair. Clearly it was possible to take the Coroner out of England, but not the urge to investigate from the Coroner himself. From his point of view, the name of the dead man was more intriguing.

‘Interesting,’ Sir Richard said. ‘So you had this other fellow, and he died, and yet the first one was not caught?’

‘No.’

‘What did you learn from the one you did catch?’

‘He was a felon who worked with a small gang, so he said. There was a man who sought the services of a killer, and he said that another was sent to fulfil the contract, but failed. My master and I believed that this failure was the man we both saw originally. And so later this Nicholas was given the contract instead. He took over when the first failed.’

‘And died in his own turn,’ the Coroner said. ‘You say it was while he was being questioned?’

‘Yes. The assassin murdered him while he was hanging in chains in the interrogation chamber.’

Sir Richard gave a low whistle. ‘That shows some balls, eh? Wandering into a torture chamber and slaying the felon there.’

‘I suppose so.’

‘What can you tell us that will help us find the murderer?’

Stephen looked at Sir Richard, then over at Pons and Vital. ‘If I knew anything, I would use it to find the man myself. All I know is, the Stammerer told me that the gang had received payment for the murder. So find the Stammerer’s men, and you may find the killer. Then, perhaps, you could find the man who killed my master as well as killed the Stammerer himself.’

‘I will, friend,’ Pons said. ‘If he is in Paris, I shall find him and deal with him.’

He nodded to the others and he and Vital left them alone with Stephen.

Baldwin saw a spasm pass over the wounded man’s face. ‘Would you like some wine?’

‘I just want to sleep and to wake to learn this was all a foul dream,’ Stephen said bitterly. ‘All I ever wanted was to serve my master. Without him, I do not know what I can do.’

‘There is one thing you may do,’ Baldwin said, leaning against the wall. ‘You can tell me all you know of your master’s investigation.’

‘That is easy. His notes are all there,’ Stephen said, pointing to a large chest in the corner of the room.

Baldwin walked to it and lifted the lid. Inside were a number of scrolls, each covered in a neat, delicate script. ‘All these?’

‘Only the one at the top. My master used to keep notes on all the crimes he investigated.’

Baldwin found one with ‘De Nogaret’ clearly marked at the top, and removed it. ‘I thank you, friend. This will aid us. Is there anything more?’

‘No,’ Stephen said, sinking back on his pillow, a pasty, green colour returning to his face. ‘All you need is in there.’

Tavern near the eastern wall by the River Seine

Jacquot slipped along the alleyway until he reached the little doorway. There was an ancient crone in the corner, and he nodded to her as he passed by, dropping a couple of sous into her bowl as he went.

‘Merci, m’Sieur,’ she muttered.

Madame Angeline had been here for as long as anyone could remember. In the past, a long time ago, she had been the leading attraction of the brothel which had stood here, but that was before her third babe and the infection in her womb which had all but killed her. It was said that after that baby she had felt so much agony in her belly that she could never service her men again. The brothel had turfed her out, and she had remained there on a little box, begging from all those who had once used her, never threatening to tell wives or lovers, but merely sitting mutely, hoping for money to support herself. Her babes died one by one as the famine struck the city, just as so many other youngsters did, but she seemed ever more determined to remain here where she had known happiness, laughter and fun in her youth. The brothel closed, reopened, closed again, and now was a tavern where some women offered themselves, but only on an unofficial level. They paid a commission to the tavern-keeper.

He had to clamber down a steep staircase to the undercroft where the barrels of wine were racked. The place held that warm fug of sour wine, piss and smoke that was the odour of drinking to any man. He snuffed the burning applewood with appreciation, thinking again of the days of his youth. In those days, with a large orchard nearby, he had often taken old boughs for his own fire, and the scent was like the smell of his childhood.

Here the wine was not the cultured flavour of the more expensive vines in the south and west, but the stronger, peasant wine of the small farms outside Paris. For some, they were too powerful, smelling so strongly that many would turn their noses up at it, but not Jacquot. The weaker wines and more cultivated grapes could be left to the rich, to the knights and merchants who liked to discuss the different tastes they said they could discern. For Jacquot, the purpose of drinking was to recall happier days.

There were rushlights and a few foul-smelling tallow candles which added their own pungency to the reek, and he took a quart of wine to a barrel and leaned on it, while he supped the wine and felt its urgent heat slipping in through his veins. This was the best of times — the moments when blessed oblivion started to rush towards him, when pain and grief would slip away and he could feel the wonder of forgetfulness. Forget his intense loneliness.

The King shouldn’t have tried that. It was a shameful act, to try to kill him for merely demanding the full reward for his efforts. Sure, he had been slow to achieve the original aim, but that was because he was a perfectionist. He had to know his target in extreme detail before he could think of launching any form of attack. And usually, of course, he was desperate for the money to allow him to return to a little hovel like this one, in which the bad memories could be erased and good ones revived by the use of suitable quantities of red wine. Now he had his money, he could remain here for a full week, he reckoned, sensing the weight of the purse at his belt.

‘Hello, Killer.’

His reactions were a little blunted, but even if he was sober, he wouldn’t have immediately drawn a knife — not with a low, sultry voice like that. ‘What do you want with me?’ he asked.

The King’s woman was taller than he’d realised. This was the first time he had seen her either fully clothed or standing. She was a better-looking wench than he had thought before. There was a feline elegance to her, in the way that she walked, in the way she gestured with her hands and arms while talking, and in the measuring gaze of her dark eyes. Her lips were full, soft and red, and he wondered what they would taste of, were he to crush them under his own. As he looked all over her, he saw her little tongue flick out and wet her upper lip in an unmistakeable invitation.

‘I want you, Jacquot the Killer. Amélie wants you.’

He gave a dry chuckle. ‘So you can take me to the King’s men? The King sent you, did he?’

‘The King is the old King. There is always a new King waiting in the wings,’ she said, leaning forward and running a long forefinger down the side of his face, tracing a line from his temple to his jaw, and then down, under his chin.

‘I am no King.’

‘But you could be. With my brain, you would make an excellent King. All who opposed you could disappear, while you took over the King’s income.’

‘And then, when you found another more suited to you, you would leave me for him?’

‘I have no interest in others,’ she said, and licked her lips again before biting at her bottom lip and smiling.

He drank off his horn of wine and poured himself more. ‘I have no need of you or of money or power. All I seek is here,’ he said, lifting the horn again.

‘Then you are a lucky man. Most men want something,’ she said.

‘I have already had all, and lost it,’ he snapped. ‘I know that the pain of loss is stronger than the pleasure of possession. Much stronger.’

‘So it’s better not to have anything? Just in case you lose all again? That is no recipe for happiness,’ she said slyly.

‘Go and lie with a goat, you whore. You want me for some sick passion based on blood.’

‘Yes — I want blood! You give me blood, and I’ll give you my body. But take me and you can have all Paris at your feet. You know it’s true. The King is stupid. He thinks he can hold everything together by the exercise of his will. He thinks, the fool, that if he wishes everything to remain the same, it will do so. But it will not! The world changes. The world moves on. Kings live … and then die.’

‘And you think this King is due for retirement?’

She smiled lazily, and then dipped her finger in his wine, before bringing it to her lips and gently sucking it. ‘I think he is soon to lose his throne. Don’t you?’