The Assassin King

Anna waited for Oliver to film his fill of the treasure chamber, then they headed back the way they’d come. Their duty to report this place was clearer now than ever, yet there was still at least one more section to explore, and curiosity so trumped responsibility that they waded across the flooded hall to it without exchanging so much as a word.

A short passage opened up into what had clearly once been a chapel, with a high vaulted ceiling and rows of pillars carved with demons and angels, and stone benches either side of a central aisle oriented to face a large dais a bare few inches above the water. A long white marble table stood at the front of this dais, making it easy to imagine some Templar notable celebrating mass or calling a meeting to order. But it was the wall behind it that stunned Anna, covered as it was by a mural of such bright fresh colours that it was instantly obvious how the towels she’d found bagged up in the back of Uncle Dun’s van had got so wet and filthy.

Oliver gave a coughing kind of grunt, as though someone had punched him lightly in the gut. He waded past her, splashing up the aisle, turning his camera this way and that as he went. Anna hurried after him. A flight of steps took them up onto the dais. Oliver stood back a little way, the better to pan across the whole wall, but she went straight up to it. Though no art historian, even she could tell at a glance that it was a fresco, a technique popular in ancient Egypt and Greece before falling out of fashion, only to be revived in medieval Italy and then spread across Europe by returning crusader knights.

The vividness of colour alone would have suggested as much, painted on while the plaster was still wet, allowing the pigments to soak right in. Equally revealing was the greyness of the backdrop sky, for blue had been the one pigment that wet plaster hadn’t absorbed well, and so had tended to fade over the decades. But the biggest tell by far was that fresco artists had only had eight hours or so before the plaster set too hard, at which point they’d had to stop for the day, returning the following morning to cut away the unused areas and start afresh.

The seams between these different panels – giornatas as they were known, from the Italian for a day’s work – tended to crack over the centuries. And as the artist would typically concentrate on completing a single element of the larger painting each day, this had the incidental effect of putting a kind of aura or halo around the key figures, exactly as had happened here with the mural’s central subject, a boy in splendid purple robes with a gold circlet on his head, seated upon a throne so much too large for him that his legs were left dangling several inches above the floor.

Who else but Henry III, and at his coronation too? That had taken place inside Gloucester Cathedral, of course, but he was shown here in the great outdoors, the artist taking full advantage of their licence to fill the background with the towns and villages of this green and pleasant land, as well as with cheering crowds of nobles and commoners alike. A work of historic importance, then, yet turned into a masterpiece by the boy’s expression, overwhelmed by the magnificence of the occasion, yet determined to make his late father proud.

A man was standing a little behind and to the side of the throne, his head respectfully bowed as if not wanting to be noticed. The artist had portrayed him as a vigorous if grizzled middle-aged warrior, his hand resting loosely upon the pommel of his sheathed sword. William Marshal again, serving as regent to the boy king, and thus England’s de facto ruler. He too had a telling expression on his face: not of triumph at his ascension but rather of solemn awareness of his responsibility, leading a bankrupt country still at war with itself.

It was no great surprise to find Henry honoured here, for kings were always liable to drop in unannounced on tours of their realm, but it was a puzzle to see Marshal so prominently feted. He’d become a Knight Templar on his deathbed, true, inducted by Aymeric de St Maur himself, but he hadn’t yet been one at the time of Henry’s coronation. Though in a sense he had been, for he’d pledged himself to the order many decades before, while in the holy land on crusade – a crusade he’d only ever gone on because of the vow he’d made to Young King Henry as he’d lain dying.

So many vows. So much sudden death. ‘I think I have the answer to your question,’ murmured Anna, turning around to Oliver.

‘What question?’ he asked.

‘About why St Maur still had John killed even after pulling off his heist.’

Oliver turned his camera on her, its lamp so bright that it made her squint. ‘And?’

‘It was never about the treasure. It was always about killing John. And St Maur wasn’t even the man behind it. He was just another member of the cast. An important one, yes, but still. The baggage train was his pay-off.’

‘Then who was behind it?’

Anna nodded at the fresco, at the man standing beside the throne. ‘Him,’ she said. ‘William Marshal.’

Oliver gazed sceptically at her. ‘History’s greatest knight? England’s chivalric hero? A common assassin?’

‘Hardly a common one. And it’s not that unthinkable, is it? We know for a fact that he’d been involved in at least one royal murder before.’

‘No, actually. I’m talking about Arthur of Brittany.’ But Oliver looked so blank that she knew she’d have to elaborate. ‘Arthur was the son of Geoffrey, another of John’s older brothers to die young. He probably had the strongest claim to succeed Richard Lionheart to the throne. It was just that John moved faster. Arthur didn’t give up, though. He won the backing of the French and went to war, only he got unlucky and was captured. John held him in Rouen while he and his closest advisors agonised over what to do, because killing a king was such a no-no, even for John. Yet they killed him anyway.’

‘And Marshal was part of it?’

‘He never spoke of it, but yes. We can place him there from other sources.’

