Son of the Morning (69 page)

Time to draw the sword? No. Anyone still guarding the castle would be puzzled by his presence. Why remove that uncertainty from their mind? He could use the confusion to attack with his knife or even go in with his fists.

Through the door. A large reception area – biggish hall draped with painted cloths showing the arrowed cross of the Hospitallers. This was not a regular dormitory area, Montagu guessed, but where many monks would sleep in case of siege. The reeds on the floor were fresh and fragrant. Buildings like this were rarely greatly occupied in times of peace but provided strongholds, should the enemy broach the outer walls. A single reed torch wavered in a recess in the wall. At the end of the hall was another door – also open – that revealed a spiral staircase going up and down.

‘Up or down?’

The Templar shrugged. ‘The chest room was in the grand solar in my day, but who knows?’

‘That will do,’ said Montagu.

They made the door and went up the stairs, up one level, where Montagu guessed there would be another hall to house defenders, and bedrooms for the Hospitaller grandmaster when he visited – up another to where – in a conventional keep – the bedrooms of the permanent staff would be.

He opened the door that led off the spiral stair. A small antechamber with four doors off it. One was open and through it came an old man’s voice.

‘Is that you, Henri?’

‘It’s me, William,’ said Montagu in his best court French.

‘What is it in the chapel, boy?’

Montagu opened the door. An old man was in bed in a sumptuous room. He had a long white beard and pale, thin skin, the mottles of age all over his brow.

‘It’s De Greville,’ whispered Jacques, ‘That serpent! He’s the old Grand Master of the order.’

Montagu wondered how they ever got the old man up and down the stairs, or if they ever did.

He saw no point in pretence now. ‘I am William Montagu, Lord Marschall of England, loyal servant of Edward, third of his name since the great conquest. We are friends of the Hospitallers and I mean you no harm and will offer you none if you co-operate. Where do you keep what King Philip has entrusted to you?’

‘Alarm!’ the old man cried out in a surprisingly strong voice.

A noise behind him. Now Arondight was free in his hand, the voices of St Anne and attendant saints sang in his head – high, clear, plainsong.

‘There was no need for that, old man. Blood will spill where none needed to!’

The Templar leapt at the old man. ‘You betrayed my order, stole our lands, gave succour and aid to high men!’ He drove down his sword in three quick stabs.

‘Do him no harm, Jacques!’ shouted Montagu belatedly, but he couldn’t worry about that. He had to get back into the ante-chamber, to stop anyone going down the stairs to rally defenders.

He jumped out of the room to see three Hospitallers, knives in their hands, hesitating at the doorway. No swords with them, not military brothers, good. One was no older than thirteen.

Montagu gestured to his vacant eye. ‘You know me, boys – the English king’s one eyed gryphon. Put down your arms, there’s no need for you to die today.’ The sword’s song was loud in his ears. It was telling him that his enemies were of serious intent – battle was imminent.

A monk slashed down at the top of his head with a dagger – the attack of an unschooled man. Montagu deflected the blade with his hand and turned sharply, using the monk’s own momentum to slam his head into the wall, dropping him to the floor like a sack of grain, the knife clattering to the stones.

‘You?’ said Montagu, levelling Arondight at the oldest monk’s throat.

The man dropped the knife. The boy still held his.

‘Tell the child to see sense,’ said Montagu.

‘Gervais, let go of the weapon,’ said the other monk. ‘This is a great warrior and you are too young to be a martyr.’ The boy dropped it.

‘Are there any more of you?’

The elder monk shook his head.

‘Do as you are told and you will live,’ said Montagu, ‘I am not a butcher, no matter what you may hear of us English.’

‘We hear you are butchers,’ said the monk.

‘Then be careful not to make me one,’ said Montagu.

Good Jacques emerged from the bedroom. The monks gasped: he was covered in blood.

‘Kill them, they are the lapdogs of tyrants,’ said Jacques.

‘Or the servants of God’s appointed king,’ said Montagu ‘You have treasures, things the king entrusted to you.’

‘Not here,’ said the monk.

‘We will look, and if you are lying, you will die,’ said Montagu. He would let the boy live, he thought. Montagu regretted any waste of life but it was necessary to make good on his threats – as a parent must make good on his threats to a child. If he warned the man and then let him go, his reputation would count for nothing with the French.

