He had never thought to see this place again with his mortal eyes, but now, if he turned his head, the distant spires of the abbey reached toward the first stars and there, the unwieldy mass of the palace crouched close by. Was it smoke that rose into the still air from those numberless chimneys, or the presence of sin made visible in this wicked place?
The monk shuddered and closed his eyes as he whispered the words of the ancient psalm. “I will lift up mine eyes to the hills from whence cometh my help…”
Help, strength, support. He would need them all if he was to avoid the mire of human transgression that awaited him at the palace and achieve the task he had been given by his brother, Louis—God’s anointed servant. The king had asked him for information about Edward’s court, but Agonistes knew the truth: what Louis really wanted was justice and revenge on the regicide earl of March. As a king, Louis had that right. God gave him the power to smite his enemies.
“Son of a blackamoor’s whore!” A porter, with great heavy baskets of vegetables dangling from the yoke across his shoulders, yelled at the monk who, oblivious, had just cannoned into his back.
The courtier asleep inside the monk awoke and bellowed, “Hold your tongue or it shall be torn out!” The surging, pressing mass of people in earshot paused in surprise. He might be filthy and scrawny in his patched robes, but this monk had the voice of authority. The porter, hearing the threat, tried to hurry past just as, weeping, Agonistes fell to his knees, desperate to atone.
“Ah, brother, brother, forgive me. It is this place… this accursed place that speaks and not I, the least, the most miserable of God’s servants.”
The porter, frightened by such strange behavior, tried to back away but the weeping monk now had him by the legs and would not let go. He dragged himself along, attached like a welk, sobbing and calling out, “Penance, brother, give me penance to subdue such evil pride.”
Uproar grew as the crowd banked up behind the strange couple and then, in a further moment, scattered, screaming, as they snatched their children and their possessions back beneath the shelter of the house-jetties above their heads. A knot of soldiers was upon them out of the gathering gloom, with whips and curses, trying to clear a path for someone very important.
“Way! Way for the king’s chamberlain. Get out of the way!”
The porter panicked. “Let me go, sir. Get up!” But Agonistes, a drowning man, did not hear him and clung to the man’s legs yet more fiercely, begging, wailing for forgiveness.
“No!” With a mighty shove, the porter swung his baskets, knocking Agonistes away from his knees.
“Halt!”
William Hastings gazed at the monk, facedown in the filth-choked kennel on the crown of the road. And Agonistes raised his head to a dizzying vision of an armed and mounted man dressed in blue and red and gold, a last spear of light from the dying sun bounced off the metal helm, gracing the knight’s head with a halo. It was a sign. The Lord had sent him a sign—and aid for the task at hand.
Scrambling to his feet, the ragged servant of God and Louis de Valois pointed his finger. This chance meeting had removed all doubt. “Lord William Hastings. I know you. The Lord knows you. And I have come to do his bidding. Sinner that I am, I can save the king from himself.” In that moment, Agonistes truly understood the mission he’d been given, and who had given it to him. His soul had spoken the truth. Whatever Louis had asked of him, he had a higher purpose.
William’s eyes narrowed. There was something about the man he recognized; take away the filth, take away the rags, and something remained. The voice, it was distinctive. He had a good memory for voices. And faces.
“Moss? Is that you?”
The monk straightened his shoulders. “The man who was once Moss is dead. I stand in his place. I am the hammer of witches and I have returned to cleanse the court and save the soul of the king from sorcery.”
William raised his eyebrows, almost inclined to laugh at the solemn absurdity of the ragged specter in front of him. “Oh? And how will you do that?”
Moss smiled, exposing unpleasantly ragged gums. “A woman lives who should have burned for manifold sins. Her name is Anne de Bohun. While she breathes, the king’s soul is not safe. The Lord has sent me here to tell him this.”
William’s hands convulsed on his horse’s reins. Anne de Bohun? “Sergeant!”
The sergeant of the guard fought his way through the press of disgruntled people, fed up with being held up on their way home, to his master’s side. “Yes, Lord Chamberlain?”
“Bring this holy brother to the palace.”
William Hastings indicated the monk, then rode on without a backward glance as his servant gazed at the monk with distaste. He was filthy, and smelly, but that didn’t matter. It was the strange look in the man’s eye that made the sergeant uneasy.
Holy? He looked more like a murderer than a saint.