The Malice of Unnatural Death: (3 page)

Not tonight. It was after midnight when he pushed that cursed pin into the model’s head, and the moment he did so the horror
of what he was doing struck home. His heart felt as if it would burst from his breast, and he shivered and almost fell.

John of Nottingham took the doll from him and observed it, smiling to himself, holding it gently in both hands almost as a
father might study his first son. ‘Now, now: you mustn’t drop it, Robert. You could hurt him!’

Jen finished her work with a feeling of anxiety lest she might have failed in her duties, but when she was done beating the
bed’s pillows into submission, ensuring that they were plumped nicely, and making them as soft and appealing as she knew how,
and had almost finished tying back the beautiful, woven drapery about the bed, she heard the door open, and gaily called,
‘Nearly done, Sarra. Leave me a moment, and I’ll be out.’

‘I am glad to hear it.’

Spinning, her mouth agape, Jen saw that the woman there in the doorway was not her friend Sarra, but the lady of the house.
‘Oh! Oh, my lady, I am sorry, I …’

‘Do not have eyes in the back of your head. I know that.’

Madam
Alice looked at her with that emptiness in her eyes that Jen had already come to recognise. In her opinion, a servant was
little better than a beetle. Jen curtsied, then hurriedly made her way from the room, all the while under the woman’s silent
gaze. She felt she was some unappealing, if necessary, feature of the woman’s household.

‘I didn’t see her coming, Jen; I couldn’t warn you,’ Sarra said in a whisper as Jen closed the door behind her. ‘Are you all
right?’

‘Of course I am – what do you think?’

‘No need to snap! I was only making sure that you weren’t upset by her turning up like that.’

Jen looked at her. ‘I don’t know why you all get so upset by her. She’s the lady of the house, but she seems perfectly all
right to me. She’s just a bit too self-absorbed, that’s all. She isn’t airy-fairy like some, but that’s no bad thing.’

‘She doesn’t talk to us at all.’

‘She’s spoken to me. She did just then.’

‘What did she say? She always ignores me,’ Sarra said.

‘Nothing. Just that she didn’t expect me to know it was her. She was fine. I don’t know what you’re so worried about.’

‘Wait till you’ve been here a bit longer, then you’ll understand.’

‘Perhaps I will,’ Jen agreed, but she couldn’t see why. The mistress was not friendly, but no one expected a great lady to
be friendly, not really. Better to be ignored for most of the day, because while you were ignored you weren’t looked upon
as a pest. The servants who lasted were the ones who could seemingly move among the family of the house without disturbing
them. Jen intended being the best of all the servants here.

‘Sarra!
Sarra, come here.
Now
, you stupid draggle-tail!’

‘Oh, saints preserve me! Coming, Steward,’ Sarra called. With a sidelong glance at her friend, she hurried into the hall.

Jen continued on her way. She was new to this place, whereas Sarra had been here for at least a year already. But the girl
who had helped Sarra had suddenly fallen prey to a disease, and wilted away in a matter of days until she could no longer
do her work. She’d been sent home to rest, and in the meantime another girl had to be found. Sarra had recommended her friend Jen, and after a brief interview with the cold-eyed steward of the household, she had been employed.

That was two days ago, and now she was here, living in unfamiliar surroundings with all these new people. It was enough to
make any girl of only seventeen years anxious, especially as she was determined to please her new master and mistress.

‘Jen, come and help me,’ Sarra called, and as Jen walked to help collect up cups and dishes from the table, she almost bumped
into her new master. She looked up at him for the first time, and as she met his laughing dark eyes she felt a curious stirring
in her heart. It was only with an effort that she managed to pull her eyes away from him, and hurry to help Sarra at the table.

Robert le Mareschal slept fitfully. When they had put away the dolls and packed up the potions carefully, he had waited until
his master had returned to his chamber before falling on his own cot. He was exhausted, the weariness more than the mere tiredness
of muscles or eyes that he was
accustomed to. No, this was something much deeper. It was almost as though all the energy in his body had been sucked from
him.

