The Templar, the Queen and Her Lover: (Knights Templar 24) Read online

  A clattering of stones from outside. He didn’t stop to think; he couldn’t carry le Vieux to safety, not with a maddened Arnaud behind him. They’d both be killed. No, he must flee.

  Jean ran on light, quiet feet to the small gate that led out to the escarpment. The door was bolted with a baulk of timber, and he pulled it aside silently, then eased the door open a little, and slipped out.

  And once out, he ran and ran.

  City ditch, London Wall

  The musicians heard about their friend’s death later in the afternoon, and were soon there at the ditch just over the other side of the great wall from the Fleet Prison. The inquest was just finished when they got there, and the body was being carried away on a makeshift hurdle, four men transporting it reluctantly, one looking as though he would soon be sick from the smell. Charlie stood studying the proceedings with apparent interest.

  ‘The poor bastard,’ Ricard muttered.

  ‘What happened to him?’ Janin wondered.

  There was a small crowd already thinning, but one old man showed no sign of wishing to leave the place. ‘It was me found him. Poor little shite-wit. Must have been wandering out after dark to be killed like that. Probably set on by footpads.’

  ‘He was robbed?’ Ricard asked.

  ‘They took his purse, yes,’ Corp agreed mournfully. If it had been discovered at the inquest, he’d have been kicking himself for not finding it first.

  ‘Poor Peter,’ Adam said.

  ‘A bad way to die.’

  ‘Stabbed? Was he knocked on the head? Throttled?’

  ‘Oh no. He was held under until he choked. They drowned him – in all that muck! Can you imagine?’

  It was a short while later, as the four remaining musicians stood in a tavern just along from Temple Bar, toasting their dead friend, that the thought occurred to Janin first.

  ‘Ricard,’ he said, ‘why would a man kill him like that?’

  ‘How should I know? I’m no murderer. Maybe it was a drunk who decided he didn’t like the look of Peter’s face, or something. Or just a cutpurse who thought it’d be easier to kill him than rob him.’

  Janin nodded slowly, but without conviction. ‘If that was the case, why drown him? Hitting him over the head would be easier, or stabbing him. Why’d someone want to drown him there?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  ‘Someone who knew a man and his wife who are dead, I was thinking. If they wanted revenge on the men who’d killed them, and everyone was saying there were these musicians who’d been leching after the wench? Perhaps a brother or father? They may want revenge – and a death in a nastier way than a quick stab.’

  Ricard gazed at him blankly for a long moment, and then longer and harder at Charlie, who was playing and giggling loudly with another small brute. He hurriedly polished off the remains of his ale. ‘I think we ought to get back to the palace and stay there until we leave the country.’

  West of Paris

  The old cart rumbled slowly, and yet Blanche had to hurry to keep up. Her hands were fettered, a long chain leading from her wrists to the rear of it, and were she to fall, she would be dragged some way before being able to get to her feet.

  Her eyes were tormented by the light still. It was so hard to see where she was going, and while the dust from the wheels plagued her, worse was the sheer pain of the brightness lancing into her eyes and making her head ache for every moment of the journey. She was so unused to the light.

  Still, the anguish was worth it for the unadulterated delight of the sensation of being in the open once more. Dear Christ in heaven! To hear the birds again, to see trees and the little shoots that showed spring might not be so very far away, was so overwhelming, she spent much of the journey wondering whether she should laugh aloud, or jump and dance with pure joy. It was like being reborn.

  Perhaps, given a little time, she might grow to feel that she had indeed become renewed. It would take much, though, to achieve that. To feel truly alive again she must be able to forget her past. To forget her husband the king of France, to forget their children – to forget the gaoler at Château Gaillard … No. She could not think of such things. Better by far to remain in the present and live for the future. That was sensible. Much more sensible.

  Live for now, and pray to God.

  Château Gaillard

  Le Vieux groped for consciousness like a diver deep in a pool desperately striving for the surface.

