[Hildegard of Meaux 06] - The Butcher of Avignon

by Cassandra Clark

  ‘How long was he there?’

  ‘He’s in for matins then stays there until after lauds.’

  ‘That’s a long time.’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘So the chamber was clear for anybody to enter for several hours?’

  ‘They’d have to get past us guards and the servants of the bedchamber first.’

  She thought, which they did. Instead she said, ‘How on earth could anyone manage that?’ She widened her eyes to encourage him.

  ‘Look, I came on duty just before matins. I reckon the young devil was already down there, having lifted the trap door ready to do his filching.’

  ‘That trap door as you call it. It’s one great slab of stone. Could one man lift it by himself?’ He had done so earlier but he was a big brute of a man. Maurice by contrast was slight.

  ‘I guess he could if he was determined to do it.’

  ‘But he had to get into the pope’s privy chamber first - ?’

  ‘With his holiness out of the way all he had to do was get past the guards on duty.’

  ‘How on earth could he do that?’

  ‘We know how. He swopped places with the page of the bedchamber.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Disguised himself.’

  ‘Is that a guess?’

  ‘We know it.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘He came blabbing, didn’t he? Terrified out of his wits when he found what had happened.’

  ‘And who is he?’

  ‘A lad called Gaston.’

  ‘Paid to do it?’

  ‘I expect so.’

  ‘Didn’t you ask?’

  ‘Not my business. Look, I do my job - ’

  ‘Not in this case you didn’t, assuming your job is to guard the pope’s gold.’

  ‘I don’t like the way you say that.’

  ‘I mean nothing by it. It’s a fact somebody made a mistake by letting both a thief and a murderer inside the treasury.’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t me.’

  ‘I believe you.’

  ‘Why are you asking me all this?’

  ‘I told you why.’

  ‘You’d be better off asking Gaston. If you could.’

  ‘What do you mean if I could?’

  ‘He’s been sent back home to his village in disgrace. Back to cow herding which is all he’s good for.’

  ‘Where is his village?’

  ‘In the hills somewhere. Two houses and a pig sty.’

  Hildegard filed this information away until later. ‘I don’t really understand how the murdered acolyte, the thief, if you will, could get inside without anyone stopping him. Surely somebody would notice it wasn’t Gaston?’

  ‘It isn’t like that. He goes up by himself to turn back the bed clothes after his Holiness has got out of bed to go to matins. Nobody would pay him heed. Why should they? They all look alike. A cap and cloak is all it would take.’

  ‘Did you see him?’

  The guard was silent.

  ‘What did you see?’ she persisted with a pointed glance at the pile of coins on the table.

  Reluctantly he admitted that he’d caught sight of somebody going up while he was sitting on the landing where the stairs separated, one up to the library and the other to the pope’s private chamber and the treasury. It was where they prepared to go on duty. He had assumed it was the usual page.

  ‘When me and Raymond, that’s the fella I was on duty with - when we changed places with the next roster,’ he looked uncomfortable, ‘well, to be absolutely honest, we came down early to have a bit of a game - ’

  ‘Of dice?’

  He nodded. ‘We often did, once his holiness was out of the way. We all did it.’

  ‘Thereby leaving the treasury unguarded?’

  ‘We were sitting there!’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Not for long.’

  ‘Long enough to have a game or two?’

  ‘That’s so.’

  ‘What happened next?’

  ‘We came down as I said.’

  ‘When? After the service for matins had started?’

  ‘That’s about it. Then eventually they took over and I went back with them. Raymond went off duty, back to his woman. I’d left my cap up there. And straightaway I saw the trap door in the floor was open. He must have got inside when his holiness went in the night office and after we guards came down. There’s no other explanation. After that it’d be simple. He opened the trap door, climbed down inside and - ’

  ‘And was knifed.’

  ‘That’s about it.’

  He calls that simple, she registered with disbelief.

