Kitabı oku: «1356 (Special Edition)», sayfa 5
Three
It would have been easy enough for Fra Ferdinand to steal a horse. The Prince of Wales’s army had left their horses outside Carcassonne, and the few men guarding the animals were bored and tired. The destriers, those big horses that the men-of-arms rode, were better guarded, but the mounts of the archers were in a paddock and the Black Friar could have taken a dozen, but a lone man on a horse is noticeable, a target for bandits, and Fra Ferdinand dared not risk the loss of la Malice, and so he preferred to walk.
It took him ten days to reach home. For a time he travelled with some merchants who had hired a dozen men-at-arms to guard their goods, but after four days they took the road south to Montpellier, and Fra Ferdinand continued northwards. One of the merchants had asked him why he carried la Malice, and the friar had shrugged the question away, ‘It’s just an old blade,’ he had said, ‘it might make a good hay knife?’
‘Doesn’t look like it could cut butter,’ the merchant had said, ‘you’d do better to melt it down.’
‘And maybe I will.’
He had heard news on the journey, though such travellers’ tales were always unreliable. It was said that the rampaging English army had burned Narbonne and Villefranche, others said Toulouse itself had fallen. The merchants had grumbled. The English chevauchée was a tactic to destroy a country’s power, to starve the lords of taxes, to burn their mills, uproot their vines, to demolish whole towns, and the only way such a destructive force could be stopped was by another army, yet the King of France was still in the north, far away, and the Prince of Wales was running riot in the south. ‘King Jean should come here,’ one of the merchants had said, ‘and kill the English princeling, or else there’ll be no France to rule.’
Fra Ferdinand had kept silent. The other travellers were nervous of him. He was gaunt, stern and mysterious, though his companions were grateful that he did not preach. The Black Friars were a preaching order, destined to wander the world in poverty and encourage it to godliness, and when the merchants turned southwards they gave him money, which Fra Ferdinand suspected was in gratitude for his silence. He accepted the charity, offered the donors a blessing, and walked north alone.
He kept to the wooded parts of the country to avoid strangers. He knew there were coredors, bandits, and routiers who would think nothing of robbing a friar. The world, he thought, had become evil, and he prayed for God’s protection and his prayers were answered because he saw no bandits and found no enemies, and late on a Tuesday evening he came to Agout, the village just south of the hills where the tower stood, and he went to the inn and there heard the news.
The Lord of Mouthoumet was dead. He had been visited by a priest accompanied by men-at-arms, and when the priest left the Sire of Mouthoumet was dead. He was buried now, and the men-at-arms had stayed at the tower until some Englishmen had come and there had been a fight and the Englishmen had killed three of the priest’s men and the rest had run away.
‘Are the English still there?’
‘They went away too.’
Fra Ferdinand went to the tower the next day where he found the Sire of Mouthoumet’s housekeeper, a garrulous woman who knelt for the friar’s blessing, but hardly ceased her chatter even as he gave it. She told how a priest had come, ‘He was rude!’, and then the priest had left and the men who remained behind had searched the tower and the village. ‘They were beasts,’ she said, ‘Frenchmen! But beasts! Then the English came.’ The English, she said, had worn a badge showing a strange animal holding a cup.
‘The Hellequin,’ Fra Ferdinand said.
‘Hellequin?’
‘It is a name they take pride in. Men should suffer for such pride.’
‘Amen.’
‘But the Hellequin did not kill the Sire of Mouthoumet?’ the friar asked.
‘He was buried by the time they arrived.’ She made the sign of the cross. ‘No, the Frenchmen killed him. They came from Avignon.’
‘Avignon!’
‘The priest came from there. He was called Father Calade.’ She made the sign of the cross. ‘He had green eyes and I did not like him. The sire was blinded! The priest gouged his eyes out!’
‘Dear God,’ Fra Ferdinand said quietly. ‘How do you know they came from Avignon?’
