‘This kitten died from poison. By dissecting it I’m attempting to discover which of its organs were affected.’

  ‘And what is that?’ Guillaume nodded at the small fine blade the Master held in his palm.

  ‘I call tell you the word in Persian. In French there’s no name for it. In this country such implements are unknown.’ The blade was the length of Guillaume’s thumbnail. Erasmus snapped it back inside its ivory handle and laid it on the desk beside the smelly kitten.

  In silence Guillaume took the proffered drink and handed Erasmus the Queen’s letter.

  In the half second it took him to read it, Erasmus seemed to age ten years.

  When he looked up Guillaume’s fury with him softened slightly. ‘So, Master,’ he said. ‘What does your philosophy suggest? You took advantage of a lonely woman, whose husband was naive and eager to please her. He was happy. He wanted her to be happy too. He allowed her a certain liberty out of his natural generosity. He was young, he respected her sagacity and experience. He expected her to use liberty wisely. You ruined all that. She’s lied to my brother that the child is his. He knows it’s not.’

  Erasmus swallowed. ‘How is the boy? How is his health?’

  ‘Excellent. He looks more like his father every day. Meanwhile the King has a question for you. How long were you his wife’s lover? You attended her when she was Queen of France. Did you lie with her then?’

  ‘No! no! I swear that …’ he dropped his gaze. ‘Only once did I ever …’

  ‘Once! Don’t insult my intelligence, Master.’

  ‘I caressed her. Just caresses. But I swear, only once. One night in Poitiers.’

  ‘You fed her a sleeping draught and raped her?’

  ‘That’s an odious suggestion!’

  Guillaume regarded him a long while, silent. An aphrodisiac? he wondered. Eastern people are famous for them. He also knew the temperament and pride of his sister-in-law. Eleanor’s too haughty to allow a commoner to mount her. Something strange took place. ‘The royal bloodlines may not be contaminated. Only those of royal blood can …’ Guillaume halted . I’ve gone dangerously close to revealing a secret, he thought. Calmly he continued, ‘The King, through his mother, has lineage to the first of the kings of the English, Cerdic. He’s determined your child can’t endanger offspring of his own blood with a claim to the throne.’

  ‘So I may have him?’

  Guillaume shook his head. ‘The King’s instructions are that he is not to cross the Channel.’ There was another silence. ‘The Queen is due to give birth again in late February or early March. I come to request you attend as Her Grace’s physician.’

  ‘If I refuse?’

  ‘I was being polite.’

  ‘I have time to return to my village to say goodbye to my family?’

  ‘Master, my brother and I don’t give a fig for your family.’ Guillaume stood to leave. ‘I’ll send an escort in good time for you to arrive in England before Her Highness is due.’

  ‘King Louis may refuse me leave.’

  Guillaume regarded him as if he were witless. ‘Kings are different from other men, Rumlar. They may hate each other, but when majesty is at stake, they’re brothers. Especially, I suspect, in the case of a queen they’ve shared.’ He gave Erasmus half a smile. ‘If word were to reach the ear of Louis that you lay with his wife …’

  ‘No, no!’

  ‘You may try to convince your colleagues of that, but I suspect you’d be hard-pressed to prove your innocence in France, since your guilt in England is already established. Adultery with a queen is a capital offence in both countries. For both parties. For a queen, the charge is treason.’

  ‘She wasn’t a queen when she … when it happened.’

  Guillaume was a head taller than Erasmus. At the doorway he placed his hands on the Master’s shoulders and bore down, forcing the older, weaker man to brace himself to retain his footing. ‘She is now. Don’t leave Paris,’ he said. ‘Kings have long arms.’

  When the door closed Erasmus sat with his head in his hands. For a long while he was still as a stone. But at length he felt an earthquake travel the length of his torso until it tore open his head. What gushed from his eyes, nose and mouth could have been water or blood.

  An hour later his German student opened the door and found him curled on the floor. Beneath his face the carpet was wet through. The youth rushed to him. ‘Did that man assault you? Should I escort you to the infirmary, dear Master?’

