Paul Doherty - The Cup of Ghosts

English envoys had arrived in Paris to negotiate with Philip. Of course their clerks and scribes, after the long day’s business was done, were eager for mischief amongst the English nation. I began to frequent a tavern, the Oriflamme, with a spacious tap room, not too clean; the rushes on the floor often squelched under my boots whilst some of the odours were definitely unsavoury. Nevertheless, this was where the English clerks congregated. At first they were sly-eyed and tight-lipped, but it’s wonderful what a flask of wine, a game of dice, joyful banter and a shared song can change. True, they were full of their own importance. They gave away no secrets; after all, these were clerks of the chancery, trained at their universities of Oxford or Cambridge in all fields of law and duplicity. What I wanted was not their secrets, only the chatter of the court, and they were most willing to share it. I rented a narrow garret with no window except a hole dug through the wall covered by a piece of hardened cloth. With Isabella’s silver it was easy to pose as the daughter of a French lawyer waiting for her father to join her from Dijon. If you pretend to act the mummer’s part, and retain the mask, the world, in the main, will believe you. Once they’d downed their cups and filled their bellies, the clerks regaled me (acting very much the innocent lady) with stories about the English court, especially the rise of Monsieur Gaveston, the king’s favourite, to the earldom of Cornwall.

‘Oh yes.’ One of them winked at me, tapping the side of his nose. ‘Earl of Cornwall Gaveston now is, bosom friend of the king, who calls him his dear brother.’

‘And the other great lords accept this?’ I asked.

‘Of course.’

They chattered on, explaining how Edward of England had no desire to arrest the Templars in his kingdom, whilst he had little inclination for travelling to France, marrying the French king’s daughter or fulfilling the treaty’s obligations.

‘If he doesn’t,’ one narrow-faced clerk muttered, ‘there’ll be war and no more journeys to Paris. At least,’ he smiled in a fine display of cracked teeth, ‘until a new peace treaty is signed.’ He put his cup down.

‘And there’s the secret. .’

Narrow Face, all pimpled and sweaty, stared at me, his half-open mouth slobbering food. He was trying to look cunning but, like all such men, he was stupid. He looked me up and down as if I was some mare at Smithfield Market, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. His companions had turned away; some were already arguing about whose dice they should use in the cracked cup, the others were distracted by one of those travelling players who’d appeared in the tavern doorway dressed in black, with the white outline of a skeleton gaudily painted over. He brought his own stool, stood on it and began to intone one of those tearful dirges about death:

When my eyes mist,

And my hair hisses,

And my nose grows cold,

And my tongue does fold,

And my strength slacken,

And my lips blacken.

And my mouth gaping. .

The students took up the refrain of this travelling English mountebank, probably some scholar from the English quarter trying to earn a crust. I was about to turn back when I glimpsed that face which was to haunt me all my life, serene and smooth under grey-dashed hair. It was the eyes which drew me, with their far-seeing gaze. The man was studying me intently. Someone moved between us and, when he passed, the man with the far-seeing gaze had disappeared. I felt the sharp edge of the table press against me. Narrow Face had lurched to his feet, leaning drunkenly across, grinning in a sickening display of yellow teeth.

‘Would you like to know the secret, ma jolie ?’

‘Of course,’ I simpered and, a short while later, I found myself strolling arm in arm with Narrow Face through the nearby cemetery of L’Eglise des Innocents. It was a macabre place, overlooked by the gleaming casements of large merchant houses and entered through a huge porch in a double gateway. Just inside the cemetery was a shrine to St Valery, patron of cures for ailments of the groin. Narrow Face sniggered and pointed out the crude wax penises hanging alongside the shrine. That clerk of the red wax, a member of the King of England’s privy chamber, as I later found out, preened himself showing off his knowledge, pointing out the different stalls and booths selling tawdry trinkets, ribbons and disused clothes. He bowed mockingly at a brace of filles de joie who went tottering past on their stiffened pattens, faces gaudy, hair all dyed, hitching up their skirts to display well-turned ankles.

We stopped beneath a tree where the coffin of an excommunicate hung dripping with dirt from the branches. Narrow Face explained how this was the closest such a wretch could come to consecrated ground. I listened as if attentive to every word, though the noise around us was deafening. Red-faced traders shouted and bawled, trying to be heard over a blacksmith, face all blotched and burnt, who’d set up his forge just within the gate and was banging on his anvil as if beating the devil. A Crutched Friar, face hidden deep in his cowl, was standing on a tomb chest, warning anyone interested how in hell usurers boiled in molten gold, gluttons feasted on toads and scorpions, whilst the proud would be hooked to an ever-turning burning wheel. Beneath the makeshift pulpit a madman, festooned with shells, did a dance, whilst a group of children chased a bell-capped monkey who’d escaped from its owner.

I leaned hard on Narrow Face’s arm and picked my way around the clots of mud and other rubbish strewn across the paved path which wound itself through that place of death. Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison — Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy. Sweet Jesus Lord, have mercy on me! I remember that day so well! The first time I killed a man! Initium homicidum — the beginning of the murders! All I meant to do was kiss Narrow Face, whisper sweet words and promise him another assignment. After all, I did as much to those apprentices I flirted with when I worked for Uncle Reginald. All I wanted to learn was what he knew. We reached the charnel house, the arms of the Guild of the Pin and Needle Workers displayed on the wall in shiny blue and red. I glanced across at the tracery grille on the tomb of a young woman with serene marble face and folded marble hands; for a brief moment I wondered where I would lie and what death I would face. Uncle Reginald’s fate was still very much in my thoughts. We went round the building. I was teasing Narrow Face, asking him about the great secret. We stood in a narrow, darkened alleyway which separated the charnel house from a line of elms fringing the high curtain wall of the cemetery.

‘The secret?’ I whispered, leaning back against the harsh brickwork.

‘Oh, very important.’ Narrow Face pressed his body against mine. He had a faint sour smell. He glanced sideways as if about to reveal some great mystery.

‘The King of England,’ he whispered, ‘will not marry Princess Isabella; he is resolute on that. He will defy her father.’

‘But that’s no secret. .’

Narrow Face stepped hastily back. I had betrayed myself. I still had not learnt the trick of keeping the mask firmly on.

‘How do you know that?’ Narrow Face’s hand slid to the wicked-looking poignard pushed through a ring on his belt. ‘How can a wench no better than a tavern slut be party to such knowledge?’

I kept still, cursing my own stupidity.

‘Are you one of the Secreti?’ Narrow Face stepped forward; the dagger point came up, pricking under my chin. The clerk watched me closely. ‘I am,’ he hissed, ‘a scholar of the halls and schools of Oxford. Do you know what that means?’ He pressed the dagger point deeper. ‘Do you truly think I am stupid, putaine ?’ He drew back his head, hawked and spat in my face. I kept still. He grasped my hand and felt the skin of my palm.