Son of the Morning (80 page)
Still, he hoped he would get a chance to see the Luciferians slaughtered. They were an abomination to him and to God, and he knew he would be doing God’s work by putting them back in the place He had intended.
The priest was bundled into the tent.
‘Stand there,’ said Edward. ‘You and I need to talk. Bow, man. My God what sort of creature are you?’
In the year the great battle of Crecy was fought.
It could not escape notice that Charles of Navarre had developed the appetites of what could only be described as, well, how would you say it? A cat. Those close to him tried not to mention it out of regard for the prince’s feelings.
He did not look particularly feline, if you ignored his eyes. His fingernails were sharp and he had a funny way of holding his mouth, with the top lip dropped over the bottom, as did some cats. Apart from that there was nothing of the cat about him – though he had taken to climbing up on the palace roofs and lying in the sun and was given to stalking the kitchens in search of mice, which he liked to eat live and whole.
As none of the servants would ever presume to comment on anything a prince might do, it took his mother a month to find out about it. When she did, she immediately insisted this stop at once and, if he was to eat mice, he ate only fine white mice pulled from a jewelled box. All were agreed that, at fourteen, the prince had become a creditable young gentleman despite – some said because of – the feline aspect.
Charles himself, of course, questioned his mother about exactly why he might be feeling so ‘miggily moggily’. At first she had tried to palm him off, saying many young men developed odd appetites around the coming of their maturity. Her cousin, for instance, had taken a great liking to cheese.
Charles, however, was an intelligent boy and questioned many people about his new hungers. Philip told him plainly he had never heard of such a thing and the Comte D’Evreux told him plainly the only mice most boys of his age liked to play with were those to be found hiding up serving girls’ skirts.
Then the palace cats started to follow him around, a minimum of eight, including some war-torn mousers from the kitchens. Again, Joan intervened and had those cats got rid of and replaced with pure Persians, the colour of smoke. If her son was to be followed by cats, he would be followed by noble cats. When it proved hard to keep the inferior felines away, Joan insisted that her son only favour the aristocratic animals with titbits.
‘Why do they follow me, mother?’ Charles said. ‘Uncle John says I must keep fish in my hose.’ She tried to offer him the line that they had peddled at court – Charles had acted nobly in trying to defend the Sainte-Chapelle against the English devils and invaders and the sorcerous Montagu had cursed him. His cat appetites and irresistible charm to the animals were the wounds of a magical battle and deserved the same respect as any injury suffered by a prince in defence of his realm or that of his allies. Charles accepted the explanation at first but eventually his keen mind worked out that it simply didn’t make sense.
‘None of them cursed me mother, I’d have heard it. I’d have felt it. What’s more, if an Englishman was going to curse me it would be with something worse than being liked by cats.’ He opened a dark wood box at his side and pulled out a wriggling white mouse by its tail. ‘Are you convinced that’s the explanation?’ He popped the mouse into his mouth and crunched its neck in his jaws in a way that always made his mother visibly blanch.
Joan, who hated to see her son so miserable, so stricken, thought she owed him the truth. And finally confessed – his father was not who he had taken him to be.
‘You lay with a
cat
?’ Charles sat with a box on his lap.
‘Yes.’
‘How?’ said Charles, whose thoughts were habitually more concerned with matters practical than moral.
‘A devil,’ she said, ‘invoked as we Capetian queens have always been able to do at times of great need.’ Nergal, in his usual place, gave a little smile.
‘Why?’ he miaowed.
‘I was given to my husband. He was not the man to restore our line to its former glory. I needed a father with more bite about him.’
Charles, as if in illustration, drew another writhing white mouse from the box and dangled it by the tail above his mouth before dropping it in.
‘I find it hard to credit,’ he said, his mouth full of fur.
‘Don’t look so shocked,’ she said. ‘Plenty of queens have had such lovers when they doubted their husbands. But for the cloak you would have retained your human appetites, I am convinced of it. That weakened your human side’
‘Don’t worry, mother,’ said Charles, ‘I like being so catty. I can outclimb any boy in the court, outjump them too. No one is my master in swordsmanship.’
‘It’s good to hear it, son, but restrain yourself with the mice. You will grow too fat for war.’
‘I shall never be too fat for that, ma’am!’ He took out another mouse, tossed it to the ceiling, drew his blade and impressively sliced it in two in mid-air. Its two pieces splatted to the stone of the floor. Joan’s hand went to her mouth but otherwise she kept her composure.
Charles’ attention snapped back to his parentage. ‘How did you summon the devil?’ he demanded.
‘Not easily,’ said Joan.
‘Did you open a gate to Hell? I would like to go back if I wouldn’t be punished for failure,’ said Nergal, swallowing down his customary candle. He breathed out but no more than steam came from his mouth. ‘I am sorely stricken,’ he said. ‘Time was I’d have been able to burn this entire castle down. I could project flame from my fingers when I was in the mood, too.’
‘Stop your complaining,’ said Joan, ‘it severely tests my patience. No, I did not open a gate, not even a postern gate by which a devil might slip through.’
‘I suppose there are devils wandering the earth at any time,’ said Nergal, ‘looking for queens to bargain with. I did in the days of my flame.’
‘Which queens?’ said Joan.
‘Can’t remember,’ said Nergal.
‘More idle boasting. Devil, I begin to wonder what you are for. What do you give us for the fortune we spend on keeping you in candles?’
‘I have saved your son.’
‘And been well rewarded for it. I estimate I have allowed you to eat about five thousand candles and one cardinal since you stayed with us.’
‘Prince Charles,’ said Nergal, ‘defend me against your mother. Tell her how I have served you.’