  ‘Look, I can’t account for it. He must’ve gone up with somebody. An accomplice. I don’t know! That’s enough!’

  She looked at the coins and began to reach for them. ‘When did you go up?’

  He shifted. Mumbled a bit. Hildegard leaned forward, ‘When did you say?’

  ‘During lauds,’ he admitted.

  ‘Not the start as you’ve just said?’

  He mumbled again. ‘Just before the end, in fact.’

  ‘You call that not long?’

  ‘It’s the middle of the night. The night shift. None of us like it.’

  ‘What does Clement do between matins and lauds?’

  ‘He stays up there as I’ve already told you, listening to the singing.’

  ‘I thought the murdered acolyte was a chorister?’

  ‘They don’t have the full choir at that time. Maybe his Holiness talks among his friends? How would I know what they do? You imagine I’m allowed in there?’

  ‘All right. I was only asking. So, given that Gaston changed places with Maurice, how do you think the murderer got inside? You seem to have forgotten him. Who did he swop places with?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  **

  She failed to get any more out of him and was left with the question whether the murderer had been lying in wait when Maurice arrived and if so, who had tipped him off that an attempt was going to be made on the treasury, for why else would he be there?

  **

  ‘Gaston, I understand you’re about to be sent back to your village?’ She had found him just in time.

  He grunted an assent.

  ‘And I hear you changed places with Maurice on the night he was murdered? Did he pay you to do that?’

  The page, pale, sullen, badly treated, knew better than to show insolence to add to his calamitous lack of judgement. He nodded. When Hildegard asked him how much he mentioned a pitifully small sum then tightened his lips in distaste at his own folly, as she assumed.

  ‘What did Maurice say to you? Did he give any reason for wanting to get inside?’

  ‘He didn’t need to. Why else would somebody break into a treasury but to steal as much gold as they could get their hands on?’ His tone was scornful.

  ‘Did he promise you more gold if he was successful?’

  The boy gave a miserable nod. She could imagine what he was thinking: all this trouble and for what? The promised riches had not materialised. They were nothing but a chimera.

  Some people live to be fooled and fooled again. And here was one, led into folly by the lure of a little stolen gold.

  ‘So what did he say exactly when he put this idea to you?’

  ‘I knew it was ‘cos of the gold. I’m not stupid. But he tried to tell me it was a dare. He said: “I want to see if I can outwit the gryphon.” A dare, I ask you! He said, “You’ll profit by it, you’ll get your reward.”’

  ‘And that convinced you?’

  ‘Of course it did.’

  ‘What did he mean by the gryphon?’

  The boy shook his head.

  ‘A gryphon is a mythical beast set to guard treasure.’

  ‘It did a bad job then, didn’t it?’

  **

  Now things had been explained she saw how easy it had been to set up. Simple, as the guard claimed. He was right in so far a
s Maurice was concerned. All it took was a cap, a cloak and nerves of steel. Once inside all he had to do was fill his bags and lie in wait until the guards moved off. He would have been able to hear their mailed boots on the stone flags above his head and judge when they were out of the way. Then it was a short step to freedom. The mystery was how the murderer, whoever he was, had got inside without being seen by anyone. It was stretching credulity to imagine he had also bribed somebody to let him in. He must have entered at the same time as Maurice despite the guard claiming that he saw only one figure going up.

  He might have even have been the one to give the would-be thief the idea in the first place, putting himself forward as a trusty accomplice, or maybe he was someone Maurice himself had confided in, boasting the way boys will, of what he intended to do, maybe inviting his friend along to witness his escapade.

  Maybe the page of the bedchamber himself had tipped someone off, perhaps for another small reward. Or maybe the murderer had taunted Maurice that he hadn’t the nerve to face the gryphon and Maurice had brazened it out, taking the other along as a witness, later to help himself to enough trinkets to keep him in comfort for the rest of his life.

  There were a hundred possible versions of what might have happened but they had one thing in common, the murderer must surely have known about the plan beforehand.

