Mappamundi E-Book

Christopher Harris

• Herausgeber: Dedalus
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: Dedalus Original Fiction in Paperback
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 476

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

New Renaissance knowledge leads to the exploration of America

Das E-Book wird angeboten von und wurde mit folgenden Begriffen kategorisiert:

Leseprobe

Dedalus Original Fiction in Paperback

MAPPAMUNDI

Christopher Harris was born in London in 1951. After leaving school he studied art briefly, then did a variety of jobs. Later, he studied biology, and taught science for several years. These jobs were interrupted by journeys to Italy, Greece and Turkey, where he researched the background to the Byzantine Trilogy: Theodore, (2000) False Ambassador, (2001) and Memoirs of a Byzantine Eunuch (2002).

He now writes full-time and divides his time between his homes in Birmingham and France. He is currently writing a novel about Pelagius, a British heretic.

Contents

Title

Dedalus Original Fiction in Paperback

Part 1: Christendom

August 15th, 1464

Turin

Paris

François

Pope Pius

Rosenkreutz

Supper with Pius

Cosmography

The alchemical wedding

The Crusade

Flanders

Essex

The Eelwife

The eelsheds

Winter

Colchester

Kings and queens

A pilgrim

The Tome

Cambridge

A scheme

Ipswich

William

Part 2: The Otherworld

Ice

Preparations

Elements

The voyage

Antillia?

Land of the Rosy Cross

Night

The savages

Soolia

Discord in Paradise

The Fountain

Madness

The others

Healing

Graven images

The witch

Part 3: Return

Aix en Provence

Copyright

Part 1: Christendom

August 15th, 1464

It was a good thing that the pope died at Ancona. Not that I didn’t like His Holiness. I counted him a friend, even though he made me serve him and never gave me the indulgence he promised. No doubt he would have freed and pardoned me eventually, had he lived. I liked the pope, and wished him no harm. It was the place of his dying that was a good thing, and the time, not the death itself. Had he died at Rome I might never have got away. Had he crossed the sea and begun his great venture we might all have been slaughtered by the Turks. And, having been nearly killed by the Turks already, that was something I was keen to avoid. So dying at Ancona was the best thing His Holiness could have done.

Even before Pope Pius died, his plans were falling apart. The rabble he called a crusade had mostly gone back to where they came from. As soon as they heard the sad news, the papal courtiers did the same, heading back to Rome before a new pope could be chosen. Pius’s closest retainers stayed with his body, but only so that they could pilfer his belongings. How they must have wished he had died in the Vatican, where they could have looted his private apartments! In Ancona, in that bare room in a borrowed palace, there was little to steal. Even so, I knew I must take something to fund my escape.

The low-vaulted room was dimly lit. There was a lamp at the bedside, a few guttering candles elsewhere. A couple of servants attended to the pope’s body, furtively searching him while they laid his limbs straight. Others were going through his baggage, turning out clothes and vestments, stripping them of embroidery or cloth of gold. I quickly looked around. On a table near the pope’s deathbed was the book I had been reading to him, a new translation of Plato’s Timaeus. In the rush to grab something of value it had been ignored by everyone. I was surprised that Patrizzi, the pope’s secretary, had not taken it, as he resented the service I did for his friend and master. All the way to Ancona I had been reading bits of the book at the pope’s bedside, so I knew it was as dull as anything of that sort could be. But it was neatly written in the fancy Italian style, and would bring me a good price from the right buyer. I have sold books before, and travelled far on the proceeds. It is just a matter of luck, of finding a wise fool who will pay well for what he cannot understand.

I picked the book up and slipped it under my tunic, and in doing so, saw something even more valuable. There, on the table, concealed by the book, was the Fisherman’s Ring, the symbol of the pope’s office, the seal Pius used on all his letters and pronouncements. His fingers were so bent and swollen that he could not wear the ring. It had been hung round his neck on a silken cord, but towards the end his skin was so inflamed that he could not bear the cord, and had begged his secretary to remove it. Even Patrizzi was not so haughty as to actually wear the pope’s ring, so he must have put it down after sealing a letter, then forgotten about it.

Without thinking what I was doing, I slipped the ring onto my finger, turning it so that the seal of St Peter faced inwards. There are old tales about rings and their power. They can cure wounds, grant wishes, make a man invisible, let him assume the shape of any creature, render the speech of birds and beasts intelligible. Maybe it was the strangeness of the moment, with the Vicar of Christ dead in bed nearby, or the pleasure I got from taking those things before Patrizzi did: whatever the reason, I felt transformed by the ring, filled with confidence and power. I knew what to do and how to do it. The ring would help me to escape. It would get me to England, where I would settle, leave my past behind, and make something of myself.

There was a desk in the next room, with pens and parchment, and ink ready mixed, and letters half-written and laid out for finishing. Nearby was a leather bag for documents, stamped with the crossed keys and triple crown of the pope’s crest. I chose an unfinished letter that began with a long preamble from His Holiness, then, as neatly as I could, wrote some lines telling all who read them to give assistance to one Tommaso d’Ancona, wherever he might pass, and whatever he might require. That is not my real name. I am Thomas Deerham, bastard son of an English soldier who caused no end of trouble with his lies and deceptions. I have tried to be more honest than he was, especially in this account of my adventures. If I have used false names or worn disguises, it was because someone made me, or because it was necessary. And my escape from Ancona was absolutely necessary. As I melted red wax onto a corner of the letter and pressed the ring into it, I felt rather pleased with myself, and with my new name.

