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

by Cassandra Clark

  Obviously she could not trust him. It was futile even to think it.

  **

  And who could she trust now? She had to help the miners to safety. She could not sit by and let good, honest, loyal men be tortured for their innocent part in the games played by the enemies of King Richard. Beset by enemies, she could think of only one source where she might find allies.

  A tug on her sleeve as she stood uncertainly in the ante chamber made her turn. As if summoned by her thoughts, it was Peterkin.

  ‘I’ve been trying to catch up with you since I saw you listening to the petitioners.’ He beamed. In a conspiratorial voice he added, ‘Come up to the next floor after tierce and wait at the top of the steps if you will.’

  He drifted back into the crowd like a wraith.

  **

  Edmund and the guild of pages. She would listen to Edmund and see how she might help him against Fitzjohn. The least she could do was to counsel patience. His time as an esquire would soon be over. He would come of age. Then men like Fitzjohn would have no power over him. She would do what she could although she did not hold out much hope that Fitzjohn could be persuaded to treat Edmund more reasonably. He was not so different as at first appeared to his younger brother, Escrick Fitzjohn. Chips off the old block. As like their father John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster, as made no difference.

  She made her way up the spiral stair that led to the friar’s cell, thinking how the attendants were able to get in anywhere, they were so much part of the busy daily scene.

  They could ask questions among the other members of the retinues. Find out who had been where and when. No-one bothered much about them. She had already seen Peterkin obtaining information for Fitzjohn in the kitchens. She did not doubt that he had been sent there on purpose now she had seen more of what went on.

  They could certainly find out a few things for her too if she asked them. From the French pages, perhaps, who were here at the time of Maurice’s murder. And maybe it was even one of them who had issued what might have been a dare to Maurice. Maybe he was now in fear that he would be found out and accused of murder.

  With the lavender-soaked cloth pressed to her face she made her way along the passage at the top of the steps until she came to the nail-studded door.

  The stink of fox. That was what came suddenly to mind. But it was a gryphon that had brought death, not a fox.

  **

  The old monk was reading at his lectern, peering myopically with a polished glass that enlarged the letters on the page.

  ‘And so the mystery remains,’ he murmured, half to himself but audibly enough. ‘Like a book forever closed to us. So be it.’ He raised his glance and looked across the chamber. ‘We are told that so far everything in the treasury has been accounted for. Is that not good news, domina?’

  ‘If it was a dare to get inside the treasury then it is only to be expected that nothing was taken.’

  ‘And that is now your considered view?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘You sound uncertain?’

  ‘It is a great sorrow to me that a young life should be thrown away on a dare.’

  ‘Ah, yes, mortality, that most transient of states, how lightly we hold it. It is like playing with a bird, sometimes it quickly flies away and is gone forever.’

  He spoke in the tones of one who could not see himself in the role of the bird but only and always as the one with the power to play.

  This was such a sudden insight into his character that it broke over her like shattering glass: his indifference to the death of a young man with his life before him. Maybe he did not know what it was to lose someone close to his heart.

  Maurice must have kin, a mother wondering how her boy fared away from home, a father perhaps, sisters whose thoughts embraced him. She had seen his brother Elfric and his grief-stricken face and could not forget it.

  She realised she was staring at Athanasius as she tried to understand the workings of his heart when she heard him saying, ‘…but our search for the pretty little dagger must still go on, of course.’

  She gazed at him in confusion before she properly understood. ‘Yes,’ she replied belatedly, ‘I suppose it is a costly thing. Clement would not want to lose such an item as that.’

  ‘Quite so. You will do what you can to find it.’

  **

  He takes a lot on himself to be giving me orders, Hildegard grumbled to herself as she reached the fresh air outside his chamber. I’ve come across arrogance before, she thought bitterly, Hubert de Courcy for instance, but Athanasius is more deeply dyed in his own superiority, less given to self-doubts than Hubert.

  It made her reconsider the old man’s role here. Was he simply a corrodian, living out his last days on a papal pension as she was led to believe?

