The King of Thieves: (29 page)

‘Absolutely right. There is no justification. And yet it happened. Curious, no? So, you see, Bishop, I will not aid you to
have the Queen sent back to the land where her position and person are held in such low esteem. I would deem that an act of
deplorable cruelty.’

‘I … I shall have to consider matters further.’

‘Do so. I would suggest that you make your peace with her, Bishop, for she is a calm, sensible lady. All she requires, I believe,
is the money the King promised her for her upkeep while she was here in France looking after her son.
Their
son. And you hold the purse. You can release the money.’

‘The King ordered me to hold on to it until she agreed to return to England,’ Bishop Walter said wretchedly.

‘Then I fear you are gripped on the horns of a dilemma. I do not envy your position.’

‘There is no choice. I am a servant of my King,’ the Bishop said firmly. ‘I will obey my King’s commands. I would prefer
to make peace with the Queen, but if I may not, I may not.’

‘Then go in peace, Bishop. I will pray for you.’

The Bishop nodded, but then his attention was drawn to the goblet. ‘What a marvellous piece of workmanship. May I look at
it?’

‘Yes. It is one of a kind, I think. You like such trinkets?’

‘I have seen its like only once before,’ the Bishop said absently.

‘Where was that?’

‘I used to be the chaplain to Pope Clement V. He had a pair like this. I remember them clearly.’

‘Made by the same man, I have no doubt,’ the Cardinal said shortly. He took his goblet back, weighing it in his hand with
pleasure. ‘I have had this for these twenty years past. Those which you saw are probably the ones which I myself gave to him.
Clement was always a shrewd and kindly man to those who respected him.’

‘Yes,’ the Bishop said. But he could recall the terror of the destruction of the Templars, wrought largely at the instigation
of Clement. That was still a matter of shame, he thought.

The Bishop had a short walk to his chamber, and he marched quickly with a couple of boys holding lanterns. Ever since the
murder of Walter de Lechelade in Exeter Cathedral Close some forty-five years before by the Dean’s men, the Bishops of Exeter
had been made aware of the dangers of walking about at night in the dark without aid.

He paid little attention to the way, for he was still smarting at the Cardinal’s attitude. It was remarkable to him that a
fellow striver in the service of God should be so unhelpful. If he himself had been asked to assist a man like the Cardinal,
he would have done all he could to support him. To be thus ejected, almost as though he was some form of beggar at the
door, was humiliating in the extreme. He was a Bishop, in God’s name, not some humble penitent who deserved a flea in his
ear.

The door to the passage that led to his rooms was just here. He thanked the boys, gave them a few coins for their trouble,
and entered.

He felt exhausted. Travelling here to France had unnerved him in the first place, because he knew how unpopular he had become.
But to arrive here and have that harridan the Queen rail at him before everyone in the French court, that had brought home
to him how fragile his position was. If possible, it had been made even more so by the effect of the French official’s death.
To have people accuse him, to actually believe that he was capable of such a vile attack – that was repellent! And meanwhile
he still had little idea how on earth he could make his way homewards, for he dare not return to the King without Queen Isabella,
or at the very least, some kind of promise from her that she would soon follow him.

The passage was lit by occasional candles, set widely apart. He walked along, careful to avoid stepping too close to them.
It would not be the first time a man had accidentally brushed against a candle and either scorched a great hole in an expensive
robe, or even had a smudge of molten tallow stain his sleeves.

Her behaviour was
intolerable
, he told himself. How the woman could think that she …

He was at a narrower part of the corridor when a hand reached about his throat, yanking him off his feet and drawing his body
over a large chest. The man had been hiding in the shadows beyond the chest, and by pushing the Bishop over it, Stapledon
could not defend himself in any way whatever. His legs were taken away by the chest’s lid, and his head fell back
to crash against the wall behind, giving him a sickening sensation.

‘Bishop Walter, I am so glad to see you,’ a voice hissed.

