The Lady Agnes Mystery, Volume 1

by Andrea Japp

  ‘I want to help you … I must. I know you don’t trust me. I can feel it and I don’t blame you; I deserve it.’

  ‘Berthe, I …’

  ‘Don’t, Reverend Mother, let me finish. I deserve it because I am guilty of telling a cowardly lie in order not to … lose face. I cannot even give the excuse that I was afraid of upsetting you. No. My only motive was pride.’

  Annelette refrained from intervening, having understood that this confession was not addressed to her. The cellarer took a deep breath before continuing:

  ‘I … for a few days I mislaid the key to your safe that was in my charge. Or at least I thought so at the time. I was terrified that you might ask me for it in order to validate some deed. I searched high and low. I couldn’t understand for the life of me how I had managed to lose that long leather thong I wore tied round my neck. I found it four days later at the bottom of a little mending basket I keep under my bed …’

  The two other women stared at her in astonishment.

  ‘I was so relieved that I did not stop to think how strange it was that I should find it there.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Éleusie asked, fearing she knew the answer already.

  ‘I had already twice emptied the contents of the basket onto my bed, thinking that if the thong had come untied, the key might have dropped down. The knot on the thong was intact. I am now certain that someone took it while I was asleep and then stuck it in the first hiding place they could find.’

  ‘Not a very good hiding place since you had already looked there,’ remarked Annelette.

  ‘On the contrary, sister, a perfect hiding place, and one that shows the thief’s contempt for me. She must have known that I had turned my bed, my mending basket, my whole cell upside down and she was counting on my pride, on my relief at having found the key without needing to admit my incompetence. I am therefore guilty of the sin of pride … But if that monster thinks I’m a coward, she’s very much mistaken.’

  Inquisition headquarters, Alençon, Perche, November 1304

  Agnès had been overcome with drowsiness soon after diligently chewing the bitter ball and forcing herself to swallow the mouthfuls of unpleasant saliva it produced. The nightmare she no longer wished to fight against had gradually given way to a sort of waking dream. She had let her body slide down the wall, slowing its descent with her hands.

  Crouched in the corner of a tiny room, dark and dank and stinking. Crouched on the muddy floor that has coated her skimpy dress, her calves and thighs with a foul greenish film. Crouching, straining in the darkness, trying to make sense of the sounds she heard. There had been a voice barking out orders, obscene laughter, and cries followed by screams of pain. Then a terrified silence. And yet Agnès felt outside it all. She felt as though she were slowly sinking back into the wall. Crouching, trying hard to merge into the stone walls, hoping to dissolve there, to vanish for ever. Steps came to a halt outside the solid-looking, low door. A voice declared:

  ‘At least they say this female’s pleasing and comely!’

  ‘She used to be. She looked more like a beggar when I brought her back down from the interrogation room.’

  ‘Come on, let’s take her. At least the women aren’t as heavy to carry back as the men after they’ve fainted.’

  The familiar sound of the bolt being drawn back. And yet she did not stir. She felt as though she were drifting, suspended in a foglike stupor.

  ‘On your feet, Madame de Souarcy!’ bellowed one of the men who had just walked into her cell. ‘On your feet, do you hear?’

  She would have preferred to remain like that, sitting in the stinking mud. But she knew instinctively that she must hide the nature of her apathy. Florin must not sense that she felt as if she were floating outside her body since she had swallowed the brownish ball. She managed to raise herself on all fours then rise to her feet. She was swaying like a drunkard. One of the men remarked sarcastically:

  ‘You need less than my goodly wife to reach seventh heaven.’

  The other man let out a coarse laugh of approval that Agnès did not understand. What in heaven’s name were they talking about?

  Her body was weighed down by a pleasant languor and they had to drag her along the corridor.

  The other guard, the one who had laughed, declared:

  ‘They shouldn’t starve them like that … then we wouldn’t have to carry them. Look at her, she can barely put one foot in front of the other. I tell you she won’t last out the first half-hour,’ he predicted, referring to the timing of the torture sessions.

