The Butcher of Avignon (11 page)

Hildegard explained she was from the Abbey of Meaux in the north of England. Speaking French, she told them that she had only been in Avignon for a few days and yet already it seemed like months. So much had happened. It was very confusing. She did not know what to make of it all.

The nuns were sympathetic. Even the younger one with the cruelly tight wimple seemed kinder now as if by sharing their gruesome task Hildegard had passed a test and could be accepted as one of them.

They were both from a priory in Burgundy, they explained, where there was much fighting, not only with the English
chevauchees,
incessantly raiding the countryside and reducing the peasants to starvation, but by the Flemish who believed they had a right to defend their Ghent weavers from coercion by the Duke of Burgundy.

‘We’re caught in the middle, there to clean up after them. There to bury the bodies.’

Slowly Hildegard got round to the question of the dagger.

Both women looked blank. ‘It was certainly in his hand when he was lying in the mortuary,’ one of them agreed, ‘but when we came to lay out the body, after the rigor had passed, it had gone. We assumed someone in authority had taken it away.’

‘It looked quite valuable,’ the other nun said. ‘Why do you ask about it? Are you saying it was stolen?’

‘It has disappeared, I can say no more than that.’

‘When you first came in to look at him,’ the younger nun said, ‘your eyes were on the dagger and for a moment, forgive me, domina, I thought it was something you desired for yourself.’

Hildegard gave a rueful grimace. ‘I was sent to fetch it and I admit I did stare at it but my look didn’t spring from personal desire for such a thing but from a wish to carry out the errand given me. I saw it’d be impossible to remove it from his grasp at that point and so decided to return later.’

‘And when you returned to fetch it, it had gone, and now you have to account to someone for its disappearance. I see.’ The nun frowned. ‘This is a mystery then.’

‘I understand that the poor young fellow was an acolyte of one of the cardinals?’ the second nun observed, her attention on Hildegard.

‘That is so.’ It seemed that the truth was becoming generally known by now.

The nun asked bluntly ‘Was it the cardinal’s own dagger?’

Hildegard felt a look of uncertainty pass over her face. ‘I don’t know,’ she admitted, ‘but I suspect not. He only said it was very like one he might have.’

‘Did he think his acolyte might have stolen it from him and decided he wanted a closer look at it?’

‘I don’t think that was in his mind.’

‘So why did he send you to fetch it?’ she persisted, adding, ‘if, indeed, it was the cardinal who sent you.’

Hildegard was silent for a moment. It was a good question but she could hardly admit to these two strangers that the cardinal feared it might lead him to be accused of sending his acolyte on a thieving jaunt.
It will lead to me.
Besides, it didn’t make sense. As far as she could see there was no reason for anybody to link him with the dagger. Why should they? Wasn’t it part of the papal treasures?

The nun was quick to interpret her silence and stared, horrified. Lowering her voice, she asked, ‘You mean to say it might have been stolen from the treasury and belonged to his holiness?’

‘I’m given to believe so. The task of fetching it came from Brother Athanasius and Cardinal Grizac. They seem to have an interest in the matter.’

‘One would think so. The magister is a power, we’re told.’

Both nuns exchanged wary glances. One of them leaned forward. ‘We understand that you are one of his - ’

‘We have said nothing,’ the elder one broke in. Her tone was colder now. She put a hand on her companion’s arm. ‘We saw nothing. We know nothing. It’s only a few days since we arrived here. We simply do as we’re asked as is our duty.’

‘The magister,’ Hildegard bit her lip, ‘what were you about to say? You believe I am one of his - ?’

‘Nothing,’ the nun shook her head with emphasis. The two women stared at her with hard eyes.

‘I’m in the same situation as you,’ Hildegard told them, lowering her voice. ‘I arrived here only a couple of days ago. I hadn’t met nor even heard of Brother Athanasius before I arrived. I can’t see him having any sort of power, trapped by old age and infirmity in his cell as he is. Surely his influence is exaggerated?’

The younger nun gave her an ironic smile, much like the one she had worn when she thought Hildegard was about to steal the dagger from Maurice. ‘Forgive me, domina, but you would say that, wouldn’t you?’

