“Anyway, once the army is ready, we will set sail immediately for Palestine, and by the time we come home victorious, England will be mine beyond dispute, with the support and blessings of the Pope and all his court.”
Richard stood up and braced an arm against the mantel, staring into the coals. St. Clair remained seated, frowning, his eyes following Richard and then shifting to where de Sablé sat watching, his face an inscrutable mask. Now he cleared his throat and spoke out.
“A hundred thousand men, you said, my lord. Forgive me for asking, but … who will pay for that?” He hurried on before Richard could react. “I mean, I know you said your father was the one who made the commitment to the venture, at Gisors, and that is as it should be, but will he carry through with it now, since the events of August, knowing you will prosper thereby?”
“Aye, he will.” Unfazed by the question, Richard spoke over his shoulder, not quite looking at St. Clair but speaking to him nonetheless. “He will, because he knows nothing and will learn nothing about my agreement with Clement. And before you ask me how I can be sure of that, the answer is that Clement needs my goodwill today far more than he will ever need my father’s. And to make doubly sure of that, I have made it clear to the Pope that I will have my own spies watching closely. Should I ever hear the smallest whisper of suspicion that the Holy Father might have been in contact with my profane father, I will resign from the army, quit the Holy Land immediately with all my men, and leave him to work out his own destiny, and that of Holy Mother Church, with Barbarossa and his Germans.”
He thrust himself back from the fire and dragged his chair back to the table, where he leaned against the back of it, his forearms folded across its top. “As for the funding of the venture, I have told you the Church is willing to contribute gold under the terms of my recent agreement with Clement. And there are other sources of supply. That, too, was taken care of at Gisors. We initiated a new tax at that time, both in France and in our Plantagenet territories in England and elsewhere. It is called the Saladin Tax—a good name, don’t you think?” He plainly thought so; St. Clair could see that from the way the Duke almost smiled as he mentioned it. “I thought of it and named it. It will be most useful when I apply it fully in England. Each man in the realm, priests not excluded, will pay a three-year levy of one-tenth of all his income. Some people think it is too onerous, I am told, but that does not concern me. England is the richest jewel in the Plantagenet crown. It can well afford the price I demand of it in such a noble cause. And besides, I would sell London itself to raise this army, could I but find a buyer with sufficient wealth.” He thrust his lower lip out in a pout. “And a noble cause it is, Henry, apart from all the politics involved.”
Having delivered that opinion, the Duke appeared to have reminded himself of his official persona, and he stepped gravely from behind his chair and seated himself before continuing. “This upstart infidel in Palestine, this Sultan dog who calls himself Saladin, has raised his foul head far enough above the sand to beg to be stamped on. He has taken Jerusalem and Acre back from us, although he will not keep them long, and his treachery has resulted in the defeat of the Christian armies in the Holy Land and the death of hundreds of our finest knights, including those of the Temple and the Hospital. Not to mention the loss of the True Cross discovered by the blessed Empress Helena six hundred years ago. For all of those transgressions he deserves to be struck down, and it is all in hand. We will be in Outremer by this time next year, and you will be by my side.”
“I … see …” Henry had to fight hard to keep his voice and his face from betraying any vestige of the consternation and panic that was threatening to overwhelm him. He counted slowly to ten before continuing in a very calm voice, “In what capacity, my liege?”
Richard frowned. He was clearly reaching the end of his limited patience. “Capacity? You’ll be my Master-at-Arms, of course. What other capacity would you expect?”
“Master-at-Arms?” The unexpected declaration left St. Clair floundering.
“Why not? You think yourself unfit?”
“No,” Henry responded, stung by the tone in which the question had been uttered. “Not unfit, but perhaps no longer fitted, if you take my meaning. I am old now, my liege, too long removed from the field. This time next year I will be fifty, and I have not swung a sword in years. In truth, since my wife died I have not even sat astride a horse. There must be younger men at your command, more suited to this task you would have me attempt.”
“Away with that old man nonsense! My father is fifty-nine and he was in the saddle, fighting me tooth and nail in Normandy, mere months ago. Besides, it’s not your muscles I require, Henry, it’s your brains, your skills and experience, your knowledge of men and warfare, and, above all else, your loyalty. I can trust you with absolute certainty, and there are few men about me of whom I can say that.”
“But—”
“No buts, man. Have you not heard a word I’ve said?
The ruck of folk, both here and in my soon-to-be new kingdom, think I should take William Marshall of England to my heart. Yes, Marshall is the finest soldier of our time, bar me myself. But William Marshall is my father’s man. Has been all his life, body and soul. So he can never be mine. He has my father’s thinking and his prejudices. He dislikes me and distrusts me and he always has, seeing in me his master’s natural but begrudged heir and resenting me for it. I will not have him come that close to my designs, for I distrust him even more than he does me. Is that plain enough for you?”
“Yes, my liege, it is … yet I would beg the privilege to be allowed to think upon this for a time.”
“Think about it for as long as you wish, Henry, but think not to ignore my wishes. I will have it thus, and you’ll refuse me, as your true liege lord, at your peril.” Richard fell silent then, uncaring of St. Clair’s reaction to his words, and sat stiffly, his brow knitting as he glanced around him, half turning towards the door at his back.
