devilstone chronicles 01 - devils band (5 page)

“I admit I’ve cast spells and fashioned amulets but only to help King Henry in his quest for a son to succeed him,” said Thomas bitterly. “Yet despite my lack of success, Wolsey envied my high standing at court and started spreading the false rumour that I’d cast a spell to make the queen barren. Eventually the king began to believe the Ipswich butcher’s lies and I was forced to flee for my life.”

“You’re not the only one to have suffered at the hands of that lying, crooked cleric,” said the swarthy man when Thomas had finished his story. “I was a captain of Queen Catherine’s Spanish guard with a nice safe job until I was falsely accused by Wolsey’s spies of seducing her lady in waiting.”

“You’re a Spaniard?” said Thomas.

“Me, a Spanish Don? I should say not,” spat the swarthy man. “I am Luis Quintana of Lisbon. I’m Portuguese and though you may not know me, I know you, Master Thomas Devilstone. I saw you many times in King Henry’s palaces and I was there during the farce of the queen’s last pregnancy.”

“You saw that?” said Thomas and he swallowed hard as he recalled a night he’d much rather forget.

“I was guarding Queen Catherine’s chamber during her last confinement,” said Quintana tapping the side of his long, thin nose knowingly. “I was there when you cast the old sow’s horoscope and predicted that she’d give birth to a healthy prince before the night’s end. You made an unholy mess of that my friend. A blind sawbones couldn’t mistake trapped wind for birthing pains, but you did.”

The failed fortune-teller fell silent with embarrassment as he remembered the ignoble end to his career in astrology. His reputation, and Henry’s last hope of his ageing queen producing a male heir, had evaporated in the cloud of foul smelling gas that had erupted from beneath Catherine of Aragon’s nightdress. Worse still, Thomas’ failure to reveal the truth about the queen’s phantom pregnancy had been the perfect opportunity for Wolsey to turn the king against him.

The cruel irony was that Thomas had known it would’ve been impossible for Catherine to conceive a child naturally because, according to her maids, the queen had ceased her monthly courses more than a year ago. He’d also known that it had been five years since the queen’s last true pregnancy had produced a stillborn child and a decade since she’d been delivered of the healthy Princess Mary. The conflict between the facts known to everyone at court, and the stars’ confident prediction that King Henry was destined to become a parent in the fifteenth year of his reign, had finally convinced Thomas that there had to be a fatal flaw in the supposed wisdom of astrology.

“I learned that night that a man can no more see his future in the stars than in the nightsoil floating in his
pisspot,” Thomas declared and he was surprised at Quintana’s reaction.

“But you were right all along! As you shall see when you hear my tale,” he said mysteriously.

The Portugee was happy to admit he’d been an insignificant member of Catherine of Aragon’s guard until an anonymous informer had accused him of seducing Mary Boleyn, the queen’s maid of honour and the king’s mistress. Though Mary was married to an obscure country squire, all London had known of her adulterous affair with the king and no one believed the child growing in her belly had been sired by her lawful husband. Quintana also insisted that, although he was no angel, he was not so stupid as to bed ‘the king’s whore’ and his arrest was part of a deeper plot to discredit the queen.

“So you see my incompetent star-gazing friend, we’re both victims of the same intrigue. Henry is the real father of Mary Boleyn’s brat, so hers must be the child your charts predicted,” said Quintana triumphantly. Thomas was about to point out that his astrological charts had definitely shown it was Catherine who was to bear Henry’s son, when the Portugee began to describe his unwilling role in the second part of the king’s dastardly plan to rid himself of both his wife and his mistress.

Quintana insisted that though Mary Boleyn’s pregnancy had proved Henry was still strong and virile this was only the beginning of the king’s problems. A royal bastard could never inherit the throne without starting a civil war so Henry had to prove he was
not
the father of Mary’s child
and
find a way to put aside his barren wife
so he could plant his seed in more fertile ground. Unfortunately for the queen’s Portuguese captain, Henry had decided that Quintana was dispensable enough to provide the solution to his dilemma.

“I was dragged to The Tower where the king’s own torturers threatened to nail my nutmegs to the rack and tear off my mainmast with red hot pincers unless I confessed that I’d ploughed the king’s wife as well as his mistress,” Quintana said grimly and he suddenly stopped talking as he remembered the blood-chilling horror of that night in the king’s dungeons. There was an uncomfortable silence until Thomas asked the question they all wanted answered.

