Michael Jecks - The King of Thieves

And now he was instigating his own little process of torture. All in the name of the King.

The prisoner had been hanging there from the butcher’s hook for over a day now. His arms must have been in agony, especially since they were so tightly bound. His ankles had swollen to an alarming extent, and Jean seriously wondered whether they would ever reduce to an ordinary size.

‘You will have to talk sooner or later, Nicholas,’ he said.

They had learned his name with embarrassing ease on the first day. That was the day on which they merely beat him with fists and ropes. Fists were good at first, but when the two men with him wanted to kick the man as well, Jean had shaken his head. He wanted information from this man, not for him just to become a third corpse. The questioning had begun. ‘Who are you? Why did you want to kill me? What do you know of the man in the Louvre? What was his name? What of the woman who died?’ On and on, he asked the same questions, and for the first day he had a policy of not believing a word he was told.

On the second day, he believed the man when he gave his name. ‘ Nicholas . They call me the Stammerer.’

He had looked at Jean with his face screwed up against the light of the candles. Jean thought — a strange idea, this — that the boy was actually speaking like someone talking to an ally or confederate. There was no complicity in this room, though, except for that which lay between torturer and questioner. The men who wielded the metal and stretched this poor scrawny body, breaking pieces of it, little by little, and him, Jean, the Procureur.

‘Why did you want to kill me? Who was the man in the Louvre? What was his name?’

It was the same questions, repeated. Each time a response was given, he made a note of it. And then, when the answers seemed to be falling into a pattern, he would change the order of the questions, trying to catch Nicholas out, snapping them out and waiting to see how long it took for the reply, listening for that pause that said Nicholas was having to think, to remember something he had invented, or whether the fellow was responding honestly.

‘He was de Nogaret. That is all I know.’

‘And the woman?’

‘His wife. We were paid to kill her …’

This was the first time that it wasn’t ‘I’. It was interesting. More interesting, if he was honest, than much of the slobbering, self-justifying ox-shit he had been forced to listen to. Jean stood, his legs and arse aching from spending too much time on a stool. Crossing the floor, he leaned down, hands on thighs, and peered up at the dangling head.

Blood trickled from a wound over his temple. Both eyes were puffed and blued from the regular beatings, and there was a reddened welt on his shoulder where a heated rod had been lain. The rest of his back was thankfully in darkness, and Jean needn’t look at that, nor at the man’s grotesquely swollen genitals.

‘Why?’ he asked quietly. ‘What would it serve you to kill me?’

‘The King was paid. Just like he was paid to kill de Nogaret.’

‘Who paid him?’

‘Someone from the castle. Don’t know who. Servant came to pay.’

Jean nodded. ‘Who is the “King” you talk of?’

‘I can’t say.’

‘You can. You will.’

‘I can’t say.’

Jean rose and shook his head. Looking over the boy’s head, he saw the two torturers. Neither was an expert at this art. Both were trained in the fields of Montfaucon among the great poles that stood there. The old wooden uprights were gone, replaced with stone in the last year. Now there were sixteen uprights, the King could have a full complement of sixty-four corpses swinging in the wind when he so desired. And all were on view from the north of the city. When space was needed, the bodies could be cut loose, and then the rotting flesh was cast into the city’s midden that lay close by. On a hot summer’s day, when the wind came from the north, Jean would cover his face with a cloth against the noxious fumes.

These two had learned their arts there, stringing up the boys and men who were guilty of foul, degenerate crimes like stealing a loaf. Better that a man should starve than rob his fellow. Jean had lived through the famine. He knew what it was like to see people starve to death. If a man had managed to keep a small store of foodstuffs, and another sought to rob him of it, that man deserved his fate at Montfaucon, so far as Jean was concerned.

‘Leave him until morning,’ he said now, considering the broken and ravaged figure before him. ‘But show him the brazier and all the implements. I want answers by the end of tomorrow. Show him and let him dream of them tonight. And cut him free. He can’t run anywhere tonight, and the freedom will hurt more than leaving him hanging.’

He left the chamber and the stench of sweat, piss and faeces, with relief. With every step he took away from that revolting room, he felt a little of the foulness falling away from him, until he found himself up in the open, and took in deep lungfuls of the fresh air. He was no torturer. The whole process made him feel sick. But the job worked — that was the trouble. It achieved results.

Louvre, Paris

The castellan strode into his room to find her there, waiting as usual. ‘What are you doing here?’

Amélie stood and walked towards him languidly. ‘Don’t you want me any more?’

It was tempting. Galician born, she had the body of a heathen harlot, but the face of an angel. Black hair that gleamed, an oval face with lips as red as a rose, she was utterly beautiful. Christ knew, it was tempting … but he didn’t have time. ‘You have to go to your master. To the “King”,’ he said harshly. ‘Tell him that one of his men has been taken, yes? He’s being held in the Temple, where they’re torturing him.’

‘What of it? Nicholas will break and die,’ she said, reaching up to his neck and placing her cool, cool hand behind his head. Her black eyes stared into his.

‘Get off me, wench! Sweet Jesus! You think this is the time for that? If this man is taken, we’re all in the midden, you understand?’

‘The “King” is no fool, Sieur Hugues. He has already sent a man to deal with Nicholas. The boy will stammer no more!’ She drew away from him as she spoke, and walking to the shelf on which lay his jug and cups, she poured two, and brought them to him. ‘Come, drink, relax, and then do what you want with me. I have all the time we need.’

‘What do you want with me?’ he demanded, but with less anger, as she took his hand and led him to the back of his room where he had a palliasse rolled at the wall.

She said nothing, but unrolled the bedding and knelt on it. As he watched, she crossed her arms and lifted her linen tunic over her head. Beneath it she was naked.

Temple, Paris

The figure at the doorway tapped quietly. ‘I have a livre for you if I can see the man they’re torturing.’

‘What do you want with him?’ the porter demanded, taking the little leather purse and reaching inside. He took up a coin and stared at it hard, before experimentally biting into it. Seeing the result, a grin of delight spread over his face.

With directions, it was easy to find him. Through one open door, down some steep stairs, into a great vaulted room that might as well have been a hall, he thought. Inside, two men were using bellows to warm a charcoal brazier, while the Stammerer stared in horrified fascination from his ravaged face.

Sighing, Jacquot strolled inside. ‘Gentlemen, this fellow was a friend of mine. Can I let him have some money for food and drink while he remains here at your service?’

‘Who are you?’ The nearer of the two men clearly had the sharper brain. Now he blocked Jacquot’s path, a length of chain swinging from his fist.