The Templar, the Queen and Her Lover

Chapter Twenty-Six

Jean picked up the bowl of pottage and supped from it. God, that was good! A pleasing, thin soup of spring leaves with some lentils, and a sausage with bread alongside, and a man could sit back in comfort.

He had made his way here slowly, wary at every stage in case he was being hunted for le Vieux’s murder, but there was no sign that anyone was seeking him. Nobody appeared to have the faintest idea that he could still be in the area, and he had found it remarkably easy to make his way down to this part of town.

The undercroft had saved his life. Surely everyone who had sought him would think that he must have escaped from the city after le Vieux’s death. It was like the last time, when he had been marked as a heretic.

He ought to have learned to keep his mouth shut. Anyone who was prepared to stand up for the truth was automatically a suspect in the eyes of the Church. Not that it was entirely due to evil men — he had no doubt that the bishop believed in his little crusade. He thought he was saving people. Jean didn’t doubt that. But when a man saw people being executed, he had a duty to think about their reactions. And if their behaviour didn’t seem suitable, bearing in mind their crime, he should consider that.

That was why he had reflected long and hard after witnessing the death of Raymond de la Côte and Agnes Franco five years ago.

What was their crime? Only that they had sought to honour and worship Christ in a way that was in keeping with their beliefs. The people of the mountains had followed the way of the Poor of Lyons for hundreds of years, but now they were to be persecuted for the way they worshipped God because the Church disliked the fact that they preached against corruption among priests and the sale of indulgences. But Jean knew that the ‘friends’ were right. No man should presume to sell remission of sins here on earth. Only God could decide to do that, and He was all-powerful. He would scarcely consider Himself bound by some contract made here in this imperfect world.

But Agnes and Raymond had been deemed guilty. They had been questioned, tortured, and had their crimes recorded by the zealous Bishop Fournier. And finally, they were passed over to the secular arm for their destruction.

It wasn’t only Jean who spat on the idea that they had died sinful. Others were of a like mind. When he stood and drank his wine at the inn in Pamiers, it was not merely the bitterness in his soul which made him denounce the bishop. He wasn’t foolish or brave enough to try that. No, it was the general feeling in the room.

‘Who thinks them evil now?’ asked the innkeeper.

‘Who could?’ one customer asked, and belched.

That was the strange thing, Jean thought. He’d felt it even under the elm tree at Ornolac earlier, when the village worthies gathered to discuss the executions. The man Raymond had sobbed, but never begged forgiveness for his crimes. Instead, when the ropes were burned away, he held his hands aloft, clenched together in prayer, and entrusted his soul to God.

It was that which made Jean bear witness. ‘Any man who could do that, who could suffer the flames and still call on God to take his soul, that man was no heretic. He must be a Christian. Any man dying in such pain and calling on God must surely have had his soul accepted. God would treasure a soul freed in such suffering in His service.’

It was the other customer there who’d shaken his head at Jean then. ‘Jacques Fournier is a good man, though. He’s a good bishop. Do you know, he wept when he heard that Raymond wouldn’t recant? It was Raymond’s fault — all he had to do was apologise, beg forgiveness, and return to the Holy Mother Church’s arms. There he would have been welcomed. He had fallen prey to heretical beliefs — perhaps from his own stupidity; maybe he was just gullible, and others took advantage of him with their lies — and he should have seen that he should give them up. It was ridiculous of him to hold fast to that which could not be true!’

‘A good man? A good bishop? He is a murderer! I would wager that Fournier would be less keen to hold to his faith than Raymond, were he to be put to the flames! Ha, there were two good Christians there, but he had them both burned.’ In his heart, he had added that it would have been better for all had Fournier been burned, and Raymond and Agnes saved, but saying something of that sort would only have served to ensure his own arrest.

Not that he need have worried. Within the hour, he was held by the bishop’s men. He was accused, denounced, and gaoled, and there he would yet be, were it not for the good offices of my Lord Enguerrand de Foix.

The Comte’s men had negotiated his release in little time, and provided that Jean left the gaol with a yellow cross stitched to the breast of his tunic to show that he was a reformed heretic of whom others should be wary, he was permitted to go with the Comte’s men. One was le Vieux, although the old man-at-arms would not talk to him for many a long month.

He had been taken up to Château Gaillard, and there he learned that he was himself to turn gaoler rather than prisoner. Others would suffer, but he was assured by le Vieux that the people in those cells deserved their punishment. Especially the poor woman who would have been queen. And even when he realised Arnaud was to remain there too, he swallowed the revulsion he felt. The alternative was to return to the bishop’s gaols himself. He couldn’t do that.

