[Hildegard of Meaux 06] - The Butcher of Avignon

by Cassandra Clark

  Elfric seemed proud to think his brother might have been involved in important matters and not killed on some trivial pretext. It seemed to dignify his death and make it more bearable.

  ‘He would only have agreed to get the poison for a good reason,’ he confided to Hildegard as they left. ‘He would never do anything bad.’

  Hildegard prayed that when the truth was revealed Elfric would not have his faith in his brother turn to ashes.

  **

  The rains returned. The discomfort such weather brought only added to the austerity of Lent. It was bleak. People trudged about the main court yard whenever they had to venture outdoors swathed in cloaks or if they did not possess one, in blankets, heads covered, faces barely visible, and feet, red raw in their sandals, wet, muddy, and throbbing with chilblains. Penitents flocked into the warmth of la Grande Chapelle.

  Hildegard informed Hubert that she would prefer to remain in the palace rather than make the journey back to Cardinal Fondi’s villa on Villeneuve in such vile weather. To her surprise, he agreed without argument. This was so rare she looked at him in astonishment. All he said was that as his fellow countrywoman and one of his nuns from Meaux he would find accommodation for her that was both safe and agreeable as was his duty and his right.

  On the point of asking him if he was feeling well, she held her tongue just in time.

  ‘I’ll send Brother Gregory to conduct you there when I’ve found somewhere suitable for you.’

  ‘Which one is he?’ she asked. Neither of the monks had made much impression.

  ‘You’ll know him by his solicitous manner,’ he remarked with a long look.

  She was to wait for him in the Tinel where he would come to find her.

  **

  The refectory, le Tinel, was always busy with guests, petitioners and other folk, enjoying the lavish fare usually available. Today they were on short rations because of Lent but it didn't prevent an army of servants catering busily to everyone’s needs within the restrictions that prevailed.

  Trays of flat bread were piled high. Hard cheese was brought out in great wedges and set down on the trestles to become the immediate focus of a forest of hands. Now and then fish from the ponds or the river was carried forth. White flesh falling off spiked bones needing careful sifting with the tip of a knife. Sauces, none. Meat, none. Subtleties, none. Wine? Some, of course. Nobody wanted to go down with the stomach cramps by drinking contaminated water.

  Safety in numbers, Hildegard observed to herself as she found space on one of the long benches at the table reserved for women. Everyone fleeing starvation and the grim reaping of winter. She sat with her back to the wall so she could see anyone approaching.

  While she waited for Brother Gregory her thoughts ran over her conversation with the pages and then she cast her thoughts back to the occasion when Athanasius had taken her along to have a look at the body of Maurice in the treasure vault.

  It was a slightly blurred memory now. The shock of what she had seen shed a light on some things and left others in darkness. She saw in her mind’s eye the stiff body in its beautiful court garments, the gold-red hair thick and vibrant, the hand fiercely gripping the jewelled dagger. Then she recalled the weeping cardinal and how she had felt a slight, uncalled for irritation at his lack of control.

  Then what had happened? Had she climbed out of the vault before him? She thought she remembered turning to look down into the vault when his mumbling pleas to have the youth brought back to life had ceased. She closed her eyes the better to focus on what she had observed then.

  It was Grizac, holding the hand of Maurice, holding the hand with the dagger in it.

  She recalled the fleeting thought that the rigour of death would soon abate and then the fingers would relax and the knife would be released of its own accord.

  It was a flash of memory and she could not decide whether she had seen the cardinal holding the hand out of grief, or trying in vain to prise the knife from it.

  She remembered how when she went back into la chambre du pape the pope‘s bodyguard must have already been there. He had climbed down to shine the light on Maurice’s face as Athanasius had directed. He must have climbed out first because she and Grizac were left in a small pool of light from the chamber above. She could surely not have seen anything as detailed as a hand holding another hand.

