Conspiracy

by SJ Parris

  ‘Was she ever intimate with the Duke of Guise, or his sister?’

  Her expression clouded and the flesh around her lips turned white as she clenched her jaw. ‘Guise… Devil take him. Yes, there was a time I sent her to Guise, and she proved herself useful. Le Balafré is not apt to give much away to my women – he is too canny. That’s why I only deploy the most skilled with him. As with you.’

  I bowed my head in acknowledgement, even as I guessed it was Gabrielle who had betrayed my presence here to her mistress. Catherine dabbed her nose with her handkerchief.

  ‘But that was years ago. She has not been near Guise for over a decade. It could not be that.’

  ‘Could they have renewed their liaison without your knowledge?’

  ‘Impossible.’ She spat the word. ‘My women do not have liaisons behind my back. They have too much to lose. Léonie de Châtillon most of all. She plays for higher stakes.’ Her gaze swerved away from mine as she said this, but I caught her knowing tone. I was tempted to ask if she meant the King, and wondered again if Léonie was the mistress Henri had mentioned with his nonchalant swagger. The way they had looked at one another during the masque spoke of something between them. But that did not preclude Léonie also being Guise’s lover, whatever Catherine wanted to believe; in fact, what better way to get close to the King than to subvert the woman who shares his bed? A suspicion began to form in a dark corner of my mind.

  ‘Well, if you are certain of her loyalty…’

  She smiled, showing her teeth. I thought of the crocodile.

  ‘I have been playing this game since you were a barefoot child in Nola, Doctor Bruno. This is what Guise wants, of course – to sow mistrust among the King’s supporters. Be assured – my women have better discipline than most armies I have seen. Those I cannot trust absolutely do not last long in my service. If there were a traitor among them I would know it before they had even formed the thought. Never imply to me that I cannot govern my own household.’

  ‘I did not mean—’

  ‘Nothing happens in this palace or the Louvre that does not reach my ears. I knew when Henri brought you here for your little midnight summit. What I cannot fathom—’ here she made a moue of irritation – ‘is why he came to you with the matter of the priest’s murder, rather than seeking my help, as he should have done.’

  ‘I have some experience in that area.’

  ‘Oh, I know it. I know what you were up to in England. Tell me – do you still correspond with your friends there?’

  Her tone was light, but there was no mistaking the threat beneath it. I tried to keep my face as neutral as hers.

  ‘My friend Sir Philip Sidney now commands a garrison at Flushing. I write to him from time to time.’

  She snorted. ‘Do not talk to me of the war in the Low Countries. My youngest son’s involvement there was nearly the death of me, God rest him.’ She paused to cross herself before fixing me with an appraising look, her head tilted. ‘And what do you make of Stafford, Elizabeth’s ambassador here? You are in touch with him, I believe.’

  There seemed little point denying it, though I wondered how she could have come by that information. ‘I find him to be a gentleman.’

  ‘Hm. Still fond of the card-table, is he?’

  ‘If so, he has not invited me to join him.’

  ‘You should. You would come out of it a richer man. I hear his judgement is somewhat flawed when it comes to a hand of cards. Perhaps not only cards.’ She leaned towards me, one bent forefinger raised in admonition. ‘I give you this advice, Bruno, since you are a man whose life depends on judging whom to trust: never put your faith in a man who cannot temper his appetite for gaming.’

  ‘A man who cannot temper his appetite for anything is not apt to be trusted,’ I said.

  ‘True. Obsession is a malady that consumes all reason. I know that too well.’ Her eyes flitted to the portrait of her husband over the fireplace and I sensed she spoke from the heart. ‘Well – Elizabeth of England is deceived in her ambassador. There is my counsel – heed it if you will, though I suppose you will not, since Stafford must be lining your pockets.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  She gave a mirthless laugh. ‘Elizabeth favoured you, it seems. She gave you licence to publish your heretical books. Four of them in three years. You must have done something to please her.’

  ‘You have seen my books?’

  ‘Of course. Those you sent to the King via Jacopo. I told you, there are no secrets from me.’

  ‘And did you read them?’ I realised I could not quite disguise my eagerness. I should have realised Henri would not keep anything from his mother.

  ‘I read enough.’

