Iacobus (8 page)

“What was that?” asked Jonas, frightened.

“Calm down, boy. It’s nothing more than a woodcutter. Let’s go and find him. He might be just the person we need.”

We spurred on the horses and came to a gallop, quickly reaching the clearing in the forest where the noise was coming from. An old, misshapen and hunchbacked man, about sixty years old, was attacking the remains of a trunk with little luck. He looked tired and sweaty and by the cerulean hue of his skin, it didn’t look like he had much time left on this earth. A huge wet patch stood out on the crotch of his trousers, revealing a urinary incontinence that my nose warned me of before I’d even dismounted. Upon seeing us arrive, he straightened as much as his hump would allow and looked at us suspiciously.

“What are you doing in these parts?” he snapped at us abruptly with a rude, rough voice.

“Strange greeting, brother!” I exclaimed. “We are good men who have unwittingly gone astray, and hearing your axe, we thought that we had found salvation.”

“Well, you’re wrong!” he growled, returning to his task.

“Brother, please, we will pay you well. Tell me, how do we get out of this forest? We want to get back to Paris.”

He raised his head and I could see a new expression on his face.

“How much will you pay?”

“How about about three gold escudos?” I proposed, knowing how exaggerated an offer it was. I wanted to seem desperate.

“Why not five?” bartered the crook.

“O.K., brother, we will give you ten, ten gold escudos but for that money we also want some wine. We are thirsty and tired after going around in so many circles.

The shady man’s little eyes shone like glass beads under the sunlight. He would have died of disappointment had he found out that I was willing to go up to twenty escudos but his greed had betrayed him.

“Give me the gold,” he demanded, holding out his hand. “Give me the gold.”

I approached him on my horse and bent down to drop the escudos into his black hand, which he grasped avidly.

“If you go back the way you came, always following the path on the right, you will get to the Noyon road.”

“Thank you, brother. And the wine?”

“Ah, yes! You see, I don’t have any here but if you carry on a mile in that direction,” he said, pointing north, “you will see my house. Tell my wife that I sent you. She will take care of you.”

“May God bless you, brother.”

“You have already blessed me, sir.”

“Why were you so polite to a common servant?” asked Jonas as soon as we were out of earshot. “That man is a slave, even though he is a slave of the King, as well as a thief.”

“I am not in favor of establishing differences because of the way people were born to this earth, Jonas. Our Lord Jesus was the son of a carpenter and most of his apostles were no more than humble fishermen. The only possible inequality between men is their kindness and intelligence, although I must admit that in this case, neither were apparent.”

“So?”

“If I had have treated him with the insolence he deserves, he would have taken the ten escudos just the same but we wouldn’t be on our way to his house. Luck is on our side, Jonas. Don’t forget that a woman, however rude she may be, and especially if she has spent her life shut away in a hovel in the middle of a forest, is always friendlier and more open to conversation.”

We found the owner sitting at the door of the hut, sprawled on a chair made from straw and wood, drinking from a jug. The cabin was squalid, miserable, filthy and dirty, just like the owner, a woman who at some point, although it seems impossible, must have had teeth and hair. I saw the look of disgust on Jonas’ face and thought that, like him, I would rather get away from there as fast as possible. But she, or anyone else like her who lived in the area, had to give me the information I needed.

“May the peace of God be with you, ma’am!” I shouted as we approached.

“What do you want?” she asked, without a flicker of emotion.

“Your husband sent us. We paid him ten gold escudos for you to give us a little wine before continuing on our way to Paris.”

“Well, get down from your horses and help yourselves, there’s a jug right here.”

Jonas and I dismounted, tied the horses to a tree and walked towards the woman.

“Are you sure you paid him ten gold escudos?”

“Yes, ma’am, but as I see that you don’t trust me, here is another escudo for you. We got lost in the forest, and if it wasn’t for your husband’s directions, we would never have been able to leave these parts.”

“Sit down and drink,” she said, pointing to some wooden benches. “The wine is good.”

The truth is that the wine was awful and had a bitter taste of old vinegar but what else could we use as an excuse to start a conversation?

