Penance

By James Jackson

1170. On a dark December evening in the candlelit cloisters of Canterbury Cathedral, Archbishop Thomas Beckett is hacked to pieces by four murderous knights. As the monks flee, one young novice standshis ground as witness to the bloody events. His name is Edward and what he sees will haunt him for the rest of his life. Some twenty years later, as a healer who has renounced monastic life, Edward becomes physician to the Lionheart –the legendary King Richard of England –and embarks with him on Crusade for the Holy Land. Yet waiting are three of the surviving killers of Beckett, knights excommunicated and banished by a remorseful King Henry II, father of Richard. These rogue knights
have not forgotten or forgiven. What they now seek is revenge on the royal house of Plantagenet. What they seek is blood, the death of Richard the Lionheart. The physician Edward too remembers the past. It is left to him to thwart the threat and save the life of his king.

• Language: English
• Publisher: James Jackson
• Release date: Feb 18, 2019
• ISBN: 9781912924608

Book preview

changed.

CHAPTER 1

Sicily, April 1191.

‘I am ready for the scalpello.’

Marfleet bent above his patient and with a small blade deftly made an incision, severing the flap of skin still attached to the cheek and ensuring it remained fixed over the reconstructed nose. It was the culmination to a procedure that had involved the moulding of a wax and resin facsimile, the application of feather cartilage and the insertion of reed breathing tubes, that had seen his skilled fingers and surgical craft directed to mending another broken face. In a world of sickness and brutality, there was no shortage in number of those journeying to his door.

He cleansed the wound with turpentine, added sweet balm and powdered liquorice and barberry and applied a compress of aloe and basil. Years of practice had made it routine.

Straightening from his task, he wiped his hands on a cloth and murmured a prayer. Some called him a sorcerer and others a miracle-worker. But he was simply doing the work of God, healing where he could, restoring to health or returning a human visage to the wounded and lame and diseased. Everyone had a path. His had taken him aged seventeen on pilgrimage to the great Benedictine monastery of Monte Cassino. Encouraged by a Prior who had considered as divine portent the fire that consumed the interior of Canterbury cathedral in 1174 and driven on by his own act of atonement, he wandered far. In Rome, Pope Alexander III himself took his confession and heard him recount the grim events of a December afternoon in which the archbishop he had since canonized was so foully martyred by four knights. It earned Marfleet a papal dispensation to roam and practice where he chose. He used such blessing to continue on, had operated with Arab physicians and studied with Persian mystics and Chin herbalists and absorbed the Ayurvedic secrets of the Charaka-Samahita. Some twenty years after the slaying in the cathedral, Edward Marfleet was no longer a novice monk cowering impotently in the shadow.

Sunlight warmed his back and the sweet scent of citrus trees and jasmine reached his nostrils as he strolled from the tent. Here, in his small encampment at the foot of a deserted Saracen fort close by the dusty hilltop village of Taormina, his travelling had ceased and contentment was found. Before him were the rugged cliffs and calming blue of the Ionian Sea, about him an escarpment of dazzling sandstone colonised by scrub and olive groves and straggling plantations of lemon and orange. He could think of no finer place for a man to heal his soul and the bodies and minds of others.

‘They say the French king has sailed for the holy land, Edward.’ Pietro had emerged, quiet and solemn and folding a dressing.

‘It leaves then only the Lionheart and his forces at Messina.’

His assistant nodded. ‘Is it true he is a giant who winnows the enemy with a single stroke of his blade?’

‘We shall hear soon enough when he makes land in Palestine.’

‘Saladin will tremble at the news.’

‘Let them to their wars.’ Marfleet rested a hand on the shoulder of his friend. ‘Such things are for princes and knights and not for humble penitents as we.’

The young Italian frowned. ‘Are we not Christians? Is it not our duty to fight in the name of the Lord?’

‘There are many ways to take the cross, Pietro. And many ways to find salvation.’

They stood awhile in silence and surveyed the tranquil scene, a tall and lean Englishman and a broad-shouldered Calabrian peasant, two people of unequal age and learning united by a shared resolve to save lives and through a bond forged when Marfleet excised a growth and restored the damaged face of the nomadic youth. Loyalty was assured and Pietro had stayed.