  ‘Not necessary. In my other chamber I have all the herbs I need.’ The youth was so alarmed Erasmus knew he must make an explanation. ‘My visitor brought terrible news.’

  The young man nodded as if familiar with every terror of life. He took a deep breath. ‘Sir, you have a class. We are already waiting. Shall I …?’

  Erasmus stood. ‘Thank you for reminding me. I’ll be there shortly.’ As he gathered his documents he thought, How apt. They were due to study a description of the execution of Socrates. From a locked cupboard in his second chamber he lifted out a handful of foul-smelling seeds.

  He swept into the hall of restive students, feeling an antic mood fall on him. ‘My noble scholars,’ he began. He opened his palm. ‘These unremarkable seeds that develop inside white roadside flowers in Outremere are the most famous murder weapon in history!’ He was prepared for the objections of the monks: surely The Cross bore that ignominious title.

  ‘Yes, Brother, reason out your case. Start with how Our Lord died, from what physical causes.’

  ‘Loss of blood?’

  ‘You’re getting close.’

  ‘Pain?’ someone else tried.

  ‘One doesn’t die from pain.’ Erasmus realised he was enjoying himself. How sweet it is to know one’s death is near, he reflected. These poor fools have been taught from infancy that death is the gate to Hell. Only the most illuminated know it is indeed, but that they are living on its inside, and once they’ve passed through, they’ll be free. As I will be a few months from now. He knew the Plantagenets would have him murdered.

  ‘Our sins?’ another ventured.

  The Master held up his hand. ‘It was suffocation that killed our Lord. What is it we all need for life? Breath! The nails through the Saviour’s flesh caused traumatic tension in His arms and shoulders. In such circumstances, the body releases huge quantities of fluid that makes it way to the lungs. Unable to move, his lungs filled so He was unable to breathe. His was a slow and agonising death, drowning in His own body fluid. The Romans were clever and cruel, were they not? The Greeks, as we will now discuss, were more humane in their executions.’ He opened his palm to show them the seeds of hemlock.

  Once back in his chamber he went to his desk to continue dissecting the kitten. The scalpel had vanished. He sat quietly, returning in memory to the day of his son’s birth – the church bells ringing so loudly the bones of his skull had reverberated as he lay on a narrow bed in the Poitiers tavern. A smell of grilled fish wafting from the back of the building had made the August air even more stifling. Unable to sleep, he had composed a letter to his wife; that he had been detained and would not be coming home for another year. His family had no need of his salary. Their landholdings were extensive, and unlike western people they owed homage to no one. They owned five hundred goats, olive groves and oil presses, vineyards and fishing boats. Over the years kings and nobles had presented Erasmus with the objects they valued most; hunting birds, war horses, jewels. He sold them for books, fishing nets or more goats. Sometimes he bought his Parisienne concubine a gift; fabric for a gown, soft sheets for her bed, a fur cloak. He had taught her to read and before he left for the south she was learning to write. Once he had given her oil of the Herb of Grace. But he had prepared it himself from fresh ingredients and had administered it in the correct way – one drop blown through a clean straw onto her cervix. ‘It’s red hot!’ she’d screamed. After that he persuaded her that at certain times an alternative was the better option. ‘Will I go to hell?’ she’d asked. ‘No,’ he’d assured her. ‘Only priests go to hell.’ He and a Greek colleague discussed the oddities of the Franks whom they strived to educate. Out of caution, they conversed in Persian. ‘The Church enslaves their minds with an iron yoke,’ Erasmus said. His colleague was sardonic. ‘Rome has fallen. Rome has risen. Her centurions carry swords disguised as crosses.’ The Rumlar had laughed in response. ‘And her army is as mercenary as ever.’

  He recalled conjuring his concubine’s sweet face, her forehead bunched in concentration over a parchment, while outside the bells chimed on and on. Bands of grief crushed his chest. He had loved Eleanor from the moment he first attended her when she was Queen of France. ‘I’ve had my share of paradise on this earth,’ he had told himself. Finally the bells had faded into silence and he fell into the arms of Hypnos.

  He had woken late in the afternoon, soggy with perspiration, but calm, knowing there would be no urgent message from the Duchess calling him back to the palace. He could breathe again and he felt blessed. He had fathered a noble child, one who brought joy to a woman sublime in her beauty and refinement.