  A long silence unfolded. One of the guards coughed. From beyond the double doors I heard the women laughing.

  ‘You wish to know what I thought, I suppose,’ Catherine said, when the silence had grown unbearable. She shifted her weight from one hip to the other. ‘I will tell you. I think you are a very dangerous man, Doctor Bruno. All the more so because your arguments appeal so persuasively to reason. And reason is frequently the enemy of obedient faith.’ She pinned me again with that frank stare, a half-smile on her lips. ‘If our first mother Eve had obeyed the Lord’s command in the garden without question instead of allowing the serpent to reason his way around it, how different the story of mankind might have been. We would be spared all this.’ She gestured towards the window as if to encompass the general predicament of France.

  I was denied the chance to contest this, because at the same moment the doors at the other end of the gallery crashed open and Balthasar de Beaujoyeux appeared as if he had been harried out of Hell, wringing his hands, his face white and his eyes wild, his hose and his velvet dancing slippers all spattered with mud and leaves. He flung himself to his knees before Catherine, shaking his head and snatching gasping breaths.

  ‘What is it, man?’ she said, her tone growing more imperious, as if to counter Balthasar’s evident distress.

  ‘Majesty, she is dead.’ He looked up at her, imploring. ‘Circe is dead!’

  FIFTEEN

  Catherine blanched, but did not lose her composure; only her free hand flailed, clawing the air in search of support. I stepped to her side and she grasped my arm.

  ‘Where? How?’

  ‘In the gardens – she was found – all bloodied – oh madonna santa, what shall we do?’ Balthasar was struggling to form sentences between snatched breaths. He pressed his hands to his face. Catherine inhaled sharply, her eyes calculating. Only I could feel how hard her fingers were gripping my arm.

  ‘This must be kept quiet,’ she said, at length. ‘Get up. Have her brought in through the back door by the kitchen, down to the cellar.’

  Balthasar rose unsteadily to his feet, shaking his head. ‘Too late for that, I fear – the people who found her made such a commotion it drew others to the site. Someone ran for the guards. They are bringing her to you now. They didn’t know what else to do,’ he added, spreading his hands to show his helplessness.

  Catherine’s face tightened. ‘Through the palace? For all to see? God save us – does no one here think?’

  ‘You must have all the gates barred immediately,’ I said. ‘If she has been killed, the murderer must be here in the palace. He – or she – will most likely try to leave as soon as possible, if they have not already done so. Your guards should detain anyone attempting to escape in a hurry. If we are fortunate, we may even catch them with blood or a weapon on their person.’

  She turned to look up at me with slow amazement, as if she had only now remembered I was there.

  ‘Do you give the commands here? We do not yet know what has happened. If these fools have sown panic, people will naturally rush to leave. I cannot keep them against their will while accusing them of murder. That will only make matters worse.’

  ‘Even if one among them is guilty of it? In the light of our conversation before…’

 
Her eyes hardened and I felt her hand clamp tighter. ‘Have I not just impressed upon you that I know how to govern my own household?’ She spoke through her teeth. ‘We must impose order on this situation immediately. Balthasar, mobilise the guards, make sure they prevent—’

  But her orders were interrupted by a further crash and judder of the doors as two men barged their way into the gallery bearing a limp body between them, a curtain of dark hair hanging down and swaying with the motion. In their wake surged a crowd of guests, shrieking and shoving one another for a better look.

  ‘You!’ Catherine roared, pointing at the guards flanking the doors to her chamber. ‘Get those people out of my private apartments. Call your fellows and make sure the guests are confined to the public rooms downstairs. Find the captain of my household guard and send him to me. Keep the doors barred.’

  Her armed men jumped to obey and after some struggle the spectators were pushed back and the outer doors to the gallery closed. The two guards carrying the body laid her down gently on the wooden floor, her hair and white cloak spreading around her. Smears of blood stood out bright crimson against the white. Balthasar turned his face away, shielding his eyes, just as the air was shattered by a chorus of women’s screams, as the nymphs burst from Catherine’s inner chamber and skidded to a halt before the corpse of their friend.

  ‘Get back inside,’ Catherine ordered, in a voice that brooked no argument; howling and clutching one another, the girls obeyed. Their laments could be heard loudly after the doors had closed behind them.

