The Butcher of Avignon (29 page)

He enfolded her in his arms, sword, blood, death around them. ‘I understand, dear heart. Some other time.’

Against his shoulder she muttered, ‘The truth is, Hubert, I’d rather have you alive than dead.’

**

They left the inn that night, riding through the darkness of the countryside to reach Avignon as dawn was turning the sky to pearl.

They discovered the palace in a state of uproar when they arrived.

Another murder.

It was close enough to Hildegard to make her feel dizzy with fear.

The nun who shared her cell had been found with her throat cut. A servant had discovered the body lying in a pool of gore on a bed in the cell she shared with Hildegard.

The rumour that met them was that it was Hildegard who was dead, the interrogating nun from England, a spy probably, deserved all she got. That was how it was told by one of the stablers soon after they rode into the yard.

Then Hildegard was recognised and the rumour was revised. The nun was a concubine of one of the cardinals and a love rival had done away with her. Or she was with child and the father, a prelate, refused to accept it and thought it expedient to get rid of her and the child both. And on, with ever more lurid accounts, until Hildegard wanted to escape into a place of peace and security where common sense prevailed. But there was nowhere like that in the whole of Avignon. And she had to brazen it out and pray, with one eye over her shoulder, that the murderer would not strike again.

One thing was obvious. If it was a case of mistaken identity as it seemed, it must mean someone was frightened. And that could only mean one thing, she was getting closer to the truth.

**

Cardinal Fondi was a handsome man in his thirties, not, Hildegard judged, as handsome as Hubert his contemporary, but good enough to attract women and make his choice. And it was certainly a fact that his choice was an admired beauty, easy to see as an ideal image of the madonna with a serene, oval face, long dark hair parted in the middle, eyes so unnaturally large and dark that Hildegard suspected she used Belladonna, and her child pretty too, all three drawing admiring glances whenever they appeared in public.

For the most part Carlotta and the child stayed over in Villeneuve at their spectacular villa and lived the life of any other noble family. The only difference was that their allegiance went to the head of the Catholic Church in France and not to a secular monarch, chosen by birth or fortune. The pope himself of course owed allegiance to no earthly lord but saw every monarch in Europe as his personal vassal.

Carlotta played the grand hostess to the hilt. Hildegard could not fault her grace and charm. Even so, when she found those darkly foreign eyes that seemed to have no depth to them fixed unmovingly on her face she felt a shiver of uneasiness.

‘You look pale, domina. Drink this.’ Carlotta plucked a goblet from a silver tray held by a brocade-clad page.

Hildegard took it but eyed the contents with misgivings.

‘I assure you, there is no poison in it,’ Carlotta gave a throaty laugh and touched Hubert on the arm in a gesture that did nothing to allay Hildegard’s qualms. The love rival rumour about the murdered nun flew into her mind before she realised how absurd it was. She was not Hubert’s lover and there was no rivalry to speak of. This woman could do whatever she pleased as long as she could square it with her protector. Hubert and Fondi drawing swords made her smile.

Carlotta turned to Hubert. ‘Her face has the look of an avenging angel, carissimo. So pure, so untouchable. You will never defeat her. I believe you’ve met your match at last. Perhaps I shall mix her a love potion? Would you like that?’

‘You talk nonsense, cara.’ Hubert, however, looked strangely pleased.

When they had a moment alone Hildegard hissed at him. ‘How could you arrange for me to stay here without consulting me first? I can’t do it.’

‘I’m your abbot. You’ll do as I think best. You’ll be safe here. That madman who killed your cell mate in her bed obviously mistook her for you. He’s not going to give up.’

‘We don’t know I was his intended victim.’

‘Oh come on, she was a blameless Scots woman, an Augustinian over here in the train of a petitioner for some obscure living up there. All she was known to do was pray, eat and sleep. Whereas you - everybody knows you’ve been ferreting around, asking questions, stirring up trouble.’

‘You should have asked me first.’

‘I knew you’d object.’

Hildegard closed her eyes in exasperation. ‘I’m close, very close, to finding out who killed those two boys - and now that poor nun. I can’t just give up to wallow in luxury over here.’