As the night wore on, he found himself waking regularly, each time drenched in sweat and fearful, as though he had just had
a nightmare. And yet if a mare did visit him, it left no memory of his dreaming. In the morning he felt drained, and yet in
his mind he was perfectly clear about his actions and the potential results. If the dolls worked, there would be an end to
a dreadful tyranny, and that was surely better than leaving matters as they were.

John of Nottingham had explained that the religious teaching about the devil and his demons was based on a lack of understanding
and the Church’s own bigoted animosity towards any kind of learning that was not founded in their own limited understandings. For his part, John asserted that he was as Christian as any man in Coventry. ‘Look to the world outside the church, Robert,
and you find that there are more truths in this world than priests could ever comprehend.’

However, in the morning, as Robert walked the last few steps to Richard de Sowe’s house, his courage began to fail him. From
the street outside he could hear the hoarse screams from the shuttered window.

Robert tried to boost his quailing spirit by reminding himself that there was a splendid irony about de Sowe’s fate. John
of Nottingham had a dry, acerbic wit, and Robert attempted to emulate it now. He reminded himself that throughout his life
this man Richard de Sowe had been content to take what he could at every opportunity, willingly using force to steal from
those weaker or poorer than he. So now the irony was, that his life was being ripped from him
without the motivation even of theft. There was no revenge in this –
nothing.
The assassination of Richard de Sowe was nothing more than an experiment. If John and Robert achieved his death, it would
be the proof of the process and other victims could be worked upon.

But this first, slow death
was
hideous. Even as he listened to the demented screaming from the solar, he felt appalled to think of what he had achieved.

‘Please, in God’s name, help us!’ a servant blurted, and Robert jumped. ‘Are you all right, Master Robert?’

‘I am fine! Don’t interrupt my considerations!’ Robert snapped, and saw the man’s eyes drop as though cowed; but even as le Mareschal turned away, the thick black gown swirling about his feet, his cloak flapping, he was sure that he could feel the
man’s eyes on him weighted with loathing, as though he knew what Robert had done. It made his heart shrivel. The penalty would
be fierce if he was discovered.

At first it had been the thought of what he might learn from his master that had prompted him. To take up a position with
a necromancer was daunting only for a man who was not determined to learn all he might. For a man like Robert le Mareschal,
the fact that Master John plainly knew much about succeeding through his use of magic was enough to lure him. With the knowledge
he would glean here, he would be able to follow his own ambition. Only after that came the desire for money.

Fifteen pounds! That was Robert’s payment, all in silver, simply for helping his master as he may. At the time it had seemed
an enormous amount of money, and all of it just to help him to learn his master’s arts. The men were paying John of Nottingham
to assassinate some other men, that was all. Many of the foul churls from about the priory here at
Coventry, those who scraped a living by their skills at begging from the doorman, would have accepted far less to overtake
the knight and slip a knife between his ribs, but that was not the point. Any man might kill another in a brash and bloodthirsty
manner: the art here was to do so
without
anyone’s realising. To kill a man without touching him; to kill him while murderer and victim remained miles apart – therein
lay the skill.

The payment had been made in part, along with the seven pounds of wax and two ells of cloth, and soon afterwards Master John
began instructing Robert in how to form the bodies. One was larger than the others, and wore a small crown encircling his
head. A second was shorter, a more corpulent fellow; the third taller, more slender, with a hawkish, cruel set to his features;
another squat and fat … seven in all. Each wonderfully, if simply, fashioned to indicate whom they represented …

There was a lengthy shriek from the solar, and Robert crossed himself. The man was enduring the torments of the devil in there.

‘Come with me! You have to help us! He doesn’t recognise any of us – no one! Please!’ Robert recognised the shouting figure: Henry, Richard de Sowe’s steward, a short, thickset man with an almost bald head and gaunt, anxious features. Henry grabbed Robert’s arm and all but dragged him indoors, turning into the little hall, and striding through it to the stairway beyond. He mounted the stairs two at a time, gripping the rope to heave himself upwards, all the while clutching Robert’s sleeve,
while the apprentice panted reluctantly behind him, and then they came into the room.

