Mathilde 02 - The Poison Maiden (3 page)

I returned to the tray. The bread and cheese had been left covered. I examined both but could detect no taint. The potage of meat and diced vegetables was cold. I sniffed the bowl, and immediately recognised an old acquaintance: the magnificent glistening purple monkshood. Its red berry smell conceals the most deadly poison, particularly the juice crushed from the roots and seeds. If consumed, monkshood scours the organs of the belly like a sharpened steel rasp. Master Rahomer, and I was sure it was he, had chosen well. What could I do? I am no pug-nosed brawler in a London runnel. My opponent had a soul as narrow as a coffin, hard black with malice, and a conscience unbending as iron. He intended to kill me, yet to whom could I appeal? Who would defend me?

Before Vespers that very evening, I stole round to the anker-hold. Rahomer was standing at the ledge, hacking at his teeth with a toothpick. His surprise and consternation at my abrupt appearance were both his judge and jury. I gabbled about how unwell I felt. Rahomer smiled, nodded understandingly and added that perhaps I should retire. I did, but not to my chamber. I returned to Isabella’s tomb. I leaned against the statues carved on its side and whispered my terrors and fears. I do not dread death; it is just that my confession must be made before I go. I crouched there in the shadows and waited for the reply. It came, Isabella’s voice echoing through my soul.

‘Mathilde,
ma petite
, I cannot defend you now. Nobody can, except yourself. This man will kill you, so strike first, strike hard!’

I went into God’s Acre and harvested a yew tree, its needles soft and fat, the berries shining red. I mixed up a paste. The following morning I stood by the priory postern gate and bought a bowl of sweetmeats from a baker taking a tray down to a nearby tavern. I mixed in the yew paste and left the bowl on the anker-hold ledge as a gift from some visitor or pilgrim. Rahomer ate it before Nones. He was ill before Vespers and dead before Matins the following morning.
Sic transit gloria mundi
– thus passes the glory of the world. To all intents and purposes Rahomer died of a falling sickness, a sudden failure of the heart. His corpse was dressed for burial and placed under a purple drape on a funeral trestle before the great rood screen. Father Prior sang the requiem mass and delivered that sermon. I listened to it scrupulously and helped shoulder Rahomer’s corpse out to be buried in the poor man’s plot. One day I will join him there, though at God’s invitation, not the king’s. I wondered if I should ask Father Prior to send a copy of his funeral homily to the court, but decided against it. You don’t cast pearls before swine!

Three days later Father Prior summoned me to a meeting in his wood-panelled chamber. I sat on a faldstool, aware of the faces of angels, saints and demons staring down at me from the paintings, frescoes and triptychs that decorated his parlour. He sat in a window seat, threading Ave beads through his fingers, a youngish-looking man, certainly a good one. I, Mathilde of Westminster, have, in the words of the old proverb, ‘lain down with wolves and woke howling’. I can recognise a wolf when I see one! Father Prior, however, was a good shepherd; he was truly concerned for me. He referred obliquely to the sudden death of Master Rahomer. I rose, walked over and pressed my fingers against his lips. He looked startled.

‘Father Stephen,’ I begged, ‘please do not ask about him. What you don’t know cannot harm you.’

He gently removed my hand. ‘Be careful, Mathilde. Tomorrow, the Feast of St Dionysius, Magister Theobald, Advocatus Regis, one of the king’s most skilled lawyers, a priest of the Royal Chapel, is coming here to question you.’

‘Father,’ I stepped back and smiled, ‘he’ll not be the first.’

Magister Theobald swept into Grey Friars shortly after the Jesus mass. He demanded to see me in my own chamber with its thick walls and narrow windows; an eavesdropper would certainly have found it difficult to listen in. He was a porky man, with a balding head, his plump face shining with oil from the ripe fruits of good living. An urbane, cynical soul with pebble-black eyes and sensuous jutting lips under a sharp, hooked nose. He settled himself on the great chair that Father Prior had provided, while I, like some sinner come to judgement, perched on a cushioned footstool. He was arrogant, so I waited. A man deeply impressed by himself, Master Theobald had only one uncertainty: why someone as important as himself had been chosen to question someone like me. He soon discovered the reason.

