The Perfect Sinner

‘There’s Heaven and there’s Hell,’ he went on, ‘and each of us is bound for one or the other. You have to earn your way into both of them and all we can do is pray to Saint Peter that he’ll be kind if we’re somewhere in between, which is where most of us are. And by the way, no it’s not what the Bible says at all. The Bible is fairly silent on the precise question of Purgatory. It’s a modern invention.’ The priest stood up, turned to face me, looming over me.

‘Look at you. Sir Guy de Bryan, noble Knight of the very choice Order of the Garter,’ he growled, ‘King’s companion, steward, holder of the Great Seal, ambassador, royal envoy. Thought of throughout the length and breadth of the land for years past as the finest knight there ever was, so clearly honest that you cast no shadow in the sunlight. It passes straight through you. So fair, you’ve been called in twenty times a year since you were old enough to wear a sword to sort out every brawling squabble the greedy nobility gets itself into. Trusted equally by the King and the Commons and that’s rare enough. Not a spot on your soul and yet you’re so afraid you’ve hired a phalanx of priests. You’re getting much too pious. You need to ease up on the piety. Do you understand anything about our Lord?’ He wheeled round and thrust his hand, finger outstretched to the top of the tower.

‘What’s that up there?’ he demanded.

I looked up, squinting against the sun. The crucifix?’

‘That’s it. Don’t we take it for granted? Wasn’t it lucky Christ died on a cross?’

Unsure where this could be leading, I frowned at him. ‘It was surely more than lucky, it was blessed,’

‘That wasn’t what I meant. Supposing Pilate had given him the option,’ rasped the priest, bending down to put his enormous face right in front of mine. ‘Supposing he’d said, all right Jesus, it’s up to you. Your choice. You can either be crucified or you can be stung to death by bees.’

More heresy was in the wind. I stared at him.

‘Well, imagine,’ said the priest impatiently. ‘If he’d chosen the bees, what an inconvenient sign we’d have to make then.’ The priest waggled his hand around his face, fingers jabbing back and forth and let out a hoot of laughter.

I crossed myself quickly as the rooks took off from the trees around the tower adding their shrieks to the echoes of the laugh. Remembering the figure up on the hill, I looked up there to see if there had been a witness to this blasphemy. There was nobody there now.

‘Oh come on, man,’ said the priest. ‘I suppose you think that’s another hundred years of Purgatory added to your sentence. If God hasn’t got a sense of humour, what hope is there for the world? Indeed, what hope is there for any of us if someone like you has to spend half your fortune on a place like this?’

‘Have you lost your faith?’ I asked. ‘It’s a few years since I’ve seen you, old friend. You don’t sound like a believer any more.’

‘Oh, don’t you dare doubt my belief,’ retorted the priest. ‘I may be old-fashioned, but I believe all right.’

‘Do you believe in good and evil?’

‘In their place,’ said the priest, ‘I am not sure I have ever met a truly evil man. Have you?’

‘Oh yes. One. Just one.’

The priest looked at me. ‘Molyns?’ he asked.

I nodded.

‘All right, I’ll grant you that,’ the priest went on. ‘One. But good and evil notwithstanding, what I don’t believe in is all this modern blackmail.’

‘You know what I did.’

‘I know what you think you did. Seems to me other people had a big hand in it.’

He didn’t know about my third sin. That was the problem and somehow I wasn’t yet ready to tell him. I had tucked it so far out of sight that I no longer quite knew its shape.

The wicket gate creaked open and a face looked round. It was the man from up on the hill. I didn’t want to be interrupted and certainly not by a stranger.

‘Not now,’ I called, perhaps a little impatiently, and the face disappeared abruptly.

‘Ah,’ said the priest, ‘sorry, he’s with me. I was just about to mention him.’

‘Who is he?’

‘He’s a squire in the King’s household. Well connected. Trusted. In with the people who matter. They send him to sort out things, very like you were at that age, I’d say. Oh and he’s married to the beautiful Philippa Roet, so that puts him in with Lancaster.’

‘Really? Why’s he here?’

‘You’re off travelling again. He’s going with you.’

‘Who says he is? Come to that, who says I’m going anywhere?’

William looked at me with a smug expression. ‘I am trusted with certain information, you know. He came down with me. I was asked to bring him to you. Up at court they thought he’d never find Slap ton by himself. I know where you’re going.’

He’d tried that sort of trick a few times before. ‘I don’t think you do,’ I said.

‘You’re journeying overland, avoiding France and all its friends. Your final destination is Genoa by way of the Rhine valley and the Alpine passes. Your purpose there is to negotiate an agreement whereby the Genoese will trade freely with us, using one port specially nominated for that purpose and hopefully granting free use of Genoa by English ships in return. Am I right?’

That removed any chance that he was guessing. ‘It’s supposed to be a secret. Who told you?’

‘Calm down. It is a secret. Lancaster told me. Is that high enough authority for you? This young man has been sent to give you a hand on the grounds that, many qualities though you undoubtedly have, fluency in Italian is not known to be one of them.’

‘I speak some Italian,’ I said, a little stung.

‘Enough to order food. Not enough to conduct high level negotiations.’

‘But why is he here now? We’re not leaving until the beginning of April.’

‘You mean nobody told you?’

‘Told me what?’

‘The King sent word last week. There’s a rush on. It’s all been brought forward. You really didn’t know?’

I shook my head.

‘You’re leaving in three days time from Dartmouth on the afternoon tide, on board your ship, Le Michel, captained by John Hawley, although why you should trust yourself to that rogue is a mystery to me. You are sailing up channel to Dordrecht in Flanders where you will join Sir James di Provan and John di Mari, two of the most irritating and self-regarding clots it has ever been my misfortune to meet, and with them you head south as soon as you possibly can.’

‘William, you know as well as I do nobody travels across the Alps in winter. Even the Brenner Pass is tough going now.’

He looked uncomfortable. ‘It seems the King believes in your ability to do it. Someone apparently has to and he thought sending you would give the best chance.’

I knew him well enough to make an accurate guess. ‘Come on, you know more about this than you’re saying. What’s it really all about?’

He squirmed. At least he gave a tiny involuntary wriggle which is as close to a squirm as a man of William’s size and experience is ever likely to get.

‘I’ve heard a few things,’ he said eventually and I just waited.

‘It’s his bankers,’ he said in the end. ‘You know he still owes those Florentines a huge fortune?’

‘The Bardi family? Yes, I have heard.’