‘Work remains, Pietro.’

‘I have readied opiates for the amputation.’

‘A fire is lit and the knives prepared?’

‘I would not forget.’

Nor would he. Uneducated he might have been, yet with his caring nature and dutiful bent, the scarred worker of stocky build and retiring manner was a master in his kingdom. He created unctions and mixed poultices, extracted sedative from poppies and menthol from peppermint, conjured essences and concentrates from his mortars and stills. The most unlikely and irreplaceable of magicians.

Marfleet gazed at his settlement of canvas shelters and rudimentary huts. There was little to draw the eye or cause remark. But hundreds had left here cured and hundreds more made their way by boat and cart to benefit from his medical prowess. Word had spread and reputation with it. Even the Crusaders passing through on sacred quest for the holy land sent their ill and injured to him to be tended.

Without thinking, he pressed his palm against his chest and felt the goatskin pouch hung on a cord about his neck and hidden beneath his smock. His personal reliquary and deepest secret, carried with him every step from Canterbury. Men would kill or pilgrimage for such things. Contained within the purse were a fragment of skull, a tuft of horsehair from a torn undershirt and a scrap of cloth still dark with the congealed blood of a martyr. Insignificant items. Yet all were taken from the cadaver of Thomas Becjet, were totems of the past and a signpost to the heavenly kingdom. Marfleet could never forget and was ever reminded. In death, the archbishop continued to guide him.

‘I see horsemen, Edward.’ The Calabrian pointed north toward a plume of dust intruding on the backdrop. ‘A mounted knight leads them.’

A subdued reporting of fact and it pricked fears lying dormant in the heart of the physician. On that cold day in 1170 those English knights had dismounted near his monastery and entered the cathedral precincts beside the Church of St Alphege, had hidden and then retrieved their weapons from beneath a mulberry tree, had caught and butchered Becket in a scene replayed often in his mind. He would give welcome to the visitors as with any who called.

‘Blessings upon you, stranger.’

‘And greeting to you.’ The knight perused him from the saddle. ‘Such humble abode for one who performs miracles.’

‘I am a physician and nothing more.’

‘Your renown outstrips your modesty. Scores of our men you have tended and cured.’

‘It is my duty to God.’

‘As ours is to Crusade.’ The knight turned his head and gazed at the far vista from the ancient Greek ampitheathre abutting the hillside to the distant and smoking presence of Mt Etna. ‘We each do as we must, Marfleet.’

‘That is so.’ He was careful in reply.

‘The armies of Europe are mustered and the holy land calls. King Richard of England and King Philip of France and their allies. All bound for Acre and the battle with the Saracen.’

‘There is no Christian alive who does not wish them victory.’

‘Yet you rest here, repose in your tented sanctuary as other men give fight.’

‘For some it is the sword that beckons and others the blade of a surgeon.’

‘Our Lord Jesus was raised a carpenter and yet answered a higher calling.’

‘My talent is more modest.’

‘Things change, Marfleet.’ The tone of the knight also.

Agenda was unknown and yet the doctor comprehended the posse beforore him rode on official errand and would not be deflected. He should have been in the hills gathering eucalyptus, could have been bathing and healing the sick in the sacred inland ools below the volcano. Intruders had entered his church.

He indicated the ramshackle collection of tents and shelters. ‘This is a place of succour and rebirth where men and women and children may be restored to health. I am needed here.’

‘Greater need lies elsewhere.’

‘Who but myself could so suppose?’ Marfleet already knew the answer.

‘Richard of England, Coeur de Lion.’

Words of confirmation and a name to conjure awe in most who heard it mentioned. The Lionheart. It would be unwise to refuse an invitation.

Betraying no emotion, Marfleet squinted at the knight. ‘What is it the king desires?’

‘Your presence.’

‘He is a prince and I a commoner of no consequence. I doubt I should be of worth to him.’

‘Would you rather be accused of witchcraft?’

‘My preference is to live as I have always lived.’

‘His grace will decide and you shall obey.’ The knight waved a hand to the rest of his formation. ‘We bring fresh horses. Mount up and ride with us. We make return for Messina.’

