The Butcher of Avignon (Hildegard of Meaux medieval crime series Book 6)

by Cassandra Clark

  ‘We have said nothing,’ the elder one broke in. Her tone was colder now. She put a hand on her companion’s arm. ‘We saw nothing. We know nothing. It’s only a few days since we arrived here. We simply do as we’re asked as is our duty.’

  ‘The magister,’ Hildegard bit her lip, ‘what were you about to say? You believe I am one of his - ?’

  ‘Nothing,’ the nun shook her head with emphasis. The two women stared at her with hard eyes.

  ‘I’m in the same situation as you,’ Hildegard told them, lowering her voice. ‘I arrived here only a couple of days ago. I hadn’t met nor even heard of Brother Athanasius before I arrived. I can’t see him having any sort of power, trapped by old age and infirmity in his cell as he is. Surely his influence is exaggerated?’

  The younger nun gave her an ironic smile, much like the one she had worn when she thought Hildegard was about to steal the dagger from Maurice. ‘Forgive me, domina, but you would say that, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘I feel contrite to find you have so deeply misunderstood my motive for wanting information from you. All I know is I was asked to fetch the dagger for Cardinal Grizac only to discover that it was missing. I thought you two were best placed to help me find out what might have happened. You could tell me, for instance, if anyone came in to see the body on a pretext of paying their respects.’ She held her tongue on the matter of the two men suggesting that the nuns themselves were thieves. ‘I wonder, was it, perhaps, taken while he was still in the mortuary after the rigour had left him, that would be, say around mid-day or shortly after?’

  ‘The rigour had left him about an hour after sext,’ the elder one confirmed. ‘You can tell the magister that.’

  ‘I feel like telling him nothing, given that he appears to be keeping me in the dark about what’s really going on. I can’t see how I’ve become implicated in the matter at all. My own concerns are far from Avignon, I can tell you.’

  The older nun laughed. ‘I believe you, domina, even if my more sceptical sister does not. I believe we nuns are seen as useful and nothing else. We are not credited with intelligence by the men who run things. I’ve seen enough of it to suspect them all of constant duplicity.’

  ‘Me too,’ her companion reproached her, as if she wanted to affirm her agreement on the matter. ‘We have to support each other and get on with what we believe to be the essential work of our calling, feeding the poor, educating the young, honouring the dead, preserving the teachings of our Order.’

  ‘St Benedict be blessed,’ her companion murmured, crossing herself.

  ‘I wonder then, as we’re in agreement, whether you can tell me exactly what happened from the time when you first saw the body until the time you finished your duties. Who brought him into the mortuary?’

  ‘The same two guards who found him. They’ll tell you that.’

  ‘They’re under a cloud themselves, I gather. Some are assuming they must have killed Maurice as soon as they discovered him.’ Hildegard glanced from one to the other.

  ‘Pointless. They may be stupid, but not to that degree,’ she said, echoing the common sense opinion of the magister.

  ‘The rumour that one of them had stabbed the thief was vigorously refuted.’ She turned to her companion for confirmation.

  ‘Emphatically denied. Why would they knife him before finding out what he was doing there? It’s patent nonsense. “We’re in the clear,” they told us and we believe them. They left us to our duties as soon as they brought his body down. They didn’t take the dagger. It was there when one or two people such as yourself came in afterwards.’

  ‘Can you name the ones who came?’

  The nun shook her head. ‘Servants, a cardinal, half a dozen fellow choristers in tears. We don’t know their names and of course did not ask out of respect for their grief.’

  ‘They left after a short while. The dagger was there when the last one went out but it had gone by the time we returned with the necessities for our trade.’

  ‘So you had to leave the body for a while?’

  ‘Briefly.’

  ‘How long were you absent?’

  ‘Only a short time. We had to find the sacristy for the oil but he was busy with the service for sext so we decided to take part in the tail-end of that.’

  Leaving enough time for someone to enter and remove the dagger from Maurice’s softened grasp?

  ‘Would you have noticed anyone going from the chapel into the mortuary adjoining it?’