I heard wailing from the next room. Others had arrived, more servants and hangers-on, competing in grief with those who had watched the pope die. Soon the bishop’s palace would be full of scavengers. It was too late to return the Fisherman’s Ring. I slipped it back on my finger, and looked around for something else to steal. All I could see was a silk cloth artfully painted to show the countries of the world. The pope had been studying it in his bed, looking at the lands lost to the Saracens, dreaming of leading an army to reconquer them. We all have our dreams, and if it would have taken a miracle to get the pope on his feet again and fit enough to lead an army, then who but a pope is most likely to be granted such a miracle? But there was no miracle. His illness took its course, and took his life. And I took the map. It folded up small and went into the leather messenger’s bag, along with the book I had taken earlier.

So, there I was, with the book, the ring and the map, dressed in the fine livery of a papal servant, armed with a false name and passport, ready to make my escape into the warm Italian night. All the stories I’ve ever been told begin in such a way, with the hero setting off on some quest or other, about to make his way through the world, beset by troubles and difficulties. Well, I am no hero, and I intended no quest. All I wanted was to get back to England, to find me a good wife and a soft bed and a dry roof, to settle in some quiet corner and never venture out of it. I’d been everywhere, or so I thought. The only place I wanted to go was home. I thought I had earned a few comforts, after the life I’d had. But philosophers tell us that the Wheel of Fortune never stops turning. It rolls onward, raising some men high, crushing others, dragging most of us behind it like dogs tied to a wagon. As for my luck, you can judge for yourself. This is no story. It is what really happened.

Turin

All through Italy my fake passport got me lodgings and horses, and I travelled faster than the news of the pope’s death. I had not ridden for years, not since I took ship to Constantinople, to help defend that city against the Turks. We fought that great battle on foot, were defeated on foot, and fled on foot. Ever since then I had walked, trudged, crept and knelt, looking up at others, knowing my place by the weariness in my legs. It was good to feel a horse beneath me, to thunder over flat ground, the trees rushing past as though driven by a great wind. I felt like a man again, not like the fawning, grovelling creature I had been.

In Savoy, before going on, I took a good look at the mappamundi. England was an irregular shape on the northwest edge of the map. There was not much detail: a flag or two, a castle, some stippling. But I knew that home was there somewhere, and if I followed the mappamundi I would find it. Ahead of me the map showed mountains, marked in jagged brown. And beyond them was France, where I had fought as a boy soldier, where I learned to kill and rob. Since then, the French had risen up and driven the English out. My false name and passport would not protect me, as the French hated Pope Pius as much as they hated the English. They had defied his authority, and he had annoyed them by not supporting Duke René of Anjou as king of Naples. And the Cardinal of Arras, having fallen out with Pius in Rome, had gone back to his country to stir up more trouble. It could not be long before the remaining cardinals elected a new pope, but that would not help me. I folded the mappamundi away, knowing what I had to do.

In Turin, I found a quarter where old clothes hung from the eaves, festooned the windows, and were piled up on trestles in front of every shop. I wanted to exchange my papal livery for something plainer, but it was not easy. Old-clothes men, wearing half their stock, strolled the street like actors advertising their next performance. Others, from behind their trestles, eyed me up, pricing what I wore, wondering how much they could get out of me. The merchants were proud of their trade, and imagined me to be a man of substance. They offered me their most expensive garments, holding up fine doublets for dashing gentlemen, fancy hats to keep the sun out of my eyes, and long-toed shoes only fit for preening popinjays. When I declined them, they offered winter cloaks, sturdy boots, even clothes for women, all as good as new, or so their vendors claimed.

There is way of dealing with merchants, of getting what you want from them at a price you are willing to pay, but I am not practised in it. One of them, a dark man with a long beard, caught me like a fish and gently played me in.

“Every garment tells a story,” he said, stepping into my path. He stroked the sprigged velvet gown he wore. “Your clothes tell me that you are servant of the pope. But your face tells me that you are not happy with your station. Perhaps you are trying to escape, to make your way to somewhere congenial. Am I right? I thought so. What can I do for you?”

His face was sad and wise, and I felt that I could trust him, though I knew that I could not. “I want to exchange these clothes,” I said. “For something plainer.”

“I might find you something,” he said. “But a suit of clothes like yours …” He frowned at my tunic, which boldly bore the crest of Pope Pius, his four golden crescents on a blue cross, beneath the crossed keys and crown.

“The papal court wears nothing but the best,” I said.

“Of course. Come into my shop and I’ll see what I can do.”

He examined my clothes, muttered to himself, rummaged through some chests and sacks, then held up a threadbare doublet and some much-patched hose. “For what you are wearing,” he said, “I will give you these.”

“But that’s not a complete outfit. Surely you can give me more?”

“There’s no market for clothes like yours. Maybe in Rome, but not here. And further north it will be worse. They are no friends of your master in France.”

“I know. That is why I want new clothes.”

“Don’t you have some money, or something you can sell?”

“No.” In fact, I had a few gold coins hidden about me, but I meant to keep them.

“What about that ring?”

