The White Rose (25 page)

'You're not going to die,' Broussac said, his eyes dancing with mischief. 'We thought we'd denied the wolves a good meal. If we hadn't, we'd have tossed you back and perhaps saved some other unfortunate!'

I struggled up to show I wasn't wolf meat. Capote brought me a deep-bowled cup of heavy claret, heated it with a burning poker, and a dish of scalding meat, heavily spiced. I later learnt it was cat. They asked me a few questions and withdrew to grunt amongst themselves, then came back and welcomed me as one of them. God knows why they saved me. When I asked, they just laughed.

'We don't like wolves,' Broussac sneered, 'whether they be four- or two-legged. You're not French, are you?' he added.

'I'm English,' I replied. 'But I starve like any Frenchman!'

They laughed and clapped me on the shoulder. If I had lied, I'm sure they would have cut my throat. I swear this now [never mind the chaplain who is sitting there sneering at me], I saw more of Christ's love amongst the Maillotins than anywhere else on this earth. Their organisation was loose knit but they accepted anyone who swore the oath of secrecy and agreed to share things in common, which I promptly did. What we owned we stole and filched, not from the poor but the merchants, the lawyers, the fat and the rich. What we didn't eat ourselves, we shared; the most needy receiving the most, then a descending scale for everybody else.

I also began to plot my departure from Paris. Benjamin, I reasoned, must either have died of an illness or been killed. Now I would need silver to reach the coast and get across the Narrow Seas. Broussac once asked what I was doing in Paris, so I told him. He was fascinated by Selkirk's murder.

'There is a secret society,' he murmured, 'Englishmen who fled after your Richard III was killed at Bosworth. They have an emblem.' He screwed up his face so it seemed to hide behind his huge nose. Their emblem is an animal, a leopard? No, no, a white boar.
Les Blancs Sa
ngliers!
'

At the time I didn't give a damn. In the winter of 1518 all I cared about was surviving and life was hard in Paris. Yuletide and Twelfth Night passed with only the occasional carols in church, for no one dared to go out at night. Mind you, every cloud had a silver lining. The brothels were free, the ladies of the night well rested and more than prepared to accept sustenance, a loaf or a jug of wine, instead of silver. I suppose I was happy enough. I never planned. (I always follow the Scriptures: 'Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.') I just wish I had practised what I preached! I was full to the gills of roasted cat, which is one of the reasons I can't stand the animals now. Whenever I see one I remember the "rancid smell of Broussac's stew pot and the gall rises in my throat.

[The silly chaplain is shaking his noddle.

'I would not eat cat,' he murmurs.

Yes, the little sod would. Believe me, when you are hungry, really hungry, so that your stomach clings to your backbone, nothing is more tasty than a succulent rat or a well-roasted leg of cat!]

I stayed with the Maillotins until spring came. The river thawed and barges of food began to reach the capital. The city provost and his marshals became more organised, clamping down more ruthlessly on the legion of thieves which flourished in the slums around the Rue Saint Antoine. Broussac and Capote refused to read the signs and so made their most dreadful mistake. One night, early in February 1518, the three of us were in a tavern called the Chariot, a cosy little ale house which stands on the corner of the Rue des Mineurs near the church of Saint Sulpice. We had eaten and drunk well, our gallows faces flushed with wine, our stupid mouths bawling out some raucous song and planning our next escapade.

Now Broussac had an enemy - a Master Francois Ferrebourg, a priest, bachelor of arts, and pontifical notary. He occupied a house at the Sign of the Keg, a little further down the street opposite the convent church of the Order of Saint Cecily. Broussac, on our way home, stopped to jeer in at the lighted windows of Master Ferrebourg's office. Oh, God, I remember the scene well: the black street with its overhanging eaves and gables, the broad splash of light pouring across the cobbles from Ferrebourg's open window. Inside, his clerks sat toiling into the night over some urgent piece of business and Broussac, half-tipsy, taunted them, making rude gestures and spitting through the window. Now, we should have left it at that, but we were too drunk to run, whilst the clerks were sober and quick-witted. They left their writing desks and poured into the streets, led by Master Ferrebourg himself. The notary gave Broussac a vigorous shove which sent my companion sprawling into the open sewer. He picked himself up, roaring with rage, and, before I could stop him, whipped out his dagger and gave Master Ferrebourg a nasty gash across his chest whilst lifting the purse from his belt.