‘Magister,’ I began, ‘why are you here? Why do you want to question me? On what authority?’

‘My child . . .’

‘I’m not your child.’

‘My daughter . . .’

‘I’m certainly not that, Magister, nor your sister, nor your mother.’

‘Mistress . . .’ Magister Theobald breathed in deeply, nostrils flaring, eyes rounded. ‘According to the law—’

‘According to canon law,’ I interrupted, ‘this is church land. I am a relict in a priory of the Franciscan order.’

‘Why are you a recluse, Mathilde?’ Theobald shifted his ground.

‘Because I chose to be. Do you want to hear my confession?’

‘Why, Mathilde, are you in God’s grace?’

‘If I am, I ask God to keep me there. If I am not, I ask him to return me there. Do you want to hear my confession?’

Magister Theobald moved uneasily. He became more formal.

‘You are Mathilde de Clairebon, born near Bretigny?’

‘You know I am.’

‘You joined your uncle, Sir Reginald de Deynecourt, senior preceptor in the Order of the Temple. He was a physician general in Paris?’

‘You know that too.’

‘You acquired whatever medical knowledge you have—’

‘You make it sound like an insult!’

‘You did not attend a faculty of medicine?’

‘My knowledge of medicine is as great as any practitioner. It is based on observation and treatment.’ I smiled. ‘Take yourself, Magister Theobald. You like claret, hence the vein streaks in your nose and cheeks. You sit uneasy on cushions and wince slightly when you move: piles? The veins in your arse are extended. You have difficulty at the stool. You should drink more water and eat fresh fruit and vegetables not smothered in some rich sauce. You have wax in your right ear and sometimes the catarrh, hence you find it difficult to hear. You act as if you are confident, yet if so, why are your fingernails so frayed? What do you want me to tell you, Magister? How juice extracted from a bucket full of snails covered in treacle and hung over a basin during the night will cure a sore throat?’ I laughed. ‘There are practitioners of physic who would recommend that. Or if you have the gout, take a young puppy all of one colour, cut him in half and lay one side hot, the flesh steaming, against the soreness? Or a field mouse, skinned and made into a small pie, then eaten, its warm skin bound against the throat for nine days, will cure a cough? I can distil such a potion, though the cure will kill.’

Magister Theobald held up a hand. ‘Mistress, you were in Paris when Philip le Bel destroyed the Templars?’

‘Yes.’

‘He destroyed your uncle?’

‘Of course. I had to flee. My uncle thought the safest place was in the household of Philip IV’s daughter Isabella. She was about to travel to England to marry her betrothed, Edward, Prince of Wales.’

‘Were you safe?’

‘Philip and his coven, Marigny, Nogaret and Plaisans, overlooked me until it was too late.’

‘And you,’ Magister Theobald pointed a finger, ‘you waged war against them?’

‘I had no choice, as I would against any man who threatened me.’

Magister Theobald pursed his lips at that.

‘Do you believe the Templar curse?’

I stared back.

‘Were you not helped by a former Templar?’ Magister Theobald stared down at the small scrolls half concealed by the folds of his robe. ‘Ah yes, that’s his name: Bertrand Demontaigu – the priest-knight.’

I caught my breath. Just the mention of his name by another made me start.

‘You loved him?’

‘Yes,’ I replied slowly. ‘I say that because he is now beyond all temporal power.’

‘He was a priest?’

‘I loved him, Magister. Where is the sin, the crime in that?’ I leaned forward. ‘Have you ever loved, I mean truly loved?’

‘I am a priest.’

‘Where in scripture does it say that that stops you from loving?’

‘A scholar,’ Magister Theobald mocked. ‘Mathilde, you should have entered religion!’

‘I never left it.’

‘Taken vows.’

‘I have, as solemn as any sworn by you.’

‘Mathilde, Mathilde.’ Magister Theobald rose to his feet and walked across to stand over me. ‘Why do you not speak to the king?’

‘Is that why you are here, Magister, to learn what I know? To urge me to confess?’

‘To confess?’

‘Come, Magister.’ I gestured with my fingers. He leaned down, and I whispered in his ear one petty hint about Isabella’s great secrets. He drew away, pale, eyes all startled.

