In the end, however, Thorseby placed the final blame for his sufferings on Thomas Neville’s shoulders rather than those of his fellow travelers. If it hadn’t been for Neville, Thorseby would be back home in the comfort of Blackfriars rather than rotting away in this damp, frigid and gloomy corner of Christendom.
Thorseby frowned, and hoped today’s interviews would make his travails worthwhile.
There was a knock at the door, and the prior of the Nuremberg friary, Brother Guil-laume, entered. He was so enormously fat that he wheezed and gasped for breath as he walked over to his chair and squeezed himself in. He nodded a greeting to Thorseby, and to the two clerics who sat at a desk in a corner of the room, pens to the ready.
“They are here,” Guillaume finally managed to say in Latin, the universal tongue of all clerics.
Thank God, Thorseby thought, for once these interviews are done then I can go home. “Then may we delay no longer?” he said, as pleasantly as his painful feet would allow. Guillaume nodded, and motioned to one of the clerics, who rose and went to the door.
“First,” Guillaume said, “the cook.”
Thorseby composed himself, settling his face into a bland expression, and folding his hands in his lap and tucking his feet out of sight beneath the trailing hem of his robe. This cook claimed to have been working in the kitchens of a tavern in Carlsberg, a small town a clay’s journey south of Nuremberg, when he’d overheard a conversation between Thomas Neville and one of his traveling companions. Apparently, this conversation had proved so interesting it had remained in the cook’s head. Thorseby looked forward to its recounting.
The cook entered, a swarthy middle-aged man with a strange left-shouldered droop and a shock of fine, dark hair sprouting from underneath an ill-stitched and tight-fitting cap. He looked both apprehensive—an interview before Dominicans was nothing to feel relaxed
about—and sly, as if he knew the worth of what he was about to say.
Prior Guillaume greeted him tersely, then indicated he should sit in the chair that faced those of the prior and Thorseby.
The cook sat, removing his cap as he did so, allowing his abundant hair to spill over his shoulders.
Thorseby’s mouth thinned as if the man’s profusion of hair was a direct insult to his own tonsured scalp.
Guillaume spoke to the man in German, receiving a muttered few words in reply, and Guillaume leaned a little closer to Thorseby. “He says his name is Fermond, and that he has lived in Carlsberg his entire life.”
Thorseby grunted. “What does he know of Neville?”
Guillaume turned back to Fermond, and spoke again, translating the cook’s replies to Thorseby.
Within moments, Thorseby was leaning forward, his eyes glittering. This man, Fermond, had been working in the kitchens when Thomas Neville sat down to eat with a Frenchman called Etienne Marcel. The conversation that had then transpired between them was incriminating in the extreme. Thomas Neville had been associated with the leader of the Parisian revolt, Etienne Marcel? Marcel had given Neville money, and a ring as token?
As Guillaume continued with his muttered translation of the conversation that had occurred between Marcel and Neville, Thorseby finally sat back in his chair. He knew that, whatever the other witness had to say, at this point, Thorseby had enough to interest Richard in indicting Neville on suspicion of treason. The passing of money and a ring between Marcel and Neville, and, more importantly, Neville’s acceptance of both money and ring, indicated a contract between them. A contract to what? To incite rebellion in France, yes, but perhaps also in England? No king liked to have the lieutenants of dangerous rebels in their realm.
Ah, Neville, Thorseby thought as the cook was finally escorted away.you have earned yourself a traitor’s death with this man’s testimony alone. What will you earn for yourself with the testimony of my next witness, the German mercenary?
A heretic’s death by burning, as it happened. The German mercenary, a hulking, brutish man, patently had no love of the Dominicans—Thorseby saw him fingering his dagger on several occasions as he testified—but he also had no love for Thomas Neville. What he said was brutal, and to the point.
“I traveled with the English friar from Florence to Nuremberg,” Guillaume muttered to Thorseby, translating in almost perfect time with the mercenary’s grunting words, “and, during this time, I came to understand that the friar was not a man of God at all, but a demon lurking in the guise of a man.”
Thorseby’s eyes widened, and his hands clenched into fists.
“We traveled through the Brenner Pass,” the mercenary continued, “spending the night wrapped in its dangers.”
“Yes? Yes?” Thorseby said, and the mercenary needed no translation to realize the Prior General’s eagerness.
“I woke during that night,” said the German, “and saw a most frightening thing. Brother Thomas lay wrapped in his blanket some distance from me, but I could easily see what manner of creature he entertained that night.”
“Yes? Yes?”
The German grinned, and leaned forward very slightly. “A demon, my lords. Horned and horrible, and with evil, silvery eyes, crouching in conversation with the English friar. I did not need to be any closer to understand their devilish intimacy… if you know to what I refer…”
Thorseby’s mouth gaped, and for a moment or two he literally forgot to breathe.
The German’s grin widened. “Would you like to hear more detail, my lords?”
Thorseby’s head jerked in assent, and every regret he had harbored about his own trip north to Nuremberg vanished as Neville’s doom spilled forth from the German’s inventive mouth.
CHAPTER VII
The Feast of St. Hilary
In the first year of the reign of Richard II
(Friday 13th January 1380)
KING JOHN OF FRANCE lifted his velvet-clad arm and tried to wipe the red wine from the corners of his mouth. He missed with his first pass, his arm bumping into his nose and forehead, and the aged monarch giggled and snorted. He made another more determined and successful effort, and sighed in contentment.
When he laid his arm, now trembling with the effort of its master’s will, back on the armrest of his chair, his two companions saw that the sleeve’s sky-blue cloth was soiled and filthy, and the fibers of the velvet clotted into ragged spikes.
Robert de Vere caught Richard’s eye, and the two men shared a conspiratorial smile. Feeble old man.
John did not see their contempt. Indeed, he was so befuddled with the wine his rheumy eyes were having trouble focusing. All he knew was that he was warm, he had a constantly refilled goblet of spiced wine in his hand, and that the two men who sat on the opposite side of the hearth from him were fine and hearty companions.
John knew that he should be unhappy and concerned about something—wasn’t there a battle that he had, perchance, lost? Wasn’t he being held against his will while his realm disintegrated without him? Hadn’t he been forced to sign something humiliating within the recent past?—but John’s mind had been slipping in and out of coherency for many months, and now he lived only for and within the moment.
And this moment was fine and comfortable and was here to be enjoyed, not spent fretting over the shadows that lurked in the corners of his mind.
He raised his goblet at Richard and de Vere, burped, then drained his wine with several slurping gulps.
Now the neckline of John’s velvet tunic was spotted with the thick red wine. De Vere grimaced, and rose from his chair to refill the French king’s goblet. There were no serving men present within the chamber and the men-at-arms who constantly provided protection to Richard were standing outside the tightly bolted shutters and doors. What happened in this chamber was going to remain secret between those who inhabited its spaces.
“You are fine companions,” John slurred. “Fine men all.” He took another swallow of wine.
“You do us honor to allow us to keep you company,” said Richard. All three men were conversing in the polite French of John’s court, and John could almost imagine that he was home, chatting amiably with the courtiers who came to fawn at the foot of his throne.
Except that now King John presided over no court save these two handsome men who sat sprawled and contemptuous in chairs opposite him. Both were clad only in black and close-fitted tunics and hose that showed off their fine forms—de Vere also wore a sword—and sported little jewelry, save a great ruby ring on Richard’s right hand and a similarly sized emerald on de Vere’s hand.
After all, was not de Vere now a king in his own right as well?
John gibbered something unintelligible, and shifted in his chair so he could scratch in the crack of his buttocks.