‘They said so! The men he left behind told us so! They said if we didn’t give them what they wanted then we would all be damned by the Holy Father himself.’ She paused just long enough to make the sign of the cross. ‘The English asked too. I didn’t like their leader. One of his hands was like the devil’s paw, like a claw. He was courteous,’ she said that grudgingly, ‘but he was hard. I could tell from his hand that he was evil!’
Fra Ferdinand knew how superstitious the old woman was. She was a good woman, but saw omens in clouds, in flowers, in dogs, in smoke, in anything. ‘Did they ask about me?’
‘No.’
‘Good.’ The friar had found a refuge in Mouthoumet. He was becoming too old to walk the roads of France and rely on the kindness of strangers to provide a bed and food, and a year earlier he had come to the tower and the old man had invited him to stay. They had talked together, eaten together, played chess together, and the count had told Fra Ferdinand all the ancient stories of the Dark Lords. ‘The English will come back, I think,’ the friar said now, ‘and perhaps the French too.’
‘Why?’
‘They search for something,’ he said.
‘They searched! They dug up the new graves even, but they found nothing. The English went to Avignon.’
‘You know that?’
‘That’s what they said. That they would follow Father Calade to Avignon.’ She crossed herself again. ‘What would a priest from Avignon want here? Why would the English come to Mouthoumet?’
‘Because of this,’ Fra Ferdinand said, showing her the old blade.
‘If that’s all they want,’ she said scornfully, ‘then give it to them!’
The Count of Mouthoumet, fearing that the rampaging English would plunder the graves of Carcassonne, had begged the friar to rescue la Malice. Fra Ferdinand suspected that the old man really wanted to touch the blade himself, to see this miraculous thing that his ancestors had protected, a relic of such power that possession of it might take a man’s soul directly to heaven, and such was the old man’s desperate pleading that Fra Ferdinand had agreed. He had rescued la Malice, but his fellow friars were preaching that the sword was the key to paradise, and all across Christendom men were lusting after the blade. Why would they preach that? He suspected that he was to blame himself. After the count had told him the legend of la Malice, the friar had dutifully walked to Avignon and recounted the story to the master general of his order and the master general, a good man, had smiled, then said that a thousand such tales were told each year and that none had ever held the truth. ‘Do you remember ten years ago?’ the master general had asked, ‘when the pestilence came? And how all Christendom believed the Grail had been seen? And before that, what was it? Ah, the lance of Saint George! And that was a nonsense too, but I thank you, brother, for telling me.’ He had sent Fra Ferdinand away with a blessing, but maybe the master general had told others of the relic? And now, thanks to the Black Friars, the rumour had infested all Europe. ‘“He who must rule us will find it, and he shall be blessed,’’’ the friar said.
‘What does that mean?’ the old woman asked.
‘It means that some men go mad in search of God,’ Fra Ferdinand explained, ‘it means that every man who wants power seeks a sign from God.’
The old woman frowned, not understanding, but she believed Fra Ferdinand was strange anyway. ‘The world is mad,’ she said, picking on that one word. ‘They say the English devils have burned half of France! Where is the king?’
‘When the English come,’ Fra Ferdinand said, ‘or anyone else, tell them I have gone to the south.’
‘You’re leaving?’
‘It’s not safe for me here. Perhaps I will return when the madness is over, but for now I am going to the high hills by Spain. I shall hide there.’
‘To Spain! They have devils there!’
‘I shall go to the hills,’ Fra Ferdinand reassured her, ‘close to the angels,’ and next morning he walked southwards and only when he was well out of sight of the village and sure that no one watched him did he turn north. He had a long journey to make and a treasure to protect.
He would return la Malice to her rightful owner. He would go to Poitou.
A small man, dark-faced and scowling, with a paint-spattered shock of black hair, was perched on a high trestle and using a brush to touch brown pigment onto an arched ceiling. He said something in a language Thomas did not understand.
‘You speak French?’ Thomas asked.
‘We all have to speak French here,’ the painter said, changing to that language, which he spoke with an execrable accent, ‘of course we damned well speak French. Have you come to give me advice?’
‘On what?’
