‘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 chose 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.