The Perfect Sinner. Will Davenport

dropped away out of my sight and I tensed my belly for its thrust, but a voice was calling. His other hand let go of my throat and he turned away.

      ‘You’re wanted,’ he said.

      I was sickened by the sight and the sound and the smell of him, but I couldn’t help staring at his face in fascination. I had no idea that I had just met the man who was to be the bane of so many years of my life.

      ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘The chief wants you.’

      I thought he meant the King, but the man who was waving his arm for me was much older. I had seen him in the camp with everyone paying him their respects, but I did not know who he was. Clearly of high rank, he wore a blue cape over gilded chain mail. Everyone except the King deferred to him and I should have asked his name of someone the first time I saw him. Now, I had left it too late and it would have seemed absurd.

      I ran to him and made an awkward bow.

      ‘The King wishes to stay behind here with his thoughts. You stay with him,’ he said in a deep and slightly slurred voice. ‘Escort him back down as soon as he is done,’ he added. ‘There is no danger. They are gone.’

      They all went off down the hill taking the surviving soldier with them and there we were, just me and the young King in unimaginable proximity. He looked at me, shrugged and turned his attention to the rest of that trampled hilltop, wandering through what had been left behind, with me close behind him. The horror of the last few minutes was still in me, but there was now more pressing business. I felt extremely important and kept my hand on my sword hilt, enjoying fantasies of an unexpected ambush and me gloriously saving my sovereign from a murderous Scot or two. No more than two I hoped.

      They had departed in a hurry. Dead cattle, partly butchered, lay in a row in the heather. Stewpots full of cooling water stood by them and further off were heaps of something I could not at first identify. The King knelt by one of these mounds and I stood back, studying him, expecting him to show signs of kingship, perhaps even of immortality. He got up, turned to me and held something out.

      ‘Shoes,’ he said in a baffled tone. ‘Shoes beyond number. Why have they left us their shoes?’

      He was right. There were shoes enough for the whole army, heaped up. I picked some up and looked at them. They were at the end of their lives, worn nearly through.

      ‘What is your name, silent one?’ the King asked me.

      ‘I am Guy, sire. Guy de Bryan of Walwayns Castle.’

      He smiled at me. ‘Well Guy, tell me what you think of these shoes.’

      I did not know enough to be talking to a king so I said the first thing that came into my head.

      ‘I think, sire, that by refusing battle, they have had to leave their soles behind them.’

      As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I knew both that it was a miserable attempt and also that someone like me should never have dared to try to joke with the King. I watched him anxiously and I saw his expression set, his mouth clamping shut and his eyes narrowing, then his mouth twitched and his shoulders shook and, to my vast relief, I saw he was choking back laughter which now burst and rolled out of him until tears streamed down his face. He laughed and laughed as if he had not been allowed to laugh for a great length of time. All I could think of was that Edward the Third, King of England, was laughing at my joke.

      ‘I thought you were the right one,’ he said. ‘I saw you down there at the camp and I liked the look of you. Might you be my friend, Guy de Bryan?’

      ‘Of course I might, I mean of course I will, sire.’

      ‘When we are alone, you don’t need to call me sire.’

      I felt my ears heat with delight.

      ‘What did Mortimer tell you to do?’ he asked, grinning at my reaction.

      ‘Mortimer?’ I bit off the ‘sire’.

      ‘You don’t know Mortimer?’ He sounded incredulous. ‘The man who spoke to you last.’

      ‘The man in the fancy chain mail?’ I asked and wondered if I had gone too far again, but that only started the King laughing once more. That man was Roger Mortimer, the man who had set himself where this young king should be?

      ‘He said to bring you down as soon as you were ready.’

      ‘It is good that you don’t know him. I never know who he has in his pay, but none could doubt you’re telling the truth.’

      ‘I don’t know anyone really. This is the first time I have been called to arms.’

      ‘Not Molyns either?’

      I shook my head. ‘Which one is he?’

      ‘The one who seemed to have a knife pressed to your face.’

      ‘Oh.’

      ‘John Molyns. Remember him. What did you think of him?’

      I could only say what was in my mind. ‘He’s a dreadful man.’

      ‘He’s certainly worth dreading.’

      ‘Why…’ I stopped. My question was too direct.

      ‘Why do I have him in my army? Was that what you were about to ask?’

      I nodded.

      The King sat down on the grass and patted the ground next to him. ‘It’s not my army,’ he said. ‘It’s my mother’s army possibly and it’s Mortimer’s army possibly, but it’s definitely not mine.’

      ‘It is, sire,’ I insisted. ‘Everyone I’ve talked to thinks so.’

      ‘You may be older than me but you’re not necessarily wiser,’ he replied. ‘I don’t suppose the latest news from the court often gets as far as…What’s your castle called?’

      ‘Walwayns.’

      ‘Just before I have to be a king again, I want to tell you this. My earls and barons killed my father. My mother rules with Mortimer who acts as king instead of me. I’m not in a strong position. Mortimer has the taste for power and once you start murdering kings it can be hard to stop.’

      ‘My sword is at your service.’

      He smiled. ‘I’d rather have your smile at my service, if it’s all the same to you. No, don’t look hurt. I don’t mean to be unkind. It’s just that I need a few more Molyns around me at the moment. If I’m ever to sit properly on the throne that is.’

      ‘Molyns?’

      ‘Guy, if you’re to live at court, you’ll have to get better control of your face. Sometimes you need a John Molyns around. The rest of the time, it’s better to be nowhere near him.’

      ‘What do you mean, live at court?’

      ‘If you’d like to, you may join my household, Guy. I need a page, but above all I need a loyal friend. Now, it’s time to get back.’

      ‘Are we going after the Scots again?’

      ‘It’s a nice idea,’ he said, ‘but the truth is they have left us these piles of old shoes as a sign that they are now well-shod in new ones and there is no point in us attempting to overtake them.’

       CHAPTER THREE

      It was early evening in New York and Beth Battock was already running ten minutes late when she got into the elevator heading down to the hotel lobby. She had wasted five minutes of that in front of her mirror trying to look American and thirty years old instead of English and twenty-seven. The other five had been spent watching the end of her recorded interview on NBC. Now she regretted all that lost time and she began to fret when the elevator stopped again on the next