Son of the Morning (41 page)

The squire, young George Despenser, knelt before the altar and said his prayers. George had spent a lot of time in prayer since his mother died.

‘Strange place for a meeting,’ said Bardi, emerging through the throng. His face, thought Montagu, was weatherworn, red at the brow.

‘What I have to say I want to say under the eyes of God.’

‘Aren’t we always under the eyes of God?’ said Bardi.

‘These windows provide his lenses,’ said Montagu.

Bardi smiled. ‘As elegant and witty as ever, Montagu – the image of a gentle chivalric knight.’

‘I do my best. You have the reputation of a problem solver, Bardi.’

‘You flatter me.’

‘No, I don’t. You’re good at it and you’re good at it because you lack moral iron in your soul. For that, you are a useful man. Tell me what you know of the death of the old king’

The Pater Noster was being said. Both men crossed themselves as the fighting men murmured, along with the monks.

‘Pater noster, qui es in caelis …’

‘Are we to talk frankly?’ Bardi spoke quietly.

‘It’s the only way I know,’ said Montagu. ‘I’m not Edward with his anger and his violence. Our noble king is a great man and cannot bear to hear things he does not wish to – as is right for one in his position. I am a lower man, a man of policy. I will not blame you for telling me what you know so I can make my decisions with all the facts before me.’

‘I know England has no angels.’ Montagu was surprised at Bardi’s candour, despite what he’d just said.

‘… sanctificetur Nomen Tuum;

adveniat Regnum Tuum …’

‘How do you know that?’

‘I’ve always found that clergymen are excessively easy to buy,’ said Bardi, ‘and were there not clergymen there when Edward ascended the throne and when he went so many times afterwards to kneel at Westminster and beg the angels to appear?’

‘… fiat voluntas Tua,

sicut in caelo, et in terra.’

‘How long have you known?’

‘Not long enough. I saw what happened at Dupplin Moor, how the Scots were routed and I thought England a safe place for an investment. Subsequently, information came to me, as it often comes to men of wealth. Too late. Edward had spent my money.’

‘Panem nostrum cotidianum da nobis hodie;

et dimitte nobis debita nostra …’

‘And why has this happened?’

Bardi shrugged. ‘It is difficult to speculate without speaking treason.’

‘You’re not an English subject; you can’t commit treason.’

‘I could still have my head cut off for saying something the English king would not like to hear.’

‘Speak freely, Bardi. I need all the information I can get.’

‘He has displeased God.’

‘How?’

Bardi shrugged. ‘Who knows the mind of God?’

‘… sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris;

et ne nos inducas in tentationem.’ The notes of the prayer delivered by the monks were long and sonorous, and the fighting men joined in, their voices varied, earnest.

Montagu breathed in. If the necessary were to happen, Bardi would need full understanding.

He said it as a murmur, under his breath. ‘The old king may still be alive.’

Bardi clutched at his purse, as another man might have crossed himself. Montagu shook his head in disgust. What had it come to that he was dealing with men like Bardi?

‘… sed libera nos a malo.’ The prayer finished and the priests moved among the men, flicking holy water over them, blessing the sites of corruption, the eyes, the chest, the hands, the genitals.

‘What makes you say that?’

‘I have spoken with certain men. I am convinced the king did not die at Berkeley castle. Utterly convinced. You know me as a thorough and serious man.’

The banker stood for a moment with a mouth as wide as a gargoyle’s.

‘Do you think the king knows his father lives?’ said Bardi. ‘No wait, he must. Oh God’s wounds – Mortimer
must
have told him.’

‘And he would have believed him?’

‘He should have. Oh blood of Christ, it’s all so obvious now. I am such a fool. Think about it and you see there was nothing politic in killing the old king. I should think it was an obvious thing to keep him alive – though the obvious sometimes requires a certain genius to see it. Why, if you are to rule as regent, not put a terribly compromised king upon the throne – one you can at any minute reveal as a usurper; one whose divine power you have neutered? So Edward knows Mortimer has a secret that can damn him as a usurper. Tell me, when you took Mortimer at Nottingham, what were the king’s instructions?’

‘That he be bound and gagged.’

‘And how was he tried?’

‘Bound and gagged.’

