Falconer and the Death of Kings (6 page)

Both Falconer and Symon looked over his shoulder at the parchment he indicated. It was the one he had been scribbling on when they arrived. Neither could immediately fathom the orthography, which was made up of simple strokes and curls. The text was dense, and as Bacon had been writing it like a normal language, and not ciphering every letter as he went along, Falconer assumed it was a language of his own creation. But before either visitor could look too closely, the friar nervously covered the text with a blank sheet of parchment. Then he stared at the two men with a serious look on his face.

‘But that is not why I asked Pecham to get a message to you, William. I am minded to compile a new compendium of knowledge. And I need a safe way of getting it from inside these walls.’

Falconer frowned at the problem Roger had presented to him. But it was Thomas who immediately saw the means of securing safe passage for Bacon’s compendium. And in a way that would give him a task that would please him greatly. He spoke up boldly.

‘Have you permission to leave the friary from time to time, Brother Roger?’

Bacon frowned, wondering what the young man intended by the question.

‘Yes, of course I may. As long as it is only for a few hours each day.’

Falconer immediately saw what Thomas Symon was proposing. He punched the young man’s shoulder with joy.

‘Thomas, I think, is suggesting that your own head is the very vessel which can carry your ideas unseen past the portals of this friary.’

Symon nodded eagerly.

‘Yes. I have visited a number of the medical schools already, and I could arrange for you to teach at one. Every day, you could come to the school ostensibly to teach, and could dictate what is in your head to me. I have a good, clear hand, and can take down what you say at a reasonable speed.’

Bacon laughed out loud.

‘I will be smuggling my encyclopedia out piecemeal.’ He shook the young Thomas by the hand, but had a warning for him. ‘It will take up much of your time for many months.’

‘I have not much else to do. And I will be learning as I write.’

Bacon turned to his old friend Falconer.

‘And you, William, what do you propose to do all this time?’

Falconer smiled easily.

‘I have tired of my official task – that of understanding Bishop Tempier’s Condemnations. I will look into the death of this student who fell from the Notre-Dame tower. After that, I am sure something will come along to keep me busy.’

He was not to know that Sir John Appleby already had orders from King Edward to track down this Oxford master who was adept at solving cases of mysterious death. And so was blissfully unaware that he would soon be embroiled in a labyrinth of mysteries that would tax him to the limits of his brain.

SIX

T
he streets on the south bank of Paris were almost empty of people. A heavy downpour had driven everyone indoors, and the wet pavements gleamed like pewter, reflecting the dark grey clouds that scudded over the city. Falconer kept under the overhanging eaves for shelter from the rain as he retraced his steps towards St-Cosmé church. He was going in search of the body of Paul Hebborn, the student who had fallen from the top of Notre-Dame Cathedral. He would have preferred to have Thomas with him as he didn’t like looking too closely at corpses. But Symon’s skills as a scribe were sorely needed by Roger Bacon, so he had left the young man planning his task with the friar. Falconer was short-sighted, and to see anything of significance on the body he would have to don his eye-lenses. He had had these fashioned a number of years ago now, refining the armature that held them on his nose and ears himself. But they were still a cumbersome appurtenance, and he was embarrassed about wearing the device in the presence of strangers. He hoped that the signs on the body would be so obvious that he would have no need of lenses.

Crossing the broad Rue de la Harpe, he turned abruptly down the narrow lane almost opposite the one from which he had emerged. His target was the convent of the Mathurins, an order of monks dedicated to the task of the redemption of captives, particularly those in the Holy Lands. The monks were derisively known as the ‘Friars of the Ass’, as their rule forbade the monks to travel on horseback. But the Order of the Trinitarians, to give them their proper name, was much favoured by popes and kings. The convent in Paris had eventually become their headquarters, and, as their founder had been a doctor of the university, Paris’s medical schools – and corpses – gravitated towards the convent. If the body was to be found anywhere, it would be in the hall of the Convent of St Mathurin. Just before Falconer reached the convent entrance, the heavens opened again, soaking his sturdy black robe thoroughly. He stood in the rounded archway of the main door, shaking the rainwater off his grizzled curls.

‘You had better come in and dry off, sir.’

