He loomed over her.
‘You know me. And I know you,’ he paused then intoned with deliberate emphasis, ‘Hildegard.’
With one finger he slid aside his mask and she saw the scar running from brow to jaw in a livid, jagged line. Features she knew were suddenly, sickeningly, before her.
Plunging into the nightmare she could only croak, ‘Escrick Fitzjohn? Here?’
It was his voice she had recognised in that scuffle outside le Coq d’or the other night. Even with him standing in close proximity as now, part of her refused to believe it. It could not be Escrick. Not here.
He ran a finger down his scar. ‘Remember when you did this to me?’
She felt drenched in cold water and came to her senses. ‘I didn’t do it, Escrick. You did it yourself by attacking the lock-keeper near Meaux. You drew your sword on him. He was unarmed. You killed him in cold blood.’
He began to chuckle again. ‘Long, long ago, yes. In another world. What a strange business fate is. I’d put you well out of mind but now, like a gift from the angels, here you are, delivered safely unto my embrace to receive a final blessing.’
‘What mischance brought you here?’
‘You’ve met my handsome brother Jack?’ he sneered. ‘Where Sir John Fitzjohn goes I’m not far behind.’
‘I’m astonished to see you in Avignon of all places. What’s for you here?’ Her best hope was to keep him talking.
‘There’s plenty, believe me!’’
‘Did you come over with your brother’s retinue?’ Keep him talking. ‘I didn’t know you and he were allies again.’
‘With his usual lordly generosity he took me in when he was called to do service with our father in Castile – ’
‘With John of Gaunt?’
‘Yes. And when that little skirmish was over and he was crowned King John in Compostela we two bastards were no further use, so Jack went back to England to rejoin Woodstock -’ he shrugged.
‘And you?’
‘I didn’t.’
‘You deserted?’
‘Call it that if you like. You’re a nit-picking nun. I see it differently. No pay, no service. And you’ll certainly know what a tight-fisted devil Gaunt is even to his own flesh and blood. I decided I’d head back to France, maybe do better for myself fighting in the pope’s army. The winning one. The victor at Cesena.’
She felt sick at the thought. He had not changed. Blood on his hands. Death in his heart. Keep talking, she reminded. ‘And now you’re Clement’s personal bodyguard? That is some achievement.’
‘Our mutual friend, magister Athanasius, saw my potential at once. I could tell him everything he wanted to know about my sainted brother and his keeper, Woodstock.’
So he was not even loyal to his own kin.
He took her silence for a chance to boast. ‘I was with Hawkwood in the papal states when I first met Clement. When I turned up here he remembered me. We get on, we do. You might not believe it. And this place suits me.’ He paused but then could not resist adding, ‘It was me to encourage Woodstock to send the miners to Clement. It scotched de la Pole’s game and gave Clement something he wanted. A word to brother Jack and he fell for it. Clever, eh?’
Her mouth was dry. While he was talking he was playing with his knife, smiling to himself and moving so that her escape was blocked.
Long ago in Yorkshire Escrick had committed a terrible murder as well as killing the innocent lock-keeper, and Hildegard had been the person to reveal the truth. He had never forgiven her. When he was banished from England their paths crossed again. Escrick had been found out in further treachery and humiliated by the Florentine merchant Ser Vitelli, a fact for which he also blamed Hildegard. Now, for the third time, they faced each other.
‘Escrick, you’re certainly a survivor. No-one could dispute that.’ As he preened at what he thought was a compliment, she took the opportunity to ask, ‘But before we go any further, and just so I can get it straight in my mind, can you tell me something. It was you who stabbed Maurice, wasn’t it?’
‘What if I did?’
‘And then you stole the dagger from him?’
‘Was that the body in the mortuary?’
‘You know it was.’
‘Then why are you asking?’
‘Just to be sure. I like things straight, you know that.’
‘Yes, get your thoughts in order, Hildegard, before the final stroke - because after that it’ll be too late.’
