Conspiracy

by SJ Parris

  I turned my steps away from the gate and followed the path back to the outbuilding. Feeling along the shelf behind the door where Cotin had found the lantern, my fingers closed over a stub of candle. I drew my tinder-box from the pouch at my belt and fumbled with frozen and trembling fingers to strike a spark from it. The room was a chaos of broken stone, metal and glass, strewn over the floor where he had pulled the crates down to slow me. Scrabbling one-handed while I tried to hold up the feeble light, I found my knife, then unearthed the statue, still tangled in its cloak, and bundled it under my arm.

  The damp air snuffed my candle as soon as I stepped outside. After a couple of attempts to relight it I was forced to concede that I did not have the time to lose; I would have to rely on my sense of direction. If the King’s guards had not stopped my attacker, there was always the chance that he would run around the perimeter of the abbey wall and try to enter another way, but the main gate would be barred at this hour and surely he would not want to wake the gatekeeper and explain himself. My guess was that he would wait and return eventually through the back wall in search of the statue. I had no idea what time it might be by now, but I must not be found sneaking around the abbey when the friars were awakened for the office of Matins at two o’clock. I could not afford to end up wandering lost in the mist. From the storehouse I set out through the trees away from the wall that separated the abbey grounds from the river path and tried to steer myself in a straight line. As a novice, I had been taught to recite certain Psalms as a means of measuring time without the need for clocks or church bells, and though I no longer spoke them in worship, I still had them all by rote, and they proved useful when I needed to mark the passing time. So it was that, after around ten minutes of determined walking, one step after another, into the white blankness, I saw the bulk of the abbey church against the sky a hundred yards ahead. Relieved, I quickened my steps towards it and the cloisters that lay beyond; in my haste I collided with a tall figure who reared up out of the mist, arms outstretched over me. I stifled a cry and jumped back, dropping the statue and grabbing for my knife as my heart hammered at my ribs, but my assailant did not move. After a moment, my shoulders slackened and I let out a panicked laugh at my own folly. I had run into a stone angel, wings spread, empty eyes raised to heaven. Taking another step back I almost fell over an object at knee height; I turned to find a moss-covered cross and realised I had wandered into the abbey cemetery. Picking my way through the graves, I found a path that I could follow as far as the church. There had been plenty among my brothers at San Domenico who would have been gibbering prayers to the Virgin and all the saints had they found themselves alone in a mist-shrouded graveyard at this hour, but I had never shared that monkish fear of the unquiet dead. It was only the living who would creep up on silent feet and put a blade in your neck.

  There was no trace of light from the windows of the library, but the door was unlocked, so I slipped in as quietly as I could and lit my candle. Shadows leapt back and I felt a pulse of affection at the sight that greeted me; Cotin had fallen asleep at his desk with his head on an open book, resting on the crook of his arm, his lamp burned down beside him. I crouched and shook him by the shoulder.

  ‘Wha—?’ He jerked awake, turning unfocused eyes on me. I motioned for him to be quiet.

  ‘Where’s Albaric’s cell?’

  ‘Eh? Dear Lord, what happened to your face?’

  ‘Not important. I need to look in Albaric’s cell. You have to show me which one it is.’

  He levered himself up, wincing at the complaints of his joints. ‘I had hoped not to see you again tonight.’ He eased his neck from side to side.

  ‘My apologies. We need to hurry.’

  ‘Why, what hour is it?’

  ‘No idea. But he could return any moment.’

  ‘It is him, then? You are sure?’

  ‘No. But it seems the most likely possibility. He had a key and there was nothing wrong with his hand.’ I ran my tongue along my swollen lip and tasted blood. ‘That’s why I want to see his cell.’

  Cotin eyed the statue under my arm, muttered a half-hearted protest and motioned for me to follow. At the door, he blew out my candle, in case the light gave us away to the night watch, and we both pulled our hoods around our faces. Keeping to the shadows against the walls, he led me around the arcades of the cloister and into the courtyard behind. The friars’ dormitory, directly ahead, was a long building of unadorned stone with rows of individual cells on two storeys facing one another across a wide corridor. I followed him up the first flight of stairs to the upper level. From the recess of the staircase, he pointed to the left-hand row of doors and held up four fingers. My eyes had begun to grow accustomed to the dark; I handed him the statue and left him hidden on the stairs while I crept along until I came to the fourth door. I glanced about me to either side before putting my hand to the latch. The atmosphere was oddly silent here, not even the usual snores or grunts you might expect from a house of sleeping men. It was as if every friar were holding his breath in anticipation. All the doors I could see appeared to be closed fast, but in my experience that did not necessarily mean no one was looking.