  Most corrodians offered something in return for their bed and board. If not money, then service. What did Athanasius offer?

  **

  Before keeping her meeting with Edmund she wanted to look in on the prisoners to find out if Peter was back from his visit to the office of the inquisition. The guards, she was pleased to note, had been reduced to one. It was the fellow on duty earlier. He was beginning to accept her, even though he put on a suspicious face when he examined the bread, cheese and flagon of wine she was carrying.

  ‘Go on in, then,’ he growled gesturing up the stairway.

  Fearing what she would find she climbed the familiar steps and pushed open the door at the top. To her relief Peter was sitting up in the straw and seemed unharmed.

  ‘What did they do?’ she asked.

  ‘Gave me a thorough questioning but without any of the business with the finger nails. Mebbe they think I’m the soft one.’ He grinned. ‘That’s how I’m playing it. They’re getting nowt from me but stories.’ He tapped the side of his head. ‘They think I’m an addle wit.’

  John, still clearly in pain, asked, ‘So when do we get out of here, domina?’

  ‘I have a plan,’ she whispered with a glance towards the door. She was aware that the guard had followed her up. She put a finger to her lips.

  The guard poked his head into the cell. ‘You lucky lads,’ he observed when he saw Hildegard pouring out two beakers of wine. ‘Better treatment than I get at home.’

  Hildegard lifted her head. ‘Would you like to share a beaker with us, captain?’

  He wasn’t a captain but he blossomed and sidled into the cell. One hand came out to take the clay pot. ‘Merci. A Dieu!’ He gulped it back in one as if fearing to be caught, and returned the empty pot.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ she told him. ‘I know I can trust you to look after these two poor fellows for me.’

  He said something she translated along the lines of ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours,’ and leered in a way perhaps intended to be friendly.

  After a moment or two he sidled out again.

  ‘This, what you just mentioned,’ murmured John with a glance towards the door. ‘What does it entail?’

  ‘Liberty. I can tell you no more. It depends on several factors. Trust me though.’

  ‘We need only to get out of the palace. We can find our own way after that.’

  ‘You’ll need to get out through the town walls as well. The quay lies only a short distance from the river gate to the North. If you make your way there you’ll be able to buy passage on a wine boat or some such. I’ll see what I can fix up.’

  ‘It’s how we get out of here that’s the problem. How many guards are on?’

  ‘Only the one now. They’re beginning to feel you’ll cause no more trouble.’

  Peter growled something and John said, ‘Don’t fret, old son. Once we’re out of here we’re as good as home.’

  ‘How do you work that out?’

  ‘We’ll head up to Aquitaine, of course. Good old English soil. Then we’re home and dry.’

  **

  The young retainers, pages and esquires alike, were expected to bed down close to th
eir lord to be on hand should he require anything, at any time of the night. Edmund and his guild, however, had their secret places where they could keep out of everyone’s notice, meet their fellows, or simply have some time when they were free from being at everybody’s beck and call.

  One of these hidden places was in the lee of a buttress high up under the carved stone ceiling of the Great Audience Chamber.

  ‘Audacious. How did you find such a niche?’ she asked when Peterkin conducted her there shortly after she left the prisoners.

  ‘The French pages showed us. We meet here to compare our respective situations.’ Peterkin, despite his sometimes impish manner, spoke with the gravitas of a churchman. She could easily see him taking holy orders.

  He showed her a gap between the stone carvings. It was like the squint in a church where the priest could spy on his congregation. She looked down. It gave a view into the Great Audience Chamber but the observers, like a priest at the squint, were out of sight. It was a strange experience to be able to see the tops of the heads far below, tonsures, coloured hoods, hair flowing loose or cropped in punishing strictness.

  She sought out Hubert de Courcy and found him, broad-shouldered in his white robes, flanked by his two companions, standing near the dais. ‘His supporters’ he had called them, one thick-set and alert, the other, tall and supple with, intriguingly, the strange watchfulness of a swordsman.