  The procedural rules stipulated that there should be no more than half an hour of torture per question. It was an extraordinarily meticulous quantification of pain and one many inquisitors did not respect. They only needed to confess and be pardoned by one of their colleagues since each had the power to absolve the others.

  They propped her up, holding her under the arms, while one of them opened the door to the torture chamber. What she saw inside made her blood run cold.

  A long table, long enough for a human body to lie stretched out on. A long table glistening dark red. Beneath it a trough filled with a curious viscous substance. Blood. Blood everywhere.

  Blood on Florin’s face, blood on his forearms up to his rolled-up sleeves. Blood on the leather apron of the executioner, who was standing in a corner, arms crossed. Blood on the walls, blood on the straps hanging from the table. A sea of human blood.

  Nicolas Florin glided towards her. His face was bathed in sweat and his eyes shone gleefully. Suddenly, Agnès understood the nature of his ecstasy: the blood, the screams, the endless torment, the ripped flesh, death.

  She stared at him and declared calmly:

  ‘You are damned, beyond atonement.’

  He leaned forward and smiled, brushing her lips with his.

  ‘Do you really think so?’ he whispered into her mouth.

  He turned round, walked gracefully over to the executioner and barked:

  ‘That’s enough chatter. There’s work to be done and I have a burning desire to begin. What a fitting expression!’

  A rough hand tore away the top half of her dress and pushed her towards the table. Another hand shoved her hard in the back and she lurched forward. The congealed blood on the wooden table touching her stomach plunged her into a bottomless pit of despair. She was bathing in the blood of another, in the martyrdom of another who had entered this hell before her. She barely felt the straps tighten across her back.

  Florin twisted the mass of auburn locks that had lost their shine and tossed them to one side with regret. He misconstrued the cause of his victim’s distress and in a purring voice declared:

  ‘Come, come … We haven’t started yet. A little nudity is surely nothing in comparison with the rest. You will soon see for yourself. Agnès Philippine Claire de Souarcy, née Larnay, you have been summoned here today before your judges to answer to the charges of complicity in heresy; individual heresy aggravated by latria; the seduction of a man of God, for which you are to be tried at a later date; sorcery and the invocation of demons. I ask you one last time, do you confess?’

  The blood smelled of iron. Can a man be identified by the smell of his blood? Can one pray for him with one’s mouth pressed into the pool of red liquid that was once his life?

  ‘You do not confess your guilt?’ Florin concluded hastily, for the contrary would have driven him to despair.

  He felt a warm sensation spread across his belly and a rush of blood to his groin. He had waited so long for this moment. He struggled to hold back his mounting pleasure, to keep his eyelids from closing. He struggled not to hurl himself onto her back and bite into her, ripping at the beautiful pale flesh of his magnificent prey with his teeth until her blood ran down his throat.

  ‘Clerk!’ Florin shouted in the direction of an oil lamp that appeared to be floating a few inches above the floor. ‘Note down that Madame de Souarcy refuses to confess and chooses to remain silent, a sure sign of her gui
lt.’

  The young man sitting cross-legged on the floor nodded and recorded the refusal.

  ‘Executioner, the lashes, quickly!’ Florin snarled, thrusting his hand out towards the tall man in the leather apron. ‘Clerk, note down that we are respecting proper procedure by first inflicting upon the accused the punishment reserved for women. If our generosity is not rewarded with a confession, we shall consider alternative methods of persuasion.’

  Florin turned towards the open fire where some thin-bladed knives were being heated above the flames until they were red-hot.

  Her body tensed when she heard the swish of the whip being raised. She cried out as it struck her back with full force. And yet the sting of the thick leather thongs felt bearable. The blows rained down on her for what seemed like an eternity. Her body jolted with each punishing new wave. She could feel her skin splitting, but it seemed relatively painless. Something smooth and warm ran down her sides and dropped onto the table. Her flesh was smarting and yet it almost wasn’t hers. A thought flashed through her mind, a soothing thought: her blood was mixing with the blood of the poor soul who had lain on that same table before her. She felt her torturer’s hands kneading her raw flesh. She felt the powder being sprinkled onto her wounds. A crippling pain made her cry out despite the little brown ball. Salt. The wicked man was rubbing salt into her wounds.

