Shield of Three Lions (16 page)

Dagobert whinnied and twirled, then choked till we had to pound his back. “Magister Malcolm is the most sought-after master since Abélard. But he takes only the finest—not Russian wolfhounds.”

Enoch drew himself up icily. “Exactly so, that’s my understanding as well. This be Alex Wanthwaite, by the by, my wee brother what’s studying to be steward to my estate, and I be Lord Enoch Angus, Baron of Wanthwaite.”

I was stunned as a bird that’s flown into a wall, then recovered and bellowed forth with all my strength, “That’s a lie! You’re naught but a thieving knot-headed Scot, a rascal, a …”

And I was hurled into the dark bedchamber where I fell to the floor. By the time the Scot followed, I was to my feet again and pummeling him with my fists. “I’ll kill you, you snake! Baron of Wanthwaite, are you! I’ll …”

He clapped a hand over my mouth. “Hush, dinna make such a blather. Where hae ye been that ye don’t know that the first-born takes all? ’Twould make no sense at all for ye to be baron and me to be landless older brother but I’ll share and share alike, which be more than generous. Meantime ye can be my ‘prentice and serve me.”

My eyes fair popped from my head above his palm, but he held me steady till I stopped struggling.

“I’ll kill you dead before you take my title and lands,” I spat when he released me.

His grinning teeth shone in the faint light. “In twa years I’ll begin to worry.”

He pulled folded bedsteads from behind the drapes and rolled our mats out upon them, then climbed into his and was soon snoring. I retired behind the curtain to change my wet clerk’s robe for a dry plaid cape and shirt, then lay down, seething.

My patience was fast running out. All right, I was in France and apparently I knew as much as anyone as to the king’s whereabouts. I needs must go on the road and find him myself. As for Enoch, let him drop into the garde-pit where he belonged.

And when I woke, Enoch was gone.

PANICKED, I RAN DOWN THE STAIRS TO FIND HIM. HE wasn’t in the hall, so I turned to the cellar. There I found Madame Annette creeping on spidery legs around a wine vat in her half-buried kitchen.

“Have you seen Enoch?”

She poured out a whine of Parisian French which was hard to follow, but I gathered that Dagobert was waiting for me in the street. As I left, she pushed two packets into my hands.

“For Haute Tierce,” she said brusquely.

Heart pounding painfully, I climbed the stairs and stood dazed in the bright sunlight. All I could think of was Enoch.

“Ho, Alex, here!” Dagobert appeared from behind a cart on the road and walked up the muddy pathway. “Ah, I see that the queen has baked you a tart. May I?” He sniffed our packets of food and gave a fastidious shudder of disgust.
“Merde.”

“Have you seen my brother, Dagobert?”

“He was eager to get to the Petit Pont to find Magister Malcolm, but said that you needed to sleep and that I was to bring you to him when you woke.”

“Thank you,” I said shyly. Much relieved, I noticed now that the air was fresh after the rain, sweetened by honeyed flowers, the rising sun shining through new grape leaves turned the world a bright green-gold.

“’Tis my pleasure, since I have a class in the healing arts at the same time that Magister Malcolm meets.”

“What healing arts are you learning?” I asked politely as we strolled.

His brown eyes shot me a suspicious look from under his plucked brows. “Are you planning on practicing physic?”

“Not at all,” I answered, surprised at his belligerent tone.

“Ah, then. Forgive me, but I had to ask. So many false practitioners, you know. We who are working for our ecclesiastical license cannot be too careful. Just now, we’re studying the innards of the body. Do you know, for example, how you digest your food?”

I didn’t forsooth.

“The stomach is normally cold, but when we eat, the liver turns on like a flame and heats the stomach from below, whereupon our food is cooked. You see? When the flame is too low, so to speak, the patient takes hot foods and herbs to ignite the liver.”

He was so delighted by his knowledge that his pasty face flushed a lively purple, almost obliterating his many blackheads. Encouraged by his friendliness, I asked my usual question.

“It must be wonderful to study in Paris, but my real reason for being here is to find the King of England. Do you know where he is at present?”

Dagobert halted.

