Unholy Innocence Read Online Free PDF

And when you find him I want him flayed alive! You hear me? Like Richard’s murderer. Am I to be disobeyed in my dying hour?’
    He yelled and screamed and kicked his legs in the air and threw all his pillows out of the bed. It was quite a lively performance for a dying man and clearly demonstrated the famous Angevin temper of which I had heard. They all had it, apparently: John, Richard, even Bluff King Harry who was supposed to have chewed the carpet when taken by an uncontrollable fit of anger. Any child creating such a fuss would have been sent to bed without its supper – which is probably what used to happen to John, come to think of it, and which in turn explains his behaviour as an adult. Joseph with his taste for contortions of the mind would love to be here right now to witness this, I thought. I could see his wise brown head analysing and nodding sagely. I suppose such behaviour is a necessary attribute of any megalomaniac, but I did also wonder what had happened to the gentle and accommodating King John we had been presented with at the pageant the day before. It seemed the public face of the King was different from his private persona.
    There was one other person in the room who I hadn’t noticed until now. He too had been at the banquet sitting on the King’s table, though somewhat distantly from the others. He was perhaps a decade older than me and noticeable because of his hairstyle which he wore shaved at the back in the old-fashioned Norman manner. This style, I remembered from my history lessons, had been adopted by our Norman conquerors so that their enemies could not grab their hair in battle, unlike their Saxon opponents whose long hair and generous moustaches had placed them at a disadvantage in close-quarter fighting. When he came to identifying this gentleman Prior Robert had lowered his voice further and whispered discreetly behind his hand the name of Geoffrey de Saye, uncle of the Justiciar. That probably explained his presence, which seemed otherwise superfluous, for de Saye was not among the group around the bed but was skulking alone by the window and wearing an expression on his face somewhere between boredom and disgust.
    I could see that my services were not needed so I was about to unobtrusively take my leave when the said Lord de Saye spotted me.
    ‘Well, look who’s here. The bone-breaker.’
    ‘Who?’ I stupidly replied.
    ‘You, idiot.’
    Earl Fitz Peter glanced briefly at me then turned frowning to de Saye: ‘Uncle, please.’
    I was shocked at being addressed at all but the more so for the manner in which de Saye had spoken, almost as though he knew me. I racked my brains but could not think that we had met before. I’m sure I would have remembered if we had. When I think of it now, I did seem to remember him staring at me once or twice during the banquet although at the time I’d put it down to my fancy. Now I was not so sure.
    Well, there was no time to dwell on it for without my noticing the French doctor had sidled unobtrusively up to me. ‘You are a physician, mon frère ?’
    I winced. ‘Yes.’
    ‘ Bien . Viens ici.’ When I hesitated, he smiled in amusement. ‘Come. Do not be afraid,’ whereupon he took my elbow lightly in his fingertips and led me to the other side of the room where he flourished a glass bottle half-filled with yellow urine. The light shining through it showed it to have a cloudy green hue. It didn’t look at all healthy to me.
    ‘Well?’ he demanded.
    I cleared my throat. ‘The King’s?’
    ‘Yes of course, the King’s,’ he said indignantly, then lowered his voice. ‘It is disgusting, non ?’
    ‘Er – oui .’ I felt like I was a student again and back at anatomy class in Montpellier.
    ‘And,’ he said cocking an elegant Gallic eyebrow, ‘what does this tell us?’ He twitched his moustaches suggestively.
    I took out my vademecum which I always carry attached to my belt. Among its many charts is one for the analysis of urine