Warlord (Outlaw 4) (23 page)

Although I never got to know her well, the Widow Barbette
seemed a respectable woman, round, neat and always busy, and she was certainly an accomplished cook. She occupied the kitchen and storerooms on the ground floor, and for a modest payment provided a meal for all of us twice a day: dinner shortly before noon, and supper in the early evening. On that first day, once we had settled the rent, she served a fine meal of roast saddle of mutton with a garlic sauce, fresh bread and a large dish of boiled peas. Her manservant León, a near idiot, was induced to go out and buy wine for us and we made a convivial meal with the five students in the
salle
– before taking a short nap, as Matthew assured me was the custom in Paris, and then rising again and setting out to see some of the city in the late afternoon.

We accompanied the students to the Petit-Pont, where they were planning to meet up with their new teacher, Master Fulk. I did not like the look of him, at first. He was a big, hulking man, hairy as a wolfhound on his body, with a head that was nearly bald as an egg, with only a few grey wisps to indicate his tonsure. He was not at all how I had imagined one of Christendom’s great minds, a celebrated teacher at the University of Paris, to look. He wore a dirty black robe, his nose had clearly been broken in a long-ago brawl, and when I came close to him I found that he had a rancid odour of old sweat about his person that almost made me gag.

The Petit-Pont itself had been a surprise, too, when we crossed it that morning. It was nothing like the crowded, endlessly moving thoroughfare of the Grand-Pont to the north of the Île de la Cité. It was quiet, for a start, with only a few houses belonging to the members of the university set upon it, and large open spaces between these lodgings where one could sit on stone benches and look out over the slow rolling Seine. It was in these spaces that Master Fulk conducted his lessons. I whispered to Hanno that I could well understand why Fulk’s students preferred to meet him outside: how could anyone stand to be in an enclosed space with
that stench? But Hanno did not find my jest in the least amusing, and frowned at me, clicking his tongue at my disrespect of a man of learning.

We bade farewell to the students on the Petit-Pont, leaving Matthew and his friends clustering around the brawny form of Fulk the Scholar, and already beginning to argue in Latin. Hanno, Thomas and I made our way north over the bridge on foot back on to the Île de la Cité and headed towards the great cathedral of Notre-Dame.

I was allowed, this time, to indulge my eyes on that wondrous sight to my heart’s content. I spent more than an hour just gazing at its exterior before entering that vast and holy space and lighting a candle for St Michael at a little shrine in the apse. I prayed once again that the archangel would help me find out the answers to the mystery surrounding my father, and sat for a while looking upwards at the majestic, soaring ceiling, and thinking of the happy times I had spent in the rude cottage in Nottinghamshire that my family had called home. Thus comforted by my communion with the saint and with the spirit of my father, I led my two men to the episcopal palace, the residence of the venerable Bishop of Paris, Maurice de Sully, a mere stone’s throw to the south of the cathedral.

The sky was darkening as we entered the palace by a door opposite the south transept of Notre-Dame; it was perhaps a mere hour before Vespers and I realized that I had spent far longer in the cathedral than I had realized. We were greeted at the door of the palace by a young monk, who asked our business and then conducted us into a chamber off the main hall. While we waited, a servant brought us cups of green wine and delicate sweet pastries, a Parisian speciality, and I ran over in my mind what I would ask the prelate, if he should be good enough to grant me an audience that very day.

After a wait of perhaps a quarter of an hour, a tall thin man
came into the room. His hands were folded across his slim waist and tucked into the sleeves of his long brown monk’s robe and his dark hair was neatly cut in the tonsure.

‘I am Brother Michel,’ he said, smiling, ‘I have the honour of serving the Bishop by helping to make his appointments, among other matters. I understand that you seek an audience with His Grace, is that right?’ He had a kind face with intelligent bright blue eyes and a frail, youthful air – in truth, when he first came into the room I had thought that he was a young man, but as he drew near to us, I saw that he was a man in his late thirties, with a scattering of pockmarks and the first lines of care only now beginning to appear on his lean, handsome face.

‘I need to speak to His Grace the Bishop on a private matter, a family matter,’ I said. ‘It is also a matter of some urgency.’