  Next morning he had set out for Paris, arriving before the start of the Michaelmas term. ‘Another little Rumlar?’ his colleagues smirked. He’d replied with a cryptic smile and a line of Arabic poetry none understood. All Paris was talking about the Duchess of Aquitaine’s son and the death, three days later, of Bernard of Clairvaux, the holiest man in Christendom. King Louis was inconsolable. He wailed with grief, but whether for the birth of the heir he had failed to sire or for the passing into eternal life of the man who had launched him on the calamitous Second Crusade, nobody was certain.

  Erasmus began preparations to rescue his son. He went to the library of the Abbey of St Denis where he asked to see maps of England – to study the number of its monasteries, he said. The country was dense with churches, abbeys, cathedrals and nunneries, Benedictine, Cluniac, a few Cistercian. Aware of the curiosity of the monks, he took copious notes, but what he was memorising was the geography of southern England, especially its smaller roads and seaports. He packed one saddlebag with a selection from his pharmacopoeia, a second with a monk’s cowled cloak and warm clothes for a child. His brain carried the maps.

  In England, the King bade farewell to his wife and Prince Henry and set out for the coast. He was escorting his mother back to Normandy, in charge of her illegitimate grandson, the motherless Little Geoffrey. When he had settled them in Rouen, he rode for France.

  Envoys from both countries had already travelled back and forth, clearing the path for a meeting between the monarchs that, if it failed, would lead to war. At stake was Henry’s title as Duke of Aquitaine and his overlordship of Anjou. Robert de Beaumont and a grey yearling filly accompanied him.

  Louis was enthroned under the mighty elm on the border of Normandy. Beneath its branches Kings of France had parleyed for decades with the Men of the North Wind whose ancestors had arrived by night in dragon boats to rape and plunder. After years of terror the heirs of Charlemagne had decided caution was the better part of valour; they ceded the marauders a broad swathe of coastal territory in exchange for the security of the Ile de France. No French monarch could ever afford to forget that Vikings had sailed up the Seine to the very gates of Paris – and only left when awarded the territory the French entitled ‘Normandy’.

  A crowd of knights surrounded Louis. Snow still lay on the ground, but the day was otherwise mild and windless. Louis was so well wrapped in fur only his eyebrows and eyes were visible. Henry wore a heavy riding cloak and fur-lined boots. The filly, in a scarlet padded caparison to keep her warm, stepped daintily, her small hooves indented the snow in a series of cups. Her nostrils twitched with nervousness. Between her ears a crown of festive red-dyed ostrich feathers bobbed as she tip-toed towards the King of France. When Henry reached Louis he handed her reins to him and fell to his knees in the snow.

  ‘I, Henry of Normandy, am your man, Sire. I defend your life with my own.’ Louis bent forward to kiss Henry’s forehead, then his lips.

  ‘Duke of Aquitaine. Arise.’ He stood too and they embraced. Several hundred men of France and Normandy shouted applause. The noise made the filly shiver with fright, her ears laid back against her head.

  ‘I hope you find pleasure in this small gift, Lord King,’ Henry said.

  Louis was running an expert eye over her. ‘A grey! And part Arab. Henry, my dear, you could not have pleased me more with bags of gold.’

  Henry bowed. ‘Her dam, Selama, sends you greetings, Highness’ he said. They began to chuckle. ‘She would love to meet her husband, Jason, again. I believe, if he asked her politely, she would—’

  ‘You!’ Louis said. ‘You stole him while I was negotiating with your father! But then, the way you gave him back; I couldn’t help laughing.’ He took Henry by the arm and together they crunched across the snow to a spot where they could converse in private. ‘I’ve accepted your brother as Count of Anjou. He’s been pestering me for five years.’

  Henry nodded. ‘Highness …’

  Louis said, ‘Call me Louis, dear boy. After all, we’re both kings.’

  ‘Louis, my liege, in the event someone were to attack the Count of Anjou …’

  ‘As long as no army were to cross the borders of the Ile de France, we would remain calm.’

