Son of the Morning (91 page)

He mulled the options. He could return the boy to Philip and convert him. That had seemed like a good idea when it popped out of his mouth at St Denis, but on reflection it was clearly never going to work. The boy was a fanatic. So Osbert was going to disappoint Philip and he was well aware of how kings reacted when disappointed. Failure may even anger God. God had bollocksed up Osbert’s life without even noticing him. What would He do if he came to His attention? Despenser was still under the impression the boy was his property and had promised to find a way to kill Osbert if he didn’t end up in his possession. And Nergal, swanning around in skirts so pretty, was a disciple of Satan. He wanted the boy dead and had sworn solemnly to Despenser to deliver him. So that just left Edward as a potential buyer, who should be pressed for as much money as possible before being incinerated in holy fire.

It would be difficult to get the boy to England but, from what he heard, the English army was coming to France. There would be a way, there was always a way. He took a couple of low value coins from his purse and then slipped the purse into a little chest, which he locked. The chest went into a hole he had kicked in the lower wall specifically for the purpose and then the hole was stuffed back with rags, as if it was just another repair on a rat run.

He stepped out into the mist of the summer night, into the courtyard of the temple. The great spider devil hung above him still, its webs glistening in the moonlight. Most of the other devils were gone out into the field with Despenser. Osbert was relieved that Despenser’s position had become more tenuous since the raising of the angels. The angels were willing to fight on the side of the devils but Osbert knew, as Despenser knew, that the devils had become unnecessary with the raising of the fourth angel. One angel might abandon a battlefield to play in a rainbow, two might. Three, very unlikely. It would be unheard of for four angels to come from their shrines and none of them help the king in battle. The only reason Philip had taken the devils at all was so they could engage England’s devils and minimise the French casualties until the angels decided enough blood had been spilled to step in.

For a foolish moment Osbert felt like doing nothing. He was chief – and only – court sorcerer, living better than he had ever lived, dressed in fine clothes and eating fine food. A life of small gains and significant losses, however, had prepared him to expect the worst. It would not last. Why? It never did. Normally he would have simply accepted this as his lot in life. However, ever since he had got out of the magic circle, a strange suspicion had grown in him – that he might in some way be capable of influencing his own fate. It was such an odd feeling that he decided to actually make some decisions, even plan for the future – rather than waiting for it to come crashing in like a stone from a siege engine.

Mind you, riches and fine wines were all very well but what really mattered was … Hmm. What? Not being completely and utterly pissed on the whole time. The only problem was that, in order not to be one of the multitude of pissed on, one had to be a pisser on, so to speak. The more he considered the metaphor, the more it struck him as being widely applicable to human behaviour. Never piss up, for that piss only comes back down. Piss sideways and the pisser next to you may turn to see who is pissing on him, thereby pissing on you. Piss down, piss down, lad, he said to an imaginary son he’d acquired as he left the temple. Piss down and piss hard.

He passed, rather than pissed, down by the side of the Temple, heading through the suburban stink towards the river. He enjoyed the new freedom to ignore the curfew that his elevated status brought him and loved to wander about at night, though not here. The curfew didn’t hold outside the city walls and all manner of men wandered the suburbs. He had his hand on his knife. Osbert needed to be out, though. He has business to attend to. He would have preferred to have recruited a devil for the job, but the devils gave their loyalty to Despenser and Nergal was doing Despenser’s work. Devils could be stupid and could be fooled, but he wasn’t ready to stake his life on it.

A low mist hung on the blackness of the river as he neared the water. He was looking for the stewes, although these whores were the sort who didn’t bother with the niceties of washing you down. Flop it out, stick it in, pay your money and don’t forget to wipe your feet on the way out. Good value if you watched your purse while on the job – the whores had swarms of little kids and most of them were thieving little bastards. He was looking for Wild Marie, a lady he had much patronised on his days off from devil summoning. She was a drab woman, ordinary as a turnip and that was why he liked her – nothing of Heavenly perfection or devilish corruption about her. She also had six brothers who were useful sorts and it was them he had come to see.