“No, I don’t know where he is.” He began to walk again, his head drooping low.

I followed, thwarted once more.

“But I know someone who could tell you if anyone could,” he added. “She’s known as Fat Giselle. Have you heard of her?”

I shook my head.

“Ah, well, perhaps her fame hasn’t spread to England, but all the students here know her. Yes, Fat Giselle has a far reach.” He smiled suddenly, displaying an expanse of pale gum. “I’ll take you to meet her.”

“Please don’t concern yourself. If you just tell me where she lives—”

“No, no bother at all, and you’re very young.”

I didn’t see what that had to do with it, but before I could ask we saw Enoch.

“Oh, Dagobert, please do me a favor: don’t tell Enoch about Fat Giselle. I’d like to surprise him.”

“My oath on St. Martin,” and he squeezed my hand.

Enoch hurried toward us.

“You two are slow as bears in January. Alex, are you feeling better? You were overweary last night.”

He was speaking Parisian French but was the same old Enoch e’en so. Now I wished that he
had
disappeared. Why had I been so frightened? He fell in stride with us along the grassy ridge at the center of the lane.

Dagobert breathed deeply. “Ah, Paris! The jewel of the universe! Except of course fair Poitiers.”

“And Edinburgh,” Enoch agreed, “the grandest pearl e’er made.”

“Edinburgh? Is that in England?”

“Scotland, land of the Scots, the Picts and the Caledonians.”

“Yes, but you
are
English nonetheless.”

“Never!” Enoch shouted, turning beet-colored.

Dagobert instantly apologized, for he meant no slight; it was simply that all students belonged to one of four nations, English, Norman, Picard or French. Personally I thought the Scots belonged with the French as the lowest of humankind but apparently every nation had its own vermin and the Scots were ours. ’Twas important to understand about nations, Dagobert continued, for the city had no power over us; we were under the king’s governance which is to say we were lawless, for both Philip and his father Louis before him were most tolerant of students. However, if we had a grievance our own nation might help us.

“Are there no laws at all then?” Enoch asked, nonplussed.

Dagobert nudged the Scot slyly. “Indeed there’s one,
very
important: make your sexual preference known at once!”

“Preference?” Enoch was bewildered. “For one doxy?”

“If you like doxies,” Dagobert replied. “About half the students have other tastes. ’Tis said that even the ducks are not safe in Paris.”

Enoch stopped dead, his face blank. Then they both rent the sky with their guffaws; I laughed too, though I saw nothing funny in harming ducks.

“However,” Dagobert gasped, “make certain that King Philip doesn’t hear of your deviations, for he permits Stewes in Paris just to be sure that no one sins. That puts
him
in a stew!”

Again I laughed along with them so they shouldn’t know my ignorance. Just then we reached the noisy rue de St. Jacques and Dagobert shouted information about our fellow-students. There were about seven thousand in Paris, half of them serious, the other half roisterers; they ranged in age from twelve to eighty, in class from shepherd to count, in origin from the four corners of the world. We found ourselves almost trampled by lines of arm-linked men crying out ribald japes in Latin, laughing and tippling, openly kissing buxom wenches that I doubted were students at all.

We all crowded onto a narrow bridge along with hawkers and talemeliers where vintners beat drums to offer free wine to eager samplers; screaming students crowded round baskets of roasted eels, pork flanks and capons; everyone ate and shouted. In the midst of this chaos, teachers stood on platforms lecturing to small groups on the street, in narrow alleyways between houses, on stairways between floors, inside rooms, everywhere.

“Exedrae!” Dagobert yelled, pointing to the narrow alleys. “Magister Malcolm in number three after Haute Tierce!”

And we lost sight of him.

Holding my arm in a firm grip, Enoch got us into the relative calm of an exedra and led us to a bench by the Seine where we could watch small boys diving naked into the current to find coins. No sooner had we settled than the heavens pealed in a cacophony of bells to sink the small isle, for it seemed that all of Paris was made up of bell towers ringing the hours of prayer. We bent our heads, then raised them to silence. The bells had stopped, even the pounding on the new Cathedral of Notre Dame. Everyone was eating.