Marfleet hesitated. He had left his past in another realm and a previous life, had abandoned his boyhood years in search of peace and new existence. King Henry once dispatched his loyal servants to deal with a turbulent preiest in Canterbury; his son Richard now committed an armed party to drag away a former novice monk and witness to historic murder. Things change, this knight claimed. Not so much, the physician reflected.

‘There is still my work, the sick and needy who travel far and place trust in me.’

‘You would defy the wishes of your king?’

‘I would crave his patience and beg his understanding.’

‘His demand outweighs all other concern.’ The voice was dismissive. ‘He sends two Hospitallers to join your commune until his audience with you is done and all matters are decided.’

It seemed that such decision was already long made. Marfleet rubbed his temple in resigned contemplation. ‘Allow me time to make arrangement and inspect those on litters in my care?’

‘Direct yourself to what we ask. No more delay is sanctioned.’

Argument would be of scant use. With a hidden sigh and a burdened soul, Edward Marfleet slipped his foot into a stirrup and climbed astride the borrowed mount. It occurred to him he should be honoured at the size of the delegation, yet he felt the pressure of kidnap and not the flattery of welcome. And a separate thought fell into his mind, the almost childish notion that as a boy in the crypt at Canterbury he had perhaps rubbed the carved nose of the lion a little too hard. The beast was awakened and come for him. A command was given and the troop wheeled and set out for the north.

*

A warrior stood atop the raised platform and viewed the panorama. Flame-haired and garbed in a scarlet mantle emblazoned with the gold lion of England, the figure was unmistakeable. He was no mere king. For this was Coeur de Lion, the soldier and ruler and legend. There was a will of steel in his sharp blue eyes and a bristling energy to his manner, a restless intelligence and natural authority that could invoke fear or love and drew the respect of all. None could ignore him and few prevail against his ruthlessness and charm. The pope might call for holy war but other things too drove this sovereign, the lust for glory and a delight in plunder and an abiding eagerness for the fight. Richard of England was embarking on Crusade.

He could be satisfied with what he saw. Within the sweeping embrace of Messina harbour and the straits lay his fleet of two hundred ships framed by the stark mountains of mainland Calabria. A stirring and beautiful scene. Around him and the senior English and Anjevin nobles clustered at his side, an army was preparing and its camp slowly dismantled. Men practised in mock combat and caparisoned horses whinnied and galloped; archers and crossbowmen let fly at temporary butts and armourers hammered and laboured over weapons and hauberks. The King had an eye for such detail. Behind him, his mobile wooden fort Mate Griffon was losing form and size as its walls were removed and carried out to a waiting transport. It would not rise again until the holy land was reached. Ordered disarray and everything directed to a single purpose.

Richard breathed deep. ‘I can already smell the alarm of the heathen in the holy city.’

‘There is yet Saladin between us and Jerusalem, sir.’

‘The better the combat and more deserving our victory.’ The Lionheart clamped his arm about the shoulder of the doubter. ‘Be of cheer, friend. We set out to regain Palestine, to avenge the defeat at Hattin and the iniquities heaped on Christendom.’

‘King Philip and his French head there before us.’

‘He will achieve nothing without us. We are his balls and his backbone, his brain and his sword-arm. Besides, he is our comrade and our brother-in-arms.’

‘For the present.’ There was a murmur of agreement from among the gathering. ‘Even brothers may prove disloyal.’

Richard laughed. The cares of his lieutenants were not lost on him, nor the dangers that loitered both behind and ahead. His ally King Philip had proved of use in challenging the rage and writ of his late father Henry. Yet the young French ruler was sly and ambitious, a rival for the lands of France and as likely to turn and wage war upon the English as he ever was the Saracen. Mutual convenience and a burning intent to be first amongst equals kept the monarchs focussed on their immediate task. Then there was John, a brother in name only, lurking cold and traitorous as regent in England. Intrigue and usurpation were entwined with chivalry in the royal courts of Europe.

He glanced at his companions. ‘Put aside your doubts. They have no place in the coming battle.’

