Authors: Unknown
PART THREE
36
Outside Bordeaux, The Kingdom of France 24 APRIL A.D. 1288
The hunt lanced through the forest, driving through the undergrowth, with twigs and branches whipping back and snapping. Storms had swept through the region the night before, and the trail was boggy, clods of mud kicked up under the fierce tattoo of hooves. Damp rose in gossamer mist between the trees, and the rich winter’s mulch, rotting on the floor, gave off a dark, moldy smell. Sunlight pressed through breaks in the thick leaves, catching in the dew, turning spiders’ webs to fragile strings of pearls and the grass in the clearings to shimmering satin. Snatches of sky appeared in the canopy, blue and brilliant. It was early, and the last vestiges of dawn’s crispness clung to the air, soon to be burned away by the sun.
Near the head of the company rode an impressively tall, athletic-looking man. His sleek black hair was covered with an emerald-colored cap and his matching hunting tunic was brocaded with twisting gold flowers. Although almost fifty, he was still youthfully handsome. The slight droop in one of his eyelids, his father’s defect, was the only blemish to speak of, and even this lent his face a certain distinctive appeal. Oblivious to the courtiers and squires who cantered on the trail before and behind him, Edward I, king of England, was wholly intent on the chase. Up ahead, not too distant now, came the baying of the scout dogs. The bellow of horns answered the dogs’ cries as the hunting party crashed toward their quarry.
Edward felt a satisfied thrill as he saw the wolf for the first time. They had been tracking it for several hours, and he would have been disappointed had it been another of the half-starved creatures they had cornered the previous day. This one was a brute, all hunched blackness and muscle as it streaked ahead through the brush. The scout dogs were called to heel with sharp whistles from the pages, and now the mastiffs, ears flat on their square heads, were loosed at Edward’s command. They pursued the wolf relentlessly for a few hundred yards before a dog at the head of the pack leapt forward. Its powerful jaws opened and came down on the wolf’s neck, sinking into flesh and muscle with crushing force. The wolf let out a howled cry and crashed to the ground, tumbling over and over with the mastiff in a knotted barrage of snarls and fur. The other dogs moved in as the wolf fought vainly, and together they pinned it, biting and tearing, whilst the hunting party pulled up around them, the flanks of their coursers dark with sweat. The huntsmen moved in and whipped the mastiffs away brutally before the wolf was torn apart. Edward jumped gracefully from his saddle. The rest of the party was gathered in behind him now, silent but for the stamping hooves and the low, snorting growls of the dogs as they were chained.
Edward drew his sword. The wolf lay on its side, panting. As Edward approached, it tried to rise and feebly bared its teeth, but it was too weak to support itself and its head flopped back down uselessly. There were red rents in its neck and stomach, and a rank smell of sweat and urine came off it. It stared up at Edward with muddy yellow eyes. The king raised his sword and stabbed down through its heart. There was a cheer as blood spurted up, staining Edward’s blade. Withdrawing it, he took the cloth that one of his squires passed to him and cleaned the sword brusquely. Squires collected the dead wolf, which would be skinned for its pelt, its carcass fed to the dogs, whilst the rest of the hunting party dismounted and passed around skins of wine, congratulating one another on the kill. Edward joined them, now relaxed, easing off his gloves.
One man, standing apart from the main company, his face sickly pale and filmed with sweat, reached for a skin as it was passed to him.
Edward’s eyes flicked in his direction, mid-conversation, and he held up his hand. “Water for him.”
The courtier didn’t hesitate, but handed the wine on to someone else. The pale man watched it go with a bitter look.
“I would recommend a purge, de Lyons,” said Edward, moving over to him.
“My liege,” murmured Garin, inclining his head. His stomach heaved and twisted violently as he caught sight of the wolf being strung up on a pole by the squires, its matted fur lathered with blood and saliva.
“Or,” continued Edward, “if a vomit doesn’t work, might I suggest you consider drinking a little less at supper.” His voice hadn’t changed in pitch or tempo, but beneath that poised tone was an edge of steel.
Garin met the king’s gray eyes, then looked away. He was forty-one years old, yet still, with just a few chosen words, Edward could make him feel as if he were thirteen. “My liege,” he muttered again.
The king moved off to speak with one of his French vassals, leaving Garin standing there alone and shivering in the muggy air.
