Son of the Morning (65 page)

Dow said nothing, let the Florentine take what comfort he could from such a wasted hope. He walked back to the camp, catching the girl’s eye. This time she did not come near.

29

In the darkness of the hold of the ship, the pardoner could pick out a faint luminescence, a moonglow behind the barrels and the chests. The place stank, as all ships’ holds did after their first spell in bad weather. Anything that a storm could shake out of a human or animal had been shaken out down there and scant attention paid to cleaning it up.

Fifty French men-at-arms stood on the riverbank beside the ship, another fifty on its deck and three came with the pardoner below.

‘That’s it, boys, in there. There’s your angel,’ said the Osbert, ‘best let me go to him first and see what’s what.’

It had not escaped the pardoner’s thoughts that a good quantity of further relics might be harvested from the angel. He had brought a hammer, a chisel and a sharp knife for that very purpose.

The men were wary. The three knights, with the sort of scars that said they knew what it was to fight, seemed like scared little boys, whispering at the foot of the ladder, not daring to come forward.

The pardoner advanced. ‘You can send your boys to arrest the queen of Navarre now, I’d say,’ said the pardoner. ‘Teach her and that bastard son of hers to look down their noses at me.’

‘You watch who you’re accusing. Kings think carefully before they throw away their allies,’ said one of the knights.

The angel was laid out on a pallet. Osbert went to its body and drew back the cerecloth. He gave a little cry. All of the hair had been cut off and every tooth in its head removed. The beauty of its face still remained but its mouth was a bloody ruin and its head was shaved tight to the skin.

‘Search the crew for teeth and hair!’ said the pardoner. ‘Hurry! God, there’s been dark work here!’

He checked the rest of the body quickly. Fingernails and toenails were still there. At least something was sacred. He took out his knife to try to prise one away. It made no impression.

He drew the knife he had taken from the dog-headed man. He put it against the toe joint and bore down with both hands, severing the big toe. It clacked heavily on the wood of the pallet.

‘Just dealing with a rat!’ said the pardoner. He stuffed the toe into his neck pouch.

‘Quite safe now, gentlemen,’ he said, waving the men-at-arms forward.

‘Thank God,’ said the knight.

All the men crossed themselves and approached the angel. They lifted the great body to the hatch, expressing surprise at how light it was. There a rope was tied around its arms and it was lifted up onto the deck. Only the light of the pardoner’s lantern remained.

He accompanied the body on the barge back down the river, along with the men-at-arms. He’d tried to avoid taking the warriors in order to have more time to remove relics from the body, but they had been insistent. There was a good fog on the water, which suited his purposes. His proximity to a dead angel could raise fear and suspicion among the common people. He knew where that led.

The boat floated on alongside the grand buildings of the Île de la Cité, drawing up on the north bank opposite the Hospital of the House of God, its towers floating upon the fog. A lantern guided them in. Osbert peered through the murk to see eight plainly dressed monks waiting for him with a two-horse cart. Hospitallers. He had not wanted to involve them and they had not wanted to be involved, until the king told them Osbert could find the angel’s body.

Now they welcomed them in. The monks took the angel’s body from the barge and placed it in the cart. It set off north up the Rue De La Temple. Only a light carried by one of the following monks and the sound of the horse’s hooves gave Osbert any sense of direction at all.

After ten minutes’ walk they drew level with the temple, a tall, boxy castle with a spindly tower at each corner. A curtain wall ran close by the tower, disappearing into the fog. The cart went in through a gate in the wall and Osbert followed. The grounds were large. A bulky building darkened the fog in front of him, another beside it rising higher, though scarcely visible. This was the temple of the Templars, or had been, where they had done all the foul magic that had wrought their destruction. The monks slid the body off the cart and carried it over towards the smudged outline of the chapel.

‘This way, magician.’ A tall monk spoke to Osbert.

‘I’m no more a magician than you are.’

‘I hope you are,’ said the monk, ‘because if you’re not then you’ve wasted the king’s time and that of the Hospitallers. That would go hard on you.’

