Unholy Innocence Read online

  I stifled a laugh. King John really must be clutching at straws if he needs my approval. Still, at least it proves I was right: Edmund’s body was a sack of old bones after all, even Samson thinks so. But something still puzzled me:

  ‘Forgive me father, but if Saint Edmund gives legitimacy to King John, then surely he gives the same legitimacy to his brother Geoffrey’s son - the twelve-year-old Prince Arthur who you do not think fit to reign.’

  ‘Well done,’ smiled Samson. ‘You’re starting to think like a politician at last.’ He breathed in deeply. ‘The difference is symbolic.’ He tapped his drawings again and smiled triumphantly. ‘Like my towers. They are symbols, too. Put simply, John is here, Arthur is not. That is a fact, but it is also a symbol. Never underestimate the power of symbolism in politics, Walter.’ He sighed heavily, heaved his not inconsiderable bulk off his chair and walked over to the open window. I couldn’t help noticing as he did so a ring-shaped cushion on the seat he had just vacated. Piles, I thought. That’s what comes of too many eight course lunches. It probably also explains his bad temper, nothing to do with me at all in fact.

  Samson stood gazing out across the Great Court at the tents and fires of the King’s followers billeted below him. ‘These are dangerous times, Walter. Plots and intrigues everywhere. We have a duty to do what we can to hold society together.’ He glanced over his shoulder. ‘You are too young to remember King Stephen and the Empress. I wasn’t much more than a child myself but I saw the fear, the lawlessness. We cannot go back to all that.’

  ‘But surely, father,’ I said gently, ‘we have a duty also to tell the truth.’

  He guffawed. ‘The truth? The truth is God’s Word as written in Holy Scripture and interpreted by us, His representatives on earth. The truth! Most men cannot read their own names so how can they possibly know what the truth is? Why do you think they come to church week after week? It’s not because they know what’s written in the Bible. They come out of habit; they come for comfort and because we fine them if they do not. That is what the clergy is for, to intercede, to guide man’s innocence as the good shepherd guides his lambs and ensures they do not stray into danger. The truth! If we all went around deciding for ourselves what is truth and what is untruth there would be a different truth for every man on earth, and then where would we be? Anarchy again. There is only one truth and that is the truth that we decide here in this place - with God’s guidance, of course,’ he added as an afterthought.

  Phew! That little speech fair took my breath away. I thought for a moment and then said slowly, ‘In that case, why did God give us free will if not indeed to decide for ourselves?’

  ‘Adam and Eve had free will and it got them expelled from the Garden of Eden,’ he sniffed.

  ‘Oh, but surely the expulsion from the Garden of Eden was due to temptation by the Prince of Darkness whom our free will permits us to accept or reject.’

  Samson sighed heavily. ‘Walter, why do you have to take such a skewed view of things all the time? Why can you not accept plain facts?’ He looked at me with disappointment. ‘Well, I am not going to debate theology with you, I have spent enough time on this. Mankind may have free will but as a member of this community you do not. You will therefore honour the vows you made to me when you entered our order, in particular the third one, and obey.’ He leaned forward across the desk and looked me straight in the eye. ‘Which means that if I say Edmund’s body was incorrupt, then incorrupt it was.’

  I winced. ‘But in addition to being a monk, Father, I am also a physician. Every day I have to ask questions: How did this fever start? What caused that injury? Where may I find a cure for that man’s belly ache or this woman’s boils? How am I to do that without having an enquiring mind?’

  ‘Maybe you can’t,’ he said wearily. ‘Maybe you will have to choose between your Hippocratic Oath and your oath to God.’

  I, too, would have liked to debate the point further but just at that moment the door to the study burst open and one of the novices rushed in, his arms waving wildly in the air, his eyes wild with fear.

  ‘Murder!’ he yelled. ‘Murder!’

  ‘What?’ said Samson rising quickly to his feet. ‘Who?’

  ‘The King!’ blurted the boy breathlessly. ‘He is poisoned!’

  Chapter 4

  CONSPIRACY

  We both rushed out of Samson’s office and along the passage into the annexe where the King had taken up residence. Being half Samson’s age and considerably fitter, I arrived at the door to the King’s bedchamber ahead of him. Two beefy guards wearing chain hauberks and iron helmets and looking extremely nervous crossed their lances in my face as I tried to enter, nearly slicing off my nose in the process.