“Well, bairn, this be our first dinner in Paris,” Enoch said cheerily.

We carefully removed the coarse gray linen from our packets to find a pot of pudding and a pot of stewed fruit. Eagerly I bent to my pudding, prepared to suck it direct from the pot as I, too, was hungry. Just as my lips touched the rim, a piece of pudding quivered in the center, rose in a shape like my finger and wove back and forth before my crossed eyes. It climbed from its nest and crept over my hand, leaving a wet trail.

“Enoch,” I gulped. “Look you.”

“Hmmm?”

His mouth dripping yellow slime, he gazed uncomprehendingly at where I pointed, then exploded onto the ground where his own spittle came alive.

“That cheap slut-daw!” he cried. “Givin’ us slops fram a middling! I’ll kill the hud-pykis, see yif I don’t!”

And I began to laugh. I howled till my eyes streamed, clutched my aching ribs.

He gagged, choked, slobbered and glared at me. “Aye, laugh and make gekkis at me. At least it’s better than a face sour as a slaeberry. I thought ye didna know how to crack smile.”

“Certes I can laugh,” I gasped when I could. “Jump in the river,
Lord Enoch
, and I’ll die laughing.” And I was off again.

At first he glowered at this new peal, then shook his head and took my shoulder gruffly. “Come, lad, no more harsh words. Ye’re my brother and ye’ve a bonny face when ye smile. Come, I’ll buy ye a pigeon pie to prove my good will.”

I followed him back to the main street and grabbed a pie, a spitted pork, a ham turnover, a sweet pastry and canestel, taking a fast bite from each so they couldn’t be turned back.

“Traitor!” he howled. “Whale-belly! Do ye think I’m made of silver?”

Again I smiled, though ’twas hard with my mouth so full, and noted that Enoch ate near as much as I did, lacking only the ham turnover. Satiated at last, we walked to the third exedra which was still empty of students.

Belching in the noonday sun, I stretched along a bench and dozed a bit as students drifted in. Most of them were clerics, although Enoch had said we were to study civil law, not canon, and most appeared older than average. Those who weren’t clerics wore a student’s uniform garb, so couldn’t be distinguished by nation.

They stood to respectful attention when Magister Malcolm arrived. He was a wizened old man, slightly bent in the shoulder, shuffling of foot, and his hair blinded me with its whiteness. He was richly dressed, however, in a heavy scarlet cappa lined in miniver in
spite of the heat, and a curious four-sided board with a gold tassel atop his thick locks. Two students helped him to his platform where he made the sign of the Cross as he reached for some parchment pages with the other hand, then muttered a fast prayer ending
“Ego sum alpha et omega, Amen,”
and looked up.

His eyes met Enoch’s and suddenly his old face was radiant.

“My Lord!” he cried in a strong youthful voice. “Lord Enoch!”

He leaped from his platform like a roe and hurried toward us. Everyone was astounded but no one more than I.
Lord
Enoch?
Lord
Enoch? Then I felt a tree fall on my head:
Enoch had managed to send Malcolm a message about Wanthwaite!
What else could it be? I watched the ancient master embrace the churl, tears freely flowing, and knew he must be privy to the scheme to steal my estate.

The two men were muttering to each other in a strange tongue when the students began to stamp impatiently and Magister Malcolm tore himself away, his hand lingering on Enoch’s hairy arm. Enoch looked different than I’d ever seen him, exalted and ecstatic as if he’d beheld a saint. Forsooth I, too, felt as if a miracle had taken place, though I wasn’t sure exactly what it was.

Now the exedra fell quiet: Magister Malcolm began to speak, this time in the rolling thunder of an organ. In spite of myself, I was hypnotized by his words, then appalled as I began to translate.

“Raptus mulieris ne fiat defendit tam lex humana quam divina.”

He was lecturing on the laws concerning the rape of women:
Rape of women is forbidden by human laws as well as divine.
Rape? The same act as Enoch’s with Gladys but done with different intent. With the intent to kill. I forgot “Lord” Enoch and my own full gullet as I strained to understand.