Unholy Innocence Read Online Free PDF Page A

to be persuaded and ordered me back on pain of being skewered. Anxious as I was for the King’s good health, I was even more anxious for my own, so I stood back and waited for Samson to arrive. A few seconds later he came puffing up behind me and waving the guards aside. Even then they hesitated.
    ‘I am his grace the Abbot,’ he bellowed at them breathlessly. ‘If you do not let us in I will have you both flogged. Now open this door at once! ’ They looked at each other. At last they relented and admitted us.
    Inside the room there were more guards looking even twitchier than the two outside. They reluctantly allowed Abbot Samson through but me they continued to hold at the door. I had to content myself with trying to see over their shoulders. From my position I could just make out the King’s bed on the far side of the room. Standing around it like angels of the Apocalypse were three people I recognised from the banquet. One I knew was the Chancellor, Archbishop Hubert Walter of Canterbury, a bluff-looking man with a strong jawline and tonsured like a monk, though I think by nature’s hand rather than his barber’s. Standing next to him was a much younger man, handsome and with a noble bearing who Prior Robert, discreetly identifying the guests at the banquet for our benefit, had named as Earl Geoffrey Fitz Peter, the Chief Justiciar of England. Who the third man was there could be no doubt for there was no other quite like him in the land. Towering well over six feet in height and with a commanding military bearing was the formidable William Marshal, the Earl of Pembroke, probably the most powerful man in England after the King himself – though some said more powerful than the King. Unlike the others who were looking very worried, Earl Marshal’s face wore an expression of stoic inscrutability - as much because most of it was hidden by his ferocious red beard as anything else.
    Bending low over the bed was a fourth man who I took to be the King’s physician, a Frenchman judging from his garb and waxed whiskers. Well, I thought, the King cannot be quite murdered yet since a dead man has little need of a physician. And from the screams and foul language coming from the bed it appeared his highness wasn’t about to expire any time soon - his lungs at least sounded in excellent health. I could just make out their owner propped up in the bed against a bank of pillows. King John’s dark hair was made all the darker by the pallor of his skin and the sweat plastering it to his brow while his mouth was contorted as though sucking on a particularly sour lemon. He was clutching his stomach, rolling from side to side and moaning all the while. From all this I made my preliminary diagnosis that the problem was likely to be with his belly.
    ‘God damn you man, stop fussing. I’m not a woman in labour. Get off me!’ The King violently shoved the French doctor away from him. ‘Lucifer and all the dogs of hell curse you for a useless Frog!’ he yelled slapping the physician hard about the head.
    ‘Oh sieur , sieur ,’ whimpered the physician lifting his hands timidly in defence and supplication.
    The King turned on his other attendants, the three most powerful men in the land, and growled at them. ‘Look at you, like a pack of hyenas waiting for a corpse to devour. Aow! My bowels feel like someone’s shoved a hot poker up my arse. Can’t you give me something for the pain?’ He turned manic eyes up at the Archbishop. ‘Where is he? God damn his eyes I’ll strangle the whore’s whelp with my own hands! I want that monk here now! ’
    For one dreadful moment I thought he might have meant me, and from the sidelong glances I was receiving from my two guards I could see they were wondering the same.
    ‘Not here yet, sire,’ the Archbishop replied placatingly. ‘He is being sought. But look, Abbot Samson is here.’
    ‘I don’t need a damned abbot,’ he growled. ‘I want the murdering monk who’s poisoned me!