  ‘With our eyes shut?’

  **

  The elder nun got up and refilled their beakers. The fact that she included Hildegard showed that her ill-judged connection with Athanasius was no bar to their feeling of sisterhood.

  ‘The cardinal who came in, did you know who he was?’ Hildegard asked.

  They shook their heads. ‘A fine looking fellow, quite elderly but as we said, we didn’t ask anybody their names, naturally.’

  It could have been, in fact almost certainly was, Grizac. He must have noticed whether the dagger was there or not and yet he had said nothing on the matter. After a moment Hildegard asked, ‘Do you think it impossible that the guards might have found out from Maurice what he was doing in the treasury - and then killed him to silence him?’

  ‘Acting on behalf of whom?’

  ‘That I cannot imagine.’

  **

  Before they got up to go the elder nun leaned forward and touched Hildegard on the arm. ‘What you asked just now about the guards is theoretically not impossible, domina, but we still think it unlikely. Isn’t that so?’ she turned to her companion who nodded.

  ‘Those two were as shocked as you might expect the innocent to be at what they found. I cannot believe they were simulating. I’ve seen enough guilty men in my lifetime to know what they look and sound like.’

  ‘I accept what you’re saying, sister. Thank you. I wonder if I may ask one or two more questions about Maurice himself?’

  ‘Anything we can tell you we will.’

  ‘He seemed well-liked if as you say so many came in tears to pay their respects. I wonder if you’d noticed him earlier?’

  ‘Never. I must say I haven’t paid heed to the youths running about the palace. Of course,’ the older nun added, ‘with so many young men attending our superiors, we can’t be expected to recognise them all.’

  ‘And like you, domina,’ the younger nun answered, ‘we’ve been here only a matter of days ourselves. We’re still trying to find out who’s who.’

  No-one better than strangers, then, to take things at face value? Hildegard included herself in this easily duped crew.

  ‘As newcomers it was an honour to be chosen to lay out the body,’ she said finally, ‘so can you tell me who asked you to do that?’

  ‘One of the pope’s house stewards. As is usual.’

  They got up to go, murmuring something about prayers and when Hildegard was alone she refilled her beaker and continued to sit there for some time.

  What little she had gleaned was enough to add to the puzzle.

  The timing of the thief was interesting. He had evidently gone into the mortuary while everyone was at mid-day prayers. If he wanted to prise the dagger from Maurice’s fingers he would have had to know about the effects of rigor mortis. He would also have had to be somebody who was likely to be seen around the chapel without arousing comment, someone who could take his chance when it arose.

  None of the chapel officials could have done it because they were involved very publicly in the ritual of the mid-day office. Those who had sufficient knowledge about the time the body was found and hence the best time to be able to remove the dagger from the corpse were few. There was herself, of course, then Athanasius and Grizac. There was probably also the house steward. Others in the Curia. And the guards. The latter would know the time they found Maurice but would they know exactly when they could pluck the dagger from his hand? It was debatable. Anyway, the nuns were adamant that they had left straightaway and would
have mentioned if one of them had returned.

  One other knew the time when the body was discovered. In English Saxon law he would be called the first-finder. It was Clement himself. The realisation of what this might mean took her breath away. She struggled to make sense of it.

  So far she had no idea why she had been included in the initial inspection in the treasury. As a witness of some kind? The innocent observer whose word, should it come to it, would be taken on trust? But why? Who was acting for whom?

  The cardinal was the one called on to make the official identification of the body. He had presumably been informed by the papal officials that it might be Maurice. Then he had come to Athanasius. That fact implied something about the nature of their relationship. It was an odd one, not friendship exactly, not with Athanasius’s alternate soothing and bullying of Grizac. But, like many relationships, it seemed to be based on a disparity of power.

  And what had the nun said? Athanasius was a power.

  Was that why he had been informed of the murder from the beginning? What sort of power could he wield from his small, bare cell? The nuns had clammed up and become distinctly chilly when his name was mentioned. Maybe some rumour had been picked up by them, a rumour spread by one of Athanasius’s rivals maybe. But how could a harmless old corrodian have rivals?

