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

by Cassandra Clark

  ‘It means that the body was discovered first by the pope and this unknown fellow.’

  ‘And left to be discovered by the guards?’

  They rode for some way under the trees until eventually Hubert murmured, ‘I feel we can discount Gaston as the murderer. I’m afraid, though, it only brings more confusion.’

  ‘We’re looking for an assassin?’

  Later she asked herself if it had been Hubert’s intention to drive her to that conclusion.

  **

  Grizac. Had he been in la chambre du pape and if so why? Was it important? He had to discover the truth about his acolyte some time. It was natural for him to be one of the first to be informed. The official identification when Athanasius and Hildegard had been present might have been a formality. More to the point who was the other person in conversation with Clement?

  It was some time since Hildegard had seen Grizac visit Athanasius in his cell. When she made her daily call on the old monk she brought his name into the conversation.

  ‘The cardinal must still be grieving over the death of poor Maurice.’

  ‘I’m sure he is.’ He did not raise his head from his book.

  She tried again. ‘Have you seen his eminence recently?’

  ‘He’s staying at his villa on Villeneuve, I believe. Licking his wounds.’

  ‘Wounds?’

  ‘The wounds of losing his Maurice, of course.’

  He wasn’t the only one. Hildegard remembered the stricken little face of Elfric. It swam before her in all its pathos. He had lost a beloved brother, tied to him by the blood of kinship. She recalled Peterkin’s attempt some time ago to start a courtly discussion about the comparative grief of losing a father or losing a brother. Now she wondered how the grief caused by the loss of an acolyte would be tallied.

  **

  Inconvenient as it was to submit to Hubert’s plan that she should become Fondi’s guest, she had to admit it was pleasant.

  Fine dining, music and frivolity. But the next day everyone was summoned to dine with the pope in the Great Tinel. After that would come forty days and nights of privation during Lent.

  Hubert suggested that Hildegard remain behind at the villa rather than risk another attempt on her life but she refused.

  Alone, in a villa, far from help?

  ‘I’m sure you mean it with the best of intentions, Hubert, but no, definitely not. I want to see what’s going on,’ she added, unwilling to let him know how much she was beginning to fear the assassin, if that was what he was. She could not see how she was part of any larger plot but the Scottish nun’s murder weighed heavily on her mind. She felt remorse that the poor woman might have died in her stead.

  They crossed the bridge that afternoon in a cavalcade, bodyguards on both sides of Carlotta in a silk curtained litter, Fondi and Hubert walking on either side of Hildegard.

  The rain had let up and a watery sun appeared and disappeared behind scraps of scudding cloud.

  The palace was buzzing with activity as all the guests from their Avignon town houses mingled with those who dwelt in Villeneuve, everyone accompanied by retainers to add to the clamour of the guests staying in the palace itself.

  It was Shrove Tuesday. Clement dined alone in his enclosure at one end of the refectory, sitting on a dais so he could look out over the heads of his flock, safe from any attempt on his life. Armed guards stood in a stiff row, eyeing everyone with cold suspicion.

  Clement’s food taster was placed a little below him near the doorway from the pope’s own kitchen where he received the dishes specially prepared for him. Before the pontiff was allowed to taste the slightest morsel the food was tested, gingerly it had to be admitted, by an elderly courtier. Wine was tested too. Poured into a goblet of chalcedony, held to the light and inspected for a change of colour that would betray the presence of poison. When it was passed as safe it was handed next to a servant and placed in Clement’s jewelled grasp. She saw him drink deeply, ask for more, and the same drawn out procedure took place. Meanwhile, he picked pensively at the food in front of him served on an array of gold platters.

  She thought of the peasant woman they had met earlier, living in the mountains in what was little more than an animal barn and wondered what she ate off. Not gold, that was for sure. Well, not yet. Not ever.

  Fondi was enjoying himself and started to recount some joke to Hubert. The two Cistercian brothers who accompanied Hubert could not take their eyes off Carlotta. Her wild beauty, if tinged by madness, held them spellbound.

  She was showing them her daughter’s squirrel and they passed it along the table, the little creature quivering at the sight of food, while Carlotta, teasing it with morsels from her plate, tossed her head and gave that familiar throaty laugh as it tried to snatch the titbits from between her lips. Soon bored, she handed it over to Fondi who absentmindedly stroked it as conversation with Hubert became more serious.

  Too distant to hear what was being said Hildegard looked round at the other diners. A lot of wine was being downed. Bellefort's noisy group at another table were urging one of their number to get up and sing. He was lifted up onto their table where he launched into a popular chanson. The pope’s personal entertainers had not yet arrived. A lute player, inaudible in the developing uproar, doggedly continued with what was evidently a ribald song he was mouthing to judge by the guffaws of the men sitting near enough to hear the punchline.

  When no-one was looking Hildegard got up and began to make her way towards the doors.

  **

  Apart from one guard sitting at the top of the steps with a stoup of ale in one hand there was no-one else guarding the upper floors. They were all carousing inside the Great Tinel.

  The cressets had not been fired up yet and the passage grew darker further along towards the guest chambers. Her soft boots made little sound on the tiles as she walked to the end.