Charles licked at his lips – his broad tongue flashing pink. ‘Times are tight, old Nergal. Mice of this quality aren’t cheap, I tell you. And I wonder if you might not further our aim of destruction by fending for yourself. I dare say you’d get in a few scrapes stealing lanterns from fine ladies. I bet you might even kill a few if they came between you and a flame.’
‘I couldn’t kill a kitten nowadays.’
‘The very idea!’ said Charles, covering the ears of a fine Persian who sat on his lap.
‘Don’t mock me, lord. See what I have given for you.’ He rattled the collar on his neck.
Charles showed his teeth. ‘A grievous wound but I am done sharing my chamber. You don’t even warm the air any more.’
‘Then find me another chamber.’
‘And risk my secrets being out among the servants of the palace? No, Nergal, it is better we part. If you can bring me any better servant, or regain your former power, you will be welcomed back.’
‘I was sent from Hell to track down the Antichrist. You were to help me in that endeavour or I wouldn’t have been sent here.’
‘I tracked him down. Had you kept your head, you would have been able to kill him easily after the angel fell on him and your mission would be done; Satan would have opened the gates of Hell to you himself, have welcomed you in and sent me who knows what rewards.’
‘Please, sir, do not turn me out into the cold. I am bound to you.’
‘How bound?’
‘You are a prince. I am a low devil. I am yours to command and swore service to you in the forest when I first protected you.’
‘It’s been no sort of protection recently, has it? If you weren’t with me when you walk the streets of Paris a gang of starved urchins would beat you and rob you. Losing my patronage will focus your mind, Nergal. You’ve been sitting in here feeling sorry for yourself for years now and what has happened? England has made a tolerable inroad into Gascony, some stirrings in the south – but I want to see this land on fire. Time was I thought you were the man to deliver that.’
‘I am, sir, I am.’ The devil wept.
‘Time was those tears would have sizzled on your cheeks,’ said Charles.
‘Shall I have him expelled, son?’
‘Oh, why not? Why not indeed?’ Charles batted at the threads dropping from his mother’s embroidery and she smiled at him indulgently.
‘No, sir, no!’
But it was no good. Joan called for the guards and they dragged the devil away into the streets.
Charles rubbed at the window, looking out into the falling snow.
‘Do you think he’ll be back?’
‘Devils are wily,’ said his mother, ‘and he is not of this world. He needs you more than you need him. For all his whining he doesn’t want to go back to Hell. Deprivation is good for the lower sort.’
‘I’ll remember that, mummy,’ said Charles. ‘Now send for more mice.’
‘She has a link to him, magician, a link, and this is the best way to find it.’
The pardoner crossed himself. Despenser was a terrible sight now – four years after he had come to the French court from Hell – he appeared more like something found on a gibbet on a city gate than the angel whose body he had inhabited.
They had taken over the crypt of the Temple chapel as a work space and now its walls were daubed with magical circles and inscriptions, the pentagrams and triangles, the names of devils and angels and the many names of God. The wax of four years of candles dripped over the tombstones and the effigies of long dead knights. Despenser kneeled in the flickering light, his corpse-face examining the body of the young woman.
‘She hasn’t rotted. Why hasn’t she rotted? I’ve rotted.’
The pardoner looked down at Sariel’s body. ‘I think it must be because God doesn’t want such perfection to fade,’ said Osbert.
‘Why do you always bother what God wants? Satan is our master and the source of our prosperity. Concentrate on pleasing me so I might please him. Why can’t you get me into
that
body?’
Osbert tapped his wand on the plinth and adjusted his conical hat. ‘I’m not a bloody magician,’ he was tempted to answer but, as he was doing rather well out of people believing he was, he contented himself with a shrug. ‘We’ve tried, haven’t we?’ he said. ‘If you’re willing to undergo the ritual we can give it a go.’
‘You would tear out my heart to do it?’
‘I don’t make the rules,’ said Osbert. ‘That’s how Lord Despenser thinks it will work and he’s made enquiries with all the devils on this very subject.’
‘Rip out my heart and I’d be back in Hell in an instant.’
‘Or in an angelic body.’
He wiped sweat from his brow. In the corner a little branding devil – basically a smith’s hot ingot roughly shaped like a man – roasted nuts for Despenser on the palm of its hand.
Despenser shot Osbert a dark look and the pardoner sat down in the space between a sarcophagus and the wall. He’d discovered that he could just about wedge himself in there deep enough so that the giant’s rotting hands couldn’t reach him. He kept his head down until the lord had found someone or something better to vent his anger on.
‘If I can inhabit this angel’s body then others can too. We can draw forth just the fellow to do it if you can hit on a better spell. No one is desperate enough to allow you to rip out their heart, not even the lowest devil.’ Despenser peered down at him, seemingly still in an even temper, though Osbert had been caught like that before – emerging from his refuge, lulled by a smile or some small talk only for Despenser to thrash him. Rotting had not improved the lord’s temper. He was desperate to find the boy and seemed to be coming to believe that the sole reason for his inability to do so was Osbert’s incompetence. In fact Osbert had proved himself a competent, even talented, conjurer.
‘I have consulted all my learned books and can find nothing better,’ said Osbert. This was true. He had no learned books but had used his magician’s allowance to buy some rather nonsensical ones at a market. The Hospitallers, he was convinced, had what he needed, but they had been mightily annoyed when the care of Sariel’s body had gone to the pardoner and Despenser, not them. They were even more annoyed that King Philip had granted Osbert the use of the crypt and a room in the Great Tower – so they were not about to open any more of their library to him than they had during their short-lived collaboration.
When the company of Despenser’s devils had finally become too much for them, they’d appealed to Philip to have them thrown out. Instead the king had told the Hospitallers to leave and they’d taken everything with them.