‘Why did you take the dagger?’ she persisted, playing for time. ‘Let me understand that.’
‘Because, Hildegard, it was obvious I could turn it into more than the gold and jewels it was made of. For some reason it was desired above rubies and pearls. Why shouldn’t I help myself now and then? Nobody’s ever going to help me. I knew dear brother Jack would give his eye teeth for it, for one, because he told me so. But I guessed I’d get a better price on the open market.’
So he had not known the true significance of the dagger after all.
She asked, ‘Was it you who attacked me on the way back from le Coq d’Or?’
‘You and your sainted paramour,’ he snarled. ‘He shouldn’t carry a sword. What sort of abbot does that?’
‘One who survives attacks by villains, evidently.’
‘So clever, aren’t you, Hildegard, you haven’t changed one jot.’
‘And you were the stranger at le Coq d’Or trying to sell the dagger.’
‘That rat hole! And to be thieved from by a beardless stripling!’
‘So you chased him - ’
‘And he ran under the bridge and tried to escape by jumping onto the rubbish trapped under the arch. That’s where I caught up with him.’
‘What happened next?’
His jaw tightened. ‘Before I could find the dagger on the stupid devil the whole raft began to drift under the bridge with our weight and I knew I’d be done for if I didn’t jump back onto the bank. He crawled further away onto the logjam and I couldn't reach him. I thought the river would sweep him down stream and that would be that, but I never have good luck. It just stuck there. For anybody else the river would have done its work and finished him. But not for me.’
His self-pity brought tears to his eyes. ‘Enough talk, Hildegard.’ He shot out an arm and grabbed her round the neck before she could move. He forced her face up to his. ‘Remember Florence? Remember the house of that merchant? You and me, remember? I believe you were almost willing to let yourself go with a real man that time. You were on the verge of surrendering to me. I could see it in your eyes.’
His mouth had lowered until it was almost touching her lips. She could tell he was working out whether to force himself on her now in the secrecy of the roof void or to finish her off with one stab of his knife to her heart.
**
From the distant, echoing, stone-ribbed chapel floated the ethereal voices of the choir, bass, tenor and treble expressing purity and a timeless beauty, the sound spiralling and descending and rising in woven harmonies as far from what was about to happen in the straw-filled cavity than could be imagined.
Somewhere, good and evil were poised in perfect symmetry like angels on a pin-head.
Hildegard could not hope to win in a trial of strength against Escrick. When he saw the uncertainty on her face he raised his knife and smiled at the prospect of a pleasure he had long desired.
‘Your last words then, Hildegard. Prepare. Finally, tell me now, who sent you to interfere in the pope’s trade with England?’
She strove to keep her lips from trembling. ‘There is no trade with England. Only a traitor to King Richard would claim so. You should know that Woodstock does not speak for England.’
‘If not now, then soon,’ he sneered. ‘He’ll be king in Richard’s place one day. That’s all he lives for. But that’s nothing to me. I serve his Holiness now. He has his precious dagger back. The thief has been despatched. Now there’s only you, stirring up trouble. He wants a clean end
to this business.’
Strength was seeping back into her veins now her initial shock at finding him here had worn off. Her mind began to clear. ‘Does he want to know where his gift from Woodstock is?’
Escrick’s eyes glinted. ‘I knew you’d have something to do with that. Do you know where those absconding losels are?’
‘Yes.’ She spoke with conviction. It was true. They were where this monster and his master could not reach them.
‘Prove it.’
‘Not to you. I’ll speak with Clement or no-one.’
She saw him hesitate. He pulled her closer but she knew he would not knife her just yet.
‘Take me to him, Escrick,’ she urged.
He gripped her round the waist with the blade of the knife against her throat and glared into her eyes. ‘If you’re lying, my beauty, I shall enjoy torturing you with my own hands, very slowly, very painfully and very fatally, and even then it will not end.’
She held his glance. ‘Escrick, I am not lying. I know where they are. Kill me and you’ll never find them.’
