‘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?’