The King of Thieves: Page 25

  ‘Will you release us, then?’

  The speaker was a short man, with a face that appeared to have been burned by acid when he was a child. One eye was milky-white, although his hair was still unmarked by the frost of age. He was probably only some two-and-twenty years, Pons thought to himself. And already an expert in so many aspects of thieving and murder.

  All these men had been swept up by the watchmen of the city in the last day. There were some forty or more in different gaols all about the town. Some were wanted already, and one was destined for Monfaucon, to be broken on the wheel for his offences, but most were like this little man: idiots who had so little ambition and intelligence that their crimes were obvious to all. However, they were useful, since they were likely to know more than most about the men who were capable of killing a Procureur.

  ‘Please? You have nothing against me.’

  Pons and Vital exchanged a look. ‘No,’ Pons said. ‘You will remain here until we are satisfied that there was no collusion between you and others to murder the Procureur.’

  ‘But we know nothing! Nothing!’ The man swore as Pons and Vital nodded to the gaoler, and the heavy door swung shut with a dull thud. The keys rattled, the bolts slid into their niches in the wall, and the gaoler began to lead the way up the damp staircase.

  ‘Wait!’

  Pons turned. ‘You want something else?’

  ‘You must realise you cannot keep us here for long?’

  ‘My friend, King Charles himself has demanded that we take all measures to ensure that the killer is found. You have no rights in this. You will remain until we remember you and consider letting you go free.’

  ‘But we …’

  ‘Bonjour, mon ami.’ Pons smiled, and set his face to the steps again.

  Les Halles, Paris

  Jacquot rested, watching a bear baiting, then wandering idly along with the crowds, viewing other entertainments.

  The city was such a vast place. Cut in half by the great swirl of grey river, the islands in the middle where the cathedral and King’s main courts were based, this was the centre of Christendom now that the Holy Land was lost. Men and women congregated here, for Paris held all hopes, all desires, within its walls. Jacquot had arrived looking upon Paris as the place where he could find a new life, and it had given him that. However, in return it had taken all he had. All his honour and integrity had been eroded until there was now only this: a husk of a man, full of self-loathing, desperate for salvation but not having any idea how to achieve it.

  If he had found just a fraction of love, of friendliness, he might have been different.

  Walking about this area, he studied others now. They drew his eye as they had not for many years. Men and women, smiling, laughing. Children at their sides, gambolling and capering in the thin sunshine. Men buying flowers and sweet-meats for their wives. One man bellowing with laughter, throwing his son into the air, while the lad screamed with delight.

  It reminded him of another time. Another life. When he had his own children, when he had hurled his boy up into the sky. But now, all he could remember was the same boy’s face, blue-grey, peering up sightlessly from the winding sheet as Jacquot wept and threw soil into those dead eyes. Up in the air, then into the ground. It made a fist in his breast, a fist that clenched about his heart.

  Jacquot was lost. He was in the city’s market and he was lost. He recognised nothing. Panic was his sole companion as he span on his heel, desperate to be away, to be anywhere other than this. He wanted to run, to pelt off in the direction of his rooms. Or a tavern. Anything. Anywhere. Panting, he felt like a wolf in a trap, frantic with the urge to flee, but utterly incapable of doing so. His legs would not obey.

  And then, the horror of his loneliness in the midst of all this joy left him, and he was calm again. He felt the fist open in his chest, his breathing return to normal, the cool sobriety return. There was nothing here for him to fear. The only danger for him was the King.

  Last night Jacquot had felt secure. Now, he knew he was in grave danger. The King would have to eradicate him just to prove that he was still the King. Thus, Jacquot had two choices. He could leave, or he must fight.

  He would fight, then. It was not in his heart to leave this whore of a city. He had run all the way here ten years ago. He wouldn’t be forced to run away again.

  The King was past his time – Amélie was right about that. The King must go, and perhaps Jacquot would take Paris in his place.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Louvre

  Baldwin was still in a pensive frame of mind when he and the others returned to the Louvre. Once inside, he looked down at Wolf and said to the others, ‘We should remain here, I think. There is no point in making ourselves unpopular with Vital and Pons when our task is to do all we can to protect the Duke. It is his safety that we are here to ensure.’

