The Lion of Midnight (13 page)

‘Your knowledge of my family’s history is commendable, my Lord.’

‘More than you know. For instance, I know that a form of mitigation for your sins flows within you. I speak of your grandmother’s blood.’

Unexpected, this. Louise-Marie de Monconseil-Bragellone had
married
the much older eighth Earl of Ravensden but retained her Catholic faith, a fact that had caused much difficulty between them. My
grandmother
had also played a decidedly ambivalent part in my childhood, with she and my mother, the two Dowager Countesses of Ravensden, warring over the faith in which I should be brought up. But surely Montnoir could not know that –

‘My grandmother, my Lord?’ I said, essaying a riposte. ‘True, it is thanks to her that I can speak with you in your own tongue–’

‘She was a true servant of holy Church,’ Montnoir interrupted, ‘as all of her family had been. Do you know the history of your French
ancestors
as well as you know that of the Quinton heretics, Sir Matthew? No?
You should learn it. You would be amazed.’ He moved a little further away, and I realised that despite the coldness of the cell, I had been sweating. ‘And thus it seems to me a man with the blood of the house of Monconseil-Bragellone might deserve a better fate than to be cremated alive in the courtyard of a Swedish castle.’

I could barely comprehend what Montnoir was saying. Only hours before, he was threatening me with imminent and certain death, yet now he seemed to be laying some sort of alternative before me. Exhausted, hungry, and increasingly impatient of the Frenchman’s diatribe, I snapped ‘For God’s sake, Montnoir, enough of this! You seek my death. Then do it swiftly, man, and spare me any more of your sophistry!’

‘You mistake me, Sir Matthew,’ said Montnoir lightly. ‘In truth, I do not seek your death. Or rather, not your immediate death – unless you give me no alternative. Instead, I seek your soul.’ I stared at him, speechless. ‘Your grandmother instructed you in the true faith,’ he said. ‘She sought to have you brought up as a Catholic. Is that not so, Sir Matthew?’

How would he know that?
Now, of course, I see that Montnoir did not need to know, nor even for the late Countess Louise to tell him what she had gleaned of my family’s history: it might have been no more than a well educated guess. Having failed to bring up her own sons as servants of Rome, as the Catholic creed demanded (but which Earl Matthew would not have permitted in a million centuries), the Countess
Louise-Marie
chose her younger grandson as the likeliest candidate to enable her to fulfil her duty to her faith. But then, cold, disorientated in a
dungeon
and still in some pain from my fall, Montnoir’s words disturbed me more than I care to remember.

The Frenchman took my appalled silence for assent. ‘God’s will has placed you in my power, Sir Matthew, and now God’s will decrees that you will fulfil your destiny. You have a choice. You can choose the fate of a heretic and murderer, or else you can join with me to fight at my side.’ He began to pace the cell floor. ‘Perhaps you do not know that before
the vile apostasy which heretics term the Reformation, English knights were ever among the most stalwart of my Order. Sir William Weston captained the ship that carried the Grand Master from Rhodes when it fell to the heathens. Sir Oliver Starkey fought alongside Grand
Master
La Vallette in the heroic defence of Malta against Sultan Suleiman’s great siege. The English province of the Order still exists, Sir Matthew, albeit dormant. It needs only one valiant knight to restore it to life.’ My confused thoughts could not take this in. What in the Devil’s name was the man about? ‘The Order also needs the swords and the skills of brave seamen, Sir Matthew. The Mahometan heathens are at the gates of Candia, and if it falls, where will be next for them? Rome or Vienna? Paris or London?’

My friend Roger d’Andelys had once told me that some in France believed Montnoir to be descended from the old prophet Nostradamus, and they might have taken his words to me as proof: for Candia,
Venice
’s great fortress on Crete, did indeed fall some three years later, after a siege of a quarter-century, and within another fourteen years the Turks would be at the very gates of Vienna. ‘I can see us, Sir Matthew, you and I, sailing together upon the Middle Sea, extirpating the heathens wherever we encounter them. Such a valiant destiny would absolve you of both your past heresy and your part in the death of the Countess of Ravensden. Join me, Sir Matthew. Return to the faith that your cousins in France hold dear to this day. Put aside the insignificant and doomed schism of a mere century. Return to the true church that countless
generations
of Quintons served and loved.’

Montnoir’s proposition beggared belief. I felt my stomach turn, though whether from the enormity of it or from simple hunger, I knew not. One moment he was conjuring up for me a vision of burning at the stake, my hair in flames and my flesh blackening; the next, he was
offering
me the prospect of crusading alongside him, clad alike in the cloak and eight-pointed star of a Knight of Malta. I wondered briefly whether the Frenchman was jesting, but the grim-visaged Montnoir never jested.
The sheer incongruity of it all made me laugh, and laughter, in turn, made me defiant.