In the bishop’s cells, and then guarding those at the château, he had come to appreciate the fact that often the gaolers were little happier than those in the cells. All those in the guard rooms were rather like him. All had spent time in suffering. Some, like him, had been in trouble with the Church, others, like Berengar, had been guilty of some other crime. Berengar had married a maid in the Comte de Foix’s household without permission, and the Comte had sought to punish him by separating him from his wife. But all debts would be discharged as soon as the last prisoner had been taken away.

The good thing about his time in gaol, and then spent guarding Lady Blanche, was that when he was forced to hide in the undercroft there was little that could alarm him. Not rats nor dark could concern him after the dank misery of Bishop Fournier’s cells at Pamiers. Apart from anything else, the room was very well stocked with food and drink, and no one need ever realise he had stolen from it.

It was two days before he dared leave the castle, and by then the Queen was long gone, but at least her movements were not kept secret. Jean was able to hear that she had travelled with her entourage to Paris itself. Surely, he reasoned, Arnaud must have also gone there. It seemed that Arnaud and le Vieux had been with the Queen’s party thus far, so it was unlikely he would have left now.

But all the way as he walked from the castle through the town and out on to the road, his pack over his shoulder, he saw in his mind’s eye how le Vieux had glared at him as he tried to brain him. It was almost as if le Vieux hated him — had always hated him. That wasn’t how it had been, though. Le Vieux had been friendly towards him — towards all of them — from the moment he’d first rescued Jean from his prison cell. There was only kindness in him, or so Jean had thought. Of all the guards, le Vieux was the only one he would have trusted. The others had all spent time in gaols, for one thing. They were hardly responsible, respectable fellows. Le Vieux had always been different. And he’d seemed to have more respect for Jean, because he’d heard that Jean had been in the battle at Courtrai. A fellow man-at-arms was someone to honour.

The more he thought about it, the more he tended to the view that someone must have poisoned le Vieux’s mind against him. And the only man who could have done so, surely, was Arnaud. Arnaud must have told le Vieux that he had gone mad, killed the men in the guard rooms, and then run away. He had no idea what Arnaud could have wanted to achieve by such lies, but there was no other explanation of le Vieux’s behaviour. There had been such loathing and disgust on his face as he tried to brain him with that cudgel. It wasn’t like the old man he’d come to know over the months at Château Gaillard.

But Arnaud was capable of anything. He enjoyed seeing people suffer. He had set the rope about Agnes’s neck, but when she started to scream in anguish and he could have strangled her to save her further torment, he hadn’t done so. He had allowed the rope to dangle in the flames so that it burned away before he could use it. And left her to shriek in the intolerable horror of death by fire.

Yes. Apart from the murder of the guards at the château; apart from the lies told about him to le Vieux; apart from all these and the rape inflicted on Lady Blanche, Jean wanted to meet Arnaud again, and make him feel the anguish of a slow death for what he had done to poor Agnes.

He finished his pottage, wiped his bowl with a little of the remaining bread, and left the inn.

Arnaud was dead. No matter what, Jean would hunt him down and kill him.

When the others were all back in their rooms, Paul went out once more.

At times like this, a man must be cautious and look to his safety. In truth, there was no city in Christendom which was fully safe. The curfews protected many, but when a man walked abroad after nightfall, his life was in his hands. Anyone might defend himself against a dark shape in the shadows, and with good reason. It was better to attack first than wait until someone drew blade against him. Each morning there was a fresh crop of bodies waiting to be found and collected — and here many were lost for ever, simply dropped quietly into the Seine. Like London’s Thames, the river could clean up a multitude of untidy murders.

But Paul was sure that his master was correct when he said that there would be a good price for the head of Roger Mortimer. Sir Charles could take it to the King, and they would share the proceeds; Sir Charles would take the larger share, of course, but that mattered little. Since both lived on the profits of his ventures, any money in Sir Charles’s purse tended to benefit Paul as well.

Paul had no idea where the man could be, but he had spoken carefully with all the grooms and other servants, and was, after all, seeking a stranger who should stand out a little. It was a man, he said, who had been a warrior, who had a certain carriage about him, like a knight, and did not appear to arrive and depart, so was probably staying nearby.