The Bishop looked up, but it might have been a demon who gripped him for all he could see. All he was aware of was a blackness,
as of the cowl of a hood with nothing inside. It was a terrifying sight. He grabbed for his crucifix, preparing to jab it
upwards, when suddenly he felt a prick at his throat. A knife!

Strangely enough, this made him less fearful. He was petrified at the thought of a devil, or any minion of hell, but a man
was a different matter. Now, he could see the glitter of reflected candlelight in his attacker’s eyes. They looked familiar
– but from where?

‘Release me, churl,’ Bishop Walter said.

‘Silence! Call me churl? You’ll be buried here in a pauper’s grave if you are not careful, Bishop. The Queen just wants her
money, but there are plenty of others here in Paris who would like nothing better than to skin you alive and feed your body
to the crows. You have dispossessed so many, robbed so many – you have enemies everywhere.’

‘It is a lie!’

The dagger pressed upwards a little. ‘You dare to contradict me? Before God, you craven, quaking thing! You will die here
unless you unbend. Perhaps it is too late already. You should fly from France. Remain here, and you will soon be dead.’

Bishop Walter felt the hand gripping his throat thrust forward, and it was only by flinging his arms wide and latching his
fingers on to the lid of the chest that he stopped himself from falling. Sitting up shakily, he kissed his crucifix as he
gazed first one way, then the other. The corridor appeared empty.

It was some moments before he could stand. His legs were
unharmed, but he was uncertain whether they might support his weight or not. When he put his hand on the chest lid, his arms
began shaking and he sat there, looking down, nausea washing over him, until a servant hurried past, checking the candles.

‘Are you all right, Bishop?’ he asked.

‘I am perfectly well, I thank you,’ Bishop Walter said.

The boy tutted to himself. ‘Someone’s snuffed all these candles. They will keep doing that. I’ll soon have them ready again.’

With a spill, he brought a flame from another set of candles further along the corridor, and relit those in the candelabra
nearest the chest. ‘Are you sure you are all right, Bishop?’

‘Yes. I am fine,’ Bishop Walter said, and now his voice was fully under control. ‘You came from that direction?’ he asked,
pointing back towards the Cardinal’s rooms.

‘Yes, my Lord.’

‘Tell me – did you pass a man as you came this way? A tall man, strong, with a hood over his head?’

The boy considered. ‘There’s no one about at this time of day,’ he said after a moment. ‘Was there someone you wanted to see?’

‘No. That is well, I thank you,’ Bishop Walter said. If the man had not gone that way, he must be along this corridor – but
if he was, there was only the Bishop’s own chamber at the end. The man must have gone the other way, surely.

His voice … it had sounded more English than French, he realised suddenly. Conversing had been easy. And the voice had
been oddly familiar.

He stood, gripping his crucifix again, and made his way to his rooms.

And then his legs began to shiver and wobble as though they could no longer support him. He had never before felt so
fearful. Someone had been here, in this corridor, an Englishman, someone who had cause to detest him, and someone who had
been able to fly away like a wisp of smoke, and just as silently. He might have been a ghost, were it not for the sore bruising
the Bishop felt at his neck.

Bishop Walter stood at his door, and then shot a glance behind him, almost scared of what be might there. He half-expected
to see that looming shape again.

Thursday after the Feast of the Archangel Michael
^*

Louvre

Baldwin was still considering the sad tale of the cook the next morning when the summons came for him to hurry to the Bishop’s
chamber.

‘What ails him now?’ he muttered.

‘He is prey to fears of a natural kind,’ Simon said more graciously.

‘Aye, well, if he is that keen to see us, we would be churlish indeed not to go. And then, on the return, the bar may be open,’
Sir Richard said hopefully.

They found the Bishop sitting on a large chair facing them as they walked into his room. There was a clerk at his side holding
a slate board, while two others sat at a desk behind.

‘Sir Baldwin, Sir Richard, Simon, I am very grateful that you could come so swiftly.’

‘It was our pleasure, my Lord Bishop. The Duke is being entertained by his tutor for a little, and then will go to his mother.
Sir Henry is with him, so we have our morning free,’ Baldwin said.

‘That is good,’ the Bishop said. He then stood and
paced before turning and facing them. ‘I am very anxious,’ he blurted out. ‘I fear an attempt may be made upon my life.’

‘My Lord Bishop, I am sure you need have no such alarms. There is no one here who could wish you harm,’ Baldwin said, and
he felt irritation that the Bishop had called them to him for such a foolish reason.

‘Look at this, Sir Baldwin,’ the Bishop said, and drew down the collar of his robe.

There, at his thin neck, the flesh somewhat pale, rather like a plucked chicken, there were four large bruises on his right
side, one on the left.

‘Dear Jesus!’ Baldwin hissed. ‘Sir Richard?’

The Coroner joined him. ‘A goodly-sized fist, that man’ll have, if I’m any judge. A good, great paw to mangle you in that
manner, me Lord. Who was it?’

‘I have no idea,’ the Bishop said. ‘I was attacked in the dark. And yet there was something familiar about the man’s voice.
He was English, I think.’

‘Has anyone else tried to warn you away from here?’ Baldwin asked.

Almost everyone, the Bishop thought to himself sadly. ‘No one for certain, no. But I think that all would prefer to see me
gone. I am an embarrassment to the Duke, an irritant to the Queen, and a shameful beggar in the eyes of King Charles. No one
wishes me here, and yet I may not go home. All I want is to return to Exeter and rest my weary bones, but I must remain here
until the Queen concedes that her place is with her husband. What may I do?’

‘First, you should be better guarded,’ Baldwin said firmly. ‘We do not want you harmed, my Lord Bishop. Second, I think that
King Charles should be informed that your life has been threatened. The King has accepted you as his guest, and
safe-conducts have been issued. If you are harmed here, it will reflect most disastrously upon the French King.’

‘That is true,’ the Bishop murmured.

‘But that fact alone makes me wonder who’d be stupid enough to try to threaten Bishop Walter,’ Sir Richard said.

Simon shrugged. ‘There are any number of Frenchmen who dislike the Bishop for his diplomatic efforts.’

‘Aye, and some English, too,’ the knight grunted.

Baldwin smiled. ‘We know where the threat may lie, but the important thing just now is to make sure that the Bishop is protected.
We will have to mount guard ourselves, and also see whomsoever else we may enlist to help us.’

Paris, near the River Seine

Vital shrugged his cloak around his shoulders. Here in the alleyway, no sun could reach them, and it felt as though they were
living in a perpetual chill.

‘I hope he’s not just testing our cupidity.’

‘More likely he is looking to see how to get himself out. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d thought we’d bring him along without
chains, and he’d try to run for it,’ Pons said.

Vital gave him a sidelong look. His companion was dressed all in shabby brown, like a worker along the shores. It was only
the sword which made him stand out, and that was mostly hidden under his cloak.

‘Bring him up here!’ Pons suddenly barked behind him.

There was a small force of five-and-twenty men, all armed with good polearms and long knives, all picked carefully for the
task ahead. In their midst was Le Boeuf, and now he was manhandled up to meet Pons and Vital. ‘These chains, can’t you—’

‘No,’ Pons said. ‘If this is the genuine place, and your work brings this matter to an end, then I personally will release
you.
If there’s nothing there, you will go back to the cell, and I will tell all that you tried to sell me the King, but failed.’

‘But they’d flay me, if they thought I’d done that!’

‘Then you had best hope that he is in there and that we capture him, eh?’

Le Boeuf stared at him with his one good eye, and then peered over his shoulder. ‘It’s that one, the third door, the one that
looks like it’s only got one hinge. That’s where he lives.’

