The Seal (47 page)

‘No . . .
however, I shall tell you that he also conspires with Marigny against you.’

‘Does he?’ There
was a sudden note, the beginnings of fear in the count’s voice. ‘Does he
conspire with that weasel?’

‘
Of course . . . you are an important man
,
they
fear your power
. They poison the King’s ear . . . they convince him that
you are conspiring against him.’

‘They do? Oh my
Lord!’ The count was flustered now and biting his thumb. ‘He shall believe that
I am conspiring against him, my own brother!’

‘The thing is,
Count . . . you are conspiring against the King . . .’

‘I am?’

‘Of course! And
for this very reason you must show Nogaret no mercy.’

‘No, I must not
. . .’ He was lost in this thought, then: ‘
But
how
will you do it? How will Nogaret succumb?’

There was a
smile. ‘Nogaret burns oil when he stays up late at night working; the oil is
scented to make his work more pleasant. It is said that he uses more than a
bottle a week . . .’

‘And?’

‘And . . . he
always buys his oil from a shop in the St Eustace quarter.’

‘Yes . . . so?’

De Plaisians
knew the count to be lacking in estimative capacities, but even a donkey would
have discerned his intentions. He looked at the man patiently. ‘We shall poison
the oil, monsieur. It will be a long painful death full of hallucinations and
the calls of devils.’

The count, a man
who dreaded his own end, seemed to find something not so displeasing in
another’s misfortune. ‘Brilliant!’ Then his face clouded over.
‘But what of my brother?
He may live till he is a hundred .
. . have you thought of that, Plaisians?’

‘I predict that
heaven has only a short time allocated to him.’

The other man’s
ignoble eyes became round with surprise. ‘How do you know?’

‘He is unwell .
. . the six court doctors all agree. Tremors . . . a condition of the
corpus nervus,
perhaps due to substances
administered by his astrologer . . . a poisoning of the source, like a tree
whose roots are poisoned by degrees, loses firstly the leaves then the
branches, then the rest.
A sign that the body, or perhaps the
mind, is diseased.
Tertian fevers . . . the black biles . . . the bloody
flux . . . madness . . . Tell me, Count, what is your pleasure?’

‘Madness . . .’
said the count, as if the word tasted good in his mouth. ‘And a cure?’

‘Tinctures,
infusions, potions . . . draughts . . . and finally the dragons.’

‘Dragons?’

‘Snakes.’

The count
narrowed his eyes in the gloom. ‘Not even I know of snakes – how comes it
that you are so well informed?’

‘The astrologer
is disgraced and fears for his life. He absconded from the castle weeks ago and
has not been seen since, except by me. He looks for any advantage.’

The Count of
Valois frowned, but then slowly his face contorted into a smile. ‘You are a
serpent, monsieur, but . . . a useful one . . . If he does the doing no one can
suspect . . . well, you, monsieur.’

De Plaisians
grinned his teeth. ‘And no one can suspect you, my dear Count!’

The man gasped.
‘Me?’

‘If he fails,
there are always other ways, of course.’

‘Other ways?’

‘Several.’

A disquiet
had settled over the
count’s form. He made little blowing noises into the cloth and cleared the
mucus in his throat. ‘And should I come to power, that is, once my brother has
been safely installed in the brown earth, what of Marigny?’

‘The King had
Dubois write a pamphlet against him, it accuses him of sorcery.’

‘Sorcery . . .’
The
count became anxious, a pallor moved over his features
and he bit his thumb again. ‘There is something heinous about it.’

‘No more heinous
than murder.’

‘And yet to me
it rings ill to accuse falsely of sorcery.’

‘Honesty is
praised and left out in the cold,’ answered de Plaisians, ‘but I shall tell you
that heroes are very often those whose brave acts are driven by duplicity.’

‘And what brave
act shall I perform? It seems you have done it all for me, Monsieur de
Plaisians.’

De Plaisians
wanted to laugh. ‘Convince the King to imprison the princesses for life . . .
they must not be executed, and
Respice
finem
. . . look to the end . . .’

‘And you? What
shall you do?’ he asked, as de Plaisians prepared to leave.

‘I shall live as
if every day were my last.’

And he left the
count to his sneezes.

M
ademoiselle
de Vigiers was beautiful. Towards the street of the tailors she walked, her
copper hair tossed, her spine a straight line all the way to a small waist, and
her steps brisk. She was on an errand of some importance for her eyes did not
stray to those men who stopped to watch and comment and to reach out to touch.
She walked on and on until she arrived at her destination.

She wondered as
she walked if she should have worn a black cape, but it had been her reckoning
that such a woman would have drawn more curious attention than a pretty one walking
the streets.

She knocked on a
door. A moment later it opened and a thin, one-legged man answered; his face,
scarred and yellow, poked out of the gloom.

‘What?’ he said
with a squint.

The woman smiled
sweetly. ‘I have come for the oil.’

Puzzlement changed
to cunning. ‘Get in.’

Once inside, the
man looked appreciatively over her form and licked his lips. ‘You have the
money?’ he asked, keeping his mouth open and smiling.

‘Yes,’ she said
and gave him a small pouch.

‘This will be
greatly beneficial.’ The man grinned and left her.

A moment later
he returned with a bottle. ‘The oil must burn all night, for the poison to
kill.’

The woman gave
him a frosty stare. ‘And who said that much work benefits a man?’

W
hen
Iterius entered the Pope’s private garden the sun was pitched low and made
shafts through air scented with lavender. It had been planted everywhere around
the Pope’s summer house at Grozeau, as his doctors had instructed.