‘On the fresco, of course, you damned fool. You don’t like the colour of the clouds? The Virgin’s thighs are too big? The angels’ heads are too small? That’s what they told me yesterday,’ he pointed his paintbrush across the ceiling to where flying angels played trumpets in the Virgin’s honour, ‘their heads are too small, they said, but where were they looking from? From up one of my ladders! From the floor they look perfect. Of course they’re perfect. I painted them. I painted the Virgin’s toes too,’ he dabbed the brush angrily at the ceiling, ‘and the goddamned Dominicans told me that was heresy. Heresy! To show the Virgin’s toes? Sweet holy Christ, I painted her with naked tits in Siena, but no one threatened to burn me there.’ He dabbed with the brush, then leaned back. ‘I’m sorry, ma chérie,’ he spoke to the image of Mary that he was painting onto the ceiling, ‘you’re not allowed to have tits and now you’ve lost your toes, but they’ll come back.’
‘They will?’ Thomas asked.
‘The plaster’s dry,’ the painter snarled as though the answer was obvious, ‘and if you paint over a fresco when it’s dry then that paint will peel off like a whore’s scabs. It will take a few years, but her heretical toes will reappear, but the Dominicans don’t know that because they are damned fools.’ He switched into his native Italian and screamed insults at his two assistants, who were using a giant pestle to mix fresh plaster in a barrel. ‘They are also fools,’ he added to Thomas.
‘You have to paint on wet plaster?’ Thomas asked.
‘You came here to have a lesson in how to paint? You damned well pay me. Who are you?’
‘My name is d’Evecque,’ Thomas said. He had no wish to be known by his real name in Avignon. He had enemies enough in the church, and Avignon was the home of the Pope, which meant the town was packed with priests, monks and friars. He had come here because the disagreeable woman in Mouthoumet had assured him that the mysterious Father Calade had come to Avignon, but Thomas now had a sinking feeling that his time was being wasted. He had enquired of a dozen priests if they knew of a Father Calade, and none had recognised the name, but equally no one had recognised Thomas either or knew he had been excommunicated. He was a heretic now, outside the church’s grace, a man to be hunted and burned, yet he could not resist visiting the great fortress-palace of the Papacy. There was a Pope in Rome too, because of the schism in the church, but Avignon held the power, and Thomas was astonished by the riches displayed in the vast building.
‘From your voice,’ the painter said, ‘I’d guess you’re a Norman? Or perhaps an Englishman, eh?’
‘A Norman,’ Thomas said.
‘So what is a Norman doing so far from home?’
‘I wish to see the Holy Father.’
‘Of course you damned well do. But what are you doing here? In the Salle des Herses?’
The Salle des Herses was a room that opened from the great audience chamber of the Papal palace, and it had once contained the mechanism that lowered the portcullis in the palace gate, though that winch and pulley system had long been taken out so that, evidently, the room could become another chapel. Thomas hesitated before answering, then told the truth. ‘I wanted somewhere to piss.’
‘That corner,’ the painter gestured with his brush, ‘in that hole beneath the picture of Saint Joseph. It’s where the rats get in, so do me a favour and drown some of the bastards. So what do you want of the Holy Father? Sins remitted? A free pass to heaven? One of the choirboys?’
‘Just a blessing,’ Thomas said.
‘You ask for so little, Norman. Ask for much, then you might get a little. Or you might get nothing. This Holy Father is not susceptible to bribes.’ The painter scrambled down from the scaffold, grimaced at his new work, then went to a table covered with small pots of precious pigments. ‘It’s a good thing you’re not English! The Holy Father doesn’t like the English.’
Thomas buttoned up his breeches. ‘He doesn’t?’
‘He does not,’ the painter said, ‘and how do I know? Because I know everything. I paint and they ignore me because they can’t see me! I am Giacomo on the scaffold and they are talking beneath me. Not in here,’ he spat, as if the chamber he decorated was not worth the effort, ‘but I am also painting over the angels’ naked tits in the Conclave Chamber, and that’s where they talk. Chatter, chatter, chatter! They’re like birds, their heads together, twittering, and Giacomo is busy hiding tits on the scaffold above and so they forget I am up there.’