I clenched my fist, feeling the ring’s big seal against my palm. It had proved useless. I had not dared show it to anyone, and it had brought me no advantage. There was no magic in it. What power it had could only be released by someone who knew how. I opened my hand so that the merchant could see the seal. Then I slipped the ring from my finger and held it out to him. Greed flashed for a moment in his eyes, then he mastered himself and looked at my offering with a mixture of gloom and contempt.

“I don’t know,” he said, taking the ring and weighing it in his palm. “I am no goldsmith, but there might be an ounce or so of gold in this ring.”

“Is that all?”

“We will take it to my friend. He will tell us what the ring is worth, and I will pay you accordingly.”

“You would weigh it? That’s not just a lump of gold. Have you looked at the emblem on it?”

The merchant raised the ring to his face and peered at it.

“The ring of Saint Peter. The first of your popes. Now there was a man who was much misunderstood. A Jew, and the follower of a Jew, who sold the gentiles a new religion. He was the greatest merchant of them all. As I say, a Jew like me, but claimed by you Christians as one of yourselves.”

“I claim nothing. I just want what the ring is worth.”

“Who can say what a ring like this is worth? There are stories, but what do they tell us? Solomon, for all his wisdom, was nothing without his ring. That was a magic ring, stolen from him by a demon. Deprived of it, Solomon wandered the world like beggar, telling everyone how he had once been king. And do you know why he lost the ring?”

“How should I know?”

“God punished him. The king had sinned, grown too fond of worldly things, so God deprived him of them until he regained his wisdom and was worthy to be king again.”

The merchant was playing with me. He had guessed my needs and knew he would supply them. “How much would you pay me?”

“That depends,” he said. “What do we know of this ring? If I was as wise as Solomon, I might know its value. What powers does it have? Was it stolen? Are you, perhaps, a demon? Are there goats’ feet hidden in your shoes, black wings folded tightly beneath that fine tunic of yours?”

“I am a man like you.”

“Like me?” the merchant smiled sadly. “You concede that much? You do not despise me like others of your faith?”

“I have travelled in the East. I respect men of all faiths, if they treat me fairly. And that ring could be worth a fortune to someone who knew how to use it.”

“A fortune!” The merchant shrugged. “If only I had such a fortune.” He looked at the ring again. “For this ring I will fit you out like a gentleman, and not just with clothes. My friend the armourer will find you weapons…”

“I do not wish to dress as a gentleman, or bear arms like one. I need a modest costume and the money to continue my journey.”

The old-clothes man kitted me out in underclothing of linen, a sombre grey doublet with dark red trim, and grey hose, none of them too musty. He found me some good boots that fitted me quite well, and I chose a grey cloak to cover myself. I did not need the cloak in the August heat, but the mountains were not far off, and the weather would be colder by the time I reached England. He tried to sell me a fancy hat with plumes and flounces, saying that a good merchant would wear something to show off his wealth, but I declined it and chose a beaver hat such as Englishmen had worn when I was young.

I wanted no signs or symbols in my clothing, no colours to show allegiance, or emblems to show my place of origin. I wanted to look like a merchant, a sober man of business who does not leave home without good reason. And, if the need arose I could wrap myself in my grey cloak and seem whatever I wanted to seem.

I have travelled as a merchant before: it is a safe guise, as long as you do not look too prosperous. Merchants pass everywhere without attracting much attention, unless they are carrying gold, or valuable goods. And if they are foreign, as merchants often are, no one expects them to abide by all the customs of the country.

In that guise I could not carry a sword, but I chose a good long knife that I could hide under my coat. With a blade like that, as I knew from bitter experience, I could kill a man as easily as with a two-handed sword.

Paris

Solitary travellers often despair. The road is hard. One place seems much like another. The company of inns and taverns is no company at all. No one can be trusted. Arriving at each place, it can be hard to make the simplest decision. I had the feeling that I was being followed. I often turned from my path and waited to see who passed. Sometimes I sat in tavern corners to see who came in after me. As it happened, I did have a pursuer, but he was not following me so closely. I was in more danger from the brigands: flayers, they were called. I knew their ways. I had been one of them. I shuddered at the things I had done in the cold winters of my youth. I had been forced into it, but could not deny to myself that I had robbed and pillaged with the worst of them. Did such things still happen now that the English had been driven from France? I feared to travel alone, yet dared not join a group. I regretted the Fisherman’s Ring. What did I have without it? Old clothes, a dull book, a passport that brought me no benefits. Only the mappamundi gave me solace. After losing the pope’s ring, I thought of that painted cloth as a sort of talisman. Its signs and marks had been laid out by a great scholar, who was skilled in astrology, as well as cosmography. I could not help feeling that the mappamundi was magical and had the power to guide me. Whenever I got the chance I spread it out, and looked at all the countries it showed, the oceans, forests, cities and wildernesses, glad that home, when I found it, would be safe on the world’s edge.

By one means or another, using various names, speaking different languages, I went north, through Savoy, Burgundy and France, until I reached Paris.

It was evening, and the city rose all around me, its spires and turrets gilded by the setting sun, its alleys already in twilit gloom. The river stank, and so did the streets. On the other bank there was nothing but churches, and I was no pilgrim. I hesitated, brought low by the travellers’ malaise. What should I do? Where should I go? I wanted to unfold the mappamundi and gaze at it. But, in that bustling city of strangers, I dared not open my bag.

