The King of Thieves: by Michael Jecks Page B

He’s unwell.’
    ‘How unwell?’ Baldwin snapped.
    ‘Unwell enough to send two ambassadors to explain how bad he is, and to swear to it on their oaths.’
    ‘Two, eh?’ Baldwin said without conviction.
    ‘So we’ll not be going, then?’ Simon said hopefully.
    ‘I don’t know. You need to ask the King, don’t you?’
    ‘Very well. So where is he?’ Simon asked.
    ‘He is with the Abbot in the Abbot’s chambers, I expect. But you aren’t allowed in there. It’s private.’
    ‘So who
can
we ask?’ Simon enquired with poisonous charm.
    And so it was that by the time they were needing their lunch, they found themselves sitting with Bishop Walter Stapledon of
     Exeter.
    Louvre, Paris
    The Procureur left his house and made his way gradually along the lane, heading towards the little shop where he customarily
     stopped to break his fast.
    Today he was late. He’d woken with a headache, the natural result of an evening out with his old companion Raoulet the Grey.
     They had known each other for many years, but those years had not taught them to be cautious of too much cheap wine. Therefore,
     this morning, his head was atrocious, but his bowels were even worse.
    As he walked gingerly along, one thought continued to whirl about in his mind. The man killed in the Louvre was almost certainly
     lured to that particular room in order to be slain. That little chamber was so quiet, so remote from the main thoroughfares,
     that it was ideal for an assassination. But
why
had he been killed? And whose idea was it that he should be taken to that room? Was it the messenger, or had someone else
     decided to bring him to that chamber? If the messenger, did it mean that themessenger himself had killed the man?
    It was making his headache worse.
    This lane was broad at first, and then it narrowed. Overhead, all light was excluded by the buildings which leaned towards
     each other like toppling cliff-faces. Jean often wondered why it was that they didn’t collapse more often. They must be almost
     half-eaten away by beetles where they weren’t rotted by the damp. Yet the ancient timbers seemed to survive, and the instance
     of fatal cave-ins was minimal. Only a few people died each year, so far as he could tell, and not many of them actually died
in
the building. All too often it was the fools who heard the rumble and creak of a house about to submit to the inevitable,
     and who rushed to watch it fall. It was easy to stare at the wrong house, expecting it to teeter, while the one behind them
     collapsed, with fatal consequences.
    Eventually, as he walked along this lane, the Procureur knew he would see a spark of white up ahead, which would gradually
     reveal itself as the massive block of the Louvre. A fortress fit for an emperor, it was enough to make any man gaze with pride
     and admiration.
    Admiration today, however, was overwhelmed by the sense of turbulence in his belly. As he glanced upwards, he was struck only
     with the immensity of timber, plaster, lathes, wattles and planks that loomed menacingly over him. The distant sight of blue
     sky was no help; it made him feel dizzy and sickly at the same time.
    No, best to keep his eyes on the ground.
    Men shouted, women bawled their wares, selling from baskets bound about their necks, and urchins pelted along the cobbles
     amid the filth in their bare feet. There was one little room up here, Jean knew, which had fallen in on itself one evening.
     There was no one else about, and no witnesses. In theevening there had been a hovel there; next morning there was a mess of wood. Took them three days to find the last of the
     bodies. It was the mother and the baby of the family, and when they got to them, they found that the mother had been killed
     in the first moments, a balk of timber crushing her skull. The baby, though, some said, had lived for a while. They found
     its head at the mother’s breast, as though still seeking milk from the corpse.
    It was a proof to Jean de