  He had been here sitting by the fire with a mug of beer in his hand, talking with the others. Jean had walked out earlier, said he needed a piss. All the others started telling stories. There was little else to do now that their most important prisoner was gone. Without Queen Blanche, there was little to do.

  Of course! Le Vieux had been telling them about her, about her appalling conduct – adultery when married to the heir to the throne. Such depravity, such dedication to her own pleasures, had led to her arrest. She was condemned to come here, and here she should rot.

  Astonishing that her husband had become king in so short a space of time. A good man. Pious, honourable, committed to his realm. Le Vieux had known him for many years, and had met him once, in Paris. His commander had introduced him. That was in the days when Charles’s father had still been alive, of course. Dear Philip the Fair of blessed memory. There was a man!

  There was a smell. Unpleasant. It reminded him of battlefields long ago.

  He had told them all about the bitch, yes. And then he had told them about her spreading her legs in the gaol, how she’d given birth later. Yes, and how she’d wept when the child was taken away. Well, any mother would. But the adulterous wife of a prince of France could not keep an illegitimate child.

  Arnaud had loved her, so he said. She was his best, his favourite. All the others here knew that. They’d looked away when the conversation moved in that direction. No one wanted to think about such things.

  And then it was that Arnaud’s impatient slapping and prodding started to wake him. ‘What? Eh?’

  ‘Vieux! Vieux! Wake up! He escaped. Look around you!’

  Les Andelys, Normandy

  Jean reached the town an hour before dark, and hurried up the narrow streets, heart pounding, feeling sick and faint from the horror of the castle.

  ‘Where is the bayle?’ he called when he saw a man. The fellow stopped dead at the sight of him, staring, and then jerked his chin towards the top of the town. Jean thanked him, and lurched off again, going cautiously on the cobbles.

  It was strangely silent in the town today. Usually this would be a bustling little place, with hordes thronging the streets. Now, though, it seemed almost deserted. It was … wrong. Jean felt his legs begin to slow, and instead of rushing headlong, he began to walk more hesitantly.

  There were shouts from up towards the town’s square, and he bent his steps that way, wondering what was happening.

  ‘The entire garrison has been slain,’ a man was shouting. ‘All dead.’

  Jean stopped. He was about to breathe a sigh of relief when a cold, unpleasant certainty struck him. There was no way anyone could have got here before him. Surely Arnaud was still chasing Berengar, and even if he wasn’t, he couldn’t have reached here yet, could he? He was busy carving holes in Berengar’s body, surely. But all the other members of the garrison were dead. Who could have come here?

  Filled with trepidation, he went to the wall and sidled up towards the marketplace, keeping to the shadows and looking about him with anxiety. This made no sense.

  In the market he saw the bailiff standing on a cart, haranguing the crowds who ringed him.

  ‘I need some men to come with me to see what’s happened and help to clear up. We’ll need to clean the bodies and move them. Who’s coming with me?’

  ‘Not just that, Bayle. Someone’ll have to read the last rites and prepare them for a vigil in the church,’ a man shouted.

  ‘We are fortunate that this man came, then,’ the bailiff said. ‘The castle’s vicar came to te
ll us all about the madmen up there. He can officiate at the services.’

  He beckoned a chubby father down at the wheel, and the smiling, benign fellow climbed on to the cart with him. ‘This is Père Pierre Clergue of Pamiers. He will help us. Any more questions?’

  Only one, Jean said under his breath. Who was this ‘castle’s vicar’? He’d never seen him before in his life. And he was supposed to have come from Pamiers, the place where Jean had witnessed that awful atrocity, and been arrested before being released to come here.

  And then another, sickening thought struck him. It was too soon for anyone from the castle to have arrived, no matter who this man was. Yet the town had been told of the killings. That meant this man had to have been aware that the garrison was going to be killed.

  ‘Christ in chains!’ he groaned. He had to get away. Run! Go somewhere far away.

