1356 (Special Edition)

‘Just a blessing,’ Thomas said.

‘You ask for so little, Norman. Ask for much, then you might get a little. Or you might get nothing. This Holy Father is not susceptible to bribes.’ The painter scrambled down from the scaffold, grimaced at his new work, then went to a table covered with small pots of precious pigments. ‘It’s a good thing you’re not English! The Holy Father doesn’t like the English.’

Thomas buttoned up his breeches. ‘He doesn’t?’

‘He does not,’ the painter said, ‘and how do I know? Because I know everything. I paint and they ignore me because they can’t see me! I am Giacomo on the scaffold and they are talking beneath me. Not in here,’ he spat, as if the chamber he decorated was not worth the effort, ‘but I am also painting over the angels’ naked tits in the Conclave Chamber, and that’s where they talk. Chatter, chatter, chatter! They’re like birds, their heads together, twittering, and Giacomo is busy hiding tits on the scaffold above and so they forget I am up there.’

‘So what does the Holy Father say about the English?’

‘You want my knowledge? You pay.’

‘You want me to throw paint on your ceiling?’

Giacomo laughed. ‘I hear, Norman, that the Holy Father wants the French to defeat the English. There are three French cardinals here now, all yammering in his ear, but he doesn’t need their encouragement. He’s told Burgundy to fight alongside France. He has sent messages to Toulouse, to Provence, to the Dauphiné, even to Gascony, telling men it is their duty to resist England. The Holy Father is a Frenchman, remember. He wants France strong again, strong enough to pay the church its proper taxes. The English are not popular here,’ he paused to give Thomas a sly look, ‘so it is good you’re not an Englishman, eh?’

‘It is good,’ Thomas said.

‘The Holy Father might curse an Englishman,’ Giacomo chuckled. He climbed the scaffolding again, talking as he went. ‘The Scots have sent men to fight for France and the Holy Father is pleased! He says the Scots are faithful sons of the church, but he wants the English,’ he paused to make a brush-stroke, ‘punished. So you came all this way just for a blessing?’

Thomas had walked to the chamber’s end where an old painting faded on the wall. ‘For a blessing,’ he said, ‘and to look for a man.’

‘Ah! Who?’

‘Father Calade?’

‘Calade!’ Giacomo shook his head. ‘I know of a Father Callait, but not Calade.’

‘You’re from Italy?’ Thomas asked.

‘By the Grace of God I come from Corbola, which is a Venetian city,’ Giacomo said, then nimbly descended the scaffolding and went to the table where he wiped his hands on a rag. ‘Of course I come from Italy! If you want something painted, you ask an Italian. If you want something daubed, smeared or splattered, you ask a Frenchman. Or you ask those two fools,’ he gestured at his assistants, ‘idiots! Keep stirring the plaster! They might be Italians, but they have the brains of Frenchmen. Nothing but spinach between their ears!’ He picked up a leather quirt as if to strike one of his assistants, then abruptly fell to one knee. The two assistants also knelt, and then Thomas saw who had entered the room and he also snatched off his hat and knelt.

The Holy Father had come into the chamber, accompanied by four cardinals and a dozen other priests. Pope Innocent smiled absently at the painter, then stared up at the newly painted frescoes.

Thomas raised his head to look at the Pope. Innocent VI, Pope now for three years, was an old man with wispy hair, a drawn face, and hands that shook. He wore a red cloak, edged with white fur, and he was slightly bent as if his spine was crippled. He dragged his left foot as he walked, but his voice was strong enough. ‘You’re doing good work, my son,’ he said to the Italian, ‘most excellent work! Why, those clouds look more real than real clouds!’

‘All for the glory of God,’ Giacomo muttered, ‘and your own renown, Holy Father.’

‘And for your own glory, my son,’ the Pope said, and sketched a vague blessing towards the two assistants. ‘And are you a painter too, my son?’ he asked Thomas.

‘I am a soldier, Holy Father,’ Thomas said.

‘From where?’

‘From Normandy, Holy Father.’

‘Ah!’ Innocent seemed delighted. ‘You have a name, my son?’

‘Guillaume d’Evecque, Holy Father.’

One of the cardinals, his red robe belted tightly about a glutton’s belly, turned fast from examining the ceiling and looked as if he was about to protest. Then he shut his mouth, but went on glaring at Thomas. ‘And tell me, my son,’ Innocent was oblivious of the cardinal’s reaction, ‘whether you have sworn fealty to the English?’

‘No, Holy Father.’

