Michael Jecks - The King of Thieves

Those were the tasks he set Hélias to discover, and he had faith enough in her abilities to leave her to it. If she did not learn anything about the two, no one else would. She knew all those who might be able to answer his questions.

It was very late in the afternoon when he finally received a message to go and visit Hélias again. Pulling a woollen cap over his head, he took up a staff, shrugged a cloak over his shoulders, and set off to the gates.

At the road outside, he saw the burly shape of a man lurking in a doorway towards the city’s gates, and immediately turned left, up to the north, away from the fellow. But he was sure that he was followed.

At home he had an old, broken mirror, and he had tried bringing a shard of it with him in the mornings for a couple of days, but it was so small that he could discern nothing in it when he held it up and glanced behind him. But when he tried a larger piece the next day, he found people staring at him in the street, and began to fear that he might at any moment be grabbed by a sergent and questioned. They probably thought him mad.

So instead he had hit upon this. Yet it was not foolproof. He just prayed that the man was actually behind him, had truly seen him.

Hélias’s road branched off this one at a crossroads, where today there was a pair of carters brawling in the street. One had broken a wheel, and the load from his wagon had fallen all over the roadway, a mixture of hens in cages, eggs broken and crushed, and a mess of butter trampled into the mire. Like many others, Jean paused to watch, cheering on the larger man, who seemed to need little by way of encouragement. He had already managed to turn the other’s mouth and face into a bloody mess, and now he had grabbed the smaller man by his shirt, and was pounding him in the belly, while two Sergents watched indulgently.

The crowd was as happy with the entertainment as any at a baiting. And it gave the Procureur time to shoot a look behind him, and — yes, there he was! The man was leaning against a building, lolling like a drunkard, arms crossed over his breast, with the weary, semi-vacant look of a man who had enjoyed too much of his master’s wine.

It was enough to make a man weep. Jean the Procureur sighed, passed around the two men as the smaller collapsed onto all fours, vomiting, and the other carter drew his boot back for the final blow. The Procureur hurried now. Here the lane was partially cobbled, and he had to watch his footing where the fist-sized stones had worked loose. At one particularly bad spot, he had to spring over a large puddle. It was a little consolation that a short while afterwards, he heard his pursuer make a similar leap, but heard the man’s boots fall into the water, followed by a short curse.

‘You took your time,’ Hélias said as he reached her door.

The Procureur nodded, trying to look relaxed as he glanced back along the road. There was one man, and then the fellow he’d expected to see, a bit further back. Good! ‘May I enter, Hélias? I’d prefer not to discuss this business here in the street.’

‘Get inside, then,’ she said. There was little humour in her tone. ‘This is not the sort of affair I like to involve myself with, you understand?’ She led the way in through the door. Once they were safely secluded in a tiny little chamber at the back of the house, she passed him a cup of wine and sipped at her own. ‘You know what this makes me think of? Those bad days when Philippe the Fair lost it.’

Jean nearly choked on his wine. ‘What?’

‘Oh, come on! Philippe lost it completely. He reckoned he could take whatever he wanted. Well, he was the King, wasn’t he? First it was the Jews, and no one complained. Then it was the Templars, and some folks got uppity about that. But not too many. No, a lot of us were pissed off with the Templars already. All they did was wander round the place showing off with all their money, didn’t they? I wasn’t going to lose any sleep over them. But I think he went too far when he took all the Templars’ money. That got the Pope’s back up, and then made everyone start to think, Well, if the Templars are up to no good, what’s to say the other monks aren’t — and the nuns — and the priests — and if they’re gone to the bad, what of the Pope? Some folks even wondered about the King. After all, if he was accusing everyone else, perhaps there was only one man to blame. And the Templars were monks. Most people trusted them.’

‘Hélias, they were found guilty of worshipping idols. They were guilty . Don’t you remember the ones they burned?’

‘And the King himself died a little later, didn’t he?’

‘That was different. That was a broken heart, I think.’

‘Yes. He learned much. Like his sons’ wives were all more keen on waggling their arses than a Toulousain tackle.’

‘Toulousain tackle?’

She looked at him. ‘You know what I mean. A tart from Toulouse. Anyway, his grandchildren were assumed illegitimate and disinherited, his daughters-in-law were divorced … he saw the end of his line. Must have broken his heart. Would any man’s.’

He was frowning already. ‘But what’s all this got to do with my men?’

‘You know that they were both called de Nogaret? Husband and wife. He was named for his father: Guillaume. She was a pretty little thing in life called Anne-Marie. They arrived here in the town shortly after the visitation of the Blessed Virgin. *I saw them about the place occasionally. They were living out near the Sainte-Opportune. A grotty little inn, not to my standard, but clean enough, I suppose. Not that his wife would have enjoyed residing here, eh?’ She cackled suddenly. ‘I think we could have helped them with the finances, though. She had the sort of backside that would have tempted the Bishop of Sens.’ She nodded to herself, and then a look of mild reproof crossed her face. ‘Not that he would be necessarily hard to tease, from what I’ve heard.’

With difficulty, Jean pulled his attention back to the matter in hand. ‘The couple — de Nogaret and his wife. What happened to them?’

‘I came to hear of them when they had not been here long. They let on to others that they wanted to seek an audience with the King. They had some news for him, so they said. They seemed very keen.’

‘What was this news?’

Hélias shrugged with a wry grin. ‘You think they were stupid enough to tell anyone? They were stupid enough, it is true, to let on that it involved the King, and that it involved money — a lot of money — but nothing more.’

‘Perhaps they wished to bring money to the King, and someone heard and executed them so he could take it all to himself?’

‘Perhaps. And then again, perhaps they sought to take money from the King or someone else. Plainly, somebody thought that there was a good enough reason to kill them both.’

‘You think they were murdered by the same person?’ Jean enquired.

‘I would say that as a Procureur, I would make a good investigator. And as a whore, you would be useless. But I can whore as well, which means I am without a doubt the better of us two. Do you really mean to say you do not think that these two died for the same reason?’

‘I had not connected the two. One died in the castle, the other in an alley. I assumed she had been killed by a jealous lover, or perhaps a madman bent on enjoying her youth. While the man was simply slain for …’

‘For what?’

‘Money, greed. Perhaps for some political motive, since he was the son of de Nogaret.’

‘May the devil piss on him and stop him burning too quickly,’ Hélias spat.

‘You had reason to hate him?’

She crossed herself, but her feelings were made clear by her expression. ‘He was the cause of much pain and suffering. Never trust a lawyer, is my motto.’