Bardi turned up his palms. ‘The king must know,’ he said. ‘Whether he chooses to believe, or whether he can do anything about it is another question. He is where he is. Funny he chose that, or something like it for his motto, don’t you think?’ He was shaking his head, almost laughing, like a losing gambler unable to quite accept his luck.

‘Do you think the king knows where old Edward is?’ said Montagu.

‘No. Or the old man would be dead’

‘Watch what you say, Bardi. We are Normans, French lords of the English, not scheming Florentines. Edward would not move against his father. Such a thing would be an offence against God.’ Bardi stepped back a little way from the warrior, clearly not too sure that Montagu’s assurances of his calm nature were worth very much.

‘His whole kingship would be an offence.’

Montagu said a few words in Latin, ‘Sed libera nos a malo.’ Deliver us from evil.

‘So who has him?’

‘The Hospitallers took him,’ said Montagu.

‘Did they keep him? And, if they did, does the king know that? He may know his father is alive but not know where. Or perhaps he knows he is alive and pays them to keep him isolated. Sweet tits of Mary, what are we to do? I am royally swived, back sarded. I’m  … ’ He threw up his hands.

Montagu waited for Bardi to control himself, refraining from comment on Bardi’s excellent grasp of whore’s English.

‘Perhaps the Hospitallers have cozened young Edward. Perhaps he suffers under a lie. Why do the knights isolate Isabella?’ Montagu was thinking out loud. It was useful to speak to Bardi – a man of intelligence, at least. And Bardi would be easy to kill if he did betray him. Bankers had many friends in life, but few the moment you stuck a sword through them. No one mourns bankers, no one, thought Montagu. No one builds monuments to them, no one sings their name in songs. Why would a man choose that path? He had no idea.

The priest began a reading – the life of St Stephen the martyr.

‘Perhaps he isolates her to stop her talking to anyone? He won’t kill his mother but he will lock her away where she cannot damn him,’ said Bardi.

‘And surround her with charms. There are magic barriers at Castle Rising,’ said Montagu.

‘Well, it might not be a bad idea. Despenser hated her more than anyone alive. If he had magical power, perhaps it still threatens her. Once you trade with demons it can be hard to put them back in the box, so to speak.’

Montagu recalled Isabella, her hands in his, in the candlelight. ‘This is adultery,’ he’d said. She’d laughed. ‘But my husband is dead’. The tilt of her head, the slight mischief in her voice. Had she been trying to tell him something? And why tell him? He already knew the truth. Why should Isabella risk raising her son’s anger further to point out something Montagu seemed to have already worked out?

‘And Stephen performed many signs and wonders, which persuaded certain men to speak against him, saying, “He has declared that Jesus will destroy the temple”,’ intoned the priest in high, nasal, Norman French.

‘I think Hugh Despenser happened to them,’ said Montagu. ‘He invoked something he could not control, something inimical to angels. The king and his angels wrestled with it, contained it. At what cost I do not know. The king took it with him. It was a banner of some sort – or at least, that was what Despenser thought he was getting when he opened its box.’

‘And they gnashed their teeth upon him.’ The priest thumped down on the pulpit.

‘The Drago!’

‘What?’

‘But they beheld his face and it was the face of an angel.’ The priest stretched out his hand, almost as if pointing at Montagu.

‘The banner of St George. The Drago. My investigations have revealed that it might be England’s saviour against the French,’ said Bardi.

‘But that’s a holy relic. The king would have no trouble with it.’

‘But who knows how it reacted to Despenser? He was evil to the core. Half devil, some said. What happened to the banner?’

‘The king took it with him.’

‘So find the Drago, find the king.’ Bardi actually made a little strangling motion with his hands. Montagu longed to strike him for that. A king, a holy king appointed by God was just an impediment to Bardi, something that stood between him and his money and therefore needed to be removed. Montagu wanted old Edward dead but not for profit, not for the money to walk around in fine clothes or buy grand houses. For order, for rightness. And for Isabella. Old Edward had committed many crimes against that lady – he got his children from her without passion, then had spurned her. God may have appointed old Edward, protected him from Mortimer. God had been wrong to do so. The old king had to die. A hot feeling came over him, shame and pleasure mixed at the thought of the old king’s murder.

Montagu mastered himself. ‘This much is imponderable. He may have the banner, he might not. The Knights Hospitaller – what do you know of them?’