‘I am a Knight already, Lord Montnoir – a Knight of the King of England, and there could be no high honour for an Englishman. What is more, I am a confirmed member of the holy Church of England, by law established. We abjure the Pope and the false idolatries of Rome. No, my Lord – I will not join you, however much you threaten me with the rack or the bonfire.’

Montnoir did not appear taken aback by my rejection of his
blandishments
; indeed, he seemed to expect it.

‘Your faith is based upon sand, Sir Matthew. Your King is but an idle whoring fellow, a feeble mouse next to the great lion that is my master, King Louis. And your precious Church of England? Why, your church rests on nothing more than the delusions of the heretic Luther and the lust of your demented King Henry. Whereas I stand upon the rock of Peter, along with the Blessed Virgin and all the saints. A millennium and a half of truth and authority.’ Montnoir leaned forward, and I saw that his eyes were ablaze. ‘Come, Sir Matthew, recall what your grandmother taught you. Say with me the Latin credo and the Ave Maria.’

I knew the words well enough; had said them often enough. I still recalled the guilty pleasure that those words had given me, for they were a secret that I shared with my grandmother. A secret that was bound to – and eventually did – enrage my mother. But I would not resurrect those memories now to indulge the sinister figure that stood before me. I shook my head vigorously.

Once again Montnoir leaned closer to me, his long thin face barely inches from mine.

‘You will convert, Sir Matthew,’ he said. ‘I see it in your eyes. Your grandmother planted a seed that has never quite died within your heart. You merely require a guide to take you back to it and then forward to your destiny. I shall be that guide, Sir Matthew. Or else I shall be the man who puts the brand to the faggots.’

Thus it began.

There was no more food, no sleep and barely any water. Instead, there was Montnoir. Always, relentlessly, Montnoir, for hours on end, until I lost track of day and night. He began with Scripture: Matthew Chapter Sixteen, John Chapter Six, and countless other of the texts from which the Roman Church claimed its authority. He veritably bombarded me with the early Church fathers from Tertullian to Athanasius and Saint Augustine. Then he ranged from theology (the supposed truths of transubstantiation, the nature of apostolic succession, and so forth), through history (the iniquities of King Henry VIII, Queen Elizabeth and their bishops), and finally, always finally, to my family and myself, to my grandmother and the death of the Countess Louise. I had heard of the Jesuits, and in due course I would meet several of them, but I never encountered a more formidable advocate for the Roman Church than Gaspard, Seigneur De Montnoir. He challenged every assumption about religion that I had ever possessed: his soft, ceaseless French
monotone
pulled down the entire edifice of Anglican faith and exalted in its place that which he termed the eternal glory of Rome.

In truth, I was ill-prepared to resist the onslaught. My faith was that of most Englishmen: I attended church dutifully every Sunday, sang the hymns, mouthed the prayers, and let my mind wander during the
sermon. I could recite some of the more familiar psalms and give chapter and verse for some of the Bible’s best-known passages, but beyond that, I was lost. For me, as for most of my compatriots, church was principally an opportunity to catch up on the week’s news with one’s neighbours, and for young men and young women to ogle each other. My uncle Tristram, a formidable intellect and brilliant debater, would perhaps have given Montnoir short shrift, but he was sceptical in religion, and although he had been diligent in teaching his nephew history, the classics, philosophy and the sciences, his own impatience with theology had translated into a reluctance to immerse me in it. Even my mother would have had little difficulty countering Montnoir’s arguments: she was deeply devout and knew much of the Bible off by heart, but she had singularly failed to transmit such further to her second son. Thus all in all I was as unprepared for Montnoir’s formidable intellectual siege as were the Trojans when the Greeks emerged from the wooden horse.

‘Let us consider the sacrament of confession, so heinously rejected by the heretic Luther and your apostate Church of England. I shall lay before you the doctrine as it is expounded in scripture, in the gospels of John and Matthew, whose name you bear and should honour, the epistle to the Corinthians and elsewhere. I shall lay before you the
unchallengeable
pronouncements of the early elders, Irenaeus, Cyprian, John Chryostom and many others. I shall lay before you the eternal truths that were mingled with the lifeblood of your dear grandmother.’
Montnoir
kept his face close to mine, his dark, hostile eyes fixed relentlessly on my own. I could smell him; for an ascetic holy warrior, the Knight of Malta seemed not to have stinted on the finer perfumes. Montnoir held no Bible in his hand and referred to no printed tract. Every argument and every passage of scripture that he flung at me was conjured up from the depths of his formidable memory. ‘So, then – Saint John, Chapter the Twentieth, the twenty-first to twenty-third verses. “Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you. And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith
unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost: Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.” Now, Sir Matthew, I put it to you that you stand in certain need of the absolution that follows confession – absolution of the sins of heresy and murder…’

