Conspiracy

by Stephanie Merritt

  Jacopo fell silent then, and did not ask me anything more until we arrived at the gates of the prison.

  He showed Catherine’s seal to the soldiers on the gates and we were waved through. The squalid gaoler was fetched, the growth on his face looking more malignant in the light. He squinted at me for a moment before recognition dawned. A curdled laugh escaped from his throat.

  ‘I remember you. Homesick, were you? Missing the old place?’

  ‘You will recall I mentioned my friends at the palace,’ I said calmly. He blanched, and the laughter died on his lips. I gestured to Jacopo. ‘This is Signor Corbinelli, secretary to the Queen Mother.’

  Jacopo held out Catherine’s seal again. ‘You have been taking bribes to keep a prisoner here illegally. We have orders from the Queen Mother to release him.’

  The mockery in his eyes gave way to fear. ‘But – I can’t allow—’

  ‘We are also commanded to arrest anyone who tries to obstruct us, in the name of Queen Catherine,’ Jacopo said, with the same steady air of authority.

  ‘He’s dead,’ the man said, panicking.

  ‘You’re a poor liar,’ I said.

  ‘Honest to God – he died this morning.’

  ‘I’d like to see for myself.’ I tried to shoulder past him but he blocked me, barring the entrance with his outstretched arms.

  ‘Look, I’ll lose my head if I let you take him.’ His voice was shrill with fright now.

  ‘You’ll lose it quicker if you don’t,’ I muttered.

  ‘No, he won’t,’ Jacopo said, behind me. ‘Beheading is for the nobility. He won’t be granted anything like that kind of dignity in the manner of his death. There’ll be nothing quick about it.’

  ‘Oh, Jesus.’ The man crossed himself as he stepped aside. ‘I only did as I was ordered, you understand – I didn’t know he wasn’t supposed to be here.’

  ‘You can save that for later. Just show us where he is.’

  He led us back through the warren of passageways leading through the old Palais, until we stopped at the hatch of the dungeon. A shudder passed through me at the memory of it.

  ‘He’s in no fit state to be moved,’ the gaoler said, as he lowered a ladder down into the stinking darkness. His manner had turned ingratiating, as if he thought that cooperation was his best hope of immunity. ‘You’ve seen him, monsieur. You take him through the streets this cold night, it’ll kill him.’

  ‘Because he is so warm and comfortable now?’ I gave him a hard look. ‘It will be better for his health than staying where he is, I assure you.’

  I took the lantern, filled my lungs and climbed down into the oubliette, trying to hold my breath against the stench. I had not forgotten those minutes of blind terror when I had believed I might be here for good; the fetid air stung my eyes, sharp with ammonia, bringing the memory back all the clearer. The dungeon was freezing, a bone-deep, damp cold that seeped in through the skin. From a corner, a scuffling noise alerted me to the presence of the prisoner, somewhere in the shadows beyond the reach of the lantern. I held up the light and picked out the wasted figure of the Count, cowering in a corner and making that strange inhuman whimpering sound I had heard before. He looked even more like a corpse than the last time I had seen him, if that were possible. Fighting my instinctive revulsion, I approached him slowly. He lifted his sightless sockets and appeared to sniff the air.

  ‘Who is there?’ he said, in that cracked voice.

  ‘Monsieur. Don’t be afraid. I have come to help you.’ I reached out and laid a hand on his arm. He shrank away from me. It was like touching dead flesh. ‘We are going to take you away from here, my lord.’

  He tilted his head towards me. ‘Why do you call me that?’

  ‘You are a count, my lord. You are the Comte de Saint-Fermin.’

  ‘No longer. I am a dead man.’

  ‘Not if I can help it,’ I said grimly. ‘Do you remember me? I was with you here a few days ago. The Italian.’

  He made an empty noise that might even have been laughter. ‘Days, years. I cannot distinguish one from another. It is all just darkness. The mind longs for oblivion, but the body stubbornly endures, beyond all reason.’

  I should have realised he would have no concept of time passing. After a pause I felt his bony fingers clutch at my sleeve. ‘There was an Italian boy here,’ he said, lifting his chin as if listening for some prompt from the past. ‘He spoke to me of Circe.’