‘So what does the Holy Father say about the English?’
‘You want my knowledge? You pay.’
‘You want me to throw paint on your ceiling?’
Giacomo laughed. ‘I hear, Norman, that the Holy Father wants the French to defeat the English. There are three French cardinals here now, all yammering in his ear, but he doesn’t need their encouragement. He’s told Burgundy to fight alongside France. He has sent messages to Toulouse, to Provence, to the Dauphiné, even to Gascony, telling men it is their duty to resist England. The Holy Father is a Frenchman, remember. He wants France strong again, strong enough to pay the church its proper taxes. The English are not popular here,’ he paused to give Thomas a sly look, ‘so it is good you’re not an Englishman, eh?’
‘It is good,’ Thomas said.
‘The Holy Father might curse an Englishman,’ Giacomo chuckled. He climbed the scaffolding again, talking as he went. ‘The Scots have sent men to fight for France and the Holy Father is pleased! He says the Scots are faithful sons of the church, but he wants the English,’ he paused to make a brush-stroke, ‘punished. So you came all this way just for a blessing?’
Thomas had walked to the chamber’s end where an old painting faded on the wall. ‘For a blessing,’ he said, ‘and to look for a man.’
‘Ah! Who?’
‘Father Calade?’
‘Calade!’ Giacomo shook his head. ‘I know of a Father Callait, but not Calade.’
‘You’re from Italy?’ Thomas asked.
‘By the Grace of God I come from Corbola, which is a Venetian city,’ Giacomo said, then nimbly descended the scaffolding and went to the table where he wiped his hands on a rag. ‘Of course I come from Italy! If you want something painted, you ask an Italian. If you want something daubed, smeared or splattered, you ask a Frenchman. Or you ask those two fools,’ he gestured at his assistants, ‘idiots! Keep stirring the plaster! They might be Italians, but they have the brains of Frenchmen. Nothing but spinach between their ears!’ He picked up a leather quirt as if to strike one of his assistants, then abruptly fell to one knee. The two assistants also knelt, and then Thomas saw who had entered the room and he also snatched off his hat and knelt.
The Holy Father had come into the chamber, accompanied by four cardinals and a dozen other priests. Pope Innocent smiled absently at the painter, then stared up at the newly painted frescoes.
Thomas raised his head to look at the Pope. Innocent VI, Pope now for three years, was an old man with wispy hair, a drawn face, and hands that shook. He wore a red cloak, edged with white fur, and he was slightly bent as if his spine was crippled. He dragged his left foot as he walked, but his voice was strong enough. ‘You’re doing good work, my son,’ he said to the Italian, ‘most excellent work! Why, those clouds look more real than real clouds!’
‘All for the glory of God,’ Giacomo muttered, ‘and your own renown, Holy Father.’
‘And for your own glory, my son,’ the Pope said, and sketched a vague blessing towards the two assistants. ‘And are you a painter too, my son?’ he asked Thomas.
‘I am a soldier, Holy Father,’ Thomas said.
‘From where?’
‘From Normandy, Holy Father.’
‘Ah!’ Innocent seemed delighted. ‘You have a name, my son?’
‘Guillaume d’Evecque, Holy Father.’
One of the cardinals, his red robe belted tightly about a glutton’s belly, turned fast from examining the ceiling and looked as if he was about to protest. Then he shut his mouth, but went on glaring at Thomas. ‘And tell me, my son,’ Innocent was oblivious of the cardinal’s reaction, ‘whether you have sworn fealty to the English?’
‘No, Holy Father.’
‘So many Normans have! But I don’t need to tell you that. I weep for France! Too many have died and it is time there was peace in Christendom. My blessing, Guillaume.’ He held out his hand and Thomas stood, walked to him, knelt again and kissed the fisherman’s ring that the Pope wore above his embroidered glove. ‘You have my blessing,’ Innocent said, laying a hand on Thomas’s bare head, ‘and my prayers.’
