Vampire Heretic Page 2

  In contrast, Charles had soon tired of and discarded the poor mad girl before she was captured, tried and burned to death. And the newly feted Gilles de Rais had callously abandoned his former companion to her fate.

  “Gilles de Rais?” I asked Stephen. “Did you say that this killer of children is Gilles de Rais?”

  “Yes,” Stephen said, watching me closely. “Almost certainly.”

  “Now, now,” the Bishop said, chiding Stephen. “We have nought but unsubstantiated rumour about murders and witchcraft. I must stress that currently all of these horrid claims are nothing more than hearsay. Come now, you men, we all know how village folk like to gossip about their betters and there is not a single body nor bloody blade to add credence to this talk. They say that children have disappeared but have they truly? And if they have gone then who has taken them? And what then was their true fate? Do you know, Stephen?”

  “No, Milord Bishop.”

  He nodded his big head sagely. “This is why we must have evidence before anything can be done. Evidence, do you see? Stephen here has my written authority to travel from place to place and take depositions from anyone who is willing to provide them. But this investigation must be conducted in full secrecy, do you hear me? None of this shall get back to my cousin the Duke until we are certain that crimes have been committed. And of course, we certainly do not wish to alarm the Baron de Rais himself, do we.” He broke off, looking me up and down. “You have the bearing of a capable man but I warn you. Do not alarm the Marshal or any of his men. He maintains a personal army of two hundred superbly equipped veteran soldiers, mounted on the finest horses and if you go blundering about then you will end up thrown in one of his dungeons just as le Ferron has. We do not have a force capable of resisting them in Nantes, and even my cousin’s personal guard is not so large as that. Do you understand?”

  “The Marshal maintains a personal army of two hundred mounted veterans?” I asked. “Men who fought against the English?”

  Stephen shot me a look.

  “Why certainly, Master Richard. And you are quite right to be fearful as these are men who are not to be trifled with and neither is the Marshal. If we go making unsubstantiated rumours then the King himself may intervene and take steps to protect his man from proper justice.” The Bishop cleared his throat. “Assuming he is guilty, of course. Bring me evidence, sirs, evidence. We must have blood and bones, God forgive me for speaking it, the blood and bones of these innocent children and also sworn statements from witnesses to murders and witchcraft or else we have nothing at all. Now, God be with you.”

  2. A Cursed Land

  May 1440

  Stephen knew the way south from Nantes to the lands around Tiffauges Castle and we rode out together, we four immortals and our servants, across the Loire and out into the wilderness beyond.

  Most of the Loire Valley, hundreds of miles of it, provided fertile soil and a delightful climate for producing abundant crops, healthy people, and wealthy lords. But south of Nantes, it was rather different.

  It was an area where met three regions of France; Brittany, Poitou, and Anjou and it was a broken country. The land itself looked like it had long ago been smashed, shattered, and wrecked, perhaps at the dawn of time or during some great catastrophe. All hard earth, thin rivers, or dank marsh, with scattered fragmented jumbles of grey rock and the people were sullen, scrawny, and bitter and the lords were few and far between. There was not enough wealth in the land itself to sustain many knights or gentlemen but there were prosperous commoners who carried on trade up and down the Loire.

  Those people that we saw as we trotted through their villages either hid from us or cast unfriendly glances in our direction. I made sure to wave, smile, and call out greetings but not one gesture was returned in kind.

  We were dressed in ordinary clothes, as a reasonably wealthy townsman might wear. All of us but Stephen wore a sturdy, padded doublet beneath those clothes but these were thinner than the gambesons we would wear beneath plate and mail armour during warfare. Thick enough to protect from a slashing cut and would perhaps serve to resist the thrust of a dagger but little more and I knew we would have to avoid full combat at all costs, especially if the Marshal’s small army was properly equipped for war. We did not even have steel helms to put on, should a battle threaten.

  Likewise, our horses were well bred and rode wonderfully but they were not trained for battle and so we could not hope to fight from them. Wherever we went and whatever we did, we would have to avoid combat wherever possible.

  In spite of the poor weather, bleak landscape, and unfriendly welcome, I felt reinvigorated by the ride. Once more, I felt wrapped in the comforting cloak of purpose.

  By the end of the day, we drew near to our destination and we slowed to a stop as the battlements appeared on the horizon. Our horses were tired, and I was wary of alerting even a fraction of the Marshal’s personal army to our presence.

  The castle itself was a substantial fortress. Standing on a massive outcrop overlooking two ravines through which ran the rivers Crume and Sevre. Towers of differing heights jutted up over thick walls, silhouetted against the sky.

  “Have we not been here before?” I asked Walt. “I look upon those walls and it feels somewhat familiar.”

  He nodded, pursing his lips as he recalled it, but Rob answered in his stead. “Came through this way a few times when we was looking for the black knight and when we was trying to bring Jean de Clermont out from hiding. Our lads needed somewhere to spend the winter, probably, what was it, ninety years ago now? By God, that’s a long time. We talked about taking this place with our company of fifty men.”

  “Well,” Walt said, “you talked about it, Richard.”