‘There was a lot at stake, to be fair.’

‘And that makes it okay, does it? You can kill a king if the prize is big enough?’

‘I’m not just talking money and power. There was a war going on. Killing Arthur would have looked like a way to end it at a stroke, and bring peace to…’ But then she fell silent.

‘Bring peace to…?’ prompted Oliver.

‘Nothing,’ she said. But Oliver kept his camera on her face, and she felt compelled to continue. ‘It’s just, there’s a bit of a pattern with Marshal. I’ve been aware of it forever, everyone has. It’s part of what made him such a legend. But I’ve only just noticed it, if you get the difference, even though it happened again and again and again.’

‘Okay. It’s that every time Marshal served a king, that king died. What’s more, their death proved to be Marshal’s stepping stone to a bigger and better job under their successor – even though those kings and their successors had pretty much all been literally at war with one another.’

Oliver shook his head. ‘I don’t get it.’

‘Maybe it would be easiest if I went through them. Arthur of Brittany you already know about. And Young King Henry we discussed yesterday. Remember how I said the Old King rewarded Marshal handsomely after his return from the crusades? Well, he invited him to join his court too. He became very good friends with the new heir presumptive Richard Lionheart while he was there. But then Richard rebelled against his father too, only more successfully than his brother had done. The two sides met outside Le Mans. Richard won. The Old King had to flee the field. Marshal famously dropped back to buy him time to escape, while Richard himself led the pursuit. He and Marshal actually met right there on the battlefield. The two great champions of English knighthood. Marshal used to boast afterwards that he was the only person ever to best Richard in single combat. He could have killed him, he claimed, but he drove his lance through his horse instead. Richard used to seethe at the story, but he never denied it. Yet we only have their word for it that it happened that way. What if there was no fight? What if they talked instead? Marshal was a pragmatist. He knew the Old King was lost, and that prolonging the war would only cause needless suffering. There was an obvious deal to be struck.’

‘The Old King fell sick and died directly afterwards. And Richard made a great show of forgiving Marshal and praising his loyalty to his father. He even agreed his marriage to a fabulously rich young ward of the crown called Isabel de Clare, turning him overnight into one of the wealthiest and most powerful barons in the realm.’

‘You’re saying it was a pay-off?’

‘It has the ring of one, doesn’t it? Rich wards were hugely valuable to a king. They didn’t just give them away. Certainly not to someone who’d just humiliated them in single combat. Yet Richard gave her to Marshal. And then when Richard died unexpectedly from his crossbow wound, it was the same pattern again. John rewarded Marshal handsomely and made him his right hand, only to die himself of possible arsenic poisoning too, allowing Marshal to reach the highest step of all.’ She nodded at the fresco. ‘Regent to an overwhelmed young boy, England’s effective king. Not bad for the younger son of a middle-ranking noble.’

‘And his reputation for chivalry? For loyalty?’

‘He’d hardly be the first villain in history with a talent for PR. But it would also depend on what he was most loyal to – his king or his country. The Young King’s death prevented a civil war, while the Old King’s ended one, as did Arthur of Brittany’s. As for Richard, England had bankrupted itself to pay his ransom after he’d been captured returning from the crusades. Yet did he care? No. It was straight off campaigning again, extorting ruinous taxes that the country couldn’t afford. Marshal would have had every reason to hope that John would make a better king. It didn’t work out that way, of course, but how was he to know? Then came John, who Marshal had plenty of reason to hate, despite his public show of loyalty. He’d humiliated him by reneging on Magna Carta. He’d kept his son hostage for years to ensure his good behaviour, and he’d threatened his estates and family too. But more than any of that, we were at war, and we were losing. Worse, we were running. The French and the rebel barons had seized half the country, yet John was still scurrying from them like a frightened mouse. Marshal was a warrior. He’d made his bones fighting in tournaments all across Europe. How was he supposed to respect a man who wouldn’t fight, not even to save his crown? And it’s not as if we need to speculate on what he’d have done in John’s shoes. We know. Because he marched on Lincoln the first chance he got.’

‘Even so,’ said Oliver. ‘All these kings dropping dead around him. Someone would have noticed. Someone would have said something.’

‘Would they? Marshal wasn’t just physically intimidating, he was by all accounts extraordinarily charismatic too, and a huge celebrity from all his tournament victories. Men like that don’t get accused of murder. They get sucked up to and flattered instead. You’ll know far better than me how you can literally get away with murder when you’re famous.’

‘I wish,’ said Oliver, with a light laugh. Except that his laugh wasn’t light. It sounded forced instead, causing her to look curiously at him. ‘What?’ he asked. But his stiffness had now reached his posture and his expression too, making her realise suddenly how little she truly knew of him, and how very alone with him she was down here. How very alone and how very vulnerable. And suddenly the internal alarm that had been making a wasteland of her life ever since her abduction by Harry Kidd began shrieking at its loudest volume yet, sending a shudder rippling straight through her.