  In despair at the lack of evidence she decided that the easiest solution was to lay the blame at the feet of the two guards on duty between matins and lauds. Have done with it, she told herself. Even then the question remained: why kill him?

  **

  No nearer an answer, she mingled with the rumour-mongers before going up to fulfil her duty towards Athanasius. There was nothing new to be heard. Everybody seemed to be losing interest already. The feeling seemed to be that it was only the death of a retainer, a sneak thief, better off dead. He was no-one of importance and was probably the victim of a personal tiff over some trivial rivalry.

  The only thing she did discover was that the clerks were busy checking everything in the treasury against an inventory to find out what had actually been stolen. Their activities were unconcealed, in fact blatant, as if to frighten the thief into a public confession. Meanwhile everyone was watching his neighbour in the hope of detecting a sudden show of affluence, although it was unlikely that anyone would be so foolish as to betray themselves in that way.

  When she went up to see Athanasius, Cardinal Grizac was already there, sitting on the bench gasping for breath and wiping his brow with his sleeve. ‘Those stairs,’ he greeted her.

  She asked him if he would be gracious enough, once he had recovered his breath, to show her the stairs to the pope’s chamber again. It was at the centre of a labyrinth of stairs and passages. She would never find her own way.

  Grizac was panting again as they climbed the steps to the vestibule where the guards waited when it was time to change duties with their comrades. Then two stone staircases led to the private chapel and library and the other into the pope’s privy chambers and the treasury. The guard would have seen anyone climbing up because the place where they sat and presumably played dice was on the landing where the stairs divided.

  Without complaint Grizac led her up to have another look.

  ‘The idea,’ he explained, ‘is that in time of danger a wooden ladder on the lower floor can be drawn up inside the tower to prevent anyone getting in to attack the pope. Or to steal from the treasury,’ he added as an afterthought. ‘The builder who designed the tower took no chances. The palace is truly a fortress and although it might be besieged for months on end, it can never be taken. If it did succumb, the treasury itself could not be breached.’

  ‘Except by one daring youth with a very simple plan.’

  ‘Quite so.’

  **

  She tried to get back in to the tower to see the English prisoners and to find out what the inquisitors had wanted to ask John, but the guard refused.

  ‘They’re sleeping now.’

  ‘It’s mid-day.’

  ‘They’re having a piss then. Nobody enters, get it?’

  **

  Fearing for them she returned to Athanasius’s cell. He was looking slightly better after a dish of capons had been brought up by a kitchen servant but the evil smell of his herbal cure hung round the place as strong as ever. She held a kerchief soaked in lavender water which she now and then patted over her face.

  The pope’s guard she had spoken to earlier was a little wealthier than when he had first met her, as was the sullen page, Gaston, who had been given a couple of groats for his help. Now she handed Athanasius a docket with the expenses on it. He did not look at it but merely pushed it under a book on his reading stand. Despite her efforts, she was no nearer the truth.

  ‘I confess I’ve reached an impasse,’ she apologised.

  ‘And the page you spoke to, the page of the bedchamber - this Gaston - he didn’t say who had dared Maurice to this foolhardy act?’ His eyes were like needle points again.

  ‘The question did not seem to have entered his head.’

  ‘It seems the whole matter has come down to a boyish prank. We shall leave it at that and find other things to amuse us. Disappointing that it turns out to have so little importance after all.’

  ‘Except for one thing,’ she reminded, ‘when the gryphon was disturbed it took a terrible revenge. Maurice’s death surely lifts the puzzle above the level of a prank?’

  **

  The jewelled dagger was still missing. Lost, presumed stolen. And it was not just one knife, she reminded herself, but two, because the murder weapon had not been found either. No doubt it hand been wiped clean and was hanging safely on somebody’s belt by now.

  **

  She waited until the guard outside the prison tower went off duty and a different one settled in then she went over. In her hands she carried a bowl of broth and a lump of wastel the kitcheners had been generous enough to provide.

