The Powder of Death Read online

  THE POWDER OF DEATH

  JULIAN STOCKWIN

  In memory of my father

  Austin E. Stockwin

  Officer of the Royal Regiment of Artillery

  And alsua wondyr for to se

  … Crakys war, off wer

  That thai befor herd neuir er

  – The Bruce, Booke XIX

  (And also wondrous for to see

  Crakys of war, off Wear

  They’d never heard before)

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  Aylward, Thomas lawyer

  Bacon, Roger Franciscan friar and scholar

  Baldovino of Pisa smith

  Barnwell, Rosamunde widow, later married to Jared

  Beavis, Aldith Jared’s wife

  Beppe manservant

  Blacktooth, Sweyn baker

  Blundel, Margery wife of miller’s gristman

  Braccio signore of Perugia

  Bury, John King’s treasurer

  Capuletti, Giacomo representative of merchants and guilds

  Cesarino translator

  Comber, Hugh freeman

  Corso Ezzelino Italian nobleman

  D’Amory, Everard baron of Castle Ravenstock

  D’Amory, Gervaise baron’s son

  David aka Daw Jared’s son

  De Beaujeu, Guillaume Templar Grand Master

  De Clermont, Matthew marshal

  De Grandison, Otho knight

  De Villiers, Jean Grand Master, Hospitallers

  Despenser English baron

  Di Campaldino, Umberto captain, podesta

  Di Ferrara, Giannina (Nina) housekeeper

  Dickin of Shrewsbury pilgrim

  Dunning, Will miller’s son

  Edward II English king

  Edward III English king

  Edward of Lincoln church official

  Farnese, Bartolomeo early member of Guild of St Barbara

  Father Bertrand priest

  Fivepot, Jankin and Reginald friends of Perkyn

  Frauncey, John bailiff’s clerk

  Gayne, Nicholas knight

  Godefroy, Hugh seneschal armourer

  Godswein friend of Perkyn

  Gosse, John smith

  Harpe Master of the Horse

  Hilmi, Köse quartermaster

  Hugh Gamel of York blacksmith

  Jared of Hurnwych blacksmith

  Kadrİye Jared’s concubine

  Kettle, William quartermaster and armourer

  Le Warde, Robert lord of the manor

  Longface, Wagge pedlar

  Malatesta, Guido signore, Arezzo

  Marco of Florence early member of Guild of St Barbara

  Maud Jared’s mother

  Old Turvey franklin of Hurnwych

  Old Yarwell franklin

  Oliver aka Nolly carpenter

  Osbert partner in smithy

  Peppin, Edward mercenary

  Perkyn villein

  Rawlin, William agent of House of Barnwell

  Sforza, Domenico agent

  Sharpeye, Watkyn archer, veteran crusader

  Streuvel early member of Guild of St Barbara

  Subsey, Hubert reeve

  Van Vullaere, Peter early member of Guild of St Barbara

  Villani, Lucia Italian noblewoman

  Villani, Ruggieri Italian nobleman

  Wang, Chu-li Chinese gunner

  Wilkie friend of Perkyn

  Will butcher

  William of Cafran ambassador

  William of Rubruck Franciscan monk

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  CHAPTER 54

  CHAPTER 55

  CHAPTER 56

  CHAPTER 57

  CHAPTER 58

  CHAPTER 59

  CHAPTER 60

  CHAPTER 61

  CHAPTER 62

  CHAPTER 63

  CHAPTER 64

  CHAPTER 65

  CHAPTER 66

  CHAPTER 67

  CHAPTER 68

  CHAPTER 69

  CHAPTER 70

  CHAPTER 71

  CHAPTER 72

  CHAPTER 73

  CHAPTER 74

  CHAPTER 75

  CHAPTER 76

  CHAPTER 77

  CHAPTER 78

  CHAPTER 79

  CHAPTER 80

  CHAPTER 81

  CHAPTER 82

  CHAPTER 83

  CHAPTER 84

  CHAPTER 85

  CHAPTER 86

  CHAPTER 87

  CHAPTER 88

  CHAPTER 89

  CHAPTER 90

  CHAPTER 91

  CHAPTER 92

  CHAPTER 93

  CHAPTER 94

  CHAPTER 95

  CHAPTER 96

  CHAPTER 97

  CHAPTER 98

  CHAPTER 99

  CHAPTER 100

  CHAPTER 101

  CHAPTER 102

  CHAPTER 103

  CHAPTER 104

  CHAPTER 105

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  GLOSSARY

  About the Author

  By Julian Stockwin

  Copyright

  CHAPTER 1

  Oxford, England

  Yuletide, AD 1261, the forty-sixth year of the reign of King Henry III

  The low fire sputtered, its warmth contracting even further in the gloom of the sparsely furnished room. The friar working by a single candle at his high desk looked up in vexation at the sounds of unrestrained revelry floating across the river. He could do nothing – creation at the nib of the pen was won only as the mind soared free of the dross of worldly existence and the common folk could not be expected to realise that their merrymaking was clawing it back to earth.