I stood by the Petit-Pont, listening to passers-by, tuning my ear to their speech. The city grew dark while I waited. Old men dragged their chairs inside and shut their doors. Waterfront hawkers stopped crying their wares. Boys ran home with loaves under their arms. The shops on the bridge closed, and linkmen lit braziers at each end. The crowds thinned. The curfew bells rang, but I had nowhere to go.

Nearby, a man was pacing back and forth by the stone wall that topped the riverbank. Several times, while I watched, he climbed onto the parapet, as though he intended to jump off. But each time he thought better of it and climbed down.

There is nothing like another’s suffering to bring cheer to the miserable, and there was a poor fellow worse off than me. I was about to go over to him, to offer him a kind word, but before I could do so I felt a tugging at my cloak. I turned, but the heavy cloth was thrown over my head, rendering me blind. Then I felt a blow to my head, and I pitched forward helplessly.

I struggled with the cloak, trying to free myself, from its mud-soaked folds. I heard someone shouting in villainous French.

“You stinking dunghill dogs!” the voice called out. “You poxy sons of drunken whores! I’ll shove you back up your mother’s cunts if I ever catch you.”

I got to my feet and looked around. The man I had been watching sat sprawled in the dirt, shaking his fist, flinging elaborate insults into the darkness. He was so eloquent that I forgot my plight. It was only when he fell silent that I realised that my bag, containing everything I owned, was gone. I must have said something, though I don’t know what. Perhaps I gave myself away by cursing.

“You clumsy oaf,” the man said, speaking my own language. He got to his feet and lurched towards me, brushing himself down. “You fucking Goddam! I’m covered in shit now. What d’you mean, knocking me down like that?”

“Me? They knocked me down too. Look at the state of me.” I held out my muddy cloak so he could see it in the light from the brazier. “And they robbed me too.” He stepped nearer, and I saw that he wore the grey habit and cord belt of a Franciscan. Filthy in person and foul of tongue, he was a friar.

He must have seen my puzzlement. “I expect you are surprised,” he said, “to hear one such as me speak like a scoundrel.”

“Not me, brother. I know very well that monks and friars are just as likely to be scoundrels as the rest of us.”

Pope Pius himself used to say that friars desire nothing so little as virtue. But they are usually careful to cover up their true natures. So what had this friar done, who had the ear of God, and could extort the aid of man, that might drive him to end his own life?

“I have my reasons,” he said, “for speaking as I did.”

“Anger is a sin.” The chance to reproach a friar could not be missed.

“It is, and I am sorry for it.”

“So is despair.”

“It is not the worst sin.”

“You were going to throw yourself into the water,” I said.

“Was I?” The friar drew back. “Were you watching me?”

“I was,” I said. “Why would a friar like you want to do that?”

“Why indeed? That’s a good question. But why should I carry on living? Life has been unkind, throwing misfortunes at me like a fishwife clearing her stall at the end of a market day. Perhaps you are a fortunate man?”

“Me! Fortunate? I think not. I have just been robbed.”

The friar peered at me, trying to make out my face in the firelight. He was a small man, thin and stooped, and the friar’s habit was too big for him. Perhaps he was so old and useless that his brothers had thrown him out.

“What did they take?” he said.

“Everything I own.”

“You’re like me, then. A man with nothing.”

Was the friar a decoy, a thief’s accomplice? I felt inside my doublet. The knife was still there. I reached for it, making the gesture obvious. “I want my things back. And revenge, if I catch the thief.”

He wasn’t scared. “You’re right,” he said. “Revenge is good. What a fool I was to think of jumping! I haven’t had a drink all day. When I leave this life, I certainly won’t do it sober.”

“Who robbed me?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “But I might be able to find out.”

“How?”

“What we need,” he said, “is some wine.” He reached out, unsteadily, taking my arm. “Come with me.”

I was reluctant. I wanted to chase the men who had stolen my bag. But what chance did I have in a strange city?

“You will have to pay,” I said. “Everything I owned has been stolen.”

“I am sure you must have a little something about you. The wise traveller always does.”

I wasn’t admitting anything. “Not me.”

“Oh well. There are still one or two places where my credit is good.”

Why would a man who could get drink on credit kill himself? And who would give credit, or anything, to a friar? He led me away from the bridge, along an alley to a door set deep in a high wall.

“Watch yourself,” he said. “And if you say anything, speak French.” He was careful to pull his hood round his face before we went in. I was wary too, as I did have some money hidden inside my doublet.

It was a low sort of place, hardly a tavern at all, more like a village alehouse where men drank until they dropped and were lucky not to be pissed on by the men who were still standing. The friar hailed a potboy, sent him for a pint of wine, and settled us in a corner, out of earshot of the few other drinkers. He sat with his back to the others, and looked down at the straw-strewn floor when the potboy came with the wine.

“The good wine of Gascony,” he said, raising the jug. It was sour stuff, not much better than vinegar, but that is what you get when you drink wine in September, before the new vintage is in. We took our turns with it until our thirst was quenched, then the friar ordered another. “I haven’t had enough of this lately,” he said. “I suppose we’d be pushing our luck to try and get some food?”

