Mathilde 02 - The Poison Maiden Read online

  The Poison Maiden

  PAUL DOHERTY

  headline

  Copyright © 2007 Paul Doherty

  The right of Paul Doherty to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  First published as an Ebook by Headline Publishing Group in 2012

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  This Ebook produced by Jouve Digitalisation des Informations

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  eISBN: 978 0 7553 5020 9

  HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

  An Hachette UK Company

  338 Euston Road

  London

  NW1 3BH

  www.headline.co.uk

  www.hachettelivre.co.uk

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Letter to the Reader

  About the Author

  Also by Paul Doherty

  Praise for Paul Doherty

  Dedication

  Historical Personages

  Foreword

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Author’s Note

  History has always fascinated me. I see my stories as a time machine. I want to intrigue you with a murderous mystery and a tangled plot, but I also want you to experience what it was like to slip along the shadow-thronged alleyways of medieval London; to enter a soaringly majestic cathedral but then walk out and glimpse the gruesome execution scaffolds rising high on the other side of the square. In my novels you will sit in the oaken stalls of a gothic abbey and hear the glorious psalms of plain chant even as you glimpse white, sinister gargoyle faces peering out at you from deep cowls and hoods. Or there again, you may ride out in a chariot as it thunders across the Redlands of Ancient Egypt or leave the sunlight and golden warmth of the Nile as you enter the marble coldness of a pyramid’s deadly maze. Smells and sounds, sights and spectacles will be conjured up to catch your imagination and so create times and places now long gone. You will march to Jerusalem with the first Crusaders or enter the Colosseum of Rome, where the sand sparkles like gold and the crowds bay for the blood of some gladiator. Of course, if you wish, you can always return to the lush dark greenness of medieval England and take your seat in some tavern along the ancient moon-washed road to Canterbury and listen to some ghostly tale which chills the heart . . . my books will take you there then safely bring you back!

  The periods that have piqued my interest and about which I have written are many and varied. I hope you enjoy the read and would love to hear your thoughts – I always appreciate any feedback from readers. Visit my publisher’s website here: www.headline.co.uk and find out more. You may also visit my website: www.paulcdoherty.com or email me on: [email protected].

  Paul Doherty

  About the Author

  Paul Doherty is one of the most prolific, and lauded, authors of historical mysteries in the world today. His expertise in all areas of history is illustrated in the many series that he writes about, from the Mathilde of Westminster series, set at the court of Edward II, to the Amerotke series, set in Ancient Egypt. Amongst his most memorable creations are Hugh Corbett, Brother Athelstan and Roger Shallot.

  Paul Doherty was born in Middlesbrough. He studied history at Liverpool and Oxford Universities and obtained a doctorate at Oxford for his thesis on Edward II and Queen Isabella. He is now headmaster of a school in north-east London and lives with his wife and family near Epping Forest.

  Also by Paul Doherty

  Mathilde of Westminster

  THE CUP OF GHOSTS

  THE POISON MAIDEN

  THE DARKENING GLASS

  Sir Roger Shallot

  THE WHITE ROSE MURDERS

  THE POISONED CHALICE

  THE GRAIL MURDERS

  A BROOD OF VIPERS

  THE GALLOWS MURDERS

  THE RELIC MURDERS

  Templar

  THE TEMPLAR

  THE TEMPLAR MAGICIAN

  Mahu (The Akhenaten trilogy)

