The Raven's Head (9 page)

‘Not tonight,’ I said, pert as a tavern wench. ‘I’m going to eat in the Great Hall, but if I see a maid, I’ll try to remember to ask her to bring you something. Can’t promise when that might be, though.’

His jaw fell so slack you’d have thought a butterfly had roared at him. I was halfway out of the door before he had recovered enough to hurl his stick after me and yell at me to return, but the stick clattered harmlessly against the closing door and I found myself whistling as I bounded down the stairs. I couldn’t afford to push Gaspard too far, not yet anyway, for I wasn’t about to reveal to him what I’d learned. That news was for only one pair of ears.

But I soon discovered that it is easier for a mouse to bell a cat than for a lowly apprentice like me to meet in private with a nobleman such as Philippe. Indeed, one of the scullions from the kitchens or a stable boy would have had more chance of speaking to him. In the past, whenever I’d been summoned with Gaspard to the
salle basse
, the lower hall, in which Philippe received the peasants, so that we could record the judgements he made in their affairs, or even to the hall above, the
salle haute
, to record the contracts he had made with other nobles, we might as well have been at the town fair. There were always crowds of men, women and servants milling about, not to mention their dogs and hawks, snarling and shrieking.

Since his rise at Court, Philippe was far too busy to stroll alone in the gardens. Even when he was walking between the main house and his private chambers in the tower, he was always surrounded by petitioners trying to beg favours, or arse-lickers, like Charles, pretending to marvel at his every word, as if he shat gold coins and pissed rubies. Try as I might, I couldn’t catch Philippe alone.

I even contemplated sending him a letter begging for a private audience. I’d written and read enough letters in my time to know how to flatter, but he received a hundred such requests a week from men he considered far more important that his librarian’s whipping boy, so it might be weeks or months before he summoned me, if he bothered at all. More likely, he’d simply ask Gaspard what I wanted, and he would doubtless tell him I was a fool and to ignore me. I might have been hanging around for months. But ironically it was the lickspittle, Charles, who gave me my chance in the end.

Charles was a distant cousin of Philippe’s, the poor relation. He was his father’s third son, so he was never destined to inherit much from his own family, unless his brothers had the decency to die before their father. But Charles had a modest allowance and enough noble blood running through his veins to ensure that, if he’d entered the Church or had managed to display even a little prowess in the jousting tournaments, he’d have risen swiftly enough. If I’d had half of his advantages, I’d have been a bishop or knight by his age and amassed a small fortune in spoils from either blessing people, slaughtering them or both.

But Charles was as lazy as a cuckoo and was far more interested in marrying wealth and position than trying his hand at building it for himself. All the women in the château seemed to find him attractive and charming, with his immaculately curled hair, cow’s eyelashes and elegant flattery, especially Amée, who allowed him to fawn over her and actually seemed to like it. Why do women fall for such oily arse-wipes? I’d never be seduced by a pretty face if the woman behind it was as blatantly vacuous as that slug-brain.

As I said, Charles had never bothered to apply himself to anything, and when Philippe foolishly entrusted him with inspecting some properties he owned, he hadn’t even known which records he would need to take with him to check that all the goods and livestock were accounted for, the boundaries and buildings in good order. With a languid wave of his paw, Charles instructed old Gaspard to have me bring him whatever he might need. The ancient one, anxious as ever to please, had me running around like a ferret in a rabbit warren, pulling out ledgers and boxes, until there was such a great heap of them that not even a warhorse could have carried them. He meticulously sorted them until he had a leather bag full of what he considered the most important, changing his mind several times before sending me, staggering under the weight of it, to deliver it to Charles. It was then that I saw my chance.

I, being only an ignorant apprentice, somehow
misunderstood
the instructions and took the records directly to Philippe, on the pretext that I’d thought he’d want to go through them with Charles before he set out. To my relief and delight, I found him standing alone in his chamber, pouring over a long parchment scroll stretched out on a table. I managed casually to let slip that Charles hadn’t known which books he wanted and I’d been obliged to spend hours selecting them for him. I hoped my diligence would impress Philippe, while, of course, reminding him that Charles was a half-witted goose to whom no father should entrust a stray kitten, never mind his only daughter. But I was not congratulating myself for long.

