The Joys of My Life

by Alys Clare

  He went back to the convent and asked to speak to Abbess Helewise. He knew by her face that she had already heard the news. She waited until they were alone in the bare little parlour before speaking.

  ‘He is the man you went looking for,’ she whispered. ‘I recognized the name.’

  ‘Aye, he is.’

  ‘You don’t think . . . ? Sir Josse, it can’t be that he is dead because he found out you were asking about him?’

  He realized what she meant. ‘You think he might have been so frightened that he killed himself?’

  Slowly she nodded.

  It was a possibility that had not occurred to him. It was likely that some well-meaning person had slipped the word to de Fleury that Josse had been looking for him. If he were engaged in some evil or criminal work, then it was conceivable that Josse’s sudden interest could have panicked him into suicide. Nevertheless, Josse was pretty sure that was not how it had happened.

  ‘I do not think so, my lady,’ he said firmly. ‘I think it is far more likely that de Fleury somehow became a threat to his employer and that de Loup lured him to the cathedral last night and killed him.’

  ‘You . . . Oh!’ Her eyes widened. Then, ‘Is there any proof?’

  ‘None that I have found yet, although I have not had the chance for a proper look. I’m going out this evening, when everyone has gone home.’

  ‘Surely they’re not working there today, in the very place where a man has just died?’

  ‘No, indeed.’ He gave her an ironic look. ‘The cathedral’s crawling with priests and busybodies and they’ll be there until the very last scrap of drama and speculation has finally been extracted.’

  She smiled sympathetically. ‘And in the meantime you are forced to sit here kicking your heels and bursting with impatience.’

  He returned her smile. ‘That might be so, my lady, except that there is this.’ He extracted de Fleury’s piece of vellum and unrolled it, spreading it out so that they could both look at it. Seeing it for the first time in good light, Josse gave a sharp exclamation.

  On the vellum, Paul de Fleury had drawn a picture – in all likelihood, the design for the commission from his employer. He must have been a skilled artist, for the picture was beautiful, with flowing lines and a vivid emotional life. It depicted a slim, graceful woman in a horned headdress and she stood in a narrow craft shaped like the crescent moon.

  The abbess did not seem to be able to take her eyes off the drawing. She said in an urgent whisper, ‘Who is she? Oh, Sir Josse, what in heaven’s name was de Fleury doing?’

  ‘I have seen this before,’ he replied. ‘It is the device worn by Philippe de Loup and the Knights of Arcturus.’

  ‘And de Loup wishes to have it incorporated into the new cathedral?’

  ‘So it appears,’ he agreed, ‘if indeed this picture represents the figure that de Fleury had been commissioned to craft.’

  ‘But . . .’ The abbess seemed lost for words. ‘Sir Josse, is this not a pagan image?’

  He tore his eyes away from the drawing – something that was surprisingly difficult, for the figure seemed to compel the attention – and looked at the abbess. ‘I suppose so,’ he agreed, ‘although . . .’ He did not know how to put his reservation into words.

  Slowly she nodded. ‘I know,’ she murmured. ‘My head tells me that she –’ very gently the abbess touched the figure – ‘is a pagan goddess and that I should have no truck with her, yet she appeals irresistibly to something so profound within me that I cannot begin to name it.’

  For some time they went on staring down at Paul de Fleury’s powerful image and neither spoke. Then Josse sighed deeply and said, ‘Philippe de Loup knew what he was about, that’s for sure. If de Fleury’s finished sculpture ended up with a fraction of the force of his preliminary design, then it would indeed have been something to behold.’

  ‘Yes,’ the abbess breathed. ‘Only now the poor man is dead, and his great gift gone.’

  ‘Why?’ Josse asked softly, as much to himself as to her. ‘Why kill him before the commission is done? It makes no sense.’

  ‘Perhaps the commission is done,’ she suggested suddenly. ‘Perhaps he gave it to de Loup last night and, having no further use for his craftsman, de Loup killed him.’