  Athanasius had stepped forward to assist her out of the vault. She had seen his face in the glare of light. Its expression was empty. Then she had looked down to watch Grizac climbing with difficulty out of the black hole. Tears glistened on his cheeks before he turned his head and moved into darkness.

  After that came the understanding touch on the sleeve as Athanasius edged past him.

  The light followed them down the stone steps outside onto the landing where the stair divided and the guards played dice. They were there then, wary, attentive, fearing to put another foot wrong.

  It was one of the pope’s personal body guard who had dutifully held the lantern through all this. Poor Grizac. When he first cast his eyes on Maurice he was controlled enough. It was only as Athanasius began to inspect the body that he broke down and began his tearful prayers.

  She went over the scene again. The bodyguard holding the light as directed. Athanasius, thoughtful, assiduous in his duty to confirm death. Herself, bewildered, travel-weary after recently arriving from England, and filled with a sense of horror at what she saw. The cardinal, stoical, then tearful. With shock? With fear? With rage? With confusion? There had been no way of reading him.

  Brother Gregory leaned across the table to attract her attention. ‘Far away, domina? Forgive me for breaking into your meditations. Our lord abbot sends his greetings. Will you be kind enough to follow me?’

  As she rose and came towards him he put out a protective arm when a servant blundered past. ‘Have a care now, fellow,’ he warned mildly. ‘This way, if you will, domina, please follow me.’

  **

  She threw her bag down and sat on the bed when Brother Gregory left. Hubert had found her a small, pretty chamber in the guest wing, without the austerity of the quarters assigned to visiting monastics.

  A single window faced east overlooking a small garden in the lee of the battlements. Espaliered fruit trees were growing against the walls and in the middle of a paved area was a spring sending up a fountain that fell back into a shallow marble basin. A door led into this miniature paradise and she decided she would go and find it when she had time.

  Now, plumped down on a bed that was rather more comfortable than the ones allotted to the nuns, she had one name on her mind.

  Grizac.

  It seemed to turn up again and again. His grief-stricken face appeared before her, his tears in the treasury that day - for the loss of a favourite acolyte or for something else? Again she asked herself why Maurice had entered the forbidden vault, why he was holding that particular treasure of all things. Had it been a dare? Or had somebody put him up to it? If so, who?

  She remembered the suggestion that he was working alone. But why? Was it really the dagger he wanted? What use was it to him? Did he know it contained poison? She wondered how Grizac felt about finding him there. His feelings had been impossible to gauge.

  Maybe he saw Maurice’s presence in such a place as a betrayal of trust. Or was Grizac the mastermind behind the theft, his tears ones of shock that everything had gone so disastrously wrong? He would have known how dangerous it would be to make an attempt on such a valuable hoard. Perhaps his tears were of regret.

  Another failure to add to the list.

  She considered his long life playing second fiddle, first to his brother, Pope Urban V, and then to his contemporary Clement VII. To be Bishop of Avignon was poor reward for a lifetime with such promising connections. He was a man of qualities, everyone agreed, a scholar of repute, compassionate, piously living up to his vows, a sagacious and respected member of the College of Cardinals.

  That is, if a suspicion of murder were
discounted.

  But then if it was a case of Grizac guilty in the treasury, what about Grizac guilty on the bridge? What about Grizac in her own cell, murdering an innocent nun?

  A knife ripping across the tender throat of a lamb came to mind.

  Blood.

  Then Carlotta, blood on her chin from the carcase of meat, blood on her knife. The sign of squirrel’s paws under the bed. A blood stain on the nun’s mattress.

  Blood everywhere.

  She turned her deliberations to the death of Taillefer. Somehow she could not see Grizac entering the debauched darkness under the bridge.

  If what she had been told were to be believed, he had crossed over, taking his time, arriving at the other side long after the others. He had been alone. Even so, he started with the others. The sentry had said so twice, once to herself and once, independently, to Edmund.

  After the others crossed he would have had time to kill Taillefer on the bridge and then stop at the chapel to make confession.

