[Sir Richard Straccan 03] - The Gleemaiden Read online

  Deil hesitated. ‘You know what the Faidits did to him—’

  ‘Of course.’ Fulk knew all too well. The Seigneurs Faidits, heretic knights dispossessed and on the run, showed no mercy to any captured crusader.

  ‘After they let him go he refused to return to his domain. He ordered his wife back to her father’s house and his daughter to a nunnery, and yielded his fief to his brother. Then he entered the novitiate at St Gilies, but after a year the abbot decided he was unsuited to monastic life. Since then he has not been fortunate in finding a place. Bad luck clings to him. He was — he still is — a fighter of renown. He is not to blame for what was done to him.’

  ‘No, poor devil. But you didn’t say he was a cripple.’ He looked accusingly at his secretary. ‘Holy Writ tells of men who made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake, and nowhere is it written that they were cripples. I did not expect him to be lame.’

  Maitre Deil opened his mouth to protest, but seeing the bishop was determined to find fault shut it again and mutely handed him a damp towel to wipe the smuts from his face. His Grace was always short-tempered after a burning.

  ‘You’ll find no man more apt to the purpose,’ he said when the bishop had wiped his face and hands. ‘No one hates heretics more. Nor pity nor shame will stay his hand. And he knows England; he lived there for some years.’

  He poured a cup of wine; the bishop drank and held it out for more. ‘Does he know why he’s been sent for?’

  ‘Not yet. Will you see him tonight, my lord?’

  Fulk considered, tugging his lip again. ‘Not now. Have someone stay close to him for a few days; note what he says, what he does. Someone discreet.’

  Maitre Deil raised a questioning eyebrow.

  ‘You may be right,’ Fulk said. ‘But we must be sure. Pity and shame have no place in this mission.’

  * * *

  Two men, discreet to the point of invisibility, observed the new arrival continuously, and after three days made their reports to Maitre Deil. Only then was the lame knight brought to the bishop’s chamber, where Fulk spoke long with him, testing and probing, before getting down to the meat of the matter.

  ‘Praise God, my son! You have been chosen to take part in a mission for Holy Church. A most secret mission.’

  ‘I am honoured, my lord.’ He didn’t ask what the mission was; he would do anything, and they both knew it.

  ‘I must have your oath of secrecy,’ Fulk said, ‘and your sworn word not to flinch from the task; to carry it out or die trying.’

  ‘You have them.’

  ‘Firstly, this meeting never happened. You understand? You will never speak of it, not even to your confessor.’

  The lame knight bowed his head in assent. The room was growing dark. Fulk sat among shadows, the three tall candles on the table before him still unlit.

  ‘When you leave here, ride to Fordelice,’ he named a village some twenty miles north of Toulouse. ‘Wait there until I send two others to join you. You will know them by this sign.’

  His white, long-fingered hand with its great amethyst ring crept like a disembodied thing from the shadows to lift the lid of a casket standing between the candlesticks, and took out two lengths of white silk ribbon.

  ‘Sew these in the form of a cross on your mantle. You know what it is?’

  The lame knight nodded. ‘The White Brotherhood.’ He raised the ribbons to his lips and kissed them reverently before folding them away in his scrip.

  ‘For this mission,’ Fulk continued, ‘your own names will never be spoken. Instead you will be known by the names of angels of the Lord God.’

  Taking a taper he lit it at the brazier and touched it to one of the candles. ‘Uriel,’ he said. ‘The flame of God.’ He lit the second candle. ‘Samael, the severity of God.’ He lit the third candle. ‘And Michael, God’s warrior.’ It was an impressive piece of theatre. He looked up to see the lame knight’s tranced gaze fixed on the flames and added softly, ‘You, Messire Michael, will command.’

  For a moment Michael’s face was slack with astonishment, then he flushed and drew himself up, straight and proud.

  ‘M-my lord,’ he stammered, deeply moved, ‘with all my heart I thank you. I thought there was no further use for me, but now—’

  The bishop cut short his thanks. ‘The three of you will ride to Bordeaux. Your quarry took ship for England there at the end of March. You will follow. Find him and kill him. Maitre Deil will give you money for the journey. If you succeed, return here to me and your reward will be greater than you can imagine. If you fail, we shall not meet again, for then, of course, you will be dead.’