Through the squelch of the narrow streets, past dogs with murder in their eyes who were roped far too generously for his liking, arguments crackling into the night from low huts, laughter, the bawls of children, the songs of mothers. Despite his wariness he was quite enjoying himself. If he’d been more raggedly dressed he would have felt at home here.

He reached the house – a slanting broken-down thing that looked as if it had been cowed under the blows of a prevailing wind. He knocked at the low door and it was opened by a ragged-arsed boy.

‘Marie!’ he called without really acknowledging Osbert, ‘Customer!’

Osbert wondered if he’d have time for a quick one. Probably not well-advised. He had use for Marie’s rattish brothers and didn’t want to antagonise them. No man wants the fact his sister is a whore thrust in his face, and even the most demure little fiddle might cause bad blood in business dealings.

The door was left open and Osbert peered within. During the day only Marie and a couple of other women were to be found at the house – though they made it known the men were near enough in case of any funny business. Now the house was stuffed to bursting – a good twenty people of all ages and both sexes in the tiny space.

Marie appeared, her slight frame squeezing through the press. ‘You came then.’

‘I did. Are your brothers here?’

‘Yes.’

‘Will they do my work?’

‘They will. How many do you want?’

‘How many are available?’

‘All six. They’re good and strong, at a sou each for the work. They have three mates. That’s ten sous and one for me is twelve.’

Marie’s adding up was as good as any whore’s – that is to say excellent – and the errors she made had a habit of being in her favour.

‘I have that money.’

‘One has a dagger whose handle is wound with the hair of St Joan. You’ll need that to take on the devil, so that will be an extra sou for the hire – fifteen.’

‘I have a couple of devil knives too. They’ll be useful. We’ll call it twenty and your men will split the extra.’

‘Good health, sir!’ A thin, dirty man who looked as though he had never even seen good health to know what it meant, lifted an imaginary cup.

‘And yours,’ said Osbert. He spoke to Marie. ‘Can they leave now?’

‘For an extra five sous, yes.’

Osbert knew he didn’t have to pay the extra but almost gave in, just because this was small change to him now. He knew, though, he needed to get the respect of the men and of Marie. Let them see you as a soft touch and there’s no limit to the liberties they’d take.

‘We go. I’ve already agreed your five extra. Let’s move before I decide to take my money elsewhere.’

Marie looked back at him with her passive eyes – whore’s eyes in which you could read nothing, not contempt, not disgust, not love, not hate. ‘Two extra.’

‘I’ll go.’

‘Twenty it is. Lads, the gentleman wants to leave.’

The men got to their feet. ‘Not inside the city, then?’ said one, a black-haired rascal with a simpleton’s lumpy face.

‘Not inside the city. We watch the road from the east. Do you know any good vantage points?’

‘That’s bandit territory,’ said the simpleton, who was clearly not as stupid as he looked.

‘I thought
you
were bandits.’

‘Yes, but there are bandits and there are bandits. This is our home patch, that’s theirs.’

‘A problem?’

‘Not for another five sous … and what’s to stop us taking it all now?’

Osbert smiled. ‘I do the work of the Temple giant. He knows where I am and if I don’t return, doubtless he’ll give you a visit. Would you like that?’

‘Not much,’ said the man.

‘Thought not. Now let’s go.’ He was keen to curtail further conversation about money.

The seven men filed along the river bank and out to the east. The moon was a good one above the mist and they soon found the ford to the north bank and the road. They followed it quietly through the fields and farmsteads, careful to wake no one by talk. Strangers on the road at that time of night would be assumed to be hostile and the last thing they wanted was to confront a bunch of well-fed country boys armed with forks and backed by dogs.

Very soon, the woods loomed. Now they had a choice – go on unseen but largely blind or stick to the road and progress faster but risk discovery. They entered the woods – it wouldn’t do to alert the Vincennes boys of their presence. Everyone was quiet and slow. The going was difficult and, when the dawn seeped through the trees, they tried to push forward as quickly as they could. The outlaws kept their dens deep in the trees, only venturing to the road to rob. Then they’d be gone, fearful of city guards or thrill-seeking noblemen and their retinues who would come looking for them.