  She felt herself drifting into oblivion and willed it with all her might. Florin’s hysterical screams came to her as if in a nightmare. He was gasping with pleasure, crowing as he ordered her to confess her sins. He cried out in a voice quivering with excitement:

  ‘Executioner, this witch refuses God … The irons … The irons and let them be white-hot …’

  There was a loud knock at the door. Agnès let out a sob before plunging into merciful unconsciousness.

  Jean de Rioux stood before the inquisitor. He avoided looking at the tortured woman, feigning disinterest.

  Florin was panting, hunched over, his face covered in sweat, his eyes glazed over. The Dominican felt his gorge rise and struggled with an overwhelming urge to kill the man right there in that cellar that he had transformed into an unspeakable playroom for his own enjoyment. But Leone’s instructions had been categorical: the judgement of God. He silently handed the missive to the torturer.

  As soon as the inquisitor saw the seal, the glazed look in his eyes disappeared. Incredulous and excited, he murmured:

  ‘The halved bulla?’

  This message could only have come from one of the two camerlingos, and had almost certainly been sent by Honorius Benedetti himself. He trembled as he broke the seal. How extraordinary. Such was his power that the camerlingo now addressed letters to him in person.

  He read and reread the contents, written in Latin:

  ‘It is essential that the correct procedure be applied to Madame de Souarcy so that her trial cannot be judged null and void. We now share the same enemies and this links us definitively. My messenger will recover this missive. H.B.’

  A sober Florin gazed up at the tall, grave-faced man. So, he was the camerlingo’s secret emissary. This explained his objection to Mathilde de Souarcy’s evidence. His mission was to ensure that Madame de Souarcy could not be saved due to some procedural error. Why had he not spoken up? If only Florin had known, he would not have wished him dead for demanding that the foolish young woman’s accusation be thrown out. But Jean de Rioux was no doubt sworn to the utmost secrecy.

  ‘We now share the same enemies and this links us definitively.’ What a magnificent prospect … Rome, greatness would soon be his!

  Jean de Rioux’s voice almost made him jump.

  ‘Guards … Take Madame de Souarcy back to her cell. Have her wounds cleaned and bandaged.’

  The astonished guards looked questioningly at Florin, who chivvied them:

  ‘Go on … Do as you’re told! The half-hour is up. The torture will resume tomorrow.’ Then, turning to the Dominican, he added in a hushed voice: ‘I shall walk back with you, my brother in Christ.’

  Clairets Abbey, Perche, November 1304

  A woman lay face down on the rack, the blood from the gashes on her back oozing to the floor. The woman was moaning. Her long fair hair was sticky with sweat and blood. A hand brushed against her martyred flesh, pouring a grey powder onto her wounds. The woman arched her back and went limp, fainting.

  Éleusie de Beaufort clasped her hands to her mouth to stifle her growing impulse to scream. She fell forward onto her desk in a faint.

  The same vision had come back to haunt her. She had mistakenly believed that she was the suffering woman. It was Agnès they were torturing at that precise moment.

  She fell to her knees and prayed:

  ‘Dear God … dear God … Dear, sweet Francesco …’

  A sudden wave of nausea made her stretch out on the broad dark flagstones where, unable to calm down, she repeated: ‘The beast must die, Francesco, he must die! The beast must die, he must die!’

  Annelette Beaupré sat on her stool in the herbarium, leaning against the cold stone wall with her arms crossed, pondering. Berthe de Marchiennes’s confession that morning had baffled her. After the cellarer’s departure, she and Éleusie de Beaufort had exchanged glances, unable to make head or tail of her story. The Abbess was adamant: her key had never left her person and she was too light a sleeper for anyone to be able to take it and return it while she was resting. And why replace Berthe’s key when all three were necessary in order to open the safe where the seal was kept? Was Berthe lying to cover herself? Curiously, Annelette did not give that theory much credence, despite her dislike of the cellarer nun.

