Warlord(91)

The Bishop’s lavish apartments, we were told by a passing canon, were tucked away in a secluded corner behind the abbey-church: they comprised a large stone house on two storeys, with outbuildings, a kitchen, a bakery, a private chapel for the Bishop’s use, and a big, square walled herb garden where food and medicines might be grown, which was surrounded by a well-swept path paved with flat yellow stones.

At the simple wooden gate of the garden, we were stopped by a servant, an old man, who demanded to know our business with the Bishop. Once again I lied and said that I came from the Dean of Notre-Dame with a message, and we were admitted, without further questioning. I was dressed in my finest clothes, a new silk tunic with a velvet-trimmed mantel, mounted on a fine horse and accompanied by an armed attendant – so I was clearly a knight and a man of consequence – but it was nonetheless surprisingly easy to obtain access to the most powerful man in Paris after the King.

We left the horses tied to a stunted apple tree outside the garden, and Hanno and I pushed through the simple wicket gate. Bishop Maurice de Sully was sitting on a low stone bench in a patch of September sun with a bowl of cut thyme in his lap and he was carefully separating the tiny green leaves from the spindly stalks. He looked truly ill, thin and worn; his grey hair sparse, his face deeply cut with the marks of long years and hard struggles. He was perhaps seventy, I guessed, and in no little amount of pain. The heavenly smell of crushed thyme – fresh, woody and sweet – filled the air of the herb garden.

As we made our way over to the Bishop, I glanced around that square open space, admiring the blocks of plants arranged in the centre in neat geometrical patterns, and I noticed a figure in a dark robe on the far side, just leaving the garden and entering an outbuilding. He was a tall man and although he was turned away from me, and I glimpsed him for only a moment, there was something about the way he moved that stirred my memory.

‘Your Grace,’ said the servant, and Bishop de Sully glanced up from the thyme bowl. ‘I humbly beg your pardon for disturbing you, but this gentleman says he has a message from the Dean; he says—’

‘Your Grace, I must speak to you about a very urgent and private matter,’ I interrupted, and Maurice de Sully looked directly at me for the first time. He had pale, almost colourless eyes and seemed wary, even rather alarmed at my words.

I hastened to reassure him: ‘I mean you no harm, Your Grace,’ I said, ‘and I admit I lied to your servant about a message from the Dean. But I have a great need to speak with you about my father, Henri d’Alle, who was once a monk here in Paris. I only wish to trouble you for a few moments and then I will gladly leave you in peace.’



That was true: I had told the Seigneur that I would dine with him and his family that day, and had sworn to be at the Rue St-Denis by noon for the feast. The servant, a slight, elderly man, was now looking between Hanno and myself, his mouth working soundlessly, his arms waggling jerkily from the shoulders: he seemed not to know whether he should make an attempt to lay hands on us and forcibly eject us from the Bishop’s presence. He hesitated, flapping like a bird, torn between fear and his duty to his master.

‘It is quite all right, Alban,’ said the Bishop to his man. ‘Calm yourself. Please be so good as to go and fetch us some wine, and perhaps a little bread and cheese.’ Then to me: ‘Be seated, young man, here, sit beside me, and tell me how I might be of service to you.’

The Bishop put the bowl of thyme down on the warm yellow slabs at his feet, and I took a seat beside him on the stone bench. Hanno stood behind me, his back leaning comfortably against the sun-warmed bricks of the garden wall, alert and yet relaxed at the same time.

‘I have an ailment of the stomach,’ the Bishop said. ‘It discomforts me a good deal and my new doctor – a Jewish fellow, but very well regarded among the brotherhood of physicians – advises that I drink an infusion of honey and thyme every night. I pick the herb myself each morning, and tell my servants that it is part of the cure but, in truth, I come here mostly so that I may be alone with my thoughts for a while. So you have chosen a good time to speak to me, my son – we will not be disturbed. You said that this matter concerned your father, yes?’

‘Do you remember him, Your Grace? Henri d’Alle; a singer in the cathedral twenty years ago, a tall, blond man who I’m told has a good deal of resemblance to me?’

De Sully looked closely at me, his pale eyes crawling over my face, and then let out a long heavy breath. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘oh yes, I remember Henri d’Alle. And I see him in you. I remember well the manner of his leaving us, too – I may be old and not in the best of health, but my recall is still reliable.’