‘Oh,
magician
,’ said the pardoner, ‘I thought you said
bagician
. It’s another word for a barber in our country. Something like that, anyway.’

The feeble attempt at a joke was lost on the monk. He went across the courtyard and Osbert trailed behind, now only the luminescence of the angel’s body to guide him.

The chapel door was open when they arrived. Inside, the monks were already arranging the body of the angel on a bier. On a seat by the altar sat King Philip, two fully mailed knights at his side. The king was clearly anticipating there might be problems.

Osbert paused in the doorway. Laid out on a bier behind the altar was the figure of Sariel. He crossed himself. She had not rotted and lay, pale and perfect, beneath the flickering candles. So the Hospitallers had got her body. He wondered what had happened to her. He tried not to stare at her. This was his big chance. He just had to wing it.

The inside of the chapel was austerely decorated with many carvings of gargoyles and demonic faces on its pillars and ceiling. A big black banner hung behind the altar bearing the white cross of the Hospitallers – its distinctive inverted arrowheads on the end of each arm. Eight points. He knew each point was meant to stand for something and was sure one of those things was contempt for death. He wondered what his cross would look like, if it represented a deep and abiding fear of death combined with a strong aversion to any sort of physical pain whatsoever.

His thoughts returned to Sariel. He was very sorry for what had happened to her and the part he had played in persuading her to come to France.

‘Considering we’re hooking a fellow out of Hell here, sir, might God’s Holy House not be the very best place for that purpose?’
Get your excuses in first, Osbert.

‘An angel sometimes dwells in this chapel,’ said the king. ‘If this is, as you say, God’s work; if these devils do truly serve him then they have nothing to fear from it. If they are God’s enemies, the angel will come forward to smite them and we may have conversation with it.’

‘Angels and devils are not great mixers, lord.’

Philip leaned forward in his seat. ‘This is the security I require. Live with this decision or hang.’

‘I guess I’ll be living with it, then,’ said Osbert.

‘How are you to proceed?’ said Philip.

‘Something my, er, magical instructor mentioned but never acted on. The angel’s body is divine. It has a life spirit that cannot quite be quenched. A devil can be invited to possess it.’

‘A devil can’t even stand the touch of angel’s blood,’ said Philip.

‘No, well, quite. But technically it’s not a devil we’re getting out here. It’s a
fallen
, fallen angel. Its original being is not unlike the creature’s here. I believe it may even be possible to place a devil into a fallen angel’s flesh.’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘Devils can possess things. The realms of soul and flesh are separate and do not mix. Therefore the devil wouldn’t have to touch the angel to control it, providing its spirit was missing. However, you never know with angels; there’s a chance it wouldn’t be good for the devil.’

‘You are a learned man.’

‘I did nothing but study for many years. Not even eat or drink. Can I call my servant?’

‘What servant?’

Osbert whistled and the scurrying form of Gressil came into the church. The devil paused at the door, sniffed about and then scuttled over the flagstones towards Osbert. One of the knights stood and drew his sword. The king waved the weapon away.

‘It’s hard to believe,’ said the king, ‘but this is one of God’s servants too.’

‘You believe what I have told you about these godly devils?’

‘I saw with my own eyes what the Templars could do and how they explained it. I would not be here now if I didn’t think there was at least some truth in it.’ He touched that plain little ring on his finger nervously.

‘Good. We’ll commence.’

Osbert took out his chalk. He had made a study of the circle on his belly and was now confident he could reproduce it, despite the knife wounds that disfigured it. Still, he unbuttoned his tunic and referred to the scars for guidance. He had watched Edwin work for so long that the prayers, the incantations, the order of the drawing of the circle and the writing of names came easily to him. One small circle for him to stand in. Another large one around the bier with the angel upon it. The little devil sat watching until, after an hour or so, the work was complete. Osbert took out the little bottle of angel blood Nergal had given him and placed a drop of blood on the houses of the east, west, north and south marked around the circle, as he had seen Edwin do with so much holy oil, holy water, holy dust and holy whatever else he could get his hands on.

‘Test it,’ said Osbert to Gressil. The devil walked forward to the edge of the circle and stopped.