  ‘Very good,’ she remarked, filing her impressions away.

  The floor of the secret hide was covered in straw and she imagined some of the boys would bed down here when they got the chance of a decent sleep.

  ‘This is the only place we will not be seen or overheard, domina. It’s important for us all that we are not known to be allies. I beg you listen to us.’

  ‘Are we allies?’ she asked.

  Peterkin nodded. ‘I fervently hope so. We’re mightily troubled by the death of Maurice. We’re vowed to find his killer.’

  ‘How can I help?’

  ‘We know you attend Lord Athanasius. He has eyes and ears throughout the palace of course.’

  ‘Of course?’

  Peterkin looked surprised. ‘But you must know that? We hear he’s master of the foreign intelligencers which is why we’re somewhat puzzled that you show us some sympathy.’

  A stillness came over the group.

  ‘Unless she’s a spy as well,’ interrupted a boy she had not noticed until now. He rose from his nest among the straw and stepped forward into the drizzle of light through the squint. He was a tall, handsome French boy, the one she had noticed tilting at the quintaine earlier. The one who had accepted Elfric’s challenge with such alacrity.

  He gave her an adult and rather ironic shrug of the shoulders. ‘We know nothing about you, domina. These English innocents are driven by sentimentality.’

  ‘I doubt that. You should already know they can’t be taken in.’

  ‘If you mean their feints in the tilt yard I grant you, they’re shrewd enough, but this is a matter of deep cunning and we know nothing of you.’

  ‘And I know nothing of you. Sometimes trust is all we have.’

  He nodded at this. ‘But we risk putting our lives in your hands if we admit too much. Even by inviting you here we’re in for serious punishment should our lords find out.’

  ‘I promise no word of this shall ever pass my lips,’ she told him, ‘nor find its way onto the written page either,’ she added when she saw him about to pick her words apart.

  She glanced round. ‘Where is Edmund?’

  ‘He’s delayed by Sir Jack, told to redo some piddling task as usual.’

  ‘Shall we wait for him?’

  ‘He won’t be long.’

  ‘In return for any help I can offer you I would ask your help in return.’ She bit her lip. It was maybe going too far to put such a burden on young shoulders after all.

  Just then a shadow slipped in through the opening into the secret niche and Edmund flung himself on to the straw with a groan of frustration. His hand went automatically to his cheek as he looked round at the others and Hildegard saw a bruise already beginning to appear.

  He noticed her and at once got to his feet and made a courtly flourish. His smile was grave. ‘Welcome, domina. Forgive my abrupt entrance. That man continues to enrage me.’

  ‘I’m honoured to be invited. I hope we may assuage your anger somehow.’

  ‘Your lady nun has offered her services in return for our help in some matter of her own,’ said the French boy.

  ‘Taillefer, may I remind you that the Cistercian Order is French and that we English find their presence in our country problematical?’ Peterkin went over and stretched up to push him on the shoulder in reproof. ‘If anyone should have doubts about a Cistercian nun, it should be us. But I pray you remember, not all monastics are painted in the same colours.’

  ‘Bien sur.’ Taillefer grinned, not at all contrite, and gave another of his expressive shrugs.

  ‘Boys, listen to me. Let’s not pick fights. What I can tell you is that Athanasius is determined to find the dagger that was in Maurice’s hand when he died. He believes it was stolen by the murderer and its whereabouts will lead us to him.’ She paused for a moment before adding, ‘I believe it’s the dagger that really concerns him.’

  ‘Valuable is it?’

  ‘So he suggests.’

  ‘Whether it is or not, he will not want the murderer’s identity broadcast around the palace,’ exclaimed Taillefer. ‘He’ll want to deal with the man himself in private.’

  The English boys looked at him in alarm.

  ‘That’s the way things are done here,’ he warned them. ‘The old fellow will search him out and have him assassinated. All that will show he ever existed will be an empty space at table. And someone else will soon fill that.’