“And what are you doing around here? It’s been a long time since somebody from the city came to Pont-Sainte-Maxence.”

“My young friend and I are coustilliers of King Philip the Long, may God take care of him for many years.”

The woman didn’t believe me.

“How can you be a coustillier of the King if you aren’t French? Your accent is … strange, from nowhere.”

“You are right, ma’am! I see that you are an intelligent woman. My mother is French, daughter of Count Brongeniart, who I’m sure you’ve heard of because he was the advisor of Philip III the Bold. My father, however, was from Navarre, subject of Queen Blanche of Artois, whom he accompanied in her flight when she escaped the Aragonese and Castilian pursuit of Navarre, fleeing to Paris with her young daughter Jeanne. Everyone knows that old story. When my mother died, my father returned to his homeland, taking me with him. I only recently returned but the King was good enough to appoint me coustillier of his gabinet for being a Brongeniart.”

The old woman was dazzled by so many names of high lineage, and I ended my speech by taking a sip of that vinegar with the innocent and distracted air of somebody who has told something so true and so evident that there is nothing left to say.

“And tell me, sire, what has brought you to this forest?”

“You see, ma’am, Pope John has requested a full report from the King regarding the death of his father, King Philip IV the Fair. Because I don’t know if you are aware, when he was found in these parts after falling from his horse, he only said two words: ‘The cross, the cross …’. The Pope wants to canonize him, as Boniface VIII canonized Louis IX, great-grandfather of our current King, in 1297. Now, ma’am, let me tell you a secret …,” and I lowered my voice as if instead of being in the middle of a dark forest, we were in a cattle market or a public square. “The King doesn’t want his father to be put on a pedestal. It would be too much having to bear the weight throughout history of his grandfather and his father being saints! He would always look bad in comparison.”

“True, true!” the hag agreed enthusiastically.

“So instead of sending the royal guard or the bishops or the advisers, the King has sent us, two coustilliers, to investigate the facts surrounding the death of his father, strongly warning us to find something that would discredit the wishes of Pope John. Which is why we need to find someone who knows exactly what happened that day, who has all the details and who, for a little money, is willing to talk. Do you know of anyone like that?”

“Me, sire!”

“You, ma’am. How can that be?” I asked in surprise.

“My husband and I know everything. Do you not see that nothing happens in this forest without us ten or fifteen servants who live here finding out?”

“Ah, well, that is interesting! Look, Jonas, this woman is the person we were looking for. What is your name, ma’am?”

“Marie, sire, Marie Michelet, and my husband is Pascale Michelet.”

“Well, here are five gold escudos, adding them to the one I gave you earlier and the ten I gave to your husband, it’s a small fortune!”

“And what about me!” she yelled angrily. “What you gave my husband was for the wine and the directions, and what you gave me when you arrived was because you wanted to. For five gold escudos I’m not sure if I’ll remember everything.”

“But look, Marie, I haven’t brought anymore and with what I have given you, you can set yourselves up for life,” I argued.

“Well …. You’re right.”

“Maybe your information will include an important detail that deserves to be paid generously. So, here … These are my last four escudos. I came with twenty and I leave with none.”

“You can ask whatever you want,” said Marie, greedily grabbing the coins. I told myself that misery breads misery and that maybe, if that same woman had been born into a distinguished family, she could have been a generous and elegant lady, a respected mother and grandmother and, most probably, disdainful of money.

Marie said that about a month before the day of the accident, two free peasants who were wandering around looking for work had settled in the vicinity of Pont-Sainte-Maxence, and with there being nothing else, helped the woodmen cut wood, and every now and then, if anyone caught a deer, ‘although, sire, don’t mention that part, as you know that it’s a crime to kill the King’s animals’, they took care of tanning the skin and making shoes and shirts and dagger sleeves from the leather. Those two free peasants were called Auguste and Felix and were from Rouen and they were the ones who spotted the dear, ‘an enormous dear, sire, a deer as tall as a horse, with a shiny coat and enormous antlers with twelve tines’.

“Did anyone else see it, Marie?”

“See who, damn it?”