  Roger Bacon’s writings had brought him respect and repute from across Christendom as well as criticism and dangerous enemies. His questing intellect had taken him down strange paths, leading him to the unshakeable belief that the mind of God could be revealed in his works of nature rather than the opinions of man. As a university schoolman he taught that the pursuit of philosophical knowledge was the high road to understanding; his sturdy principle, to accept only that which had been amply demonstrated before proceeding further.

  A protracted burst of jollity cut through his thoughts
again.

  Outside, a virginal carpet of snow lay over all, softening the outlines of town squalor. In charity he’d sent his serving boy away to join the merriment, but not before a stern homily on the temptations of the flesh. He was alone, in the upper floor of his eyrie with a dying fire for company.

  Drawing his homespun robe closer Bacon got up to attend to the embers, so much poorer than the crackling splendour of the yule log on the opposite bank. The last mummers had finished their show and with Gog and Magog justly slain they were claiming their due in raucous style, careless shrieks of women mingling with jovial roars and laughter. He hesitated – was this not a thing of exemplary wonder, that as a portion of brightness and life against the blackness and unknowns of an evil world, it stood for God’s grace infilling the impure darkness of one’s soul? Perhaps.

  He poked at the fire and was rewarded with a momentary blaze. He added a small log then went back to his desk.

  But as he lifted his quill there was a sudden knocking at the door below.

  There was no one else now in this little building straddling the roadway over a bridge. Who could it be? He had no fear of robbers for the Franciscan mendicant order abjured wealth and display, but his books and instruments were worth far more to him than tawdry adornments.

  Should he answer the door? The sound had been too robust for a drunken well-wisher and seemed to indicate that this was a visitor who knew he was in.

  He took the candle, descended the stairs and stood at the closed door.

  ‘Who is there?’ he called.

  There was no reply. The peephole showed only a vague shape against the white luminosity of the snow.

  He slid the bar up and the door creaked loudly as he opened it to reveal the figure of a large man in a cloak with a curiously pointed hood hiding his face.

  ‘What is your business, my son?’

  ‘Then you do not know me, holy brother.’

  Bacon recognised the deep voice. ‘Why, by God’s sweet passion – it’s Brother William!’

  The hood was flung back and there was his friend, the high-placed Flemish Franciscan, William of Rubruck.

  ‘Do I see you well, dear Roger?’

  ‘You do! Yes, upon my soul, and the better for seeing you! Do come in, this cold would perish even the warmest heart.’

  He closed the door as Rubruck shook the snow off and declared mysteriously, ‘Which compared to where I’ve been fated to go is the merest breath of chill.’

  ‘Oh? Well, you shall tell me of it – but only after I offer you a fine posset.’ He found a pan in the deserted buttery along with milk, ale and nutmeg and they mounted the stairs to his study.

  While Bacon busied himself heating the milk his visitor took off his cloak – dark and fur-lined, it was well worn and oddly fashioned with its pointed hood all one with it.

  ‘It’s been too long, my sage and worthy friend. Let me see, the last time – was it not Paris and the ever-rational Peter Peregrinus, or was it—?’

  ‘Dear Brother, tonight I’ve come to you alone, to tell of my journeying.’

  Something in his voice told Bacon that this was to be no mere recounting of a tale and his interest quickened. The travels of a wise man were always to be valued as a source of true knowledge of the world but he suspected there was more to it than that.

  ‘I’m to be honoured, William. Please go on.’

  Rubruck stared at the fire for long moments before he began. ‘Know that His Grace King Louis of France has been much troubled by the grievous losses among the holy Crusaders at the hands of the Saracens and thought to take measures as would remedy this. In the year twenty-seven of his reign he dispatched an envoy to the very court of the chief of the Mongols beseeching an alliance against the Mohammedan.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Brother Roger, I was the one who led this mission.’

  ‘Ah. So you must travel into Asia, past Constantinople to the very lands of the Tartars.’

  ‘An immense journey, years in the making.’ With a distant look he went on, ‘To the capital of the Great Khan Möngke, which is Karakorum, on the far side of the world. Across a vastness unimaginable, a grass desert without end – all summer, a bitter winter and the great heat again for leagues beyond counting.’

  ‘Then you were granted sights of amazing wonder, which you know I’m with child to hear!’

  ‘In good time I shall write at length of these, but for now you must be content with—’

  ‘The monsters who inhabit the boreal realm, the sciapods of one foot – the anthropophagi feasting on human flesh. I’ve given little credence to such tales but …?’

  ‘None did I see, neither they nor the kingdom of Prester John, my curious friend. Yet I stood at the mount of the Ark of Noah and the Iron Gate of Alexander the Macedonian, but never a great city, for they are a restless people and think not to plant a village, still less a town.’