  Josse considered it. ‘It’s possible,’ he agreed. ‘Although if it’s true, then where’s the statue? It was intended for Chartres – remember how I told you what Ambrois de Quercy said about de Loup making a special contribution to the new cathedral? If you’re right and de Loup waited until the work was done and then murdered the workman, then the finished object must be here somewhere. It makes no sense for de Loup to have taken it away.’

  The abbess was shaking her head. ‘I do not know, Sir Josse.’

  Abruptly he stood up. ‘I will ask among the masons,’ he announced. ‘One of them may know if Paul de Fleury had a workroom and if he did, I’ll go and look.’

  She too had risen. ‘May I come with you?’

  ‘Of course.’ He was delighted. ‘I would have suggested it, only I had imagined your day was already planned.’

  ‘I can spare the time for a healthy walk out in the fresh air,’ she said firmly. ‘Come on, let’s see if we can find this putative workroom before the priests and the busybodies.’

  Helewise let Josse precede her along the narrow streets since he appeared to know his way. Soon they were in the artisans’ quarters and, after asking questions of a couple of people, found themselves on a dusty and much-trodden track between rows of low buildings, many open-fronted. Inside were the tools of the craftsmen’s various skills: carpenters, masons, glaziers, blacksmiths. On any other day, the row would have been bustling with purposeful activity; today, it was silent and deserted.

  It will not last long, Helewise thought. Such is the fervour here in Chartres that they’ll all want to get back to work. Tomorrow, everything will return to normal. Men in the middle of particularly precise and demanding tasks may even creep back later today.

  Paul de Fleury had shared his workroom, deserted now, for inside were two plinths each bearing slabs of marble. De Fleury’s colleague was working on the statue of a saint – St John, Helewise noticed, for he bore the Agnus Dei in his arms. The marble on the other plinth was covered with a cloth. Josse twitched it aside.

  De Fleury had made a start on his figure. Her outline could be detected emerging from the smooth stone, the head on its graceful neck bearing the strange horned headdress, but the work had a long way to go.

  ‘Here is our answer,’ Josse said quietly. ‘We are left, as I feared we would be, with a mystery. For some reason, de Loup fell out with his craftsman and, abandoning the commission, killed him.’

  Helewise stepped forward to help Josse replace the cloth over the figure. ‘I still do not see why de Fleury could not simply have fallen from the beam,’ she said. It had been worrying her since Josse had first announced with such conviction that the poor man had been murdered.

  ‘There are two things to consider,’ Josse said as they stepped over the debris in the workroom and set off back up the track. ‘First, it is only an assumption that he fell; made, I think, because he was found directly beneath the beam. I intend to speak to those who are dealing with the body and I shall ask about the injuries and judge whether or not they are consistent with the theory. Second, if he did fall, then, my lady, what on earth was he doing up there?’

  By nightfall, Josse had as clear a picture as could have been achieved in a day. He had spoken to the monks who were preparing Paul de Fleury’s body for burial and they had assured him that no man sustained such frightful and extensive injuries except as a result of falling from a great height. ‘We see all too many such wrecked bodies,’ one of them told Josse sadly.

  He had also talked to the master mason who had identified the body and who, in answer to Josse’s question, said that de Fleury’s statue was to have been placed in a niche to the east of the South Porch, between windows dedicat
ed to the Virgin and the Zodiac. This information, Josse reflected, provided no reason whatsoever for de Fleury to have been crawling about high above the nave.

  He joined Abbess Helewise and Sister Caliste for the evening meal in the convent’s refectory, nodding across to Brother Saul and Brother Augustus, seated at the long table where the servants ate.

  ‘Will you take the brethren with you tonight?’ the abbess whispered. ‘There may be danger.’

  ‘That remained true while Philippe de Loup was in Chartres,’ he murmured back, ‘for it was always possible that news might have reached him that I had been on the Île d’Oléron nosing around his tower. But I believe, my lady, that he has gone.’

  ‘If it is true that he killed de Fleury, then yes, I agree that he would not stay here,’ she hissed. ‘What if you are wrong?’

  He shrugged. ‘Then I’ll just have to be careful,’ he said lightly.

  ‘Take one of our trusted lay brothers,’ she persisted.

  ‘No, my lady,’ he said firmly. ‘I shall have to slip in and out of the cathedral site without being spotted by the night watchmen, and that’s going to be difficult enough for one man alone.’

  She sat back in her chair and he sensed that she had conceded the argument. They finished the meal in a slightly chilly silence but, as he got up and bade her goodnight, she looked up at him with a worried expression. ‘May God watch over you,’ she whispered.

  ‘Amen,’ he muttered. Then, summoning a quick and, he hoped, reassuring smile, he hurried away.

  The moon illuminated the square too brightly for a man with a clandestine purpose. Josse stood in the shadows of a large house at the corner of the square for some time, studying the night watchman walking to and fro. He appeared to be alone and not over-conscientious, for quite soon he walked over to where a brazier burned a short distance from the cathedral’s west entrance and remained there rubbing his hands over the flames.

  Josse took his chance and slipped down the side of the skeletal building, moving out from the shadows at the last moment and running up the steps and through the space where the South Porch was being put up. Inside, the cathedral was deserted. In the middle of the nave, there was a dark stain.

  Josse went swiftly out into the open space and stared down at the mark left by Paul de Fleury’s blood. Then he looked up, verifying that the body had lain directly beneath the beam stretching from the north to the south walls of the nave. It was so high that it made him dizzy just staring up at it. It was daunting, for he was going to have to climb up there.

  He ran lightly over to the south side of the nave and made his way along to where a ladder led up to the first level of scaffolding, three men’s height above. Working steadily, making very sure of his hand- and footholds and trying not to look down, slowly he ascended, past the top of the great arch at the side of the nave and on past a row of clerestory windows. Above them were spaces for more windows – at least two rows, he thought – and finally he was up at the point where the great ribs of the vaulted ceiling would spring out from the walls.

  The beam from which de Fleury had fallen stretched out from where Josse now stood to the other side of the nave some twenty paces away and, in the moonlight streaming down into the roofless building, Josse could see it very clearly. Looking out, imagining a man walking confidently across – imagining a man falling – made him feel dizzy and sick. He shut his eyes tight. That was far worse, for suddenly he felt as if he were spinning through the air, out of control . . .

  Hastily he opened his eyes. Get on with it, he commanded himself. Cautiously he moved forward until he stood just short of the point where someone would set off to walk along the beam if for some reason his craft demanded it. Men performed such feats, Josse well knew, and he could only imagine that long habit removed the terror. There were handholds, of a sort, offered by the falsework that would support the roof as it was constructed, although these were spaced quite far apart.

  He looked down. There were footprints in the dust. He kneeled, taking the carefully wrapped pitch torch from where he had stored it inside the neck of his tunic and lighting it with his flint. Its light flared – surely too brightly! – but if the watchman spotted it, there was little Josse could do. He had to see.

  There were two sets of footprints, one considerably larger than the other.

  How had it happened? Josse wondered. Had the murderer enticed de Fleury up here on some pretext, got him walking out across the beam and then somehow dislodged him? But the body had been found in the middle of the nave – at the spot, Josse now realized as he looked down, that would be the very centre of the strange ringed pattern that had been laid out down there so far below.

  Was that significant? What was that odd pattern, and why was it there? Josse did not know. So, he thought, forcing his concentration back to the present task, let’s say that the killer says to de Fleury, ‘I’ve thought of a better place for the statue of the goddess in the horned headdress, one where she can gaze out unseen on those below.’ Or maybe, he thought eagerly, there has been some protest about her pagan origins and in order to put her here at all, de Loup had to find somewhere less obvious. ‘We’ll put her high up where the roof joins the walls,’ he says to de Fleury, ‘so we’d better shin up and find a place.’ Then up they climb and when they reach this spot, de Loup asks his craftsman to check whether the opposite wall offers a better place. De Fleury sets out across the beam – something he must have done many times before, if not here then on other builds – and when he reaches the middle, de Loup . . .