Slowly, I realise that I was no longer certain what was true and what was not. My head reeled. I felt sick, and several times was on the point of spewing. Montnoir’s argument was so plausible, so firmly founded upon Scripture, that I began to find it ever more convincing. Even in that moment, when I was so weak and my mind so clouded, I half realised what was happening: that Montnoir was reawakening feelings I had known before. His case was more densely argued and couched in more sophisticated language, but it was essentially the same one that the magnificent and imperious Louise-Marie, Dowager Countess of Ravensden, had deployed upon her impressionable grandson when he was but nine or ten, and had then periodically redeployed at intervals in the years before her death, contrary to all the remonstrations of her son Tristram and her daughter-in-law, my mother. Thus Montnoir’s words often struck unconscious chords that he could not have anticipated, and took me back to a time when I was a young boy, fatherless and lonely amid the great ruins of Ravensden Abbey. A young boy intrigued by, and strongly attracted to, the apparent eternal certainties of the faith that his grandmother espoused. More than once Montnoir’s face seemed to disappear, to be replaced by that of the old Countess, and more than once I was on the point of falling to my knees and reciting with tears of joy the words that Montnoir was so desperate to hear from my lips, the words I had uttered often enough as a child and which surely could hardly hurt now:
Ave Maria, gratia plena
…

Yet each time, somehow, I held myself back. Just as I was about to yield, my grandfather, the formidable Earl Matthew, would appear before my confused, racing mind, scowling reprovingly at his wife’s shade and growling: ‘
Steady, lad. Stay true
’.

At one point, indeed, I rallied feebly against my tormentor. Montnoir was railing against the Church of England, and hitting home. ‘Consider the church that your King has put in place since his restoration, Sir Matthew. It is the church of the late Archbishop Laud – altars and altar rails, bells and incense, genuflection and the sign of the cross. Why, it even has saints! The late King Charles, a saint and martyr! Come, Sir Matthew, you must see that the difference between this so-called Anglicanism and the true church of Rome is but paper thin. Is it so very difficult to cut the paper, to move from the one to the other as your grandmother wished you? Would you really condemn your immortal soul to millennia of Purgatory and hell, simply so that you may utter your creed in English instead of Latin?’

I was desperately hungry and tired, yet somehow I murmured ‘We Anglicans do not admit of Purgatory, Montnoir. And I was never much fond of Latin.’

Montnoir remained implacable. ‘Purgatory is the fate that awaits you if you do not repent, Sir Matthew. Purgatory, and then eternal
damnation
, for you and all those you hold dear. For your wife Cornelia, indeed. Purgatory and hell have special circles set aside for the Dutch. At once heretics against God and rebels against their divinely anointed monarch – yes, the Dutch face damnation, every man, woman and child of them!’

‘If that is so, Lord Montnoir,’ I said wearily, ‘why does your King Louis ally with them in the present war?’

It was merely a chance remark, a mere reflex prompted by my anger at his mention of my dear wife, but Montnoir recoiled as though he had been physically struck.

‘The Most Christian King does not always follow the path that God has ordained for him,’ said Montnoir. There was a harshness in his voice that had not been present before. ‘Some of those about him, about his court, advise him badly, and persuade him to pursue policies that are not in the interests of holy mother Church. Thus he makes alliance with an apostate republic when he should join with Spain, the Emperor and
the Pope to extirpate Protestantism from Europe. Then, reunited and invincible, Christendom should turn East in crusade against the
heathen
hordes!’ Montnoir’s eyes blazed. ‘
That
is the true destiny of Louis de Bourbon! And yet the heretical Huguenots are permitted to worship freely, when his Majesty’s every waking moment ought to be devoted to purging them from his realm!’

I had never seen the Knight of Malta so passionate, so enraged. Montnoir had talked dispassionately of what he termed the heresies of the English and the Dutch, and of the threat posed by those he termed the Mahometan heathens. Why, then, did the subject of the Huguenots in France animate him so? Unless –

I recalled an argument that Montnoir had brought against me, hours earlier – the story of Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus. I thought, too, upon something my French friend Roger, comte d’Andelys, had once told me about Montnoir’s origins: of where his ancestral lands lay. At once, all was clear.

‘You were a convert,’ I said. ‘You are a man of Guyenne, and that has ever been a stronghold of the Huguenots. That is why you detest them, and the whole of Protestantism. You have turned against your own, Montnoir – against what you once were.’

Montnoir’s mouth fell open. He stared at me as though he were truly seeing me for the first time.

‘How can you know that?’ he gasped.

‘As you persist in reminding me, Lord Montnoir, my grandmother was French. I have friends among the French. Thus I am not entirely ignorant of the history and geography of your country.’

Montnoir seemed about to reply, but thought better of it. Instead he turned abruptly and left the cell, leaving me blessedly alone. I put my head down upon my pallet and was asleep in an instant.