  ‘We’ll set out to find this dagger, then,’ said Edmnd.

  ‘And we’ll get to it first.’ Taillefer spoke with great firmness. ‘If it leads us to the murderer of our beloved friend Maurice we’ll emulate our lords and show the killer no mercy.’

  Hildegard murmured something about the rule of law but Edmund was already affirming what Taillefer had said. ‘Why the magister wants it so desperately is nothing to us. We should definitely be the ones to find it and bring Maurice’s killer to justice.’

  ‘Consider it done, domina.’ This was Taillefer again. ‘We’ll assume the dagger has been stolen by the murderer. We’ll track it down and thus identify him. Then we’ll make him pay for his crime against us. So I make my vow.’

  The boys gripped each other’s wrists, murmuring, I vow it.

  ‘Now,’ statesmanlike Taillefer turned to Hildegard. ‘What is the boon you ask of us?’

  ‘Again, it’s a matter of life and death.’

  They gathered closer. Peterkin, Edmund, Taillefer, and Bertram with young Simon and Elfric beside him, all listened intently while she told them about the miners and unfolded her plan to set them free. Afterwards she warned them that they were at liberty to reject what she was asking of them and she would not lodge any blame with them. But even before the words were out they were offering their support.

  ‘For King Richard and the true commons!’ exclaimed Bertram. The others, including Taillefer, echoed him.

  **

  Before she left she stood at the squint with Edmund and looked down into the Great Audience Chamber, at Clement, in his malign magnificence. It was easy to see from this height how the dull-witted, the penitential and the superstitious could wish to hand over their moral destiny to such a figure.

  Robed in scarlet velvet, gold encrusted, his triple crown on his head, and with powerful features, he looked convincingly omniscient. He seemed more than human, as if he could easily take all the crimes and petty sins his adherents had committed and absolve them of any need to make reparation.

  They would be forgiven with the lift of one of his beringed fingers. He would smile on them, his faithful servants, and with that hau
ghty disdain it would be like god himself taking them into his embrace.

  Hildegard could not forget Cesena and the thousands slaughtered.

  **

  Edmund walked alongside her down the passage towards the guest quarters. ‘You have doubts about our ability to carry out the plan,’ he observed.

  ‘Is it obvious?’

  ‘A wisp of smoke, no more. I praise Sir Jack for making me sensitive to the slightest change in someone’s demeanour. Danger. My thumbs prick.’ He turned to her. ‘Tell me?’

  ‘My qualms are this. You are all so young. I know you will not see that as a problem. Indeed, you probably think the weak link is me, because I’m so old.’

  He laughed. ‘Age, time. It’s natural for us to see anyone not of our years as either a baby whose babble is not worth considering, or as so old their ears are clogged with the world’s filth and their vision turned to fog. We stand between the two.’

  ‘Edmund, I am neither old nor clogged with filth or fog.’

  ‘I beg your pardon, domina. I would except you from that judgement. I meant only men like Sir Jack. It was the worst of sweeping judgments, the sort we make without thinking - until we think.’

  Edmund had clearly spent a lot of time at the royal court. It made him both too world wise and somehow too innocently idealistic.

  ‘I see the need to free those two prisoners clearly enough, whether I’m fogged up or not,’ Hildegard continued. ‘But I fear I’m asking too much of you. I fear for you. I cannot promise that this will not be a dangerous undertaking. Things can so easily go wrong. You could suffer.’

  ‘We’re eager to engage. And besides, what alternative do you have but to include us? Where else can you find help in a place like this? And, like you, we cannot sit by and let Englishmen suffer the agony of torture at the hands of Clement’s inquisitors. And remember also,’ he continued before she could interrupt, ‘we have the guiding star of immortal Prince Edward ever before us.’

  ‘Prince Edward?’

  ‘Our king’s illustrious war lord father who took his first command at the age of fourteen during the glorious battle of Crecy. Fourteen! I’m nearly seventeen,’ he added.