  Left alone, Catherine looked from me to Balthasar. Her face was pinched but she kept her bearing erect. ‘Where is my physician? Fetch him here.’

  ‘I believe he did not attend tonight, Your Majesty,’ Balthasar whimpered, unable to take his eyes from Léonie’s body.

  ‘Send for him at his house, then. And find Ruggieri. Anyone who can tell me what happened here. And, Balthasar – fetch the King to me immediately. Whatever he’s doing, drag him from it bodily if you have to.’

  Balthasar shot me a brief glance, lowered his eyes to the corpse and scurried away, a hand pressed over his mouth to stifle his grief. If he were not Italian and theatrical, I might have said he was overdoing it.

  Catherine let go of my arm and walked around the body. The girl’s eyes bulged in terror, her face drained white, the lips peeled back in a grimace. Her wrists and arms were smeared with blood and dirt. Dead leaves had tangled in her curtain of hair.

  ‘Well. Whatever threat you thought she posed to the King, she is none now,’ Catherine remarked quietly. She did not seem particularly distraught by the murder of a young woman who had served her for thirteen years, but that did not necessarily mean anything; she belonged to an age when a queen was expected to conceal her private feelings at all costs.

  ‘No. Someone has made certain of that,’ I said. We looked at one another. I suspected we were both wondering the same thing. There was a long pause. I cleared my throat.

  ‘Your Majesty,’ I ventured, ‘I have some knowledge of anatomy and a little experience in instances of unnatural death. Might I be permitted to make a cursory examination?’

  Her brow creased. ‘It would not be seemly for you to handle the body of a young woman. You are not a physician.’

  ‘Neither is Ruggieri. He is an astrologer.’ And a charlatan, I wanted to add, but held my tongue. ‘With respect, Your Majesty, I would not be seeing anything she did not already show to three hundred spectators this evening.’

  Again, I had the sense that her first instinct was to slap me, but instead she regarded the body in silence, her jaw working from side to side. At length she prodded Léonie’s limp arm with the end of her stick, turning it to expose the inside of the wrist. ‘See here. I am no physician either, but this has the appearance of self-slaughter, would you not say?’ I caught a note of supplication in her voice; she wanted me to confirm her conclusion.

  I had already registered the slashes to the wrist, but I had also observed Léonie’s face. I crouched by the body and looked up at Catherine.

  ‘The appearance, yes. If I may?’

  She pursed her lips, then nodded a grudging agreement. I lifted the right hand to show her. ‘These wounds are too superficial to have bled out. They are made horizontally across the wrist. The vein is not severed – see? These cuts could not have killed her.’

  ‘Then – what?’ For the first time, I glimpsed the mask of control slip a fraction. Catherine de Medici was frightened. I could not blame her; we both knew the person who had felt most threatened by Circe that night was Henri, and that it was I who had planted that fear.

  ‘Look.’ I lifted the coils of hair that had draped across her neck. ‘See this bruise at the throat, and the flecks of blood in the eyes? She was strangled, with a ligature by my guess. I think the incisions were made afterwards.’

  Garrotted, I thought, by someone who knew what they were doing. Just like Joseph de Chartres. It must have happened quickly, before she could scream for help; there had been enough couples seeking out a private spot in the wood for someone to have heard something otherwise. I recalled the cry that had echoed through the trees while I was tussling with the man in the Greek mask, that I had taken for a woman in the throes of passion; could that have been Léonie? My stomach knotted at the thought that I might have been close enough to save her.

  Catherine appeared to be digesting this.

  ‘It is an interesting theory, Doctor Bruno. But as you say, you are not a physician. I suggest we do not leap to any conclusions. I will reserve judgement until I have heard an expert opinion.’

  ‘But you must have the clearing and the woods searched for any traces the killer may have left behind. The knife that was used, for a start. If she died by her own hand it would still be there.’

  Catherine shifted her weight again and looked at me with a curious intensity. In the same instant I realised my mistake.

  ‘Clearing?’ she said, raising an eyebrow. ‘Woods?’

  ‘Or wherever she was found. Balthasar mentioned—’

  ‘Balthasar said she was found in the gardens, as I recall. You are the one who has introduced this clearing in the woods.’ Her gaze drifted again to my boots. I had a sudden dread that Gabrielle might have told her I was asking questions about Circe and that even now Catherine was drawing her own conclusions, pleased to have found a ready scapegoat.