  ‘Your wife,’ I prompted, folding my hand over his.

  ‘In name, perhaps. But she was never mine, in her heart.’ I wanted to press him further, but he fell into a coughing fit that threatened to tear his fragile frame apart. When it subsided, I hooked an arm under his.

  ‘Come with me. You will have food and warmth, and rest. You will be free.’

  ‘Free.’ That dusty laugh again. To my surprise, I felt him resist with what little strength he had. ‘I am dying, boy. It no longer matters to me where I do it.’

  ‘It matters to me, my lord. If I leave you here, you will be dead by tomorrow.’

  ‘Then it cannot come soon enough.’

  ‘Please, my lord.’ I slackened my grip and bent closer to him. ‘What do you dream of, in here, when you remember your old life?’

  ‘The sun on my face,’ he said, without hesitation. He lifted his ravaged eyes upward. ‘Birdsong.’

  ‘Would you not like to feel that again, before you die?’

  The claws around my arm tightened their grip.

  ‘I believe you would,’ I persisted. ‘I’m afraid it is December, so there are limits, but we will do our best. I can probably rustle up a seagull.’

  He did not speak, but he stopped trying to pull away and I thought I saw him incline his head.

  ‘This journey will hurt you,’ I said, draping his skeletal arm around my shoulder. ‘I cannot help that, and I’m sorry for it. But at the end, there will be a soft bed, and hot food, and rest.’

  ‘Come, then,’ he said, in a voice so thin it was barely the ghost of a whisper.

  I do not know how he endured the journey without screaming; thirteen years in that dungeon must have taught him a stoicism I could not begin to imagine. His limbs were so wasted he could not stand on his own, much less walk; though he weighed less than a child when I lifted him, it set my teeth on edge to feel how I was jolting him in trying to climb the ladder and hand him up to where Jacopo and two of the Palais guard were waiting to haul him through the hole. It was Jacopo who cried out in horror when he saw the emaciated figure. We wrapped him in the spare cloak and with the help of a mounting block he was lifted into the saddle in front of me, where he slumped in my arms without a sound as we made our slow way back over the river to the rue des Tournelles, Jacopo walking beside us with the guards as escorts. I heard the chink of coins as he dismissed them at the door and sent them on their way, with instructions to return the horse to the Hotel de Montpensier and explain that they had found it running loose in the street. I watched them guiltily while they led Charlemagne away, his hooves ringing on the iron-hard ground as the blur of their lantern gradually faded into the night, and hoped that Francesco and his friends were not being punished for my rash decision to abscond with Guise’s horse. After I had specifically promised him I would not steal anything of value.

  TWENTY

  Jacopo’s steward appeared and between us we carried the Count upstairs to one of the guest rooms. He looked so broken when we laid him on the bed that even the physician turned pale; it would not have surprised me to learn that the journey had killed him. But the physician confirmed he was still breathing, and called briskly for hot water and clean linen to be brought before urging me and Jacopo from the room and promising to fetch us when he had examined the patient.

  Jacopo asked the steward to bring us a jug of hot wine in his study. He gestured me to a chair near the hearth, while he hurried across to his desk and tidied away the book and papers lying there. Then he pulled up a chair opposite, threw anoth
er log on to the fire and poked it until the sparks jumped up like a furnace. When it was blazing higher, he leaned forward, elbows on his knees, chin propped on his fists, and stared into the flames, his expression unreadable.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, when I could no longer stand the silence. ‘I put you in a difficult position, I know.’

  He did not shift his posture, merely turned his head to look at me.

  ‘I can barely frame my thoughts into words, Bruno. How could he have been down there for thirteen years without anyone knowing? Even the poorest wretch in the kingdom would not let his dog live like that.’ He shook his head, gazing at the fire again.

  ‘I suppose no one inspects the prisons,’ I said. ‘It was Guise’s doing – all of it. He blinded the Count on Saint Bartholomew’s night and threw him in that dungeon. He’s been paying them to keep him there ever since.’

  ‘But why? What use is the Count to him in that state?’

  ‘I don’t know. But it has something to do with Circe. Léonie de Châtillon. She was married to him.’