Usually, he managed to conceal the symptoms of a night’s drunkenness from the king; he wasn’t often called upon before mid-morning, and by then he would be over the worst of the shakes and sweats. Today, however, Edward had insisted that all of his advisors accompany him and his vassals on the hunt, giving him a chance to talk over his plans for the coming month. Garin too had been summoned to attend, even though he wasn’t exactly an advisor, at least not in any official sense of the word. Indeed, after nigh on twenty-eight years in the king’s employ, he still wasn’t sure what his position was, or where he fitted in the complex hierarchy of the royal household. Neither, for that matter, were any of Edward’s other staff, which was unfortunate for Garin as the lack of definition made them wary of him and he had always found himself to be something of a loner in the bustling life at court. He resented this segregation and simultaneously acknowledged that it was necessary. For some of the things he had to do for the king, he couldn’t be seen to hold a formal position. Existing outside the restraining ring of bureaucracy imposed upon the other royal officials made his work that much easier to accomplish. Caught between the legal and illegal worlds, he lived a strange half life where he was neither one thing nor the other, a state exacerbated by his almost constant drinking.
When he thought these days about what he had become, Garin viewed his life with a certain bemused detachment, like a man who has, at some point, taken a wrong turning but is fairly sure that he will join the road he is supposed to be on anytime now. But he had been thinking this ever since he had returned from the Holy Land, eleven years ago, and still that road had not materialized. He could have left: disappeared one night with a stack of coins from Edward’s coffers, fled to another kingdom far from the king’s reach, started anew. But fear and indecision and hope had made him stay. In Edward’s employ, he had purpose and status, however notorious; he was paid, not as well as he would like, but enough to live on, and he continued to believe, despite all evidence to the contrary, that Edward would eventually reward him for his faithful service. He also had a sense of belonging in the royal household, which was, in some ways, like being in a family, and this was important since his mother, Cecilia, had passed away five years earlier, leaving him alone. Edward had taken back the estate in Rochester, somehow, after blinding Garin with legalities and technicalities, managing to draw the remainder of the de Lyons’ dwindled fortune into his own treasury, ensuring that Garin would never see a penny of his inheritance.
As the hunting party finished off their wine and mounted up, two squires carrying the wolf, lolling from side to side on its pole, Garin pulled himself weakly into his saddle, thinking how much better he would feel when he had a drop of wine inside him. Sobriety was not a comfortable state these days, and his thoughts always tended to the past and to gloom whenever he was sweating out the previous day’s consumption. His spirits lifted briefly at the thought of the unfinished jug in his bedchamber, as the party moved off through the forest, heading back to Bordeaux.
Almost an hour later, they passed out of the forest reserve and into the fields and vineyards that spread out from the city in a patchwork of greens and yellows, cleaved by the blue Garonne, which flowed through Bordeaux and on to the sea. Farmers worked the russet soil, tending new crops. Grapes, still sour and young, clung to the vines. The dawn crispness had gone, burned off by the day’s metallic heat. For Garin, there was something unequivocally English about the scene, despite the southern warmth and the ripening grapes and the neat little bastide towns that were scattered about the landscape, many of them built by Edward. The king had spent the past two years in Gascony, working tirelessly to create new settlements and to unite squabbling feudal lords in his French duchy, a territory attained by his great-grandfather, which had subsequently passed from his father, Henry III, to him. Bordeaux was Edward’s capital, and the life he had made for himself and his family here was a comfortable one.
Riding swiftly through the city and up to the castle that perched arrogantly over the town and the lily-logged river, the hunting party clattered into the courtyard, the guards at the gatehouse saluting briskly. Considering that most of the royal court had been with Edward on the hunt, the yard was surprisingly busy. Outside the stables were around fourteen horses, with several young men loitering close by, squires perhaps. Garin noted that the beasts’ trappings were of colors and styles he didn’t recognize, but more curious than this were the squires themselves, who were distinctly foreign in appearance, with olive skin and colored turbans wound around their heads.
Edward too had seen them. As he dismounted, pulling off his cap and pushing a hand through his sweat-damp hair, he began to walk in their direction, an inquiring look on his face. Before he could reach the foreigners, however, he was greeted by his steward, who came quickly out of the main entrance to meet him.