Though Falconer was more used to English vernacular, enough French was spoken in higher circles in England that he could still comprehend the invitation. He peered through the gloomy doorway at the figure silhouetted in the open entrance to the convent. The man was tall and wore the habit of a Trinitarian – a white robe emblazoned with a cross of which the upright was red and the crossbar blue. He ducked through the archway out of the rain.

‘Many thanks, Brother. It seems that Paris is as wet as Oxford, though I am thankful for the lack of mud in the streets.’

The monk closed the door behind him.

‘Ah, you are a master at Oxford, then, that other hotbed of Averroism.’

He made reference to an interpretation of Aristotle’s theories now disapproved of but close to Falconer’s own heart. He was about to argue with the monk when he spotted the hint of a smile on the man’s lips. He was being teased and refrained from rising to the bait, returning the jibe.

‘Not if your bishop has his way.’

The monk laughed and waved his hand dismissively, stepping through a small door set in the thickness of the convent’s wall. He quickly re-emerged with a coarse cloth in his hand.

‘Here, take this and dry yourself.’ He handed the cloth to Falconer, who began to dry himself as the monk carried on talking. ‘There are many serious false assertions made by Aristotle, but they will matter little to you if you catch a chill and die.’

Falconer vigorously towelled off his wet hair and face, and replied.

‘I could debate with you long and hard about the doctrine of souls and monopsychism, but I fear my errand is more mundane. And not a little melancholy.’

‘You have come about the boy.’

It was a statement, not a question, from the monk, who took the wet cloth back from Falconer. William quickly saw that the monk had assumed he had some official status as he was of the same nation as Paul Hebborn. He didn’t bother to correct the mistake. It would make seeing the body all the easier, and, after all, he was not lying. He had come to see the boy.

He nodded sadly.

‘Yes, I have.’

‘He is in the side chapel. Follow me.’

Falconer followed the white-robed monk into the church, his wet boots squelching on the tiled floor. The interior rose high above his head in a series of round arches set on sturdy pillars. Nothing disturbed the silence except the sound of their respective footsteps. They entered one of the side chapels, an ill-lit chamber where the cold made it quite suitable for the storage of a dead body. When the monk stepped aside, Falconer saw the corpse on a bier before the altar. The greyish shaft of light – heavy with dust motes – that filtered through the small circular window above only added to the melancholy scene. The body was shrouded in a white sheet that bore ominous dark stains on it. Reluctantly, Falconer drew the sheet aside. The sight made his gorge rise.

The poor boy’s skull had been smashed and his face was distorted by the impact with the ground. But even so, Falconer could discern a look of horror in the bulging eyes, the pupils nothing but dark pools. Mercifully, the broken body was still clad in a particoloured surcoat over a white tunic, held tight by a belt from which hung the boy’s purse. The brightness of the surcoat and the red woollen hose that were on Hebborn’s legs suggested he was of noble birth. In Paris, as in Oxford, wealthy clerks were at pains to show off their station in life. But still, all his family’s wealth had not saved him from a terrible death.

The patient monk whispered something that Falconer did not catch.

‘I’m sorry. What did you say?’

‘I was asking if you had seen enough. Only it will soon be nones, and I must go and pray for his soul.’

‘Indeed.’ Falconer paused for a moment, as if moved by the sight of the boy who in fact he had never met. ‘I wonder if I may have a moment alone with… Paul.’

The white-clad monk bowed his head in acquiescence and silently glided from the chapel. A short while later, Falconer followed him out. In response to the monk’s enquiry about the disposition of the body, he hesitated. The Trinitarian monk clearly still imagined he was somehow related to the boy, or acting on behalf of the family.

‘I am sure his family will be in touch very soon. Thank you for your time, Brother.’

He hustled out of the convent before any more embarrassing questions could be asked of him. Hidden in his sleeve was the purse that had hung at Paul Hebborn’s waist.

‘You stole a dead person’s scrip?’

Thomas, back from his long session noting down Roger Bacon’s thoughts, was sitting opposite Falconer at the long refectory table in St Victor’s Abbey. They were taking a modest supper, and though no one else sat close to them his tones were low. But he could still hardly believe what William had said that had caused his outburst. Falconer, for his part, soaked his crust in some ale and shovelled the sweet softness into his mouth. He smiled and swallowed before replying.

