Defiant Unto Death (6 page)

‘We don't want your food, Brother. I came to bury my dead and have prayers offered for them.'

The monk glanced to where the small cart had been brought to a halt behind the horsemen. ‘We have two of our own buried in sacred ground.'

‘My soldiers won't care whose company they keep. Their souls need forgiveness and their bodies a Christian burial,' said Blackstone wearily. He wanted to rid himself of this damp place and get home. His towns would be resupplied with the weapons and money they had gained and his men needed women and ale. Blackstone looked at the bedraggled monks; they seemed in greater need of care than his own men. ‘Is there game here?'

‘There is plenty in the forest, but we have no weapons and Sir Henri forbade anyone but himself and his men to hunt.'

‘Sir Henri's arrogant soul has not yet been laid to rest, but his ghost can't prevent you taking game. Have your monks dig the grave, one will do, long and deep enough for my men.'

He spurred his horse forward. Fresh venison or boar would fill his men's bellies and reunite body and soul.

By the time he returned the watery sun was halfway into the afternoon. And where his men's corpses had lain in the back of the cart there was now a roe deer that would feed them for the next few days, a supplement to de Grailly's cooks' pottage, and another for the grateful monks.

A wooden cross was hammered into the dirt; Blackstone's men knelt in the mud and prayed while he stood behind them and fingered the silver goddess. Brother Clement spoke a Latin liturgy, but cast a disapproving look in Blackstone's direction.

‘Humility before God costs a man nothing but his pride,' he said, taking the risk of chiding Blackstone as the men gathered their horses.

‘I'm not proud, Brother.'

‘Then what?'

‘Angry.'

‘With God?' the monk quavered, alarmed that the man who stood before him, wounds bandaged and features disfigured by war, might be an agent of Satan.

‘It's none of your business,' Blackstone said, adjusting the belly strap on his saddle.

‘There are abandoned souls who haunt these desolate marshlands at night. We hear them cry out in the forests. Make your peace, lord knight, and He will save you. Cast aside that pagan goddess you wear and let your men see a holy warrior lead them.'

‘What you hear are wolves calling their brothers to the kill. My goddess is of the marshlands and the trees, she's in mountain and stream. She's everywhere I need her.' He pulled himself up into the saddle and tossed a sack full of silver plate and a bag of coin at the monk's feet. ‘And she does not kill a deaf-mute boy. My brother was slaughtered like a beast ten years back, too soon for my anger to cool. But on my journey here I promised God that I'd give my share of the spoils to the first poor church I found. I keep my promises. Just in case He's watching. Spend it wisely or I'll hear of it.'

Blackstone turned the horse away as Brother Clement's disbelief gave way to joy when he tipped open the sack. He called after Blackstone: ‘My lord! We shall! An infirmary and more! Sir Thomas, you will always find a welcome here!'

‘You hear that,' Meulon said. ‘You'll be an honoured guest in this slime pit.'

‘Then let's hope we never ride this way again,' said Blackstone.

Meulon turned in the saddle and looked back at the gathered monks, embracing in their joy and clasping hands in grateful prayer, eyes raised to heaven, for the bounty delivered by the scarred Englishman.

‘Your share might have been better served by bribing a town's burghers to open their gates to us. It would save another fight.'

Blackstone dug his heels into the horse's flanks. ‘We have all we need. No more towns, Meulon. We're going home. We've missed Christmas and my son's birthday. There'll be no more fighting this year.'

The street urchin scurried through the muddy backstreets of Paris that he had known all of his eight years, avoiding the jostling crowds on the main cobbled thoroughfares that carried carts and carriages. He sidestepped the piles of human faeces that congealed and stank in his path and in doorways. Although the city's ordinance stipulated that each resident was to carry these deposits to disposal tips, the boy, whose only given name was Raoul, knew of no one who obeyed the Provost. Instead, Raoul, and others like him, shovelled it away for them. A crust of stale bread or a near-worthless coin was payment enough to ensure he pleased those who squatted and relieved themselves while he hovered, like one of the flies above the steaming pile, ready to scoop it up. When the stench-ridden alleyways became too fetid he carried buckets of water from the city fountains to sluice the doorways and the gutters that ran down the middle of the narrow streets. From dawn until the Angelus rang at eight at night he would move from one workplace to the next; it was a routine that would not pay a man enough to feed himself or his family, but enabled the feral child to survive another day. No task was too menial.