Another grandee spoke. ‘We all have taken the cross, sir. We each of us have made solemn covenant with God to face trial and fire in His name.’

‘Nothing is more noble.’ Richard swept his hand across the scene. ‘This is our Camelot. This is our brotherhood and quest. This is a sacred journey to be recounted a thousand years hence.’

‘We are with you unto death, sir.’

‘It will be the death of the Saracen and the forces of darkness, Riviere.’

He lapsed to reflective silence, savouring the moment, his confidence unshakeable and belief all-consuming. His hierarchs attended, mute at his forcefulness. They too were awed by the spectacle, by the pennants and banners and the call of trumpets, by the scale of an enterprise that was the physical manifestation of the will of God and the bellicose instincts of their earthly master. Kingship was conquest and the Lionheart did them well.

Something had irked him. Without warning, he vaulted the rail and landed below, a commander transformed to the role of a training sergeant. He had killed enough to earn his position. Relieving a hapless knight of sword and shield, he entered the duelling scrum and raised the weapon above his head.

‘You dogs and cowards! You bastards and knaves!’ A perplexed stillness eddied through the throng. ‘I have seen more violence in a kitchen, more commitment in a bedchamber! A child with a stick could do more hurt! Even my fair betrothed, the Princess Bengaria who travels in our company, would acquit herself in battle more manfully than you!’

His voice cowed and his insults stung. Shame-faced, his audience shuffled nervous, hardened and steel-clad fighters reduced to embarrassment and unease. But he was in mood to lecture rather than forgive. And his opinion was absolute.

‘Hark to what I tell you. This sword is your life and that of your brothers. Use it.’ He scythed it hard toward a knight, moving forward as the man feell back, unrelenting in his pursuit. ‘Attack…attack…attack.’

Bludgeoned into retreat his quarry attempted to defend himself, the clumsy parries swept aside and fumbling resistance ignored. The man slipped and recovered. Richard kept on, pushing and crowding, hooking aside the shield with his own and reversing his sword to batte close with its quillons and pommel.

Effective and ferocious work. Simulated skirmishing had lost all pretence.

It was a boot to the stomach that brought swift conclusion. Disorientated and disarmed, the knight bent double to breathe and find respite. He earned instead a kick to the face that catapulted him prostrate to the ground. His king was already kneeling on his chest, wrenching free his helmet and placing a dagger to his eye.

‘You yield?’

‘Yes…yes…I yield.’ Surrender came feeble through bloodied lips.

The Lionheart rose and sheathed his knife and regarded the assembled. ‘I will make heroes of you yet. Is not the heathen Saladin the seventh head of the dragon in Revelations?’

‘He is.’ They muttered in acquiescence.

‘Shout it to the Lord.’

‘He is!’

‘Are we not tasked by God to strike it off?’

‘We are!’

‘Fight as though Christ is at your shoulder and the True Cross is raised before you. Never cease until the holy city is retaken and the last pagate apostate sent butchered into hell.’

They cheered. The lesson was complete.

Fresh diversion had appeared, thd cavalcade of horses and their travel-stained riders forcing a path through the commotion of the camp. It was near thirty miles from Taorima along the coastal track and they had maintained an unforgiving pace. Stiffly they dismounted, shaking mobility back to their limbs and wiping sweat from their brows and dust from their clothing. Meeting with a king demanded some formality.

‘You bring him?’ Richard scanned their faces.

‘We do sir.’ The knight ushered Marfleet forward. ‘I vouch he is more skilled in medicine than in handling his reins.’

‘Is this so?’

‘I am no horseman, your grace.’ Marfleet greeted the Lionheart with a level gaze. ‘My back and seat tell me plain.’

‘As clearly as you speak your mind. You do not bend your knee to me, physician.’

‘It is an altar before which I choose to kneel.’

The Lionheart appraised him, a soldier-king intrigued by the insolent reply. He could have a man whipped or hanged for showing disrespect, could order a prisoner torn to pieces with a single lift of his hand. Yet the stranger was brought to him for a reason and would go unpunished for the while.

That stranger had now opted to ignore him, without his assent was ministering to the dazed and stricken victim of the pugilistic bout.