  I let myself into Albaric’s room without a sound, keeping my hood up, and struck my tinder-box until the damp candle caught flame. By its light I saw a plain table against the wall by the door, with a large leather-bound book lying on it. That would be a place to start, at least; letters might be hidden between pages or inside bindings. I picked up the book, trying to hold the candle steady, but the volume was too large to lift with one hand, and as I was shaking it by the spine it slipped from my grasp and landed with a loud slap on the table. I froze, every muscle taut and trembling, eyes fixed on the door as I waited to see if the noise had disturbed anyone.

  ‘What in Jesu’s name—?’ said a voice behind me.

  I whirled around with a gasp, to see Frère Albaric sitting up on the mattress against the far wall, tangled in a woollen blanket. He stared at me, equally amazed, his eyes dazed and puffy with sleep. His hair stood up in tufts around his tonsure; one cheek was marked with a crease from his sheet and I could see that he was wearing a linen nightshift. His face bore the naked vulnerability that comes from being jolted out of deep sleep. I had been so convinced that he must have been the man in the storeroom I had no more than glanced at the bed to register a heap of blankets. I recovered my presence of mind before he did and blew out the candle as I slipped back into the corridor, hoping he had not had a chance to see my face.

  A hand shot out from the darkness and grabbed my arm as I emerged; I jumped again, but it was Cotin, pressed up against the wall.

  ‘Frère Joseph is not in his cell,’ he whispered, pulling me by the sleeve and pointing me to a door on the opposite side, towards the far end. I scuttled along, hoping that Albaric would conclude he had imagined a figure from his nightmares and fall back to sleep without feeling the need to raise an alarm.

  I eased the door of Joseph’s cell shut behind me and leaned against it, trying to slow my breathing. When I had managed to light the candle again, I saw that the almoner’s room was laid out much as Albaric’s, though the few furnishings were more obviously expensive: a mattress on a wooden pallet under a small arched window, set high in the wall opposite the door; on the right-hand side, a table and on the left, a wooden trunk. At least this time the bed was empty; from the tumbled sheets it looked as if Joseph had left in a hurry. The table was also bare, save for a branched silver candlestick, but to my relief, the chest was not padlocked. I opened the lid and began to pull out whatever I could find: good quality linen undershirts; a pair of leather shoes; a rosary of amber beads, smooth as glass; a tortoiseshell comb… but nothing more. Not in a trunk open to anyone; I should have realised. I cast around to see where else he might have hidden personal effects. The room held no other furniture, no cupboards, no drawers. Where had I squirrelled away the writings I wanted to keep from prying eyes when I was a friar? My eyes lighted on the ma
ttress.

  I fixed my candle into the silver holder on the table and set it down by the bed so that I could grope along the underside of the mattress until I felt a split in the seam, just large enough to slip a hand inside; through the lumps of horsehair my scrabbling fingers closed around a sheaf of papers. I drew them out and untied the ribbon binding them as I brought them closer to the light. The topmost sheet was instantly recognisable; another crude sketch of King Henri mincing in women’s clothes while two sly-looking young men with lascivious pouts wrapped their fists around the sceptre he held erect in his lap, above a set of satirical verses about the Queen Mother’s desperate recourse to witchcraft to secure a Valois heir. The paper beneath was more unusual: it showed a series of drawings depicting a variety of imaginative forms of torture and execution, while a queen looked on, the name ‘Elizabeth’ emblazoned above her head. The text was an impassioned plea, shorn of all ribald jokes, urging the people of France to consider the plight of their fellow Catholics in England, and to rise up and exterminate heresy before they too suffered the same fate at the hands of the Protestants. The writer ended his polemic by calling on true Catholics to finish the work begun on the glorious night of Saint Bartholomew’s – an extraordinary exhortation for which he would certainly be executed, if his authorship could be proved. The style – and I could almost swear the handwriting – were identical to the ones I had found in Paul’s room. That, at least, was evidence of a connection between Frère Joseph and the murdered priest.