  What? he wondered. What could he have done to make de Fleury fall?

  Slowly he bent down and put his hands either side of the beam. Straining, he tried to move it. To his surprise, it moved quite easily. It did not move far, but then it would not have had to. Even a hand’s breadth would have been enough. He sat back on his heels and extinguished his torch; he could manage the climb down without it once his eyes had adjusted and it was better not to be seen.

  I will not swear that’s how it was done, he thought. Only that it’s how it could have been done.

  Then, doing his best to rid his mind of the vision of a man falling through the air, carefully he went back down the scaffolding to the safety of the solid ground far below.

  He did not know it, but someone other than the oblivious night watchman had been observing him ever since he had entered the cathedral. The people in the secret encampment knew about the man who had fallen to his death in the centre of the labyrinth and they knew they must counteract the evil that had sullied this most precious spot. They had ordered the powerful figures among their number to stand vigil in the cathedral by night, calling down the powers of good and beseeching them to push back the threatening darkness. This first night, the sunset watch had fallen to one of the men. The second watch was Joanna’s.

  She had had no idea that Josse was here in Chartres; all she had been told was that he had gone to France. So great had been her surprise when she had identified the tall, broad-shouldered figure in the nave that she had all but cried out. She had restrained herself – whatever her private feelings, she was here to do a job and abandoning her post to run out to Josse was no part of it – and settled back to watch what he would do. She guessed his purpose as soon as she saw him crouch down by the dark stain at the heart of the labyrinth and, as she watched him clamber up the scaffolding to the beam across the vault of the roof, she knew her guess was right. With her eyes fixed on his distant figure, she prayed to the Great Mother to make sure he did not fall. So fierce was her concentration that she thought she saw a faint shimmering figure made of light put out its arms to him.

  She waited until he came down and willed him to leave the cathedral via the opening by which she was standing. As he came level, she drew her light cloak carefully around her and said softly, ‘Josse.’ As his shocked eyes met hers and he opened his mouth to cry out, she added urgently, ‘Hush!’

  He grabbed her arm, pushed her back against the wa
ll and hissed, ‘What are you doing here?’ Then, as understanding dawned, he said, ‘This is the place you told me about, isn’t it? The place where your people have to come to protect something that’s under threat?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That’s what I’m doing now. The death here has brought a shadow and, in addition to our original purpose, we have to try to disperse it.’

  He stared intently into her eyes. ‘It was murder, or so I believe.’

  She hesitated, but as he seemed to know already there was surely no harm in telling him. ‘Some of my people were here last night,’ she said. ‘I can’t explain but it’s to do with the labyrinth.’ She pointed to the markers in the nave. ‘They saw two men climb up to the roof and one went out to sit astride the beam. He was looking down as if he were trying to find the centre of the maze, and the other man was giving him instructions. The man on the beam said, “I’m over the centre now,” and then the other man kicked the beam sideways with his foot. The man on the beam slipped off but managed to wrap his arms tightly round it, but then the other man kicked out hard again and again and in the end he let go.’

  ‘So it was murder,’ Josse breathed.

  ‘Yes.’

  After a moment, he said, ‘Are you to stay here all night?’

  Smiling in the darkness, she said, ‘No. I will be relieved shortly.’

  She made out his expression as the moonlight glittered in his eyes. ‘Shall I wait for you?’ he said tentatively.

  She did not know how to answer. Three nights ago, she had shared the Bear Man’s warm, snug bed. Here now was an older love but one who had as great if not a greater place in her heart. I cannot compare the two, she realized, for they are so different that I do not think of them in the same way at all. Would it matter? If my people – he – were to find out, would they be angry with me?

  She thought, as she had thought before, that if there were any necessity to love no other than the strange being who was one of her own, then she would have been told of it. In the absence of any such command, it seemed to her that she was free to do as she wished. She wanted to spend some time with Josse, although for many reasons it could not be long. Even so they could walk out into the concealing darkness together and she could bask in his love. She wanted that; she needed it, for she was in turmoil.