  ‘May it be said that the Tartar in his home and hearth is nonetheless tutored, gentle in his manners?’

  ‘They ceaselessly travel in a horde, eat millet and meat all but raw for lack of fuel, consuming the fermented milk of mares, to which they add blood. They live in transportable houses of felt, which they call “yurts”, and their manners are … singular – they drink pot liquor and think nothing of doing their filthiness while talking together. And to revere their parents, they consume their dead flesh and drink from their very skull – in truth, a benighted folk.’

  ‘I weep for your travails, dear William.’

  ‘Do not, I pray you Brother, for is it not written in Ecclesiasticus, “He shall go through the land of foreign peoples, and shall try the good and evil in all things.” A deep saying and one I held close to my heart as I progressed through these odious lands.’

  ‘Then I must ask it – were you received at the court of the captain of the Tartars?’

  ‘Which is the Khagan Möngke, who was most obliging. Be aware, Brother, that this is the chief of the peoples who have spread across the face of the earth like no other, whose word may set a host of ten thousand times ten thousand horsemen against any who challenge his will.’

  Bacon blinked in wonder. ‘This capital will therefore be rich and splendid beyond all conceiving.’

  ‘Excepting stone turtles past counting and a wondrous tree crafted of lustrous silver I found it not much out of the ordinary.’

  ‘Yet you did enter in upon the palace of the chief of the Mongols.’

  Rubruck paused a moment in reflection, then answered, ‘I did so, Brother.’

  ‘And your mission – may it be said to have succeeded?’

  ‘I laid before him a letter from King Louis, translated by my man Homo Dei. His answer – that if such a one together with His Holiness the Pope should travel to do homage to himself, he promises good welcome. Naught else.’

  ‘There can be no reasoning with those who are blind to the wider world, I’m persuaded. Yet you will have a higher work – the bringing of the knowledge of Christ’s mercy to this horde!’

  ‘As you say. But they are a strange and perturbing race of men. They worship Tengri, the sky god, and are never without their sorceries and idolatries. Superstition rules their lives – even the Great Khan does not eat until the soothsayers read the charred bones of sheep.’

  ‘No heathen is entirely lost to God’s grace.’

  ‘You will be astonished to learn that I discovered Christians already in attendance at his court.’

  ‘How can this be?’

  ‘They are none but Nestorians with their vile heresies. Together with a species of shameless idol-worshippers and a coven of sly Saracens. It passed that Khagan Möngke professed himself curious at the claims of the different faiths and set us all to debating their merits with each other together before him.’

  ‘Aha! A foolish pagan priest it is who wrangles with the Master of Rhetoric!’

  ‘Would that it were so. My interpreter was a contemptible creature who I doubt gave true mea
ning to my words, and besides which I was constrained to ally with the Nestorians against the infidels.’

  He sighed. ‘The result you may conjecture when I tell you that on taking my leave I perceived my precious gold cross of St Francis, which I had guarded so jealously over such vast a distance to present to him, was there on a wall – but side by side with every other abomination of heathen effigy.’

  ‘A dolorous conclusion to a journey of spirit and hardship,’ Bacon murmured in sympathy.

  Rubruck looked up with a suddenly sombre expression. ‘As you must guess, my tale of far wandering is not the reason for my presence.’

  ‘You wish to discuss a great matter that troubles you.’

  ‘Just so, learned one.’

  ‘Then say on, dear Brother.’

  Rubruck rose and went to the window, opening the shutters and peering out cautiously.

  ‘There is no one below us?’

  ‘None. The knaves have deserted me for their merrymaking.’

  ‘That is good. For what I am about to divulge is for your ears alone, my good Brother.’

  ‘Do sit and share with me your perplexity then, William,’ Bacon said.

  ‘It is no simple concern, you must believe. It touches on the future of Christendom itself.’

  He paused as if collecting his thoughts. ‘In Karakorum oft-times the Great Khan was occupied by the affairs of state, leaving we envoys in idleness. You will know me as incurably desirous of knowledge, to promiscuously enquire and learn, and I could not abide that condition. Thus it was that I sought permission to make visit to the privy districts of his capital.’

  ‘You must have seen—’

  ‘It is one revelation alone that astonished and daunted me, my dear friend. One that shook my understanding of the workings of God in nature, the boundary of magic and sorcery – to feel the very trespass of the Devil on our world!’

  Chilled by his words, Bacon tensed.

  ‘For what I am about to do, I ask forgiveness, for there is no other way to bring to you the sensations I felt as I first beheld this that I now share with you.’

  He rose and went to the window again, and satisfied of their privacy, closed the shutters. Feeling around in his leather pouch he drew out a small object, which he inspected, then went to the candle and offered one end to the flame. It sputtered and fell to a red glow. He threw it to the floor and moved away quickly.

  Astonished at his behaviour, Bacon could only watch from his chair.