The priest droned on: ‘But Stephen was full of the Holy Spirit. He looked at the sky and saw the greatness of God. He saw Jesus standing at God’s right side.’

‘A successful order. Very rich. They got all the Templar lands. Made themselves a pretty penny there,’ said Bardi.

‘Magicians?’

‘The Templars had magicians. It was said that was why the French king had them dissolved. Do the Hospitallers have magic?’

‘Wards and prayer, yes, but no magic.’ Bardi’s insouciance was an affront to Montagu. Did he take him for another one of the gulls he lent money to?

‘I see the sky open. I see the Son of man standing at God’s right hand.’ This priest would have done better as a mummer or a marketplace yabberer. Just say the words, man, no need to go at them like a king stirring his troops to battle.

‘Unless they offered shelter to the Templars. Or coerced them in some way. A Templar magician would be a valuable quantity.’

‘Yes,’ said Bardi. Still not open, still not frank. Well, let’s see how long that lasts.

‘Could you contact one?’

Bardi’s face was impassive. ‘What sort of question is that?’

‘What do you know, Bardi?’

The Italian widened his arms. He reminded Montagu of a street pickpocket, caught but his incriminating evidence long gone. The priest’s voice rose and fell: ‘Then the men shouted. They put their fingers in their ears. All together they ran at Stephen. They put him out of the city and threw stones at him. He spoke to God and said, “Oh, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”’

Montagu noticed Bardi’s eyes were on Arondight. The Earl was too direct to be much of a politician but he had been in enough fights to know what a man was thinking by studying his eyes. Bardi was afraid Montagu was going to kill him. Montagu didn’t know whether to increase that fear or offer reassurance.

‘Then he kneeled down and said in a loud voice, “Lord, do not punish them for this wrong thing they are doing.” After he said this, he died.’

The priest made the sign of the cross.

Montagu said nothing. Bardi was pleasantly rattled. Now Montagu did touch the hilt of his sword. Bardi coughed.

‘It is of no consequence, lord. I have carried a letter. More than once. Your king owes everything to me.’

‘Then say what you have to say. If you are an honest man you have nothing to fear.’

‘I arranged a meeting between a Templar – a man working with the Hospitallers – and your king. That is it. You know all the details now.’

‘A magician?’

‘Maybe a fraud. Maybe a magician.’

‘When?’

‘In the year that Mortimer died.’

Montagu rubbed his hand hard across the pommel of Arondight, hurting himself rather than Bardi. So that
was
how they’d got into Nottingham Castle – magic. He shivered.

‘How did you know of this magician?’ Montagu recalled Eleanor Claire’s words: ‘It was a relief to find we weren’t up to our ears in debt to the Florentines. I feared the worst with the company he was keeping.’

‘I know a lot. I am a man of contacts. He was a contact.’

‘A contact made when you were working for the king’s favourite Hugh Despenser.’

‘I do many things for many people. I carried a letter. That’s all.’

‘And you didn’t pry it open and replace the seal?’

‘Would you pry into Despenser’s letters?

‘I would if I were you.’

Bardi shook his head and held up his hands. ‘Not me, not me! If you think I was going to risk Despenser’s wrath you’ve got another think coming. A wise gambler quits while he’s ahead. I had contacts with old Edward, I had contacts with his favourite. I also had contacts with Despenser’s enemies and with the French court and the Hospitallers. I provided safe passage for one of the Hospitallers’ men and I was led to believe he had certain uses.’

‘Magical uses.’

‘Yes. But I never enquired further until young Edward asked for my help. Why would I risk Despenser’s anger by being too ambitious? I took the letters back and forth like a good boy and never cried “what’s here?”’

‘I have them here.’ Montagu gestured to a bag that lay by the foot of a pillar.

Bardi’s eyes widened. ‘So what did they want the magician for? May I see?’

‘You may not. Banners. Despenser wanted a banner and in return he was to provide them with some relics. A dead angel, to be precise. You facilitated that, knowingly or not.’

‘He killed an angel? Have I undermined my own investment? Mother of God!’

‘The least of your concerns. You have imperilled your immortal soul.’

‘I had no idea. I …’ Bardi had broken into a sweat, as well he might – he’d been part of a plot that had offered the worst kind of insult to God.