“Did you admit to committing adultery with Catherine of Aragon and Mary Boleyn?” he said.

“Of course I did. I lied like an abbot caught in bed with his catamite and told them anything they wanted to hear. If a fat English king wants to abandon his faithful wife and pregnant whore so he can marry some other inbred, blue-blooded, brood mare what do I care? I’ll face any man in a fair fight but I’ll not suffer the torments of the rack for anyone,” said Quintana defiantly.

“But your lies didn’t save you did they? The king has sentenced you to hang and quite right too. Whether you committed treason with the queen or not, God’s commandments forbid the bearing false witness as well as adultery and the wages of sin is death,” interrupted the red bearded man.

“Perhaps God’s commandments should also forbid the torturing of innocent people but at least I’ll suffer a quick, clean death as a good Catholic and not as a heretic
Lutheran! Me they’ll hang quickly, but you they’ll roast slowly like a side of good English beef,” countered Quintana.

“I do not fear a martyr’s death at the stake,” said the red bearded man. “I’ve heard the true word of God from the monk Luther and I no longer wish to live in a corrupt world ruled by Satan and his servant, the anti-Christ Pope Clement.”

“This prophet of doom is Bos de Vries,” said Quintana to Thomas. “He’s a mad Frisian from some godforsaken sandbank off the coast of Holland. He thinks he’s been sent by Jesus to preach Luther’s New Covenant but don’t let him fool you. He’s nothing but a failed priest who abandoned the pulpit for the life of a pirate and a rebel and Wolsey will have him burned at the stake once the holy days of Lent have passed.”

“I am condemned for heresy not piracy or treason,” complained Bos who seemed strangely proud of his crimes. “I shall burn for a few minutes and then enter paradise but you, you traitorous Portuguese liar, shall burn for all eternity for betraying your lawful queen!”

“Is me betraying my queen any worse than you betraying your God?” retorted Quintana and there followed a bitter discussion as to whether apostasy, heresy, bearing false witness or fornication was the lesser sin. Thomas listened with amusement as Bos admitted that, in his youth, he’d harboured ambitions to become a Catholic priest until his theological education had been interrupted by a rebellion against the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian of Hapsburg.

Despite ruling an empire that stretched from the German Ocean to the Adriatic Sea, Maximilian had sought to add the tiny, independent Duchy of Friesland to his territories. Taking advantage of a local feud between claimants to the ducal coronet, the emperor had backed the pro-Hapsburg candidate, but the Frisians had refused to recognise the imperial puppet and had fought a long and bitter war, to depose him. To crush the rebellion once and for all, Maximillian had raised the infamous Black Band and these pitiless mercenaries had systematically laid waste to Friesland. Outraged by the bloody atrocities committed by the Black Band, Bos had left his seminary and joined the rebels.

“In the end God deserted us and we were defeated,” he said sadly. “Most of my comrades were hanged but I escaped to England where I learned the truth about the pope and his heretical church. In my desire to save others from the errors of the Roman Rite, I preached Luther’s New Gospel until that poxed, papal poltroon Cardinal Wolsey had me arrested. Yet I forgive him because after Easter I shall be with Christ and wear the golden crown of martyrdom.”

“If the angels can find a diadem big enough to fit your great fat Frisian head,” said Quintana prompting Bos to roar with anger and lunge at the Portugee but he came to the end of his iron tethers long before he could reach his target. Frustrated in his murderous ambition, Bos sank bank into the filthy straw and growled at Quintana like a whipped dog.

“How about you African? You’re a long way from home so how did you come to be in a foul English prison?” said
Thomas, “Have your heathen gods abandoned you just as our God has abandoned us?”

“I am no heathen,” said the African quietly. “My home is the desert kingdom of Nubia, which lies to the south of Mahometan Egypt, yet my God is the Christian god. Indeed my people accepted Lord Jesus into their hearts at a time when you Englishmen were still worshipping stones and trees.”

“You’re a Christian?” said Thomas in surprise.

“For a thousand years all Nubia honoured the Lord Jesus until our land was conquered by the infidel Funj and now our people are the oppressed slaves of the Mahometan Caliphs,” replied the Nubian.

Thomas had never heard of ‘The Funj’ so the Nubian told him that his enemies were a pagan tribe from beyond the marshes that marked the southern border of his kingdom. Twenty years ago, The Funj had overrun Christian Nubia, however their victory had been fleeting as they in turn had been invaded by Islamic Turkish armies, who were expanding south after their conquest of Egypt. In an attempt to preserve his independence, the Funj king Amara Dunqas had converted to Islam and forced his Nubian subjects, both pagan and Christian, to renounce the faiths of their ancestors.

“This happened in my father’s time,” said the Nubian. “My Father was Djoel, King of Dotawo, last of the four Christian kingdoms of Nubia, and I’m his son, also called Djoel, rightful king of all the lands between the First and Sixth Cataracts of the Nile.”

“He spins a good yarn but the truth is his name is Prometheus and he was a Southwark prizefighter until he was caught rigging crooked bouts,” sniffed Quintana. “Royal blood or not, he’ll be hanging from a gibbet by Pentecost, just like the rest of us.”

“Only my poverty drove me to a life of sin,” said Prometheus angrily. “When my father died, I fled into the desert with a few loyal companions and we carried on the war against The Funj but I was betrayed and captured. I refused to renounce Jesus so my captors sold me to the Barbary corsairs and I was sent to suffer a living death chained to the oars of their filthy galleys.”

Prometheus told of how he’d been freed during a sea battle between the Muslim corsairs and a Christian fleet from Venice. After his liberation he’d joined the crew of a Venetian merchantman sailing for England but once his ship had arrived London his luck had turned. Whilst their captain waited for a new cargo, the sailors had passed the time playing dice and Prometheus had quickly developed a passion for the game. Unfortunately, his desire to win had become so strong he’d killed one of the sailors he’d caught cheating with a single blow. The captain had ordered the Nubian to be hanged at once but, using only his fists, Prometheus had managed to fight his way off the ship and disappear into the twilight world of Southwark’s brothels, bear pits and boxing booths.

“I will not be cheated by those who are so low born they have to look up to see the bellies of snakes but I knew it was wrong to kill the man,” said Prometheus. “I tried
to make amends by using my gift for healing to make my way in the world but the Mark of Cain was upon me.”

The Nubian explained that during his years spent fighting for his throne, the Christian hermits who lived in remote desert caves had taught him the skills of a physician so he could treat his men wounded in battle. He’d learned how mouldering grain could cure fever, how acacia thorns and goat sinew could stitch wounds and how snake venom could make thick humours flow. Prometheus had tried to use this knowledge to earn his living as an apothecary but the residents of Southwark and Bankside had not trusted the potions and physicks sold by an enormous African.

In desperation, Prometheus had turned to his other talent, knocking people senseless with one punch, and joined a boxing booth. He’d fought under the name of ‘Prometheus The African Titan’ but he’d soon tired of splitting the lips and blacking the eyes of drunken blacksmiths and costers. Impatient to earn enough money to buy his passage home, he’d agreed to start losing bouts in exchange for gold. After one particularly egregious fraud had resulted in a riot, Prometheus had been arrested, convicted of cheating those wagering on the bout and sentenced to hang.

“But if you can’t bear to be cheated by lesser men why did you agree to lose?” Thomas asked.

“Because I wasn’t losing, I was winning a fortune by betting against myself,” said Prometheus with a broad grin. “Yet once again I was cheated of what was rightfully mine by the greedy lawyers who were supposed to plead
my case and by the magistrates who took my bribes yet still condemned me to a pauper’s death.”

“What a fine quartet we make,” laughed Quintana when the Nubian had finished his story. “A witch, a liar, a heretic and a cheat but at least we all have one thing in common. We’ve all failed most miserably in our criminal ambitions and we shall suffer death for our failure!”

“Not me, I intend to leave here as soon as possible and lead a rebellion that will drive the Tudors from England!” Thomas announced boldly. Having heard Bos and Prometheus boast of their parts in their country’s rebellions, Thomas confidently expected that they’d be the first to offer him their support but he’d gravely misjudged their mood.

Bos declared that whilst it was every man’s duty to resist a tyrant who threatened the ancient rights and liberties of a free people, just as the Frisians had resisted the oppression of the invading Hapsburgs, rebellions against lawful monarchs were born from the sin of pride. The ex-priest added that pride was the worst of all sins as it had led to Lucifer’s army of rebel angels being cast out of Heaven and in their fall were sown the seeds of Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden.