Falconer and the Death of Kings (29 page)

A deathly silence had followed this revelation, and the women were swiftly dismissed. As Zellot and his guests considered their next actions, the sky darkened and large drops of rain began to fall. The castle felt cold, damp and gloomy, as if it had been in mourning for the dead for years. Falconer knew he had to check the women’s story in case it was just rumour.

‘Is Tom still a servant here?’

Zellot looked up at Falconer, his eyes reddened from the wine he had consumed since hearing the terrible tale. He nodded his head.

‘He is the only one left in the stables. There are not many horses to look after now. And yes, before you ask, you can speak to him. Offer him some reward, if you have to. God knows he needs some help in the stables. But don’t tell me the result of your interrogation. I don’t want to know. Then I can pretend what I heard was all servants’ gossip.’

‘We will leave immediately after we have spoken to Tom.’ Falconer patted Zellot’s arm. ‘You are a good man, John Zellot. Stick to your task, and you will be rewarded.’

Zellot was not so sure, but he stood and shook Falconer’s hand and kissed Saphira’s. She had one bit of advice for him as they departed.

‘Don’t drink too much, Master Zellot. And practise your swordplay at the lists, not on defenceless goblets.’

As she and Falconer walked across the courtyard, heads bent against the relentless rain, she asked him a question.

‘Do you really think Zellot will be rewarded for babysitting this old castle?’

‘I’m afraid not. Poor man, he was so ambitious when we last saw him at Westminster. I fear he will now be forgotten in this arsehole of a place.’

Entering the run-down stable that stank of horse piss and rotting straw, Falconer spotted a bent-backed old man lovingly rubbing down their two rounceys. He called out.

‘Tom?’

The old man straightened his back with a wince of pain and peered at the two people who had entered his domain. He was ashamed of its state, but he was too old to look after it properly by himself. In its heyday, the castle had a dozen stable-lads running around.

‘I am Tom, sir. What is it you might want? I have looked after your mounts as well as I could, sir.’

‘You have done a good job, Tom. As I am told you have for many years for Master Zellot, Lord Edmund and his father Richard before him.’

Tom squinted suspiciously at the black-clad man. He was not used to flattery, and when it came he was sure something awkward was to follow. He shuffled his feet waiting for it. He did not have to wait long. The red-haired woman hung back in the shadows, and the man asked the question Tom had been fearing for the last two years.

‘Meg and Annie have been telling us about the death of poor Prince John. They said you told them something about it. Something you saw.’

Tom poked at the dirty straw with his sandal.

‘Those two blabbermouths should keep their traps shut. I saw nothing.’

Saphira stepped forward, touching Tom’s arm gently.

‘There is nothing to fear. No one will know it was you who told us. And John Zellot will reward your honesty. He might even be persuaded to find a stable-lad to make your work here a little lighter.’

She could sense that the old man was weakening. He wanted to tell his tale to someone. She held her breath, and finally it tumbled out.

‘I did see something. It was unmistakeable, especially when I tell you that the boy used to argue with the master all the time. And Richard hated being crossed by anyone. But even more so by young John, who never stopped reminding the master that he would be king one day. Even so, the master shouldn’t have put the little lad on such a wild and large animal. He had no hope of controlling it. Then I saw Lord Richard hold the scabbard of his sword at the top and poke the pommel in the horse’s flank and rake it down. He must have intended the boy some harm, but God alone knows if he meant to kill him. But kill him he did.’

Saphira thanked the old stable-hand and took the reins of her rouncey from his hand. She and Falconer led their horses out into the rain and mounted, gathering their cloaks around them. It would be a miserable journey onwards to Oxford. As they plodded towards the castle’s inner drawbridge, Tom called out after them.

‘I think he was remorseful afterwards – Lord Richard. I reckon that is what brought on the attack that led to him suffering from the half-dead disease. And his eventual death.’

Falconer checked the progress of his horse, thinking of how to ask his question.

‘Did you expect Richard’s death, when it came? Was he too ill to survive?’

‘No, that’s the funny thing. Master hated the state he was in, but that had made him even more cantankerous. He wasn’t frail, or near death. So it came as a surprise when he died in his sleep like that.’

The rain beat down, and Falconer and Saphira bowed their heads and rode off westwards.

THIRTY-ONE

The Feast of St Edward the Confessor, the Fifth Day of January 1274

F
alconer had been waiting months for some news from Paris. It was a reply to an enquiry he had sent for the attention of Grand Master Guillaume de Beaujeu. He had expected and hoped that it would come soon, for it would have concluded his long-drawn-out enquiry into the lethal activities of Amaury de Montfort. Once known to him as Jack Hellequin. Falconer wanted Guillaume to question Odo de Reppes once again about the night Richard of Cornwall died. He was still convinced that Odo had meant him to understand he was not responsible for Richard’s death. That Amaury had desired it, but that the Templar had been too late to carry out his task. Someone had beaten him to it. Falconer needed Odo to tell him all he knew about that night. But in lieu of travelling once again to the Paris Temple at the Marais, where Odo was incarcerated, he had to rely on Guillaume being his agent. Now months had passed without a reply to his letter, and he felt very frustrated. His only consolation was that King Edward was still tied up in Gascony and had not returned to England to be crowned.

Wandering the water meadows to the west of Oxford, he rehearsed in his head the events surrounding Prince John’s and Richard’s two deaths. There was no doubt that Uncle Richard had caused the death of the child, leaving the sickly young Henry as Edward’s only male heir. And the gossip was that he might not last out the year either. And the next male child – Alfonso – whom Saphira had helped bring into the world was barely a year old yet. Babies’ lives were so perilous. Edward could only hope that, with Amaury still at liberty, one of his boys would survive him. But the question for Falconer still remained. If Amaury, through the agency of Odo de Reppes, did not kill Richard, who did? And for what reason?

His wanderings around the water meadows, with the spiralling towers of Oseney Abbey rising out of the mist, gave him no answers. But when he returned to Aristotle’s Hall, one of his students was waiting for him with news. Peter Mithian had been glad to see Master Falconer’s return. Brother Pecham, who had been left in charge of maintaining Aristotle’s Hall and of teaching Falconer’s students in his absence, had been dull and of a strict nature. Falconer was an uncompromising taskmaster, but he was always entertaining and never predictable. Everyone was glad he was back.

‘Master, there are two visitors waiting for you in your solar.’

‘You allowed them up into my private quarters, Peter Mithian? How many times have I told you not to let strangers in there.’

Mithian feigned repentance, hiding a smirk behind a raised palm.

‘I am sorry, master, but they insisted.’

Grumbling under his breath, Falconer hurried up the rickety stairs to his solar set high in the eaves of the narrow tenement. He was sure some meddling envoy of the king had barged his way in and would be disturbing the perfect disorder of his room. He swung the door open and called out as he entered.

‘I hope you have not touched anything, or I shall be searching forever.’

The familiar voice he heard shocked him to his core.

‘You do not surprise me, William. This table looks as disordered as your mind.’

Squinting into the sunlight that hung low outside the narrow window arch, Falconer strove to make sense of what he saw. Before him stood the slight figure of a tonsured Franciscan monk who had not been allowed in Oxford for years.

‘Roger? Is that you?’

‘Put your eye-lenses on, William, and you will see that it is I. And I have brought you back your able scribe and assistant.’

Falconer looked to his right for the first time, recalling that Mithian had said he had two visitors. Standing to one side, in the shadows, his hands modestly folded in front of him, was Thomas Symon. He strode over to him and took one of his hands, shaking it vigorously.

‘Thomas. It is so good to see you again.’

Symon could not repress a huge grin, and he extricated his hand from Falconer’s only to rub the top of his head with it in embarrassment. Falconer then clutched Roger Bacon to him and gave him a hug, whispering in his ear.

‘They have set you free at last, then?’

Bacon freed himself from his friend’s clutches and smiled.

‘My order has seen fit to permit me to return to Oxford, where I may teach and write. So long as I show my completed writings to my Father Superior. My three volumes are still under lock and key in Paris, however.’