‘Good,’ Pons said, and issued his instructions quickly. The men separated, with one smaller force of eight running off to
the rear of the building, at the river’s edge. Meanwhile, Pons and Vital waited, watching and muttering, Pons counting to
four thousand, which was the amount of time the second force would need to get into position.

‘Time’s up,’ he announced quietly. ‘Good luck, boys – good luck, Vital. Mind your nice cloak, eh?’

‘You mind your moustaches, old friend,’ Vital murmured, and then the two gripped their scabbards in their left fists and ran
lightly over the road.

There was no sign of life inside. Pons leaned down to peer in through a gap in the timbers of the door, but could see nothing.
No lights, no people, just a mess of broken planks and refuse of all kinds. A rat scurried, suddenly alarmed.

Pons looked over, and Vital shrugged. ‘Doesn’t look very lived in, eh?’ and then he beckoned.

The men rushed over the road and ran at the door. There was a loud crack and splintering as the door gave way, and then they
were all inside, pelting up the narrow corridor, up some rickety stairs, men fanning out in all directions, shouting and screaming
at the tops of their voices, slamming weapons against closed doors, thundering about up in chambers overhead.

Vital looked down at his feet. ‘I think he was wrong about this place, don’t you?’

Pons was about to respond, when there came a shout from outside, at the rear of the building.

‘There’s a body here!’

The King swore and slammed a fist into his cupped hand. ‘Who betrayed us? Who dared to tell the officers about us, about our
home?’

Amélie was still curled on the bed of furs, and now she stretched, lithe as a cat, curling her fingers over, and staring along
the length of her arms and hands with satisfaction. ‘Perhaps it was the poor assassin you tried to double-cross? Or one of
your men who deserves more money than you paid?’

‘Shut up whore! If I need the advice of a bitch like you, I’ll ask for it,’ the King spat. He returned to the window out over
the Seine, watching as the men floundered through the thick river ooze to the figure which still lay out nearer the water.

‘It is the dry summer this year. Apart from the rains in the last couple of weeks, it’s been dry,’ his clerk said nervously.

The King made no comment, but stared silently at the work outside. ‘They should have carried him further out,’ he hissed.
‘The river was dropping already when they put the men out there.’

‘We didn’t know,’ said Peter the peasant. He wasn’t going to whine. He’d done all he could, sliding down the rope to kill
that man on the flats to stop the officers being called.

‘You didn’t
know
?’

‘It wasn’t our fault if the bastard didn’t get washed away like all the other refuse from the city. Anyway, a man found out
there could have come from anywhere. Didn’t have to have been thrown from here.’

‘There is much which is interesting about this. First is the stupidity of a man like you leaving a corpse out there for anyone
to find. Then there’s the way you left it there for three
days so the officers could come and find it. But worst of all, there’s the incredible dimness of a man like you who can’t
see that these fellows were told where to go. They walked right in through the house we used to deposit the bodies in, didn’t
they?’

Peter shrugged. ‘It was the nearest house to the body. Where else would they have gone?’

The King nodded and then, in a fluid movement, he turned, drew his knife and slashed it across Peter’s face. It left a fine
red line that began at Peter’s right cheekbone, missed the hollow near his nose, then marked over the nose, to the left cheek,
running right across it almost to the man’s ear. The line remained until Peter’s mouth opened in a shocked bawl, and then
a fine spray burst from it.

Peter’s hands came up to his face, and his eyes stared down in horror at them as they were bedewed with his blood. He drew
a breath to cry out, but by then the King had reversed his blade. His hand snaked out and gripped Peter’s neck, suddenly pulling
his sergeant towards him. The sobbing man had no time to scream before the knife stabbed upwards three times, two to the lungs,
the last to the heart. He was dead even as his body slumped on the blade.

‘Take that tub of lard away. I don’t want to see his face again,’ the King said with cold dispassion. He wiped his knife on
his sleeve, unheeding, as two of his men pulled the twitching form out of the room. ‘We move from here tonight. We’ll go to
the rooms near Saint Jacques.’