‘So many Normans have! But I don’t need to tell you that. I weep for France! Too many have died and it is time there was peace in Christendom. My blessing, Guillaume.’ He held out his hand and Thomas stood, walked to him, knelt again and kissed the fisherman’s ring that the Pope wore above his embroidered glove. ‘You have my blessing,’ Innocent said, laying a hand on Thomas’s bare head, ‘and my prayers.’

‘As I shall pray for you, Holy Father,’ Thomas said, wondering if he was the first excommunicate ever to be blessed by a pope. ‘I shall pray for your long life,’ he added the polite phrase.

The hand on his head quivered. ‘I am an old man, my son,’ the Pope said, ‘and my physician tells me I have many years left! But physicians lie, don’t they?’ He chuckled. ‘Father Marchant says his calade would tell me I have a long life yet, but I would rather trust my lying physicians.’

Thomas held his breath, conscious suddenly of his heartbeat. There seemed a chill in the room, then a quiver of the Pope’s hand made Thomas breathe again. ‘Calade, Holy Father?’ he asked.

‘A bird that tells the future,’ the Pope said, taking his hand from Thomas’s. ‘We do indeed live in an age of miracles when birds deliver prophecies! Isn’t that so, Father Marchant?’

A tall priest bowed to the Pope. ‘Your Holiness is miracle enough.’

‘Ah no! The miracle is in here! In the painting! It is superb. I congratulate you, my son,’ the Pope spoke to Giacomo.

Thomas stole a glance at Father Marchant, seeing a slim, dark-faced man with eyes that seemed to glitter; green eyes, forceful eyes, frightening eyes that suddenly looked straight at Thomas, who dropped his gaze to stare at the Pope’s slippers, which were embroidered with Saint Peter’s keys.

The Pope blessed Giacomo and then, pleased with the progress of the new frescoes, limped from the room. His entourage followed him, all but for the fat cardinal and the green-eyed priest, who stayed. Thomas was about to rise, but the cardinal placed a heavy hand on Thomas’s bare head and pressed him back down. ‘Say your name again,’ the cardinal demanded.

‘Guillaume d’Evecque, Your Eminence.’

‘And I am Cardinal Bessières,’ the red-robed man said, keeping his hand on Thomas’s head, ‘Cardinal Bessières, Cardinal Archbishop of Livorno, Papal Legate to King Jean of France, whom God bless above all earthly monarchs.’ He paused, plainly wanting Thomas to echo his last words.

‘May God bless His Majesty,’ Thomas said dutifully.

‘I heard Guillaume d’Evecque died,’ the cardinal said in a dangerous tone.

‘My cousin, Your Eminence.’

‘How did he die?’

‘The plague,’ Thomas said vaguely. Sire Guillaume d’Evecque had been Thomas’s enemy, then his friend, and he had died of the plague, but not before he had fought on Thomas’s side.

‘He fought for the English,’ the cardinal said.

‘I have heard as much, Your Eminence, and it is to our family’s shame. But I hardly knew my cousin.’

The cardinal withdrew his hand and Thomas stood. The priest with the green eyes was staring at the faded painting on the end wall. ‘Did you paint this?’ he demanded of Giacomo.

‘No, father,’ Giacomo answered, ‘it is a very old painting and very badly done, so it was probably daubed there by a Frenchman or perhaps a Burgundian? The Holy Father wants me to replace it.’

‘Make sure you do.’

The priest’s tone drew the attention of the cardinal who now stared at the old painting. He had been looking at Thomas, frowning as if he doubted the truth of what Thomas had said, but the sight of the painting distracted him. The faded picture showed Saint Peter, identifiable because in one hand he held two golden keys, offering a sword towards a kneeling monk. The two men were in a snow-covered field, though the patch of ground about the kneeling man had been cleared of snow. The monk was reaching for the sword, watched by a second monk who peered apprehensively through the half-opened shutter of a small snow-covered house. The cardinal gazed at it for a long time and looked surprised at first, but then shuddered in anger. ‘Who is the monk?’ he demanded of Giacomo.

‘I don’t know, Your Eminence,’ the Italian answered.

The cardinal glanced quizzically at the green-eyed priest, who merely answered with a shrug. The cardinal glowered. ‘Why haven’t you covered it over already?’ he demanded of the painter.

‘Because the Holy Father ordered the ceiling painted before the walls, Your Eminence.’

‘Then cover it now!’ the Cardinal snarled. ‘Cover it before you finish the ceiling.’ He snatched a glance at Thomas. ‘Why are you here?’ he demanded.

‘To receive the Holy Father’s blessing, Your Eminence.’

