His belly now held nothing but a half-pulped mess of destroyed organs and sizzling, clotting blood. The muscles in the assassin’s arm bulged, and he pushed the poker in yet further.
Richard’s diaphragm burst asunder, and the assassin jerked the poker back into the now-ruined cavity of Richard’s belly, lest he burst apart the heart and lungs and cause Richard to bleed from nose and mouth.
The assassin gave one final, vicious twist, then pulled the poker out with some degree of regret.
He made a disgusted face at the slimy mess coating its length.
Watching Richard carefully, his four companions gradually released their hold on him.
But the former king was dead, even if his body still jerked and roiled a little as organs and blood vessels continued to burst and cook within the retained heat of his belly.
The assassin thrust the poker into the coals, burning off the detritus of Richards internal organs, then carefully replaced it in its spot on the grate. He turned back to Richard’s body, and removed the earthenware cylinder from his body, pocketing it.
He ran his eyes up and down Richard, indicating to his companions that they should untie his hands and throw the destroyed nightshirt in the fire. He sighed, satisfied. Richard’s body was unmarked. There was nothing to indicate a foul death Nothing to indicate murder.
A natural death,” said the assassin, “for a most unnatural man.” The others laughed, then, having tidied up, left the room.
IT WAS All Souls Day, the day when the souls of the dead most easily walked the earth. It was that day of the year when a bitter, revengeful soul would have no trouble finding someone within which to smolder.
FAR AWAY to the north, Hotspur stood atop a hill staring at the misty peaks of Scotland plunging and rearing into the distance. On the slopes below his men were cutting the throats of the last of the wounded Scots they’d felled when they’d met in battle earlier this day.
Then, slowly, as the Scots shrieked and died below him, Hotspur turned, and stared south.
His hand slipped to the hilt of the dagger at his side, and his eyes narrowed in thought… and ambition. Then his eyes moved, and fell on the Dominican friar walking up the hill toward him.
Prior General Richard Thorseby, black-hearted man of God, come to stir the coals of winter.
GLOSSARY
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AQUITAINE: a large and rich province covering much of the southwest of France. Aquitaine was not only independent of France, it was ruled by the English kings after Eleanor of Aquitaine brought the province as part of her dowry to her marriage with Henry II.
ARMOR: the armoring of a knight was a complex affair, done in different ways in different countries and generations. Generally, knights wore either chain mail or plate armor or a combination of both, depending on fashion or the military activity involved. Chain mail was formed of thousands of tiny iron or steel rings riveted together to form a loose tunic (sometimes with arms); plate armor consisted of a series of metal plates fashioned to fit a knight’s body and joints—the full suit of armor was rarely seen before the fifteenth century.
Helmets (whether BASINETS or the full-visored helms), mail or plate gloves, and weapons, completed the knight’s outfitting. See also HAUBERK, PEYTRAL and SHAFFRON.
ARUNDEL, RICHARD: Earl of Arundel and Surrey, one of RICHARD’s Privy Councillors.
ARUNDEL, WILLIAM: Archbishop of Canterbury after SIMON SUDBURY.
ASHBOURNE, ELIZABETH: one of MARY BOHUN’s attending ladies.
AVIGNON: the French-controlled town which is the seat of the rebel popes.
BALL, JOHN: a renegade priest.
ballard, agnes: maid to margaret neville and nurse to Rosalind.
BARMING: a small village in central Kent.
BASINET: an open-faced helmet (although many knights wore them with a visor attached) that was either rounded (globular) or conical in shape. See also ARMOR.
bavière, isabeau de: wife of louis, mother of charles and catherine.
beauchamp, thomas: Earl of Warwick.
BEAUFORT, HENRY: illegitimate-born son of JOHN OF GAUNT and his third wife KATHERINE SWYNFORD. Henry is the Bishop of Winchester. BEAUFORT, JOAN: illegitimate-born daughter of JOHN OF GAUNT and his third wife KATHERINE SWYNFORD. Now married to RALPH NEVILLE. BERTRAND: prior of St.