Philippe barely glanced at me and, with a flick of his finger, indicated that I could set the bag down near the door. He said he intended to send for Charles later that evening to give him his final instructions; Charles could take the records with him then and study them overnight.

I derived considerable satisfaction from the thought of Charles having to lug that heavy bag all the way over to the Great Hall and spend the night wading through the mountain of dusty records. Not that he would, of course. He’d call for a servant to carry the bag and not give the ledgers a second glance. But I’d learned long ago that life was much more bearable if you indulged in the odd fantasy or two about the way things
should
be. But I had more pressing matters on my mind.

Philippe dismissed me with a curt gesture and bent once more over the scroll on which were inscribed the details of roads and rivers. He was so accustomed to servants doing exactly what he asked that he had turned away without waiting to see if I had retreated. Like a conjuror, he imagined that, at a simple sweep of his hand, I would simply vanish. And his authority was such that I found myself obediently walking to the door, even as I was telling myself not to be such a fool. Here was my one chance to speak to him alone. I might never get another.

I turned with my hand on the latch. Though I had been rehearsing this for days in my head, now that I was face to face with the man, I couldn’t think how to begin. My mouth felt as if it was full of sand and my legs were trembling.

‘My lord, I have to speak with you on . . . on another matter.’

I saw a slight frown of irritation crease his brow, but still he didn’t bother to look round, his finger tracing down the length of the scroll. ‘What is it?’ he grunted. ‘Out with it.’

‘Some days ago you asked my master Gaspard to search . . . for a certain document.’

‘So,’ he said curtly, ‘who do you imagine I would ask to look for documents – my cook?’

I came close to losing my nerve, but I forced myself to continue.

‘I believe . . .’ I swallowed hard, then said firmly, ‘I
know
the document he brought you was a forgery. In the book . . . the book of records from St Luke’s Church. That last account was not written by Father Vitalis.’

Philippe’s back snapped upright. The scroll he’d been examining sprang back into a roll, jumped from the table and fell to the floor. He took a pace towards me, his expression so furious that I found myself pressing down on the latch ready to take flight.

‘Shut the door,’ he said, in a dangerously quiet tone. ‘Come closer.’

I shuffled a couple of paces towards him. Living with Gaspard had taught me exactly how long a man’s reach is, but Philippe was a younger and much fitter man.

‘A book of church records.’

I nodded briefly, trying to force myself to stand still.

‘And what makes you imagine that I would be interested in anything written in the church records?’

His gaze was fixed so intently on me that, though I had been determined to look him in the eye as his equal, I found myself having to stare down at the corner of the table in order to be able to stammer out a word.

‘The – the last entry, my lord, an entry concerning your great-grandfather’s marriage to Countess Hélène and the birth of their son . . . that’s what you wanted Gaspard to find.’

At the edge of my vision, I saw Philippe’s feet stir and was unable to stop myself taking a step back, but he made no move towards me.

‘I had not realised Gaspard had confided in you,’ he said quietly.

I could hardly tell him I’d listened at the door, but if I said that Gaspard had told me all, the old crow would surely deny it. So I remained dumb. But, unwittingly, there in that chamber, I learned my first lesson about how to discover what you need to know. If you stay silent, neither confirming nor denying, men will eventually begin to talk.

Philippe sank down in the chair beside the fire. ‘Then you know already that my enemies were circulating rumours that my grandfather’s birth was not legitimate, which might have caused me some difficulties.’

Difficulties!
Total ruin, more like. I’d be the first to admit I was as innocent as a newly hatched chick back then, but even I knew that the moment a man’s entitlement to lands and hereditary rank is questioned you can’t take a pace without treading on a hundred relatives, all clamouring to prove they have the greater legitimate claim.

‘But now I have proof that my grandfather was the legitimate son of Estienne, Le Comte de Lingones,’ Philippe continued softly. ‘The king is satisfied that all is in order, so that is the end of the matter.’

‘The proof was the story in the book from St Luke’s Church?’ I asked, though I already knew the answer.