  Frowning, she sipped her wine. The tormenting question she asked herself was whether the murderer knew Maurice before he drew his dagger on him, or whether it was a case of strike first, think later, an act committed in the heat of the moment. He might have come across him accidentally during the break-in. Did that make his death no more than an accident? Maurice caught in the wrong place at the wrong time? The sense that there was a sinister, planned aspect to his death would not leave her. Someone, other than the guards, had discovered that Maurice had broken into the treasury. It seemed to lead once more to Clement.

  By now, the presence of an accomplice had been somewhat discounted and if it wasn’t an accomplice and a mere thieves’ quarrel, was it fanciful to suspect that the killer had acted with the definite purpose of silencing Maurice? It was an alarming thought. But what could the acolyte know that made it necessary to shut him up? Grizac had been distraught just now. Was it because he knew why Maurice had been silenced?

  She found herself weaving back again to the old question which had still not been resolved, namely, what was Maurice doing in the treasury at all?

  Everyone she had spoken to had jumped to the conclusion that he was after filling his pockets, for why else, they reasoned, would a servant be found in amongst a golden hoard more spectacular than a king’s ransom? In every sense it was certainly the wrong place whatever his excuse for being there.

  With nothing to grasp hold of, no clues, no obvious beneficiary, no sense of a motive, it was as shifting shadows, like the echoing fortress-palace itself, shrouded in darkness, with its secret chambers and ill-lit corridors. Worst of all, there was no-one she could trust to help shed light.

  **

  The tower. The sentry. The same deferral to somebody inside.

  ‘That English nun again, captain.’

  ‘Let her in.’ Then came something barely audible about her wasting her time.

  The sentry returned. ‘Trying to turn them into priests, domina?’

  ‘My greatest hope, captain.’ To deter him from thinking otherwise.

  She climbed the same dank staircase.

  ‘Well, boys,’ she said when she opened the door and saw them playing dice again. Shackled. Throwing quite deftly now, after practice.

  ‘Are we out of here then?’

  ‘Patience is a virtue.’

  ‘So we’re told, domina, but we are less than virtuous, us, praise St Benet.’

  ‘I’ve had a look at the sumpter yard and feel that is not the way. But despair not. We refuse to be daunted.’

  ‘This John Fitzjohn,’ asked Peter. ‘Should we know him?’

  ‘Not especially. He’s a northerner born but bred in one of the houses given over to Gaunt’s mistresses somewhere down in Lincolnshire. He has a younger brother you’d not want to meet on a dark night. A fellow by the name of Escrick Fitzjohn. I’ve been unfortunate to encounter him twice before.’

  ‘To your triumph?’

  ‘I’m pleased to say so, otherwise I doubt whether I’d be able to say anything.’

  ‘Lethal, then?’

  ‘Very. He has the advantage of being extremely plausible such that even with a knife at your throat you can feel you’re in the wrong and he, with his mortal ambitions, has right on his side.’

  ‘I can’t see any smooth talker pulling the wool over your eyes, domina.’

  ‘He didn’t, but I felt a gobbet of compassion every time I met him.’

  ‘Compassion?’

  ‘At how life, or the devil, has made him so desperate he can willingly and defiantly put his soul in jeopardy by his actions. I was gullible when we first met. Softer. Younger. Now, however - ’

  ‘Hard as nails? Battle-hardened?’

  ‘You might say so.’

  He chuckled. ‘For our sake I hope it’s true.’

  ‘Well, that’s Escrick. His brother may be the same for all I know, or he might well be a saint. I’ve never met him before now. He’s had more worldly success, I believe, a fact which may have added to Escrick’s ill-wishing on anyone and everyone.’

  ‘Where is this lethal fellow now, did you say?’

  ‘I didn’t because I don’t know. I imagine he’s far away. He was outlawed but did not stay the three tides. He absconded to join one of the white companies under Hawkwood, got bested in Florence then went I know not where.’

  A chill came over her. His was a name she had not allowed into her thoughts for some time.