Angelo’s friary m Rome. BlERMAN, JOHAN: a young merchant who accompanied THOMAS
NEVILLE on his
journey through the Alps in The Nameless Day. BLACK PRINCE: the now deceased first son of EDWARD III and his queen, PHILIPPA. The
Black Prince was married to JOAN OF KENT, and was the father of RICHARD II. BOHUN, CECILIA: Dowager Duchess of Hereford, mother of MARY BOHUN. BOHUN, MARY: heiress to the dukedom of Hereford, wife to HAL BOLINGBROKE. BOLINGBROKE, HENRY OF
(hal): Duke of Hereford and Earl of Derby, son of
JOHN OF GAUNT and his first wife, Blanche of Lancaster. BORDEAUX: a port on the Garonne estuary in southwest France and capital of the
duchy of AQUITAINE. Bordeaux was the BLACK PRINCE’s base in France (and in fact his son, RICHARD, was born there). BRANTINGHAM, BISHOP THOMAS: bishop of Exeter and Lord High Treasurer of
England.
CATHERINE: daughter of Prince LOUIS of France and ISABEAU DE Bavière, younger sister to the DAUPHIN, CHARLES. CHARLES, DAUPHIN: grandson of the French King JOHN, son of Prince LOUIS and
ISABEAU DE Bavière, and heir to the French throne. Older brother of CATHERINE. chartres, regnault de: Archbishop of Rheims. chatellerault: a heavily fortified town some twenty miles north of CHAUVIGNY in
central France. CHAUVIGNY: a town consisting of five interlaced castles situated on a hill overlooking
the Vienne River. It is just to the east of POITIERS and some two hundred and twenty miles south of Pans. THOMAS NEVILLE spent some time here in the company of LANCASTER, the BLACK PRINCE and BOLINGBROKE during 1378.
ClNQUE PORTS: the five (thus “cinque”) important medieval southeastern ports of England: Dover, Hastings, Hythe, Romney and Sandwich. The barons of the Cinque Ports, as the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, were very powerful offices
CLEMENT VII: the man elected by the breakaway cardinals to the papal throne after the election of URBAN VI was declared void because of the interference of the Roman mob.
Clement rules from AVIGNON while URBAN, who refuses to resign, continues to rule from Rome.
COURTENAY, SIR ROBERT: squire to THOMAS NEVILLE. See also SQUIRE.
D’ARC, JACQUES: sergeant of the village of Domremy, in the province of Lorraine, France.
Father of JEANNETTE D’ARC.
D’ARC, JEANNETTE (JEANNE, OR JOAN): second daughter of JACQUES D’ARC. Known as the Maid of France for her visionary prophecies.
D’ARC, ZABILLET (ISABELLE): wife of JACQUES D’ARC and mother of JEANNETTE d’arc.
DATING: medieval Europeans almost never used calendar dates; instead they orientated themselves within the year by the religious cycle of Church festivals, holy days and saints’
days. Although there were saints’ days every day of the year, most regions observed only a few of them; the average number of holy days observed within the English year, for example, was between forty and sixty. In Florence it was as high as 120. Years tended to be dated by the length of a monarch’s reign, each successive year starting on the date the monarch was crowned; EDWARD III was crowned on i February 1327, so, according to popular use, each new year during his reign would begin on 1st February. The legal year m England was calculated from Lady Day (25th March), so for legal purposes the new year began on 26th March. See also HOURS OF THE DAY, and my web page on medieval time for a full explanation on calculating the medieval year: www.saradouglass.com/medtime.html.
DAUPHIN: the official title of the heir to the French throne, Prince CHARLES, grandson of King JOHN.
DUNOIS, COMTE DE: the commander of the French garrison at Orleans. Better known as the Bastard of Orleans.
EDWARD III: a now-dead king of England. Grandfather of RICHARD II.
GABRIEL, SAINT: an archangel of heaven.
GASCONY: a province m the south of France famed for its wine and horses.
GERARDO: Italian man, keeper of the northern gate (the Porta del Popolo) in Rome.
GLASDALE, SIR WILLIAM: One of HOTSPUR’s officers at the siege of Orleans. Commander of the fort of LES TOURELLES.
gloucester: see woodstock, thomas.
gravensteen, THE: the Count of Flanders’ castle home in Ghent, capital of Flanders HALES, JOHN: a husbandman from the village of BARMING in Kent.
HALSTOW HALL: THOMAS neville’s home estate in Kent on the Hoo Peninsula near the Thames estuary.
HAUBERK: a tunic made of chain mail. Generally, it had sleeves (sometimes of chain mail, sometimes of plate armor) and reached to a knight’s knees.
HOTSPUR: see PERCY, HENRY.
HOURS OF THE DAY: although clock time was slowly spreading by the end of the fourteenth century (clock time used an evenly divided twenty-four hour day), most people within hearing of church or monastic bells orientated themselves within the day by the canonical hours. The Church divided the day into seven, according to the seven hours of prayer: