Michael Jecks: The Prophecy of Death

Of course, if that happened he might even win a great reward. Become a knight, even. Either that, or he’d be found dead one day in a ditch for his perfidious behaviour. The King would have his balls for what he’d done.

But for now, he must escape. He moved swiftly along the roadway, keeping the castle on his left, until he reached the cross on the Wincheap way, and there he turned south and west, heading towards the leper house of St Jacob. A short distance before that, he found the track off to the left into the trees, and met with the men who had the horse.

He took the reins, and with a sense of relief to be safe again, the man in the King’s herald tabard sighed and clapped spurs to the beast. There were many miles to cover before he could rest properly again.

Since getting here from France he felt as though he had been in the saddle all the time. He only prayed he might find some peace soon.

Tuesday following Easter 6

Château du Bois, Paris

Baldwin sipped his wine and tried to look appreciative.

The musicians were not all bad. Some were really quite talented. That fellow Janin was rather good with his vielle, and Ricard was a competent gittern player, although he did tend to make a little too much of a show with his playing for Baldwin’s taste. He seemed to wave his instrument about overmuch when the women were watching him. Still, at least he was making a pleasing sound. Not soothing, but definitely pleasing.

But it was soothing which his soul needed just now. He had been here in France for a month or so, which meant that it was … what? Two months, no, three since he had left his wife and children back home at Furnshill. However long it was, it felt a great deal longer. That was certain. His son was only a matter of three months old when the King’s summons had arrived to call him on this journey, travelling to France with the Queen, protecting her from dangers on the road, so that she might arrive safely at the French court.

Queen Isabella was a strong-willed woman. She had come through many disappointments with her husband and his choice of friends. In recent years she had seen all her properties confiscated, her income taken, her servants exiled and even her children taken into custody. All this while her husband ignored her and took to carousing with his favourite adviser, Sir Hugh le Despenser.

Many women would have been broken by such cruelty, but not Queen Isabella. Baldwin reckoned that at the heart of her there was a baulk of English oak, resilient, impervious, unbending. She grew more resolute with every setback, he thought. For all the hardship and the sadness which it must have brought to her, still she acted like a Queen. There was no apparent rancour in her spirit as she conducted her embassy with the French King. King Charles IV, her brother, was a man of great intellect and enormous cunning, Baldwin felt — but he tended to feel that about any king. Men with such enormous power were best avoided, in his opinion.

She was here today, sitting at her chair, listening to the music with enthusiasm as the players cavorted, her eyes sometimes straying to the little boy who sat at the back with the covers for the instruments, discarded along with the musicians’ paraphernalia.

To Baldwin’s relief the lad was playing quietly with a ball and causing no trouble. He was the adopted son of Ricard of Bromley, the musician with the gittern, and seemed content enough with his life just now. That itself was good to see.

Baldwin glanced across at his friend of so many years, Simon Puttock. A tall man, some ten years younger at nine-and-thirty or so, Simon was a strong man, used to long hours in the saddle. He had been a bailiff on Dartmoor, responsible for upholding the King’s peace on the moors. His grey eyes were set in a calm, sunburned face and had seen their share of violence in over ten years of trying to seek out felons. His reliability had led to his promotion to the post of officer of the Keeper of the Port of Dartmouth, but the reward had been bitter, as it meant leaving his wife and family behind.

And now he did not even have that post, for his Patron, Abbot Robert of Tavistock, had died, and arguments had arisen over the abbey’s choice of successor. Simon had no idea what his job would be.

Baldwin’s face twisted wryly. Unlike him, he thought. His own position was fixed: he was the Keeper of the King’s Peace, a Justice of Gaol Delivery, and most recently, a member of the king’s parliament, a council which even the king distrusted. He only used it to raise revenue.

For Baldwin, such a post reeked. He had been a Knight Templar, a member of a holy and honourable order, which had been attacked by an avaricious French king and his partner, the Pope. The Templars had been destroyed by those two, to their dishonour. Baldwin had been fortunate enough not to be in the preceptories when all were arrested, and was never caught. Yet the experience of seeing the persecution and deceit had left him with an abiding hatred of politicians and the clergy. He could trust neither entirely. Only his friend Simon seemed absolutely trustworthy.

Simon was now standing at the other side of the room — naturally all those in the chamber here listening with the Queen, the knights, the men-at-arms, the ladies-in-waiting, were all standing; none might sit in the Queen’s presence — and was stifling a yawn. Baldwin felt his own jaw respond, and vainly attempted to conceal it, sensing his mouth puckering like an old hag’s who had bitten into a sloe, before he managed to cover it with a forearm.

The Queen displayed no such weakness. She remained upright in her chair, listening with every indication of enthusiasm, as though all the tribulations of the last months were dispelled by the music, hard though Baldwin might find it to believe. And yet, he knew, for much of the time, she was bitter. She concealed her anger at, and detestation of, Despenser, the principal architect and cause of her misery, but for Simon and Baldwin, who had grown to know and understand her moods and behaviour in the last few weeks of travelling with her, the fact was that her mood was generally easy enough for them to read. It was clear that she was here to do the very best deal she could for her adopted country and her oldest son, so that he might inherit a good kingdom, but for all that, if there were any means by which she could embarrass or offend her husband, she would surely not hesitate to grasp it with both hands.

‘That,’ Simon said as they walked away from the Queen’s chamber to their own, ‘was boring in the extreme. I don’t know about you, but I’m not sure how much more of this I can bear.’

‘It’s all right for some,’ Baldwin admitted. ‘Fine wine, good food-’

‘Too damned rich.’ His friend grunted. ‘Give me some plain rabbit roasted over an open fire rather than all this coloured muck.’

‘… and yet I want to be at home to see my son. I worry about Jeanne,’ Baldwin finished. His wife had been so tired when he left her to set off for London, and all he could recall was that paleness about her features and the pinched look she had worn, as though his beautiful lady was overtired and cold.

‘I’d like to see my Meg again, too,’ Simon said sharply, adding, ‘and my daughter should have been married by now. All this wandering about France and back has delayed her nuptials. I doubt whether she, or her mother, will be too happy about that.’

It was true. Simon’s daughter, Edith, had been betrothed for an age — certainly more than a year — but she was almost seventeen now. He would have to allow her to marry as soon as he could, and that may well mean as soon as he returned home to Lydford. He had kept her waiting too long.