The Exiled (2 page)

‘Edward?’

The duke was a pale shape behind him, a white, indistinct pillar from the dust; the king’s right hand reached for the pommel of his sword — he’d heard the fear. Silently, quickly, the king moved towards his brother, one pace, two, three and then he saw ...

‘Is this sorcerer’s work, Edward?’

Richard nearly controlled his voice — it was low, which was good, and steady, but ‘work’ came out as a squeak. Edward often forgot how young he was.

In the depths of the cave, a curtain wall of rock had fallen away to reveal a man lying on a rock ledge. In the gloom, he could have been asleep, but as Edward bent down he saw ... a naked corpse. A black, naked corpse.

Cured and darkened by the salt air, perhaps, the skin of the man was the colour of sea-coal, but it lay in strange inhuman folds; muscle had dissolved from beneath leaving an outline, an approximation, of the collapsed shape of a man. That was repellent enough in its sucked-out strangeness, but this death had been a cruel one.

The man’s throat had an old, profound wound, a gash just beneath the jaw that was deep enough to show the spine’s junction with the skull. There were blade-marks on the white bone and a stiff noose of animal-sinew had dropped into the tear as the flesh of the throat decayed around it, a noose which had once been brutally tight.

‘Look.’ Richard had his voice steady now. In the uncertain light, he pointed and Edward just made out, black on black, a thin, leaf-shaped blade between the dead man’s ribs. It had been rammed into the chest with such force that several of the ribs were broken. A strange thing for such a small blade.

Edward reached down to take it.

‘Don’t! Don’t touch it. It could be cursed.
He
could be cursed.’ Richard’s voice shook but the king ignored the subtle, fearful breath of old magic, old beliefs.

‘No, brother. See? It’s just a kind of knife, I think.’ The king held the black thing up: it was beautiful, fitting his hand so well it might have been his own, yet he was puzzled. It was made from no metal he knew and the cutting edge was slightly scalloped, though lethally sharp. Perhaps it was stone, but stone such as he had never seen before, more like black glass, and very cold.

The man-thing lay silent before them, curled up like a sleeping child. A slow, unwilling shiver touched the king’s spine.

‘Edward, I think we should go. They’ll be looking for us, after the storm. The queen will be unhappy.’ Richard laughed nervously. He really wanted to leave this strange place, right now, but thinking of Elisabeth Wydeville’s certain rage was a bracing thing, a human thing that helped somehow. He made a move towards the horses.

‘Wait. Richard, what did you mean, cursed?’

Richard was suddenly very busy with the girths of both horses, he spoke over his shoulder.

‘Well, the triple death. You know: drowned, or burned or buried after hanging and cutting the throat. There were different ways of doing it when they wanted to make a sacrifice or ...’

‘Or what?’ The king was almost conversational as he bent down and carefully left the nasty little black knife, if knife it was, lying near one of the dead man’s hands.

‘Or to prevent an evil man walking after death. Sometimes they buried them at crossroads. Just old stories, I expect, but ... Edward, what are you doing?’ Richard’s voice was sharp with nerves.

‘There, my friend. Sleep well.’ If the dead fingers were ever to reach out, ever to uncurl, they would touch the murderer’s final weapon. Did the dead have need to defend themselves? Edward shook his head at the strange fantasy.

The brothers walked their horses out of the cave and away between the crushed rock, over the new landscape as the sea slowly quietened, slumping back hissing softly on the shingled sand.

Gratefully, Richard snuffled the salt on the air as he mounted and crossed himself, kissing the relic ring. ‘Thanks be to Our Lady, and Saint George! That old Loki didn’t get us! Lucky again, brother — we might have been companions to his friend back there for all time. No one would have found us.’

But Edward, once more on Mallon’s back, riding towards duty, towards responsibility, took no notice of his brother’s words. Luck? Once, when he’d really needed it, his luck had run dry. And thinking of that time, unwillingly, nearly a year ago, he only heard one thing, the sound of sea birds calling, and only saw one thing, Anne’s face.

From a distance he’d watched her go, hadn’t prevented it as she and Deborah sailed away from Dover’s harbour. And now, as Mallon stretched out to a gallop on hard sand at the sea’s edge, the pain came again, fresh, clear and almost sweet; the pain under his ribs which was there when he saw her face as if he too had been sliced open with that black knife, sliced to the quick. And died. Died for her.