  ‘Aye, true enough,’ Sir Richard said. ‘But if the Bishop is accused of complicity or worse again, it’s best that we know the details, so far as we can, of the investigation.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Baldwin said. He looked up at the massive white walls of the castle.

  ‘Something wrong, Baldwin?’ Simon asked. He was growing quite anxious for his friend. It was unlike him to be so introspective.

  Baldwin turned to him with a lift of his eyebrows. ‘Should there be? No, Simon, I was merely reconsidering my priorities. There are times when it is absolutely right for a man to leave his duties to investigate a matter such as this death of the city’s prosecutor, but there are other things which demand our attention, as good Sir Richard has reminded me. Our place – my place – is here, in this castle, ensuring that the Queen and our friend Bishop Walter do not come to blows, and seeing to the defence of the Duke of Aquitaine. It is not my place – our place – to investigate the deaths of men in this castle. Come – let us find the young Duke now.’

  The Queen felt utterly contented, in a manner she had not known for months, sitting in her chair, her son at her side in a similar seat, listening to the bickering of her musicians as they debated amongst themselves what they should play next.

  ‘Mother, do they always argue like this?’

  ‘No, I feel that it may be your presence which has caused them this additional pressure,’ she returned. As she said this, she bent her head a little in the direction of the gittern player. The musician swallowed, and hurriedly struck up some chords. Around him, the other men gradually followed his lead. While they played, the Queen turned her head towards the little huddle of ladies-in-waiting.

  ‘My Lady?’ whispered her maid, Alicia.

  The Queen nodded, and Alicia began to usher guests, servants and hangers-on away, to give the Queen more space. Of the two ladies-in-waiting who were moved, Lady Alice de Toeni looked quite shocked; beside her, though, Lady Joan of Bar gave the Queen a slight wink.

  ‘She is happy to tolerate your foibles, I see, Mother,’ the Duke said. ‘Are you feeling unwell?’

  The Queen smiled. He was not yet thirteen, and yet he had the observant eye of a man a great deal older.

  ‘I feel better now that those people have been removed. I thought I was to be crushed when they all came in behind us.’

  ‘But why include the ladies-in-waiting?’ he wanted to know.

  ‘I do not trust them all. If you need to converse with me, my darling, you should always try to do so through Alicia. She is my friend and dearest companion. Do not speak with Lady Alice de Toeni.’

  ‘She’s a creature of my father’s?’

  ‘Yes. And not to be trusted,’ the Queen said, scarcely moving her lips.

  It was true. When King Edward had sent the Queen here as his emissary, so he had fenced her about with his own people. Among her ladies-in-waiting, the only one in whom she could confide when she left England was Alicia, a sweet child who knew, moreover, that her own happiness depended entirely upon the Queen. She adored one of Isabella’s guards, Richard Blaket, and that gave the Queen a certain cont
rol. Alice de Toeni, by contrast, was utterly devoted to the King, and the Queen suspected that she was a spy.

  Lady Joan of Bar was a different proposition. Formerly the wife of the Earl Warenne, some ten years or so ago she had managed to leave her vile brute of a husband.

  ‘If the matter is urgent, you may be able to trust Lady Joan,’ the Queen added.

  ‘Her? But wasn’t she selected to join you by Sir Hugh le Despenser?’

  ‘Yes. But she suffered so much from her husband, I think she now feels sympathy for me and remorse for accepting the task of coming to spy on me. She will not harm me, I believe.’

  ‘That is good. I will bear these women in mind.’

  ‘What of you, my darling? What news is there?’

  ‘I have heard that the Despenser is in another panic just now. He fears that at any time the Lord Mortimer will arrive on our eastern shores to overrun the country with a ragtag and bobtail host of Hainault mercenaries. He writes to all the Admirals warning them, I hear.’