  The lame knight nodded, his face impassive.

  Fulk stood up and held out his pectoral cross. ‘Swear your oaths on this. There is a fragment of the True Cross in it.’

  Michael took it between his hands. ‘I swear, upon the Cross of Christ, to carry out this task or die, and never to speak of it.’ Whatever it is, he thought. God helping me!

  ‘God and his son and all the saints are witness to your vow, my son. You are now one of the White Brotherhood, whose purpose is to destroy the enemies of God.’

  Michael’s face was exalted. ‘I will destroy them, whoever they are!’

  ‘‘One is especial,’ said Fulk softly. ‘Now listen. This is what you must do…’

  * * *

  God’s warrior, the knight called Michael, left Toulouse that night, astride a much better horse than the one he’d come on and leading a laden rouncey, both from Fulk’s stables. As he settled in the saddle and gathered the reins he remembered something.

  ‘A woman and her daughter, heretics, were taken by men of the brotherhood the evening I arrived. What became of them?’

  Maitre Deil consulted his wax note-tablets. ‘The girl was sent as bondmaid to the nuns at Montauban. The woman was released yesterday.’

  ‘You let a heretic go?’

  Deil shrugged. ‘She had nothing of value to tell — no names. She wasn’t worth the cost of burning, so in mercy my lord bishop ordered her eyes torn out instead, for while she lives there is hope her soul may yet be saved.’

  ‘I shall pray for it.’ Michael touched spurs to his horse and tugged the mule’s reins. Maitre Deil looked after him for a few moments, then shut the postern gate and hurried to the bishop’s chamber.

  ‘Has he gone?’

  ‘Yes, my lord.’

  ‘And the other two?’

  ‘They have been summoned. They will be here tonight, or tomorrow.’

  The bishop pressed his fingers to his aching temples. ‘Deal with them yourself. Tell them no more than they need to know and send them to join Michael at Fordelice. And see that a courier leaves for Rome at once; the Holy Father must be kept informed. This time there will be no mistakes.’ He clenched his hand on his pectoral cross, white-knuckled. ‘God will not let this unspeakable blasphemy go unpunished. They will succeed.’

  ‘What then?’ Deil asked. ‘If they return?’

  ‘I promised a great reward,’ Fulk said. So he had, and he meant it. What reward could be greater than a martyr’s crown in heaven?

  Chapter Six

  Judith, please! You really must leave it to me.’ Bishop Peter des Roches suppressed a sigh of exasperation. Negotiations on his sister’s behalf with Coldinghame — a skilfully balanced combination of bribe and threat — were at a delicate stage, and not helped by Judith’s habit of shooting off blistering letters to Prior Radulfus. The bishop had been able to intercept them so far, but it had been touch-and-go yesterday. He’d only managed to stop her courier, in the nick of time, by closing London Bridge, causing a traffic jam that brought the city to a standstill and Londoners’ robust protests in a storm about his ears. Their mayor was even bleating about compensation, a piece of sauce that beggared belief!

  Would she never go home?

  She had nabbed him as soon as he was dressed this morning, in the passage between his bedchamber and the stairs, eyeing
his costly clothes with disapproval. Peter des Roches was a handsome man, which was to be expected, for he was close to the king, and John would not tolerate ugly people around him. Tall, florid, a little stout, the bishop was moderately splendid this morning in a velvet so purple as to seem black unless the light caught its gloss, and thigh boots of finest doeskin. He looked like a prince, and only the small tonsure, almost hidden in his wiry grey curls, proclaimed him a man of the Church. Judith considered such display unseemly.

  She stuck at his elbow as he walked, demanding, God help him, that he excommunicate the prior of Coldinghame. ‘What’s the good of being a bishop,’ she ranted, ‘if you won’t use the weapons God has given you?’ The two women attending on her looked harried, as well they might. It had long since dawned on the bishop why Earl Joceran had spent so much time away from home.

  They reached the door of his private oratory. It wasn’t the hour for prayer, but any port in a storm.

