‘I’ll go and search him out. I’m sure I can be persuasive enough to make him tell me every secret he’s ever known.’

Shelving her fears she asked, ‘Might I come with you?’

Hubert’s response was an unexpected look of pure delight. It made her squirm with guilt.

They rejoined Fondi and Carlotta in the gilded chamber. Musicians were brought in and soon a night of black velvet turned to silver as dawn approached and the winter beauty of the villa and its terraces and gardens brought some solace to Hildegard’s troubled thoughts.

To witness the loving exchanges between Fondi and Carlotta, however, only made her long more hopelessly for what could never be.

**

On good horses, the same ones they had hired before, they covered the distance into the mountains in rather less than a day. It was late afternoon by the time they rode into the hamlet where the page of the bedchamber lived.

The place was impoverished like many of the villages in the countryside round here where the peasantry was forced to eke a living and, in fact, it was little more than a muddy track sloping between a few rough looking thatched barns.

A labourer wrapped in rags pointed with his ash wand to a house at the top of the lane and when they entered the enclosure at the side they saw that building work had started on an enlargement of the living quarters and that a barn for the cows was being rethatched. Someone was beginning spend money.

Hubert slid down from his horse and went over to the door at the back. A suspicious voice stopped him. ‘Who’s there? Who are you?’

‘I come from Avignon,’ Hubert replied. ‘I’m searching for the page to his Holiness the pope.’

‘Is he calling him back?’ A face appeared in the window space but the door remained bolted.

‘He may do if he answers one or two questions,’ replied Hubert.

‘He’s out there.’ The woman, his mother or elder sister, gestured over to the barn.

Hildegard got down and crossed the yard with Hubert.

When they ducked their heads under the lintel they saw the page, now dressed in rough work clothes, with a knife at the throat of a lamb. He slit the struggling creature’s throat with practised efficiency and flung the bleeding carcase to one side. Then he heard his visitors and looked up. The knife dripped blood.

He began to back away into a corner of the barn, the knife held in front of him. ‘Who are you? What do you want? I’ll use this!’ he threatened.

‘Peace, child. We come merely to talk.’

‘I don’t know anything.’

‘I’m sure you know many things.’ Hubert nodded to Hildegard to leave them.

Walking away she heard Hubert talking softly to the boy. Soon they appeared at the door of the barn and while she waited outside with the horses, they went inside the cottage after an exchange of shouts between the boy and the woman.

Hildegard stood by the horses for some time. Night fell. One or two candles came on inside the cottage. The village street was devoid of human life.

A wind began to whine from off the summit of the mountains. It was a bleak place. Anybody would want to leave it. The boy must have some special skill to have been plucked from such a place to be raised to what for him must have been a dizzying height. A village priest, she supposed, his bishop, the hierarchy by which peasants with some sort of promise could be lifted from their origins to a different life.

She thought of William of Wykeham, back in England, a clever boy who had impressed his tutor, attracted a benefactor, and after achieving the zenith of becoming Lord Chancellor of England, had now founded a college in Winchester for the education of impoverished boys such as he had once been.

Her musings stopped when Hubert reappeared. The door was noisily shut and bolted behind him.

They rode right away from the village before he told her what the boy had said to him.

**

Their horses walked side by side through the woods. Shafts of moonlight stippled the path. When she looked at Hubert his face was silvered by the mysterious light as he spoke.

‘When Maurice failed to return down the back stairs that night after dealing with the pope’s bed and doing what else he had been assigned to do, our young friend Gaston here began to worry. He feared that Maurice had been caught red handed and that his own part in the break-in would be revealed. He said he waited half the night and only when his nerves got the better of him he crept back up the stairs. He had to pass the guards but they were so involved in their dice they didn’t notice him or if they did it meant nothing and was straightaway forgotten because, of course, he had a right to be there.’

‘What happened when he reached la chambre du pape? Did he go right inside?’

‘No, he heard voices. One voice stood out. It was the pope himself. Clement’s gravelly tones are unmistakable. The other voice he did not recognise. But he did hear a name.’

Yes?’

‘Grizac.’

‘But was he mentioned because Maurice was his acolyte or was it because he was being addressed?’

‘My very question. But Gaston was unable to answer. He said he thought it sounded as if it was mentioned in passing and it was likely to be so because only one other voice spoke, that was the one unknown to him. But he admitted that Cardinal Grizac might have been standing by in silence, too shocked to speak. In retrospect he realises that they must have found Maurice’s body but at that point Gaston didn’t know he was dead. He fled in terror, nevertheless, back down the stairs, praying, he said, that Maurice would not betray him. When he heard he was dead he had the grace to say he was ashamed of the joy that sprang into his heart. He was saved. Maurice could never betray him now.’

‘That explains his surly manner when I spoke to him. He was in a state of sheer terror for his life.’

‘He also told me that Cardinal Grizac was in the chapel from matins to lauds. My two brothers confirm this as they were there themselves.’

‘I know.’

Hubert raised his eyebrows. She could see his expression in the moonlight. Grim and unyielding.

‘Presumably your brothers did not accompany the pope to his bedchamber so they will not know who was there when Maurice's body was discovered.’

‘That would be too easy.’

‘What time did Gaston go up there?’

‘He says it was after lauds.’

‘He just missed being seen by the guards then. That’s when they say they went up.’

‘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?’