Ian Morson - Falconer and the Death of Kings

Approaching the island end of the bridge, Falconer’s thoughts of the Jews reminded him of Saphira Le Veske. He was still desirous of finding her in Honfleur and resolving their differences. He was also thinking of the others in Oxford that he had left behind. Peter Bullock, the town constable, would no doubt be patrolling the university town, keeping a keen eye out for wrongdoing. Then Sir Humphrey Segrim entered his thoughts again as he recalled his promise to the old man. In order to assuage the knight’s sense of guilt that he had brought down the wrath of Odo de Reppes on his wife, Falconer needed to hear the truth of the Templar’s deeds in England. Segrim had seen him in Berkhamsted when Edward’s uncle, Richard, King of Germany, had died. Killed by Odo, Segrim had insisted. It was curious how fate had now drawn Falconer into investigating that very death, along with that of young Prince John while in Richard’s care. He could not have imagined that occurring when he had met Segrim months ago in Oxford.

Pushing through the crowds that thronged the buildings perched precariously over the river on either flank of the bridge, he was surprised to catch a glimpse of someone. It was only a fleeting sight, but it was one of a handsome figure in a green dress. The woman’s hair was covered by a modest snood, but a couple of errant locks of red hair had escaped the headdress. He uttered her name.

‘Saphira?’

Falconer stopped, and people began to push past him on the bridge, complaining at the obstruction he was causing. He thought the person he had seen had been moving towards one of the buildings to his right, but he had lost sight of her. Could it have been Saphira? Or had his eyes been deceiving him due to him thinking about Oxford and all he had left behind? There was only one way of finding out.

He forced his way across the street towards the place where the red-haired woman had disappeared. The narrow stone building had a small sign over the door in Hebrew, with a name carved below it. It read ‘Manser of Calais’. Falconer hesitated for a moment, recalling the terms on which he and Saphira had parted, then pushed open the door and stepped into the darkened room beyond. Two faces, a little startled by his abrupt appearance, looked up at him from where they sat either side of a small table. One was an old man with a hatchet face half hidden by a beard and with deep brown eyes. The other face was that of Saphira Le Veske. Her look of alarm was abruptly replaced by a broad smile on recognizing who it was had entered.

‘William! You have saved me a long and tedious hunt. How did you find me so soon?’

She held out her hand, and Falconer’s fears about his reception fell away. He clasped her hand in both of his, squeezing a little more powerfully than he needed to.

‘Luck, I suppose. I was walking across the bridge thinking of you, and there you were. You are not an apparition, are you?’

‘You can feel that I am flesh and blood from the way you are grasping my hand. A mite too tightly, I may say.’

He responded to her teasing and released her fingers.

‘I had to be sure. Too many strange things have been happening to me recently. But tell me: how did you know I was in Paris?’

She looked down at her feet, not wishing yet to admit the need she had felt to communicate with William.

‘I… er… sent a message to Rabbi Jacob that I would be longer than I anticipated in Honfleur, and asked him to pay the rent on my house. When I got his reply a few weeks later, he happened to mention he had heard you had left for France too.’

What she did not say was that she had specifically asked the rabbi for some information about Falconer. And that she had been told he was actually in Paris. Oblivious to her hiding these facts, he took a step back and surveyed her. Her shapely figure, clad in one of her familiar green dresses, had not changed. It looked even more enticing, in fact. He pointed to her headgear.

‘I see your hair is as unruly as ever.’

Saphira instinctively reached up and tucked an errant curl back under her starched white snood. Then she turned to the money-changer, who still sat at his table, visibly amused by the bantering exchange.

‘It seems I do not need your services, Manser. This is the man I came to Paris to seek out. He has fallen right into my lap.’

Manser smiled broadly, nodding his head.

‘It is just as well he did. I fear it might have taken me weeks to find one scholar among all those that throng Paris. Even if we could have narrowed it down to Englishmen.’ He looked Falconer up and down. ‘There are far too many Englishmen in France.’

Saphira laughed and, taking Falconer by the arm, led him from Manser’s gloomy counting house. They sauntered along the Right Bank of the Seine towards the hiring square Falconer had seen before. Business there was brisk, and the couple watched in silence for a while, both thinking their own thoughts. When they did speak, it was together.

‘I was going to come to Honfleur…’

‘My business was finished in Honfleur…’

They both stopped and laughed. Saphira bowed her head in mock deference.

‘Please, master, you must speak first.’

William gave her a serious look that he could not sustain, and they laughed again. Her tinkling laughter wove itself around his low guffaw, and he held his hands up in defeat.

‘Saphira, I…’

She put a finger to his lips.

‘You need say nothing, dear William. Let us call a truce in our battle.’

He nodded his head sagely.

‘A truce sounds better for my sense of pride than a complete capitulation. A truce it shall be.’

She took his arm in both hands and clutched it tightly.

‘Now, tell me what you have been doing while I have been subjugating the wilfulness of an errant sea captain and setting my wine-shipping business to rights again.’

Thomas’s day proved a frustrating one. Despite Falconer’s warning of the dangers, he had hoped to question Peter de la Casteigne or Jack Hellequin about his idea that at least some of the students of Adam Morrish had been misusing drugs. But both of them were absent from the lectures. Which was no real surprise, as those students who had come were sorely distracted by the second death in their midst. Most of the clerks could not concentrate on what their master was teaching. And Master Adam himself seemed out of sorts, his lecture on Galen being listless and full of errors. Thomas listened with only half an ear, thinking he might ask Morrish if he kept any preparations on the premises. He knew that hemlock and opium were used as an anaesthetic, and a useful ointment could be made up from opium and lard. Had the students broken in to his supplies themselves? He waited until the end of Adam’s lectures in order to be able to question him. But as soon as Adam had finished, the master claimed a headache was plaguing him. He asked Thomas to lock the building after he had finished his meeting with Friar Bacon, and he hurried off before Thomas could speak to him properly. The students dispersed without expressing their usual pleasure at being released for the day.

It was a moment before Thomas realized that the building now stood empty and silent. And that he was alone with the key to the front door in his hand. It was the best chance he would have to search the house. That at least could not place him in any danger. Familiar with the layout on the lower level, he decided to start at the top, and climbed the creaky stairs leading to the upper room, the only one he had never seen inside. He opened the door cautiously, despite the fact that he knew the master had left, feeling he was doing something wrong. The solar was untidy in a way that was unlike Falconer’s room in Oxford. His friend’s quarters were cluttered with the detritus of his enquiring mind. Esoteric texts were buried under rocks with strange marks on them, and under skulls of animals, and birds’ wings were stretched to see how they might support a body in flight. Morrish’s room was merely uncared for. He leaned over the table in one corner of the room to find a battered copy of the Isagogue of Johannitius open and turned on its front, straining the cords that held it together. Another medical text — Haly ibn Ridwan’s treatise on Galen — lay discarded on the floor. Thomas was appalled. Did Morrish not know the value of these works? Letters written on parchment were scattered around as though of no further use. Thomas knew each one of them could be scraped clean and reused. Morrish appeared not to need to care about being penny wise. Searching further, he found nothing that resembled a pharmacy of drugs, or even a formulary listing medicines and their uses. Until he looked under the table and found a small chest. He pulled it out and tried to open the lid. But it was locked, the hasp deeply scratched and battered. As he could not open it without the key, he was not able to verify if it contained opium or any other sorts of herbs and preparations. Idly, he poked the door key he still held in his hand in the lock and jiggled it. And almost jumped out of his skin when a voice called out from down below.