He had once taken a young whore to the man who ran one of the public baths. She was no more than thirteen but she could pleasure the fat old bastard as had the daughter who had run from his incest and was found drowned in the Seine. Some said he had killed her himself to avoid eternal damnation by the local priest to whom she had confessed. Suicide condemned her anyway. It was of no matter to Raoul; his service was rewarded when the old man allowed him to carry the buckets of hot water into the communal tubs. The steam soaked away the grime from his skin and loosened his matted hair, and gave him warmth in the winter months when the King commanded that the baths be kept open despite the cost of fuel. No wonder they called him ‘le Bon'. The ‘good' King gave alms to the poor and was pious before the face of God. The great lords and other men of influence and power were in the city to swear allegiance to their King. They would pledge loyalty and money to support his plans to raise a great army of thirty thousand to stop the Prince of Wales in his scourging of the south – and where crowds gathered there would be purses to cut, because once these nobles emerged from their ceremony with the King they would join the merchants, artisans and commoners in the Place de Grève where the unemployed gathered to be hired for whatever work could be found. But there would be no work today. In its stead there was to be a spectacle.

It would be a cut-purse's gift from God when the divine King had one of his Norman lords beheaded in the square.

And that was why Raoul avoided the crowded main streets.

‘Raoul!' a man cried as the urchin's bare feet ran lightly across the soiled streets. ‘Clear this shit!'

Not today.

King John II of France, resplendent in his royal robes, waited in the ante-rooms of the Great Chamber of the Parlement. His irritations chafed like an ill-fitting piece of armour. Being king meant having too many decisions to make. He was here to face those who wished to control the royal purse. That, and consider for the last time whether to grant clemency to Count Bernard d'Aubriet, a Norman lord who had surrendered his land to the English. The uncertainty was like a knife in his gut. Beyond the walls, across courtyards and roofs, he sensed the unseen population going about their daily business, isolated as he was in the Royal Palace on the Île de la Cité, the island in the middle of the River Seine. The Grand Pont was the way he crossed the river but it was an excursion infrequently undertaken unless the French Parlement convened or he rode to war. He seldom laid eyes on his subjects; it was their representatives, the Estates General, who spoke on their behalf; it was they who made their demands, fawned and bowed while scheming how best to protect their local wealth, how not to gather the taxes he needed. Well, he needed their money now. A demand had been sent from the Estates in the south, demanding – that word was more insulting and humiliating than being spat upon in public – that he send troops to defend them against the marauding Prince of Wales, whose army, albeit small, wreaked havoc, scorching the land, plundering city, town and village. They
demanded
he do his royal duty and protect them. And now news had reached him of trusted noblemen in the south who had betrayed him to the English Prince.

The King suddenly rose from his chair, his thoughts propelling him to his feet. His Lord Chamberlain and close advisers were startled and shuffled back from him, but the King barely saw them; instead he saw disaster looming and the crushing defeat of his reign if he did not force the English to cease their depredations. He needed more money. And once he had shown his command of the situation he would bring the troublesome Norman lords under control, and once he had them brought to heel he would, at last, confiscate his son-in-law's lands and lock the scheming, murdering bastard Charles of Navarre away in the Châtelet.

John needed the Estates General of the Languedoïl, who represented the people of northern France. And he needed the people of Paris. He needed their support, their belief in him and their taxes. He needed a subsidy to pay his army. It was of no concern to him if his subjects did not love him as their King, be they peasants or merchants. And following the great pestilence, half the damned so-called nobles had bought their rank and status. His father had made them pay for it though. He had prised the last coin from their grasping hands. Which was about the only good thing he did before he died. The rest? Bankruptcy, dissent and the damned English.