Cardinal Bessières frowned. He was plainly suspicious of the name Thomas had given, but the existence of the old painting seemed to trouble him even more. ‘Just cover it!’ he ordered Giacomo again, then looked back to Thomas. ‘Where do you lodge?’ he asked.

‘By Saint Bénézet’s church, Your Eminence,’ Thomas lied. In truth he had left Genevieve, Hugh and a score of his men in a tavern beyond the great bridge, far from Saint Bénézet’s church. He lied because the last thing he wanted was Cardinal Bessières to take a sudden interest in Guillaume d’Evecque. Thomas had killed the cardinal’s brother, and if Bessières knew who Thomas really was then the fires of heresy would be lit in the great square beneath the Papal palace.

‘I am curious,’ the cardinal said, ‘about the state of affairs in Normandy. I shall send for you after the None prayers. Father Marchant will fetch you.’

‘I shall indeed,’ the priest said, and made the words sound like a threat.

‘I shall be most honoured to assist Your Eminence,’ Thomas said, keeping his head bowed.

‘Get rid of that painting,’ the cardinal said to Giacomo and then led his green-eyed companion from the room.

The Italian, still on his knees, let out a long breath. ‘He didn’t like you.’

‘Does he like anyone?’ Thomas asked.

Giacomo stood and screamed at his assistants. ‘The plaster will set hard if they don’t stir it!’ he explained his anger to Thomas. ‘They have porridge for brains. They are Milanese, yes? So they are fools. But Cardinal Bessières is no fool, he would be a dangerous enemy, my friend.’ Giacomo did not know it, but the cardinal was already Thomas’s enemy, though fortunately Bessières had never met Thomas and had no idea that the Englishman was even in Avignon. Giacomo went to the table where his pigments were in small clay pots. ‘And Cardinal Bessières,’ he went on, ‘has hopes of being the next Pope. Innocent is frail, Bessières is not. We may have another Holy Father soon.’

‘Why doesn’t he like this painting?’ Thomas asked, pointing to the end wall.

‘Perhaps he has good taste? Or perhaps because it looks as if it was painted by a dog holding a brush stuck up its arsehole?’

Thomas stared at the old picture. The cardinal had wanted to know what story it told, and neither Giacomo nor the green-eyed priest could answer him, but plainly he wanted the painting destroyed so no one else could find the answer. And the picture did tell a story. Saint Peter was handing his sword to a monk in the snow, and the monk must have a name, but who was he? ‘You really don’t know what the picture means?’ Thomas asked Giacomo.

‘A legend?’ the Italian guessed carelessly.

‘But what legend?’

‘Saint Peter had a sword,’ Giacomo said, ‘and I suppose he’s handing it to the church? He should have used it to cut off the painter’s hand and saved us from having to look at his horrible daubs.’

‘But usually the sword is painted in Gethsemane,’ Thomas said. He had seen many church walls painted with the scene before Christ’s arrest when Peter had drawn a sword and cut off the ear of the high priest’s servant, but he had never seen Peter placed in a snowstorm.

‘So the fool who painted this didn’t know his stories,’ Giacomo said.

Yet everything in pictures had a meaning. If a man held a saw then he was Saint Simon, because Simon had been sawn to pieces at his martyrdom. A bunch of grapes reminded folk of the eucharist, King David carried a harp, Saint Thaddeus a club or a carpenter’s rule, Saint George faced a dragon, Saint Denis was always painted holding his own severed head: everything had a meaning, yet Thomas had no idea what this old picture meant. ‘Aren’t you painters supposed to know all these symbols?’

‘What symbols?’

‘The sword, the keys, the snow, the man in the window!’

‘The sword is Peter’s sword, the keys are the keys of heaven! You need teaching how to suck at your mother’s tit?’

‘And the snow?’

Giacomo scowled, plainly uncomfortable with the question.‘The idiot couldn’t paint grass,’ he finally decided, ‘so he slapped on some cheap limewash! It has no meaning! Tomorrow we chip it off and put something pretty there.’

Yet whoever had painted the scene had taken the trouble to clear that patch of snow from around the kneeling man, and he had painted the grass cleverly enough, scattering it with small yellow and blue flowers. So the cleared snow had a meaning, as did the presence of the second monk looking fearfully from the cottage window. ‘Do you have charcoal?’ Thomas asked.

‘Of course I have charcoal!’ Giacomo gestured to the table where his pigments stood.

Thomas went to the door and looked out into the great audience chamber. There was no sign of Cardinal Bessières or of the green-eyed priest, and so he picked up a lump of charcoal and went to the strange painting. He wrote on it.