  It was the ferryman who had told her he heard an argument coming from the direction of the bridge. His testimony had persuaded her to look there. The priest confirmed the sound of an argument. Voices raised in anger above the howling wind, a knife in the darkness, a body splashing into the black waters of the Rhone.

  It was the priest who had mentioned the bell for lauds, said he heard the voices before he rang the bell. But Hubert, Fondi and presumably the others stayed on for lauds because it wasn’t worth crossing from Villeneuve twice in such a violent storm.

  The murderer could not have attended lauds. There would have been no way he could have been on the bridge shortly before the bell and then in attendance inside the palace.

  It was a good fifteen minutes’ walk down the lane and then the complicated access to get into the chapel, another ten minutes at least. She saw the priest’s expression as he mentioned the bell and felt there was something evasive about it.

  Was he confident that he had in fact rung the bell at the time he claimed? I sleep fitfully, he had told her. Had he woken earlier than he thought he had? Did he ring the bell long before lauds took place in the palace?

  First the voices, then the murder, then the bell giving the murderer time to get back to the palace and into the office for lauds? Alibi intact. Grizac could have done it with time to spare.

  It was a theory at least.

  **

  She went to find Hubert. He was in the Tinel with his two supporters.

  Before she could speak he said, ‘I was just finishing my bread and water before coming to find you. I have something to tell you. But first, I trust your new chamber is satisfactory?’

  ‘Very,’ she replied. ‘I’m most grateful for your string-pulling on my behalf.’

  ‘No point in being a cardinal in waiting if I can’t help my friends,’ he announced dryly.

  Gregory and Egbert chuckled.

  ‘You first then,’ he said. ‘You have something to say?’

  She shot a swift glance at the two monks. They both beamed. They were clearly going to listen in.

  Turning to Hubert she said, ‘It’s about that night when you crossed the bridge, when Taillefer was murdered.’

  The two monks leaned forward with interest. Wild horses wouldn’t have dragged them away. When Gregory spoke the matter had evidently been discussed with Hubert because he said, ‘Have you found new evidence, domina?’

  ‘Not really.’ She gave Hubert a helpless glance.

  ‘Have no worries. They know as much or as little as I do and whatever they hear will go no further.’

  With no choice, she explained the problem so far.

  Egbert looked interested. ‘So the murder took place on the bridge after an argument and around the time of the bell for lauds, thereby giving an alibi to any of us who were in the palace at that time. Well,’ he said, sitting back, ‘that’s a relief, eh, Hubert?’

  Hubert smiled in acknowledgement. ‘But what Hildegard is saying is that the innkeeper at le Coq d’or told her the fellow who was trying to sell the dagger - probably the same one who stole it from the mortuary - went rushing out in pursuit of Taillefer as soon as he found out it’d been taken from his pack. Hence voices not on the bridge but in the lane outside the inn.’

  ‘But Taillefer was found on the temporary dam that had built up underneath the bridge with his clothes still partly dry.’

  ‘Meaning that he must have fallen from the bridge?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Gregory frowned. ‘Were there any witnesses to this racket of shouting we understand to have taken place outside the inn?’

  ‘Plenty, apparently,’ Hildegard replied. ‘The stranger woke everybody up with his ranting. He chased Taillefer down the lane towards the bridge then returned a few minutes later complaining that the thief had got away. After that he gathered his things and left, to vanish into the night.’

  ‘And did he leave by means of the bridge?’

  ‘If so the sentries must have seen him go over.’

  ‘The sentry said nobody but the cardinals and Hubert crossed the bridge that night. But he heard no argument because of the storm.’

  ‘You believe him?’ Gregory’s eyes were sharp.

  ‘I see no reason for him to lie about it.’

  ‘Not unless he’s complicit with the murderer.’ Gregory frowned.

  ‘He means it could have been the sentry who murdered Taillefer,’ Egbert interpreted.

  ‘It could have been anyone,’ she admitted glumly.

  ‘Storm, argument, bell, theft, murder. Is it one of those puzzles destined to remain forever unsolved?’ Egbert shared her gloom.