  But there was another paper beneath, of better quality and written in a different hand. As I read, I felt my eyes widen.

  Your fingerprints your mouth your tongue burn my skin long after you are gone. Only you know the secret places of my body, the way I ache for you, in the knowledge I should not. Yet for all the judgement and scorn arrayed against us, for all the punishment that might befall us if it were known, I would not have given up one single hour in your embrace. You consume me. My desire wills me to you like a hawk towards home.

  Followed by more in this vein, though it was neither signed nor dated; hot words for a friar who had taken a vow of celibacy. Joseph was running a great risk in keeping such an inflammatory letter, but perhaps his high birth gave him immunity from routine searches. I held the paper up to my face and sniffed it; faint traces of perfume lingered behind the smell of stale horsehair. The writing was distinctive, the letters embellished with elaborate flourishes; an educated hand, but belonging to someone with a taste for ostentation. I decided to keep the note; Joseph de Chartres may be well connected, but proof of a forbidden love affair might make him vulnerable. I was not sure how much could be achieved without a signature to the letter, or any means of identifying his correspondent, but it would surely make him nervous to suspect that someone else had it in their possession, and that might give me leverage.

  I tucked the papers carefully into the secret pocket sewn into the lining of my doublet – an alteration I had had made to all my clothes when I lived in London, for just such a purpose. Reaching again into the mattress to check I had not missed anything, I rummaged around until my fingertips touched another object; this time a leather purse, tied with a drawstring. I opened it and tipped the contents into my palm: two gold écus and a torn strip of paper, on which was scribbled, in the same hand as the pamphlets, Brinkley, 28 11 4h.

  Was it a code? Who or what was Brinkley? It was an English name, if I was not mistaken. Many of the émigrés who had fled to Paris rather than renounce their faith under Elizabeth had established connections with the Catholic League; if Joseph de Chartres was involved in distributing propaganda against the King, he might also be collaborating with the English Catholics – the anti-Elizabeth pamphlet among his papers suggested as much. Or perhaps Brinkley was a reference to the mistress, and the money was for her. As I stared at them, it struck me that perhaps it was not a cipher at all, but a far more obvious explanation – 4h could mean simply a time, quatre heures, in which case the other numbers might be the date. The 28th of November was tomorrow. A rendezvous, then? Even if my guess were correct, I had no way of knowing where or with whom, but at least it was one more thin thread I could follow, now that I was certain that Joseph must be Paul Lefèvre’s killer. I touched a thumb to my bruised mouth. Evidently he had exaggerated the limitations of his crippled hand.

  I was crouching to return the money to its hiding place when the cell door juddered open and light flooded the walls. I whipped around, startled; a figure filled the doorway, lamp held aloft. He appeared to be fully dressed, despite the hour.

  ‘Put down the weapon,’ he said, in a voice accustomed to giving orders.

  I stood and held out my hands, palms up, to show I was not armed. He eyed the purse.

  ‘The one at your belt,’ he said, with a touch more steel. He was a solid man, tall and broad, nearing sixty but still possessed of a vigorous energy apparent in his florid cheeks and quick, sharp eyes under bristling brows. His abbot’s robes were trimmed with fox-fur and patterned in gold thread that winked in the light; a jewelled crucifix hung from his neck, so large it almost reached his belt and would have made a lesser man stoop. ‘Let us see, now,’ he continued, as I unstrapped my knife and dropped it to the floor, ‘carrying a weapon inside the abbey precincts – that is an offence in itself. Unlawful intrusion, theft, violent assault—’ he gestured to the blood on my lip. ‘Quite a list of charges to be going on with.’

  ‘It was I who was assaulted,’ I said.

  He raised an eyebrow. I realised I would do better to affect a degree of humility.