Where was she? Where was she?

‘E
nough. Rest now. You must be stiff.’

The girl kneeling in front of the casement window stretched and sighed, easing her clenched muscles. It was true she was stiff, and cold also, from holding the pose. The charcoal braziers had burned out long ago and the room was frigid.

‘We have worked well today, you and I.’ The painter, oblivious to the temperature and happy to chat as he ground pigment in his mortar — it would yield rich scarlet when bound with boiled linseed oil and powdered gum Arabica — spoke truthfully, for the girl had knelt uncomplainingly for several hours. That was unusual amongst his clients, and he was grateful.

Satisfied, finally, with the consistency of the bloody paint he’d now mixed in an oyster shell, he took some to the tip of his brush and smiled apologetically.

‘If you are ready, I must use this light, mistress; perhaps a little more padding for the knees?’ He smiled encouragingly as she knelt again, but then frowned as he leant towards his canvas, lost once more in catching that annoyingly elusive highlight on one small fold of the velvet which was giving him trouble, such trouble ...

Sound travelled well in that still, icy dusk. The shouts of children playing on the frozen canal outside the painter’s narrow house bounced off the walls inside the studio when, finally, the man put his brush down and stood back from the picture.

He flicked a glance towards his sitter, obediently kneeling still. She was rimmed by the last of the light outside his casement and he could barely see her face, for the red sky in the west was darkening; soon the oil lamps, tallow dips and the candles would be lit against shadows all over his city.

‘That is all for today, mistress. The light is gone.’

Gratefully, Anne de Bohun sat back on her heels, allowing her body to slump and flexed stiffened fingers one by one.

‘Maestro? May I look?’

‘Not yet, mistress. Bad luck to look on it unfinished. Perhaps tomorrow.’

She understood his reluctance perfectly. It would be hard letting something out into the world, even when it was finished, if you’d brought it into being. Very well, she could wait a little longer.

Without fuss, Anne picked up a serviceable winter cloak and, getting to her feet, draped it round her shoulders. Best to cover the garnet-red velvet of the dress she was wearing for it was the most valuable thing she owned and there were strangers on the streets this winter. She did not want to invite robbery — or worse.

‘Lotta! Bring light!’ The painter’s voice was shockingly loud as he yelled for his servant, not even bothering to open the door and call down the stairs. She would hear him.

As they waited, Hans Memlinc, the German painter, watched Anne covertly whilst he cleaned his brushes — those ivory hands with their long, capable fingers pinning her cloak together, smoothing the folds of the stiffened veiling surmounting the embroidered cap which hid her hair. He’d never seen her hair. He was sad about that.

Anne de Bohun was a mystery. His paintings cost a great deal of money, but she’d not baulked at the price when they’d struck the contract. Yet, if gossip was correct, she was not, herself, personally wealthy, even if her guardian Mathew Cuttifer, the English merchant, was. Perhaps he had paid?

There was a timid little thump at the door. Suppressing irritation, Memlinc leaned over and flicked the iron latch up. The door swung into the room, revealing the anxious face of his servant, Lotta. She was holding a branch of lit candles in one hand, a small, sputtering oil lamp in the other. She was very young and flustered, and her anxiety to please her master made her clumsy. She dripped oil from the lamp onto her kirtle as she curtsied to her master and his guest.

‘Set the candles down, girl. Not there!’ Lotta had hurried to comply, putting the branched lights down on the first available surface, his work table cluttered with mortars for grinding pigment and pots full of brushes. ‘How many times? No! Put the candles in front of the mirror, it will double the light.’

Anne took pity on the harried child. It was only so little time since she too had been a servant. ‘There, Lotta, give me the lamp for your master. And please let Ivan know I am ready to go home.’

Gratefully, Lotta scuttled out of the studio and Anne glanced at the painter as he dropped a fine muslin cloth over the face of his work. The material was held away from the surface by a delicate wire prop. Delicate things pleased them both. They smiled at each other.

‘Thank you, Maestro. Today was a good day. I shall look forward to our final session together tomorrow.’ Such a subtle stress on the word ‘final’, but the painter heard her, heard what she meant and surprised himself by nodding. Yes, they would finish tomorrow.