  The body of the nun would have been removed by now.

  When she reached the door she hesitated.

  From far off came the sound of musicians, the shrill squeal of bagpipes sounding as macabre as a stuck pig, followed by the muffled war thump of a bodrum adding a more ominous undernote to the roar of conversation and masculine guffaws. The arrival of the musicians marked the start of the night’s entertainment. Eventually everyone would pour into the Grande Chapelle to sing lustily to the saint in whose honour they were enjoying themselves. Close at hand was only a thick silence. If she listened she could hear herself breathing and the whirr of blood through her veins.

  Lifting the latch slowly enough not to make a sound, Hildegard pushed open the door and stepped inside.

  **

  It was early evening. The sun had appeared from behind the clouds for a last show of brilliance throwing a dazzle of light across the chamber through the narrow window slit. There was no need for any additional light.

  Illuminated in its brief gleam was the nun’s bed against one wall. It had been stripped to its straw pallet. A faint stain showed at one end, no more than a shadow’s breath. Her own bed, unillumined, on the other side had been made up as if for its next occupant. A few belongings lay orphaned on the blanket.

  Facing the door, in the same stream of light was a wooden stool, empty. The floor had been swept. In the glare of the sun the polished stone gave off a transient lustre the colour of a nightingale’s egg.

  Hildegard moved further inside. Nothing here to speak to her. Nothing to say what had happened. Who had caused it to happen. What the nun’s last thoughts were. Nothing here.

  She went over to the window, sunlight catching her in a hard dazzle and she turned, blinking, to view the chamber from a different point of view.

  When her sight cleared she hesitated.

  The servant had been too hasty after all. The job was only half done. Under the nun’s bed was a layer of dust.

  There was something…picked out in the harsh light. She crouched down to get a better look. In a scuffle of paw marks there was a little pile
of mouse droppings.

  She remembered the many cats slinking around the palace.

  Not a mouse, surely?

  Straightening, she searched round to find something to contain the crusted heap until she could have another look at it in a good light.

  Already the beam of the setting sun had shifted, falling now into an empty corner and, as she searched her sleeves for something to wrap the droppings in, the light decayed little by little, leaving her in a silver gloaming.

  She bent down and scooped the droppings into her scrip. In the sudden darkness as the sunlight shifted something made her glance towards the door. A movement on the threshold made her freeze.

  Someone was watching her.

  **

  A blur of white emerged from the darkness and a figure stepped into the chamber.

  Hildegard jerked to her feet. ‘Hubert! What are you doing here?’

  ‘Why did you leave us?’

  ‘I knew I’d left some things here,’ she told him, feeling the lie was justified.

  ‘Get them then and let’s return to the others.’

  ‘I didn’t think you’d notice I’d left.’

  He stepped aside as, quickly picking up her few belongings from the bed, she walked out into the passage.

  ‘Let me carry those for you.’ He insisted on taking each article separately, her comb, leggings and missal. ‘Is this all?’

  ‘Yes.’ Except for the small parcel hidden in her scrip she added silently.

  She stepped aside so he could lead the way. She did not want anybody walking behind her just now. Especially one of Fondi’s allies.

  Not after what she had just found under the bed.

  **

  All her old suspicions of Hubert were swarming back as they made their way down into the Tinel.

  ‘Why on earth did you follow me?’ she rounded on him before they sat down.

  ‘To make sure no-one else did.’ He was curt.

  Throughout the rest of the feast he avoided her glance but she caught him once or twice giving her a surreptitious appraisal that baffled her. Everyone’s attention, however, was on Carlotta.

  She was gorging on peaches and figs, brought in from the hotter climate of Outremer, and every now and then she would feed one to Fondi with a great show of sensual pleasure as his strong teeth bit into them and made the juices run.

  Food was so plentiful it arrived in any sort of order. Fish with sugar subtleties. Fowl with lobster. Crayfish with hare. Wild boar with eel.

  Enormous meat platters were brought in, spilling over with haunches of venison, hams, pig’s trotters, steaks and sausages, and when wild boar, rare and bloody, was placed before them Carlotta with a loud laugh speared a piece Fondi cut off for her, and tipped it on the end of her eating knife into her mouth with a sigh of pleasure.

  Blood ran down her chin and Fondi, with an amorous smile, put out the tip of his tongue to lick it away. Soon their faces were smeared with grease. What remained of the torn carcase swam in its own blood. Carlotta’s sharp knife speared it again and again.

  Hubert, noticed Hildegard, ate little and must have been fasting because he avoided meat altogether and only picked at a few shreds of fresh water fish cooked in almond milk, toying with each piece before slowly putting it into his mouth and chewing with pensive deliberation.

  Clement was dining in full view of everyone to fit the importance of this last rich meal before Lent, instead of alone in his privy chamber as usual. He was leaning comfortably back among the braided cushions of his wooden dining chair, an object gilded and grand enough to be called a throne, both hands clasped in front of him under his pectoral cross. A stouter man would have rested them on his stomach but Clement was lean and rested them lightly as if prepared to use them.

  He had a cold look, with very black, all-seeing eyes that continually flickered over the faces of the diners. They scraped unblinking over her own table, paused, returned, then moved on to encompass the rest of them.

