[Sir Richard Straccan 03] - The Gleemaiden Read online

  In the office, his clerk greeted him as if he’d never been away, getting straight down to business. ‘Glad you’re back. Lord Hamo got a bit shirty about the price of that tooth of Saint Cecilia. He’s not a happy baron.’

  ‘Let him stew a while longer, Peter,’ said Straccan. ‘He’ll grumble, but he’ll pay. What about the relics from Cyprus? Did they come?’

  ‘Yes. All there. I’ve put them in the book. The Countess of Gloucester wants a relic for the altar of a church she’s building, something to do with Our Lady; she wants to know what we can offer. Oh, and Brother Lucius from Dieulacresse was here about the garden.’ Peter put his pen between his teeth and riffled through the documents on the table with both hands.

  Straccan beamed. The garden! ‘Did he bring the plants?’

  ‘A wagonload. Plants, trees, and special sacks of earth, as if we hadn’t got our own. And a boy.’

  ‘I didn’t order a boy.’

  ‘He’s just lent. His name’s Nicholas. Brother Lucius wrote it all down. I’ve got it here somewhere, how to plant and care for the things, but Nicholas was to see them settled in — as if they were colts, for Christ’s sake!’

  ‘Did he send the pear trees?’

  ‘Pears, plums and a quince. He said if that grows it’ll be a miracle, but you wanted it. Ha! Here it is.’ Peter produced a list written in a monkish hand, and peered at it. ‘What are cardoons?’

  ‘God knows! Where’s whatsisname, Nicholas?’

  ‘Round by the orchard. He works, I’ll give him that. Digging from dawn to dusk, planting, watering and suchlike. He goes to his mum’s house at Falhollow to sleep every night. Brother Lucius wants him back, mind.’

  The garden had been Straccan’s idea; he’d consulted Lucius about it last summer, setting aside the ground in readiness for Janiva’s coming. It was his gesture of faith that he would find her, and somehow, during that lonely year, its planning made her seem closer to him. Now he looked with satisfaction at the neat rows and groups of plants, and the spaded ground still waiting for its treasures. String and pegs marked new beds and paths, staked saplings shivered slightly in the breeze. It was a mild morning — March had softened in the last few days — and a fresh warm fragrance breathed up from the turned earth. At the boundaries of the new garden, stones had been stacked to build its enclosing walls. Perched on a stone, a robin waited to swoop on the worms exposed by Nicholas’s spade.

  ‘Did you do all this by yourself?’

  The boy paused, his foot on the spade. ‘Aye, master. Brother Lucius did the stuff wi’ string and pegs, then he went home, an’ I got on wi’t.’

  ‘It’s good work. Would you like to stay at Stirrup and look after the garden?’

  Nicholas smiled, pushing his thick dusty hair out of his eyes. ‘Na, master. I be goin’ to be monk. Tis what my ma wants, what I want too. Brother Lucius, he’s too old and stiff for the bendin’ an’ diggin’, but he know a powerful lot ’bout herbs and such. I’ll be gardener at the priory, he promised. I alius loved the wonders in the bud, and the green growin’ things.’

  His thick, earthy finger gently touched a leaf, much as a mother touches the face of her baby. Straccan could have sworn the leaf lifted itself to the boy’s hand.

  Chapter Four

  The road from Bristol to Gloucester was always crowded with traffic to and from the port, and in these unsettled times, with rumours flying of rebellion and a French invasion, was busier than ever. Companies of knights and men-at-arms were on the move, grousing and cursing whenever they had to make way for the great long carts carrying wine, wool, timber and stone, hides, dried fish, live sheep, wheat, barley and pig iron. There were travellers returning from overseas or setting out on their adventures — monks, couriers, merchants, pilgrims, beggars — and abjurers too, poor sods, who to escape the gallows must tramp barefoot, escorted none too gently, to the nearest port to buy or beg passage into exile.