  ‘So she was.’ Jacopo stared at me, his face creased with concern. ‘Why do you say that?’

  I related the conversation I had heard from the Duchess of Montpensier’s balcony.

  ‘Guise distinctly said that now the girl was dead, she would not cause them any trouble. His sister then said the Count should die too. Guise was going to kill him in the morning.’

  ‘So they had no further use for him without Léonie. But why, I wonder?’

  ‘I am hoping the Count will be able to tell us.’

  ‘I wouldn’t depend upon it, Bruno.’ He leaned forward and poked the fire again. ‘Moving him like that almost finished him off, the physician said. He may not last the night. Even if he rallies, do you not think his mind will be as broken as his body, after thirteen years in that pit?’

  ‘I think his wits are sharper than you might imagine,’ I said. ‘We can only hope.’

  ‘What in God’s name were you doing on the Duchess’s balcony, anyway?’

  ‘I was in her room looking for a letter.’

  ‘What letter?’

  ‘Any one. I needed to see her handwriting.’

  I explained about the letters to Joseph de Chartres from his mystery lover. Jacopo listened, his frown growing more entrenched.

  ‘But now you think the Duchess is not the mistress after all?’ he asked, when I had finished.

  ‘Not as far as I can see. But Guise is behind all this somehow, Jacopo, I know it – all three deaths. I just cannot find one piece of evidence that will tie him to it conclusively. Still, perhaps we can take comfort in having saved one life tonight. Or at least making his death more dignified.’

  ‘Poor, poor man. I cannot bear to think of what he has suffered. He was accounted very handsome once, you know. And a fine soldier.’ He clenched and unclenched his fists. ‘I sometimes think the Duke of Guise is the Devil incarnate.’

  ‘It was Guise I saw in the Greek mask on his way to the clearing, around the time Léonie was killed. I got into a scuffle with him – he took my knife from me. Two days later, he gave it to the Duke of Montpensier.’ I took a sip of wine and wrapped my hands around the glass to warm them. ‘I am certain Guise must have been the one Léonie was expecting to meet, when she blurted out to me that she could not go through with it. He planned to use her to attack the King. It is the only explanation that fits.’

  Jacopo let out a sigh. ‘It is one explanation, certainly. But as you say, you have no proof beyond one overheard conversation that can easily be denied, and another with a girl who is now dead, and can tell us nothing at all.’

  ‘The Count may know something.’

  ‘He may, but who would take his testimony seriously, in his state?’ He scratched the tuft of hair in the centre of his balding pate. ‘All this is speculation.’

  ‘But I have a feeling we are drawing closer to the truth than we have been all along,’ I said.

  ‘Still, only this mysterious lover can prove or disprove Guise’s involvement.’ He refilled my glass and his own and sat back, his hands folded in his lap, contemplating the flames. ‘You say she persuaded Joseph de Chartres to kill Lefèvre for fear he – de Chartres – would be denounced as a spy? No mention of this conspiracy involving Circe that you thought was the reason for the priest’s death?’

  ‘No. That was odd, I grant you. Perhaps she feared to put that in writing.’

  ‘Hm. A spy for whom, though? I thought de Chartres was a loyal League man.’

  ‘Christ, I don’t know.’ I put my head in my hands. ‘In this city it could be anybody. The young curate at Saint-Séverin mentioned that he’d heard Lefèvre calling Joseph Judas. Perhaps it was true that he had discovered a betrayal.’

  ‘And I suppose you still won’t heed my advice to leave this business altogether?’ he asked gently.

  ‘How can I? When I am so close. If I can give the King this, Jacopo – proof that will publicly condemn Guise and his associates for murder – he will be in my debt.’

  ‘You think he will give you back your position at court?’ I heard the scepticism in his voice.

  ‘I would not expect that. I only want modest financial support and immunity from persecution for my books. A post at the University, perhaps.’

  Jacopo ran a hand across his head and did not look at me. ‘For himself, Henri might do that much, but I don’t know if Catherine would permit it. In any case, you will not get much sense out of the King at the moment. Léonie’s death seems to have affected him badly. He has fallen into one of his fits of melancholy and will see no one.’

