Paul Doherty - The Poison Maiden

‘My mother wasn’t hurt?’

‘No. I went down there. The Noctales were bully boys, the dregs of the slums. They helped themselves to food and wine, roistering and sleeping in the stables and barns. I did my best. I objected, asking why Catherine de Clairebon should be their sole host.’

‘Was their leader Alexander of Lisbon?’

Raoul pulled a face. ‘No, the leader of these crows was a Burgundian called La Maru. He was, is, I think, a defrocked cleric. He was different from the rest, cold-eyed with a weasel soul. He rejected my plea, saying I should complain to the king at the Louvre or, if I wanted to, Mathilde de Clairebon sheltering amongst the Goddams at Westminster. I understood from your mother that La Maru made this reference time and again before he left, promising they might well return before midsummer.’

I tried to control my fears. Raoul knew, I knew, my mother knew, and so did Marigny, the root cause of such abuse, hence that unfinished threat in the abbey gardens. I was being punished, warned through my mother because of my hostility towards Philip and his minions from hell. I questioned Raoul most closely but he could say no more. Perhaps he was being kind and wished to save me from the litany of petty cruelties and indignities inflicted upon my mother. He was nervous, anxious to be gone from such strange surroundings. I told him to wait, hurried to my own chamber and brought from my precious store two small purses of silver coins. I explained that one was for him, the other for my mother. He refused. I still thrust both into his hands, and begged him to reassure her of my love and tell her that I was well but, for the moment, could not return to France as it would be too dangerous. He listened carefully, promised me he would do all he could and left.

Un bon homme , Monsieur Foucher. I have a special Book of Hours, once beautiful, its vellum cover now tattered, aged with use, stained and frayed. At the back, like any good bedeswoman or chancery priest, I have a list of those souls I pray for. People who did what they could when there were so many reasons why they should pass by on the other side. Raoul is one of these. After he left, I fled to my own chamber and crouched in the corner, staring at the light pouring through the lancet window. I sat huddled, seething with fear, hate, revenge and a deep, cloying sense of despair. When would this all end? I stared at the bleak crucifix and prayed for an end to my heart bubbling like a cauldron, full to the brim with disorderly, dangerous humours. My gaze wandered to a triptych of St Anne, mother of the Virgin, bending over her precious child. I prayed to her even as I recognised the words of Augustine: how demons can cloak themselves in thick, moist bodies such as steam from a pot or foul gases from a marsh. Did such demons prowl now, wrapped and wafted in the perfumes of this palace, drifting along its corridors and galleries, sliding like a mist, searching for the gaps and crevices in the armour of my soul? I prayed to St Anne and breathed in deeply. Images of my mother floated through my mind. I’d always been closer to my father than to her. I believed I was more the expression of her love for him than the object of her love. Nevertheless, the ties of the womb are the strongest. I wept for how her gentleness must have suffered at the hands of the Noctales. God forgive me, I seethed with hate for Marigny, Alexander of Lisbon and La Maru.

A tap on the door roused me from my reverie. A pageboy, hair all tousled, pushed his cheeky face through.

‘Mademoiselle Mathilde, you must come, the queen waits for you.’

I rose to my feet, straightened my dress and hurried after him into the gallery. The queen was in her own private chamber. She was sitting on the edge of her hung bed, its gorgeous tapestries bundled back over the rods above her. She was dressed in a linen shift gathered high at the neck, her feet pushed into silver-gold slippers, her long hair hanging free down to her shoulders. She was humming to herself as she arranged the playing cards Marigny had brought her from France, sorting them into sections: hearts, trefoils, pikes and squares. She sat as if immersed in this, unaware of anything else as I closed the door behind me. By then I knew her. Isabella was at her most dangerous when she looked the most innocent!

‘What is wrong, Mathilde? You’ve been back some time, I understand? Yet you did not hurry to see your mistress.’ She gestured at a stool close to the bed. I sat down and told her everything that had happened. She kept playing with the cards and, after I had finished, continued to arrange them into sets of four.

‘Do you know, Mathilde,’ she gathered one set into her hand and clenched them tightly, ‘while you were gone, I went across to the abbey; the good brothers, I understand, are preparing for their head-shearing. Anyway, I examined the misericords, the carvings beneath the stalls where the monks sit. Grotesque scenes! A witch riding a cat, a man fighting a dog, a mock bishop, Samson tearing a lion’s jaws, and next to that, a jackal devouring a disinterred corpse. I wondered, Mathilde, do such paintings reflect the humours of our tangled souls? Let us forget about our problems here.’ She stared at me with those icy blue eyes, her lower lip clenched between her teeth. ‘Your poor mother, Mathilde, what shall we do about her?’ She threw the cards on the bed and lifted a finger. ‘I shall certainly write to my father. What I don’t want is to be like Herod in that play we are preparing for Easter. You remember?’

I nodded, though I scarcely did. Isabella had a love of such mummery and liked nothing better than to hire players and watch their comic antics. She was a keen reader of their texts and had learnt some of the lines, which she would mouth with the leading characters.

Isabella closed her eyes. ‘Remember Herod’s line? “Out, out, out! I stamp. I stare. I look about! I rant! I rage! Now I am mad. The brat of Bethlehem? He shall be dead.”’

‘Mistress?’ I queried.

‘Mathilde,’ Isabella opened her eyes, ‘we must not rant and shout but sit and watch. This is the waiting time. We must be subtle, as full as trickery as our opponents. So, let us think, then let us prepare. .’

Two days later my mistress, clothed in shimmering cloth of gold, her chair of state strewn with blue silk tapestries boasting the gorgeous lilies of France, invited Enguerrand de Marigny and Alexander of Lisbon to share sweet wines from Spain and honey-coated cakes. The ostensible reason was to thank the Portuguese for accepting Gaveston’s offer of battle as well as commiserate with him for injuries received. Isabella, the perfect minx, her hair and beautiful face framed by a snow-white wimple, a gold circlet round her head, had issued the invitation and received the Lord Satan and his imp, as she called them, in her inner chamber. Marigny, of course, dared not refuse. Moreover, he was full of curiosity as well as diplomatic questions about whether Isabella was enceinte. He came clad in the dark, rich robes of a lawyer, except for a froth of white around his throat and wrists; rings glittered on his fingers; around his neck was a silver chain carrying a large gold fleurde-lis — a sign that he enjoyed his royal master’s personal favour. Alexander was clothed in the usual black cotehardie and leggings, a white cambric shirt beneath. He looked unaffected by his fall except for mild purple bruising on the right side of his face, a sprain to his wrist and a slight limp. Both were ingratiating to my mistress. I was ignored. The Lord Fox, his sharp, pointed features frozen in a smile, red hair combed and coiffed, darting green eyes full of malice, did glance sharply at me; his thin lips twisted in a smile before he returned all adoringly to my mistress with a litany of false flatteries. Alexander of Lisbon, dark face smouldering, tried to ape such subtle deceit but found it more difficult.