The Devil's Diadem (50 page)

‘Saints save us,’ said Edmond. ‘I pray this is not yet
another
tale of the elusive Holy Grail and its dark magics!’

There was a subdued twitter about the table, and Hugh shot Edmond a black look.

‘It is not, my lord king,’ he said.

‘Then reach your point speedily,’ said Edmond, ‘for I have better things to do than settle about this fire and listen to Templar tales all day.’

Hugh took a deep breath, and I could see he struggled to control his temper.

‘Then if I may be blunt,’ he said. ‘What my brothers found scrabbling about in the temple’s crypt was an imp from hell.’

There were gasps and murmurs about the table, and I froze. Eventually, once my initial shock was passed, I risked a glance at my husband — his face was impassive.

‘This vile imp was searching for something,’ Hugh continued. ‘One of our brethren, braver and faster than the others, seized the imp before it had a chance to vanish, and he threatened it most menacingly with his sword and demanded of it what it sought. It hissed, and spoke many foulnesses, but eventually my brethren learned it searched for a crown of some description. Our brothers learned no more from the imp, for so soon as it spoke those words it disintegrated into a vile-smelling pile of decomposing flesh.

‘Our brethren dug, they sifted the rubble from one end of that crypt to the other, but they could find nothing. Most certainly nothing resembling a crown. In the end we thought no more of it and continued our aid to those crusaders caught in the grip of the pestilence until, God be praised, the pestilence speedily moved on.’

Hugh paused to take a sip of wine, and Edmond tapped his fingers on the table in irritation at this delay.

‘No doubt you wonder how all of this is connected, my lord,’ Hugh said to Edmond. ‘I will say so, but will make my account brief, lest I try your patience further. Our Order in Jerusalem did not connect the two concurrent horrors, imp and pestilence — both of which occurred at the same time — until someone informed Pope Innocent II. He then called to his presence our new Grand Master, Robert de Craon, and told him a most terrifying tale.’

‘Which you are doubtless about to tell us, eh?’ Edmond said.

His ill-temper was growing by the moment.

Hugh inclined his head.

‘Innocent told de Craon that, many years ago,’ Hugh said, ‘before even the time of the Viking attacks up and down the coasts and rivers of Europe, a monk vanished from among his small order of brethren in the wilds of Anatolia. Greatly disturbed in his mind, but of powerful vision, the monk made his way down to hell, from whence he stole the Devil’s favourite diadem. The monk returned to this mortal world, where he wandered for years carrying the diadem, listening to its fateful whisperings. Eventually, maddened, he hid the diadem just before his death.

‘We, both Innocent and the Templars, believe that the Devil now wants his diadem back.’

‘Is that what the imp searched for within the Temple?’ Wincestre asked.

‘Aye,’ said Hugh, ‘we believe so. We think this monk must have hidden the diadem within the Temple’s crypt, the Devil had discovered this fact, and sent his imp for it.’

‘And so who has this diadem now?’ asked my husband. ‘I imagine, that once confronted with a tale of such a powerful and rich icon, you have searched everywhere for it.’

Hugh gave a small smile. ‘Well, my lord of Pengraic, we believe that, likely only quite soon before the imp searched for the diadem, someone
else
found it and removed it from the Temple precinct. Where is it now? Well, we have some idea, but the Devil had none. Thus he sent the pestilence onward to
sniff
out its location.’

There was a loud murmur about the table.

Again I glanced at Raife. His face remained impassive.

‘My lords, hear me out,’ said Hugh. ‘We have deduced all this from a number of careful observations, and I would like to lay them out before you. My lord king, this concerns your realm, and it concerns your highest magnates, so do
not
toss me that impatient glance again lest you want your realm to vanish entirely!’

For one moment I thought Edmond was going to thump his fist on the table and shout at the Templar master, perhaps even have him expelled. Edmond’s fist clenched, his face tightened and flushed, but he collected himself and gave Hugh the smallest, tightest nod possible.

‘My lords,’ said Hugh, ‘let us leave the matter of the diadem momentarily and discuss this plague. It began in the land of the Ghaznavids, where it tormented the people, and then spread rapidly into the Holy Lands. From there, as you all know, through the lands of Europe and then into this realm.