‘As I shall pray for you, Holy Father,’ Thomas said, wondering if he was the first excommunicate ever to be blessed by a pope. ‘I shall pray for your long life,’ he added the polite phrase.
The hand on his head quivered. ‘I am an old man, my son,’ the Pope said, ‘and my physician tells me I have many years left! But physicians lie, don’t they?’ He chuckled. ‘Father Marchant says his calade would tell me I have a long life yet, but I would rather trust my lying physicians.’
Thomas held his breath, conscious suddenly of his heartbeat. There seemed a chill in the room, then a quiver of the Pope’s hand made Thomas breathe again. ‘Calade, Holy Father?’ he asked.
‘A bird that tells the future,’ the Pope said, taking his hand from Thomas’s. ‘We do indeed live in an age of miracles when birds deliver prophecies! Isn’t that so, Father Marchant?’
A tall priest bowed to the Pope. ‘Your Holiness is miracle enough.’
‘Ah no! The miracle is in here! In the painting! It is superb. I congratulate you, my son,’ the Pope spoke to Giacomo.
Thomas stole a glance at Father Marchant, seeing a slim, dark-faced man with eyes that seemed to glitter; green eyes, forceful eyes, frightening eyes that suddenly looked straight at Thomas, who dropped his gaze to stare at the Pope’s slippers, which were embroidered with Saint Peter’s keys.
The Pope blessed Giacomo and then, pleased with the progress of the new frescoes, limped from the room. His entourage followed him, all but for the fat cardinal and the green-eyed priest, who stayed. Thomas was about to rise, but the cardinal placed a heavy hand on Thomas’s bare head and pressed him back down. ‘Say your name again,’ the cardinal demanded.
‘Guillaume d’Evecque, Your Eminence.’
‘And I am Cardinal Bessières,’ the red-robed man said, keeping his hand on Thomas’s head, ‘Cardinal Bessières, Cardinal Archbishop of Livorno, Papal Legate to King Jean of France, whom God bless above all earthly monarchs.’ He paused, plainly wanting Thomas to echo his last words.
‘May God bless His Majesty,’ Thomas said dutifully.
‘I heard Guillaume d’Evecque died,’ the cardinal said in a dangerous tone.
‘My cousin, Your Eminence.’
‘How did he die?’
‘The plague,’ Thomas said vaguely. Sire Guillaume d’Evecque had been Thomas’s enemy, then his friend, and he had died of the plague, but not before he had fought on Thomas’s side.
‘He fought for the English,’ the cardinal said.
‘I have heard as much, Your Eminence, and it is to our family’s shame. But I hardly knew my cousin.’
The cardinal withdrew his hand and Thomas stood. The priest with the green eyes was staring at the faded painting on the end wall. ‘Did you paint this?’ he demanded of Giacomo.
‘No, father,’ Giacomo answered, ‘it is a very old painting and very badly done, so it was probably daubed there by a Frenchman or perhaps a Burgundian? The Holy Father wants me to replace it.’
‘Make sure you do.’
The priest’s tone drew the attention of the cardinal who now stared at the old painting. He had been looking at Thomas, frowning as if he doubted the truth of what Thomas had said, but the sight of the painting distracted him. The faded picture showed Saint Peter, identifiable because in one hand he held two golden keys, offering a sword towards a kneeling monk. The two men were in a snow-covered field, though the patch of ground about the kneeling man had been cleared of snow. The monk was reaching for the sword, watched by a second monk who peered apprehensively through the half-opened shutter of a small snow-covered house. The cardinal gazed at it for a long time and looked surprised at first, but then shuddered in anger. ‘Who is the monk?’ he demanded of Giacomo.
‘I don’t know, Your Eminence,’ the Italian answered.
The cardinal glanced quizzically at the green-eyed priest, who merely answered with a shrug. The cardinal glowered. ‘Why haven’t you covered it over already?’ he demanded of the painter.
‘Because the Holy Father ordered the ceiling painted before the walls, Your Eminence.’
‘Then cover it now!’ the Cardinal snarled. ‘Cover it before you finish the ceiling.’ He snatched a glance at Thomas. ‘Why are you here?’ he demanded.