  AN EVIL SPIRIT OUT OF THE WEST

  THE SEASON OF THE HYAENA

  THE YEAR OF THE COBRA

  Canterbury Tales by Night

  AN ANCIENT EVIL

  A TAPESTRY OF MURDERS

  A TOURNAMENT OF MURDERS

  GHOSTLY MURDERS

  THE HANGMAN’S HYMN

  A HAUNT OF MURDER

  Egyptian Mysteries

  THE MASK OF RA

  THE HORUS KILLINGS

  THE ANUBIS SLAYINGS

  THE SLAYERS OF SETH

  THE ASSASSINS OF ISIS

  THE POISONER OF PTAH

  THE SPIES OF SOBECK

  Constantine the Great

  DOMINA

  MURDER IMPERIAL

  THE SONG OF THE GLADIATOR

  THE QUEEN OF THE NIGHT

  MURDER’S IMMORTAL MASK

  Hugh Corbett

  SATAN IN ST MARY’S

  THE CROWN IN DARKNESS

  SPY IN CHANCERY

  THE ANGEL OF DEATH

  THE PRINCE OF DARKNESS

  MURDER WEARS A COWL

  THE ASSASSIN IN THE GREENWOOD

  THE SONG OF A DARK ANGEL

  SATAN’S FIRE

  THE DEVIL’S HUNT

  THE DEMON ARCHER

  THE TREASON OF THE GHOSTS

  CORPSE CANDLE

  THE MAGICIAN’S DEATH

  THE WAXMAN MURDERS

  NIGHTSHADE

  THE MYSTERIUM

  Standalone Titles

  THE ROSE DEMON

  THE HAUNTING

  THE SOUL SLAYER

  THE PLAGUE LORD

  THE DEATH OF A KING

  PRINCE DRAKULYA

  THE LORD COUNT DRAKULYA

  THE FATE OF PRINCES

  DOVE AMONGST THE HAWKS

  THE MASKED MAN

  As Vanessa Alexander

  THE LOVE KNOT

  OF LOVE AND WAR

  THE LOVING CUP

  Kathryn Swinbrooke (as C L Grace)

  SHRINE OF MURDERS

  EYE OF GOD

  MERCHANT OF DEATH

  BOOK OF SHADOWS

  SAINTLY MURDERS

  MAZE OF MURDERS

  FEAST OF POISONS

  Nicholas Segalla (as Ann Dukthas)

  A TIME FOR THE DEATH OF A KING

  THE PRINCE LOST TO TIME

  THE TIME OF MURDER AT MAYERLING

  IN THE TIME OF THE POISONED QUEEN

  Mysteries of Alexander the Great (as Anna Apostolou)

  A MURDER IN MACEDON

  A MURDER IN THEBES

  Alexander the Great

  THE HOUSE OF DEATH

  THE GODLESS MAN

  THE GATES OF HELL

  Matthew Jankyn (as P C Doherty)

  THE WHYTE HARTE

  THE SERPENT AMONGST THE LILIES

  Non-fiction

  THE MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF TUTANKHAMUN

 
ISABELLA AND THE STRANGE DEATH OF EDWARD II

  ALEXANDER THE GREAT: THE DEATH OF A GOD

  THE GREAT CROWN JEWELS ROBBERY OF 1303

  THE SECRET LIFE OF ELIZABETH I

  THE DEATH OF THE RED KING

  Praise for Paul Doherty

  ‘Teems with colour, energy and spills’ Time Out

  ‘Paul Doherty has a lively sense of history . . . evocative and lyrical descriptions’ New Statesman

  ‘Extensive and penetrating research coupled with a strong plot and bold characterisation. Loads of adventure and a dazzling evocation of the past’ Herald Sun, Melbourne

  ‘An opulent banquet to satisfy the most murderous appetite’ Northern Echo

  ‘As well as penning an exciting plot with vivid characters, Doherty excels at bringing the medieval period to life, with his detailed descriptions giving the reader a strong sense of place and time’ South Wales Argus

  Moira and Brian Carter dedicate

  this book to our grandchildren

  Elizabeth, Thomas, Jonathan,

  Megan, Zoë, Jake, Sarah, Katie and Alex

  Historical Personages

  Foreword

  In the spring of 1308, England was on the brink of civil war because of the new King Edward II’s total reliance on his favourite, Peter Gaveston. Edward had just married Isabella, the daughter of Philip IV of France who seized the opportunity of his daughter’s marriage to meddle in English affairs. This account of what happened next is based on historical sources. A commentary is provided at the end to explain its startling revelations. The quotation at the beginning of each chapter is from the Vita Edwardi Secundi (The Life of Edward II), the authorship of which is still debated.