‘I see,’ said the monk. ‘Is there perhaps some way in which I could help you? If it is a question of alms, or perhaps a small advance …’

I flushed, embarrassed that this man of God should think that I had come to the Bishop seeking money. He pulled out his right hand from its sleeve and indicated a long table at the side of the chamber. ‘Why don’t we sit, make ourselves comfortable, and you can tell me what the problem is,’ he said. I trusted him instinctively – he radiated a kind of inner strength and goodness that was truly comforting to a troubled man – and before I knew it, I was seated on a stool across from him and telling him the tale of my father’s time at Notre-Dame twenty years ago, and of the visit by Bishop Heribert, and of the theft of the candlesticks, and my father’s expulsion from the cathedral, his exile in England and his mean death at the hands of Sir Ralph Murdac. The tale came pouring out of me like a torrent, and I realized how much I had wanted to confide in someone sympathetic and helpful. Of course, I had told Hanno and Thomas the nature of our business in Paris, but they were in no position to help me solve the mystery. This kindly man of God, I believed, might hold the key.

Brother Michel nodded and frowned and looked at me, his clear blue eyes now filled with compassion. When I had finished my tale, he sighed deeply. ‘So much suffering,’ he said. ‘So much pain.’ And I swear I saw a gleam of a tear in his eye.

‘Well, Sir Alan,’ he continued, ‘I have no doubt that His Grace will wish to hear about this matter in full from you personally. And I am sure that he will do his utmost to help you in your quest to find the real thief. I will speak to the Bishop this very evening and I will urge him to find the time to see you; but he is an extremely busy man, as I’m sure you must know, with a great many calls on his good nature. So I think the best thing might be for you to tell me where you are lodging and I will have a servant bring you a message when His Grace is at liberty to attend to this. Would that be acceptable to you?’

I nodded, and he smiled, and I felt a wave of relief flow through me, now that this godly man had shouldered my burdens.

‘It may take a few days, I’m afraid,’ said Brother Michel, as he ushered us out of the chamber, ‘but I pray it will be no more than a week or so. Be patient, be strong, and trust in God that we may bring this matter to a happy conclusion.’ And he gave me another smile before he left us in the care of the hall servants.

As I walked back over to the cathedral, flanked by Thomas and Hanno, to say an extra prayer for the soul of my father, I was satisfied that Brother Michel would champion my cause to the Bishop. Between us, through reasonable discussion, and with God’s help, we would unravel the mystery of the Heribert theft and exonerate the memory of Henry d’Alle, once and for all.

The call that I paid on my uncle Thibault, Seigneur d’Alle, was far less satisfactory than the encounter with Brother Michel. His house on the Rue St-Denis, next to the church of St Opportune, was a very grand edifice of timber and brick, three storeys high and set back a little from the road. It reeked of money. Thomas
and I banged on the big front door in the middle of a violent rainstorm the afternoon of the day after my meeting with Brother Michel. We were admitted, well soaked by the downpour, by a richly dressed servant and shown upstairs to a solar on the second floor.

The Lord of Alle, my uncle Thibault, was playing chess with a much younger and very handsome fair-haired man when I was ushered, dripping, into the opulent room. A pair of long hounds snoozed by the fire at the end of the room. The men were seated at a table in the centre, hunched over the board. I saw that the board was inlaid with squares of ivory and ebony, and that the pieces were decorated with tiny jewels. As I came in, the younger man moved a piece and said: ‘There, I have you, Father; your king is dead!’

The Seigneur d’Alle’s face mottled with anger: ‘Again? God damn this cold-blooded, womanish game!’ And with a blow of his arm, he swept the board off the table, sending it crashing to the floor, the pieces skittering away across the wooden surface. One of the hounds lifted its refined, pointed head, gazed at me for a minute out of deeply stupid eyes, then went back to sleep.

‘Father,’ said the handsome young man, in a warning tone, ‘we have company!’

The Seigneur swung his large head round towards me: under a mop of brown hair, his face was ruddy, pouched and touched here and there by whitish, faded scars. He glared at me angrily, then rose from his chair, turned and stood facing me, his hands resting easily on his hips. He was a big man, taller than me, with broad shoulders and long legs, and while he was dressed in costly finery, a gold embroidered tunic and a black sable-lined mantle, and not equipped as if for the battlefield, I could tell from a glance that he was a fighter. This was no city-dwelling lordling with soft hands and mild manners – this was a seasoned French knight, a man of blood and iron. He seemed familiar, the resemblance with my
father being apparent – but he also reminded me just a little of my beloved sovereign, King Richard. Not in looks, but in his belligerent masterfulness and total confidence.