  ‘I’m a doctor,’ I remonstrated with them. ‘I can help.’

  But they were not to be persuaded and ordered me back on pain of being skewered. Anxious as I was for the King’s good health, I was even more anxious for my own, so I stood back and waited for Samson to arrive. A few seconds later he came puffing up behind me and waving the guards aside. Even then they hesitated.

  ‘I am his grace the Abbot,’ he bellowed at them breathlessly. ‘If you do not let us in I will have you both flogged. Now open this door at once!’ They looked at each other. At last they relented and admitted us.

  Inside the room there were more guards looking even twitchier than the two outside. They reluctantly allowed Abbot Samson through but me they continued to hold at the door. I had to content myself with trying to see over their shoulders. From my position I could just make out the King’s bed on the far side of the room. Standing around it like angels of the Apocalypse were three people I recognised from the banquet. One I knew was the Chancellor, Archbishop Hubert Walter of Canterbury, a bluff-looking man with a strong jawline and tonsured like a monk, though I think by nature’s hand rather than his barber’s. Standing next to him was a much younger man, handsome and with a noble bearing who Prior Robert, discreetly identifying the guests at the banquet for our benefit, had named as Earl Geoffrey Fitz Peter, the Chief Justiciar of England. Who the third man was there could be no doubt for there was no other quite like him in the land. Towering well over six feet in height and with a commanding military bearing was the formidable William Marshal, the Earl of Pembroke, probably the most powerful man in England after the King himself – though some said more powerful than the King. Unlike the others who were looking very worried, Earl Marshal’s face wore an expression of stoic inscrutability - as much because most of it was hidden by his ferocious red beard as anything else.

  Bending low over the bed was a fourth man who I took to be the King’s physician, a Frenchman judging from his garb and waxed whiskers. Well, I thought, the King cannot be quite murdered yet since a dead man has little need of a physician. And from the screams and foul language coming from the bed it appeared his highness wasn’t about to expire any time soon - his lungs at least sounded in excellent health. I could just make out their owner propped up in the bed against a bank of pillows. King John’s dark hair was made all the darker by the pallor of his skin and the sweat plastering it to his brow while his mouth was contorted as though sucking on a particularly sour lemon. He was clutching his stomach, rolling from side to side and moaning all the while. From all this I made my preliminary diagnosis that the problem was likely to be with his belly.

  ‘God damn you man, stop fussing. I’m not a woman in labour. Get off me!’ The King violently shoved the French doctor away from him. ‘Lucifer and all the dogs of hell curse you for a useless Frog!’ he yelled slapping the physician hard about the head.

  ‘Oh sieur, sieur,’ whimpered the physician lifting his hands timidly in defence and supplication.

  The King turned on his other attendants, the three most powerful men in the land, and growled at them. ‘Look at you, like a pack of hyenas waiting for a corpse to devour. Aow! My bowels feel like someone’s shoved a hot poker up my arse. Can’t you give me something for the pain?’ He turned man
ic eyes up at the Archbishop. ‘Where is he? God damn his eyes I’ll strangle the whore’s whelp with my own hands! I want that monk here now!’

  For one dreadful moment I thought he might have meant me, and from the sidelong glances I was receiving from my two guards I could see they were wondering the same.

  ‘Not here yet, sire,’ the Archbishop replied placatingly. ‘He is being sought. But look, Abbot Samson is here.’

  ‘I don’t need a damned abbot,’ he growled. ‘I want the murdering monk who’s poisoned me! And when you find him I want him flayed alive! You hear me? Like Richard’s murderer. Am I to be disobeyed in my dying hour?’

  He yelled and screamed and kicked his legs in the air and threw all his pillows out of the bed. It was quite a lively performance for a dying man and clearly demonstrated the famous Angevin temper of which I had heard. They all had it, apparently: John, Richard, even Bluff King Harry who was supposed to have chewed the carpet when taken by an uncontrollable fit of anger. Any child creating such a fuss would have been sent to bed without its supper – which is probably what used to happen to John, come to think of it, and which in turn explains his behaviour as an adult. Joseph with his taste for contortions of the mind would love to be here right now to witness this, I thought. I could see his wise brown head analysing and nodding sagely. I suppose such behaviour is a necessary attribute of any megalomaniac, but I did also wonder what had happened to the gentle and accommodating King John we had been presented with at the pageant the day before. It seemed the public face of the King was different from his private persona.

  There was one other person in the room who I hadn’t noticed until now. He too had been at the banquet sitting on the King’s table, though somewhat distantly from the others. He was perhaps a decade older than me and noticeable because of his hairstyle which he wore shaved at the back in the old-fashioned Norman manner. This style, I remembered from my history lessons, had been adopted by our Norman conquerors so that their enemies could not grab their hair in battle, unlike their Saxon opponents whose long hair and generous moustaches had placed them at a disadvantage in close-quarter fighting. When he came to identifying this gentleman Prior Robert had lowered his voice further and whispered discreetly behind his hand the name of Geoffrey de Saye, uncle of the Justiciar. That probably explained his presence, which seemed otherwise superfluous, for de Saye was not among the group around the bed but was skulking alone by the window and wearing an expression on his face somewhere between boredom and disgust.

  I could see that my services were not needed so I was about to unobtrusively take my leave when the said Lord de Saye spotted me.

  ‘Well, look who’s here. The bone-breaker.’

  ‘Who?’ I stupidly replied.

  ‘You, idiot.’

  Earl Fitz Peter glanced briefly at me then turned frowning to de Saye: ‘Uncle, please.’

  I was shocked at being addressed at all but the more so for the manner in which de Saye had spoken, almost as though he knew me. I racked my brains but could not think that we had met before. I’m sure I would have remembered if we had. When I think of it now, I did seem to remember him staring at me once or twice during the banquet although at the time I’d put it down to my fancy. Now I was not so sure.

  Well, there was no time to dwell on it for without my noticing the French doctor had sidled unobtrusively up to me. ‘You are a physician, mon frère?’

  I winced. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Bien. Viens ici.’ When I hesitated, he smiled in amusement. ‘Come. Do not be afraid,’ whereupon he took my elbow lightly in his fingertips and led me to the other side of the room where he flourished a glass bottle half-filled with yellow urine. The light shining through it showed it to have a cloudy green hue. It didn’t look at all healthy to me.

  ‘Well?’ he demanded.

  I cleared my throat. ‘The King’s?’

  ‘Yes of course, the King’s,’ he said indignantly, then lowered his voice. ‘It is disgusting, non?’

  ‘Er – oui.’ I felt like I was a student again and back at anatomy class in Montpellier.

  ‘And,’ he said cocking an elegant Gallic eyebrow, ‘what does this tell us?’ He twitched his moustaches suggestively.

  I took out my vademecum which I always carry attached to my belt. Among its many charts is one for the analysis of urine samples. Comparing the colours on the chart with that of the specimen I concluded that the King’s humours contained far too much black bile which might explain his temper and I said as much to the French doctor.

  ‘Bon,’ he nodded approvingly. ‘I concur.’ He then sniffed the specimen and held it out for me to do the same, which I did and nearly choked.

  ‘Urgh! Fish.’

  ‘Aha!’ squealed the Frenchman delightedly. ‘You noticed.’ Then he did what I was expecting next but had been dreading: He dipped a manicured finger into the warm, viscous liquid and sprinkled a few drops of it on to his tongue. But before he could offer me the bottle to do the same we were mercifully interrupted by shouting coming from outside the bedroom door which burst open and one of our brothers fell heavily in followed by one of the beefy guards. The man’s eye was swollen badly and he had a large cut on his lip from which blood was oozing. His hands had been bound in front and a stick inserted through his elbows behind thereby thrusting his chest painfully forward. The guard kicked the hapless monk onto his knees in front of the King’s bed where he scrambled to look up, absolute terror contorting his eyes.

  ‘This is the pervert who poisoned the King,’ growled the guard.

  ‘Brother Alric!’ said the startled Samson and immediately turned to the Archbishop. ‘What is the meaning of this outrage? This man is one of my congregation. How dare he be treated this way?’

  The Archbishop merely shrugged and walked away. But Samson would not be fobbed off so easily.

  ‘You!’ He pointed at the guard who had kicked the monk. ‘Whose man are you? I’ll have you horsewhipped for this impertinence. Release Brother Alric at once!’

  The guard hesitated and looked to de Saye who with a resigned gesture waved him aside. The guard immediately released his hold on the hapless monk who fell towards the bed. So, I thought, not only an ill-mannered rogue this uncle of the Justiciar, but a bully too.

  John scrabbled to the edge of the bed to peer at the man more closely. ‘Is this him?’ he gasped looking at the terrified monk. ‘Is this my poisoner?’

  ‘No poisoner, I beg of you, sire,’ whimpered Alric pathetically. ‘I am the baker. That’s what I do. I bake – bread, cakes, biscuits. Pretty little confectioneries to sweeten your tooth. Why would I want to poison the King?’

  ‘Why indeed!’ John wrinkled his nose and grabbed Alric by his robe. ‘I’ll have you roasted on your own spit, you murdering knave. Whose pay are you in? Eh? His?’ he pointed at Abbot Samson. ‘Philip’s? God’s bowels!’ he bellowed. ‘Will no-one protect me from this nest of traitors?’

  Right on cue de Saye stepped forward again. This time he grabbed the unfortunate Alric by the throat himself and started to throttle the poor man twisting the ropes to make him scream. Fortunately for Alric, at that moment John had another attack of colic, gasped and let out a terrible final cry then rolled onto his back distracting de Saye long enough for Alric to wriggle from his grasp and scuttle as fast as he could to the other side of the room. De Saye made a grab for him but Samson stepped between them, to de Saye’s evident fury.

  But now another quarrel had broken out, this time between the Archbishop and the Justiciar. It appeared to be over the ability of the King in his current condition to continue governing the country, the Justiciar saying he wasn’t competent, the Archbishop insisting that he was.

  While this new distraction was going on I took the opportunity to make a more detailed diagnosis of the King’s condition now that I was closer to the patient. My mind had gone back to the banquet the day before and suddenly all became clear to me. What had ‘poisoned’ the King were all those lampreys he
had eaten. He’d certainly had enough. Loathing the slimy creatures myself, I had taken a particular interest in the King’s evident relish of them and had watched with growing revulsion as he consumed plate after plate of the slippery worms. No doubt for those who have a taste for them they are a delicious delicacy but I can’t abide strong-smelling fish. But it was definitely the smell I detected in his urine just now. In addition there was a jakes bucket by the King’s bed which I had already noticed was empty and unused. Lampreys are notoriously rich and fat-filled which, if taken in sufficient quantity, can block even the most robust digestive system. Somewhere in the back of my mind I seemed to remember that one of John’s ancestors – was it his great-grandfather King Henry the First? – had died from eating a surfeit of the wriggling parasites. Not wishing to interrupt the contretemps between the Archbishop and the Justiciar, I leaned towards Abbot Samson and whispered my conclusion in his ear. Unfortunately Samson, being a little deaf, did not hear me the first time so I repeated my diagnosis louder just at the moment when my warring lords spiritual and temporal paused in their wrangling and the word CONSTIPATION rang out in the silence, as clearly as a rook’s caw on a crisp winter’s morning.

  Every eye in the room fell upon me. If the floor could have opened at that moment and swallowed me all the way down to Hades I would not have protested.

  The first to break the silence was Archbishop Hubert. ‘What nonsense is this?’ he scoffed glaring at me angrily. ‘What do you know of it?’

  ‘My lord Archbishop,’ droned Abbot Samson pedantically. ‘Master Walter is a trusted physician and academician, let me assure you -’.

  ‘And your prescription?’

  The voice cutting short the Abbot, deep and filled with gravitas, was that of William Marshal. It was the first time he had spoken and clearly he wanted a straight no-nonsense answer to his question. He looked at me with steady eyes. The stage, for good or ill, was mine.

  I quickly repeated my conclusion and my reasoning over the lampreys. De Saye snorted contemptuously while everyone else looked merely bemused. Only Earl Marshal, I saw with gratitude, was nodding and stroking that fearsome beard thoughtfully. But having talked myself into a diagnosis I had no suggestion for a remedy which was what the councillors now demanded. They looked at me expectantly and I could feel my worth plummeting fast as I fought to think while the French doctor pursed his lips and cocked that inquisitive eyebrow of his again.