‘You will find nothing,’ said the man, ‘and I will not help murderers. Are you from Hell?’

‘England, as I said,’ said Montagu. Then a thought struck him. ‘What is the disturbance in the chapel?’

‘A devil has broken through,’ said the monk, ‘and the men are struggling to contain it.’

‘Watch them,’ said Montagu to the Templar. Jacques, looking down at his bloody hands, seemed surprisingly unnerved, and said nothing.

Montagu quickly ransacked the rooms – there was nothing there of any real value at all. Some of the fine cups, plates and wall hangings would have interested a common thief but not him. Jacques had made a mess of the Grand Master. Well, at least the old man was in Heaven now. Montagu looked at the body and wondered about the company he was forced to keep to do the king’s work.

At the back of the room, new bricks were at the bottom of the wall. Montagu waved the feather. The wall disappeared to reveal a small store room.

There was nothing in it.

‘Is this where it would have been?’ he shouted to Jacques.

The Templar poked his head around the door. ‘I think so. There’s nowhere else looks likely.’

Montagu left the room. ‘Lock these two in there and we’ll head to Caesar’s Tower,’ said Montagu.

‘There are no locks.’ Jacques had grabbed the older monk, a knife in his hand.

‘No,’ said Montagu, ‘we are not killers. These are holy men and I’ll not spill their blood without reason.’

‘You are not in command here, lord,’ said Jacques.

‘With this in my hand, I am,’ said Montagu, nodding towards Arondight.

The Templar looked at the fine steel, the blade aflame in the light of the torches, and he let the monks go.

‘Tie them then,’ said Montagu. He pointed with the sword to the ropes that secured the monks’ robes.

Voices on the stairs. Men coming up.

‘Robbers!’ shouted the boy monk.

Montagu caught the child a backhanded blow, sending him unconscious to the floor. He was, as always, a practical man, a man who had formed his battle tactics under the arch-pragmatist Edward. It is as it is. The boy couldn’t be left to give away their positions so he had to be silenced. ‘I won’t be so kind to you,’ he informed the older monk.

‘What? Who’s up there?’ The voices from the stairs again.

Montagu sheathed Arondight and approached the monk, pulling off the man’s belt cord. In an instant he had him tied, long practised at such manoeuvres in tournament mêlée and battle.

‘You should strike a bargain,’ said the monk, ‘your friend in the chapel may prove difficult to contain. It wouldn’t be impossible for you to walk out of here.’

‘It’s not impossible for me to walk out of here now,’ said Montagu. He turned to the Templar.

‘Our mission is still on. We’ll make Caesar’s Tower.’

‘You can’t fight all of them,’ said Jacques.

‘I don’t intend to. Come on.’

The spiral staircase still had one level to ascend. Montagu opened the door to it to see a hare-eyed monk staring back at him – he wore only a plain habit, no mail, and he carried no sword. Montagu put his boot into the centre of the man’s chest, sending him sprawling up the stairs, his head striking a step with a crack. Montagu hoped he hadn’t killed him. He sprang up towards a door at the top. It opened onto the crenellated roof of the keep and he ran out onto it. He was above the fog and a half moon looked down on him. Below him, lights swirled like strange fish in a soupy sea – torches. Well, the alarm was up, men were pouring into the building.

The Templar joined him on the roof. ‘Now what?’

‘We make some corpses,’ said Montagu.

He closed the door to the roof and drew Arondight. Soon men would be pouring up those stairs, coming through that door, and he wanted them coming through blind. He could hold that door forever if he had to. Once as many men as possible had been drawn to the tower, he would cut a hole in the tower roof using the feather, hope to get in unnoticed. If not, he would have the advantage of surprise. He put his hand to his tunic, felt the letter. The feather! It wasn’t there. He unbuckled the tunic. Nowhere. He must have dropped it in all the running.

Then he saw the Templar, the feather in his hand.

‘I cannot be caught by these people,’ Jacques said. ‘You will provide a distraction while I find the letters.’

‘What?’

The Templar held up the angel’s feather. He also had the sack containing the holy lance, the crown of thorns. Montagu had only put it down for a breath. Instinctively he felt inside his tunic. Yes, the bottle of angel’s blood was still there.