'Run, Shallot!' he screamed.

I was too drunk and, as Broussac disappeared into the darkness, Capote and myself were seized and held until the night watch arrived. Our thumbs were tied together and, in a clatter of arms and a tramp of archers, we were hustled into the dark archways of the Chatelet prison and thrown into a deep dungeon beneath the tower.

We were tried before the Provost of Paris the next morning. Capote, still drunk, farted and belched when the sentence was read out. I tried to reason with them but, in doing so, confessed I was English. My fate was sealed. We were condemned as two of the most troublesome blackguards within the liberties of Paris; rioters, burglars and assassins, hand in glove with some of the most desperate characters of the underworld. We were sentenced to hang the next morning at the gallows of Montfaucon. I tried to plead and argue but was only beaten for my pains and thrown down the steps back into my cell; the dungeon door, grating shut, was locked securely behind us.

Capote immediately fell asleep on the straw. I just sat staring into the darkness, hugging my knees. All I could see was Death, beckoning and grinning before me. In the thick, musty air of the dungeon I felt a creeping graveyard chill. Who would help me this time? The Parisians would scarcely spare a second thought for an Englishman and be only too pleased to see me twitch and shake at the end of a rope. I thought of Benjamin and Wolsey and cursed them. Couldn't they have done something? Made enquiries? Searched me out?

['Put not your trust in princes, Shallot!' my chaplain often quips. I rap the little hypocrite across the knuckles and tell him to keep writing.]

I spent the night before my intended execution listening to Capote's raucous songs. The fellow said he didn't give a fig about life so why should he fear death? He was still brazening it out the next morning when the Provost and his bodyguard of twelve mounted Serjeants and ten archers came to collect us. We were roped, hustled up the steps of the dungeon and into the freezing courtyard. The scarlet execution cart was waiting for us, the skulls of hanged men decorating each side. The Provost barked an order and the red-hooded executioner turned, wished us good morning, flicked his whip and urged the cart through the gates of the prison and on to the winding track down to Montfaucon.

We made a brief stop at the Convent of Les Filles de Dieu near the port of St Severin. Here the good sisters comforted us on our last journey with a manchet of bread and a cup of wine.

I chewed the bread and took the wine in one long gulp to control my trembling for I did not wish to disgrace myself. Capote was as raucous as ever, eyeing the sisters, cracking jokes with the executioner, telling the good prioress to have a second cup ready for the journey back. The provost then ordered us forward, the Serjeants going ahead, spurring a lane through the mob gathering to watch us die. I glimpsed Broussac, one hand down the bodice of some whore, the other holding a wine cup. He grinned and toasted me silently. I glared back at the bastard. If he had kept his mouth shut I would still be eating rancid meat and plotting my own way out of Paris.

At last we reached the gibbet and, if you should wish to see a vision of Hell before death, go to Montfaucon. A hideous place! A flat, oblong mound fifteen feet high, about thirty feet wide and forty feet long, it stands like some horrible pimple outside Paris on the road to Saint Denis. On three sides of this mound there is a colonnade on a raised platform comprising sixteen evenly spaced square pillars of unhewn stone, each thirty-two feet high, linked together at the top by heavy beams with ropes and chains hanging from them at short intervals. You could hang a small village there. In the centre of the platform gapes an immense lime pit covered by a grating which is used for the disposal of the hanged after they have been gibbeted. (Did you know in summer the gallants take their doxies out there for a picnic? Imagine, wine and pastries under the swinging corpses of the damned!)