  But I was spared the necessity of responding as the door opened once again to admit a figure like a great crow, black wings flapping the length of the gallery. As he drew nearer I realised he was wearing the same costume as me, the Dottore from the Commedia, in black gown and sneering beaked mask. When he untied the mask and lifted it, the face beneath wore a remarkably similar expression of contempt.

  Cosimo Ruggieri still wore his white beard long and forked, in emulation of some long-ago fashion of the Florentine aristocracy which he supposed gave him the look of a magus. He had developed more of a squint since I last saw him, presumably because he was too vain to admit his eyes were failing. He had always claimed to be older than his years in order to seem more venerable, but he must be at least of an age with Catherine; where she had grown stout, Ruggieri seemed to have shrivelled, his skin stretched tight over the bones of his face, dry and lined as one of his alchemical parchments.

  ‘Gracious Queen,’ he began, in his grandiose manner, offering her a sweeping bow but keeping his greedy little eyes trained on me, ‘it can be no accident that such black misfortune should befall your noble house on the day this Neapolitan sorcerer dares to show himself uninvited at your feast.’

  I could not hold my tongue. ‘Sing a different tune, Ruggieri. At least no one has ever accused me of keeping a child’s severed head on an altar to speak prophecies.’

  He gave a dusty laugh that rattled in his throat. ‘What need have you of an intermediary, when it is known you commune with the Devil face to face?’

  Catherine rapped her stick hard on the floor. ‘Gentlemen!
A woman is dead. I did not call you here to bicker like children.’

  Ruggieri looked briefly chastened, which gave me some satisfaction. ‘Tell me how I may be of service, Majesty,’ he said, holding out his hands in supplication.

  ‘I want you to look at this girl. Tell me what you think happened to her.’

  His eyes darted nervously to me; clearly he feared it might be a trick question. He made a great show of pacing around the body, pulling at the twin points of his beard in contemplation. When he could delay no longer, he addressed Catherine.

  ‘It would seem she has dispatched her own soul to Hell. A sin against God and nature,’ he added, adopting a suitably sage expression. I snorted.

  ‘Doctor Bruno says otherwise,’ Catherine said, watching me carefully.

  ‘Doctor Bruno says the universe is infinite, but he has no proof of that either.’

  Catherine allowed a flicker of a smile, but it did not touch her eyes. I considered confessing to her that I had encountered Léonie in the copse and repeating what she had said to me in error, but instinctive caution told me I would not help my own cause by placing myself at the scene of yet another murder, particularly after my ill-judged comment about the clearing, and in any case, the moment had passed; I should have spoken before Ruggieri arrived.

  I glanced across at the old sorcerer. Léonie had been waiting for someone. She had been in a state of considerable distress, but had steeled herself to tell that person she could not go ahead with a task they had evidently demanded of her – a task she was terrified of carrying out, something so grave she believed it would damn her soul. I could think of few sins that would appear so terrible to a woman steeped in the casual debauchery of Catherine’s court, except murder. To my ears, Léonie’s wild words had as good as confirmed Paul’s letter and his dying warning: that she had been part of a plot to kill the King.

  The more I turned over her outburst in my mind, the more tantalisingly this hypothesis took shape: she had been charged by some unknown person to assassinate Henri and had lost her nerve. The conspirators manipulating her realised she had become a danger to them – especially if they learned that she had confessed her treasonable plans to a priest – and decided she needed to be silenced. I could go so far as to speculate that, since she had once been Guise’s lover, the Duke may still have some hold over her; it seemed the most likely explanation. Although there was always an alternative possibility that could not yet be discounted: that the King, alarmed by my warning, had acted on impulse to disarm the threat of Circe for good. I could see full well that this was the fear behind Catherine’s reluctance to accept that the girl had been murdered. I wondered if Ruggieri had reached the same conclusion and scrambled to support his mistress with the verdict she wanted to hear; no one with even a passing knowledge of anatomy could seriously suppose the girl to have killed herself. But one other question troubled me: had Léonie mistaken me for the man she was expecting, because I was wearing the same costume?