‘To receive the Holy Father’s blessing, Your Eminence.’
Cardinal Bessières frowned. He was plainly suspicious of the name Thomas had given, but the existence of the old painting seemed to trouble him even more. ‘Just cover it!’ he ordered Giacomo again, then looked back to Thomas. ‘Where do you lodge?’ he asked.
‘By Saint Bénézet’s church, Your Eminence,’ Thomas lied. In truth he had left Genevieve, Hugh and a score of his men in a tavern beyond the great bridge, far from Saint Bénézet’s church. He lied because the last thing he wanted was Cardinal Bessières to take a sudden interest in Guillaume d’Evecque. Thomas had killed the cardinal’s brother, and if Bessières knew who Thomas really was then the fires of heresy would be lit in the great square beneath the Papal palace.
‘I am curious,’ the cardinal said, ‘about the state of affairs in Normandy. I shall send for you after the None prayers. Father Marchant will fetch you.’
‘I shall indeed,’ the priest said, and made the words sound like a threat.
‘I shall be most honoured to assist Your Eminence,’ Thomas said, keeping his head bowed.
‘Get rid of that painting,’ the cardinal said to Giacomo and then led his green-eyed companion from the room.
The Italian, still on his knees, let out a long breath. ‘He didn’t like you.’
‘Does he like anyone?’ Thomas asked.
Giacomo stood and screamed at his assistants. ‘The plaster will set hard if they don’t stir it!’ he explained his anger to Thomas. ‘They have porridge for brains. They are Milanese, yes? So they are fools. But Cardinal Bessières is no fool, he would be a dangerous enemy, my friend.’ Giacomo did not know it, but the cardinal was already Thomas’s enemy, though fortunately Bessières had never met Thomas and had no idea that the Englishman was even in Avignon. Giacomo went to the table where his pigments were in small clay pots. ‘And Cardinal Bessières,’ he went on, ‘has hopes of being the next Pope. Innocent is frail, Bessières is not. We may have another Holy Father soon.’
‘Why doesn’t he like this painting?’ Thomas asked, pointing to the end wall.
‘Perhaps he has good taste? Or perhaps because it looks as if it was painted by a dog holding a brush stuck up its arsehole?’
Thomas stared at the old picture. The cardinal had wanted to know what story it told, and neither Giacomo nor the green-eyed priest could answer him, but plainly he wanted the painting destroyed so no one else could find the answer. And the picture did tell a story. Saint Peter was handing his sword to a monk in the snow, and the monk must have a name, but who was he? ‘You really don’t know what the picture means?’ Thomas asked Giacomo.
‘A legend?’ the Italian guessed carelessly.
‘But what legend?’
‘Saint Peter had a sword,’ Giacomo said, ‘and I suppose he’s handing it to the church? He should have used it to cut off the painter’s hand and saved us from having to look at his horrible daubs.’
‘But usually the sword is painted in Gethsemane,’ Thomas said. He had seen many church walls painted with the scene before Christ’s arrest when Peter had drawn a sword and cut off the ear of the high priest’s servant, but he had never seen Peter placed in a snowstorm.
‘So the fool who painted this didn’t know his stories,’ Giacomo said.
Yet everything in pictures had a meaning. If a man held a saw then he was Saint Simon, because Simon had been sawn to pieces at his martyrdom. A bunch of grapes reminded folk of the eucharist, King David carried a harp, Saint Thaddeus a club or a carpenter’s rule, Saint George faced a dragon, Saint Denis was always painted holding his own severed head: everything had a meaning, yet Thomas had no idea what this old picture meant. ‘Aren’t you painters supposed to know all these symbols?’
‘What symbols?’
‘The sword, the keys, the snow, the man in the window!’
‘The sword is Peter’s sword, the keys are the keys of heaven! You need teaching how to suck at your mother’s tit?’
‘And the snow?’
Giacomo scowled, plainly uncomfortable with the question.‘The idiot couldn’t paint grass,’ he finally decided, ‘so he slapped on some cheap limewash! It has no meaning! Tomorrow we chip it off and put something pretty there.’
