The implication of Edward taking on the role was clear and the King’s eye was jaundiced when he stared at Sandale; the Bishop wished the Dominican had taken a vow of silence.
‘Death absolves all oaths,’ the King replied eventually.
‘I am sure such matters will be more roundly discussed,’ the Bishop of Ely offered, ‘once the excommunicate Scotch are brought into the Grace of God and the Holy Father … when we have a Holy Father,’ he added slyly and Edward barked a mirthless laugh.
‘Aye – until then, Father Arnaud,’ he said, ‘there are only unholy Scotch. That land is full of heretics.’
He leaned forward, hawklike and stooping, it seemed to the Bishop of Ely.
‘But that land, pretend king or not, is part of my kingdom, which is not under abjuration and where we have no torture. Be aware of it, Dominican – especially since you have no Holy Father to appeal to.’
Arnaud said nothing, though the hatred hazed off him like sweat from a running horse. No, there was no torture permitted in England, he sneered quietly to himself, not when cold, starvation, chains and the odd over-zealous beating would suffice. You would not find a rack, a thumbscrew or a hot iron anywhere in Edward’s realm – yet men died being put to the Question, all the same.
Edward, losing interest in the argument, called for a song and his troubadour, Lutz, appeared from where he had been perched in some clean rushes. There were groans and a few mutters; Edward knew they were sneering at how the King surrounded himself with ‘Genoese fiddlers’ and even those he favoured said so.
They know nothing, Edward thought, gnawing his discontent like a bone. They sneer in secret at their king for having the ways of a simple country knight – and again for having the sensibilities to enjoy fine music, well played. None of them, of course, knew an Occitan master of music from a Genoese street performer. Or a lute from a lark’s tongue.
Lutz was a lark’s tongue with a lute, Edward thought and was pleased with the poetry of that, repeating it in his mind and working out ways to voice it for general approval. Then, like everyone else, he was captured by song.
The troubadour from Carcassone sang a few swift verses of the Fall of Troy, another couple of stanzas of the Quest for the Grail. Then he began the Song of Roland and, gradually, the place fell silent as his voice, sweet and silk-smooth, rose up and coiled round the expert fingering.
‘With Durandal I’ll lay on thick and stout,
In blood the blade, to its golden hilt, I’ll drown.
Felon pagans to th’ pass shall not come down;
I pledge you now, to death they all are bound.’
Thweng marvelled, then, at how it changed, how all those knights grew silent, how eyes misted. All in a moment, they were altered to something close to what they strove for and, when it was done, they embraced it with quiet, respectful pats on the table.
Even the lines that spoke of hardship in the service of a lord, of having to endure great heat and great cold.
Even of being parted, flesh from blood …
ISABEL
O for your spirit, holy John, to chasten lips sin-polluted, to loosen fettered tongues; so by your children might your deeds of wonder meetly be chanted. In honour of the eve and the day, the nun called Constance brought me St John’s wort and sat and combed my hair, a blessing in itself. Better yet was hearing the unseen street player, scaling out the monk’s chant on his instrument – Ut Re Mi Fa Sol La – to offer his own prayer to the blessed St John.
Ut queant laxis
Resonare fibris
Mira gestorum
Famuli tuorum,
Solve polluti
Labii reatum
Sancte Ioannes
I sang the words with him then: So that these your servants may, with all their voice, resound your marvellous exploits, clean the guilt from our stained lips, O St John.
As the blessed St John heralded the coming of Our Lord, so this feast heralds the coming of mine. Keep the hearts of Thy faithful fixed on the way that leads to salvation.
CHAPTER NINE
Bannockburn
Vigil of the Feast of St John the Baptist, June 1314
The sun was tipping past noon, a glaring orb searing grass to gold, the half-dried velvet of the great hill sweltering beyond. It glittered the leaves of trees, darkening the long shadows to a tempting coolness – but no one wanted the balming relief of the Torwald’s shade; it was safer out here under the fist of a sun which hammered on their maille and leather, wilted the fine plumes and turned jupon and gambeson and haketon to ovens.