‘Say Escrick to me in that voice one more time,’ he muttered hoarsely. ‘Say it as if you mean it.’
Whatever he thought it meant she repeated his name and then his mouth, breathing out foul fumes into her face, came down to envelope hers, biting her lips and forcing his tongue deep into her mouth. She wanted to gag and for a moment she thought he was going to rape her there and then but when he lifted his head it was to make his usual whining plaint. ‘It’s your fault I’ve suffered the wrath of his Holiness, losing those bastards. It was you, helping them escape. You will pay for it, Hildegard. That’s a promise. But later. When we’ve got what we want out of you. Now, get moving.’
He was breathing heavily and she felt that he might change his mind at any moment and ravish her first before dragging her in front of Clement but he pushed her ahead of him, the point of his knife piercing through the layers of her clothes until it broke skin.
**
He forced her along the gallery that ran high up above the floor of the Grand Chamber. It was the best place to view the pattern of the glazed tiles made by the skilled craftsmen from Byzantium on the floor below.
Now, although she was not close enough to the parapet to see, worshippers would be kneeling on them, the pope himself would be standing on them with his arms raised to receive the Eucharist, the choir would sing the responses while standing on them, and an ironic and misplaced holiness would fill the stone vault with its hymns.
Incense was spreading an intoxicating languor as it floated upwards to the gallery. To recall the wayward soul to the ineluctable passage of time a bell sounded, emptying with diminishing overtones into the empyrean.
Escrick was immune to everything but Hildegard. ‘I can’t wait.’ His grasp tightened as he dragged her to a standstill and forced his mouth over hers. The heat from his body carried a powerful stench of raw meat, horse dung and his own personal smell. She tried not to breathe it in. He lifted his mouth from hers long enough to snarl, ‘Shut your eyes as you did in Florence. Surrender to me. Say my name.’ He squeezed one of her breasts but she refused to cry out at the pain. ‘Say it!’ he repeated.
‘Escrick –’ she gasped.
‘Tell me you want me.’ He squeezed again.
‘I want you – ’
‘And only me.’
‘Escrick, I’m fainting – ’
‘Say you want only me.’
‘Only you.’ She was gasping with pain and rage and the violent desire to wrench from out of his grasp but he was overpoweringly strong, no match for any but the most muscle-bound champion of the militia.
He backed her against the wall. Nearby, further along, was a door. It was ajar. As he pressed against her, she moved in his embrace and when he dragged her skirt up she slid along the wall, with Escrick, breathing hard, mirroring her moves until they were close to it. Taking him by surprise, she suddenly wrenched herself from his under his weight and hurled herself through the opening. Putting her shoulder to the door, she slammed it hard into his face as he sprang after her.
He yowled like a wounded beast. Curses followed. It was a moment or two before he recovered sufficiently to throw his full weight against it.
By the time it flew open and he burst after her, she was running up the stairs and into a labyrinth of narrow passages and arcades. Ducking and weaving under the roof supports she ran blindly until, gasping for breath, for life, she squeezed through a gap between two pillars and found herself in an open gully on the outside of the building.
She flattened herself against the stonework and held her breath. Somewhere in the corridor came the clatter of Escrick’s mail boots on the stone paving, followed by a bang as a door ddown below was flung back, more footsteps, this time fading, and then the sound of another door opening, distantly. His footsteps receded.
She glanced round. The last people to walk the gulley must have been the masons as they put the finishing touches to the gargoyles on the roof more than a decade ago.
A cacophony of screeches started up when she made a move. An eagle owl with huge wings outspread was streaking down towards her with its hooked beak darting for her eyes. She pulled her hood over her face and beat wildly to deflect it with her spare hand then began to crawl slowly along the gulley towards a niche behind one of the stone gargoyles. More hawks began to circle the towers of the palace with inhuman screeches at the interloper.
