The King of Thieves

Начало книги

Saturday, Nativitas, Blessed Virgin Mary, eighteenth year of the reign of King Philip IV of France*

Path outside Anagni, south-east of Rome

God’s blood, but he hated them. All of them. The religious ones; the pious ones. And today he would win some sort of satisfaction for the way they’d treated him.

It was a hot day, and Guillaume de Nogaret wiped his brow with his sleeve as he sat on the horse, waiting for the signal from the man at the top of the rise. September in this benighted land here, only a few leagues from Rome, was always hot. He was used to heat, but not to this overwhelming dryness. He was baking inside the heavy tunic he had bought in Paris.

Some two-and-thirty or so years old, Guillaume had been born in the lovely countryside near St Félix-en-Caraman, but it was not long before he had been captured — when he was orphaned.

The men who had taken him were all the same. Men of the Church who prostrated themselves before the Cross and begged forgiveness for their sins. Well they might! Their hypocrisy and venality were unequalled. Thieves and gluttons, lustful, degenerate, evil. They would declare their love for boys like the little Guillaume, asking him to participate in their unnatural practices, and then beat him with rods when he refused them.

Читать дальше →