It was a spare chamber lit by clusters of guttering candles and a large charcoal brazier. Over the burning tallow Robert
could smell the sourness of urine: the knight had lost all bodily control. The windows were fastened and shuttered to keep
unhealthy odours from the sick man, but within the place there was an overwhelming, unpleasant stench. Robert had smelled
enough dead and rotting flesh to recognise the foulness of decay.

When he had discussed the commission with Master John, it had seemed almost a game. The idea of killing a man from half a
mile distant had seemed – well, almost laughable. It was ridiculous. Even when they had taken the down payment, Robert felt
more like a mischievous student than the accomplice to a murder. Now he was being confronted with the fruits of his labours.

Steeling his heart, he took two paces into the room.

Sir Richard was straining, every muscle taut, as though the bed was drenched in a burning acid. He was a man in agony, bound
to the posts of his bed with thongs, and gripped by four of his strongest servants, who tried to prevent his thrashing too
vigorously and hurting himself still more. They gazed at Robert pleadingly, hoping that he might procure a swift release from Sir Richard’s anguish. Which indeed he would.

‘How is he?’ Robert asked now, and Henry looked at him as though he was mad.

Sir Richard de Sowe’s teeth were bared. Every sinew showed, from his neck to his skinny calves, and his red-rimmed eyes darted
from one to another of his retainers like a torture victim surveying his tormentors. There was blood at his mouth, at his
wrists, at his ankles. It had sprayed from his lips to spatter the breast of his stained linen shirt. With every jerk and
twitch of his body came a relentless moaning, like a dog’s whining anguish when its back was broken.
Richard de Sowe knew, in that small space where rational thought still survived, that he was dying. Yet when his servants
glanced at him, he flinched as though not recognising any of them.

Robert recoiled as Sir Richard’s gaze flicked towards him. ‘My Christ!’

With the shutters firmly closed, the only light came from the tallow candles, but their fumes were those of animal pyres. It made the chamber a charnel house.

‘He was fine yesterday,’ the man who held Richard de Sowe’s head mumbled. ‘What could do this to him?’

‘Perhaps his humours are disturbed,’ Robert blurted. ‘Let me go to … I can ask Master John of Nottingham. He will know
…’

Henry released Robert’s sleeve, as though recognising at last that the fellow before him was as unable to help his master
as he himself. He held Robert’s eyes for a long moment, before a gasp and shriek from the bed drew his attention once more.
‘You ask him. Me, I’d think it more likely that only the devil himself could answer for this.’

As soon as he heard of the death, John de Courtenay knew that at last he would receive the reward he had craved. There was
no sorrow, no sadness at the ending of a life which had been so full of generosity and goodness, only a boundless relief. At last that God-bothering, cretinous obstacle to his advancement had been withdrawn.

For the rest of his life he would recall this moment: where he sat, how he felt, what the weather was like. Abbot Robert Champeaux
was
dead
!

He was in his chamber, feeling the somnolence that came
from a well-filled belly and a seat positioned comfortably close to the fire, while in his mind he contemplated the days to
come. There was the promise of good hunting. Since the abbot had been warned to keep his hounds away from the king’s deer,
he had enforced a strict code of abstinence among his brethren, but not even a forceful nature such as old Abbot Champeaux’s
could effectively command obedience while he was confined to his own bedchamber. While he had been laid up with this last
illness, his face grey-green in the thin light from his window, shaking like a man with the ague, it was clear that he could
not enforce his rules.

Some had been fearful, and had thought that the abbot might recover at any time. They had drawn up terrifying pictures of
him in their minds, a grim-faced old man leaning on a heavy staff as he always had, with great white eyebrows that scowled
so a man might be frozen from thirty paces. Many a newly tonsured brother had cause to dread his chastisement; they had all
experienced the rough edge of his tongue when they had fallen short of his high expectation. The abbot was a strong-willed
man, and punished any transgression that might affect
his
monastery with ruthless determination.