She went over the scene again. The bodyguard holding the light as directed. Athanasius, thoughtful, assiduous in his duty to confirm death. Herself, bewildered, travel-weary after recently arriving from England, and filled with a sense of horror at what she saw. The cardinal, stoical, then tearful. With shock? With fear? With rage? With confusion? There had been no way of reading him.
Brother Gregory leaned across the table to attract her attention. ‘Far away, domina? Forgive me for breaking into your meditations. Our lord abbot sends his greetings. Will you be kind enough to follow me?’
As she rose and came towards him he put out a protective arm when a servant blundered past. ‘Have a care now, fellow,’ he warned mildly. ‘This way, if you will, domina, please follow me.’
**
She threw her bag down and sat on the bed when Brother Gregory left. Hubert had found her a small, pretty chamber in the guest wing, without the austerity of the quarters assigned to visiting monastics.
A single window faced east overlooking a small garden in the lee of the battlements. Espaliered fruit trees were growing against the walls and in the middle of a paved area was a spring sending up a fountain that fell back into a shallow marble basin. A door led into this miniature paradise and she decided she would go and find it when she had time.
Now, plumped down on a bed that was rather more comfortable than the ones allotted to the nuns, she had one name on her mind.
Grizac.
It seemed to turn up again and again. His grief-stricken face appeared before her, his tears in the treasury that day - for the loss of a favourite acolyte or for something else? Again she asked herself why Maurice had entered the forbidden vault, why he was holding that particular treasure of all things. Had it been a dare? Or had somebody put him up to it? If so, who?
She remembered the suggestion that he was working alone. But why? Was it really the dagger he wanted? What use was it to him? Did he know it contained poison? She wondered how Grizac felt about finding him there. His feelings had been impossible to gauge.
Maybe he saw Maurice’s presence in such a place as a betrayal of trust. Or was Grizac the mastermind behind the theft, his tears ones of shock that everything had gone so disastrously wrong? He would have known how dangerous it would be to make an attempt on such a valuable hoard. Perhaps his tears were of regret.
Another failure to add to the list.
She considered his long life playing second fiddle, first to his brother, Pope Urban V, and then to his contemporary Clement VII. To be Bishop of Avignon was poor reward for a lifetime with such promising connections. He was a man of qualities, everyone agreed, a scholar of repute, compassionate, piously living up to his vows, a sagacious and respected member of the College of Cardinals.
That is, if a suspicion of murder were discounted.
But then if it was a case of Grizac guilty in the treasury, what about Grizac guilty on the bridge? What about Grizac in her own cell, murdering an innocent nun?
A knife ripping across the tender throat of a lamb came to mind.
Blood.
Then Carlotta, blood on her chin from the carcase of meat, blood on her knife. The sign of squirrel’s paws under the bed. A blood stain on the nun’s mattress.
Blood everywhere.
She turned her deliberations to the death of Taillefer. Somehow she could not see Grizac entering the debauched darkness under the bridge.
If what she had been told were to be believed, he had crossed over, taking his time, arriving at the other side long after the others. He had been alone. Even so, he started with the others. The sentry had said so twice, once to herself and once, independently, to Edmund.
After the others crossed he would have had time to kill Taillefer on the bridge and then stop at the chapel to make confession.
It was the ferryman who had told her he heard an argument coming from the direction of the bridge. His testimony had persuaded her to look there. The priest confirmed the sound of an argument. Voices raised in anger above the howling wind, a knife in the darkness, a body splashing into the black waters of the Rhone.
It was the priest who had mentioned the bell for lauds, said he heard the voices before he rang the bell. But Hubert, Fondi and presumably the others stayed on for lauds because it wasn’t worth crossing from Villeneuve twice in such a violent storm.
The murderer could not have attended lauds. There would have been no way he could have been on the bridge shortly before the bell and then in attendance inside the palace.
It was a good fifteen minutes’ walk down the lane and then the complicated access to get into the chapel, another ten minutes at least. She saw the priest’s expression as he mentioned the bell and felt there was something evasive about it.
Was he confident that he had in fact rung the bell at the time he claimed? I sleep fitfully, he had told her. Had he woken earlier than he thought he had? Did he ring the bell long before lauds took place in the palace?
First the voices, then the murder, then the bell giving the murderer time to get back to the palace and into the office for lauds? Alibi intact. Grizac could have done it with time to spare.
It was a theory at least.
**
She went to find Hubert. He was in the Tinel with his two supporters.
Before she could speak he said, ‘I was just finishing my bread and water before coming to find you. I have something to tell you. But first, I trust your new chamber is satisfactory?’
‘Very,’ she replied. ‘I’m most grateful for your string-pulling on my behalf.’
‘No point in being a cardinal in waiting if I can’t help my friends,’ he announced dryly.
Gregory and Egbert chuckled.
‘You first then,’ he said. ‘You have something to say?’
She shot a swift glance at the two monks. They both beamed. They were clearly going to listen in.
Turning to Hubert she said, ‘It’s about that night when you crossed the bridge, when Taillefer was murdered.’
The two monks leaned forward with interest. Wild horses wouldn’t have dragged them away. When Gregory spoke the matter had evidently been discussed with Hubert because he said, ‘Have you found new evidence, domina?’
‘Not really.’ She gave Hubert a helpless glance.
‘Have no worries. They know as much or as little as I do and whatever they hear will go no further.’
With no choice, she explained the problem so far.
Egbert looked interested. ‘So the murder took place on the bridge after an argument and around the time of the bell for lauds, thereby giving an alibi to any of us who were in the palace at that time. Well,’ he said, sitting back, ‘that’s a relief, eh, Hubert?’
Hubert smiled in acknowledgement. ‘But what Hildegard is saying is that the innkeeper at le Coq d’or told her the fellow who was trying to sell the dagger - probably the same one who stole it from the mortuary - went rushing out in pursuit of Taillefer as soon as he found out it’d been taken from his pack. Hence voices not on the bridge but in the lane outside the inn.’
‘But Taillefer was found on the temporary dam that had built up underneath the bridge with his clothes still partly dry.’
‘Meaning that he must have fallen from the bridge?’
‘Yes.’
Gregory frowned. ‘Were there any witnesses to this racket of shouting we understand to have taken place outside the inn?’
‘Plenty, apparently,’ Hildegard replied. ‘The stranger woke everybody up with his ranting. He chased Taillefer down the lane towards the bridge then returned a few minutes later complaining that the thief had got away. After that he gathered his things and left, to vanish into the night.’
‘And did he leave by means of the bridge?’