I do not know if it was five minutes or five hours later when the crone’s
shaking woke me. Montnoir stood behind her, the mask of cold
contempt
upon his face fully restored.

‘You are obdurate, Sir Matthew,’ said Montnoir, ‘far more obdurate than I had anticipated.’ He sighed, and seemed genuinely saddened. ‘So be it. You resist the eternal truth, and you shall pay the price. It is
evident
that I have wasted my breath upon you, Quinton. You deserve the slowest, most painful death that can be inflicted on a man. Subjection to the instruments in the adjacent cellars, then consignment to the pit
yonder
, to be eaten alive by the rats.’ He nodded toward the nearby grill in the floor. ‘But to my regret, I am constrained by time and circumstance. Nevertheless, I do not require time or instruments of metal to inflict sufficient agonies upon you. I have observed many times that inflicting pain upon a man’s loved ones, or the threat of inflicting it, often has a more powerful effect than merely crushing fingers or breaking limbs. Take your dear Cornelia, for instance –’

The very mention of her name was sufficient. Summoning what strength remained to me, I flung myself from the pallet and ran, head down, for Montnoir. But he stepped backwards smartly, and the
manacle
bit into my ankle like a man trap. I fell into the dirt that covered the cold stone floor, face down, my outstretched arms reaching impotently toward the feet of the Knight of Malta.

‘You demon, Montnoir! You hell-spawned bastard!’

‘Oh have no fear, Sir Matthew, I have no intention of maiming or
killing
her. Not yet, at any rate. But it occurs to me that the one thing sure to add to your death agony will be to perish in the knowledge that your wife will believe you betrayed her. With your own brother’s wife, at that.’

I got to my knees, and saw the blood was flowing freely over the iron manacle from a great gash my ankle. ‘It is a lie, Montnoir,’ I gasped through the pain, ‘I never loved the lady Louise.’

‘That is of no account. Merely planting the suspicion will torment your wife long after you are dead.’

Montnoir’s words came closer to the bone than he could know: in the
aftermath of the Countess Louise’s death, it had taken me several weeks to assuage Cornelia’s suspicions that I might have had feelings for her.

‘You will burn in hell, Montnoir,’ I whispered angrily as I got
unsteadily
to my feet.

‘I think not, Sir Matthew. Hell is reserved for the likes of you. And you shall be there soon enough. I have been giving the matter some thought, and have decided that although I cannot dispose of you as slowly as I would wish, mere burning is not an adequate punishment for such a gross reprobate as you, a heretic and a murderer. For you’ – he stabbed a finger angrily toward me – ‘you are far worse than those heretics who wallow in ignorance because they have never witnessed the eternal truth of the church of Rome. You, Quinton, were shown that truth by your grandmother, and yet you chose to reject it. Such wilful heresy deserves the severest punishment, and you shall have it. The Castle stables contain four horses, and the courtyard is amply wide enough for them. Thus at dawn, Sir Matthew Quinton, you will suffer the fate of Ravaillac. That will be especially appropriate, for your
precious
grandmother was there that day. She witnessed it. Indeed, she played a part in bringing those events to pass. I suspect that she will not have told you that. No? I thought not. So think of her, Sir Matthew, as you endure that which she witnessed.’

Montnoir left, and the cell door closed heavily behind him. I tore off part of a shirt sleeve and wrapped it around my bleeding ankle. Yet why was I attempting to heal myself, only to face the fate that the
Frenchman
had described to me: the fate of Ravaillac, murderer of Henry the Fourth, King of France, in the year 1610?

I knew the story well: at that time, who did not? The assassin was
subjected
to the most terrible death imaginable. First his right hand, with which he had driven the dagger into the royal breast, was plunged into a cauldron of fire and brimstone. Then the flesh was slowly pulled from his chest, arms, thighs and legs with red-hot pincers. Boiling oil, resin, wax, sulphur and brimstone were poured upon the wounds, and molten
lead upon his navel. Finally, four horses were fastened to his limbs and set off in different directions. It was said that Ravaillac lived through all of this, enduring for hours, at last succumbing only when the Paris mob literally tore his body apart. Some of the more ghoulish peasant women were said to have greedily devoured pieces of his flesh. And it seemed that my grandmother had witnessed all of it; indeed, if Montnoir was to be believed, she had played some sort of part in bringing it about. I had thought my family had secrets enough, yet now here was another, and one that seemed about to come full circle in the most dreadful way imaginable. The Countess Louise-Marie would never know that her grandson had suffered the same fate as the assassin Ravaillac, but I had little doubt that by one means or another, Montnoir would ensure that both my mother and my wife learned exactly how Sir Matthew Quinton perished. It was this, more even than the horror that lay before me, that consumed my thoughts as day turned into night.