‘As you said to me yesterday, I want you alive, not dead. You’re safer here.’

He refilled her goblet and pressed her fingers round the stem. ‘I’ll taste it first for poison.’ He drank from it then turned it so she could drink from the impress of his lips.

‘Even so,’ she continued after sardonically doing as invited, ‘the friar who warned me to get you away to safety saved my life too.’

‘Was that his intention? If so, we have an ally.’

‘Which is more than that poor nun had. Oh, Hubert, I do wish I’d spoken to her. She seemed to sleep all the time, or pray, for what good it did her.’

‘She died as she would have wished, in the sanctity of her belief.’

‘I need to be in the palace, Hubert. I can’t do anything from here. I’ll decline Fondi’s invitation.’

‘Tell me what you’d do if you were over in Avignon and I’ll do it for you.’

A flame of doubt was reignited. He was Clement’s man. How could she forget? He wove a spell over her and she kept on forgetting. He must be trying to find out what else she knew.

‘Suspicion must fall on whoever crossed the bridge that night when you and Fondi walked over. I’ve spoken to Bellefort and he seems an unlikely candidate and he also has plenty of witnesses to say he hurried straight across.’

‘If that gaggle of fools can be trusted. They’ll say anything Bellefort tells them to. But I take your point. I can’t see him getting out of his litter in a raging storm to say his prayers and slit the odd throat without making a drama out of it.’

‘Then there’s you and Fondi.’ She gave a little laugh as she ticked their names off on her fingers. ‘Another name that came up is Montjoie, and then, of course, there’s Cardinal Grizac.’

‘Whose acolyte it was in the treasury. That must rule him out.’

‘Why so?’ She looked at him with curiosity.

‘Maurice was his acolyte. Why would Grizac murder Taillefer?’

‘Revenge? Don’t forget Maurice might have had a companion in the treasury and if they quarrelled and a knife was drawn - it could easily have been Taillefer. Think how Grizac would feel then? Positively murderous.’

‘It sounds plausible.’

‘It was the same method. Just like the nun yesterday. I know it’s not in the least evidential but - ’

‘It suggests something else to me.’ His lips scarcely moved.

‘What’s that?’

‘Execution.’

She stared at him.

‘Deliberate and planned. Were those three linked in some way we’re unaware of? Or is it a warning?’ His face was without expression.

Both were silent until Hildegard whispered, ‘A professional assassin?’

‘Maybe there’s something big at stake, bigger than either of us can know?’

It was a relief to feel she was not alone. ‘It was what I thought at first.’ She avoided mentioning the miners and John Fitzjohn. ‘But if there is something behind it what is it?’ She stopped suddenly. What had led Hubert to make such a suggestion? Who was being warned off? She shivered. She waited for his reply with bated breath.

But he did not say anything. He seemed to be waiting for Hildegard to supply the answer.

Suppressing what was a horrifying suspicion she stared at him for a long moment.

‘There’s also this,’ she managed to say at last. ‘Someone must have known Maurice was going to break into the treasury, apart from the page he changed places with, I mean. And it must have been someone with knowledge of the lay out and how to get into it and what the movements of the guards were. A professional killer would have that knowledge. Unless,’ she finished weakly with her thoughts in turmoil, ‘the page was lying and he conducted an outsider to the pope’s chamber by a similar ruse.’

Hubert frowned. ‘Where is he?’

‘The page of the bedchamber? Back in his village in the mountains. It’s a day’s ride from here. I checked.’

‘I’ll go and search him out. I’m sure I can be persuasive enough to make him tell me every secret he’s ever known.’

Shelving her fears she asked, ‘Might I come with you?’

Hubert’s response was an unexpected look of pure delight. It made her squirm with guilt.

They rejoined Fondi and Carlotta in the gilded chamber. Musicians were brought in and soon a night of black velvet turned to silver as dawn approached and the winter beauty of the villa and its terraces and gardens brought some solace to Hildegard’s troubled thoughts.

To witness the loving exchanges between Fondi and Carlotta, however, only made her long more hopelessly for what could never be.

