The Last Days of Magic (29 page)

As for the Irish light cavalry, mounted on fast hobbies, their bows would be outmatched, the English longbow being able to kill men and horses at a much greater distance.

Increasingly, the longbow was becoming the deadliest weapon in modern warfare, and the English were by far the master of the art. Six and a half feet long, the English longbow was carefully cut from the radius of a yew tree, so that the forward face was sapwood and the belly heartwood. This produced a bow so strong that it could not be drawn the usual way, by pulling back the string, without quickly exhausting the archer’s right arm. Instead the string was held steady while the archer bent the bow by laying his body weight into it. Using this method, a trained archer could accurately fire up to six arrows a minute over the course of a sustained battle.

Nottingham moved money for sixty-five thousand sheaves of arrows into the square representing the Privy Wardrobe, the office responsible for arms and armor. Each arrow would be made of poplar and tipped with a bodkin head, which was long and narrow with a specially hardened point. Bodkin-tipped arrows fired from an English yew longbow would pierce chain mail at two hundred yards and light plate armor at one hundred.

The most skilled longbowmen came from Cheshire, and Richard kept them as his personal bodyguards—utilizing the fear of quick, inevitable death that a skilled archer struck in his foes. In their green-and-white livery that bore Richard’s white-stag badge, his bodyguards did whatever he commanded for one hundred eighty-six pence a month, an amount equal to the income from a small estate. Richard even found them effective in presenting his request to Parliament, as required by the Magna Carta, for new taxes to finance the Irish invasion, the funds coming from the Vatican being a closely held secret. He sent twelve to stand in the Parliament chamber during the vote, longbow in one hand, arrow in the other.

Four Cheshire archers remained in the war room, hovering about the counting table to protect the gold and act as Richard’s eyes and
ears. Around the table a lively debate was going on about how much money to allocate to salaries. A force of ten thousand men-at-arms would be raised for the invasion, even though the Vatican paid for fifteen thousand. It would consist of sixty-five hundred mounted archers, thirty-one hundred infantry—primarily pikemen—and four hundred knights. Any men not already in the service of the earls or Richard had to be hired or pressed into service, clothed, equipped, and trained. In addition to de Vere—who held the earldom of Oxford—Mortimer—who held the earldom of March as well as being the designated heir—and Nottingham, the earls of Rutland, Huntingdon, and Gloucester had agreed to participate in the invasion. All the fighting men plus squires, stewards, and retainers, along with their horses, arms, and supplies, would need to be mustered, housed, and fed at Milford Haven, the disembarking point for the invasion scheduled for twenty-four months hence.

The decision to invade in late fall and brave the wet, cold Irish weather was also Richard’s. He believed that his archers would be at their most effective when the forests and undergrowth were barren. It would also surprise the Irish, since historically armadas sailed in the calm summer months.

In a particularly poetic moment while lounging in bed, Richard mused to de Vere, “I want you to gallop behind a gale of arrows sweeping away the Irish forces and splash through a river of their blood.” Anne’s slim, pale hands clapped almost soundlessly while de Vere laughed.

16

What peace, so long as the whoredoms of thy mother Jezebel and her witchcrafts are so many?

—2 Kings 9:22, King James Version

And he [Manasseh] caused his children to pass through the fire in the valley of the son of Hinnom: also he observed times, and used enchantments, and used witchcraft, and dealt with a familiar spirit, and with wizards: he wrought much evil in the sight of the Lord, to provoke him to anger.

—2 Chronicles 33:6, King James Version

Paris, France

December 1392

Q
ueen Isabeau of France was dreaming of Ireland before she awoke to flat, silver light streaming into her opulent bedroom. The first full moon following the winter solstice was framed in a floor-to-ceiling window. Tonight she had made sure her husband, King Charles VI—now known more often as “the Mad” rather than his preferred “the Beloved”—was being cared for by her sister-in-law in his slightly less opulent bedroom on the other side of the royal residence, the Hôtel Saint-Pol, in the fourth arrondissement of Paris. While the nominal seat of government and the court of Charles the Mad was at the nearby Palais du Louvre, the true power of the throne lay here, in Isabeau’s shadow court, the witch court, known
throughout Europe, by those few who knew, as the High Coven, for which she was the Grande Sorcière.

A small clock on the mantel chimed 2:00
A.M.
, the time for her witches to gather. Before she could join them tonight, she must renew her bond—a bond through blood and time—to the founder of their coven, as she did after each solstice. Though still exhausted from her most recent trip to Norway, she climbed out of her canopy bed and pulled a silk robe over her nightgown. Gliding across her moonlit bedroom, she approached the wall and pressed a piece of molding. With a click a panel swung open.

The Grande Sorcière entered into a perfectly square, windowless room. In the center, on a small gilded table, a single golden candle burned, filling the room with liquid yellow light. The Grande Sorcière knew that as long as she performed the rite, this candle, first lit by her kinswoman Taddea de la Barthe 112 years ago, would not go out and would not burn down. She sat on a plain wooden chair, gazed into the flame, and began the ritual of remembering.

She was rowing a boat up a river of blood under a dark purple sky, where a sun and a moon spun in a tight arc. Along the black sand bank, row upon row of women, thousands of them, each of them on fire, turned their heads to watch her pass.

She tied the boat to a stone wharf and stepped out onto a staircase, which led down farther than she could see.

She walked down the staircase and entered one of the many doors along its edge.

She was in the body of eight-year-old Taddea, standing at a familiar second-story window at the edge of a large square in a town she knew to be Toulouse in 1275.

She could feel the man’s rough hand under her chin, squeezing her face, smell the ale and sausage on his breath as he bent down to her. “You must watch,” he growled. The Grande Sorcière and her predecessors did not care enough about him to remember the man’s
name. “See what happens to your kind, what we’ve done to your mother.”