  ‘He is a frantic fool,’ Queen Isabella snorted. ‘And the sooner he is removed the better.’

  ‘He is my father’s friend, Mother.’

  She noticed the sudden use of the personal. ‘You are quite right. And yet he rapes the whole nation. Your father’s friend treats it as his own private plaything. How many more loyal servants of your father must be dispossessed and exiled because of Sir Hugh le Despenser?’

  ‘Sir Hugh has the right to protect himself. Mortimer would have seen him hanged.’

  ‘It is a mutual ambition.’

  ‘Perhaps so,’ he said. But there was no answering chuckle in his tone. He looked listless and fretful.

  ‘Darling, you are worried?’

  ‘Mother, I have seen the effects of the wars on you and the King, as well as on my friends in the household. Good men are dead because of the squabbling between the Despenser and the Marcher Lords. I would not have any more good men die.’

  ‘What of the realm?’

  He glanced at her, and suddenly she saw a man in those shrewd blue eyes. ‘I feel I should be asking you that, Mother!’

  She smiled, turning back to the musicians. Putting out her hand, she took his, but only for a moment. There was no answering pressure from his fingers. It was not a lack of love for her, but the mere reminder that she was not his only parent, and that he had loyalty to his father too.

  ‘Mother?’

  Ah, she thought, here it comes.

  ‘Mother, Bishop Walter has asked me to speak with you, to request that you meet with him. Will you do so?’

  ‘What does he want with me?’

  ‘I think, only to speak. He is deeply worried, too. He wants to see if he can heal the rift between you, he says.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ she spat. ‘Will he return to me my tin mines? My estates? My children? My money? What of the men of my household, the ones exiled by his advice, the others held in English gaols? All guilty of the atrocious crime of loving me and wishing to serve.’

  ‘He is a different man from the arrogant Treasurer of a year ago, Mother. Now he sits quietly. I think he realises his treatment of you was not fair. And he is terribly fearful of the matter of the man who was killed.’

  ‘I had heard something of that,’ she said. ‘But you think that he is malleable now? He will be honourable in his dealings with me?’

  ‘I hope so.’

  She smiled. ‘Hope is so misjudged a commodity, do you not think?’

  ‘I feel sure that the Bishop is better acquainted than I.’

  ‘So I should speak with him again. That is well. I shall, you may tell him.’

  ‘I will ask Richard of Bury to see him.’

  ‘This Richard … you are content to keep him?’

  ‘He is a good tutor, Mother. He is diligent,’ the Prince said with a slight droop of his mouth. ‘Too diligent on occasion, when the sun is warm and the deer waiting to be hunted. But he teaches well, and forces me to consider the importance of a martial spirit and love of the arts. I have learned all about Alexander, about the Romans, about King Arthur. I sometimes feel I must wade and wallow in their history all my days.’

  ‘So long as he is loyal.’

  ‘I think he is the most loyal of all my servants.’

  ‘Good. We will have need of loyal men before long.’

  ‘What shall I tell the Bishop?’

  ‘That I will be pleased to see him in two days. I will let him know where and when. And now, let us give ourselves up to the music.’

  ‘Very well.’ He listened silently for a moment or two. Then: ‘Mother? Where on God’s clean earth did you find these men?’

  Wednesday after the Feast of the Archangel Michael*

  Paris

  Stapledon stood licking his lips in the antechamber to the Queen’s rooms, keen to get on with the interview, and yet fearful of it. It would not be a meeting of minds, of that he was sure.

  ‘Bishop? Please follow me in here,’ a servant called from a doorway, and Bishop Walter rose from his bench and glided after the man, his heavy robes concealing his feet.

  ‘My Lady, I hope I see you well?’

  ‘Dispense with the pleasantries, my Lord Bishop. You and I know each other well enough to realise they mean nothing. What do you want?’

  ‘My Lady, I fear for your safety,’ the Bishop said. ‘It is one thing to return to a beloved country, to visit a brother, to see all the places which have appealed so much, but at this time it is dangerous. War is still possible.’

  ‘You have little faith in my diplomacy, then.’

