Paul Doherty - The Demon Archer

‘Ah, Master Baldock. What do you seek?’

‘This morning,’ the groom replied, ‘there was no one to look after your horses. I am a free man. .’

‘You seek employment, Master Baldock?’ Ranulf smiled. ‘It’s possible. But, come, sit down next to me. Tell me all you know about Alicia Verlian.’

The Louvre Palace was the private preserve of Philip IV of France. The gardens around it, with their flower beds and herb plots, orchards, fountains, carp and stew ponds, were the delight of his life. Only he and his close confidants were allowed to walk and rest there. Indeed, members of his household, particularly those who felt the lash of his cutting tongue, were reluctant to accept an invitation to what Philip called his ‘Garden of delights’. At the far end of this garden, in its own enclosure, stood what Philip called his ‘orchard of the hanged’. Its ancient pears and apple trees carried a different fruit, besides those the good Lord allowed to grow in glorious profusion. Here, Philip’s executioners and torturers hanged those guilty of crimes against their royal master: a cook suspected of poisoning; a door-keeper found guilty of selling secrets to foreign merchants; clerks who had been too garrulous in their cups and, above all, English spies whom Amaury de Craon’s agents tracked down and captured. The place stank of death. The corpses were gibbeted until the smell became too offensive, at which point Philip would order them to be cut down and buried in the derelict cemetery his torturers called ‘Haceldema’, a Jewish term for the ‘field of blood’. Sometimes Philip would summon suspects there. He would take them by the arm and walk round the trees, pointing to the rotten fruit, describing the crimes and felonies of each miscreant. Such a walk always jogged the memory and loosened the tongue, but this time it had failed.

Philip now sat in his garden bower and looked across at the bloodied, bruised face of Simon Roulles, that perpetual English scholar who had, at last, been caught. Philip, his face impassive, his corn-coloured hair falling down to his shoulders, smoothed his moustache and well-trimmed beard and scrutinised the English spy.

‘You are in deep pain?’

Philip’s eyes moved to the black-clad torturers standing behind their victim.

‘Monsieur Roulles has been on the wheel?’

The red-masked executioner nodded.

Philip wetted his lips. Roulles was barely conscious. He was lashed by cords to the chair. Philip picked up a napkin and gently dabbed at the streak of blood trickling out of the corner of the English-man’s mouth.

‘Do you know, Simon?’ he murmured. ‘I always wanted to meet you.’

Roulles’ lips moved but no sound came out.

‘No, no, it’s useless.’ Philip scratched his head in annoyance. ‘It is futile. You do understand my English?’ Philip didn’t wait for an answer. ‘It is futile,’ he repeated, ‘to claim that you are an English scholar, to demand to be expelled from France on some ship leaving Calais or Boulogne. You carry letters claiming to be a Frenchman. You have a fictitious cousin in the countryside. But it’s all lies, it’s all shadows. Your master, Sir Hugh Corbett. .’

‘He is not my master!’ The words were spat out.

‘Of course, he isn’t. I do apologise. Edward of England never lets his left hand know what his right hand is doing. Still, you are an English spy. You ferret out secrets and send them back to your Prince.’ Philip leaned across and again gently wiped the Englishman’s mouth. ‘Would you like some wine?’

One of the torturers picked up a jewel-encrusted cup and held it to his victim’s lips. Roulles lapped like a dog, allowing the wine to swill round his mouth. He knew it would be the last he ever tasted. His whole body was a sheet of flame. He’d been placed on the wheel and spun round and round while the torturer had struck at his arms and legs, pinching his flesh with burning tongs. The same questions, time and time again. What had he learned? What had Mistress Malvoisin told him? Simon had not broken, confident that the messenger he had despatched to England would already have handed the secret to his royal master.

‘I ask you again,’ Philip said. ‘Or it’s back to the wheel. I do not wish that, Monsieur Roulles, I want you to tell us the secret.’