“If your credit is good for it.” Food was far from my thoughts, and I paid little attention to his question, though I ought to have been alerted to our true condition by his wheedling tone. “You said you’d help me,” I reminded him. “I want my bag back, and everything in it. You said you could find the thieves. Or are there too many of them in Paris?”

“The French are a larcenous race, I’ll grant you that. But the cause, I think, is the example set for us by the English. Your countrymen stole everything they could while they attempted to rule us. I take it you are English, despite those Italian clothes?”

“My father was English, my mother Gascon.”

“I’m not sure which is worse.”

“Neither am I.” I have no reason to be grateful to my parents, and the friar must have heard that in my voice. He looked at me curiously, and I saw that he was not as old as I had thought. I guessed he was a score of years younger than my half-century, a young man, broken by ill-health or bad luck.

“Perhaps you Goddams are not all bad.” He did not sound as though he believed it. “This bag,” he said, “what did it look like?”

“It is about this big,” I said, holding out my hands to show him, “of red leather, with a crest stamped on the flap.”

“A crest? Whose?”

I hesitated. “The pope’s.”

“You must be an important fellow to carry a bag like that.”

His tone was sly. I could tell he thought I had stolen the bag, that I was no better than the Frenchmen who had taken it from me. I was about to tell him that I had counted the pope as my friend, that I had served his Holiness loyally. Then I remembered that I had stolen the bag, and its contents.

“I’m just a merchant,” I said, “on my way home. There are some documents in the bag, which I’d like to have back.”

“Valuable ones?”

“Only to me.”

He asked me questions, tried to find out my business, but I was careful not to say too much. Friars are as bad as priests. They pry your secrets out of you, then beg a coin or two for having heard your confession. If you don’t pay they threaten you with eternal damnation, or with revealing your sins to all within earshot. After all, if you haven’t paid, it’s not a true confession, and the confessor isn’t bound by the seal of secrecy. It is best to keep your sins to yourself, unless you really are confessing, and even then it’s best to keep a few back.

“What about my bag?” I said. “Do you know who’s stolen it?”

“I know who the thieves are in this quarter.”

“Are they friends of yours?”

He sighed. “I have no friends. I am a dead man.”

There was nothing ghostly about him. He stank. He might have been a walking corpse. I drew back. “You carry the plague?”

“No. I spoke metaphorically.”

“Then talk straight, and take me to these thieves.”

“Nothing can be done tonight,” he said. “But in the morning, when the sun is shining, everything will look different.” He looked around the room. “Now we must sleep.”

“Where?”

“I know a place.” He stood up and tottered towards the door. I followed him, no steadier.

“You there …” A big man in a leather apron was bearing down on us.

“Run!” the friar said. And I did, but the door was bolted. We both seized the bar together and tried to draw it. But men grabbed us from behind and threw us to the floor. I went for my knife but kicks stopped me, and more kicks hit my legs and arms, and would have hit my cod and yard if I hadn’t curled up to protect myself. I could hear the friar wailing, but they were kicking me, not him. They shouted at us, and the friar whined and wheedled, and they kicked me again. The friar called out, threatening God’s vengeance on men who were too mean to give alms to a mendicant. The men spat on him, then threw us out into the alley.

I heard the door slam, and fell forward into the foul ooze that fills all Paris as though the city was built on a dunghill. The friar was still wailing. I stood and reached out for him, dragging him by his cord belt until we were out of the alley and back at the riverside. We seemed to be alone. Were there no watchmen in Paris?

“Why did you do that?” I said, flinging him down by a brazier. The light from its coals made his face look devilish.

“It was my last chance,” he said, half sitting up. “And I took it. No one will give me credit now. But at least we have had our wine.”

“And paid for it in blows.”

“Cheap at the price,” he said. “I have often paid more.”

“You didn’t pay much tonight. You kept clear of the beating.”

He shuffled backwards. “I can assure you I was hit too.”

His tone angered me more than the beating I had just had. Everything they said about friars was true. I reached into my doublet and pulled out my knife. He saw the blade flash in the firelight. “A weapon!” he said. “A fine one, I am sure, for a man like you.”

“It will do the job.” But I was not sure what the job would be. Was the friar a drunken fool, a useless scrounger, a thief ’s decoy, or the only man in Paris who could help me?

While I hesitated he leapt to his feet and pulled out a blade of his own.

“Do friars carry knives, now?”

“I have to eat,” he said, edging away from me. “To cut my bread, like anyone else.”

It was no bread knife. It was the long, slim blade of a backstreet brawler. I was sure of it: he was in league with whoever robbed me. “Stop!” I said. “Drop your knife.”

He stopped, and held his hand out limply, allowing the blade to droop. Then he lunged at me, aiming for my heart. I didn’t think he would be so quick, but I was ready for him. I parried the blow, knocked the blade out his hand, grabbed his arm and pulled him forward, then tripped him, flinging him against the river wall. Old soldiers never forget. Fighting is in their blood, even when they have not fought for years.

The friar hung over the wall, the same wall he had tried to jump from not long before. I held onto his leg, letting his body dangle over the edge. Holding him took no effort: he hardly weighed anything. No wonder he had wanted food.

“Poor François!” he whined. “You won’t let go, will you?”

“Won’t I?” I held my blade over him, making sure he could see its glint.

“Don’t kill me.” His voice was feeble. There was no fight left in him.

“You wanted to die.”

“But not to be killed.”