  ‘I brought you something to cheer you up,’ she shook off her feeling of foreboding that always returned at the mention of Escrick’s name and placed a flagon of very passable Rhenish on the floor beside them. ‘And this meat. Enjoy it. It’s the last you’ll get before Lent, I expect.’

  ‘Angels do exist. I always hoped they did.’

  **

  As she walked away her thoughts returned to the problem of Maurice’s murderer and she wondered how much Clement himself really knew about the matter. The story seemed simple enough: after lauds he found the treasury broken open and called his guards.

  Did he at that point venture into the stronghold to view the body for himself? Or had he taken the advice of his advisors and left it for them to deal with? If he had seen and recognised Maurice that would be sufficient for Cardinal Grizac to be fearful. Very fearful indeed. But then, why the delay in taking him into custody?

  She remembered how Athanasius had consoled him with the thought that the inquisitors had not yet sent the palace guards for him.

  Grizac’s prime concern seemed to be to save his own skin. Above all he expressed a palpable fear of being implicated in a plot against the pope. He seemed to imagine he would be accused as the mastermind behind the attempted theft. But why would a man as obviously wealthy as Grizac be suspected of stealing, despite the involvement of one of his acolytes? It was preposterous.

  Hildegard frowned. Could his greed be so unbridled as to lead him to such an act? Every instinct made her doubt it.

  She returned to the question of what Clement himself knew of the matter. He made his announcement to the packed Audience Chamber just before prime. Yet the body was apparently discovered shortly after lauds. The delay in making the announcement suggested confusion. And later, was he present when the body was brought out of the narrow space of the treasury and up into his bedchamber? He would know then, at the latest, that the dead youth was Grizac’s acolyte so why the lies, or more charitably, the rumours surrounding the identity of the victim?

  I’m going round in circles, she thought, but she could not stop herself. None of it made sense.

  How, for instance, had the cardinal managed to evade the inquisitors if Clement knew who the boy wa
s? Did Grizac have an even more powerful protector than that afforded by his own eminence? The guards must have recognised Maurice and informed him as soon as the body was discovered. And yet no-one had formally identified Maurice before Athanasius conducted Grizac to the treasury. If his identity had been known by others lower down the pecking order the information would have been impossible to keep secret and would have spread like wild fire round the palace. It was only now that the details were beginning to seep out. So who had kept a cap on things, and why?

  She couldn’t escape the feeling that Grizac and Athanasius knew more than they admitted. She felt they saw her as just a useful fool. Someone to go about asking questions so that it appeared as if something was being done. The secret, whatever it was, shared between the two men, remained. Except that now something had gone wrong. Someone had stolen the dagger and they didn’t know who…and one of them, at least, was worried.

  Again and again she came back to the same questions. Why? Who? Who gains?

  When she reached her guest chamber she halted before opening the door. From within came the sound of a high Scottish voice at prayer. With a sudden change of mind she set off for the Chapel of St Martial instead, slipping into an empty place against the wall just as the priest began his oration.

  **

  The Holy Office of nones. She knew it backwards, made the expected responses on cue, knelt, prayed, stood, sang, chanted the words learned by rote many years ago in the haven of goodness at Swyne.

  On leaving she found Abbot Hubert de Courcy by her side. He paced along for a moment or two then, apparently thinking better of it, and without exchanging a single word, increased his pace and disappeared up a flight of stairs to the consistory.

  Had he wanted to say something? If so it was an odd experience to find him at a loss for words. It was more likely he was waiting for her to make some sign of contrition. She had probably spoken out of turn as usual the last time they met. She sighed, thinking, I’m wearied by all this - the currents and cross-currents of the place - then as she glanced up she saw him leaning over one of the window arches on the staircase of honour. He was looking down at her. When he saw her glance up he hesitated then moved back without acknowledging her and she saw a flash of white as he rapidly ascended the staircase. His intention, whatever it was, only added to her irritation. What, she asked herself, does this place have to do with me? I can’t be drawn into other people’s plots and contrivances to no purpose. I have my own interests to consider and they’re not dependent on the favour of anyone here.