‘He will live, physician.’ Richard hooked his thumbs into his swrod-belt and regarded the scene. ‘He will live because I have taught him well.’

Marfleet had removed a phial from a canvas bag and unstoppering it was allowing the beaten man to sip. Next, he applied with a cotton pad salve to the rising welts and bruises. Only when satisfied did he climb to his feet and call out for bearers.

‘An instant in my camp and already you take command.’

‘My guide is Hipporcrates.’

‘And mine Ares, god of war.’ Richard motioned at his surroundings. ‘It is why we arrive at Messina and continue on for Outremer. It is why farriers shoe horses and smithies sharpen swords.’

‘Their concerns are not mine.’

‘Be he infantry or man of medicine, no true Christian may shirk the fight.’

‘You invite me to attend you on Crusade, your grace?’ His question was measured and composed.

As was the reply. ‘I order it.’

Enslavement was decreed without a flicker of uncertainty, was the privilege of a ruler with right on his side and a mission to perform. Marfleet was condemned by his own renown. Two men of similar age and differing status faced each other, one a monarch and one his subject, a titan with an invincible air in discourse with an imperturbable doctor of caring ways and dark hair and warm observant eyes. An unlikely meeting of talents and strangely complementary.

The Lionheart considered his newest recruit. ‘Return to your hillside and gather your possessions. We leave within the week.’

‘I have hundreds who rely on me.’

‘Your King depends on you the more.’ Richard was turning to rejoin his coterie. ‘Moreover, physician. Where we go, there will be countless number on whom you may practice.’

Quiet resignation rather than despair settled in the thoughts of the former Benedictine. He was accepting of circumstance, had adapted before, would be swept up in a grand campaign that might devour all. If only this king knew of his past and what hung about his neck and how he had once taken a branch and with other monks scourged the back of a penitent ruler crawling toward the tomb of Becket. Henry planned for armed venture to the holy land and his son and heir Richard was bringing it to being.

Shouts and the discordant noise of a struggle slewed attention to a new direction. A brawl was in train. At its centre was a drunk and burly individual, staggering beneath the weight of his assailants and laying several flat with the power of his fists. Oaths mingled with the grunts of injured men and the melee developed in travelling affray. Stubborn and enveloped, the fellow was refusing to submit.

‘Fetch him.’ Richard beckoned to the participants.

They obeyed, spitting teeth and mumbling apology and herding forward their reluctant captive. He sauntered as though the victor.

Richard eyed him. ‘Your name?’

‘Hugh, your grace. Sergeant Hugh of York.’ He waved expanisvely at his opoonents. ‘Attended by biting fleas and pestilential gnats.’

‘You are paid to fight the Saracen and not wage war upon your own.’

‘My own? They attack me, sir.’

A knight with a blackened eye and swollen face intervened. ‘He is a common rogue who strikes a knight, your grace. He should be hanged.’

‘Your answer to this?’ Richard addressed the unrepentant soldier.

The man belched. ‘Would you not do as I?’

‘It is a capital offence to lay any hand upon those I value.’

‘I vouch he has no value.’ Nonchalant in his inebriation, Sergeant Hugh directed a scowl to his accuser. ‘I bring a company of the finest bowmen in England, men who would serve you unto death. This knight struts and parades and moves to steal my sweet maid.’

‘She is a harlot.’

‘My harlot.’ The soldier growled with menace at the knight.

The Lionheart shook his head. ‘There is no place for sedition and disobedience, nor for mutinous disrespect.’

‘How could I disrespect my king?’ Sergeant Hugh swayed and steadied himself.

‘Beg forgiveness of the noble knight or suffer my wrath and full consequence.’

The soldier considered the terms, his gaze flitting from king to knight in thought or some confusion. Rash action had already earned him a summary trial. He blinked and nodded, weighing the situation and searching for inspiration in the crowding faces of his audience. A decision had been reached.

‘I ask for absolution.’

In heartfelt manner he bowed his head to the affronted knight and with sudden and ferocious speed slammed his fist into the proffered face. The victim dropped soundless. It was a silence that extended, one invested with the expectation of instant reprisal and of a miscreant hauled aloft with his neck in a rope noose.