The men camped in the forest, making no fire and eating no food – for they had none. They were accustomed to hunger. The next day they found a rise with a good view of the road.

‘We’ll make our camp here,’ said Osbert. ‘They will be coming this way.’

‘Who?’

‘A woman and a boy.’

‘And you need six of us for that? I thought you said there was a devil.’

‘The lady
is
the devil. I’ll talk to them while you sneak up. Kill her quickly and cleanly. Botch it and you won’t live to see the next dawn.’

He passed the two devil knives to Lumpface.

‘For your most able men. Do not harm the boy.’

They waited by the road and waited a long time – weeks, living off the land as best they could. They were too near to the city to catch any lone travellers and most people moved through in big groups, many bearing weapons. Some groups of men-at-arms were on the road – crossbowmen with their baggage train, giant shields strapped to mules and donkeys, knights from the east taking a night in Paris before heading on to face the English in the north. How much easier it would all be, thought Osbert, if the angels would engage without first seeing evidence of men’s bravery. They could send the archangel Gabriel up to wherever Edward’s army was, watch him engulf it in fire without the trouble or expense of discharging a single crossbow quarrel. God wanted too much from man, he thought.

It rained and was miserable, then it was sunny and more pleasant. The men trapped rabbits in the woods and became more complacent – building a fire. The Vincennes Gang did not appear and Osbert guessed they too might have gone north to follow the army and grab whatever plunder was going.

It was night when they finally came, the cart creaking along the road. It woke Osbert, who lay half-toasted, half-soaked with his front to the fire. Rising he looked down onto the moonlit road. A distance away he saw them – she driving the cart on with a whip, something in the cart behind. It could have been a sack, but Osbert guessed it would be the boy. Something else was in there too – long like a coffin. The Drago?

One of Marie’s brothers drew a bow but Osbert waved him down.

‘It will not hurt it,’ he said. ‘Get in close, attack with the knives.’

‘Where will you be?’

‘Co-ordinating from up here.’

‘What’s co-ordinating?’

‘It’s a sort of cowering,’ said another man.

‘At a sou a piece I think you can reasonably be expected to risk your lives,’ said Osbert. ‘The trouble with you people is that you want something for nothing. Now get down, attack and if one of your fellows with the devil knives falls, pick up the knife and attack again.’

‘Easier to kill you and take the money.’

‘The thought had occurred to me, which is why I took the precaution of bringing none,’ said Osbert. ‘Now please attack before they drive straight past and are gone.’

The man tossed the knife in his hand. ‘Come on,’ he said to his friends.

The men dropped quietly down the bank and Osbert briefly lost sight of them. Then a huge cry and hullaballoo, a flash of fire, screams and silence. Osbert waited. Still silence. He feared the worst – that all his men had been killed and the cart had moved on. He scrambled down the slope to see the trees in front of him on fire, crackling away with a pleasant, piny smell.

‘Sorcerer,’ said a cracked, female voice.

Osbert moved around the fire to get a better view. ‘Shit,’ he said. Six humped bodies blazed away in the road, intensely enough for Osbert to take a pace back.

When Osbert had feared the worst, he had shown quite a lack of imagination as to what the worst might be. The worst was not that all his men were dead and the devil had gone on. The worst was that all his men were dead and the devil was still there, angry and out to roast him like a Lammas hog. The devil would not be moving on because he had, in the exuberance of his defence, incinerated his horse too.

‘Nergal,’ said Osbert. ‘Thank God you’re safe. You’ve rescued me!’

13

The French angels blew the English fleet ragged for nine days, forcing it back from the towering white rocks of The Needles on the Isle of Wight to Portsmouth harbour.

Montagu observed the four angels on a lighted cloud above the fleet puffing their cheeks to blow the English invaders back to land. Michael was the hardest to look at, his great spear blazing from the clouds, his fearful beauty turning night into day.

Montagu knew what he would counsel Edward, had he been allowed near, and hoped the king’s present advisers had said the same. Get out on the deck and convince them to allow the crossing. It would do the men good to see their king addressing such powerful beings; it would show them that God respects the courageous. From his place on his little boat, hedged in among ten cursing London archers, he saw the king emerge.