  Looking at the imposing fortress, I scoffed at the notion. “I must have been mad.”

  Walt laughed, as did Stephen.

  “It has been much added to in the years since,” Rob said, appraising the place. “More towers, new walls. Higher than before. We would need an army to take it now. Five hundred, perhaps.”

  “Five thousand, more like,” Walt said. “And a score of cannon.”

  But we were not going to take the castle. Not with an army or in any other way. Gilles de Rais was said to not be in residence and instead he was at another of his many castles, in Machecoul, thirty miles west toward the sea. When a lord was not present, with his court and household, a castle would be almost entirely empty. Perhaps a caretaker or two to guard against burglars and squatters, and to fix a leaking roof to stop the place falling into ruin before the lord returned. But we could not be certain that Tiffauges was not also guarded by members of the Marshal’s army. It seemed unlikely to me but Stephen claimed the villagers believed those soldiers and the Marshal’s men resided in the empty castles. I had not believed it but smoke drifted from within and from one of the towers and so it was not worth the risk.

  Instead, we wanted to speak to the people in the villages subject to Gilles de Rais. And we had one specific man in mind.

  “Come,” I said to Stephen, “let us find this village of Tilleuls and get a statement from this physician of yours.”

  All about the landscape was bleak and wind-blasted. Underfoot, the ground was stony and the soil so thin that the trees grew stunted and were bent over by the endless winds. Water pooled here and there in hollows, their surface choked by weeds and green slime. Above us the sky was low and dark, like a roof of broken slate.

  “Best wrap up your bow,” I said to Rob. “You look like an Englishman.”

  “Plenty of bows like this in France,” Rob objected. “In Brittany, too. Not just hunters but soldiers, too. Some of them. Levies, mainly, when raised from the country.”

  “I’d rather you did not look like an Englishman or a poacher or do anything that might make the commoners mistrust us. You will unstring and sheath your bow and hide the arrows. From the first moment we make ourselves known to the people of these lands we must be beyond reproach. We will pay for everyth
ing we use, and we shall pay handsomely. We will be courteous even when treated rudely. Do you hear me, Walt?”

  He affected outrage. “Why do you single me out?”

  “Do you hear me, Walt?”

  “Yes, Richard.”

  “And we are all from Normandy. Even Walt.”

  “That’s right,” Rob said. “And if anyone asks, we just say his mother was ravished by an Englishman.”

  “Don’t you mean a Welshman?” Stephen said.

  “Oh, charming,” Walt said. “Even my dear old friend Stephen Gossett is having a dig at poor old Walt, who never did his friends no harm in his life and then this is how they treat him in his turn.”

  “That is enough, now,” I said, seeing the roofs of houses up ahead for just a moment as we went over a rise in the road. “We must present ourselves as trustworthy men who can be relied upon to get the evidence needed to arrest their lord and to put him on trial.”

  “Why can we not just kill him?” Walt asked as our party picked our way along the narrow tracks toward the village. “Just ambush him, cut off his head and be done with it.”

  Stephen sighed elaborately. “He may be both mortal and innocent, Walter. We cannot murder an innocent man.”

  “Innocent?” Walt said. “Of course he done it. People don’t talk about things like that if it ain’t true. And if he has done things that that, like what they say he done, then he has to be immortal. Don’t he?”

  “Not necessarily,” Stephen said, sniffing and lifting his nose up. “Immortals do not have a monopoly on violence.”

  “But if he is guilty of murdering children,” Rob said, speaking slowly and frowning. “Why do we not just kill him anyway? Whether he’s been drinking their blood or not? Mortal or immortal, he will deserve death.”

  Stephen lifted a finger up and took the kind of breath he often took before launching into a pompous lecture.

  I hurriedly spoke before he could get started. “Because our Order exists to kill William’s immortals. Not to assassinate common murderers for the sake of it. If he has committed crimes, then the Bishop and the Duke must be the ones to pass judgement. Only if he is an immortal is it our duty to put an end to him.”

  Stephen and Rob nodded in agreement.

  “You’re saying we first have to find out if he is a killer and then also find out if he is an immortal before we can do anything?” Walt said. “Be easier if we just take him, that’s all I’m saying. It’s what we done before. Take him, cut his flesh and have him confess that is guilty and a spawn of William de Ferrers before we slay him. Like we done before.”

  “That was different,” I said. “That was war. There is no war here. And the easier route is not often the right one to follow. We must act rightly for we are knights, we three, and Stephen is a moral man, are you not, Stephen? Despite once being a monk and now being a lawyer.”

  My words drew laughter from all three but they quickly fell silent and I hoped they would think on what I had said. Even so, I was not feeling so confident about doing the right thing myself.

  Gilles de Rais had been one of the architects in the downfall of the English armies and the revelation that he may have been an immortal the entire time brought the whole conflict since Orléans back into relief. He was at Joan of Lorraine’s side during every battle and thus it was he who had been whispering stratagems into her ear.

  Our defeat suddenly made sense to me. And I had an opportunity to put it right, to take revenge for the losses we had suffered.