Iterius, dressed
in dark apparel and capped against the sun, looked to the Pope like a black
cloud that spoils a bright day. He bowed low and his hat fell from his balding
head.

Clement grunted
and sat back upon his cushioned day bed, sipping poppy tea as the last rays of
the sun warmed his troubled skin. He said nothing to the Egyptian, preferring
to leave him to busy himself awhile with his thoughts. Above, the full-grown
cypress trees rustled in the light breeze and bees buzzed about. He could feel
the flatulence; soon he must have recourse to its discharge.

His eyes moved
torpidly to the man standing before him. ‘What do you want? You have failed
me,’ he said and yawned.

Iterius bowed
low once again. ‘I am still your loyal servant.’

Clement raised a
brow, his round face cold and bland, but his eyes now were lit up like candles.
‘You are a servant of the Devil . . . How comes it that you have not been
successful? Failure is only something one ascribes to the angels of the Lord .
. .’

Iterius, at a
loss for words, made a twitch of his mouth; an uncertain voice came out of his
throat. ‘Your Holiness . . . please . . . I am a servant of the Lord . . .’

‘Ahh!’ The Pope
spat and saliva lingered wetly on his lips and chin. ‘Do not meddle with me,
Egyptian! I am no fool! God works in mysterious ways, even pacts with devils
must he employ in order to perform his wonders!’ Then he sat forward; his
watery legs hanging over the side of the bed became visible beneath the layers
of fabric. ‘You have watched over Philip . . . yes . . . but after so many
years, Jacques de Molay has kept his mouth shut and you have not found me what
you promised . . . I could not care less now.’

Iterius shifted
about, thinking. ‘Will you not protect me?’

‘Protect you?’
The Pope raised a brow. ‘Why should I protect you? To me you are a foul,
spindly little weed and you must, in the course of good husbandry, be plucked
out!’ He took a sip of his tea, now gone cold, and made a wince. ‘All that I am
left with is the small comfort of knowing that Philip has been equally served
by you!’

‘Your Holiness . . . if I may?
What
must I do now? I did not betray you . . .’

‘And you have
done as you should, my child.’

‘And?’ Iterius
asked.

‘And?’ Clement
raised his brows.

‘The King has
his assassins around every corner . . .’

‘Poison him,’
Clement said jovially, feeling the effects of the tea.

‘How may I do it
if I am exiled from his affections?’

‘Well then . .
.’ The Pope perused the pathetic form of the infidel before him, and as though
advising him of some pleasantry, said, ‘There is nothing for you to do but go
back to the death that awaits you.’

The evening grew
cool and the earthy scent of thyme and basil hung down over the garden. The sun
had descended below the horizon of distant hills. Iterius crossed the courtyard
and made for a door to the cloisters. There, hidden in the shadows, a cowled
monk took a vial from him. A moment later the Egyptian was gone into the void.

And from the
garden there came the sound of the Pope’s loud resonant snores.

L
ooking out at the sea of
snow, Etienne was reminded of the day they had come by the castle on the mountain.

The night they
arrived, there had been rain. They had come round the bend of that narrow
passage with their bodies curved to the wind, and in the shelter of frosty
pines the three men had looked upward to the ramparts and battlements and had thought
it a fine place to rest.

It was now four
years since they had set off from the woman’s house. Time had dulled the pain
of it but it had not hid it from his eye.

He remembered
Jourdain’s words to him that day, ‘Courage is born of pain,’ and now it seemed
to him false. It was not courage that he had ever felt standing upon the
parapets of his life. He had only discerned cowardice in his limbs, hatred in
his heart and doubt that made a fog in his head. These things had lain with him
on this side of the abyss that existed between him and God and between his
Order and the world of men.

Now, standing
before the material abyss below the castle walls, he misplaced his gaze into
the distance, into the vastness of the horizon, whose four sides showed him
endless rows of fir trees that melted into the steely sky and continued to
eternity. This wild and far-flung vision showed him how insignificant he was to
his faith and to the world, since all things continued without him and nothing
was unhinged or thrown over the rim of the world because he was not present in
it. The snow, profound and compelling, inclined upon the speck of land as if to
better observe him and drew around him untroubled and unchanged, washing past
the mountain towards the vastness – it was a small thing, this great
castle, and he, even smaller upon it.

He found worship
in this. A humbling reverence no less faithful than that which looked to heaven
from inside the walls of a church. To look at the world, inhabited by spirits,
with the sun leaning upon it, or the moon, or the wind whipping the trees, his
soul climbing heavenward and down again – this was his new devotion. In
this picture before him he had seen his own spirit mirrored, and listened to
himself speaking from it as though it were an instrument by which he could come
to know something of his nature. It told him he must not only look for his Lord
in those marks made by Him upon the earth: inside the wishing soul of a deer or
in the sap of a tree. He must not find Him only in the wind or the rain or the
lightning that tore through the thunderous clouds. Such devotion alone would
put him out of balance and take from him his communion with other men. His Lord
must be looked for also, and in the same measure, in all those whom he had
known. He was one part Jourdain, another Andrew, and another part Jacques. He
was the woman Amiel, in her soft silences, in the darkness of the lashes around
her eyes. He was set upon the creases on the face of the old man and He lived
in the laughter of the child. He was one part Iterius and another part Marcus.
He lived in the hearts of all as that part of them which, to his sense of it,
must be the higher and more refined part. He told himself that the Order of the
Temple formed a community, a brotherhood, so that worship of Christ experienced
among brothers might broaden to the worship of Christ in every man.