  Some of the pilgrims and all the beggars were afoot. The three, a man and two boys, sitting at the roadside oblivious to the dust, might have belonged to either group, but on the whole their looks were against them: too unkempt, their clothes too ragged. Besides, the man looked sick, and the great carts lumbered slowly past, none willing to take a chance on them. The older boy, slight of build and sun-browned, looked to be thirteen or fourteen, the other no more than six years old. The man was young, tall and broad-shouldered, but it was all he could do to get to his feet, and when he did he limped. He had clearly been injured; there was dried blood on the leg of his breeches. The older boy bent to let the younger scramble on to his back. All three were very thin, dirty and exhausted, but it would be dark in a couple of hours and they must find a place to sleep — some straw in a shed if they were lucky, a hedge or dry ditch if not. Some shelter was essential; it was early April, still cold at night, and they had only the clothes they were wearing.

  Back at the dock, when they had disembarked, the man had helped to load wine on to carts in return for the carter’s promise of a lift as far as Gloucester. But they’d only travelled three or four miles when it became obvious that he was sick, and horror of contagion made the carter turn them off.

  A woman riding a donkey trotted past and saw the boy carrying his little brother, as she thought. Moved to sympathy she reined in for a moment and called to the man, ‘There’s a hospice two miles on, pilgrim; they’ll give you and your boys supper and a bed.’ But he, using all his concentration to put one foot in front of the other and stay upright, didn’t or couldn’t respond. The older boy looked up, unsmiling.

  ‘Mem, madame.’

  Bloody foreigners! Frogs, by the sound of it. No wonder the fellow had no manners! Miffed, the woman heeled her donkey and trotted on. It began to rain, a brief but cold shower. The chances of a dry ditch receded, but at least it would lay the dust.

  The little boy said, ‘I’m so tired, Roslyn. Can we go there?’

  ‘No, David,’ said the other, who wasn’t a boy, after all. ‘If they’re looking for us, they’ll look in those places.’

  The sick man stopped, swayed and mumbled something. ‘What, Miles?’

  ‘This is England,’ Miles said. His head ached so cruelly that he found it difficult to think, let alone speak. ‘Not bloody France. We’re safe here.’

  Roslyn raised a cynical eyebrow. ‘You think? Best take no chances. We’ll find somewhere to rest.’ And to David: ‘Will you walk for a bit?’ Setting the child down, she took the sick man’s arm over her shoulder, bracing herself for the weight. Like a couple of drunks, they staggered on, with the stumbling child clinging to Roslyn’s tunic.

  We can't go on like this, she thought. Frowning, she looked at the carts, great and small, trundling past, and the riders on horses, mules and donkeys. Perhaps I can steal a horse. Some folk afoot were towing handcarts. Or one of those… Some of these travellers would be stopping at the hospice the donkey woman had spoken of.

  ‘Come on, Miles. Just a little further.’

  Ten more steps, and ten, and another ten. A fat monk on a mule came up behind them. ‘Get out of my way!’

  But Miles was slow, and the monk, passing, stuck his foot out and gave the limping man a hard shove in the back. He went down on his knees, pitching forward on his face. David gave a loud cry of dismay, and as the monk urged his mule on, the child stood with small fists clenched, glaring after him. In the stream of travellers it was not possible to tell where the stone came from that struck the monk’s back. He glared over his shoulder but jogged on.

  Roslyn’s reaction was strange. Instead of helping Miles she cried, ‘David! No, David, don’t! Look at me, at me, David!’ and dropped to her knees beside the child, whispering to him, hugging him tightly with his head pressed against her so that he couldn’t see the monk any more.

  David tried to pull away. ‘He hurt Miles!’

  ‘I know, but you promised! No stones!’ He struggled, but only when the monk was quite out of sight did she release him and help Miles u
p, propping him along as before. And so, painfully, they covered another mile.

  As it grew dark they came upon a tumbledown shed, not far from the hospice, blessedly dry, a store for turnips and old hay. Miles’s headache and throbbing leg gave him little rest, but he must have slept at some time for he never heard them whispering together, nor the girl leaving, and returning later pulling a small handcart. His dismay when he woke and saw the contraption would have been funny if it hadn’t been serious.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Can you get up, Miles? I’ll help you. We must be quick.’ Quick, yes, before the owner of the cart woke and found it gone. ‘Get in. I’ll pull you.’