‘My lord,’ I began, after making my bow, ‘I am Sir Alan Dale, the son of Henri d’Alle – I am your nephew.’

‘Are you now?’ said the Seigneur. ‘Are you indeed?’ There was a slight, uncomfortable pause while he stared at me. ‘And what is it that you want with me – nephew?’

I was taken aback; I had assumed that my ties of kinship, the fact that we shared the same blood, would be enough to guarantee some civility. Evidently, I was wrong.

‘What he wants,’ said the younger man, getting up from his seat and coming around the table to approach me, ‘is a dry towel.’ The young man, who was clearly the Seigneur’s son, looked beyond me to the servant hovering by the door of the solar. ‘Gaston, be so good as to fetch this gentleman a clean, dry towel. Immediately!’

Turning his gaze back to me, the fair-haired young man said: ‘I am Roland d’Alle. Perhaps you and your man would care for a glass of wine to warm your hearts on this miserable day?’ He smiled, but only with half of his face, and I saw then that the left-hand side of his head, which had previously been turned away from me, was disfigured by a large red mark, raw and ugly, a recent burn for sure, only partially healed – what had once been a remarkably good-looking face was now quite disfigured by that wound.

‘I asked you – Sir Alan, is it? – what you wanted here,’ said the Seigneur, his voice brusque, like a man accustomed to giving orders and having them instantly obeyed. ‘So – what do you want? You pop up out of nowhere and claim to be a long-lost relative; what could you possibly want, I wonder? Could it be that you are hoping for a little advance to tide you over in a difficult time?’ His tone was very close to a sneer; and I bristled. This was the second occasion in my two days in Paris that strangers I had met had assumed that I had come to beg money. I peered down at my shabby, damp
and travel-worn clothes. And then looked back up into my uncle’s brick-red face. I could feel the stirrings of a raw anger that I’d hoped so much to keep suppressed.

‘I do not come seeking anything from you, my lord, least of all money,’ I said coldly. ‘All I require is some information. I wish to know about my late father, your brother Henri d’Alle. Who was wrongly accused of theft, and hounded from Paris, abandoned by his
family
’ – I gave that word its due weight – ‘and, once outcast by the Church, lived in poverty in England until his death at the hands of an unknown enemy.’

‘You seem to think you possess all the facts,’ growled the Seigneur. ‘What more do you wish to know?’

‘I wish to know why you did not help him.’

‘That is no God-damned business of yours.’

‘My father, my family, my business,’ I said, struggling to keep my temper; fighting the growing urge to step over to my uncle and knock him to the floor.

‘And I have no more information about your father and his relations with
my family
that I care to give you,’ the Seigneur said. ‘Now, I will ask you—’

‘He was a fool,’ said a new voice, a woman’s voice, and I turned towards the door to see a servant carrying a tray of wine cups and a slim, elegant shape in a long green fur-trimmed silk robe offering me a large white linen towel. Thomas was already scrubbing at his damp head with a similar item.

This was the Lady of Alle, I assumed, and the first thing I absorbed about her was that she was truly, incandescently beautiful; even approaching her forties, as she must have been, she stole the living breath from my lungs: raven hair peeking from under a neat white coif, deep green eyes, pale, almost translucent skin, a swelling bosom above the waist of a sixteen-year-old. From half a dozen yards away I caught a waft of her perfume: something floral yet creamy – she even smelled utterly delicious. I found my anger at
her boorish husband washing away as I drank her in, like a thirsty man downing a full jug drawn from an icy well. She kissed me on the cheek, a cool, brief touch of her lips that made the hair on my arms stand up, and said: ‘Good day, nephew, I am Adèle – what a pleasure it is to finally meet you.’

And I found myself seated at the table, with the Seigneur and Roland and this heavenly creature in human form, while the servant poured wine for us all.

The rain rattled against the closed shutters of the solar, and brought me back into the world. When I had taken a sip of the wine, I turned to Adèle and, trying to control my fluttering belly, I said: ‘Why did you call my father a fool?’