  No. He would go to Paris and tell the King’s men there what had happened. That would be best.

  As soon as the menfolk of the town had made their way out and across the river to the castle, Jean himself hurried out, and took the road east and south, praying and sobbing as he went.

  Chapter Seven

  Château Gaillard

  The castle smelled like a charnel house, Père Pierre thought as he wandered about the great court.

  Once it would have been a magnificent place. The walls were all limestone, white and gleaming, but at some time in the past it had been sacked and many of the walls were in poor repair. Still, it was a place of happiness to him. It would hopefully mark the end of a long journey.

  ‘In here, Père!’

  The sergent had the brains of a goat, but he was reliable enough. Père Pierre climbed up and crossed the bridge from the outer fortress into the upper, main section, to where the sergent stood waiting. ‘It’s not a pretty sight, Père. Are you sure you are ready for this?’

  ‘Oh, I think so,’ the little man said with a deprecating smile. His amiable blue eyes were sad as he took in the place.

  He was used to the sight of bodies. From that first journey down to the south with the madman Arnaud and the scruffy man-at-arms, the man all knew simply as le Vieux, he had been in close communion with the dead. So many over the years. He had helped dear Bishop Fournier with the Inquisition, writing down the testimony in his careful, small but neat hand, and then going with so many to hear their last words and praying with them.

  Better than most, too, he knew exactly what sort of man Arnaud was. From the day when the poor woman had died, he had known. Arnaud had demanded that they leave instantly, desperate to run from that place. And later in the prisons, when he looked after the women in their cells, Pierre had felt sorry for the women as he heard them weep, sob, or scream as Arnaud left them. All had the same end, the pyre. Agnes in particular had died badly, he recalled. Arnaud had been cross with her, because she had not been nice enough to him, so he had let her death come as slowly as possible. Shameful.

  So many memories, so many dead. He only hoped that today there would be just one more. The world would be a safer, better place without that one face, he thought.

  He took a deep breath, and fingered his rosary, murmuring the prayers as he crossed the court towards the guard’s building. Here the bodies were sprawled in undignified postures, the flies all over the sightless eyes, the gaping mouths. There were already little white clusters of eggs in the wounds. Early, he thought, for flies, but the damned things were always present.

  Praying, making the sign of the cross, muttering the words that should aid the souls’ passage to heaven, he made his way about the dead men. He pulled a face at the smells and sounds of buzzing, but continued on his way.

  ‘And the others?’ he asked.

  ‘There aren’t any more,’ the sergent replied.

  ‘There must be!’ Dear God! Don’t say that the madman has escaped! Pierre prayed silently. Please, not that!

  Second Thursday of Lent7

  Louvre, Paris

  The work was tedious, but Cardinal Thomas d’Anjou was glad of it. He polished the gold and silver at the altar of the little chapel with a vigour that was entirely absent from his usual demeanour.

  A taciturn man, he usually displayed little feeling, but in a church or chapel he could enjoy submitting to the service of God. It was an essential part of his life, this careful cleaning of all the paraphernalia of his religion, and he enjoyed it all the more the higher up the ladder of authority he climbed within the Church. There were some who said that he might be the next pope. Well, perhaps so, but he would not worry himself about that. He had two masters: God and the king of France. Fortunately the latter was as religious as he was himself, and service to one meant satisfying the other.

  The knock at the door was an unwelcome distraction. He pursed his lips, frowning down at the jewel-encrusted cross he had been cleaning, and then sighed. ‘Yes?’

  Two men walked in, and he looked from one to the other. ‘François?’

  The older of the two, a narrow-featured man with the appearance of a hawk, with greying hair over hard, piercing brown eyes, nodded. ‘I do not think you have met Père Pierre?’

  ‘Ah, you are the father from the Comté de Foix?’

  The father, a chubby man with the face and figure of a man unused to travel, bowed delightedly at being recognised. His clothing was stained and worn, with many loose threads and muddy patches. He looked, as he was, the latest in a long line of peasants, the cardinal told himself.