‘Which Gaspard discovered in the attic,’ Philippe said carefully, arching his eyebrows, as if daring me to contradict him.

‘Which Gaspard
wrote
himself,’ I countered.

‘That’s nonsense, boy!’ Philippe was again on his feet. ‘Any man can see at a glance it was written many decades ago. The book is old, the ink faded. Whatever madness has possessed you to think otherwise?’

‘I saw Gaspard writing in that book, yet there are no new entries in it. The ink was made to look old. He didn’t use iron-gall ink, he wrote with the older form of ink they used a century ago. I found the recipe, which he also must have read for it was among the books I fetched for him from the attic.’

As proof I recited the recipe from memory: ‘
Grind the seeds of goat-leaf and after let them boil in wine together with a rusted iron nail. This makes a green ink. But if thou wouldst make a black ink, add drops of vitriol till it turn black and also the sap of the hawthorn, so that will stay wherever thy pen does place it.

‘The base of that ink is green,’ I said, in case Philippe hadn’t got the point. ‘So when it’s old, the green tinge begins to show through the black again. Gaspard sent me to the still room for goat-leaf seeds for a purge, or so he said, but I know he used them for ink. By adding too few drops of vitriol, a little of the green hue would remain visible, so it would look as if black ink had faded with age. I can prove it to you. I can make that ink again and match it to the page.’

You have to admire men like Philippe: they have been well schooled in the art of not betraying their emotions. Vital, I imagine, if you spend your life among the schemers at Court. But, even so, I thought I saw his face blanch a little, though it might just have been the flickering of the firelight.

‘Gaspard is a loyal servant,’ he murmured.

I had no idea if Philippe himself knew what Gaspard had done or if he, too, had been tricked by the old man. He wasn’t stupid. He must have suspected something, but he’d been so desperate for proof that he’d probably grasped at any rope flung out to him that would pull him from the mire.

His tone when he spoke aloud again was chilling enough to freeze the flames in a blacksmith’s furnace. ‘But you, my young apprentice, are evidently neither loyal to your master nor to me. You say you saw your master writing. Naturally, he writes. That is his job. You say it was in a certain book. I have only your word for that and one book looks much like another from a distance. You say he sent you to fetch some seeds for a purge. Who gave you the seeds? Will this person corroborate what you have said? . . . No, I thought not. You can hardly imagine that King Louis would listen to the half-witted ravings of a disaffected servant and
English
boy to boot. And that is what they are, nothing more than the delusions of a mooncalf. The king has already accepted the evidence as true and he does not like to be made to look a fool.’

My face grew hot. The discussion was not proceeding as I had rehearsed in my head. But I wasn’t going to slink away defeated, not yet.

‘Surely then the king will like it even less if he’s made a fool of by one of his trusted nobles,’ I said quickly. ‘What if your enemies who were spreading those rumours find out about the forgery and tell His Majesty? They’d be only too willing to believe my story and . . . and they’d pay well for such information,’ I finished in a rush.

Philippe’s mouth slowly widened into a humourless smile.

‘Ah, now we cut to the heart of the beast. Gaspard, no doubt, told you that I generously rewarded his diligence in finding the record. And you thought, But I, too, spent many hours searching long and hard like my master. Indeed, perhaps it was you who discovered the book on those dusty shelves and, not unnaturally, you are thinking, But where is the justice in this? I also should have been rewarded for my pains, even though I am a mere apprentice.’

I gave a half-nod, uncertain whether he was mocking me or actually thought I had a point.

He paused, regarding me for a long time. A heavy silence descended on the chamber, broken only by the cracking of the logs on the fire and the moaning of the wind through the shutters. I could hear my own heart pounding in my chest. Was he going to pay me, have me thrown out or worse? It suddenly occurred to me that he could easily have me flogged bloody. The sweat was trickling down my forehead, but I daren’t wipe it away for fear of drawing attention to it. I knew I shouldn’t let him see I was afraid, but it was all I could do to stop myself blurting out that I’d made a terrible mistake and throwing myself on my knees, begging him to forgive me. I was on the verge of doing just that when he spoke again.