‘What are you doing?’ Giacomo asked.

‘I want the cardinal to see that,’ Thomas said.

He had scrawled Calix Meus Inebrians in great black letters across the snow. ‘My cup makes me drunk?’ Giacomo asked, puzzled.

‘It’s from a psalm of David,’ Thomas said.

‘But what does it mean?’

‘The cardinal will know,’ Thomas said.

Giacomo frowned. ‘Sweet Christ,’ he said, ‘but you play dangerously.’

‘Thanks for letting me piss here,’ Thomas said. The painter was right, this was dangerous, but if he could not track down Father Calade in this city of his enemies, then he would invite Father Calade to follow him, and Thomas suspected that Father Calade would turn out to be the priest with very green eyes.

And the priest with the green eyes was interested in an old, badly painted picture of two monks and Saint Peter, but the centre of the painting had not been the kneeling monk, nor even the gowned figure of Saint Peter himself, but the sword.

And Thomas, though he could not be certain, was suddenly convinced that the sword had a name: la Malice.

And that day, long before the None prayers, and before anyone could find him and put him to the church’s torture, Thomas and his company left Avignon.

The warm weather came. It was campaigning weather, and all across France men sharpened weapons, exercised horses and waited for the summons to serve the king. The English were sending reinforcements to Brittany and to Gascony and men thought that surely King Jean would raise a great army to crush them, but instead he took a smaller army to the edges of Navarre, to the castle of Breteuil, and there, facing the stronghold’s gaunt walls, his men constructed a siege tower.

It was a monstrous thing, taller than a church’s spire, a scaffold of three floors perched on two iron axles joined to four massive wheels of solid elm. The front and sides of the tower were sheathed in oak planks to prevent the castle’s garrison from riddling the platforms with crossbow bolts, and now, in a cold dawn, men were nailing stiff leather hides to that wooden armour. They worked a mere four hundred paces from the castle and once in a while a defender would shoot a crossbow bolt, but the range was too long and the bolts always fell short. Four flags flew from the tower’s summit, two with the French fleur-de-lys and two showing an axe, the symbol of France’s patron saint, the martyred Saint Denis. The flags stretched and twisted in the wind. There had been a gale in the night and the wind still blew strong from the west.

‘One shower of rain,’ the Lord of Douglas said, ‘and this damn thing will be useless. They’ll never move it! It’ll bog down in mud.’

‘God is on our side,’ his young companion said placidly.

‘God,’ the Lord of Douglas said disgustedly.

‘Watches over us,’ the young man said. He was tall and slender, scarce more than twenty or twenty-one years old, with a strikingly handsome face. He had fair hair that was brushed back from a high forehead, blue eyes that were calm, and a mouth that seemed constantly hovering on the edge of a smile. He was from Gascony, where he owned a fief that had been sequestered by the English, leaving him without the income of his lands, which loss should have rendered him poor, but the Sire Roland de Verrec was renowned as the greatest of France’s tournament fighters. Some had claimed that Joscelyn of Berat was the better man, but at Auxerre, Roland had defeated Joscelyn three times, then tormented the brutal champion, Walther of Siegenthaler, with quicksilver swordplay. At Limoges he had been the only man standing at the end of a vicious melee, while in Paris the women had sighed as he destroyed two hardened knights who had twice his years and many times his experience. Roland de Verrec earned the fees of a champion because he was lethal.

And a virgin.

His black shield bore the symbol of the white rose, the rose without thorns, the flower of the Virgin Mary and a proud display of his own purity. The men he so constantly defeated in the lists thought he was mad, the women who watched him thought he was wasted, but Roland de Verrec had devoted his life to chivalry, to sanctity and to goodness. He was famous for his virginity; he was also mocked for it, though never to his face and never within reach of his quick sword. He was also admired for his purity, even envied, because it was said that he had been commanded to a life of sanctity by a vision of the Virgin Mary herself. She had appeared to him when he was just fourteen, she had touched him and she had told him he would be blessed above all men if he kept himself chaste as she was chaste. ‘You will marry,’ she had told him, ‘but till then you are mine.’ And so he was.

Men might mock Roland, but women sighed over him. One woman had been driven to tell Roland de Verrec that he was beautiful. She had reached out and touched his cheek, ‘All that fighting and not one scar!’ she had said, and he had drawn back from her as if her finger burned, then said that all beauty was but a reflection of God’s grace. ‘If I believed otherwise,’ he had told her, ‘I would be tempted to vanity,’ and perhaps he did suffer from that temptation because he dressed with inordinate care and always wore his armour blanched: scrubbed with sand, vinegar and wire until it reflected the sun with dazzling brilliance. Though not on this day because the sky above Breteuil was low, grey and dark.