  Countless dishes continued to be heralded forth to be piled on the trestles in front of them, servants hurried back and forth to the kitchens, the botteler brought more wine from the cellars. The music played. The temperature rose.

  A page went up to the enclosure, bowed with a pretty flourish, said something at which Clement’s lips drew back in a narrow smile, and received a morsel from the holy platter as a reward.

  Subtle concoctions of sugar in the shape of gilded castles and ships in full sail were brought in to accompanying cries of wonder. Soon after that Clement rose to his feet as if wearied, called his guards and, as they formed a path of honour so that he could leave, processed formally down the centre of the Tinel. Everyone clattered to their feet, those who could, knelt, crossing themselves.

  Two cardinals were summoned by a raised finger. As everyone else struggled to their feet again they followed and the double doors at the far end leading into Clement’s private chambers slid shut behind them.

  Hubert leaned towards Hildegard across the table and whispered, ‘As well as Grizac that was Cardinal Montjoie who was invited to a private audience with Clement, if you’re still interested.’

  **

  Hildegard’s sumptuous guest chamber at the Fondi villa had a view across the Rhone towards the towers and crenellations of the palace of Avignon.

  She could see people coming and going along the water front, or driving their horses under the gatehouse in the town wall. The bridge was busy with traffic now dawn had chased away the night but the weather was still blustery, squalls shuddering over the surface of the water, stirring up white caps in the random eddies. It still looked difficult to navigate. She guessed that trade from the Middle Sea would be held up until the floods subsided. Yawningly she fumbled in her scrip for the strange findings from under the bed of the murdered nun.

  She shook out the contents onto the window embrasure where it was brightest.

  Mouse droppings were small and grain like. She was familiar enough with them from around the grain stores at Meaux.

  In the blue light of early morning she saw that the ones here on the sill were larger and darker than expected. It was no mouse that had left them. Could a cat have got in? A cat was a clean creature and would have tried to cover its excrement. She poked at the crumbs with a finger nail. They turned to dust. They must have lain under the bed for a day at least.

  She decided to check her suspicion, unlikely as it was, by finding an excuse to play with the squirrel and observe its habits.

  **

  Montjoie did not like women in his exclusive man’s world. Everything about him demonstrated disdain. It was probably true that Bellefort did not much care for them either, but this was more likely due to a difference of preference than from outright antagonism.

  Montjoie was a short, spare man with a thin face and fastidious features. He would have been undistinguished, with his height and build, but for the richness of his apparel. Gold brocade sleeves trailed to the ground, a magnificent surplice embroidered with infinite skill and a deep red velvet skull cap made him impressive.

  He played irritably with the rings on his fingers after he was introduced to Hildegard as if her sight of them might have reduced them in value.

  Hubert was impassive.

  He must have guessed that conversation would be almost impossible between the cardinal and Hildegard because he did not allow the silence that followed their greeting to last more than a moment before he broke in smoothly with some arcane scriptural remark that only a scholar would have understood. It established a bond that could exclude a mere woman and Montjoie, so misnamed, must have taken it at face value because he even attempted a narrowed smile of triumph at Hildegard’s apparent exclusion.

  Supercilious. A bigot, she registered. Too vain to stoop to murder?

  In her experience murderers committed their acts out of impotence, if they were not outright mad. They could find no other way to survive on their own terms without destroying someone. How they chos
e the victim who stood in their way was personal and often unexpected to the casual observer.

  Who stood in Montjoie’s way? Whom might Montjoie consider worthy of the vulgarity of murder?

  On first meeting he seemed rather the type to choose the law to destroy someone. Law was neater, cleaner. And cleverer than the knife.

  He clearly valued cleverness.

  Whether he would take the trouble to get someone saved from punishment by recourse to law was another matter. She could not see the light of compassion in his egotistical features. The priest of the bridge had been saved by a compassionate intervention.

  Murder then? What had he to gain? In the matter of Maurice’s murder there could be any number of motives, as a demonstration of loyalty to Clement being the most obvious.

  Imagine, he had stumbled across the would-be thief when returning with the pope after mass, maybe to discuss some church matter, some interesting legalistic question that only so-called great men would understand, he had discovered the thief, and killed him to protect his holiness. That was one way of explaining it. The pope in setting his men onto discovering the murderer might then have used them as a ploy to direct suspicion away from his own man.

  Unfounded, she reproved herself, switching her attention more carefully to what Hubert and Montjoie were discussing.

  Dull nonsense, she decided after a moment. Hubert was simply marking time so she could have a good look at the cardinal and make up her mind about him. Then, if he was complicit in her game, he would work round to that night on the bridge.

  ‘And praise God that in His wisdom He is sending us more clement weather,’ Hubert eventually remarked.

  ‘Clement? He has surely a hand in the matter too,’ murmured Montjoie with coy humour.

  ‘Without doubt. I remember in horror the walk across the bridge a night or two ago - you remember, when we had been privileged to dine with his Holiness, en prive.’

  Flatterer, thought Hildegard. Why not say ‘in private’ instead of all this en prive stuff.