  He baulked. ‘In that? No! I can’t!’

  ‘Why? What’s the matter?’ They stared at him as if he was mad.

  ‘You don’t understand! It’s a cart. I’m a knight. It’s against my honour!’ It was the most degrading thing that could happen to a knight; disgraced prisoners of war were transported in carts for folk to jeer at and throw turds. And he was right, they didn't understand.

  Roslyn looked at him for a long moment, then gave a very Gallic shrug. ‘As you please. David, jump in.’ The child did so, and Roslyn took the shafts and moved off.

  ‘Wait, Roslyn! Not so fast! I’ll keep up. I can. I will, I promise!’ But already the cart had travelled some way. Miles lurched after it, swearing. After twenty steps or so, he fell down. The cart stopped, turned, came back.

  ‘David, help me get him in.’

  As they dragged and heaved him — although thin he was big-boned and heavy, and ridiculously uncooperative — Miles began to cry, tears of weakness and frustration, tears of shame. At last he was in, sprawled on the planking; and losing no more time the cart set off again. David slid a folded sack pillow under Miles’s head. Tears made pale gullies down the little boy’s dirty face.

  ‘Miles! Oh Miles, don’t die! Oh please, not you, not you too!’

  Chapter Five

  Bishop Fulk stayed to the end, long after most folk had grown bored and gone home. Not until the executioner’s apprentices had raked out the embers and thrown the charred bones in the Garonne, lest any heretic should take them away to venerate, did Fulk sign his bearers to take up the chair and carry him back to his residence. As he jolted through the narrow streets of Toulouse his lips moved in prayer — not for the souls of the burned heretics, they were beyond hope of mercy, but for Christendom and the Faith, for Holy Church in her desperate struggle against the overwhelming tide of heresy, and for all godly men who fought the Church’s enemies.

  A dozen archers rode with the curtained chair, which was borne by eight carriers, and twelve spearmen marched with it, six to a side, in case anyone should be moved by the devil to try and kill the occupant. Their captain rode fully armoured, sword in hand, beside the chair, scanning doorways, windows, rooftops and alley mouths, alert for danger. Beneath his fur-lined robes the bishop wore ring mail from throat to groin, under his mitre was a steel skullcap, and within the curtained chair the hands loosely clasped in his lap rested on the hilt of a long-bladed dagger. These precautions might be thought unseemly for a man of God, but agents of Satan had tried seven times to kill him.

  Fulk leaned back and closed his eyes; the smoke had made them sore. It had been a wearying day; it gave him no pleasure to watch human flesh char and sizzle like pork in the flames. He had done his utmost to save those wretches from their dreadful end, but like most of these cursed Cathars, sons of perdition, they had rejected the loving mercy of the Church and gone to Satan as blithely as any blessed martyr ever went to Christ.

  At times the bishop almost succumbed to the sin of despair, for these heretics were like no others. The whole of the Languedoc was infected, from the highest-born nobility to the meanest serf. Villages, towns, whole cities believed themselves the only true Christians, and Holy Church the church of Satan. Generation after generation had been born, lived and died in heresy, and gone to hell. The Cathars had churches, bishops, priests — even women priests! They regarded the Holy Cross as a hateful and disgusting thing, the instrument of Christ’s torture, the sacraments as worthless, and the Mass itself as sacrilege; for how, they asked, could a piece of bread, digested in the guts of the Catholic faithful and shamefully excreted, be the true body of God?

  Deep-rooted, Catharism had grown out of the earlier Bogomil heresy and the perverted doctrines of the Manichees before that. The Cathars taught that the world and mankind had been created not by God but by Satan, and were altogether evil; that only the soul was of God, trapped in a fleshly prison from which it could only escape by leading a pure, chaste life. Marriage and procreation could only bring into the evil world more evil beings; therefore, they argued, Christ could not have been born from the womb of Mary. He was pure spirit and could never have assumed impure flesh, nor suffered physical death. There had been no incarnation and no resurrection.