  His face betrayed none of his disgust for the tatty fellow. Instead he looked at François enquiringly.

  ‘It is done,’ François said.

  ‘Good. Then there are only a few loose ends remaining which need to be tied.’

  Vigil of Feast of Piranus8

  Queen’s chamber, Westminster

  The Queen nodded and thanked the company. All was arranged, then. She was to be leaving the next day.

  At least she would not appear to be a pauper begging at her brother’s door. Her worst fears had not been realised, thanks be to Christ. She would have with her a train of more than thirty people all told. True, all had been selected by her husband – or more likely Despenser – but that would scarcely matter. She had her own plans, after all. Did everyone really think her so stupid?

  Perhaps they did. They could not cope with the idea that a woman might have a brain of her own. Despenser had fully surrendered to her, in so far as he had stopped attempting to have her destroyed. No, he was content for her to leave the country and achieve a diplomatic treaty with her brother, provided Despenser and the King did not have to go to France themselves. That would be too dangerous. Despenser knew full well that his life would be forfeit, were he ever to set foot on French soil. That was the price of his piracy when he had been younger, when he had overwhelmed a French craft and stolen it, killing the crew. Now he was persona non grata in France.

  However, she still found it astonishing that the fool believed her when she pretended to have forgotten his insults, his lies, his mendacious treatment of her. He thought either that she was so dim she had not noticed, or that she was so foolish that she had forgotten and forgiven. He had himself forgotten that she was a woman of the royal house of Capet of France. She would never forgive an insult. Never!

  When Queen Isabella first arrived here in England, she had been a young and naïve child, ready to do her duty by her new husband. At the time they had both been little more than pawns in the great game that was diplomacy. Neither had been given any choice in their partners. Their futures were set upon their joint path by their fathers, the kings of France and England, to cement a peace between their bickering nations. The Pope agreed, and thus the life of the seven-year-old girl had been welded to the nineteen-year-old man’s at a betrothal ceremony in Paris. Her husband-to-be, Edward of Caernarvon, was not there. She was not to meet him for another five years, when he took her hand in the cathedral of Our Lady of Boulogne. Soon afterwards they left France for England.

 
; ‘Your royal highness? There are some men here to meet you.’

  The esquire bowed so low, for a moment she thought that he would beat his brow upon the paved floor.

  That was one of the aspects of her life which was so confusing. In all her years as a child she had been treated with the respect due to a queen. It was fitting for a woman of her position in the world. But when she reached England her life had changed. As she watched the men being brought in, she could remember that time so clearly. The shame, the dishonour she felt, how demeaned she had been.

  When she was wedded, her father had showered gifts on Edward, rich jewels and rings, and had sent more for Isabella as part of her dowry. She was a queen in her own right, after all. There was an agreement that when they were married, Isabella would have lands dowered to her from the king of England’s French territories. But when they had been living together for a little, the twelve-year-old queen was disturbed to find none of the promised money appearing. There was nothing with which to support herself, let alone her household of knights, squires, servants … She was forced to resort to resentful letters to her father. And then she saw that the rings and trinkets promised to her had appeared on the person of the unlovely Piers Gaveston, her husband’s ‘friend’.

  It made her cold with rage to learn that her husband could prefer the company of that vain, arrogant, sneering Gascon. He made those first few months – nay, years – miserable for her. By her husband, she was treated as a child. As his sister, perhaps. Ignored, unloved, and only occasionally summoned to royal events.

  Perhaps it was understandable. Now a woman of almost thirty years, she was better able to see how a man like her husband might have viewed her. He, a grown adult of five and twenty years, she a small girl of only twelve. It was no surprise, in truth, that he would seek the companionship of others closer to him in age. After a time she had grown to appreciate this. She did not grudge her husband his affairs with other women, even when one gave birth to his bastard, and she was able to feel willing to console Edward when the lad died on his first campaign.