  Prologue

  Thus today the will conquers reason.

  Vita Edwardi Secundi

  ‘What will you have to say for yourself when the wind no longer stirs your hair? When your gullet is dry and you can utter no word, your bloodless face is white and your eyes are set in their gloomy sockets? When your mouth cannot be moistened and inside it your tongue stiffens against the roof of your mouth? When blood no longer courses in your veins? When your neck cannot bend or your arms embrace? When your foot cannot take a step? What does that putrid dead body reply now? Let him say what vain glory has to offer him now . . .’

  I listened to Prior Stephen’s funeral homily on the man I had killed as I nestled in the shadow of the great rood screen in the cavernous nave of Grey Friars, the Franciscan house that lies between Stinking Lane near the Shambles to the south and the Priory of St Bartholomew to the north. I, Mathilde de Clairebon, also known as Mathilde of Westminster, in the Year of Our Lord 1360, the thirty-third year of the reign of Edward III, am still killing to protect myself. I have no choice. I am old and wasted, well past my sixtieth summer. My courses have long dried. My blood is sluggish, my bones ache, my muscles protest, but that is only the flower; the stem is still as strong and tenacious as ever, as is the root that defines me. The great Aquinas, quoting Aristotle, claims that ‘being’ is only being when it relates. Our relationships, he argues, define us, bring us into being and, in so many cases, make us murderers or the victims of murder. I am no different. I, Mathilde, formerly handmaid, henchwoman, counsellor, physician and even lover of Isabella, once Queen of England. Now I’m a relic, a survivor. Two years after my mistress died, I shelter amongst these cold grey stones. Isabella lies buried here in her marble sarcophagus, a majestic table tomb that stands in the choir to the right of the high altar. They buried her in her wedding dress, clutching the heart of her husband, Edward II, whose reign she so brutally ended. However, as in life so in death: Isabella also lies near the tomb of her great love, Mortimer of Wigmore, hand-fast in life, soul-fast in eternity.

  The new father prior, the deliverer of sermons of doom, his fur-lined cowl framing a narrow, anxious face, favours me. He allows me to write my memories, my confession in a cipher only God and I understand. So close, so subtle is the cipher that even the most skilled clerk in the king’s secret chancery cannot understand it. They could spend their time in purgatory trying to break it, yet still fail. Oh, the king would love to know! He hungers for my secrets, whetted by his own mother’s fevered babblings as she lay in that cold, grim chamber at Castle Rising with the babewyns, griffins, gargoyles and other stone-sculpted grotesques staring down at her from the walls. She talked to those from the past. Names I knew well. I have watched them parade and posture in the sun before slipping into the dark: Philip IV, le Bel, the beautiful King of France; his helpmates, those demons incarnate, Marigny, Plaisans and Nogaret. Other sinister shadows gather. Chief amongst these is Clement V, pope, usurer and destroyer, shit-ting blood as he died, his corpse abruptly bursting into flames as it lay before the high altar of some church. Next to him, Edward of England screaming at the cross after his beloved Gaveston was executed. They all congregate: pictures, legends, frescoes in my mind. So many memories! Streets, havens of darkness, torchlight glinting on the weapons of hooded, visored assassins as they slip through a doorway intent on murder. Battlements prepared for war, packed with armures de fer, pots of flame brightening the darkness, the ominous silence broken by the creak of leather and the clatter of armour. Men, hearts full of fury, determined to hold fast against the dark mass of enemy approaching the walls. Churches with their hallowed light and shifting gloom; before their rood screens, coffins containing the corpses of the murdered, all draped in black and ringed by purple candles, tended by bedesmen telling their paternosters whilst in the shadow-filled transepts the priest is silently garrotted by those who plan more murder. Soaring castles overlooking battlefields soaked in bloody snow. Forests and woods alive with men moving silently round those they’ve left hanging from the outstretched branches of oak and sycamore. Towns burning. Gallows set up before cathedral doors. The pestilence slinking across a blighted landscape. The dead choking filthy ditches. The living on their knees in desperate prayer as Abaddon, the Angel of the Bottomless Pit, cuts the cords and empties the sack of God’s anger on to the land. I have also lived in a world of secrets, of amorous lechery thronged by the Judases and Losengiers, those betrayers of courtly love.