But it was laughter that came, the mirth of Richard bellowed and infectious and embracing all others in his company. The King had a taste for physical humour and a felled knight was become the butt of his soldierly joke.

‘We are not yet landed in Palestine and already I give you casualties.’ He beamed at Marfleet. ‘What would you have me do with this unruly wretch? Hang him or reward him?’

‘He is unafraid of a king and uncowed by his assailants. Were I a general, I would keep him at my side.’

The Lionheart approached the man as though assessing livestock, a commander intrigued and appreciative of fighting zeal. Yet waywardness needed to be tamed.

‘Is it weakness that I should show you clemency, Hugh of York?’

‘Rather, it is a display of greatness.’

‘Dispute my authority or ignore my will and I shall break you on the wheel.’ Richard gripped his arm. ‘Kneel to your King.’

Sergeant Hugh did so, sobriety and formality replacing earlier misdemeanour. For a moment, he was pacified.

His master spoke. ‘You will guard me with your life?’

‘It was ever thus, your grace.’

‘Night and day you will be vigilant, in field or tent will be ready with your sword?’

‘I swear it.’

‘Then you are a rough commoner raised to be my bodyguard and your bowmen my royal archers.’

His decision made, he rounded on his heel and stalked away on further mission in his camp. His officers fell in behind. There was nothing remote in the generalship of the Lionheart. Their situations altered and status elevated by dint of royal proclamation, Marfleet and Sergeant Hugh contemplated the aftermath. A sense of absence existed whenever Richard Coeur de Lion departed.

In the foreground, a knight named Sir Pellinore Beauregard was revived with cold springwater thrown across his face and led tottering away. And in the background, skiffs and lighters took men and provisions to the ships and the pace of readying for the expedition quickened. Campaign and bloodshed lay ahead and a theatre of war beckoned.

Sergeant Hugh winked his thanks to the physician. An alliance had been formed.

*

Reinvention could take many years and revenge almost a lifetime. From his vantage on a ridge of the black mountain near Antioch in the holy land, a figure watched as a rider garbed in a black surcout guided his horse up the narrow track toward him. He knew why the man was come and the news he would deliver. It marked both a beginning and a culmination, the imminent arrival of Crusade and the end to a wait that had lasted twenty years. Two decades since those events in the cathedral, since excommunication by a pope and banishment by an ungrateful king, since a quartet of knights forfeited land and fortune and position on account of a brutal murder. An exile could grow embittered; a man shorn of everything had little remaining to lose. Hugh de Morville had learnt to be patient.

The messenger drew close, one of the trusted Templar sergeants on whom the knight relied. Out here there was privacy and solitude and a simple hermit existence, a cave-riddled landscape from which to plot nefarious acts and mount vicious raids against Arab villages in the hinterland. William de Breton might have perished from leprosy, yet his three surviving comrades from that afternoon in Canterbury often made journey and convened at at this retreat.

Greetings were exchanged and the horseman dismounted.

‘You bear tidings of our princes?’

‘King Philip of France will soon arrive at Acre. The Lionheart is slower to leave his den.’

‘What is a month or a year to those who have bided an eternity?’ De Morville stared west toward the blue-washed haze of the Mediterranean. ‘Fortune turns and Coeur de Lion will be carried straight to our domain.’

‘It will prove hazardous for him.’

‘We shall ensure it. Pledge of brotherhood will not hold or keep amity between Philip and Richard. Division will show and greed spread and ambition set one against the other.’

‘Philip already chooses his cousin Conrad of Tyre as future king of the Crusader realm. Richard supports Guy of Jerusalem.’

‘And so our sport begins.’

A degree of satisfaction seeped into the granite features of De Morville. Few would guess at the journey he had made, would remember the tale of how four young knights had killed a bishop by order of their sovereign and alone been blamed for their crime. They had suffered and paid dear. Chased north to Scotland and almost hanged, they had crept back to England and sough refuge in Knaresborough castle. But they were besieged and captured and brought before the King. Henry had been in duplicitous and unforgiving mood.

De Morville thought of those times and