‘I feel contrite to find you have so deeply misunderstood my motive for wanting information from you. All I know is I was asked to fetch the dagger for Cardinal Grizac only to discover that it was missing. I thought you two were best placed to help me find out what might have happened. You could tell me, for instance, if anyone came in to see the body on a pretext of paying their respects.’ She held her tongue on the matter of the two men suggesting that the nuns themselves were thieves. ‘I wonder, was it, perhaps, taken while he was still in the mortuary after the rigour had left him, that would be, say around mid-day or shortly after?’

‘The rigour had left him about an hour after sext,’ the elder one confirmed. ‘You can tell the magister that.’

‘I feel like telling him nothing, given that he appears to be keeping me in the dark about what’s really going on. I can’t see how I’ve become implicated in the matter at all. My own concerns are far from Avignon, I can tell you.’

The older nun laughed. ‘I believe you, domina, even if my more sceptical sister does not. I believe we nuns are seen as useful and nothing else. We are not credited with intelligence by the men who run things. I’ve seen enough of it to suspect them all of constant duplicity.’

‘Me too,’ her companion reproached her, as if she wanted to affirm her agreement on the matter. ‘We have to support each other and get on with what we believe to be the essential work of our calling, feeding the poor, educating the young, honouring the dead, preserving the teachings of our Order.’

‘St Benedict be blessed,’ her companion murmured, crossing herself.

‘I wonder then, as we’re in agreement, whether you can tell me exactly what happened from the time when you first saw the body until the time you finished your duties. Who brought him into the mortuary?’

‘The same two guards who found him. They’ll tell you that.’

‘They’re under a cloud themselves, I gather. Some are assuming they must have killed Maurice as soon as they discovered him.’ Hildegard glanced from one to the other.

‘Pointless. They may be stupid, but not to that degree,’ she said, echoing the common sense opinion of the magister.

‘The rumour that one of them had stabbed the thief was vigorously refuted.’ She turned to her companion for confirmation.

‘Emphatically denied. Why would they knife him before finding out what he was doing there? It’s patent nonsense. “We’re in the clear,” they told us and we believe them. They left us to our duties as soon as they brought his body down. They didn’t take the dagger. It was there when one or two people such as yourself came in afterwards.’

‘Can you name the ones who came?’

The nun shook her head. ‘Servants, a cardinal, half a dozen fellow choristers in tears. We don’t know their names and of course did not ask out of respect for their grief.’

‘They left after a short while. The dagger was there when the last one went out but it had gone by the time we returned with the necessities for our trade.’

‘So you had to leave the body for a while?’

‘Briefly.’

‘How long were you absent?’

‘Only a short time. We had to find the sacristy for the oil but he was busy with the service for sext so we decided to take part in the tail-end of that.’

Leaving enough time for someone to enter and remove the dagger from Maurice’s softened grasp?

‘Would you have noticed anyone going from the chapel into the mortuary adjoining it?’

‘With our eyes shut?’

**

The elder nun got up and refilled their beakers. The fact that she included Hildegard showed that her ill-judged connection with Athanasius was no bar to their feeling of sisterhood.

‘The cardinal who came in, did you know who he was?’ Hildegard asked.

They shook their heads. ‘A fine looking fellow, quite elderly but as we said, we didn’t ask anybody their names, naturally.’

It could have been, in fact almost certainly was, Grizac. He must have noticed whether the dagger was there or not and yet he had said nothing on the matter. After a moment Hildegard asked, ‘Do you think it impossible that the guards might have found out from Maurice what he was doing in the treasury - and then killed him to silence him?’

‘Acting on behalf of whom?’

‘That I cannot imagine.’

**

Before they got up to go the elder nun leaned forward and touched Hildegard on the arm. ‘What you asked just now about the guards is theoretically not impossible, domina, but we still think it unlikely. Isn’t that so?’ she turned to her companion who nodded.

‘Those two were as shocked as you might expect the innocent to be at what they found. I cannot believe they were simulating. I’ve seen enough guilty men in my lifetime to know what they look and sound like.’