  ‘I will leave you here, my lady.’ He opened the door, expecting her to stand aside. ‘We’ll talk later.’ But no, she followed him inside, still talking. He heard a curious sound — a squeak? A strangled yelp? — and the curtain of the privy in the corner swayed and bulged.

  The bishop was annoyed. That was his private gong, and although he suspected that his body servants made use of it, Peter des Roches, irritated by his sister’s presence, was in no mood today to live and let live. With an oath he whipped the curtain aside.

  Only long practice helped him turn his involuntary laugh into a cough.

  Over a woman’s shoulder, the appalled face of the countess’s chaplain gaped at him. The bishop couldn’t remember the man’s name, but hearing his sister’s indrawn breath behind him couldn’t help feeling a twinge of sympathy. ‘Oh dear,’ was all he said.

  With a whimper of dismay, the chaplain’s paramour scrambled off his lap, leaving her partner in a state of squalid disarray. Pallid with shock, the woman shook her skirts down and tried to dash past, but Judith, who had recognised her as one of her own laundresses, seized her by the hair and administered several stinging slaps, shrieking maledictions.

  The din, of course, brought servants running, and their faces — avid, gleeful or horrified — peered in at the door.

  Still sitting on the privy, the chaplain — Paul, that's it, the bishop remembered suddenly — had fumbled his clothes together and was bleating, ‘Mercy, my lady, mercy!’

  Judith shot him a look that might have frozen boiling oil. ‘Fornicator,’ she hissed, and striding forward, dragging Garlanda by the hair with strength fuelled by outrage, she seized the luckless chaplain by his ear. Towing both miscreants, she marched to the door. ‘Out of my way!’ The servants scattered.

  Left alone at last in his oratory, the bishop didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

  * * *

  It was a sweet early May morning when a messenger came to Stirrup with a letter summoning Straccan to London, to attend the Bishop of Winchester.

  ‘What does His Grace want?’ Straccan asked.

  ‘Dunno, me lord. He’s at Westminster, and asks that you meet him there as soon as you can.’

  ‘I’ll leave tomorrow. Do you ride with me?’

  ‘No, me lord, I’ve other errands. Better get on.’ But his hopeful look in the direction of the kitchen wasn’t lost on Straccan.

  ‘At least eat before you go.’ Straccan whistled for a groom, and having dismissed man to kitchen and horse to manger, went to find Gilla. She was in the garden with Nicholas.

  ‘How long will you be gone?’ she asked.

  ‘It depends what he wants. Not long, I hope.’

  But he felt decidedly uneasy. Why should King John’s most trusted confidant send for him? Well, he’d soon know: if he and Bane left at dawn tomorrow, Tuesday, they should reach Westminster by Thursday night.

  * * *

  The three Angels rode to Bordeaux, where a knight of the Brotherhood had been killed, and in dying failed his appointed task.

  It was their task now.

  ‘Attract no attention,’ Bishop Fulk had said. ‘Arouse no one’s curiosity. The devil has many agents.’ So they avoided inns and hostels, even monasteries, and slept in their cloaks on the ground.

  In the bright moonlight their shadows followed them as they set up camp for the night. The youngest, Uriel, had the job of tending the fire.

  ‘Does he… does he have horns?’ he asked, turning the skewered meat to cook the other side. Reflected in his eyes, small red flames flickered.

  ‘He’s not Satan,’ said Michael sombrely. ‘He’s flesh and blood, born from a woman’s womb as we all were.’

  ‘Then how shall we know him?’

  ‘We are God’s hounds on his trail,’ Michael said. ‘We shall know by the stink of the beast when we draw near.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘We kill him, and bring back his head.

  Chapter Seven

  A dismal little penitential procession emerged from the gates of the bishop’s palace at Southwark soon after dawn. Two men-at-arms flanked Garlanda, barefoot and in her shift, her head shaved of its impudent curls. She carried a massive church candle. Behind her came a man with a whip. The rain extinguished the candle, but it didn’t matter. So early, on such a day, there were few to watch, but some are always ready to jeer at any helpless creature, to throw rotten fruit, eggs, or even stones although that was forbidden. Soon there was blood as well as rain and tears on her face.