Amélie pouted. ‘But I don’t like it there. It stinks of dead animals all the time.’

‘You will get used to it or you’ll die,’ the King said matter-of-factly. He felt his broken teeth with his tongue.

This was the result of being slack. He had been enjoying his life too much. There were times to take leisure, but not when
a man dared to defy you. The fool Jacquot had killed his men and brought this on to him, and he wouldn’t take it. Whether
or not Jacquot had sent the men over there to try to catch the King and his men, he didn’t know. Probably not, because Jacquot
would have directed them to this, his main residence, not the other house. In the past the King had called that chamber his
‘courthouse’, because it was where he had his men go when they were accused of some misdemeanour. If they were said to be
keeping too much of their whores’ money, if they were not declaring the full contents of a purse they’d stolen, if they ‘forgot’
to mention a gambling game that had paid well, they were taken to the courthouse so that their case could be heard. And then
justice was administered according to the King’s whim. Sometimes the accused was confirmed as guilty, sometimes the accuser
was declared to be at fault, and more often than not, the two were forced to fight to the death to determine the outcome.

The advantage of the courthouse was that it was far enough away from any freeman’s habitation. Those who lived down here at
the side of the river were the poorest and meanest. They would not go to the Sergent to report a murder or screams. And that
meant that his courts could be held in safety, and that the bodies afterwards could be usefully slipped into the Seine, to
be taken downriver, far away from the place of their death.

If not Jacquot, someone else must have sent the men to the courthouse. In the last few days all had heard of the arrests and
the numbers of men who’d been swept up from the streets. Any of them could have known of the King’s courthouse. It was a building
of ill-repute because of the stories of screams which emanated from it late into the night.

He clenched his fist and set it on the wall, glowering as the men lifted the body from the mud and began to drag it
laboriously towards the shoreline. He might never find out who had tried to inform on him. However, there was one man he could
force to pay. He hadn’t even begun to think about Jacquot yet. Finding someone to destroy his best killer would be immensely
hard. Ideally, it should be a man-at-arms who wore the tabard of the King of France. Someone like that would be able to command
respect, and even the true King’s men could be attracted to money, the same as any other.

There was one man, of course. Up at the castle … Perhaps he could be persuaded, for a good fee.

And then killed, of course.

As an afterthought, he beckoned one of his men. ‘Follow them, Mal, and see where they go. I want to know where they came from
– and where they take the body. Report to me at Saint Jacques.’

Pons and Vital eyed the mud-sodden body in silence. The wound at his throat proved that he had been killed in a professional
manner.

‘Executed, certainly,’ Pons said.

‘Are there any other wounds? Was this the last of many, or the first?’ Vital wondered.

‘It shows that this building has been used for some killings,’ Pons said, looking about him again.

‘Likely, yes.’

They had seen that this body had been close to the trap-door which led to the river waters and then they had been called upstairs,
where they found a large-sized room. There had been fights in here. Blood lay upon the rough-hewn planks in several places,
but it was not fresh. The odour was that dull, dry smell which spoke of old death. A bench with a small trestle sat in one
corner of the room, and there was a hook in the middle, while to one side stood a small chest. In that they
had found some scraps of cloth, six red, one blue. They were baffled.

‘Have him cleaned,’ Vital said to the Sergent who stood guard over the dead man. ‘At least he has not been here for too long.’

‘And not in the water,’ Pons observed. ‘If he had, his hands would have turned to gloves.’

‘Yes. I have seen the bodies too.’

They both had. Murdered men often turned up in the river, where their flesh became so engorged with water that it could slip
from the meat beneath. It was one of the more revolting kinds of death.

‘Can I go free? You see I wasn’t lying. They were here.’

The two turned back to their captive. His milky eye made him look still more beseeching, and he held out his wrists like a
supplicant. ‘Please?’