  The guard insisted on poking the point of his knife into the broth and swirling it about. He did the same thing with the bread, cutting it roughly into four pieces and looking disappointed when both exercises proved futile. He nodded her inside with a grunt.

  When she reached the top of the stairs she opened the cell door and was about to call out to Peter when the name died on her lips. ‘Where is he?’

  John, alone, was slumped in the straw and barely managed to raise his head.

  She was across the floor in a moment. Crouching down beside him she asked, ‘What have they done to you?’

  In reply he raised both hands.

  Every nail had been ripped out. His face contorted in an attempt at bravado. ‘They got my nails but they got nowt else.’ He slumped back on the straw. ‘Not from me. Never. Do what they will.’

  ‘Let me attend to your fingers before they become infected.’

  Placing the bread and broth on the floor she opened her scrip. She needed water first to clean up the bloody mess that had once been his finger tips. The flagon beside him was still nearly full so she tipped some onto a clean piece of linen. ‘This will hurt but I beg you, John, do not attempt to restrain your language. It will help to utter any imprecation you can think of. I don’t know why, but it does.’

  She set to work. The ends of his fingers were a bloody pulp. The inquisitors had done a thorough job. Delicately she wiped away any loose skin, staunched the flow of blood that was started up again then applied a mixture of honey and a few other things taught secretly to her many years ago. Then she had to cut strips of cloth and bandage each of his fingers separately.

  Afterwards he apologised for his oaths.

  She smiled. ‘I’ve heard far worse. And from nuns too.’

  A little life came back into his eyes. Unable to hold anything, he looked helplessly at the bread and broth. She told him to shut up and do as he was told, then to open his mouth to eat the broth she was about to feed him like the babe in arms he was and then, when he had polished off the last of
the bread which she was also going to feed to him, gobbet by gobbet, she wanted to know everything that had happened.

  He did as he was told, taking the bread soaked in broth from between her fingers with closed eyes. The strength began to seep back inside him.

  ‘You’d never do this if I had the use of my hands,’ he murmured.

  ‘I wouldn’t need to.’

  ‘True.’

  His brown eyes flickered with a show of spirit as she urged him to eat it all.

  ‘Worse than my mam,’ he told her when she finished by brushing the crumbs off his tunic, ‘but twice as beautiful.’ He levered himself into a different position. ‘Tell me, domina, when will I be able to use my hands to lift my sword against those bastards?’

  ‘Soon enough.’

  ‘They wanted to know about our methods. Fancy that.’

  ‘What methods?’

  ‘How we took the mine down so deep. How we drained the water out at those kind of depths. That sort of thing. One daft fellow asked if we’d ever got down far enough to see the flames of hell. That’s one question I did answer. “Raging hot they are and as big as mountains.” He was excited about that. Wants to go down and see them for himself. They didn’t translate when I told him I hoped it’d be sooner than he thinks. Then they wanted to know what sort of deal the Emperor had made with Chancellor de la Pole.’

  ‘What did you tell them?’

  ‘I told them nothing. Anyway, how the hell would I know what Wenceslas offered de la Pole? We got Good Queen Anne in exchange for a go at their silver mines. Mother of the next king of England. I reckon that’s prize enough for us.’

  He held up his bloodied bandages. ‘For every nail there was a question. For every question there was no answer.’ He shuddered in the aftermath of his ordeal and pretended it was the cold.

  Hildegard wanted to hold him against her as if by doing so she could protect him from further violence. Instead she urged him to keep talking, as the best cure for shock she knew. ‘Tell me what’s happened to Peter.’

  ‘When they brought me back they made sure he had a good long look at my hands. He went as white as a sheet. I said, “Fear not, I told ‘em nothing. Stand firm for the brotherhood. “I will,” he said. He gave me the clenched fist. For King Richard and the true Commons, domina, as I know you understand.’