1356 (Special Edition)

God’s.’

‘He’s English,’ the earl said forcefully, ‘and so am I. And the church does not kill! It hands men over to the civil power, and right now I am that power! I am the Earl of Warwick and I won’t kill an Englishman for the church’s benefit unless the Archbishop of Canterbury tells me to.’

‘But he is excommunicated!’

The earl mocked that claim with laughter. ‘Two years ago,’ he said, ‘your goddamned priests excommunicated two cows, a caterpillar, and a toad, all in Warwick! You use excommunication like a mother uses a birch rod to correct her children. You can’t have him, he’s mine, he’s English.’

‘And right now,’ Sir Reginald Cobham added softly, and speaking in English, ‘we need every English archer we can find.’

‘So why are you here?’ the earl asked the cardinal and, after a deliberately insulting pause, added, ‘Your Eminence.’

The cardinal grimaced with anger at being denied the revenge he sought, but controlled it. ‘His Holiness the Pope,’ he said, ‘sent us to beseech both your prince and the King of France to make peace. We travel under the protection of God, recognised as mediators by your king, by your prince and by your church.’

‘Peace?’ The earl spat the word. ‘Tell the usurper Jean to yield the throne of France to its rightful owner, Edward of England, then you’ll have your peace.’

‘The Holy Father believes there has been too much killing,’ the cardinal said piously.

‘And you were about to add to it,’ the earl rejoindered. ‘You’ll not make peace by killing women in an abbey church, so go! You’ll find the prince that way.’ He pointed north. ‘Who’s the abbot here?’

‘I am, sire.’ A tall, bald-headed man with a long grey beard stepped out of the apse’s shadows.

‘I need grain, I need beans, I need bread, I need wine, I need dried fish, I need anything men or horses can eat or drink.’

‘We have very little,’ the abbot said nervously.

‘Then we’ll take what little you’ve got,’ the earl said, then looked at the cardinal. ‘You’re still here, Your Eminence, and I told you to go. So go. This monastery is now in English hands.’

‘You cannot give me orders,’ Bessieres said.

‘I just did. And I have more archers, more swords, and more men than you. So go before I lose my temper and have you carried out.’

The cardinal hesitated, then decided prudence was better than defiance. ‘We shall leave,’ he announced. He gestured to his followers and stalked down the nave. Thomas moved to intercept Sculley, then saw that the Scotsman had vanished.

‘Sculley,’ he said, ‘where is he?’

The abbot gestured towards a shadowed archway beside the apse. Thomas ran to it, pushed the door open, but there was nothing outside except a strip of flame-lit cobbles and the monastery’s outer wall. The sword of the fisherman had gone.

There was a fitful moon sliding between high clouds, which, with the torches, gave enough light to see that the cobbled yard behind the church was empty. The hairs at the back of Thomas’s neck prickled and, fearing that the Scotsman was in deep shadow waiting to ambush him, he drew his sword. The long blade rasped on the scabbard’s throat.

‘Who was he?’ a voice asked, and Thomas turned fast, heart racing, to see it was the bloodied Black Friar who had spoken.

‘A Scotsman,’ Thomas said. He stared back into the shadows. ‘A dangerous Scotsman.’

‘He has la Malice,’ the friar said flatly.

A noise in the bushes made Thomas turn, but it was just a cat that stalked from the low-hanging branches and crossed towards some far buildings. ‘Who are you?’ he asked the friar.

‘My name is Fra Ferdinand,’ the friar said.

Thomas looked at him, seeing an older man, his weathered face bloody. ‘How did your nose and lip get broken?’

‘I refused to say where la Malice was,’ the friar said.

‘So they hit you?’

‘The Scotsman did, on the cardinal’s orders. Then the abbot told him where she was hidden.’

‘In the tomb?’

‘In the tomb,’ Fra Ferdinand confirmed.

‘You were at Mouthoumet,’ Thomas said accusingly.

‘The Lord of Mouthoumet was a friend,’ the friar said, ‘and good to me.’

‘And the Lord of Mouthoumet was a Planchard,’ Thomas said, ‘and the Planchard family were heretics.’

‘He was no heretic,’ Fra Ferdinand said fiercely. ‘He might have been a sinner, but which of us is not? He was no heretic.’

‘The last of the Dark Lords?’ Thomas asked.

‘They say one still lives,’ the friar said, and crossed himself.

‘He does,’ Thomas said, ‘and his name is Vexille.’

‘They were the worst of the seven,’ Fra Ferdinand said. ‘The Vexilles knew no pity, showed no mercy, and carry the curse of Christ.’

‘My father was called Vexille,’ Thomas said. ‘He didn’t use the name, and nor do I, but I am a Vexille. Lord of God knows what and Count of somewhere or other.’

Fra Ferdinand frowned, looking at Thomas as though he were some dangerous beast. ‘So the cardinal is right? You are a heretic?’

‘I’m no heretic,’ Thomas said savagely, ‘just a man who crossed Cardinal Bessieres.’ He thrust the sword back into its sheath. He had just heard a gate being slammed and barred and he reckoned Sculley and the cardinal were gone. ‘So tell me about la Malice,’ he demanded.

‘La Malice is Saint Peter’s sword,’ the friar said, ‘the one he used in the Garden of Gethsemane to protect our Lord. It was given to Saint Junien, but the Dark Lords found it and, when their heresy was burned from the land, they hid it so their enemies could not find it.’

‘They hid it here?’

Fra Ferdinand shook his head. ‘It was buried in a Planchard tomb in Carcassonne. The Sire of Mouthoumet asked me to find it so the English wouldn’t discover it.’

‘And you brought it here?’

‘The sire was dead when I returned from Carcassonne,’ the friar said, ‘and I didn’t know where else to take it. I thought it would be safer hidden here.’ He shrugged. ‘This is where it belongs.’

‘It will never have peace here,’ Thomas said.

‘Because it isn’t hidden any more?’

Thomas nodded.

‘And is that what you want?’ Fra Ferdinand asked suspiciously. ‘That it should have peace?’

Thomas took one last look around the monastery grounds, then walked back towards the abbey. ‘I’m no Dark Lord,’ he said. ‘My ancestors might have been Cathars, but I’m not. But I’ll do their bidding anyway. I’ll make sure their enemies can’t use it.’

‘How?’

‘By taking it from that bastard Sculley, of course,’ Thomas said. He went back into the abbey church. The monks were leaving and the candles were being snuffed out, but there was enough light left to see into the half- opened stone casket that stood in its place of honour behind the altar. Saint Junien lay there, his hands crossed and the yellow-brown skin of his face stretched tightly across his skull. The eye sockets were empty and the shrunken lips pulled back to show five yellow teeth. He wore a Benedictine habit, and in his hands was a simple wooden cross.

‘Rest in peace,’ Fra Ferdinand said to the corpse, and reached in to touch the saint’s hands. ‘And how will you make sure your enemies can’t use la Malice?’ he asked Thomas.

‘By doing what you wanted to do,’ Thomas said. ‘I’ll hide it.’

‘Where?’