  ‘I wish I’d brought you two foals!’

  Louis smiled. He raised an eyebrow. ‘But you have two sons from Eleanor.’ He was no longer the timid novice monk whom she’d terrorised for thirteen years. He was an experienced monarch, adept at dissimulation.

  Henry felt a surge of confidence that now was the moment to out-manoeuvre Louis, not by triumphalism, but humility. ‘I have one son. The first born is a cuckoo.’

  The French King crossed himself. ‘It’s true then,’ he murmured. ‘I didn’t want to believe the prattle of my courtiers.’

  A rush of desire to continue overwhelmed the English king. ‘As a husband I’m in despair,’ he said. ‘She longs for the freedoms we men take for granted. I watched it embitter my mother, denied a throne because she’s female. As you know, Eleanor’s father raised her like a son so she could rule the men of Aquitaine. Privately she still calls herself “Duke”. She’s resigned to providing me with children, but I know she dies of thirst for power. Quemadmodum desiderat cervus …’

  ‘As the hart panteth after the fountains of water,’ Louis murmured. ‘In the thirteen years of our marriage she panted with longing to be her own master. I loved her with every particle of my being. But my devotion was a matter of indifference to her.’

  Henry knew what he would say next would shock Louis, but unburdening himself had brought a flood of something like bliss. ‘I met the love of my life when I was seventeen, but she was cruelly taken from me. I had neither love nor desire for Eleanor. Of course I could …’ he shrugged, ‘… perform. But because I loved my concubine I told Eleanor that providing she was discreet, I had no objection …’

  Louis swallowed. Henry’s unchastity, not as frightful as his father’s, but frightful all the same, bewildered him. That he had encouraged it in Eleanor – who needed so little encouragement – was, Louis believed, punishment from God. He remained mute until he felt he could speak without rancour. ‘You have learned a lesson?’ His tone was mild.

  ‘I have. It’s unhappy consequences are yet to be determined. Meanwhile, I am a changed man. I …’ He was about to say, I am determined to control everything and everybody, but realised this was an intimacy too far. They regarded each other in silence. Suddenly the older King gathered the younger to his chest. Henry felt hot tears from Louis’ eyes wetting his cheeks. ‘Only those who’ve suffered as we have from that woman can speak with such candour,’ he whispered.

  He’ll always love her, Henry thought. That means … He could not grasp what it meant, for a strange, unfocused feeling had come over him. As they loosened their embrace Louis looked quizzically into the younger king’s face. A cool radiance emanated around him.

  ‘I sense, Henry, we have company. Does he always travel with you?’

  Henry felt gauche, unsure how to follow whatever the Guardian was telling him. But suddenly he was aware that he had been following His instructions all along. A voice inside him said, Louis can never defeat you if your war is just. He drew himself erect. That means, he thought, I may one day become King of France. That’s what Eleanor craves.

  The moment of intimacy evaporated. They were no longer men. They were monarchs and rivals.

  They strolled back arm in arm to the waiting throng, mounted now and ready to depart. Guillaume was among them, having ridden five days earlier to Paris to fetch the Master.

  ‘Went brilliantly,’ Henry muttered to his brother. ‘We can take down Geoffrey with impunity. He’s given his word he won’t intervene.’ The air was cold enough for him to feign he did not notice that behind them two Norman knights rode either side of a dark-skinned man they had manacled to the saddle of his horse.

  In English palaces, where the court saw glimpses of Prince William, whispers came from the walls. One day, players set up a stall in the London horse market with puppets of a man and a baby. The man asks the baby, ‘Who’s yer father, then?’ His hair is red, the baby’s is black. A woman enters. ‘He’s yours. I found ’im under a cabbage.’ She whacks the man. ‘Found ’im under a Turk, more like!’ The man whacks her and she falls backwards off the stage. Thomas of London was in the crowd with the horse master, purchasing destriers for the royal stables. ‘Call a sheriff,’ Becket said. ‘Those players are to be arrested.’

  ‘But sir, it’s just a bit of fun,’ the horse master said. ‘Don’t mean anything.’

  Thomas gave him a sharp look. ‘You’re right. A bit of fun,’ he agreed.