Seeing the King's torment of uncertainty one of the other men stepped closer. Simon Bucy was unafraid of the King's outbursts; he and others like him were the strength behind an uncertain monarch. All were considered friends, and each of them had benefited from John's largesse. They were capable men who worked diligently for the Crown but, more than high office, wealth was their rank.

‘My lord?'

‘Simon, what are we to do?' the King asked in barely a whisper. ‘Do we execute d'Aubriet or reprieve him? Will his death spark a Norman rebellion? We needed more time. We should have given him a trial – a public trial. Now the Normans will see that we alone have condemned him.'

‘Perhaps, my lord, a generous gesture would placate the Norman lords.'

The King's temper flared. ‘Our generosity is our failing! We manoeuvre ourselves between a son-in-law who plots intrigue, who nurtures the weakness of our son the Dauphin against us, who gathers the barons ready to strike when Edward invades to support the Prince of Wales – and invade he will!'

He hurled his goblet of wine across the room. Courtiers and advisers ducked and swayed but those nearest their monarch could not avoid being spattered. King John leaned across the embossed, intricately carved table, his fingers curled like talons. The table, like the kingdom, had been inherited from his father who had squandered the glory of France at Crécy ten years earlier and died months after his noblemen failed to take back Calais. John also inherited empty coffers, drained by years of war. In those years since his father's death and that final humiliation at Calais, he had raised taxes, secured loyalties, brought errant knights and dissident noblemen back into the royal fold. But it was still not enough to rid himself of certain Norman lords and the English captain, Thomas Blackstone, who tore at his flesh. It was as if France were a boar on a spit, turning slowly over the coals, fat dripping into the spluttering flames and flaring up as had the southern provinces, burned and looted by the English and Gascons, who seized towns and trade routes. And Norman lords still defied him; still made demands; continued to deny they protected the English adventurer Thomas Blackstone, who stole his towns like a thief in the night.

‘Are we a flagellant? Are we to be whipped publicly into further humiliation? Do we not bleed enough for France?' he bellowed, spittle spraying those who had avoided the thrown wine-cup, but who now dared not flinch from the royal phlegm. The royal house of Valois fought burning fires of discontent on a wide front, which at times encircled the King like hounds around a cornered beast.

‘Very well. It is done. We will show them! The people of Paris need to see that their King does not grant mercy to those who place France in jeopardy.'

He turned on his heel and strode towards the door. Simon Bucy glanced at the others in the room. None could quite conceal their despair at their impetuous King, but when their advice was cut at its root, there was no stopping him. He did not learn from past mistakes, and now he was about to make another.

King John ‘the Good' sat on a divan raised on a platform beneath a broad canopy at the far corner of the Great Chamber of Parlement. The principals of the realm sat along the wall at the King's left; to his right were the peers and barons. At a lower level were the representatives of the towns with five hundred inhabitants or more. The impressive barrel-roofed hall was dominated by a wall painting of the crucifixion. The image of divine suffering seemed to be so often reflected in the King's pained expression.

Power and majesty were two sides of the same coin. The Normans were resplendent in their tabards – larger than surcoats, they were made of silk embroidered in sumptuous style, emblazoned with the nobleman's coat of arms. Sir Godfrey and Jean de Harcourt sat with Guy de Ruymont and other Norman lords, among them the older statesmen de Mainemares and Jean Malet, the Lord de Graville – men who would rather see a more capable monarch settle his backside onto the silk cushions embroidered with the fleur-de-lys. They bore their impatience with grim determination as the Chancellor, Pierre de la Forêt, droned on like a glorified moneylender of the difficulties of waging a defensive war from the coffers of the royal treasury alone. More money was required, taxes would be raised and the loyal support of the Estates General was needed in this time of national crisis. The murmur of uncertainty echoed around the vaulted hall. The Chancellor waited a moment, then turned to the King, who nodded; such meetings were always stage-managed. The Estates would want something in return for giving the Crown the money it needed.