“The deer, did anyone else see it other than Auguste and Felix?”

“I don’t know what to tell you …,” the old woman made an effort to remember. She seemed smart and alert (greed awakens the most stupid of people) but her life had been tough and her mind was not exactly the most exercised part of her brain. “Yes, I think so but I’m not sure. I can’t quite remember if the son of Honare, a woodman who lives further north, also said that he had seen it, or that he thought he’d seen it … I don’t know.”

“It’s O.K., don’t worry. Please continue.”

“Auguste and Felix were obsessed with the animal. They followed it around the forest day and night but they didn’t catch it. They never hunted, and anyway, they said that an animal like that deserved to die at the hands of a king. When Philip the Fair arrived with his retinue that day, it was Pascale who told him about the deer and told him the marvelous things that the pair from Rouen had said about the animal.”

“And so the King enthusiastically went in search of the deer with the miraculous antlers.”

“Hahaha! He certainly did! And he died!”

“And where were Auguste and Felix that day?”

“They said that they didn’t want to miss the hunt and that they were going to go up that hill,” she said, pointing to her right with a fat, dirty, gnarled finger. “That one, can you see it? They wanted to watch from up high.”

“Were they armed?”

“Armed? Auguste and Felix …? Not on your life! They were never armed, I told you that they never hunted.”

“But they knew how to make sheaths for daggers.”

“And very well, too! I’m sure I have one inside the house. Do you want to see it?”

“No, that won’t be necessary.”

“Auguste and Felix didn’t go up the hill armed. That day they only carried their staffs which helped them to walk through the forest and clear a path in the undergrowth.”

“And the dogs, Marie, why weren’t they with the King when he was attacked by the deer?”

“The King was faster than the dogs.”

“Did he really go that fast?”

“He flew! The pack always goes first, showing the way the game went but the King thought he saw the deer going in a different direction, and he separated from the group.”

“And the horn, why didn’t he sound the horn when he got lost and was attacked by the deer?”

“He didn’t have it.”

“He didn’t have it?” I asked in surprise. “No hunter goes out without their horn.”

“That’s right, and the King had a very pretty one tied to his belt. I saw it. It was average size, made of pure gold and precious stones. It must have been worth a fortune!”

“And how is it possible that he didn’t have it on him later?”

“What do I know! All I know is that Pascale spent a week looking for it in the area where the deer rammed the King because he said that when they found him on the ground shouting ‘the cross, the cross …’, the horn wasn’t there and he couldn’t have had it on him when he was attacked because he didn’t call his companions. They swore on it.”

“Pascale was looking for it to return it, naturally,” I said sarcastically.

“Naturally …,” mumbled Marie.

“I just want to know one more thing, Marie. Where are Auguste and Felix now?”

“Ooh, what a question! Not even they know that!”

“Why?” Jonas asked.

“Because they left to find work somewhere else. They stayed here until Easter and then returned to Paris. Shortly after, the hunger started. People were dying like dogs, fighting over a morsel of bread. They visited us a few times over the course of a year or so, and then said that they were going to look for work in Flanders, in the fabric factories. We haven’t heard anything from them since.” Marie settled back comfortably on her wood and straw chair, ending the conversation. “Have you found what you were looking for to please the King?”

“Yes,” I replied, standing up; Jonas copied me. “I will tell him that you were of great help.”

The old woman looked at us from her seat with curious attention.

“If it wasn’t for the fact that you … I would say ….”

I quickly changed the subject. I, who was so sublime at lying, behaved like an apprentice when things were beyond my usual scope.

“On your horse, Jonas! Goodbye, Marie, I hope that you enjoy your money. It’s money that you have earned thanks to the Pope.”

Two days after Jonas delivered my letter to Beatrice of Hirson — in that discreet and moderate way —, her response finally arrived from the hand of an old servant who shook when he gave it to me, like a leaf tossed about in a gale. Watching him escape down the stairs like a young boy, I guessed that his unjustified fear must have been nothing in comparison to the fear that he would have seen on the face of his mistress when she gave him the note which I was now holding in my hands.