Yet whoever had painted the scene had taken the trouble to clear that patch of snow from around the kneeling man, and he had painted the grass cleverly enough, scattering it with small yellow and blue flowers. So the cleared snow had a meaning, as did the presence of the second monk looking fearfully from the cottage window. ‘Do you have charcoal?’ Thomas asked.
‘Of course I have charcoal!’ Giacomo gestured to the table where his pigments stood.
Thomas went to the door and looked out into the great audience chamber. There was no sign of Cardinal Bessières or of the green-eyed priest, and so he picked up a lump of charcoal and went to the strange painting. He wrote on it.
‘What are you doing?’ Giacomo asked.
‘I want the cardinal to see that,’ Thomas said.
He had scrawled Calix Meus Inebrians in great black letters across the snow. ‘My cup makes me drunk?’ Giacomo asked, puzzled.
‘It’s from a psalm of David,’ Thomas said.
‘But what does it mean?’
‘The cardinal will know,’ Thomas said.
Giacomo frowned. ‘Sweet Christ,’ he said, ‘but you play dangerously.’
‘Thanks for letting me piss here,’ Thomas said. The painter was right, this was dangerous, but if he could not track down Father Calade in this city of his enemies, then he would invite Father Calade to follow him, and Thomas suspected that Father Calade would turn out to be the priest with very green eyes.
And the priest with the green eyes was interested in an old, badly painted picture of two monks and Saint Peter, but the centre of the painting had not been the kneeling monk, nor even the gowned figure of Saint Peter himself, but the sword.
And Thomas, though he could not be certain, was suddenly convinced that the sword had a name: la Malice.
And that day, long before the None prayers, and before anyone could find him and put him to the church’s torture, Thomas and his company left Avignon.
The warm weather came. It was campaigning weather, and all across France men sharpened weapons, exercised horses and waited for the summons to serve the king. The English were sending reinforcements to Brittany and to Gascony and men thought that surely King Jean would raise a great army to crush them, but instead he took a smaller army to the edges of Navarre, to the castle of Breteuil, and there, facing the stronghold’s gaunt walls, his men constructed a siege tower.
It was a monstrous thing, taller than a church’s spire, a scaffold of three floors perched on two iron axles joined to four massive wheels of solid elm. The front and sides of the tower were sheathed in oak planks to prevent the castle’s garrison from riddling the platforms with crossbow bolts, and now, in a cold dawn, men were nailing stiff leather hides to that wooden armour. They worked a mere four hundred paces from the castle and once in a while a defender would shoot a crossbow bolt, but the range was too long and the bolts always fell short. Four flags flew from the tower’s summit, two with the French fleur-de-lys and two showing an axe, the symbol of France’s patron saint, the martyred Saint Denis. The flags stretched and twisted in the wind. There had been a gale in the night and the wind still blew strong from the west.
‘One shower of rain,’ the Lord of Douglas said, ‘and this damn thing will be useless. They’ll never move it! It’ll bog down in mud.’
‘God is on our side,’ his young companion said placidly.
‘God,’ the Lord of Douglas said disgustedly.
‘Watches over us,’ the young man said. He was tall and slender, scarce more than twenty or twenty-one years old, with a strikingly handsome face. He had fair hair that was brushed back from a high forehead, blue eyes that were calm, and a mouth that seemed constantly hovering on the edge of a smile. He was from Gascony, where he owned a fief that had been sequestered by the English, leaving him without the income of his lands, which loss should have rendered him poor, but the Sire Roland de Verrec was renowned as the greatest of France’s tournament fighters. Some had claimed that Joscelyn of Berat was the better man, but at Auxerre, Roland had defeated Joscelyn three times, then tormented the brutal champion, Walther of Siegenthaler, with quicksilver swordplay. At Limoges he had been the only man standing at the end of a vicious melee, while in Paris the women had sighed as he destroyed two hardened knights who had twice his years and many times his experience. Roland de Verrec earned the fees of a champion because he was lethal.