  The cobbles bruised her feet, and her arms were trembling with the weight of the candle when the first blow of the whip knocked her to her knees. There was laughter. On hands and knees she gazed wildly around, but saw no kindly face. No one helped her up. She was condemned, a fornicator; her sin the worse because her partner was a priest.

  When the sinners were discovered and the truth came out, Lady Judith’s wrath and disgust knew no bounds. Under her roof and unknown to her they had been lovers for more than a year! Heroic discretion had preserved their secret at home, but the long uncomfortable journey south was their undoing.

  It had allowed only two opportunities for mutual solace, and those had been hasty, nervous and unsatisfactory. Desperation and deprivation drove them to their fatal assignation in the bishop’s privy. They begged for mercy in vain. Judith was adamant. Father Paul would be branded and flung bodily out of the bishop’s gates, while his paramour was sent to the nearest brothel, where her misplaced ardour could be put to some use.

  Father Paul was meanwhile locked up on bread and water. The countess took it upon herself to tell him of his sweetheart’s fate, a salutary lesson that she thought would give him something to think about — as indeed it did, but not in the way she intended.

  * * *

  The messenger from Coldinghame brought a letter from Prior Radulfus which sent the bishop hotfoot to his sister’s chamber. He found the countess at her stitchery, with her ladies, while her newly appointed chaplain read improving extracts from a life of Saint Paul. At the bishop’s entrance he stuttered into silence and covertly wiped the sheen of sweat from his brow.

  ‘He has agreed, Judith,’ des Roches said without ceremony. ‘Radulfus has dropped his objections.’

  ‘Has he indeed? What did you promise him?’ his sister asked shrewdly.

  ‘It so happens I had bait to dangle,’ the bishop said, looking smug. The triumphant gleam in Judith’s eye, he thought, boded little good for Prior Radulfus. She would never forgive him for the trouble he’d caused her. Des Roches felt almost sorry for the man, but not as sorry as he felt for Earl Joceran, who would wake at Judgement Day to find Judith still at his side.

  With a glare that pinned her chaplain to the lectern, the countess signed to him to continue reading. His voice cracked with nervousness, swooping from soprano to baritone, and his blush spread from throat to tonsure. Des Roches recognised terror when he saw it. The horrible example of Father Paul’s recent fall from grace must be ever foremost in the poor man’s mind. The b
ishop had washed his hands of the ugly business; they were not his servants, and he could not deny Judith’s right to discipline hers as she saw fit. Now he turned with relief from the sordid affair and its distasteful aftermath to his sister’s departure. She insisted on starting for home at once. She couldn’t wait to get there! God knows what the rest of her household was getting up to in her absence.

  But in the preparations for departure, she didn’t forget Father Paul. Her fury had cooled somewhat, tempered by her victory, so instead of having him branded as a fornicator, she left orders for him to be released after a month had passed, and sent on his way with twenty lashes to remind him of her magnanimity.

  Des Roches saw his sister off, then ran upstairs to watch from the tower as her cortege clattered over the bridge. Not until it was entirely out of sight did he pull off his velvet cap and toss it into the air with an unepiscopal whoop of glee.

  * * *

  ‘Straccan! You lost no time. I didn’t expect you before the morrow.’ Pulling off his riding gloves, the bishop tossed them to one of the dozen — at least — pages milling around him, and drained the cup of wine offered by another upon one knee. ‘Have they fed you while you waited?’

  ‘Thank you, yes, my lord.’

  Bishop Peter sank into a chair, where a brace of pages knelt to pull off his boots. Over the cup’s rim his worldly, knowing eyes assessed Straccan. ‘You’ve been away from home a lot recently.’

  And how the devil do you know that? Straccan wondered.

  ‘Forgive me for dragging you from your own affairs; I wouldn’t do it without good cause. I believe we may help each other, you and I.’

  Straccan kept his voice neutral. ‘Indeed, my lord? How?’

  ‘You remember William de Breos?’ He waved away another cup-bearer, accepting instead a perfumed towel with which he wiped his face and hands. ‘You drew steel on him — in Sanctuary.’