‘I don’t believe—’

‘Oh do, my child,’ I teased, ‘believe me. If you told the king what I have just told you, you would not live to see the first Sunday of Advent next.’ I shrugged. ‘An unfortunate accident, a contagion or something you ate, squeezing itself down your throat and depositing in your belly a feast of toads that, as you die, will rumble like a fire blocked in a chimney.’

Magister Theobald backed away and sat down.

‘I’m trying to protect you, Magister. Go back and report that I am as obdurate as ever.’

The king’s advocate wiped the sheen of sweat from his face. ‘The old queen,’ he muttered, ‘she babbled so much when she died.’

‘Leave that!’

‘One thing.’ Magister Theobald drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. ‘The Poison Maiden – who was she?’

‘Ah,’ I smiled, getting to my feet, ‘tell his Grace the Poison Maiden is not far from me, or indeed from him.’

Magister Theobald stared back, perplexed.

‘My child,’ I bowed, ‘I have said enough.’

I left and returned to the sanctuary, where I knelt beside her tomb, cooling my hot face against the marble. I stared down the nave and thought of the Poison Maiden. It was time to return to my confession.

Winter’s spite was spent. Candlemas had come and gone in a glow of light through dark sanctuaries, chancels and chantry chapels. Edward of England had scarcely been crowned a month, yet already the Great Lords, as they called themselves – Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke; Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln; Bohun of Hereford; Beauchamp of Warwick; and de Clare of Gloucester – were mustering for war. The roads and lanes into London surged with fighting men of every description. Archers dressed in quilted jerkins over homespun shirts, around their waists leather belts with scabbards for sword and dagger, their green serge leggings and crude oxhide boots caked in mud. Their helmets and neck cloths glistened in the sheen of the spring rain, and against their shoulders were longbow staves, the precious twine concealed in a leather sleeve to protect it against the wet. Behind these marched masses of foot in their leather jerkins, heads and faces concealed by conical helmets with broad nose guards. Crossbowmen followed armoured in kettle hats and hauberks; men-at-arms marched in leather jacks and quilted gambesons, coats of scaled armour, the iron skullcaps on their heads laced beneath the chin. They all carried round shields or targes, in their belts shafted axes, clubs and daggers. All these troops streamed towards Westminster, the retinues of the lords who hoped to unfold their war banners in a blaze of arms: dragons, castles, chevrons, martlets, griffins, bears and lions of every colour. The troops mustered in the fields and wastelands around Westminster, impatient for their masters, conventicled in nearby St Peter’s Abbey, to issue their defiance of the Crown.

Across the narrow road, protected by fortified gates and crenellated walls, lurked their intended victim: Edward of England, with his golden hair and olive skin, two yards in height, a prince of striking appearance. His finely etched face was made all the more remarkable by a straight nose, full lips and a generous mouth, and his slightly drooping right eye, a legacy from his father, gave him an enigmatic, mysterious look, as if he was constantly weighing what he saw and heard. As well he might. The Great Lords were demanding the arrest and trial of Edward’s favourite, the man he called his bosom friend, his dear brother, a new Jonathan to his David, the Gascon, Peter Gaveston. The Lords thought different. In their eyes Gaveston was the alleged offspring of a witch, a commoner unjustly exalted by the king to the earldom of Cornwall, a premier lordship of the kingdom, a public display that the favourite was the king’s heart and soul. Gaveston had also been given in marriage Margaret de Clare, the king’s own niece. He was allowed to display extravagant arms dominated by a gold-scarlet eagle. In the eyes of the Great Ones, Gaveston, despite his dark hair and splendid physique, adorned by costly robes of silk, velvet and damascene, was a cockatrice. He was compared to that fabulous two-legged dragon with a cock’s head and face whose stare and breath were fatal to all it glared at. In a word, Gaveston was a blight on the kingdom. He was that mysterious, fabulous beast, with the head of a man and the body of a lion protected by porcupine quills and a scaly tail, which roamed the land dealing out death and devastation. He was a marined, a merman, neither one thing nor the other. The Lords wanted him dead. Resentful at his hold over the king, his elevation to power, his marriage, his wealth, his wit, not to mention his skill at arms, they were truly jealous of Gaveston. They wanted him gone and had come fully armed to the Parliament at Westminster to achieve that.