When I arrived, Montfaucon seemed to have been busy. At least fifteen crow-pecked corpses, slimed by their own decay, swung from the end of creaking ropes. By now my courage had failed and I had to be helped up the steep, wooden steps, the executioner's assistants whispering that if I made a good show they would make sure I would choke for no more than ten minutes. Behind me the cart creaked away and the executioners busied themselves with the ropes. I glimpsed Capote beside me, now quiet. The thick hempen cords were slung round our necks; a dusty-robed priest appeared as if from nowhere to recite in a precise voice the last prayer for the dying. The provost came to the edge of the scaffold, unrolled a parchment and read the sentences of death. The noose was tightened and I was pushed up a ladder.

'Don't be nervous,' the executioner grinned. 'At least you don't have to go down it again!'

I gazed out wildly over the crowds.

'Not now,' I whispered. 'Surely, not now!'

The ladder was turned, I heard a voice cry out: 'Not that one!'

But I was already choking as the noose tightened around my throat. I heard a terrible pounding in my ears, my heart thudding like a drum, my stomach lurching as I swung on the end of the rope. I turned and twisted. Capote was also dancing in the air. I couldn't breathe, the pain in the back of my head was so intense, then suddenly blackness.

I revived as I felt myself go hurtling through the air and crashed down on to the wooden planks of the scaffold. The noose round my neck was loosened, I retched and vomited. Beside me crouched the provost, looking concerned.

'You are still with us, Master Shallot?'

I retched again, on to his robe, a suitable thanks to the hard-faced bastard. He squirmed in distaste.

'A pardon, Shallot.' He thrust the small scroll under my nose. 'Someone still loves you!'

The provost made a sign. Two of the archers picked me up under the armpits and hustled me down the steps of the scaffold. I glanced at Capote, still dangling, choking out his life. I saw a sea of faces and heard the boos and catcalls of the crowd, cheated of their sport. A serjeant-at-arms, wearing the royal arms of France on his tabard, gestured to the archers to hoist me into the saddle of a horse whose reins he held.

Hell's teeth, I can hardly remember the rest! A bumpy, shaky ride back across Paris. I thought I was being taken to the prison but instead found myself outside the door of Le Coq d'Or. The serjeant-at-arms, hidden behind the guard of his conical helmet, dragged me down and pushed me into a chamber where a candle glowed in the darkness. I smelt the sour odour of sweaty robes and noticed a brazier of gleaming charcoal had been rolled in. I was shoved down on the bed, the soldier left and the slattern bustled in with a small manchet loaf and a goblet of wine. She watched me eat for a while, mumbled something and left. I nearly choked on the bread; my neck and throat seemed to be ringed by a cruel vice. Stars danced before my eyes and I kept shaking with fear at my latest brush with death. Surely you understand? One minute dangling on the end of a rope; the next a reprieve, a bumpy ride through Paris, followed by the sweetest bread and most fragrant wine I had tasted for months.

[Ever since Montfaucon I have always dreaded executions. I mean, sometimes, as Lord of the Manor, I have to order one but my court is well known for its leniency. Of course, I pay the price. At night my fields are more alive with poachers than rabbits. I will grant the most hardened criminal a reprieve rather than see him hang. The chaplain is nodding his little, bald head. Of course, the idiot now understands the reason for my mercy. He probably thought I had a soft heart. Well, he learns something every day, including why I can never bear anything tight round my throat. Even the touch of smoothest silk reawakens the horrors of my journey to Montfaucon.]

Anyway, back to Le Coq d'Or where I lay on the truckle bed and drifted off to sleep.

When I awoke Benjamin was leaning over me, his eyes bright in a face more pallid than usual.

'Roger, I have returned.'

'Of course, you have, you bloody idiot! Just in time!' I snarled. 'Where in Hell's name have you been?'

Chapter 10

Benjamin sat on the stool next to my bed and wiped the sweat from his face. He looked paler and thinner.

'I'm sorry, Roger,' he mumbled. 'It's a long story. I went to Kelso in Scotland.' He looked away, lost in his memories. 'A lonely monastery surrounded by a sea of dark purple heather and deserted, haunted moors. A grey-slated, dark-stoned building.' He smiled thinly. 'Oh, I was safe enough. Agrippa gave me a safe conduct and the Lord d'Aubigny arranged for moss troopers to guard my every step.'