“What’s the difference?”

“I had lost hope. I wanted to slip away from this life, to leave my sins and my old self behind, not to have the life ripped out of me by an Englishman’s blade.”

His words touched me. They expressed my own half-formed desires. I too wished to leave my sins and old self behind. And I did not wish to commit another sin by harming someone as helpless as him. I hauled him in, and let him sit against the wall.

“I am Thomas,” I said.

“I am François.”

“What made you lose hope?”

“I’m not meant to be here,” he said. “I’ve been exiled.”

“By your order?” it was not unusual for fallen friars to be thrown out by their brothers.

“No. By the king and parliament. If the king’s men catch me, they’ll hang me. I don’t want my corpse strung up for idlers to gawp at. Why should the scum of Paris look down on me while they gaze up at the gallows? I don’t want the flesh torn off my bones by crows and kites. Why should birds feed well when I’m half-starved? Where’s the justice in that? I want to choose for myself: life or death. And if death, what kind.”

I put my knife away, and his, tucking both into my belt, where I could get at them easily. I didn’t realise it then, but I had done something significant. Whether it was a mistake or not, you may judge when you have read the rest of this story. By sparing François I made myself his keeper, and from then on I was no more able to get rid of him than if he’d been chained to me.

François

The moon was up, and the river looked like silver. I walked like a man in a dream, following François along the waterfront, down the empty streets of a city I did not know, past narrow houses and stinking privies and fine gates and shuttered windows and bolted doors. He dashed down a side street and I followed him. It was pitch dark, and slippery underfoot, and I still feared trickery, even though I had taken his weapon. I heard him heaving at a door, then he called to me.

“In here! It’s quite safe. There’s no one here but me.”

I went in. It might have been a thieves’ den, the lair of the very men who robbed me, but what choice did I have?

The room was as dark as the alley outside.

“Upstairs,” he said, from the other side of the room. Then he climbed up a ladder, leaving me alone. There was nothing for it but to climb up after him, which I did as well as I could, my legs being stiff from all the beating and brawling I had been through. The upstairs room was empty. Moonlight pouring through a broken shutter showed me François and a heap of straw, nothing else.

That night I fought with myself for longer than I had fought with François. I regretted having pulled a knife on him. When in Rome I had resolved to leave violence behind me. I had killed too many men, and feared that I would kill again when roused to anger. So why was I carrying a knife, if I did not intend violence? It would have been folly not too. No traveller goes unarmed. I had already been robbed, and stood a good chance of being swindled by the friar. What other dangers faced me? There were always thieves on the road, and tricksters in every town. To travel unarmed would be to make myself a victim. But I was a victim anyway, and my knife had not saved me.

So my thoughts went, turning in circles like a creaking cartwheel, until I felt François shaking me, and heard him urging me out of bed.

He was carrying a dark lantern, its side slid up to let out a glow.

“It’s still night,” I said.

“The bells have struck three.”

“Let me lie,” I said. “My legs are as stiff as stockfish.”

“I have been out and made enquiries.”

“Do you know who the thieves are?”

“Yes.”

I sat up and rubbed my eyes. “Then lead me to them.”

He wrapped himself in his long Franciscan cloak and set off. I hobbled after him, down the stairs and out into the alley. Raising the lantern to show me the way, he darted through a doorless archway, into a maze of passages and yards. We skirted little squares and hidden courts, passed shuttered shops, emerged into patches of wasteland, reached dead ends and doubled back, cut through half-wrecked houses, clambering in one window and out of another. Was he trying to confuse me?

I tripped on rough cobbles, squelched through mud and filth, got caught on brambles, hit my head on low lintels. Once we went through a graveyard where whores lurked, their painted faces like death’s-heads in the light of a dying bonfire. François slowed down, as though he was tempted to linger, then he twitched and shuddered like a man forced to watch something that disgusted him. He rushed on and I struggled to keep up with him. For a short-winded runt he moved fast, and I knew that if I lost sight of his lantern I would never find my way back to the river, or out of the city.

He stopped, at a doorway that looked no different from any other, and asked for his knife back. “I may need it,” he said, “if I am to help you.”

“I’ll come in with you. And if anyone needs to use a knife, I will.”

“You’ll get nothing if you come in. You must leave it to me. Describe the bag again. Tell me exactly what was in it. Then I’ll know what I’m looking for and whether or not I’ve found it.”

“How do I know you won’t trick me?”

“I give you my word.”

I had a good idea how little his word was worth, but he had turned things his way, making me the beggar, not him, giving me no choice. I told him what to look for then stood watch while he silently prised open a shutter and climbed through the window. What kind of friar knows where thieves are to be found, and how to burgle a house without making a sound?

I paced the cobbles, looking this way and that for the men I was sure would come for me. Would they be watchmen, shop-guards, or thieving cutthroats? Had François guessed I still had some gold on me? And why did I want the bag so much? Its contents were of doubtful value. I knew I could sell the book, and maybe the map, if I was desperate, but the money I might get for them would be no use if I got killed in a Paris backstreet. Did I value my memories of Pope Pius so much that I was prepared to take that risk? I held on to my knife, ready to defend myself from anyone, or to rush after François if I heard a noise from the house. But I heard nothing, and feared the lying friar had slipped out of a window and made off into the night.