  The answer came to her in a flash. Copies! Four days was plenty of time for a good smith to produce one. She suddenly had a worrying thought: what if Blanche de Blinot had also mislaid her key temporarily and said nothing? What if – given her mental deterioration – she had not even noticed its disappearance? What if a second copy had been made of the key for which Annelette had publicly accepted resonsibility? Her hand automatically reached up to touch the top of her robe. The small lump she felt there did not set her mind at ease.

  The third and last key was hanging round Éleusie’s neck. Assuming the theory of the copies was correct, it placed Éleusie de Beaufort above suspicion since she was free at any time to open the safe and retrieve her private seal. However, since her key was the only one of its kind she would be the next victim.

  Something was not right. Some crucial element was missing. Why would the murderess insist on trying to take the seal when so many of them now thought this was her intention? Every deed, every letter would be scrupulously checked and rechecked by the Abbess. Moreover, if the poisoner killed her, her seal would automatically be invalidated.

  There were so many loose ends and no clear way of tying them together. The whole affair seemed illogical. Annelette was unable to arrive at the truth. The murderess was both intelligent and extremely cunning. She had discovered the other sisters’ weaknesses and strengths, their petty secrets and vanities, their deep resentments and turned them to her advantage. Yolande’s Thibaut, Berthe’s pride, Blanche’s senility … But why poison Hedwige du Thilay and Jeanne d’Amblin? What part did these two friends play in these murderous equations? Two friends … What if only one had been targeted and their innocent habit of sitting together at mealtimes or taking tea together had sent the other to her grave? Which of the two had been meant to die, then, Hedwige or Jeanne? Hedwige du Thilay? Was her position as treasurer in some way connected? The paymistress managed the abbey’s revenue, oversaw and paid the farrier, the singers and the veterinary doctor … In short, she was in charge of a good deal of money. It had not been unheard of in the past for monks to make veritable fortunes by falsifying deeds with stolen seals. No, she felt she was losing her way. Enrichment was not the murderess’s motive, Annelette would have staked her life on it. And what of Jeanne d’Amblin, whose strong constitution alone had saved her from the poison? Jeanne had per
mission to leave the abbey in order to make her rounds. She met many of their donors, conversed with them and even became their confidante. Had she seen or heard something that had worried the poisoner? Something whose importance the extern sister had not realised at the time? Think … the answer was easily within her grasp.

  Thibaut!

  Thibaut, the beloved son for whom Yolande had been prepared to lie. Annelette must learn more about him and ask for the Abbess’s help in order to do so.

  Annelette had suddenly made great headway towards a solution. The poisoner must have discovered that the sister in charge of the granary slipped out at night to meet her informant near the herbarium. She had borrowed her shoes in order to point the finger at Yolande de Fleury. Annelette cursed for the first time in her life, stamping her foot petulantly:

  ‘Zounds!’

  Her theory didn’t hold water, for it assumed the culprit knew that a trap had been laid for her, and yet Annelette had told no one of her plan, not even the Abbess.

  Thibaut, Thibaut … The answer, she was certain, lay in the pretty name of that illegitimate little boy.

  An insistent ringing sound gradually brought her out of her thoughts: the sisters were being called for vespers.

  She left the herbarium, more determined than ever to ingest nothing that she had not prepared herself in the kitchens. For, if her enemy were as clever as she gave her credit for, she would soon realise that Annelette was her most formidable enemy and would not hesitate to crush her.

  A figure was crouching behind the hedging laid with chestnut branches that protected the medicinal herb garden from the wind.

  Annelette, Annelette, thought the figure, how tiresomely tenacious you are. How it bores me. How would you like to die, dear apothecary? Just to please me, go on. Die!

  Éleusie de Beaufort studied her apothecary daughter in silence.

  ‘What you are asking me to do is so strange, Annelette … Do you really think that this little boy can help our investigation?’