  ‘Father Abbot – I can see how this must look. But I can explain. If you send someone to look outside the gate, you will find soldiers from the King’s personal guard who will vouch for me. My name is—’

  ‘I know exactly who you are, Doctor Bruno,’ the Abbé said. His look suggested this knowledge was not going to work in my favour. ‘As for the soldiers – there are armed guards here, but not, I fear, the ones you requested in this letter.’ He flicked his wrist up to show a piece of paper held between his first and second finger. My heart dropped to my stomach. ‘Do you imagine I allow messages in and out of this abbey without knowing what they contain? Especially ones addressed to the Louvre. Cotin should have known better. But perhaps he stood to gain as your accomplice.’

  ‘Father Abbot, you must listen. I believe you have a murderer in your abbey.’ I looked him in the eye and spoke solemnly. If I betrayed a hint of alarm, I would be giving him the confirmation he wanted.

  ‘I have a thief in my abbey, that much seems beyond doubt.’ He sniffed.

  ‘I am not a thief, Your Grace, I swear.’

  ‘That is your money, is it?’

  We both looked at the purse in my hand.

  ‘I pray you, send to—’ I hesitated. Not the King. Cotin was right – Henri would not risk inflaming further ill feeling among the religious orders by coming to the defence of a heretic accused of theft in defiance of a powerful abbot. As I had already worked out, he had chosen me precisely because he could dissociate himself from me if things became awkward. But I still had one friend with a degree of influence. ‘Jacopo Corbinelli, at the palace. You must know him – he is secretary to the Queen Mother and the King’s librarian. He will vouch for me.’

  ‘No doubt. You Italians always stick together. Though he would be a fool to soil his hands in this instance. And in any case, I am not your messenger boy.’ He crushed the letter Cotin had written for me in his fist and turned in the doorway, motioning to someone out of sight. Still believing I might negotiate my way out of the situation, I dropped the purse on the bed and picked up the candle. Without thinking, I bent to retrieve my knife – it was valuable and I did not want to leave it behind if I was to be escorted out under guard. But the Abbé glanced back as I was reaching for it and cried out with as much drama as if I had stuck the blade in his ribs. Before I could surrender the weapon, he had retreated and two men armed with pikestaffs barged into the room;
one seized me by the hair while the other twisted my arm behind my back and wrenched the knife from my grasp. In the commotion I let go of my candle, which caught the edge of Joseph’s bedding; a small conflagration erupted and the man holding my arm yelped and let go, flapping his hands at his leg where the flames had singed his hose. I took advantage of the confusion to tear myself away from the other one, leaving a clump of my hair in his fist. I hurled myself towards the door and out into the corridor; by now most of the cell doors stood open and a row of pale, awed faces stared at me.

  The Abbé stood blocking my way to the stairs; there was no sign of Cotin and I could only hope he had had the sense to vanish with the statue before anyone had seen him.

  ‘Stop that man!’ the Abbé thundered. I glanced back, in time to see the arc of a pikestaff descending, a moment before I felt the impact of the blow and my knees buckled beneath me. I tried to speak but no sound emerged; my sight blurred as the soldier crouched over me and the world turned black.

  * * *

  It remained dark when I opened my eyes some time later, to find I was lying on my side, face pressed to the ground. My senses were still dulled from the blow to my head, though not sufficiently to block out the fierce smell of excrement that assailed my nostrils as soon as I was conscious. Where was I? I raised my head an inch as pain seared up the back of my skull like a hot needle. Under my cheek, the prickling of dried straw. A stable, perhaps? But it was not the clean, grassy smell of horse dung making me retch; this stink was human. Mine? I could hardly tell. When I tried to roll over, I found I could not move my arms; my wrists had been bound together behind me. I struggled to my knees and twisted my right shoulder up to try and wipe the dirt, or caked blood, from my eyes on my sleeve, but it made no difference to the darkness. There was no source of light in the room. I was frozen through, shivering so hard that my teeth clattered together and I was in danger of biting my tongue. I slumped back on to my heels, rolled my shoulders to ease the pain and tried to join the jolted fragments of memory. I had drifted in and out of consciousness after I was struck; they had put me on a horse, or had I imagined that? With a hood over my head, so I had no idea where they had taken me. I forced myself to my feet, feeling the world tilt and sway unnervingly as if I were at sea. I could at least stand upright. Despite the filthy air, I breathed slowly and deliberately, in and out. The pain in my head advanced and receded, making my eyes swim. When I was reasonably certain that I was not about to faint or vomit, I called out.