Michael Jecks - The King of Thieves

‘Yes, I have no doubt. However, I would like you to come with me right now .’

There was an edge to his voice that made Bishop Walter stop and look at him with a sudden alarm. ‘What is it, Simon? Is there another disaster to mar this lovely morning?’

‘Only one thing, Bishop. Sir Roger Mortimer is here.’

Upper chamber near St Jacques la Boucherie

He woke with acid in his belly, and Le Boeuf began to puke before he knew where he was, before he remembered anything about the evening.

‘Christ’s boils!’ he muttered, spitting and cursing.

There was a pain that began right behind his eyeballs and spread from there to encompass his entire skull. He must have been beaten up badly for his body and head to feel like this, he told himself. And then there was the soreness about his belly. He must have been drinking too, then.

There was light now, but he daren’t open his eyes yet. The pain was going to be too intense, sod it, so he rolled himself over, avoiding the direct sun. But something was very wrong. He wasn’t on his palliasse. Maybe he’d fallen from it, and was just on the planks of the bedchamber, then. There was rough timber under his cheek, and he experimented with his good eye, opening it to glance down.

Where was he? This wasn’t his floor. It wasn’t his home. Where had he got to? In a mild panic, he sat upright, and then he realised his wrists were bound. ‘God’s ballocks! What the …’

‘Awake, are you? Good. I like to have someone awake when I consider what to do with him. Although in your case I don’t feel the need to worry myself. Can you understand that?’

Le Boeuf closed his eye and shook his head, hoping that this might be a mere bad dream, but the dream didn’t go away. He felt an ungentle prod against his back, and then a pain that seemed to slam into his kidney and made his eyes jerk wide. A whimper left his drooling mouth.

‘Aha, Le Boeuf, so you do know who I am, eh?’

The King of Thieves crouched down to smile at him. Behind him, Le Boeuf could see a woman, a dark beauty with a look of interest on her face as she watched the King draw a dagger. He allowed it to rest against Le Boeuf’s cheek, the point down on his skin. It made his flesh creep. He could feel the sharpness, sense the ease with which it could be thrust down, where it would jar against his teeth, then slip softly into his mouth, through his tongue, through even the other cheek, until it pierced the wooden floor, where it would hold him entirely; he’d be unable to move without slicing through the whole of both cheeks, losing his tongue in the process. This was torture of a sort King Charles’s own executioners could not have dreamed of. He had heard of the King of Thieves using it against many of his own men.

‘Who did you speak to when you decided to sell me and my men?’ the King asked in a mild, soft tone.

‘I didn’t tell anyone …’

The knife was pressed down. There was a spurt in his mouth, and he screamed into his closed lips, eyes wide and panicked. Blood in his mouth. A chip of tooth where the dagger’s blade had connected. ‘No! No!’

‘You’ll tell me, of course,’ the King said. ‘Because it’s easy. And if you don’t, I’ll have your body cut into tiny pieces, one by one, even as you watch. You’ll be able to see it all. So you need to answer.’

‘The King’s Sergent. I had to! I had to tell him. And he brought two officers of the King, a man called Pons and another called Vital. They were going to …’

‘Yes, they were going to kill you, weren’t they? Well, it doesn’t really matter now, because you will die for what you have told them. You have put me to a lot of trouble, you see. So I think I shall kill you — but not yet. No, I think you need to consider your crimes first, and so I shall wait until later. But to make sure you don’t try to escape, I shall need a hammer, please.’

He wanted to shake his head, to plead, but the King had no compassion. There was nothing in his eyes except the desire to inflict as much pain as possible on the man before him. Le Boeuf saw the heavy leaden hammer being passed, and only just had time to open his jaw before the dagger’s hilt was struck. His horrified screams were almost muted by the dull thudding of the hammer against the dagger as it was pounded through Le Boeuf’s mouth and into the floor.

‘There,’ the King said, when he was done. He eyed the sobbing, bleeding thing on the floor before him, and drew back his boot to slam it with all his malice into Le Boeuf’s belly, making the man spew again, the vomit pooling near his mouth, the acid burning at the fresh wounds in his cheeks, the blood mingling with the greenish-yellow swirls. ‘Feel free to rise, if you want,’ the King said quietly.

He kicked again, and Le Boeuf felt it hammer at his upper belly, his body convulsing to eject all the fluid left in his stomach, desperate not to move his mouth and slash all to pieces.

But it wasn’t the King’s ferocity towards him that scared him most. It was the look in the woman’s eyes as she watched, licking her lips as though contemplating a sexual encounter, rather than the destruction of a poor beggar.

Bruised, his kidney ruined, his face pinned to the wooden plank of the floor, Le Boeuf sobbed for his life and for his approaching death.

Louvre

Baldwin was leaving the Cardinal’s chamber, when the Cardinal himself approached him from the corridor. ‘Sir Baldwin? Would you object to my walking with you?’

‘By all means,’ Baldwin said with an entirely false smile.

‘The Queen is a most determined lady.’

‘Yes. I was growing aware of that,’ Baldwin said.

‘She would have the King relinquish his unnatural obsession with this man Despenser and return to her marital bed. Is that such a dreadful desire?’

‘Of course not. However, it is her methodology which I question. She has been commanded to go to her husband, and that rightful order she is refusing to obey. That itself is petit treason. No woman has the right to deny her husband’s command. But this is worse — her husband is the King. That makes her refusal an act of genuine treason. It is impossible to condone such behaviour.’

‘You would have her go to a home which is repugnant to her? You would have her throw herself at her husband, no matter how undeserving?’

‘Yes. She is married to him. It may be painful, but better that than the inevitable shame and humiliation of being forced to go back.’

The Cardinal looked at him from under frowning brows. ‘You think someone could force her?’

‘Your King will have to in the end. The Pope will not wish for any further enmity between your King and ours.’

‘The Pope will be keen to see the issue resolved, it is true.’

‘You don’t think he’ll demand that she returns to her husband?’

‘The Pope? No. I know his mind, I think, as well as anyone does.’

‘Why not?’ Baldwin asked, genuinely confused by the man’s arrogant conviction.

The Cardinal looked at him. ‘Do you understand much about the workings of power?’ he asked, pointedly looking at Baldwin’s patched and threadbare tunic. ‘I used to be a poor man, but I managed to achieve some prominence by application and taking some risks. Some years ago I helped the French King to capture the treacherous Pope Boniface. I was soon afterwards able to advance myself. It is how all do so, Sir Knight. The Pope is another such self-made man who managed to win an election. God did His part — but who is to say that men themselves did not influence His choice? The Pope, when all is said and done, is only a man. He wants his life to be eased, not complicated. Now, from his perspective, how safe will it be for Queen Isabella to return to her husband? It will lead to strife in their relationships. It may even lead to her being chastised.