She dare not look down but crouched in terror as the birds corkscrewed into the air then dropped towards her, only at the last moment spinning away with baffled cries as they understood this new prey was unreachable. Their endless screams would surely draw attention to a human interloper in their eyrie. When one of the larger hawks stooped to attack she reached into her sleeve and threw a morsel of bread, earning enough time to crawl further along the gully into a cavity underneath the stone-work. The wind grasped and tuckered and tried to loosen her grip but little by little she edged out of sight of the birds.
There was no sound of Escrick climbing onto the roof. He would not expect her to have risked climbing outside. He would be searching the labyrinth of passages in the tower.
Somehow she forced herself to crawl further along until she found a space out of sight of anyone climbing onto the roof. With the wind still blustering at her robes she tucked the spare fabric into her belt and crouched down to plan a way of escape.
How long would she have to remain here? She would have to sit it out until it seemed safe enough to return inside. A sob of fear at the height of the building blurred her thoughts for a moment but she fought it back. She would not fall if she was careful and it might be some time before Escrick brought help to search her out, some long time before they thought of looking up here for her.
A leering gargoyle with tangled locks provided a vantage point from behind which she could peer down into the main courtyard and yet remain out of sight. As she reached for a handhold, a piece of stone broke off and she saw it go spinning over the edge of the gutter to fall without a sound into the yard far below.
**
Cramped and cold and fearing to move but thankfully still unseen, she watched the comings and goings in the courtyard. Eventually, the recognisable shape of Escrick Fitzjohn appeared, accompanied by a figure wearing a long, black cloak. It must be Athanasius. Someone had set him free.
Both men walked slowly along, staring upwards as if trying to catch sight of a movement that would reveal her hiding place to them. A group of men-at-arms joined them. She was frozen, both with the cold and with the more abstract feeling of fear. She told herself that if she kept still long enough they might go on thinking she had found a hiding place inside and she prayed that they would lead themselves on a wild goose chase and search the hundreds of chambers in the palace. They would probably imagine no woman would dare climb out onto the roof of such a frighteningly high edifice.
The hawks had lost interest in her. If she kept still enough they w
ould forget she was here at all.
She watched the men below through a chink in the sculpted stone as they walked the entire length of the yard with their attention fixed up towards the spires of the roof. Then she watched them walk back again. A crowd of onlookers gathered. Everyone was staring upwards and pointing. She saw Sir John Fitzjohn’s colours down there. No sign of Sir John himself.
Eventually, the men moved off and entered la Grande Chapelle for the next office, followed by a few onlookers. The day shortened. Shadows filled the corners of the yard. Eventually, a posse of riders rounded the corner of the stable yard. They looked like toys, so small and distant were they,
It turned out to be quite a large retinue, prepared for travel by the look of the sumpter wagon that followed. She stared more intently. A litter was slung between two horses. The cardinal on a high-stepping grey was surely Cardinal Fondi. The litter must be carrying Carlotta and her daughter.
When the cavalcade reached the gatehouse a figure in white stepped out to meet them and, with a wave of one hand, watched the horses jostle under the arch onto the lane outside. She daren’t even imagine it was Hubert.
The cavalcade continued to ride out through the walls. She was high enough to see them take the road on the other side going east. Fondi’s pennants fluttered above the wall of the enclave for some distance. He was travelling away, then. Not back to the villa on the other side of the bridge - but taking the road to Urbino.
Escrick Fitzjohn and Athanasius had long since disappeared but some men-at-arms sauntered back, looking about as if they expected Hildegard to appear from out of the ground in front of them. Where was Escrick? Her ears strained to hear the sound of anyone clambering onto the roof but it was the intermittent shrieks of the hawks and the whine of the wind round the gargoyles that assaulted her ears without end.
It was desperately cold. Her teeth would not stop rattling. She pulled her hood over her face and breathed into it to get warm. If she could only stay up here long enough among the stone gryphons, the basilisks and the manticores, and all the other beasts of nightmare the masons had imagined, they might believe she had escaped from the palace altogether.
[Hildegard of Meaux 06] - The Butcher of Avignon Page 31