‘But this plague did not travel like other pestilences. It followed a narrow path, devastating towns and hamlets in a thin corridor that led from the Holy Lands, through the Byzantine empire, the Germanic lands, northern France, Normandy and then to England. Everyone outside of this slender path has been spared. What other plague has spread this way?’

No one answered him.

‘And once it entered England,’ Hugh continued. ‘What did it do? Again, that relatively narrow path across the southern and central parts of your realm, Edmond. As if it were following a
scent
. It travelled in a straight path.

‘Straight to Pengraic. Where it stopped.’

‘What do you intimate?’ said Raife. ‘That I have been harbouring some devilish —’

Hugh held up a hand. ‘If you please, a moment, my lord. Now the plague has reoccurred. How is it travelling? May I ask?’

‘It is travelling from Pengraic straight toward London,’ said Richard, Edmond’s son.

Hugh smiled, staring right at Raife. ‘Ah. It is travelling in a direct line from Pengraic right toward London.’

‘It is following the earl?’ Edmond said, his voice thick with disbelief.

‘I believe not,’ said Hugh. ‘I think, as does my Brother Fulke here, that it is following the earl’s wife, the Lady Maeb.’

Raife sprang to his feet, thumping a fist on the table as he did so. ‘What new accusation is this cast at my wife? Eh? You asked her here under false pretences, monk!’

Hugh spread his hands. ‘Hear me out. None of this made sense to us, until I arrived in England recently and Brother Fulke here told me that final piece of information which
did
make sense of everything.

‘A few months before the pestilence and the Devil’s imp’s arrival in the Holy Lands, one of the Order’s sergeants, Godfrey Langtofte, left both the Order and the Holy Lands and returned to his native country.’

I felt cold.

Hugh gave a slight shrug. ‘Sometimes we lose people back to the sinful life. It happens. At the time we thought nothing of it, and
I
had continued to think nothing of it until I arrived here in London and Brother Fulke informed me of both the path of the plague here in England,
and
of the identity of the Earl of Pengraic’s new wife.’

He paused, and I looked at the table top, unable to look at him or anyone else about the table.

‘The Lady Maeb,’ Hugh said. ‘Godfrey’s daughter.’

I closed my eyes momentarily at the sudden buzz of murmuring.

‘
What are you saying?
’ Edmond hissed through the low voices.

‘We think now that someone found the Devil’s diadem within the crypt of the Temple of Solomon, and stole it, fixated by its beauty. We believe that person to be Godfrey Langtofte — he is the only member of our Order in Jerusalem at the appropriate time, who had access to the Temple, and whom we cannot account for. That he fled Jerusalem with little reason given to us is damning. As is the fact the plague trails at Langtofte’s daughter’s heels, from one side of this realm to the other, town by town as she rides through, and then back again. It does not deviate.

‘Lady Maeb’s father stole the Devil’s diadem from the crypt within the Temple at Jerusalem,’ Hugh said again, his voice as calm as if he discussed the clouds in the sky, ‘then brought it to England, where he gave it to his daughter Maeb before he died. As the pestilence follows her every move, then Lady Maeb must have the diadem.’

‘I have not!’ I said, looking to Raife for support.

He was gazing at me with an unfathomable look.
Sweet Jesu! Did he
believe
this?

‘I do
not
have any diadem,’ I said as forcefully as I could.

‘This is truly some fantastical tale,’ Edmond said slowly, but even he was regarding me speculatively.

I felt increasingly ill with fear. Was this why the imps had been in our house at Cornhill? But I did not have any diadem! I did not! I closed my eyes briefly, praying that Raife did not mention the imps.

‘Did your father give you anything before he died?’ Edmond said.

‘How many times must I say this?’ I said. ‘My father gave me nothing but a few rags to wear and the name of his house. That is all. Sweet Jesu! He left everything else in his will to the Templars!
You
have it, Master Hugh! You must have! Perhaps buried in the crypt at your round church on Holbournestrate. Has your Brother Fulke neglected to mention it to you?’

‘We have searched your father’s old estate carefully,’ Fulke d’Ecouis said. ‘There is nothing there.’

‘Then I give you full permission to search my chests and chambers, Brother Fulke. You may search my body, too, lest you think I secrete the diadem in this belly.’ I struck my belly with my hand.

‘You may have hidden it anywhere,’ d’Ecouis said. ‘You’ve had long enough.’