  ‘Then the surest way to lift him from it is to bring her killer to justice.’

  ‘What do you propose? Break into the house of every woman who associates with the Catholic League and steal a sample of her handwriting?’

  I shifted in my chair. The pain in my hip from my impetuous leap earlier was growing worse. ‘If that is what it takes.’

  He sighed. ‘Ah, Bruno. Your stubbornness will be your undoing, one way or another.’

  An hour ticked by. Jacopo returned to his desk to continue with his paperwork. I picked up a book and tried to read, but I could barely keep my eyes open. Overhead the boards creaked in different tones as the physician moved about the room. My clothes smelled of the gaol again, and from carrying the Count; I caught the stink rising from them in the heat of the fire. Eventually there came a discreet tap at the door and the physician entered, wiping his hands on a linen cloth.

  ‘He is more comfortable now. I’ve given him a draught to help him sleep.’ He shook his head, amazed. ‘He must have the constitution of a lion, to have survived in that condition for so long. Man’s capacity for endurance is remarkable.’

  ‘Will he live?’ I asked, standing.

  He gave me a frank look. ‘For a while. But do not expect too much. His health is in shreds. He will not get well again, in the sense that you might understand it. His body has been destroyed.’

  ‘But, for now …?’

  ‘I see no immediate danger. There is no trace of gaol fever that I can detect.’ He turned to Jacopo. ‘I will return in the morning. If he wakes, I recommend a thin chicken stock – nothing more substantial. His stomach will not cope with it. And – ah – if we might discuss the matter of the fee …?’

  ‘I will sit with him, in case he wakes,’ I offered, partly because I did not want to hear how much the Count’s life was going to cost Jacopo. That was something else we would have to work out when – if – I eventually had any reward from Henri.

  The bedchamber was warm and airless, hazy with woodsmoke from the fire that had been stoked high and now blazed fiercely. A faint vegetal trace of medicinal herbs lingered, but it was not enough to disguise the smell of decaying flesh. The Count lay stretched out under blankets, perfectly still, dwarfed and shrunken against the plump pillows. The doctor had bathed him and dressed his wounds, clothed him in a clean nightshirt and taken the worst of the fil
th from his face, but if anything this only made his wasted flesh seem more naked, the scarred tissue around his empty sockets more ghastly. He looked entirely bloodless, like a mummified corpse, as if you could snap off one of the desiccated limbs and nothing would spill out but dead insects and dust. But he was alive, I reminded myself, and free.

  I fell asleep in the chair by his bed. I do not know how many minutes or hours passed, but I was awakened by a choking noise; I lunged forward and lifted him, holding his torso upright while his breath rattled in his chest like a handful of stones thrown down a dry well. When the coughing fit subsided, he slumped back into my arms. I thought he was asleep; I was about to lay him down once more when he drew a scraping breath.

  ‘I dreamed I felt the wind on my face.’

  ‘You did,’ I said, amazed and delighted to hear him speak, though he was barely audible. ‘I’m sorry I could not arrange the sun, but it’s the middle of the night in December. Soon it will be spring, though,’ I continued, trying to sound encouraging. ‘When you are well again, you will be able to sit outside in the sun and hear the birdsong.’

  ‘I do not think I will see the spring, boy.’ His hand clawed for mine. ‘I dreamed they gave me something to take away the pain. And that I was lying in a feather bed. I think I am still dreaming it.’ His voice was faint and full of wonder.

  ‘No, it is real.’ I held his hand. ‘You are safe now.’

  ‘Such kindness,’ he murmured. ‘I never thought to hear a kind word again.’

  Tears pricked at my eyes; I could not let go of his hand to brush them away.

  ‘Why did you save me?’ he asked, running his tongue around his cracked lips.

  ‘You have been the victim of a terrible injustice,’ I said, fighting to keep my voice steady. ‘And—’ I hesitated – ‘he was going to kill you. The Duke of Guise.’

  ‘Ah.’ He nodded. ‘Le Balafré. He killed them all, you know.’

  ‘What?’ I tried not to jolt him as I tensed. I did not see how this could be true – Joseph had killed Lefèvre, for a start – but I wondered what more the Count knew. ‘How do you know?’