  ‘It is not that, it is the value which you hold. You are too important, my Lady, to be left here in Paris.’

  ‘Oh, that is not a matter of concern, my Lord Bishop. Since you refuse me my own income from my estates in Devon, and since you also now will not extend to me the money which my husband allocated for me, I am forced to live away from Paris for much of the time. The King, my brother, is not so parsimonious as to see me resort to beggary to keep myself fed and clothed.’

  This was a pointed comment, and the Bishop flinched. ‘My Lady, all I did, I did for the good of the realm. It was my duty, and I discharged it as I thought best. I am very sorry if any action of mine was enough to disturb you.’

  ‘Not for long, my Lord Bishop. I was a little discommoded to have all my children sequestrated, I confess, but what is that for a woman, compared to your mature judgement.’

  ‘My Lady, let me …’

  ‘No, my Lord Bishop. Let me explain to you. I want the money which the King my husband sent with you. I want it in my coffers, because that will allow me to fulfil my duties to him. It will also permit me to ensure the safety of my son. I and he will not be here forever, and we must leave a good impression. That means largesse, feasting, entertaining. Have you ever known an impecunious ambassador? Yet you insist on making me one such. It is not satisfactory.’

  ‘My Lady, I would gladly, but the King was most insistent. He said that you must return.’

  ‘I say I wish to have the money first.’

  ‘Your Royal Highness, sadly—’

  ‘So you will refuse. That is a great shame. You know, of course, that the French court blames you for the death of the Procureur?’

  ‘That was nothing to do with me!’

  ‘Really? All say you were seen quarrelling violently with him. And all Frenchmen know how argumentative the English are. And how prone they are to grabbing weapons and attacking.’

  ‘But on the day he died, I was—’

  ‘I am sure you have a perfect alibi, Bishop. However, it will not suffice. A man with your wealth can easily afford an agent to do your bidding.’

  ‘My Queen, will you not please consider returning home?’

  She looked at him, and now allowed a small smile to stretch her mouth. ‘Of course I will. As I said in the court, just as soon as that pharisee is gone, I will be happy to go home.’ She rose. ‘I will not return to my husband until S
ir Hugh le Despenser and his father are gone from the kingdom forever.’

  Temple

  Pons returned to the gaol alone when the message reached him. Vital was asleep, and there was little need to wake him, so far as Pons could see. There had been many similar messages in the last day or two, and always it was a whining cur of a peasant demanding to be released.

  The streets here were crowded about with tall, timber-framed buildings, but as he approached the river and the Île de la Cité, the streets broadened suddenly, and the walls about him became stone. The gaol where this man was kept was at the northern gate to the Île, the Grand Châtelet. Here, Pons nodded to the guard, and was soon inside.

  Walking down the circular staircase was treacherous in the extreme. The water was a constant sound here, with droplets falling from the ceiling, and green slime clinging to the stonework all around. Pons was sure that if he was to be left here for any time, he would be driven mad. The sound of water dripping, the wash of the river, the clanking of chains, the constant smell of faeces from the buckets in the little cells, all would contribute to a feeling of intolerable despair.

  ‘What is it?’ he said.

  ‘I want to speak to you, master.’

  It was the youngster with the white eye, he saw. The lad had his face to the grating in the wooden door, like a man trying to escape by forcing his way through the ironwork. His lips were outside the cell. Perhaps that was it, he wanted to be free so desperately that merely pushing his lips to the free air outside was enough.

  In the glittering torchlight, the man’s one good eye rolled with anguish. Of course, Pons thought, the others in the cell would be interested to know what the boy thought he could sell … and if he was to betray another, his life would not be worth a brass sou.

  In the last few days, many of the prisoners gathered up by the Watch, were already so desperate to escape their cells that they were calling Vital and Pons to relate any snippet. So far, none of it had been of any use whatever. If there had been much chance of a breakthrough, he would have woken Vital, but now, seeing this man’s yearning to be free of the cell, he was glad he had not done so. This was another useless dead-end, if he knew anything.