I was jolted from my theorising by the sound of a key in the lock. Wedged tight into the recess, I leaned across to make sure I could see through the narrow gap between the two stacks of boxes. Ignoring the pain in all my joints, I held myself still, terrified that the slightest sound would give me away and ruin my advantage. Despite what I had promised Cotin, I had no intention of allowing the killer to leave and hide his evidence. I was confident that, with surprise on my side and the help of a weapon, I could easily overcome him and force him at knifepoint to the gate, where the King’s soldiers would be waiting.
The door creaked open and a faint circle of light appeared; behind it, the outline of a figure, the cowl of his habit pulled up over his head. I heard the door click shut and the light brightened; I realised he had draped the lantern with a cloth to dim it on his way through the grounds. I held my breath, every fibre tensed. He crossed immediately to the boxes of books, set down his light and crouched to pull away the first crate. Silently, I eased out from my hiding place and drew my knife. The light from his lantern puddled on the floor; I caught a glimpse of his profile as he straightened, clasping the bundle with the statue to his breast with both hands like a Madonna holding an infant. I stepped forward; the movement startled him and he whipped around to face me, frozen with surprise.
‘Keep quiet, don’t move, and you won’t come to harm,’ I said, holding the point of the knife towards him. ‘I need you to come with me. Bring that with you.’
His face was still hidden in shadow, but I saw his eyes flick down to the statue, as if he had forgotten he was holding it. In an instant he seemed to recover his power of thought; he leaned back and, with considerable force, hurled the statue at me so that it struck me in the chin. I staggered backwards, touching my fingertips to my face, and in that unguarded moment he swung a punch that connected with the left side of my jaw. I dropped the knife; my mouth filled with blood as I struggled to recover my balance, but he reached out and pulled at the stack of crates beside us so that it toppled forwards. I managed to jump back as boxes of stone, glass and metal crashed across the floor, trapping me in the corner. I was fortunate that no flying debris struck me, but by the time I had clambered over the heap, he had already grabbed the lantern and plunged me into darkness as he closed the door behind him.
Cursing, I stumbled blindly across the room, spitting blood, relieved to find that he had not locked me in. Outside the mist was so thick now that I could not see more than four or five feet in front of me, but the lantern was barely visible as a pinprick of fuzzy light between the bent shapes of trees ahead. I lurched after it, tripping on clumps of grass, branches clawing at my clothes, damp skeins of cobweb clinging to my face as trunks loomed out of nowhere and the light bobbed and grew fainter. Moonlight barely silvered the layers of vapour that hung heavy as smoke in the air. After a few paces I could no longer see the lantern at all. I thought I heard a low laugh from just behind my left shoulder, though it might as easily have been a magpie. I realised he had led me into the orchard deliberately to confuse me. There was no sound now but the stillness of the night and my own blood thudding in my chest. Turning again to what I believed was the direction of the path, I moved with caution, but before I found the edge of the trees I glimpsed the light again, jouncing up and down a few yards ahead. I ran towards it, only to see it disappear as I heard the sound of a gate slamming and the key turning in the lock.
‘Merda,’ I muttered. A few feet further on I found the path leading to the door in the wall; my quarry had slipped out while I was stumbling among the trees. I hesitated, trying to decide my best course. I had Cotin’s key; I could pursue him, but he might have hidden himself along the river track with the idea of ambushing me if I followed. He had already shown himself unafraid to kill a man on that path; I did not want to go the same way, and I was unarmed now. Besides, I thought, brightening – if all had gone smoothly, he would have run straight into the arms of the King’s soldiers. I hoped they would have the wit to hold him until I caught up with them. But there was still the matter of evidence; while he was away from the abbey, this was my chance to see if there was anything more than the cloak and statue that would serve to condemn him beyond doubt. Perhaps he had kept some correspondence hidden in his cell that would make explicit who had set him on to kill Paul – any such letter would be a thousand times more valuable than a bloodied statue. It was worth a try. I ran my fingers gingerly over my swollen lip; though I had still not had a clear view of his face, I could be fairly sure that punch was not thrown by a man with a crippled right hand. If Cotin was right, there was only one other friar with a key to the storeroom. At least that meant I had an idea of where to start.
I turned my steps away from the gate and followed the path back to the outbuilding. Feeling along the shelf behind the door where Cotin had found the lantern, my fingers closed over a stub of candle. I drew my tinder-box from the pouch at my belt and fumbled with frozen and trembling fingers to strike a spark from it. The room was a chaos of broken stone, metal and glass, strewn over the floor where he had pulled the crates down to slow me. Scrabbling one-handed while I tried to hold up the feeble light, I found my knife, then unearthed the statue, still tangled in its cloak, and bundled it under my arm.
The damp air snuffed my candle as soon as I stepped outside. After a couple of attempts to relight it I was forced to concede that I did not have the time to lose; I would have to rely on my sense of direction. If the King’s guards had not stopped my attacker, there was always the chance that he would run around the perimeter of the abbey wall and try to enter another way, but the main gate would be barred at this hour and surely he would not want to wake the gatekeeper and explain himself. My guess was that he would wait and return eventually through the back wall in search of the statue. I had no idea what time it might be by now, but I must not be found sneaking around the abbey when the friars were awakened for the office of Matins at two o’clock. I could not afford to end up wandering lost in the mist. From the storehouse I set out through the trees away from the wall that separated the abbey grounds from the river path and tried to steer myself in a straight line. As a novice, I had been taught to recite certain Psalms as a means of measuring time without the need for clocks or church bells, and though I no longer spoke them in worship, I still had them all by rote, and they proved useful when I needed to mark the passing time. So it was that, after around ten minutes of determined walking, one step after another, into the white blankness, I saw the bulk of the abbey church against the sky a hundred yards ahead. Relieved, I quickened my steps towards it and the cloisters that lay beyond; in my haste I collided with a tall figure who reared up out of the mist, arms outstretched over me. I stifled a cry and jumped back, dropping the statue and grabbing for my knife as my heart hammered at my ribs, but my assailant did not move. After a moment, my shoulders slackened and I let out a panicked laugh at my own folly. I had run into a stone angel, wings spread, empty eyes raised to heaven. Taking another step back I almost fell over an object at knee height; I turned to find a moss-covered cross and realised I had wandered into the abbey cemetery. Picking my way through the graves, I found a path that I could follow as far as the church. There had been plenty among my brothers at San Domenico who would have been gibbering prayers to the Virgin and all the saints had they found themselves alone in a mist-shrouded graveyard at this hour, but I had never shared that monkish fear of the unquiet dead. It was only the living who would creep up on silent feet and put a blade in your neck.