‘The circle is sound,’ it said in its little squeaky voice. ‘I cannot cross it.’

‘Good,’ said Osbert, ‘so let’s begin.’

30

Montagu waited for the Templar for a week. The skies were black and the air full of the threat of rain, although no fog came. He woke at dawn wet with dew, drinking the puddles that formed in the rain, eating nothing. Memories came and went. Isabella, chiefly, sometimes his children, sometimes, bizarrely, of his first sword tutor Sir Robert Parr. ‘A man who kicks on the battlefield is one who wants to fall over,’ he’d said. ‘Only ever use it in the street, on good cobbles, and then only to finish a fight. God gave you two feet to stand on. Don’t mock him by making it one.’ After all he’d been through, was Montagu childish enough that he was embarrassed to be bested, however fleetingly, by low men? It seemed he was.

No one came near him in the hollow, though curious children watched him from a distance before their mothers called them back.

His sword was by his side, Isabella’s letter with him and the crown of thorns. For all his riches in England, they were three things he would not part with. The sky was grey – a storm was trying to come in from the east, where a weak dawn laboured under the clouds. He sat up. Still in that little hollow. Had it been seven days or eight? Good Jacques would come, he thought – he had to come.

Finally, as he dozed in a rare interval of sunshine, there was the sound of a man approaching. Montagu didn’t draw his sword – he didn’t want to antagonise anyone needlessly.

A man appeared above him. He was meanly dressed in just a ploughman’s rough tunic and braies, no shoes on his feet. At his side, though, he carried a good sword. He was old – around fifty, grey-bearded and tall and lean, with the air of someone accustomed to being taken seriously. Montagu crossed himself. It was the man who had guided them at Nottingham. William Eland. Good Jacques, as Bardi had called him.

‘You look hungry,’ commented Good Jacques. His voice was common, like a market trader’s.

‘Yes.’

The man nodded. ‘Here, catch.’ He threw Montagu’s purse at him. ‘All monies present,’ he said.

‘I can’t eat this,’ said Montagu.

‘A lesson there, I’d say.’

‘How did you get it back?’

‘The people lost their taste for robbing you when your devils appeared.’

‘What devils? I saw only one.’

‘One at first, then three big ones: two on the first night and one last night – a monstrous eye, a half-headed man and, to top it off, a woman eaten by plague. Doubtless if I kept watching you there’d be more but I think even you need to eat. Here.’

He opened his bag and took out a loaf of bread.

Montagu took it, counted to ten and then ripped off a piece as casually as he could. Without form a man is nothing.

‘What’s the names of these devils?’ asked the man.

‘I know no devils.’

‘They knew you, Lord Montagu. You’ve cleared half the slum.’

Montagu didn’t know what to make of this information, so he made nothing. The devils, he felt sure, were something to do with that pardoner – a low and disreputable sorcerer if ever he saw one.

‘Who are you?’

‘Your sworn enemy,’ the man replied.

‘How do you know my name? And why are you my enemy?’

‘You imagine that the rulers of the Great Hall are Philip and his wife? No, the rulers are the kitchen boys and the servants, those that throw out the rubbish and the shit. They are people you notice less than the walls or the buttresses. Yet they are walls and buttresses to that palace. They know all its secrets and without them it falls. I knew you were here within hours of you arriving at Le Châtelet. I have been watching you – or rather have had you watched.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I think you may help me.’

‘Yet you call me your enemy.’

‘I am someone who hates you more completely than any of your royal foes, more than Philip, more even than that prince you ran from the palace with. You look surprised. Has he told you he’s your ally? He’s a hater that one, to his core. If it wasn’t for the damage he’s going to cause I’d cut his throat now just to take a little bit of ugliness out of creation.’

‘Nothing wrong with plain speech,’ said Montagu. ‘Do you have a name, enemy?’

‘I’m Good Jacques,’ he said. ‘Or Jack, depending on how you like it. Jack Lebonne to some.’ It was as Montagu had hoped.

‘You’re the Templar?’

‘Was a Templar. There’s no temple any more, have you noticed?’

‘Then we are on the same side. I am an enemy of the Valois too.’