  In his litter, Fulk groaned at the magnitude of his task. No matter how many heretics burned, there were always more; their loathsome doctrine spread like the plague, sure proof that the last days were coming, as Saint John had written. Fulk would uproot and burn them, these foul weeds strangling God’s garden, as long as breath remained to him.

  But evil as they were, a stench in God’s nostrils, these Cathars were as nothing compared to the monstrous affront to God, the living blasphemy that now threatened Holy Church and all Christendom.

  The task of destroying that had fallen to him, and so far he had failed. It wasn’t his fault, he had done his utmost, but here he stood alone against the tide of evil. Until help came, in the form of Lord Simon de Montfort’s forces — please God, soon! — he would just have to keep trying.

  There was shouting in the street. His bearers were slowing down. Fulk pulled the leather curtain aside and stuck his head out.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  The bearers stopped abruptly, amid yells and jeers and the high-pitched screaming of a terrified woman. Fulk beckoned his captain.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Just another heretic, m’lord.’

  The bishop leaned out for a better look.

  He wasn’t the only one held up. A pedlar with his laden donkey, a monk on a mule and a mud-splashed knight on horseback had also been brought to a halt, unable to get through the clot of people blocking the narrow street and egging on two rough-looking fellows wearing the blazon of a white cross. They were dragging a screaming woman from a house. She clung to the doorpost, but one had her round the waist while the other hammered at her bleeding hands with the haft of his dagger. A girl, seven or eight years old, clutched her mother’s skirts, her face beslobbered with tears. A bystander tore the child away and flung her sprawling between the hooves of the knight’s horse. The rider dismounted instantly to pick her up.

  ‘Help us, sir, please! Please, help!’ she cried, grasping the edge of his jerkin.

  The knight laid a protective hand on her thin shoulder. ‘What has the child done to be handled so roughly?’ he demanded.

  The men had forced the woman to her knees in the mud while one of them tied her hands behind her back. ‘Nothing to concern you, sir. Heretics.’

  At that the knight’s face changed, all humanity wiped from it in an instant. Quite gently he detached the child’s grip and pushed her towards the soldiers.

  ‘I’m sorry, maid. I can’t help such as you,’ he said. ‘God’s work be done.’

  A howl of approval went up from the onlookers. Muck and stones flew as the woman and her daughter were dragged away. The bishop’s outriders began whacking at backs and bottoms with the flats of their swords, while the captain bawled at folk to make way. The crowd melted like grease, the knight remounted and rode on, the monk likewise, although the pedlar was having a spot of trouble with his donkey which had decided to sit down. With a ‘One, two, three!’ the chair bearers heaved up their load and trotted forward. Fulk let the curtain fall.

  * * *

 
His secretary, Maitre Deil, was waiting with the eager look of a man who had news and was bursting to tell it.

  ‘He is here! He has just arrived!’

  ‘He is late,’ said the bishop sourly, taking off his mitre and rubbing the red dent across his brow. ‘He was supposed to be here yesterday.’ He took off the steel cap and turned his back for a squire to undo the straps of his mail shirt.

  ‘The roads are bad,’ Maitre Deil said, but the bishop was unwilling to be placated, and his face wore its look of discontent all the way to his private chamber, where a slot in the wall known to his household as ‘the bishop’s eye’ allowed him to peer down into the hall without being seen.

  ‘Which is he?’

  ‘Near the door, by the first pillar. I have sent a servant to take him to the dormitory.’

  Leaning against the pillar with his arms folded was the knight from the street. As the bishop watched, a lay brother approached and spoke to the knight, who followed him from the hall, limping heavily. The bishop scowled.

  ‘He’s a cripple! Could you find no fit man for the task?’

  ‘Oh, hardly a cripple, my lord. And we have already sent three fit men,’ Deil reminded him. ‘With sorry results: two dead and one who will never fight again.’

  ‘They didn’t expect such fierce resistance. They didn’t expect any resistance! It seemed simple enough.’ The bishop tugged his lower lip between finger and thumb, mentally mourning the three good men wasted, two in their graves and the third left useless with but one arm. ‘What in the name of God,’ Fulk growled, ‘makes you think this cripple can fare better?’