‘He no longer had any use for it, and it may yet tell us something about his death. I have not yet had chance to look inside it, but we can do that after vespers.’

Symon paled.

‘We? So I am to be involved in this sacrilege, am I?’

Falconer leaned across the scarred oak table and took the stale bread that his former student had left in front of him. He held it up questioningly. And when Thomas, with a sigh, ceded the scrap to him, Falconer repeated his previous manoeuvre, and chewed on another ale-soaked crust.

‘You know you are as curious as I am about this. You just don’t have the nerve to do what I did.’

Thomas shook his head wearily and watched as Falconer rose from the table, wiping his fingers down the front of his shabby black robe.

‘Come. Let us return to the abbey guest house and see what we have recovered.’

They left the refectory and walked along the south side of the cloister to the passage that gave out on to the separate buildings that made up the abbey’s infirmary and guest quarters. The two of them shared a room there, which in barely two months Falconer had cluttered with all sorts of curiosities and texts. Indeed, it had begun to resemble his own solar back in Aristotle’s Hall in Oxford. Thomas, who preferred tidiness around him, guessed that it made the regent master feel more at home in his temporary sojourn in Paris. As for himself, he felt like an interloper. But he fancied he was such an ascetic that it shouldn’t matter. He could make his home wherever he could lay his head. And now he was so fired up with his new task of recording Doctor Mirabilis’s thoughts that any discomfort seemed to pale into insignificance. But he would have liked to have discussed what the friar had said to him today after Falconer had left.

‘Listen, young Thomas,’ said Bacon, ‘and I will tell you about the boundless corruption everywhere. Even the Court of Rome is torn by the deceit and fraud of unjust men. The whole Papal Court is defamed of lechery, and gluttony is lord of all.’

Thomas had gone pale at such words being spoken out loud, and he was not surprised that the Franciscan order had kept Bacon under lock and key so long. He had been anxious to test Falconer with his friend’s words. But William was more intent on examining Paul Hebborn’s scrip. He was already pulling the drawstring and tipping the contents out on to a space he had cleared on the small table in the centre of the room.

‘Hmm.’

Falconer rummaged in his own purse, extracted his eye-lenses and put them on. Peering down at the tabletop, he poked at the scattering of items with a bony finger. There was a horn spoon, three small coins, a broken comb and a tattered copy of Priscian’s grammar book.

‘Not much to go on, is there?’

Thomas agreed.

‘It was not worth stealing, after all.’

‘I wish you would stop referring to it as stealing. I merely borrowed the scrip in order to help trace what happened to the boy.’

‘Yes, but it hasn’t helped, has it?’

Reluctantly, Falconer had to agree, and he shovelled the items back into the leather purse.

‘I shall have to talk to his master and fellow students somehow. Though without any authority here, I am not sure how they will receive me.’

‘He was studying medicine, under an Englishman called Adam Morrish near the Petit Pont.’ Thomas named the bridge that linked the Ile de la Cité to the university quarter on the south bank of the river. ‘I could talk to the students, if you wish. The faculty of medicine has what they call here a dean as its head. He is called Gérard de Osterwiic. I have met him, and he is a most amenable man. He will know all about the individual schools of medicine. And if we are to set up this subterfuge of Friar Bacon teaching at a faculty outside the order’s building, it might as well be at the Petit Pont.’

Falconer frowned, seeing that this might cut him out of the process altogether.

‘Will you have time to do that, and act as scribe for Roger? That will be your primary task, after all. Perhaps I should speak to this dean.’

But Thomas would not have it. He felt for the first time that he was at the centre of things in Paris, where before he was scurrying at Falconer’s shabby boot-heels. And, though neither man knew it then, Falconer would soon find his burden greater than Thomas’s. Sir John Appleby was already reckoning to be at the Abbey of St Victor soon after prime on the very next day. Edward was chafing at the bit to speak to the regent master who had served his father in his last days. And to present him with a complex puzzle that he had been thinking about all day. He knew he could make use of this Falconer to serve his own ends. It was just a matter of how he would arrange to have Falconer do his bidding.