  But perhaps Gilles was not an immortal. Perhaps it was my desire for him to be so that coloured my thinking and twisted my thoughts.

  And if he was not an immortal then was he a man capable of murdering children? Dozens of them at that, so Stephen had suggested. Dozens or even scores.

  Whether Gilles was good or evil seemed to rest on whether the Maiden of Orléans had herself been divinely inspired or heretical. Had she been practising witchcraft all those years ago when she led armies while dressed as a knight? Had she drawn from the power of evil? If so, then it seemed likely that Gilles was also evil.

  Or had she truly been divinely inspired, following the directions of angels and God above? For if that was true, as the French yet claimed, then how could Gilles be either evil or immortal?

  I had no answers but I hoped to find some amongst the commoners of the region and first of all from the people of Tilleuls.

  “Here we are,” Stephen said as we rode into the centre of the village.

  There was a stone church, quite plain but in good repair, and a group of good houses around the large central square, built tall and with tiled roofs. The gardens were well-kept, and the stink of the middens and cesspits was not as foul as in many such places. In fact, it was as fine a village as I had seen in the area.

  When we approached there were children playing a game of some sort in the middle of the village before the church but before we came close they scattered beyond the building and into the houses. In the silence after the children’s voices stopped, all I could hear was the sounds of our horses breathing and their hooves echoing from the walls of the church and the houses all around.

  A movement caught my eye and I turned to see a pair of shutters slam closed in the upper window of the house there. Almost at the same time I heard a door bang shut on the other side of the church and there was the scraping of a bar being pushed into place behind it.

  The wind blew up a swirl of dust beneath us.

  “We mean no harm!” Stephen bellowed suddenly, right behind me.

  I almost jumped out of my skin and my horse sprang forward in surprise.

  “For God’s sake, Stephen,” I said as I reigned my horse in. “Do you think that will bring them running with jugs of wine and a platter of almond tarts?” He began to answer but I did not let him do so. “Get off your bloody horse and lead us to the house of your potential witness.”

  Sheepishly, he pointed to the grandest house in the village. A two-storey place with an attractive tiled roof and windows with sound panes of glass in them. “The physician’s house.”

  “Watch the approaches at both ends of the village,” I said to Walt and Rob. “Do not let the servants wander. Be respectful to all the folk here but remember also that any of them may be in league with the Marshal.”

  Both men nodded and moved to instruct the valets. I noted that Rob checked his bow in its sheath and loosened the cover on his quiver.

  Stephen was speaking through the closed front door of the physician’s house as I approached. He turned and his face was one of despair.

  “The physician is away,” Stephen said. “And they will not admit us.”

  I sighed, for it suddenly seemed obvious that he would not be there, for physicians who do not reside in large towns travel all over visiting the sick. “Where is he? Do not tell me he has returned to Nantes? We could have stayed and met him there.”

  Stephen jerked his head at the door. “The woman there will not say.”

  “Is there no other within who will help us?”

  Stephen shrugged and stroked his chin. “To speak plainly, Richard, I was doubtful whether even a man as learned and decent as the Master Mousillon here would speak to me in an official capacity. His servants would certainly lack the courage to do so.”

  “You are the one who lacks courage,” I said and stepped up to the door before banging on it with my palm. “We are on official business, madame. Is the lady of the house within?”

  There was a pause before a soft voice answered. “This is she.”

  “Please would you open the door but a little, madame, so I may state my business? We have come as previously agreed with Master Pierre Mousillon, some weeks ago now. Perhaps you already know of why we come but I must say that we come from Nantes on peaceful, legitimate business, and not from Tiffauges or Machecoul or any other such place.”

  After a moment, the lock turned and the door opened a little.

  “Thank you, Madame,” I said, �
��I appreciate the—”

  My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth as I laid eyes on a beautiful young woman who was not more than twenty years old. Perhaps she was a servant or perhaps Master Mousillon had got himself an especially lovely young wife, but I suspected she was a daughter.

  “Ah,” I said, softening my tone and lowering my voice, “my apologies, mademoiselle, I believed I was speaking to the lady of the house. Is your mother present?”

  “My father is Pierre Mousillon,” she said, in the most delightfully high, clear and yet warm and steady voice. “I am the mistress here. Now, my father is away and will not return for some time. Please, sir, I beg that you leave me be.”

  “A moment, if you please,” I said, placing my hand gently on the door frame and leaning forward. “I shall certainly do whatever you wish but perhaps you can help me before I go?” She paused, looking up at me. I snatched off my hat and clutched it in my fist. “You see, mademoiselle, we have come about the boy. His name is Jamet. Forgive me but he is your brother, is that correct?”

  She breathed in and held up her chin, her eyes shining. “He was.”

  “I see. And as I understand it, young Jamet Mousillon disappeared last year and I am here to discover what occurred and also to see justice done.”

  “Justice?” She hesitated, peering at me through her fierce eyes. “And who are you?”

  “My name is Richard. This is my friend Stephen. He is a lawyer but try not to judge him too harshly, for he is not so bad, as far as members of his profession are concerned. Stephen here is the one your father spoke to in Nantes, about your brother.”