One man seemed to have an idea. He had been asked by William de Bouden, the Queen’s comptroller, to deliver a note to a servant staying at an inn. At the time the fellow delivering the message had been surprised, for it seemed peculiar that the Queen’s comptroller should want to speak to such a man, but when he arrived at the inn, he had caught a glimpse of a tall, warrior-like man in the background.

It was enough to interest Paul, and that was why he was making his way to the place now. The man had not taken only the one message. In the last evenings, there had been three all told. Likelihood was, so Paul reasoned, that there’d be another tonight. So he was going to the inn to watch.

The inn was set in the maze of small alleys and lanes behind the butcheries of St Jacques north of the river, and he walked cautiously in case he met the watchmen. Anyone found this late in the evening could be arrested with impunity, and Paul had no false hope that an Englishman from the Queen’s guard would be safe if found out here. More likely, he’d be stabbed and killed the more swiftly and his body thrown over a bridge. Better to dispose of him than have the King’s men come and seek retribution for scaring one of his sister’s men-at-arms. No, if he saw the Watch, he would either bolt or fight. He reckoned he should be safe against most watchmen.

Narrow-fronted, the building was placed in the midst of a series of ancient little houses. It had only recently been converted into a tavern, from the look of it. Waxed parchment covered the windows to keep out the worst of the cold night air, but while it no doubt gave a warm glow to the dim lighting within, it served only to make Paul feel colder. He settled into the shadow of a doorway opposite and gazed at the place, waiting. That was one thing about being a fighter for so many years: waiting patiently came as second nature to him now.

Steps came down the cobbles, and he stirred himself silently. He had been dozing with his eyes open, but at the first sound he was wide awake. Soon he could make out the shape of his informer.

The man scurried along the alley like a rat walking down a corridor of cats. His eyes were all over the place, as though he expected to be jumped on at any moment. Quite right, too. The bloody fool should have had a couple of men with him. But then, as Paul knew, he would have been a still more attractive mark. A man who walked abroad at night was a possible target to a cut-purse. A man who walked at night with two henchmen was clearly guarding something of value, and so was still more attractive.

He pulled the door open and slid inside around it. The hinges were rotten, and the door scraped badly on the ground, opening only about halfway. Orange candlelight flooded out into the lane, to slip to a knife-blade as he tugged the door closed after him.

It was only a matter of a few minutes before the door was opened again, and then the man hurried out and set off up the road to escape back to the Queen’s household. Paul watched him with a slight frown on his face, wondering what could have made him hurry so urgently. Then he pressed himself back into the darkness as the door opened again. Three men came out and stood in the lane looking up and down for a few moments, before two more figures emerged. One was a tall, well-favoured man, a cap on his head, pulling gloves on as he came. He stopped in the doorway, looked about him, nodded, and then marched off after the messenger, his guards fanning out behind him.

Paul pursed his lips. This would clearly not be so easy as he had hoped. He would have to have some help. He nodded to himself, and as the men disappeared round a curve in the lane, he left the shadows, peering up after the group.

As soon as he began to trail quietly after them, the door of the inn scraped again. Too late, he saw his peril, thinking to leap back to the shadows.

‘So, master. You were wanting to see our lord?’

Two men, both with swords drawn, blocking his path that way. He turned to flee up the lane, but even as he turned he saw the men back at the corner. Roger Mortimer made a gesture with his hand, and the four men with him began to walk slowly towards Paul. He put his hand to his sword, but before he could grasp it he felt the two behind him jump forward. One took his sword arm; the other beat him about the head, three, four times, with the hilt of his own. Paul stumbled, but could jerk his elbow upwards, and he felt it crunch against a nose. That caused a short curse, but then there was a hideous crashing thud against the back of his neck, and sparks were thrown up in front of his eyes, sparks that pinwheeled about before his gaze as he toppled forward to rest his face on the cobbles.

‘Who do you work for?’ The voice was calm, but determined.

‘I work for no one.’

‘You were seeking me. The messenger told us. He at least was loyal. Who do you work for, the King? Are you with him?’

‘I was just looking for a pot of wine! You lot attacked me,’ Paul protested.

‘You have two choices. A fast death or a slow one. Slow will be painful. Tell me who you work for, and you will not suffer. Refuse, and I will see to it that you have a bad death.’

Paul tried to clear the fog in his head. The back of his neck was on fire, with flames of pain searing the rear of his skull. It was hard to think straight, and he certainly couldn’t think fast enough to save himself. ‘I don’t …’

‘Take him back. Question him. Find out all he knows, then kill him,’ Mortimer said. ‘Sorry, friend. I don’t have time for this.’