‘I accept what you’re saying, sister. Thank you. I wonder if I may ask one or two more questions about Maurice himself?’

‘Anything we can tell you we will.’

‘He seemed well-liked if as you say so many came in tears to pay their respects. I wonder if you’d noticed him earlier?’

‘Never. I must say I haven’t paid heed to the youths running about the palace. Of course,’ the older nun added, ‘with so many young men attending our superiors, we can’t be expected to recognise them all.’

‘And like you, domina,’ the younger nun answered, ‘we’ve been here only a matter of days ourselves. We’re still trying to find out who’s who.’

No-one better than strangers, then, to take things at face value? Hildegard included herself in this easily duped crew.

‘As newcomers it was an honour to be chosen to lay out the body,’ she said finally, ‘so can you tell me who asked you to do that?’

‘One of the pope’s house stewards. As is usual.’

They got up to go, murmuring something about prayers and when Hildegard was alone she refilled her beaker and continued to sit there for some time.

What little she had gleaned was enough to add to the puzzle.

The timing of the thief was interesting. He had evidently gone into the mortuary while everyone was at mid-day prayers. If he wanted to prise the dagger from Maurice’s fingers he would have had to know about the effects of rigor mortis. He would also have had to be somebody who was likely to be seen around the chapel without arousing comment, someone who could take his chance when it arose.

None of the chapel officials could have done it because they were involved very publicly in the ritual of the mid-day office. Those who had sufficient knowledge about the time the body was found and hence the best time to be able to remove the dagger from the corpse were few. There was herself, of course, then Athanasius and Grizac. There was probably also the house steward. Others in the Curia. And the guards. The latter would know the time they found Maurice but would they know exactly when they could pluck the dagger from his hand? It was debatable. Anyway, the nuns were adamant that they had left straightaway and would have mentioned if one of them had returned.

One other knew the time when the body was discovered. In English Saxon law he would be called the first-finder. It was Clement himself. The realisation of what this might mean took her breath away. She struggled to make sense of it.

So far she had no idea why she had been included in the initial inspection in the treasury. As a witness of some kind? The innocent observer whose word, should it come to it, would be taken on trust? But why? Who was acting for whom?

The cardinal was the one called on to make the official identification of the body. He had presumably been informed by the papal officials that it might be Maurice. Then he had come to Athanasius. That fact implied something about the nature of their relationship. It was an odd one, not friendship exactly, not with Athanasius’s alternate soothing and bullying of Grizac. But, like many relationships, it seemed to be based on a disparity of power.

And what had the nun said? Athanasius was a power.

Was that why he had been informed of the murder from the beginning? What sort of power could he wield from his small, bare cell? The nuns had clammed up and become distinctly chilly when his name was mentioned. Maybe some rumour had been picked up by them, a rumour spread by one of Athanasius’s rivals maybe. But how could a harmless old corrodian have rivals?

Frowning, she sipped her wine. The tormenting question she asked herself was whether the murderer knew Maurice before he drew his dagger on him, or whether it was a case of strike first, think later, an act committed in the heat of the moment. He might have come across him accidentally during the break-in. Did that make his death no more than an accident? Maurice caught in the wrong place at the wrong time? The sense that there was a sinister, planned aspect to his death would not leave her. Someone, other than the guards, had discovered that Maurice had broken into the treasury. It seemed to lead once more to Clement.

By now, the presence of an accomplice had been somewhat discounted and if it wasn’t an accomplice and a mere thieves’ quarrel, was it fanciful to suspect that the killer had acted with the definite purpose of silencing Maurice? It was an alarming thought. But what could the acolyte know that made it necessary to shut him up? Grizac had been distraught just now. Was it because he knew why Maurice had been silenced?

She found herself weaving back again to the old question which had still not been resolved, namely, what was Maurice doing in the treasury at all?

Everyone she had spoken to had jumped to the conclusion that he was after filling his pockets, for why else, they reasoned, would a servant be found in amongst a golden hoard more spectacular than a king’s ransom? In every sense it was certainly the wrong place whatever his excuse for being there.