‘It’s going to rain,’ the Lord of Douglas growled, ‘and this damned tower will go nowhere.’

‘It will bring us victory,’ Roland de Verrec said, sounding quietly confident. ‘The Bishop of Châlons blessed it last night; it will not fail.’

‘It shouldn’t even be here,’ Douglas snarled. The Scottish knights had been summoned by King Jean to join this attack on Breteuil, but the defenders were not Englishmen, they were other Frenchmen. ‘I didn’t come here to kill Frenchmen,’ Douglas said, ‘I came here to kill the English.’

‘They’re Navarrese,’ Roland de Verrec said, ‘the enemies of France, and our king wants them defeated.’

‘Breteuil is a goddamned pimple!’ the Lord of Douglas protested. ‘For Christ’s sake, what importance does it have? There are no bloody Englishmen inside!’

Roland smiled. ‘Whoever is inside, my lord,’ he said quietly, ‘I do my king’s bidding.’

The King of France, ignoring the Englishmen in Calais, in Gascony and in Brittany, had instead chosen to march against the Kingdom of Navarre on the edge of Normandy. The quarrel was obscure and the campaign a waste of scarce resources, for Navarre could not threaten France, yet King Jean had chosen to fight. It was evidently a family quarrel, one the Lord of Douglas did not comprehend. ‘Let them rot here,’ he said, ‘while we march against England. We should be chasing the boy Edward and instead we’re pissing on a spark at the edge of Normandy.’

‘The king wants Breteuil,’ Roland said.

‘He doesn’t want to face Englishmen,’ the Lord of Douglas said, and he knew he was right. Ever since the Scottish knights had come to France, the king had hesitated. Jean had chosen to go south one day, west the next, and to stay put on the third. Now, finally, he had marched against Navarre. Navarre! And the English had erupted from their strongholds in Gascony and were ravaging inland again. Another army was gathered on England’s south coast, doubtless to be landed in Normandy or Brittany, and King Jean was at Breteuil! The Lord of Douglas could weep at the thought. Go south, he had urged the French king, go south and crush the puppy Edward, capture the bastard, trample his men’s guts into the mud, and then imprison the prince as a bargaining piece for Scotland’s captured king. Instead they were besieging Breteuil.

The two men were standing on the topmost platform of the tower. Roland de Verrec had volunteered to lead the attack. The siege tower would be trundled forward, pushed by dozens of men, some of whom must fall to crossbow bolts, but others would replace them, and eventually the whole tower would crash against the castle wall and Roland’s men would slash through the ropes holding the drawbridge that protected the front of the upper platform. The drawbridge would fall, making a wide bridge to Breteuil’s battlements, and then the attackers would stream across, screaming their war cry, and those first men, the men most likely to die, must hold the captured battlement long enough to let hundreds of the King of France’s troops climb the tower’s ladders. They had to climb those ladders while cumbered by mail, by plate armour, by shields, and by weapons. It would take time, and the first men across the drawbridge had to buy that time with their lives. There was great honour in being among those first attackers, honour earned by the risk of death, and Roland de Verrec had gone on his knees to the King of France and begged to be granted that privilege.

‘Why?’ the king had asked Roland, and Roland had explained that he loved France and would serve his king, and that he had never been in battle, he had only fought in tournaments, and that it was time his talents as a fighter were put to a noble cause, and all that had been true. Yet the real reason Roland de Verrec wished to lead the assault was because he yearned for a great deed, for a quest, for some challenge that would be worthy of his purity. The king had graciously given Roland permission to lead the attack, and then granted the same honour to a second man, the Lord of Douglas’s nephew, Robbie.

‘You want to die,’ the Lord of Douglas had grumbled at Robbie the night before.

‘I want to feast in that castle’s hall tomorrow night,’ Robbie had answered.

‘For what?’ the Lord of Douglas demanded. ‘For what goddamned purpose?’

‘Talk to him,’ the Lord of Douglas now appealed to Roland de Verrec. That was why Douglas had come to the tower, to persuade Roland de Verrec, reputed to be the greatest fool and most chivalrous knight in all France, to urge Robbie to his duty. ‘Robbie respects you,’ he told Roland, ‘he admires you, he wants to be like you, so tell him it’s his Christian obligation to fight the English and not die in this miserable place.’