John of Tours felt a sudden, urgent need to empty his bladder. His torpid eyes moved from this to that, looking for a way out.
The King stared long and hard at him and stood, full with a sudden burst of activity. ‘Well then, I shall make something useful of it!’ he said. ‘How are your legs, Tours?’
It was the truth that John of Tours could not feel his feet for numbness. ‘My legs . . . sire?’
‘Yes. Are they strong, do you have a fondness for running? Or have they turned to fat from sitting so often upon that abundant derrière?’
‘Why . . . do . . . you . . . ask, sire?’ The treasurer’s trembling sent his ledger onto the floor where the pages, having come loose, scattered and melted into the pile of parchments from the table.
Philip Capet stretched forth his own sinewy extremities, flicked a wrist and his guards seized the treasurer. ‘You shall need them, Tours, perhaps you should not have sat so much . . . my dogs exercise every day . . . their legs are most becoming.’
‘But sire . . . I . . .’
‘Hush . . .’ said the King with a finger to his mouth, as if in the other room there slept a restless child.
His eyes were the blue of a winter sky. ‘We are going hunting.’
34
THE KING AND HIS
ASTROLOGER
‘. . . dogs and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie.
Revelation 22:15
The King entered the tower through a secret aperture to the left of his throne and climbed up the stone stairs, two steps at a time.
Beneath the portholes in this part of the ducal wing he observed the turrets and battlements, and the little courtyard with a marble fountain surrounded by galleries. It had been snowing heavily all day and all of it lay drowned and cold.
When he reached the top he stood before a door and pulled a face of disdain over his expressionless character before unlocking it.
Inside the large room light diffused behind pale green windows fell upon a myriad of things. The first to come to his attention was the shape of a man that immediately dropped before his master.
Philip’s shadow fell over it. ‘Stand up, Astrologer . . .’ Iterius rose with a limp. This day he wore a purple robe and a velvet cap that covered his ears and emphasised his enormous nose, his full lips and small, beadlike eyes. The King observed the ugliness of these features and made a yawn of it.
Iterius bowed in answer and, adjusting the satin sash around his middle, waited to be addressed.
The King looked around. In the middle sat a long table drowned in parchments, shells, rings, balls and vials filled with liquids and powders. Large volumes were scattered all over the floor, and there was a pungent smell of burnt herbs and sulphur. Philip walked over to the table, picked up a parchment then set it down without reading it. His eyes fell on this and that and finally came to rest on the Egyptian again, whom he examined as one examines an apple before biting into it.
‘Iterius,’ he said, wiping one hand with the other and raising a cold brow, ‘your Majesty wishes to know how you have been wasting your time and his patience.’
The Egyptian’s features turned servile. ‘Experiments, sire, computations, regenerations.’
‘Yes . . . yes . . . but what in the devil have you achieved?’
The man fumbled with his words and Philip turned his head and therefore his brow to one side and observed him from out of slitted eyes. ‘I have no gold. I have no bank and no property . . . It seems the Templars have outwitted me. My question is, Astrologer, why did you not see it in your stars?’
The Egyptian’s face paused a moment before the immediacy of Philip’s gaze. ‘Sire . . . I have consulted the flames,’ he said, moving towards him, ‘and awakened the spirits of fire. I have consulted the boiling waters and the wax shapes . . . but it was the pattern created by smoke that has this day warned me of your . . . disappointment.’
The King raised a hand and the Egyptian was instantly silent. ‘You are late. Why did you not tell me yesterday?’
The other man looked down in deference. ‘I did not know it yesterday, sire, I only learnt of it today.’
‘Today? You imbecile! What good are you to me? Without the gold there is nothing! Without the bank less still, and with¬out the property . . . well . . . I have wasted my time!’
‘But sire, if I may . . . there are other things . . . more advantageous to your Royal Highness besides gold. But like gold, they must be mined in the exact right place.’
‘There is nothing more advantageous than gold, you fool!’
‘There are . . . secrets, sire,’ he threw in.
The King narrowed his eyes. ‘Secrets?’