  ‘Let’s look at it from another angle,’ Hubert suggested. ‘How did this second thief get hold of the dagger? Did somebody inside the palace pass it to him to sell at the highest price or was he working from inside the palace himself?’

  ‘There is a way somebody from outside could get into the palace,’ she mentioned hesitantly, wondering if she was breaking faith with her informant. ‘I was told in confidence that a certain postern is left unlocked some nights. If the fellow trying to sell the dagger knew about that he could easily have got inside - ’

  ‘Entered the mortuary - ’

  ‘And stolen the dagger.’

  ‘And then,’ added Hubert, ‘he could have found his way out to le Coq d’or?’

  ‘Easily.’

  ‘And the rest follows.’

  ‘Taillefer, knowing he would not be allowed onto the bridge, fled underneath the arch where the whores usually worked and was killed there.’

  ‘Except,’ Hildegard interrupted, ‘Taillefer’s garments were almost dry.’

  ‘So our version of events doesn’t answer the question how he got onto the raft without getting thoroughly soaked to the skin.’

  ‘And another yawning hole in all this is that no-one saw him under the arch.’ Hildegard frowned.

  What seemed much more likely was that Taillefer had met the cardinal at the steps leading onto the bridge. Grizac was a figure of authority who could take him across, but then a quarrel, the raised voices, the knife across the throat, the body over the parapet, falling, to the cardinal’s ill luck, onto a floating raft of debris instead of into the water where he should have been swept away, the current taking with his lifeless body all clues to his murder.

  She could not accuse one of the cardinals in front of these three men. Their allegiance was to Clement. They would close ranks against her.

  There was a silence but then Gregory got up and went over to one of the servers. When he returned he had a flagon of something that when it was poured out into four beakers was definitely not water.

  ‘The flaw is that this boy, Taillefer, was not seen to go onto the bridge and it’s equally true that he wasn’t seen to run under the arch. Even if he had done so without being noticed - in all the rage of wind and rain that wouldn’t have been unlikely - he couldn’t have got onto the dam unless he had swum across from the
bank. And that was impossible in the given conditions.’

  Hildegard sighed with frustration. ‘Thank you, Hubert. That sums it up.’

  ‘There’s no escaping the fact that Taillefer had to have fallen from the bridge?’

  ‘That’s the only way to account for his garments being wet on the outside and relatively dry on the inside, something that’d have been impossible if he’d been immersed in water for the time it would have taken to swim across to what he imagined would be safety.’

  ‘The river was treacherous anyway,’ Gregory pointed out. ‘Surely it’s doubtful whether anyone could have swum across, even when driven by the terror of being pursued.’

  ‘He couldn’t have jumped?’

  ‘Fifteen feet from a slippery, shelving bank?’

  ‘Round and round.’ Gregory tapped impatiently with his finger nails on the table top until he saw Egbert’s glance. ‘Sorry. Bad habit.’ He pushed his hands inside his sleeves.

  Back to Grizac. He was on the bridge. Fact. If the bell was rung early he could have hurried back in time for lauds. Hildegard almost blurted out his name but decided at the last minute to hold her tongue.

  Even Grizac did not solve all questions. What grudge could he have against the esquire to kill him? Why the quarrel? It made no sense.

  Was it because Grizac suspected that Taillefer knew about Maurice’s intended theft? Did he fear what else the esquire had been told? Did Taillefer need to be silenced? That would assume Grizac was the brains behind the whole thing. And a man who could kill without a qualm. Grizac? He seemed so devout, a man with a kindly manner. Like Peterkin she felt guilty even to entertain such heinous suspicions. Rather than the extreme response of murdering Taillefer, Grizac would surely have tried to bribe him or frighten him into handing over the dagger if he was so desperate to get his hands on it? And, anyway, how could he know Taillefer had the dagger that night unless somebody had told him?

  Was it possible that Grizac overheard the commotion from the inn himself as he arrived at the bridge?