‘So you had to leave the body for a while?’

‘Briefly.’

‘How long were you absent?’

‘Only a short time. We had to find the sacristy for the oil but he was busy with the service for sext so we decided to take part in the tail-end of that.’

Leaving enough time for someone to enter and remove the dagger from Maurice’s softened grasp?

‘Would you have noticed anyone going from the chapel into the mortuary adjoining it?’

‘With our eyes shut?’

**

The elder nun got up and refilled their beakers. The fact that she included Hildegard showed that her ill-judged connection with Athanasius was no bar to their feeling of sisterhood.

‘The cardinal who came in, did you know who he was?’ Hildegard asked.

They shook their heads. ‘A fine looking fellow, quite elderly but as we said, we didn’t ask anybody their names, naturally.’

It could have been, in fact almost certainly was, Grizac. He must have noticed whether the dagger was there or not and yet he had said nothing on the matter. After a moment Hildegard asked, ‘Do you think it impossible that the guards might have found out from Maurice what he was doing in the treasury - and then killed him to silence him?’

‘Acting on behalf of whom?’

‘That I cannot imagine.’

**

Before they got up to go the elder nun leaned forward and touched Hildegard on the arm. ‘What you asked just now about the guards is theoretically not impossible, domina, but we still think it unlikely. Isn’t that so?’ she turned to her companion who nodded.

‘Those two were as shocked as you might expect the innocent to be at what they found. I cannot believe they were simulating. I’ve seen enough guilty men in my lifetime to know what they look and sound like.’

‘I accept what you’re saying, sister. Thank you. I wonder if I may ask one or two more questions about Maurice himself?’

‘Anything we can tell you we will.’

‘He seemed well-liked if as you say so many came in tears to pay their respects. I wonder if you’d noticed him earlier?’

‘Never. I must say I haven’t paid heed to the youths running about the palace. Of course,’ the older nun added, ‘with so many young men attending our superiors, we can’t be expected to recognise them all.’

‘And like you, domina,’ the younger nun answered, ‘we’ve been here only a matter of days ourselves. We’re still trying to find out who’s who.’

No-one better than strangers, then, to take things at face value? Hildegard included herself in this easily duped crew.

‘As newcomers it was an honour to be chosen to lay out the body,’ she said finally, ‘so can you tell me who asked you to do that?’

‘One of the pope’s house stewards. As is usual.’

They got up to go, murmuring something about prayers and when Hildegard was alone she refilled her beaker and continued to sit there for some time.

What little she had gleaned was enough to add to the puzzle.

The timing of the thief was interesting. He had evidently gone into the mortuary while everyone was at mid-day prayers. If he wanted to prise the dagger from Maurice’s fingers he would have had to know about the effects of rigor mortis. He would also have had to be somebody who was likely to be seen around the chapel without arousing comment, someone who could take his chance when it arose.

None of the chapel officials could have done it because they were involved very publicly in the ritual of the mid-day office. Those who had sufficient knowledge about the time the body was found and hence the best time to be able to remove the dagger from the corpse were few. There was herself, of course, then Athanasius and Grizac. There was probably also the house steward. Others in the Curia. And the guards. The latter would know the time they found Maurice but would they know exactly when they could pluck the dagger from his hand? It was debatable. Anyway, the nuns were adamant that they had left straightaway and would have mentioned if one of them had returned.

One other knew the time when the body was discovered. In English Saxon law he would be called the first-finder. It was Clement himself. The realisation of what this might mean took her breath away. She struggled to make sense of it.

So far she had no idea why she had been included in the initial inspection in the treasury. As a witness of some kind? The innocent observer whose word, should it come to it, would be taken on trust? But why? Who was acting for whom?

The cardinal was the one called on to make the official identification of the body. He had presumably been informed by the papal officials that it might be Maurice. Then he had come to Athanasius. That fact implied something about the nature of their relationship. It was an odd one, not friendship exactly, not with Athanasius’s alternate soothing and bullying of Grizac. But, like many relationships, it seemed to be based on a disparity of power.

And what had the nun said? Athanasius was a power.

Was that why he had been informed of the murder from the beginning? What sort of power could he wield from his small, bare cell? The nuns had clammed up and become distinctly chilly when his name was mentioned. Maybe some rumour had been picked up by them, a rumour spread by one of Athanasius’s rivals maybe. But how could a harmless old corrodian have rivals?

Frowning, she sipped her wine. The tormenting question she asked herself was whether the murderer knew Maurice before he drew his dagger on him, or whether it was a case of strike first, think later, an act committed in the heat of the moment. He might have come across him accidentally during the break-in. Did that make his death no more than an accident? Maurice caught in the wrong place at the wrong time? The sense that there was a sinister, planned aspect to his death would not leave her. Someone, other than the guards, had discovered that Maurice had broken into the treasury. It seemed to lead once more to Clement.

By now, the presence of an accomplice had been somewhat discounted and if it wasn’t an accomplice and a mere thieves’ quarrel, was it fanciful to suspect that the killer had acted with the definite purpose of silencing Maurice? It was an alarming thought. But what could the acolyte know that made it necessary to shut him up? Grizac had been distraught just now. Was it because he knew why Maurice had been silenced?

She found herself weaving back again to the old question which had still not been resolved, namely, what was Maurice doing in the treasury at all?

Everyone she had spoken to had jumped to the conclusion that he was after filling his pockets, for why else, they reasoned, would a servant be found in amongst a golden hoard more spectacular than a king’s ransom? In every sense it was certainly the wrong place whatever his excuse for being there.

With nothing to grasp hold of, no clues, no obvious beneficiary, no sense of a motive, it was as shifting shadows, like the echoing fortress-palace itself, shrouded in darkness, with its secret chambers and ill-lit corridors. Worst of all, there was no-one she could trust to help shed light.

**

The tower. The sentry. The same deferral to somebody inside.

‘That English nun again, captain.’

‘Let her in.’ Then came something barely audible about her wasting her time.

The sentry returned. ‘Trying to turn them into priests, domina?’

‘My greatest hope, captain.’ To deter him from thinking otherwise.

She climbed the same dank staircase.

‘Well, boys,’ she said when she opened the door and saw them playing dice again. Shackled. Throwing quite deftly now, after practice.

‘Are we out of here then?’

‘Patience is a virtue.’

‘So we’re told, domina, but we are less than virtuous, us, praise St Benet.’