‘But, if you know what it is,’ Roulles gasped as his lips bubbled blood, ‘it is no longer a secret. You do know it, Philip of France.’

The king leaned across the table and smacked him with the back of his hand. The amethyst ring he wore gouged the prisoner’s cheek.

‘The secret?’ he repeated. ‘And, if you tell me it, I’ll tell you one.’

Roulles attempted to smile. Like a dreamer he kept going in and out of consciousness. Sometimes he was back in Oxford. At others he was in a tavern singing a carol with friends and the snow was falling outside. Or King Edward was walking arm-in-arm with him through the rose gardens of Westminster.

‘Do you know Pancius Cantrone?’ Philip asked.

Roulles jerked.

‘You must know him,’ Philip insisted. ‘And the scandalous tittle-tattle he depicts as the truth.’

‘I know of no such man.’

‘Come, come, Master Roulles. Let me refresh your memory. Monsieur Malvoisin, before he died in a most unfortunate boating accident, believed he had learned certain secrets.’

‘It’s the truth!’ the prisoner blurted, fighting a wave of nausea. He must not collapse; if he could only ignore the pain!

‘No, no, Monsieur Malvoisin shared this gossip with Signor Cantrone. Somehow or other you discovered it.’

Roulles kept his head down.

‘You are going to die,’ Philip continued remorselessly. ‘Either quickly or at the end of a rope in my orchard.’

Roulles refused to reply.

‘What was the secret?’ Philip insisted. ‘Is that why your master sent you to Paris?’ Philip nodded to one of the torturers, who yanked back Roulles’ head. ‘Lord Henry Fitzalan is dead,’ he declared. ‘Killed by an arrow to the heart. And as for Signor Cantrone. Well, Seigneur Amaury de Craon is now within breathing distance of him. Or perhaps you’ll take comfort that the secrets you discovered have been despatched to England. That pedlar, the chapman, the tinker, the trader, what’s his name? Ah yes, Malsherdes. You think Malsherdes reached Boulogne and took ship to England?’

Roulles tried to concentrate. Despite the agony in mind and body, he thought of little Malsherdes and his pack pony going along the cobbled streets of Paris and out into the countryside.

‘You drank with him, didn’t you?’ Philip continued. ‘At an auberge on the Fontainebleau road. Two of you there in the corner, whispering away like children. Malsherdes left.’ Philip paused. ‘You can have some more wine. Take as much as you wish.’ He waited until the prisoner’s mouth was full. ‘Malsherdes is dead. My men caught him out in the countryside, a quiet place.’

Roulles coughed and spluttered the wine he had drunk. Philip, as gentle as a mother, patted his lips with the blood-soaked napkin.

‘However, Malsherdes was faster than we thought. He’d lit a fire for himself. Before we could stop him, your letters were burned, so my men burned him!’

Roulles forced a grin. ‘Then you know as much as I do, Philip of France.’

The king leaned back in his throne-like chair and, cocking his head, he half-listened to the songbird imprisoned in a silver cage hanging from the branches of a cherry tree. From another part of the palace he heard the bray of trumpets and realised it must be time for the midday prayer. He was wasting his time here. He nodded to the torturers.

‘Take him out! Hang him!’

Roulles was dragged to his feet and bundled out. Philip fastidiously wiped the blood from the goblet’s brim and sipped at it. He was glad Fitzalan was dead. There would be no more letters, no hints of blackmail. But Cantrone? Would de Craon kill him? Philip couldn’t care less. What was one man’s death in the great design? However, he must not give offence to Edward of England! Would Cantrone, whom he would have loved to hang alongside Roulles, bargain with his secret? Or flee? If he bargained, how much trouble would he cause? What scandal would Edward’s agents here in Paris or in Avignon fan with their tongues? Philip looked towards the door. Did de Craon have a hand in Fitzalan’s death? Had he taken his orders too literally? Philip rubbed the side of his face. He must go and pray, must petition his sainted ancestor Louis that Cantrone’s path, and that of the meddlesome clerk Corbett, never crossed.