“Where is your son, young André?” He turned back to face his host. “Still out tomcatting at this time of night? He had better be, or I’ll not take kindly to his slighting me.” He stopped, struck by the expression on Sir Henry’s face. “What’s wrong, Henry? Something’s amiss, I see it in your eyes. Where is the lad?”
The door opened at that point and a servant entered, his head obsequiously downcast, and scurried towards the fireplace, clearly intending to add more fuel. Henry raised his hand and voice, stopping the fellow in his tracks and dismissing him instantly. As the man hurried away, closing the door noiselessly behind him, his master stood and removed his heavy mantle, folding it gently over the back of his chair before he himself moved to the fireplace. There he silently set about selecting logs and placing them carefully atop the fire, grateful for the chance to collect his thoughts. He had forgotten how disconcertingly intuitive Richard Plantagenet could be on occasion, and as he placed each log and thrust it down into the coals with his booted foot, he cursed himself for his lack of caution in this particular matter.
Richard, however, had no intention of allowing his host to escape the hook. “Well, Henry? I’m waiting. Where is young André?”
St. Clair straightened his back and sighed, then turned to face the Duke squarely. “I cannot answer that, my liege, for I truly do not know.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? You don’t know where he is tonight, or you plain don’t know where he is at all?”
“The latter, my liege. I have no knowledge of his whereabouts.”
Richard pushed himself upright in his chair, making a great show of wide-eyed surprise. “No knowledge of his—?” He turned to direct an incredulous look at the silent knight de Sablé. “This is a man who has but one son, Robert, and I have seen him spend more time with the boy in a single day than my old lion spent with myself and all my brothers in his lifetime. And now he does not know his whereabouts?” He turned back then to St. Clair, all trace of raillery vanishing. “When did you see him last, then?”
; St. Clair shrugged. “It has been more than two months since last he spent a night beneath this roof.”
“Then whose roof does he sleep beneath tonight? And before you answer that question, know that I noticed how you avoided my last one. Has he a mistress?”
“No, my liege, to the best of my knowledge he has not.”
“So when did you last have contact with him? Take care, Henry.” St. Clair inhaled deeply, knowing there was no way to avoid answering. “Two days ago, my liege. Contact, but purely indirect, through another. I sent him food and clothing.”
“Food and clothing? Is he a fugitive?”
“Aye, my lord, he is.”
“From whom, and for what cause?”
St. Clair could not bear to look the other man in the eyes any longer, and he turned away towards the fire. “He killed a priest.”
“A priest? By God’s holy arse, this calls for more wine. Pour some for us, and then sit down and tell us your tale, for it sounds as though it must be worth an ear. And wipe the misery from your mien, my friend. Bear in mind the name and status of your audience. We have yet to meet the priest who dares to look at us defiantly, ever since my father dealt with the Englishman Becket. Quick now, man, pour, and then tell us what occurred.”
Heartened in spite of his own pessimism by his liege’s obvious contempt for priests in general and by the influence he knew Richard could bring to bear if he cared to, Henry went to the table and poured three brimming goblets of wine while de Sablé stood up and pulled his chair over to the fireplace by Richard’s. He served both of his guests, then dragged his own chair over to join them before returning for his own cup, sipping from it slowly as he returned thoughtfully to his seat, deciding how he would present his story.
Richard’s patience, notoriously scant at the best of times, wore out rapidly, and as usual it was he who broke the silence.
“So, he killed a priest. How and why?”
“By accident,” St. Clair replied. “Although the intent was there, and the man deserved to die. He was raping a woman.”
“Raping a woman … the priest?”
“Aye, and there were four of them, all priests. André
came upon them accidentally, but there was a fastflowing river between them and him and so he could not close with them quickly enough to stop them. He shouted to let them know he had seen them, fired a crossbow bolt at them, and galloped to the only bridge, half a mile downstream. It was too far. By the time he got back to where they had been, they had killed the woman and three of them had vanished, leaving a fourth man dead. André’s crossbow bolt, loosed at random, had found a mark, falling from the sky to pierce the skull of one of them.”
“And this fellow was a priest?”
“He wore the square tonsure of a Benedictine, so he was either priest or monk. But his friends had taken his clothes and the woman’s, so André could tell nothing of the fellow’s ranking from his habit.”
“If André could not come close to them, and they were all unclothed, how could he know they were all priests?”
“He had recognized another of the four from across the river, a fellow he had met and had words with once before. This was a priest by the name of de Blois, whose family’s lands abut ours. The rest was deduction. For if two of the four were priests, involved in criminal activities, then it made sense that the other two should also be priests. But that argument is moot now, for we know who the others are.”
“How so? Are they in custody?”
“No, my liege, they are not. André gave chase, but when he did not find them immediately he sought assistance. He came directly home and told me what had happened—this was our own land—and so I sent the captain of my household guard with a party of men to retrieve the bodies and bring them back here. But there were no bodies there when they arrived. They found blood at the scene, and they found marks to indicate that something heavy had been dragged away, but nothing else.”