Anne reached up and carefully placed the little terracotta lamp on a shelf above his work table where the uncertain light spilled down to the painter’s best advantage, then began fastening iron-shod wooden pattens over her soft shoes.

‘Until tomorrow, then.’

She was grateful that tomorrow would bring completion, for it had been a lengthy process sitting for the painter and she was impatient to have the picture home.

Hans Memlinc had no idea how important his work was to Anne. It was only paint, canvas and the skill of his hands, but this picture was Anne’s private, tangible symbol of hope, hope for her future, and her future success in this city, and as such was worth every one of the carefully hoarded gold angels she would pay.

Anne’s pattens clicked on the painter’s tiled floor as she left his studio smiling happily. Belated conscience struck him and he called after her, ‘I’ve kept you late, mistress. You must be careful going home. There are too many mercenaries in town this winter. Wild and silly, most of them, but no one is safe after the curfew bell.’

She laughed. ‘I’m not worried. The Watch’ll have chained the streets by now. Soldiers all drink too much anyway. I can outrun them, Maestro!’ He heard her giggle as she clattered happily down his staircase and he found himself grinning.

Anne was still smiling as Ivan, her guardian’s Magyar manservant, closed the front door of the painter’s house behind them. He’d been waiting in Master Memlinc’s warm kitchen, quite happy to while away another winter’s day chaffing little, shy Lotta and flirting with Eva, the cook–housekeeper. She was substantial, Eva, with an abundance of good flesh packed tightly into a pretty skin. He liked that. She liked him. They had been pleasant times.

‘The picture will be finished tomorrow, Ivan, so no more happy days with Eva.’ Spooked by Anne’s prescience, the man nearly dropped his flambeau. He crossed himself quickly, but she saw it.

‘What’s this, Ivan? A prayer? Who for? Eva?’

Her laughter was so unforced, so clear in the dark, sharp air that Ivan was ashamed. She was not a witch, this girl, just clever — for a woman. Cautiously he smiled, and held the light higher.

Anne pulled on her one winter indulgence — fleece-lined mittens — as she breathed deeply of the wood-smoke air. A few minutes’ brisk walk beside the frozen canal and she would reach her guardian’s new house with its warehouse near the Kruispoort — one of the nine fortified gates of the city of Brugge — but Ivan would have his hand on the hilt of a short stabbing sword the whole way.

It was a good feeling, if she was honest, that he was her protector, for the town
was
filled with outlanders this winter: mostly mercenaries in the service of the Duke of Burgundy who roamed the streets waiting for the end of winter and the certainty of the coming spring campaigns. The Lowlands were still restless and their new duke had much to do to secure his Duchy, let alone deal with the French. Mercenaries are only ever half tame, everyone knew that, and winter made them dangerous: too much time on their hands and too much blood from rich food and good beer.

Ivan understood. As a very young man he too had been dangerous — still was, in a more controlled way — which was why he’d been hired by Sir Mathew Cuttifer, Anne’s patron and guardian, to help protect his interests in this city. Anne fell into that category for reasons Ivan was not paid to understand.

Brugge, this Venice of the North, was booming and there were rich pickings to be had, and not just for English merchants with interests outside Britain, like Sir Mathew. Young, landless men are always attracted to wealth, and many here had more ambition than a short lifetime’s service as one of the Duke of Burgundy’s paid fighters.

And it was hard to be poor in such a place, hard not to be envious of other people’s good fortune — if you had none yourself — for wool, spices and jewels arrived daily in barges down the Zwijn from the coast. More wealth to add to that already stuffed in behind the sturdy walls of this dynamic city — and Sir Mathew and his friends, the English Merchant Adventurers, commanded much of it.

Thus it was Ivan’s job to see that his master, and his master’s ward, Lady Anne de Bohun, lived in peace, the peace he could help give them in dangerous times when so many coveted Sir Mathew’s rich possessions, this girl included. He took the office seriously as a matter of professional pride.

Anne was a realist, too, for all the joking with Meinheer Memlinc. It was the darkest time of the year and she was grateful to have this short, powerfully squat man pacing at her side, alert as a hunting dog.