Falconer glanced at Thomas, who was still grinning from ear to ear.

‘And the task Thomas and yourself undertook in Paris?’

Thomas opened the flap on the satchel slung over his shoulder. Delving inside, he pulled out the corner of a substantial bundle of parchments. Bacon waved a hand.

‘Our little conspiracy continues, and Thomas works on recording my… lectures. How industrious of him. But we have something else for you. I nearly forgot in all the welcoming hugs. Thomas.’

Thomas nodded and slipped a single letter out of his tightly packed satchel, handing it over to Falconer. He took it, examining the hand that had scribed his name on the outside of the folded document. He didn’t recognize that, but then a clerk will have written it, because the wax seal on the edges of the parchment was clearly that of the Grand Master of the Order of the Poor Knights of the Temple. Guillaume de Beaujeu could write, but his hand was slow and awkward. He had dictated a letter to one of his clerks and sealed it not with his personal ring but with that of his office. Falconer had a sense of impending doom about this communication from his old friend. He broke the seal and moved to the window to read the letter.

The signature was Guillaume’s own hand, but the sentiment rang untrue to Falconer’s ears. It was the letter of a Grand Master, and in the reading of it Falconer sadly realized he had lost a friend. He also had the uneasy feeling that Odo de Reppes had been dispatched by someone seeking to hide the truth. And not by his own hands.

‘Is it bad news, William?’

Roger’s solicitous enquiry brought Falconer back to the present.

‘In a way. It marks the end of the enquiry I was following. My report to Edward – when he deigns to return to these shores – will have to be incomplete. Still, let us not dwell on that. You are returned to Oxford. Will you reopen your tower at Grand Pont?’

Falconer was referring to the tall building resembling a watermill that stood beside the river and the main bridge over it to the south of Oxford. The Franciscan friar had built quite a reputation for black magic when he had last occupied it due to late-night experiments within its upper room. Bacon shook his head.

‘I fear it is too damp and crumbling to be inhabitable. Besides, I have to exist under the watchful eye of Father Superior in the friary itself until I have proven myself to be totally innocuous.’

‘Quite some time, then.’

The three men laughed, but there was a hollow ring to the jollity expressed by two of them. Bacon would be under surveillance because of his beliefs, and Falconer had been deliberately thwarted in his investigations into the death of Richard of Cornwall. Only Thomas Symon was unencumbered by the pressure from those around him. Falconer hoped that his natural optimism would not also be crushed as that of his companions had been. They each took leave of the other, with Bacon returning to the Franciscan friary just outside the southern walls of the town, and Thomas to Colcill Hall, next to Aristotle’s, where he would temporarily reside before finding his own teaching post.

Falconer sat alone in his solar, staring at the message from Paris. He felt there was something hidden in the words of Guillaume’s missive. But rack his brains as he might, he could not see it. He lay back on his bed until he heard his charges down below in the hall leaving Aristotle’s for a night of roistering in the low taverns of the town. Some of his students were too poor to buy anything but the cheapest watery ale. But Oxford offered them nothing other than inns and the bawdy houses of Grope Lane to pass the hours of a long summer’s evening, and beer was cheaper than a whore. They would come back even poorer and have sore heads in the morning, and they would not have learned a lesson, doing it all over again the next night. Falconer remembered his own student days in Oxford and then Bologna. He must have been a disappointment to his friends, for he would prefer to study a text by Aristotle than drink with them. But he had no more money then than he had now. Yet what he did have was a fierce determination to transcend his background as an orphaned farm boy funded at the university by a local priest. He knew nothing of his father other than the name he inherited, and little about his mother other than as a pale, drawn face that had disappeared from his knowledge when he was a small boy. The priest had been a severe presence in his young life, giving him no love, and Falconer learned his distrust of the Church from that time. He had been very surprised that the priest had eventually paid for his studies. But all that had been going on forty years ago. Now he had other charges in his care, and he would make sure they were brought up right. Including letting them get drunk now and again.