“My lord, was your morning successful?”
Edward didn’t answer. “We have guests?” Behind him, the rest of the hunting party were climbing from their saddles. The dogs, barking loudly, were led to the kennels.
“They arrived shortly after you left, my liege.” The steward had to raise his voice over the dogs’ din and looked pained to do so. “They are waiting in the reception room.”
“Who are they?”
“A Mongolian embassy, my liege, under the authority of a man named Rabban Sauma, ambassador of the ilkhan, Arghun.”
Garin, handing his reins to a page, listened interestedly to this. The last news they had received from Mongolia was that after Abaga, ilkhan of Persia, had died, and his brother had taken the throne, only to be murdered by his generals when he converted to Islam. Arghun, one of Abaga’s sons, had been elected in his place, but so far, they had heard nothing from him.
“Take me to him,” said Edward at once. He beckoned to several advisors, who fell into step behind him as he shrugged off his riding cloak and entered the castle with the steward. The wolf was taken away to be skinned and cut up for the dogs.
Garin followed Edward at a discreet distance, curious to know what the Mongol ambassador was doing so far from home.
In a bright, oak-beamed room at one end of the castle, a group was gathered. Several of them looked Western in origin, but more were foreign. As Garin entered the chamber, a little way behind the king and his advisors, his gaze fell on one figure at their center, a rotund, beaming man of middle years who wore an elegantly embroidered white and jade cloak, which contrasted starkly with his tanned face. His white turban was decorated with a plump, glossy sapphire, embedded in gold, and his mustache drooped sleek and black down his jawline, framing an oiled beard. He looked richly exotic standing in the center of the bare stone chamber. A thin, anemic-looking man stood to his right, staring contemptuously about.
“My liege,” said the steward. “I present Ambassador ...”
The rotund man’s beam widened. Before the steward had finished speaking, he was moving toward Edward. “Your Majesty,” he said expansively, bowing low, “blessings upon you. I am Rabban Sauma, ambassador of his highness, the esteemed ilkhan of Persia.” He spoke French slowly, stiltedly.
Edward accepted the greeting graciously. “Welcome to my court, Ambassador. Can I have my servants bring you anything? Food? Wine?”
Rabban frowned delicately and gestured to a man standing close by, who spoke quickly to him in a guttural language. Rabban smiled again and shook his head. He answered the man beside him, who at once translated his words to Edward.
“Thank you for your kind hospitality, my lord. Some food and something sweet to drink would be most welcome, for myself and my men.”
“We will break our fast together,” replied Edward. He nodded to his steward, who bowed and swept out of the room.
“My liege,” Garin heard one of the advisors murmur. “Might it be prudent to ask the ambassador why he has come, before you break bread with him?”
The ambassador, oblivious to this exchange, had wandered over to one of the high windows where Bordeaux and the surrounding sunlit fields were framed. “Beautiful,” he said in French, pointing to it. “Very beautiful.” He lapsed back into his native tongue, the translator echoing him in a stuttering stream. “I have come from Paris. Paris too is beautiful, but in a manmade way. I marveled at the splendor of its university, the elegance of its architecture, the chapels.” Rabban’s eyes widened with delight. “You have seen Sainte-Chapelle, Your Majesty?”
Edward waited for the translator to catch up. “I have.”
Rabban didn’t seem to notice the sour note in Edward’s tone. “King Philippe himself showed me this wondrous place. A fragment from the very crown of Christ, I saw there, conveyed by King Louis, and afterwards I took Mass with Philippe’s court. It is a day I shall forever cherish.”
Garin, standing behind and a little to the right of the king, saw Edward’s jaw pulse at the mention of the king of France. Edward had begun his sojourn in Gascony with a visit to Paris to pay homage to the new king, an intense young man, whose subjects had already named him
le Bel,
“the Fair,” on account of his legendary good looks. There had been an immediate sense of rivalry between the two men on that first meeting. Partly, Garin had thought, this was because Edward disliked being Philippe’s vassal and Philippe disliked having an English monarch ruling territory in his kingdom; but possibly more, he had guessed shrewdly, because Philippe reminded Edward of himself years ago: young, ambitious and handsome, a rising star, whose light threatened to outshine that of the celebrated English king, hero of the Crusades and scourge of the Welsh. Edward didn’t like sharing glory.