I could smell baking bread. Soon the city would wake, shutters would be thrown open, the streets would fill, and I would be a man in a crowd.

François climbed out of the window so silently that the first I knew of it was the slap of his feet on the cobbles. Then, as though he had been holding his breath the whole time, he took in a slow, wheezing chestful of air.

“Is this it?” he said, opening his dark lantern so I could see what he offered me. It was my bag, and I reached into it, feeling the book and a wad of silky cloth that must have been the map. There was no time to see what condition they were in.

“My passport,” I said. “It was stamped with the pope’s seal. It’s not here.”

“It wouldn’t be much use. We won’t be presenting ourselves at the gates. We’ll slip out of Paris unseen.”

“How?”

François led me back to the river by a much shorter route than the one we took earlier. Perhaps it was a different stretch. I couldn’t tell. We climbed down some stone steps to a wharf where fishing boats and barges were moored, and he leapt from one vessel to another as nimbly as a goat. When I caught up with him he was untying a small boat.

“You’ll have to row,” he said, as I got in beside him. “I’d like to help, but I’ve not been well.” He settled himself in the bows, wrapping his cloak around him like a blanket. “Keep to the centre,” he said. “That’s where the channel is.”

I was no waterman, and after the drubbing they gave me in the tavern my arms were so stiff that I could hardly row. I managed a few clumsy strokes to get us out into the middle, then the current caught us, and I only used the oars when I had to, fending off obstacles, or guiding the boat round the river’s curves. François pulled his hood over his eyes and slept.

Paris slipped past, lit by the hazy moon. Mist rose, and curled around us, lapping the boat until the water was invisible. It was good to sit, though I had to be careful not to fall asleep. Now and then having forgotten François’ advice to keep to the centre, I had to punt through shallows until the current caught us again. Soon we were free of the city. Stone gave way to mud and reeds, and sheep lay huddled in fields. The sun rose, and gradually drove off the watery chill. Herons stood silent on the banks, flapped off as we approached, then circled round and landed again.

François woke with a start and began coughing. His thin chest heaved, and his face went red, and he leaned over the side, retching and spitting.

“If you are so ill,” I said, “why don’t you go back to your order? Surely your brothers would look after you.”

He sat up and took deep, wheezing breaths. Old scars showed white on his blotchy face. “The truth is,” he said, “I am not really a friar.”

By then, I was not surprised.

“I never was one,” he said. “I wear these clothes as a matter of convenience. I hate friars. Who doesn’t? They are wandering parasites who profess poverty but live in luxury off whatever they can get from the pious. Well, that was what I thought. But I haven’t got much from my imposture.”

“What are you?”

“I was a scholar. I studied hard in my youth. And played hard. I fell in with wrong company, coquillards, we call them.”

“Pilgrims?” I thought he meant travellers who wear the cockle shell of St James, on their way to Compostela.

He laughed. “They posed as such, when it suited them, just as I pose as a friar. But they were unruly men, older than me, veterans of the English wars, turned loose in peacetime, and devoted to all manner of crime and dishonesty. I found them interesting. I ran with them, and I drank with them. That was my downfall. I killed a priest when I was drunk. They locked me up for that. I was badly treated. Very badly. I would have died in a filthy dungeon, had not the king chanced to ride by.”

“The king freed you?”

“We were all pardoned, turned out into the street, to honour the king’s visit.”

“You are a lucky man.”

“You wouldn’t say so if you had led my life. If I ever had any luck, it’s run out. After they set me free, I committed another crime, a robbery, and now I am banished.”

“From France?”

“From Paris.”

“Is there a reward for your capture?” A reward would be worth having, if there was any way of claiming it.

“Only death.”

“So why stay?”

“I left for a while, but I couldn’t stand it. I hate the countryside. It’s full of pigs and peasants. The people are too poor to beg from, and there’s nothing worth stealing.”

“There are other towns.”

“They are too small, and I am too well known.”

“You are well known?”

“In certain circles.”

“So you risked death in Paris?”

“The city is life itself to me. I love the place: its sights and sounds, even its smells. But there is nothing for me in Paris now. All my friends are dead or turned traitor. Last night I thought I would rather die than leave the city again.” François coughed again, his face wracked with pain. “I ought never to have gone back,” he said. “Revisiting one’s old haunts is seldom a good idea. I will have to move on. To England, perhaps. Do you think your countrymen would have me?”

“I don’t know if they’ll have me.”

“Were your crimes that bad?”

“Who said I committed any?”

“I can guess.”

I shoved an oar out to fend off a log, making more of a business of it than was necessary. “You won’t get me to tell you,” I said, when the log was safely behind us. “I wouldn’t confess to you, even if you were a friar.”

“I’ve been honest with you. If we are to be friends, you should, too.”

“Are we to be friends?”

“I helped you,” he said. “Now we are in the same boat.”

“I’m rowing and you’re lounging.”

“You can see I’m ill, Thomas. I used up all my strength helping you. Please, humour a sick man. Tell me, what was your crime? Have you killed a man?”

“I was a soldier. I lost count of the men I killed.”

He reached between my feet and picked up my bag. “How did you come by this?”

“I took it from the pope’s bedside.”

“What were you doing there?”

“I was in papal service,” I said. “Until His Holiness died.”

“Pope Pius? Is he dead? I had not heard.”

“He died not long ago. I came straight from his deathbed.”

“May God have mercy on his soul.” François spoke so forcibly that he started coughing again. “Pope Pius was a good man,” he wheezed. “And a friend of learning and literature.”

I was surprised to hear a Frenchman say that, as Pius had been no friend of France. It made me think François really was a scholar, as he claimed.

“Pope Pius was indeed a good man,” I said, “though he never gave me the indulgence he promised.”

“So, you wanted an indulgence! I was right. You are a sinner.”

“I killed a man, and was locked up, like you. They let me go, in the end. But without my indulgence, I am still a sinner.”

“If I really was a Franciscan,” he said. “I might have given you an indulgence.”

“Sold me one, more like.” That was something I hadn’t thought of before. If only I still had the pope’s ring! With a false friar to do the talking, and the ring to do the sealing, I might have made a fortune by selling indulgences.

“You served the pope,” he said. “How long for?”

“Three years.”

François looked disappointed. Perhaps I should have exaggerated.

“I expect you served him well?”

“As well as I could.”

“Well, who could ask for more? I am sure your sins were wiped out, even if His Holiness did not actually give you an indulgence.”

“Do you really think so?”

“I am sure of it.”

“If you, with your schoolman’s learning, tell me that, then who am I to argue?”

“That settles it: you are absolved, and free to go home.”

Of course, he said that because he wanted to go with me. But the words were still a comfort. I hadn’t thought of my years at Rome counting for anything. Heaving on the oars, I took the boat round a great curve, taking care to keep away from the reed beds and shallows. Then, back on a long reach, I sat back and let the boat drift on the current. It was only a few hours since I had met François. Despite his crimes, he was a clever man, which is not always true of scholars. He knew more about me than I had told him. And he wanted to go to England. There was no need to give him an answer. He could go with me for a while. Then we would see.

“This is a good way to travel,” I said. “Better then walking.”

“We’ll have to walk tomorrow.”

“Why?”

“The river goes the wrong way. If we followed it we’d end up at Harfleur, and it’s a long way to England from there.”

It was indeed. My father had once walked it, slogging through the mud of Picardy, living off raw turnips, wading through the Somme, fighting the French at Agincourt before he got home. He never stopped talking about it, and I knew that route too well to want to walk it for myself.

“Will we be safe on the roads?”

“We will now. The king’s men have rounded up all the flayers and cutpurses. I knew some of them, but they’re all gone now. Hanged, mostly. Except for the ones who recanted. There’s nothing worse than an old friend who’s turned respectable. It’s no good going to him and begging food and lodging for old time’s sake. A man like that’s likely to turn you in, to betray you to the watch, just to show how good he’s become.”

Was François really such a scoundrel? Or was he a man about town who fell in with low company and fancied himself as bad as his friends?

“Are you of good family?” I asked.

He laughed. “Oh yes! I come from the great family of de Montcorbier, or de Loges, as we were sometimes known.”

He sounded very grand. “So those are your names?”

“Not exactly. My parents were so poor they couldn’t feed me. I was taken in by a benefactor called Villon. It is his name I bear.”

I didn’t know what to think. The name hinted that he was a villain, or fancied himself to be one, but it gave me no idea of his true status. “Do you own any land?”

“Not a furrow.”

“Have you ever been rich?”

“Once I had thirty nobles.”

“How did you get it?”

“I stole it.”

“How long did you keep it?”

“Not long.”

We drifted on, talking of this and that, getting to know each other. François was not a well-made man. His face was narrow and scarred, and its usual expression was a frown. He was thin, bent, and weak, and he curled up in the boat’s bow like a whipped dog. I didn’t have to wonder what had made him like that. He told me, while he lay there, of the hardships of a scholar’s life, of being sent to the university at twelve years old, of lectures at dawn, rising in the dark to escape a beating, of dull tutors, and learning everything by rote to escape more punishment. Though I had wanted to study as a youth, I did not envy that life of poverty, starvation and never-ending work.

François cheered up a bit when he told me about the larks they had had, the tricks and scams, drunken pranks, and the comic verses he wrote to annoy his enemies. He fancied himself a poet, and had written all sorts of verses, not just comic ones. But when he recounted his later ill luck, and the friends and patrons who had turned against him, he sank back into gloom, and seemed no livelier than a bundle of rags.

François wanted me to like him, to feel sorry for him, to be his friend. I once thought that His Holiness Pope Pius was my friend. How could that be true? The pope liked me well enough, but he liked his lapdog better, and when the dog died he mourned more than he would have done for any man. I was useful to the pope, like many others, and that was that.

François, it was clear, thought I might be useful to him. So why did I want to help him? Why was my heart filled with warm feelings towards him? Not long earlier, brawling on the riverfront, we would happily have killed each other. But I liked François, and I think he liked me. But liking was not the same as trusting. Even so, I told François about myself, describing my life as a soldier, and the places I had fought in. He forgave my trespasses in France, where I had served as a boy. I told him about the great battle to save Constantinople from the Turks, how the Christians were defeated, how I was captured and made a slave, and how I escaped. My adventures diverted him well enough, but what François really wanted to hear about was my time at Rome, where I served the pope. So I told him, making sure he knew I was no mere servant, that I knew the great and good men that gathered round the papal throne, and some of the bad men who did the same.

Pope Pius