Warlord(62)
There was a constant stream of traffic crossing the bridge; a few men like us on horseback, but many others afoot – traders leading pack animals, one fellow herding a flock of unruly sheep northwards towards the slaughter yards we had recently passed, dozens of clerics in their black robes, students or young priests, it was hard to tell. Packs of filthy street urchins dodged between our horses’ legs offering more services than the ear could comprehend – and some involving their sisters that it is better not to contemplate, if you wish one day for a reward in Heaven. Even with Thomas and Hanno between me and the crowds, and our student friends waiting patiently a few yards ahead, I was jostled by the throng of passers-by, buffeted and bustled; the noise of a hundred throats dinning in my ears. I had a strong sensation of being in a strange, disorientating world – an unreal place, almost like a dream battlefield. It was not a pleasant feeling. Not for the first time I longed for the broad open dales of Yorkshire or the clean woodland of Westbury. Then my eye alighted on a knight, or rather on the departing back of a knight. He was at the north end of the bridge, about fifty yards away, pushing his horse through the throng, preparing to ride under the arch below the Grand Chastelet and out of sight. He was in full mail covered by a white surcoat, and he had his shield strapped to his back, a normal way to carry it when the prospect of battle was remote. But it was a shield I knew: a blue cross on a white field with a black border.
It was the device of the knights who had tried to kill me at Fréteval. And the sight of an enemy brought me back into the real world like a dash of icy water in the face.
Chapter Twelve
I shouted ‘Hoy!’ and pointed at the back of the knight, just as he was passing under the Chastelet portcullis and away north into the Ville de Paris. Hanno followed the direction of my arm and nodded to himself.
‘Shall I follow him?’ he asked me, pulling his palfrey with difficulty around to face the direction we had come from.
The press of the populace around us was too thick and the knight of the blue cross had already disappeared from sight into the maze of streets in the Right Bank; knowing it was useless, I shook my head.
‘It is well that we know that these fellows are in Paris, too,’ I said to my Bavarian friend. ‘We are forewarned. And one day, Hanno, we’ll have a reckoning with them.’
Matthew the student called over to ask what we were so excited about: but I had not yet told them of my quest in Paris, and for some reason I did not wish to speak of it then. So I merely said that I had admired the knight’s helmet and wished to possess one similar myself. Then we all moved off the bridge and entered the Île de la Cité – the pulsing heart, the very core of Paris.
Paris had two masters in those days, each almost the other’s equal in pomp and power: the temporal lord, Philip Augustus, the King, and his spiritual counterpart, Bishop Maurice de Sully. And just as the city of Paris was shared between these two puissant lords, so too was the Île de la Cité. The western part of the island was the preserve of the King and his court: a vast palace for Philip himself, apartments, private chapels and grand halls for his family and servants; the eastern half of the island belonged to Bishop de Sully, and was dominated by the cathedral of Notre-Dame – only as yet half completed – but it also contained the episcopal palace, where Bishop de Sully and his people lived and worked, and a hospital, or Hotel-Dieu as it was called, as well as innumerable smaller churches, and a never-ending complex of cloisters that housed the throngs of clergy belonging to the cathedral. It was Notre-Dame, of course, that I was most eager to see: this great godly edifice was the Bishop’s life’s work. It was also the place where my father had made his music, and perhaps been briefly happy before his descent into peasanthood, poverty and ignominious death.
As we came off the Grand-Pont and on to the island, the royal palace, with its high tower and fortified walls was directly to my right, but we turned almost immediately left into the Rue de la Draperie – a bustling street filled with sellers of all kinds of cloth, from shining samite in peacock colours to drab fustian, from soft oriental silks to rough workman’s canvas. The mason’s-yard chinking once again echoed through the streets, above the animal hum of thronging humanity conversing, disputing, buying and selling. The drapers cried: ‘What do you lack; what do you lack, mistress?’ to every goodwife who hurried past their shopfront. Porters, struggling under the weight of vast bundles of coloured cloth tied to their backs, forced their way through the press, shouting for passage, their language sharp when their way was blocked, their elbows even sharper.