  I may be dried and shrivelled as an ancient plum. My hair is grey and wiry, my skin a leathery brown; nevertheless, I have lived life to the full, drunk, even guzzled from the goblet of life. So why do I write? Well, every soul has its song, the very essence of its being, and this is mine. My confession to God. My discourse with myself. After all, aren’t the most intimate and enjoyable conversations those we have with ourselves? I have seen history unfold. I have watched in mounting apprehension God’s justice come to fruition. I have, the good Lord assoil me, witnessed the effect of that hideous curse Jacques de Molay, the last Grand Master of the Temple, hurled from the roaring flames and bellowing foulsome smoke that burnt his flesh to a cinder on the Île-de-France and sent his soul fluttering like a dove towards God. A few words screamed out, yet that curse spread like a thick shower of arrows up and across God’s heaven, barbs cutting the air before falling on their victims. All this was helped by my mistress. She who became the Virago Ferrea – the Iron Virago, Isabella la Belle, the new Jezebel, the Destroyer of Kings, the Usurper of Princes, the Ouster of Thrones, the Shatterer of Lives, God’s anger incarnate. Isabella, mother of the one I call the Accursed, her son Edward III, bloody-handed, falcon-faced and hawk-hearted. Age has steeped him deep in villainy. He has drenched Europe in blood, blackened God’s sky with the sooty smoke of funeral pyres. Gog and Magog have risen and stalked the world. Edward and the Annihilation, the Great Pestilence, siblings who have roamed the earth hand in hand. Once I was a famous physician who witnessed all this; now I am a recluse, a pensioner no better than a servant girl. How times change! Fortune’s wheel spins so dizzily. Edward ordered me here to be with Isabella, his beloved mother, now interred beneath that cold, ornate sarcophagus.

  ‘As in life, so in death, Mathilde,’ he mocked, full red lips curling in derision. ‘Look at
you,’ he hissed. ‘Grey-haired, grey-eyed, grey-souled. Yes, Grey Friars will suit you well. You have my permission to stay there. I could give you more, greater reward?’ He smiled and stroked my hair as if I was one of his limner hounds.

  At the time I steeled myself. I stared over his shoulder at his Luparii, his wolf-men, the knights and clerks of the king’s secret chamber. They would have cut my throat if Edward had lifted a finger. Yet he dare not do that; well, at least not publicly. He probably knows what pledges I have lodged with powerful churchmen up and down this kingdom. They protect me. I smile, they have no choice! I know all about their secret lives. Edward recognises this. On that particular day he curled his finger round one strand of my hair, tightened it and pulled.

  ‘Mathilde,’ he whispered, ‘they say you were once beautiful.’

  ‘Sire, they say the same about yourself!’

  ‘Ever quick.’ He tugged on my hair again, then withdrew his hand. ‘Swift as a lurcher!’ he breathed. ‘I can see the traces of what you once were. Mother told me: your hair black as night, fair-skinned, tender-eyed, slender and willowy as a wand.’

  ‘Vanity of vanities,’ I mocked. ‘All things pass, sire.’

  ‘Then tell me, Mathilde,’ the king leaned closer so I could smell the fresh fragrance from his quilted jacket; his gold-ringed fingers edged towards my hands, the skin now dark and spotted like that of a toad, ‘tell me whom you trust.’

  ‘Put not your trust in princes,’ I quoted. ‘In mortal man in whom there is no help.’

  The king drew back, amber eyes gleaming, lips whitespittled like those of an angry cat.

  ‘See,’ he quoted menacingly back, ‘they lie and wait for your life, powerful men band against you.’

  ‘I shall hide my face from them,’ I retorted, ‘and see what becomes of them, for they are a deceitful brood with no loyalty in them.’