Paul Doherty - The Cup of Ghosts

‘ Mon seigneur ,’ de Clauvelin bowed his head, hands outstretched towards the king, ‘mercy!’

Edward gazed back stony-eyed.

‘Soon you will sleep.’ Gaveston smiled, glancing across at me. ‘Monsieur Sarnene, I laced your wine with poppy juice, and when you awake, after your fall, you’ll be in hell!’ He picked up his own goblet. ‘ In infernum ,’ he chanted, satirising the office of the dead, ‘ diaboli te ducent — into hell the demons will lead you.’

De Clauvelin, coughing and spluttering, made to rise only to collapse against the table and fall to the floor. Gaveston sprang up.

‘So soon, so soon?’ He kicked de Clauvelin, who moaned but lay still. Edward also rose and joined him, and both viciously kicked the prostrate man with their booted feet.

‘Stop, my lords!’ Isabella begged, hands to her face. I sat cold with fear. Isabella shouted again. Both men paused, chests heaving, faces wet with sweat. Gaveston wiped his brow on the back of his hand.

‘He sent my mother to a hideous death. She was strapped to a pole in the town square at Bearn, brushwood piled high against her. The flames roared so high, the heat became so intense, the hangman could not get to her to give her the mercy death, to strangle her. They say her flesh bubbled like. .’ His voice faltered and he looked away. Edward moved to comfort him. Gaveston picked up his goblet and threw the dregs of wine over the unconscious man.

‘He’ll die quickly, not like my mother!’ He kicked his victim again and looked beseechingly at me. ‘I had to do it now. He thought the world had forgotten, but I am not the world.’ He strode across the room and opened the door; his two assassins slipped in. Gaveston kicked the prostrate man.

‘There’s a narrow postern gate in the curtain wall. It’s used for throwing away slops and refuse. You’ll find the hinges oiled, take him and throw him out.’

I closed my eyes and thought of de Clauvelin’s body falling down that sheer rocky abyss into the freezing, swirling sea.

‘Give out that he was walking on the parapet and had drunk too much wine.’ Gaveston clicked his tongue. ‘Say he slipped; who will question, who will care?’

The two men removed the body. Gaveston started breathing deeply. He appeared self-satisfied, content, rubbing his stomach like a man who’d enjoyed a good meal.

‘Justice,’ Edward murmured.

Gaveston collected the notary’s clasps, buttons and cross and threw them into the fire. He insisted on one final cup of wine. We sat and drank, the mood swiftly changing. De Clauvelin was forgotten, at least by them, and for the first time I wondered if Isabella and I had exchanged one prison for another. The princess made to leave. Both Gaveston and the king, now all courteous, walked us out into the gallery, which was filling with retainers and servants preparing for the king to retire. Gaveston’s chamber was further along. We entered it. I clutched the presents he had given us. I was tired, needful of silence, desperate for sleep. The favourite’s chamber was like an upturned treasure chest, with costly clothes and precious ornaments flung around. Both he and the king were now talking of their royal progress through Kent to Becket’s shrine at Canterbury and the jewel they were to present there. Gaveston wanted to show it to us, excited like a child about a gift he had prepared. I stared at the great bed, its pure linen sheets thrown back. On the floor beside it were hunting boots decorated with gilded spurs; in the far corner a hooded falcon on its perch, jesse bells ringing as it moved restlessly. I glimpsed a triptych hanging rather crookedly from a hook on the wall hastily put there when Gaveston had set up his household. I went across to put it straight and hid my surprise: the painting celebrated the martyrdom and glory of St Agnes; I had last seen it at de Vitry’s house. At first I thought it was a copy, but the slightly rusting hinges along the folds of the picture and the dark patches around its glowing edge convinced me it was the same I’d seen in Monsieur Simon’s house. So how had Gaveston acquired it? Noting my interest, the favourite sauntered across to describe his deep devotion to the saint who shared his mother’s name. Isabella heard this and hastily made a sign that we leave. I joined her; we both bowed to the king and Gaveston and withdrew.

Once alone, Isabella declared she did not want to retire. She studied Gaveston’s gifts and wondered about the events of the evening.

‘They did the same as your father,’ I retorted, ‘a fine display of power and terror; which is why de Clauvelin was killed in our presence. They intend,’ I added, ‘to be the sole masters in their house.’

Isabella pressed one of the sables against her cheek and smiled. ‘As do I, Mathilde, as do I!’

We left Dover the next morning, a glorious cavalcade, the might of England. Edward cheerfully announced he had no intention whatsoever of waiting for his French guests and the sooner he returned to Westminster the better. The weather, I remember, had made one of those startling turns, as if nature itself wanted to greet England’s new queen: rain-washed, clear blue skies, a bright winter sun, the ground firm underfoot, the air bracing but not cutting. Edward and Gaveston moved to the head of the column with their retinue of dwarves and jesters, eager to hunt with hawk and falcon. They’d often break away from our line of march, cantering across the fields to fly their magnificent birds against herons, plover, anything which dared wing its way under God’s own heaven. Time and again I saw these predators loosed, wings beating as they fought the breezes to gain ascendancy, floating like dark angels against the blue before making their breathtaking, magnificent plunge.

Both Isabella and I were ignored, as the great game had truly begun, though we had enough to distract ourselves. We rode palfreys, accompanied and protected by Sandewic, Casales, Rossaleti and Baquelle, who were eager to describe the countryside we were passing through. Despite the severity of winter, the land had a softness unique to itself, so different from the bleak plains of Normandy. The countryside spread out like a carpet on either side, great open fields of iron-hard brown soil awaiting the sowing. Meadows and pastures for the great flocks of sheep, thick dense woods, dark copses with small hamlets nestling in the lee of a hill or some forest clearing. The poor are the same wherever they are, and they are always with us. The roads were busy with those searching for work as well as merchants, friars, tinkers and chapmen with their pack donkeys and sumpter ponies, carts and barrows all of whom had to hastily pull aside as the royal cortege approached. On one occasion we passed a troupe of moon people, perpetual travellers, with their brightly painted wagons, gaudy harness decorating their horses. They clustered together on the side of the road dressed in their garish clothes and cheap jewellery, offering trinkets for sale. Pilgrims going to and from Canterbury, Rochester, or Walsingham further to the north also thronged, Ave beads slung round their necks, pewter medallions pinned to their ragged cloaks. These lifted their hands and, as we all swept by, called down God’s blessing on Edward and his queen.

Such sights in the open fresh air were calming after the turbulence of the recent days. Our four companions described the countryside, its crops of wheat and rye as well as the fruits and vegetables, parsley, leek, cabbages and onions, plums, pears and apples, grown by the peasant farmers. I noticed how, unlike Normandy, there were few hedges, the different holdings being separated from each other by baulks of unploughed turf. These gave the land a strange, striped appearance though increasingly more harvest ground was being turned into pasture for sheep, English wool being in constant demand throughout Europe. As we passed their thatched-roof wattle-and-daub cottages, the peasants came hastening out to gape and cheer. The deeper we journeyed into Kent, however, the more prosperous the small villages became, their stone houses and churches seeming commonplace. These were usually grouped round some magnificent red-brick or honey-coloured stone manor hall with fine tiled roof, stacks to draw off the smoke, heavy oaken doors and windows full of mullioned glass.