He thought he was forcing her to watch. He was not; she would have watched anyway. “Some, they start off blubbering, some try to be brave, like your mother, but they all end up thrashing in the flames.” He laughed as her mother’s thin shift burned away.

It was true, the body that had once held her mother, Angéle de la Barthe, was screaming and flailing against its bonds, tied to a stake in the center of the flaming pyre as a large crowd cheered. What was untrue was that a real witch’s body writhed in pain at the stake. It flailed in anguish because its spirit had flown, and the body was lost without it. Before the first lick of flame on skin, Taddea had felt her mother’s spirit enter her body, her mother’s blood surge within her own veins.

The inquisitor, Hugo de Beniols, had convicted her mother of having sexual intercourse with Satan. That was not true. It had been an incubus. As for the charge of kidnapping infants to feed the monstrous spawn of that unholy union, there had been no spawn. Her mother took the incubus purely for her pleasure, and the kidnapped infants were used to create reagents for a variety of enchantments.

“You’ll end up on the stake,” the man said, his voice softened, “if you don’t please your king. You’d be out there burning now if not for his grace.” In the square the body blackened, crisped, and finally stopped moving. The crowd, many holding scented linen handkerchiefs over their noses and mouths, drifted off.

“Come along,” the man said, moving his grip to her arm and pulling her away from the window toward the door. “As long as your king, Philip the Bold, holds you under his protection, you’ll be safe.” The Grande Sorcière felt Taddea make the decision that it was not she who would need protection.

The Grande Sorcière withdrew from the candle flame and smiled. She could feel Taddea’s blood, renewed, flowing through her own body.

Taddea had been loaded into a carriage, which took her to the court of King Philip III. At first she had performed tricks to amuse the court and, in private, divinations for Philip the Bold. Soon, though, he had become afflicted with debilitating dysentery, and her role evolved. Taddea became his constant caretaker and spokeswoman, bringing other women into the court to help her. Philip was the first of an unbroken chain of nine French kings who suffered mysterious maladies, a chain that continued with the Grande Sorcière’s husband. While poison was often whispered about, suspicion never fell on the women of the High Coven.

As the Grande Sorcière stood, a warm, lustful wave washed through her blood. She would summon the king’s younger brother, the duc d’Orléans, to her bedchamber later. First she must meet with her witches. Since Taddea had formed the High Coven during her second year at court, it had always been ruled by her direct descendants, three of whom, like the Grande Sorcière, had become queen of France. The Grande Sorcière left the candle chamber and walked out of her bedroom and down the short corridor to her private audience room.

Valentina Visconti, the twenty-six-year-old wife of the king’s younger brother, followed her into the room, trailed by Charles the Mad on tiptoes. The Grande Sorcière gave her a questioning look. Valentina shrugged. “I couldn’t shoo him away.”

“Your Highness.” The Grande Sorcière gave an almost imperceptible nod in her husband’s direction.

“What? How can you see Us?” Charles cried. “We are made of glass. It must be these clothes, you can see Our clothes.” Charles began to pull at his clothing.

“Be careful, Your Highness, you may shatter yourself,” said Valentina.

Charles froze.

“Take him over to the corner,” said the Grande Sorcière.

“Come, Your Highness, I will help you undress.” Valentina carefully led Charles away.

Valentina had come to the Grande Sorcière’s attention through the system of lower covens spread throughout Europe. At the age of fourteen, Valentina had poisoned her first son, illegitimate and unbaptized, to harvest his blood and fat to make an ointment that allowed her to travel long distances very quickly without being seen. It was this difficult spell that created the false but growing rumor that witches could fly. At fifteen Valentina was initiated into the High Coven; when Valentina was nineteen, the Grande Sorcière arranged for her to marry the king’s brother; and at twenty she was appointed by the Grande Sorcière as the coven’s new Keeper of the King.

The other members of the coven rose and bowed to their Grande Sorcière in greeting.

Joanna of Navarre, also twenty-six, had, when she was but seven, sewn her sleeping father, King Charles “the Bad” of Navarre, into his bedsheet, doused it with brandy, and lit it on fire. While her father squirmed, screamed, and burned to death, she collected his flames into blue glass boxes. Death flames were the most powerful reagent that could be extracted from an adult human and were used in spells to make the living do anything commanded, but only for a short time, until the flames consumed their internal organs. They could also be used to make the freshly dead talk.

Béatrix de Montjean, seventeen, nursed her daughter, Catherine. The Grande Sorcière could already sense power emerging in the infant. Béatrix was adept in the preparation of potions and poisons, items always useful at court. She was also the coven’s wet nurse. The Grande Sorcière’s own infant daughter, Michelle, was sleeping in a crib beside her chair.

From the corner Charles watched Béatrix move her daughter from one breast to the other. “Polish Us,” he murmured to Valentina as she carefully removed the last of his undergarments. “We must be perfectly clear.”

“As you wish, Your Highness,” replied Valentina. “Joanna, please bring an empty vial over.”

Matteuccia de Francesco clapped her hands. “Back to your lessons,” she ordered the three young girls standing next to her. Matteuccia, a sixteen-year-old former Italian nun, had become known as the Witch of Ripabianca due to her success in necromancy, the art of divining through and animating the dead, even those long passed. She had been brought into the High Coven a year earlier as tutor to the Grande Sorcière’s daughters.

The Grande Sorcière sat at a table off to one side of the large room, where Joanna joined her. A young eunuch, illiterate and mute—his tongue had been cut out—served them hot spiced wine while a similarly maimed boy brought a gold platter stacked with small fig pies and balls of puffed dough covered with honey.