Sharon Penman: Prince of Darkness

“I do not care if I do!” Her defiance might have sounded more convincing if her teeth hadn’t been chattering. She half expected him to offer her his own mantle, was taken aback when he did not. “Justin, why are you being so stubborn? Why will you not listen to me?”

Justin ignored her and went to look for his saddle. She trailed after him, wrapping her arms around herself in a futile attempt at warmth. “You are going to hear me out if I have to follow you across half of Paris. I met Lord John at the French court, and he asked for my help. I could hardly refuse him, Justin. You may have forgotten that he is the queen’s son, but I do not have that luxury. Moreover, I saw no harm in doing what he asked. He said he needed to talk to you. Why is that so dreadful? Why are you acting as if I’d lured you into a viper’s den?”

Justin whirled, angry words of accusation hovering on his lips, only to be silenced by the look of honest bewilderment on her face. Remembering just in time that she did not know what had happened in Wales. She did not know that John had passed a sentence of death upon him. Nor was she aware that her spying for John had been discovered. And the queen did not want her to know.

“Justin, talk to me, please. Tell me what I’ve done that is so unforgivable,” she pleaded, and he stared at her mutely, overwhelmed by the burden of so many secrets. Not knowing what else to do, not trusting himself to hold his tongue, he turned away from her and fled out into the night.

The Greve was deserted and still, swallowed up in shadows. The only signs of life came from the river, where several boats were moored. Justin headed in that direction, tightening his hold upon his mantle as he faced into the wind. As he’d hoped, he soon caught a glimmer of light, and followed it to a small dockside tavern. It was half empty, the only customers a sleeping sailor and several men lingering over their drinks to delay going out into the cold. Justin found a table out of range of the door’s drafts and ordered a flagon.

The wine was wretched, so impure that he had to spit out sediment into the floor rushes. Shoving it aside, he made a resolute attempt to banish John and Claudine from his thoughts and focus upon where he was to spend the night. It made sense to leave his horse in Petronilla’s stable; he could claim it in the morning. Curfew must be nigh, so he had no time to roam the streets in search of an inn. After some thought, he beckoned to the tavern owner, and negotiated a bed for the night. The man agreed to provide a pallet in his kitchen, but he looked as shifty as any London cutpurse, and Justin decided he’d best sleep with one eye open.

Overhearing this negotiation, one of the other customers suggested he look for lodgings at St-Gervais, by the Baudoyer Gate, and Justin was getting directions when the door was thrust open and Durand de Curzon entered. He was wearing an elegant wool mantle trimmed with fox fur, a garment that looked utterly out of place in the seedy little tavern, and he attracted a few covetous, conjectural glances. When he swaggered toward Justin, though, men moved out of his way, theirs the instinctive unease of a flock sensing a predator in their midst.

“This day keeps getting better and better,” Justin said as Durand claimed a stool and a place at his table.

“You were too easy to track down,” the knight announced, reaching over for the wine flagon. “Had I been a hired killer, you’d have been a lamb to the slaughter.” Lacking a cup, he drank directly from the flagon, gagged, and spat into the floor rushes. “Christ on the Cross, de Quincy, I’d sooner drink horse piss!”

“What do you want, Durand?”

“I want you to fetch the Lady Emma for John and bring her back to Paris.”

“And I want you to repent your multitude of mortal sins and take the Cross, pledging to walk barefoot to Jerusalem. What are the chances of that happening?”

“If you are expecting me to offer an apology for what I did in Wales, you’ll still be waiting on the Day of Judgment. As I told you then, I had to choose which mattered more to the queen, that I continued to protect her son or that you continued to breathe. The hard truth, de Quincy, is that the queen needs me more than she needs you.”

“So does the Devil,” Justin said, pushing his stool away from the table. Once he was on his feet, though, with a clear path to the door, he paused. He did not doubt that Durand’s first loyalty was to Durand, not the queen. But he also knew that the queen would have expected him to hear the other man out.

Durand correctly interpreted his hesitation. “Sit down ere you attract attention and I’ll tell you what I know and why I think you ought to do as John bids you.” As soon as Justin reclaimed his seat, the knight leaned forward, saying quietly, “John got a letter from Brittany that rattled him good and proper. He balked at showing it to me, saying only that Constance was contriving his destruction. But I knew his favorite hiding places, so I just bided my time until I got a chance to read it for myself. It was a message from a woman named Arzhela de Dinan, warning him that Constance had written proof that he and the Count of Toulouse’s son were plotting to lure Richard to Toulouse once he is ransomed and there have him slain.”

Justin caught his breath, for John was right. Such a charge could indeed be his ruin. Richard had never seemed threatened by John’s attempts to steal his crown. Even in German confinement, he’d dismissed John’s intrigues with laughter and a mocking comment that John was not the man to conquer a kingdom if there was anyone to offer the feeblest resistance. Justin had often marveled at how often John eluded the consequences of his treachery, concluding that fortune had thrice favored him. He benefited from his brother’s amiable contempt and his mother’s protection, but above all from his position as heir-apparent. Most people were willing to turn a blind eye to the misdeeds of a man who might one day be England’s king.

But what if proof existed that he had connived at Richard’s murder? To kill a crowned king, God’s anointed, was regicide. Richard would not overlook that. Nor would Eleanor forgive. Justin suspected that John would have more to fear from the mother than from the queen, for Richard claimed her heart and John could only claim her blood.

“Two questions,” he said, his eyes searching Durand’s impassive, unreadable face. “Is there any chance this is true? And what have you been able to find out about this Arzhela de Dinan? How reliable is she?”

“Those are three questions,” Durand pointed out. “But no, I do not see how it can be true. It is a charge that could eventually be disproved-assuming John was given the chance to disprove it. On the surface, though, it has enough plausibility to hearten his enemies and fire Richard’s Angevin temper, for he has long been at odds with the lords of Toulouse. It is easy to believe that Raymond would concoct a murder plot, given the oceans of bad blood there. He is already suspect because of the heresies he and his father tolerate in their lands.”

Justin knew that the Church was increasingly alarmed by the spread of a heretical doctrine that denied some of the basic tenets of the True Faith, but his knowledge went no further than that. He had more pressing concerns now than outlaw sects, and he interrupted before Durand could continue. “Tell me about the woman.”

“Arzhela de Dinan’s warning has to be taken seriously, for she is well placed to know the secrets of the Breton court. She is a first cousin to Duchess Constance, and to judge by the tone of her letter, she was once John’s bedmate. She told John that she has not yet seen the letter for herself, but she is sure it exists. She believes it to be a forgery, or at least pretends to believe that. I’d say John has good reason for concern. He has enough penance due for past sins without adding regicide to the list.”