‘I do not have the damned thing!’ I cried, and the note of hysteria in my voice finally brought Raife to my support.

‘My wife has no diadem,’ he said. ‘I know her belongings as well as any. She does not harbour the diadem. If what you say is true then my wife must be carrying it about, hither and thither, but yet I have not seen it, nor have, I wager, any of her attending women. Believe me, if she was secreting the Devil’s diadem then I think
I
would know it.’

‘I have nothing to hide,’ I said, still emotional and frightened. ‘Search what you will. You have my entire permission. Ask my women! Search! I dare you to find this thing!’

I was so angry that I found myself weeping, and Raife put a hand on my shoulder.

‘If the plague is, as you suggest, coming now to London,’ he said to the Templars, ‘then you must believe that the diadem is here, now, in London. Then come search my house, I beg you, and let this matter rest.’ He paused, then thumped the table with his fist. ‘Lord God above, I am heartily
sick
of these attacks on my wife! How often must she prove herself innocent to you?’

‘I stand with my lord of Pengraic on this issue,’ said Edmond. His voice was calm, but very authoritative. ‘The countess has already been venomously attacked and proven by God and before all to be innocent. This is a truly fantastical tale you weave, Master Hugh, and on what? Mere supposition?’

‘How many other people have been through Jerusalem and then back in England in the past few years?’ Raife said. ‘If the diadem is here — if it exists at all — then anyone might have brought it. Thousands of pilgrims and crusaders have been to and fro this realm and Jerusalem in the past years. Why fixate so on my wife?’

‘Because, unusually for a mere sergeant, her father had access to the crypt before he vanished from our Order so precipitously,’ said Hugh. ‘We kept stores of gold there, which he accounted for.

‘Because the plague clearly follows your wife’s steps. And because of your wife’s sheer damned luck over the past year — she survived the plague, and rose from obscurity to sit at the king’s right hand as your wife. I find that … fascinating.’

‘My horse, Dulcette, might be harbouring the diadem,’ I said. ‘The plague could as easily have been following her as me.’

‘Think not to use wit to —’ Hugh began.

‘Enough!’ Edmond said, raising both hands. ‘I have heard
enough
of this! It is a fine tale, master, but I cannot yet believe it. I have a city half burned and de-populated, a people terrified by the renewed ravages of the plague, and here you sit prating of strange jewels and devilish pestilences and accusing one of my court of harbouring a crown so vile that it surely must have stained her hands black with venom had she ever handled it. Yet I see no stain, Master Hugh, not on her hands nor on her character.’

He threw his hands up in the air. ‘What will the Countess of Pengraic be accused of next? Crucifying Christ himself ?

‘Enough, I say. Now all I want to hear from this table are practical measures by which we can aid those affected by fire and drowning, as those by plague who are either in its grip or in its path. Speak, if you will.’

‘Raife, look. This is all my father ever gave me.’

We were back in our privy chamber in the Cornhill house. Soon my ladies would be with me to aid me pack for our removal into the chambers in the Tower. But for now, Raife had wanted to see
what
precisely I had from my father.

Raife held the old, ragged folded cloth in his hands, fingered it to make sure it was not concealing a diadem, then he shook it out and looked at it.

‘It displays a somewhat poorly worked depiction of the Last Supper,’ I said.

He nodded, laying it back in the chest from whence I had taken it. ‘It is nothing but tapestry,’ he said. ‘There is nothing else?’

‘No, he gave me nothing else. Most of what I brought with me from my childhood home have been passed on. Two kirtles and several chemises and ribbons. The ribbons I still have, there,’ I pointed to where they lay atop my new chemises, ‘and the kirtles and chemises I gave to two good wives in Crickhoel before we came to Edmond’s court. After your generosity, I had no further need of them.’

‘You are
sure
your father gave you nothing else?’

‘I am
certain
!’

Raife sighed and sat down. ‘What are those Templars on about?’

‘I do not know why they fixate on my father.’

‘He brought nothing back with him from the Holy Lands?’

‘Raife, how am I to know? He might have brought Christ’s crown of thorns with him for all I know, and buried it somewhere along the way. I was not his keeper. I do not know where he went or what he brought here or there! All I know is that I do
not
have this diadem and I saw no evidence of it in my father’s possession in those few months at Witenie before he died. He made no mention of any such thing.’