“You mean bodies were dragged away, I presume?” “Yes, my lord. There is a great hole close to that point, a vertical chasm that the people hereabouts call the Devil’s Pit. It falls straight down into the earth and appears to have no bottom, and local legend says it simply appeared there one night, back in the time of my grandsire’s grandsire. My captain believed the bodies had been thrown down there and were beyond recovery.”
“And had they?”
“One of them had. The woman. And with her body, the priest’s head.”
“The priest’s head …” Richard was frowning. “What happened to the rest of him? And who was the woman?”
“No one knows who the woman was, my lord. No one has asked after her or come looking for her, and none of our local women are missing. All the women within a circle of twenty miles from here have been accounted for. It would appear safe to say she was not from these parts.”
“It would be equally safe to say she might not have existed at all, save in the mind of her creator, Sir André St. Clair—” The Duke forestalled Sir Henry’s protest with a chopping motion of one hand. “I am not saying I believe that to be true, Henry, but were you and I judges, seeking the truth, we would have no choice but to consider that. With no proof of this woman’s death, and no faintest knowledge of her identity, there is no evidence, other than the word of your son, that she ever existed at all. Even were she a stranger, she must have come here to visit someone, and her disappearance would have given rise to questions. So we will come back to that matter. Now tell me about the priest’s body, headless as it was.”
“The body of the priest was presented as evidence that the poor fellow had been murdered by my son.”
“Explain that.”
Sir Henry St. Clair nodded his head in acquiescence.
“From what I have been able to piece together, my liege, the three miscreants stole the bodies, cut off their dead companion’s head, and threw it into the Devil’s Pit along with the woman. They then took his body back with them because he had a deformed hand that identified him beyond doubt as one Father Gaspard de Leon, a visiting priest from Arles. They then told a tale of how, on their way to join their nowdead brother, they had witnessed him in the act of apprehending a sinner in the act of committing sodomy with a young boy—”
“Pardon me—,” de Sablé began, but Richard waved him to silence.
“Go on, Henry. Were you about to say they accused young André of sodomy with a boy?”
“Aye, my lord. I was.”
“Say on, then. Tell me.”
“They said that they had seen the scandalized priest challenge the pederast and attempt to save the boy, but the sodomite had sent the boy scurrying away and then seized his sword and killed Father de Leon, cleaving his skull. He had then cut off the priest’s head and taken it away with him, wrapped in de Leon’s priestly garments, leaving a naked, unidentifiable body behind him. He had not seen them, they said, being separated from them by the swollen river.
“As soon as he had gone, they made their way to the bridge and back to the scene of the murder, then followed the tracks of the killer’s horse down the hillside to the Devil’s Pit, where they arrived in time to see him throw the severed head down into the abyss. Fearful for their own lives, they hid and waited until the killer left, then made their way directly to the castle of their landlord, Baron Reynauld de la Fourrière, and testified under oath to him, and to their superior, Abbot Thomas, about what they had seen, and adding that one of them, the priest called de Blois, had recognized the murderer, a local knight called André St. Clair.”
St. Clair looked from one to the other of his listeners, both of whom sat stone faced. When he saw that they had nothing to say, he continued. “I found out all about this the morning after, when a squad of Baron de la Fourrière’s men came hammering on my door, demanding that I surrender my son to answer the charges of sodomy and murder brought against him. Fortunately, André had left before they came, and I sent a messenger to find him, warning him to stay away.”
&nbs
p; “Sodomy.” Richard’s voice was flat and hard. “They accused André of sodomy?”
“Aye, my lord. They did.”
“And you did nothing? I find that hard to credit.”
“What could I do? For that matter, what could they do? André was beyond their reach at that time, and I knew I needed to make sure he stayed there, for I saw no hope of his receiving justice in this matter in the verdict of the Church. I asked myself what man of goodwill, in his right mind, would publicly give consideration to the possibility that three distraught priests might have beheaded their companion and disposed of his head to protect themselves, or that the single man accused in this case, who made no denial of having killed the dead man, might be telling the truth when he condemned his three priestly accusers for the rape and the murder of an innocent girl?
“And so I have not set eyes on my son or spoken with him since.”
“Not once? Why not?”
“Because I dare not, my liege. I am watched constantly and, with very few exceptions, I know not whom to trust. There is a price on my son’s head, sufficiently high to tempt any man to turn him over to the Church and what it must see as justice.”
Sir Robert de Sablé glanced at Richard. “May I speak, my liege?”
“Of course you may. Speak up.”
“It unsettles me that the woman has not been either identified or claimed, or even reported missing. I find that to be not merely incredible but deeply troubling, for much of it makes nonsense of both sides of this sorry tale.” He looked directly at St. Clair. “Have you discussed this with your son at all?”
St. Clair’s headshake was brief. “No. When first he told me of it, her identity did not appear to have great import. The urgency for me at that moment lay in taking immediate steps to retrieve her body, and her assailant’s. There should have been ample time thereafter to establish who she was. But then the bodies vanished, and that set everything at odds.”
“But surely—”
“Surely we should have discussed it later, is that what you were about to say? We would have, without fail, but la Fourrière’s people arrived soon after dawn the following morning and by then André was already gone.”