**

On good horses, the same ones they had hired before, they covered the distance into the mountains in rather less than a day. It was late afternoon by the time they rode into the hamlet where the page of the bedchamber lived.

The place was impoverished like many of the villages in the countryside round here where the peasantry was forced to eke a living and, in fact, it was little more than a muddy track sloping between a few rough looking thatched barns.

A labourer wrapped in rags pointed with his ash wand to a house at the top of the lane and when they entered the enclosure at the side they saw that building work had started on an enlargement of the living quarters and that a barn for the cows was being rethatched. Someone was beginning spend money.

Hubert slid down from his horse and went over to the door at the back. A suspicious voice stopped him. ‘Who’s there? Who are you?’

‘I come from Avignon,’ Hubert replied. ‘I’m searching for the page to his Holiness the pope.’

‘Is he calling him back?’ A face appeared in the window space but the door remained bolted.

‘He may do if he answers one or two questions,’ replied Hubert.

‘He’s out there.’ The woman, his mother or elder sister, gestured over to the barn.

Hildegard got down and crossed the yard with Hubert.

When they ducked their heads under the lintel they saw the page, now dressed in rough work clothes, with a knife at the throat of a lamb. He slit the struggling creature’s throat with practised efficiency and flung the bleeding carcase to one side. Then he heard his visitors and looked up. The knife dripped blood.

He began to back away into a corner of the barn, the knife held in front of him. ‘Who are you? What do you want? I’ll use this!’ he threatened.

‘Peace, child. We come merely to talk.’

‘I don’t know anything.’

‘I’m sure you know many things.’ Hubert nodded to Hildegard to leave them.

Walking away she heard Hubert talking softly to the boy. Soon they appeared at the door of the barn and while she waited outside with the horses, they went inside the cottage after an exchange of shouts between the boy and the woman.

Hildegard stood by the horses for some time. Night fell. One or two candles came on inside the cottage. The village street was devoid of human life.

A wind began to whine from off the summit of the mountains. It was a bleak place. Anybody would want to leave it. The boy must have some special skill to have been plucked from such a place to be raised to what for him must have been a dizzying height. A village priest, she supposed, his bishop, the hierarchy by which peasants with some sort of promise could be lifted from their origins to a different life.

She thought of William of Wykeham, back in England, a clever boy who had impressed his tutor, attracted a benefactor, and after achieving the zenith of becoming Lord Chancellor of England, had now founded a college in Winchester for the education of impoverished boys such as he had once been.

Her musings stopped when Hubert reappeared. The door was noisily shut and bolted behind him.

They rode right away from the village before he told her what the boy had said to him.

**

Their horses walked side by side through the woods. Shafts of moonlight stippled the path. When she looked at Hubert his face was silvered by the mysterious light as he spoke.

‘When Maurice failed to return down the back stairs that night after dealing with the pope’s bed and doing what else he had been assigned to do, our young friend Gaston here began to worry. He feared that Maurice had been caught red handed and that his own part in the break-in would be revealed. He said he waited half the night and only when his nerves got the better of him he crept back up the stairs. He had to pass the guards but they were so involved in their dice they didn’t notice him or if they did it meant nothing and was straightaway forgotten because, of course, he had a right to be there.’

‘What happened when he reached
la chambre du pape
? Did he go right inside?’

‘No, he heard voices. One voice stood out. It was the pope himself. Clement’s gravelly tones are unmistakable. The other voice he did not recognise. But he did hear a name.’

Yes?’

‘Grizac.’

‘But was he mentioned because Maurice was his acolyte or was it because he was being addressed?’

‘My very question. But Gaston was unable to answer. He said he thought it sounded as if it was mentioned in passing and it was likely to be so because only one other voice spoke, that was the one unknown to him. But he admitted that Cardinal Grizac might have been standing by in silence, too shocked to speak. In retrospect he realises that they must have found Maurice’s body but at that point Gaston didn’t know he was dead. He fled in terror, nevertheless, back down the stairs, praying, he said, that Maurice would not betray him. When he heard he was dead he had the grace to say he was ashamed of the joy that sprang into his heart. He was saved. Maurice could never betray him now.’