‘I was a pickpocket before I ever was a monk,’ Jacques said. He stood on the edge of the battlements and Montagu could see it was hopeless – he could not grab him before he jumped.

A question came into Montagu’s mind. ‘All England’s angels are not gone. Some were left. If the Evertere eats angels, how did an angel get it back in its chest?’

‘That was not an angel.’

‘Then what was it?’

Jacques shook his head and stepped off the roof, floating down into the fog, just a faint glow against the grey.

Montagu looked to the heavens. Then he smiled. ‘It is as it is,’ he said. He put his tunic back on and secured the letter. He kissed the hilt of the sword. ‘St Anne,’ he said, ‘and Isabella.’ The saint sang filling his mind with beautiful music, but his ears were dinned by the shouts of his foes.

34

The pilgrims ditched them a day’s walk from Milan – the old man whom they called their leader telling Orsino straight that he considered him and his boy bad luck.

They were then cast into the rather ludicrous position of walking side by side with the pilgrims along the Roman road for much of the journey, separated by two hundred yards and a hard silence.

Orsino got easy access to the city, a coin and a word that he was attending on a merchant of Florence all it needed to get him in. His fine armour, good horse and squire showed him to be a man of quality.

Milan staggered Dow. He had thought London rich, but this place shone as if its streets really were paved with gold.

Dow thought of Sariel – his mother. Was she even his mother? Everything had turned out to be false – everything. He wanted so much to be ordinary, to return to the moor, to give up his cause, to find a woman he could trust, neither devil or demon, to live even as the people of the villages lived, in simplicity. Was it better to bow to a priest, to take the blood and the flesh at the altar and be secure than live always in this life of unrewarded struggle?

He felt dizzy and sick and he could still taste that strange dust that had issued from the devil-girl. The city made his head spin. Everything could be bought here, everything – the whole city was a market bursting with produce from all over the world. The main street was less a market than a brawl conducted with lengths of bright cloth, loaves, pans, fish, armour, pots, livestock. Everyone shoved and bustled, everyone called out and cried. Here a man shouldered through the crowd carrying a squealing piglet above his head. Towards a stall selling saddles a fight broke out, a man screaming that he had been pickpocketed.

They were looking for the house of the Hospitallers, who kept a small priory in the city. He passed through an arch – above it a carved stone shield featuring the slithering snake of the ruling Visconti family’s arms – the Biscone. The snake had a man clasped in its jaws, his wide arms indicating his anguish. Orsino saw Dow looking up at it.

‘Like the angel said,’ said Orsino.

Dow nodded.

‘As good an image of a life as you’ll ever see,’ he said. ‘That’s me up there,’ said Orsino.

‘Which one?’ said Dow.

Orsino laughed, but he knew the boy wasn’t joking. ‘The man,’ he said, ‘though my snake likes to suck me slowly like a liquorice root.’

‘Until all your goodness is gone,’ said Dow.

Orsino didn’t find that joke funny. ‘Maybe,’ he said, ‘though I hope I will win my goodness back, hard though that will be. Every man has his snakes, Dow.’

The boy said nothing.

Orsino yawned and continued. ‘We need to find lodgings and stabling for the horses. I have a feeling it won’t be cheap.’

Dow coughed again. The taste of that dust was still with him.

‘Are you feeling well?’

‘Right fine,’ said Dow.

‘Here.’ Orsino passed a wineskin over to the boy and smiled at him.

Dow took a swig to clear his mouth. ‘Thank you,’ he said.

Orsino laughed in surprise. ‘Would you unhorse me?’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘That’s the first time you’ve said “thank you” in all the years I’ve known you.’

Dow flushed and feared tears might come into his eyes.

Orsino took the wineskin and put his hand on Dow’s arm. ‘I would be a friend to you, if you let me. You have been badly treated, no question, and it was me who took you from your home. But God offers absolution, so you can too. You are dear to me, Dowzabel – my apprentice.’

‘You are not my father.’

‘No. And you are not my son. But God has put us together for whatever reason. My son is gone. My daughter and my wife too, and it was God’s punishment on me that they went, my sins that they paid for. Through you I would atone.’

‘I am not your way to salvation.’

‘Perhaps not. I don’t seek to make you my son. I seek only to treat you kindly and to behave as a true Christian towards you. I will gain atonement through my mission here.’