‘Nor I you, but you’re better.’
Louis deserved to have the last word, but it had to be said, ‘Let’s go to the dogs, eh? and see what they have to tell us.’
* From Io piango (1581), by Luca Marenzio (1553-99), after a poem by Petrarch.
* From La Guerre (The War), by Clement Janequin (1485–1558).
5
The study was huge and hugely cluttered, and it showed at once a side to Bishop Henry-Baptiste Rivaille that was totally unexpected. It was not a room in which to officially greet people. It was very private and tucked away in a far corner of the Cloister of the Pilgrims’ Well, le Cloitre du puit des pèlerins, which dated from the fourteenth century and was on the rue Sainte-Catherine within a few minutes’ walk of the Palais.
‘You find me at home, Inspectors, and busy at my researches,’ he said, taken aback at the intrusion but valiantly trying to hide the discomfort. ‘What can I do for you? A glass of anisette, some coffee …? It’s not often detectives from Paris visit the Bishop of Avignon and the Vaucluse unannounced.’
The cook, who had, under the threat of Sûreté duress, escorted them from a side entrance, and who had been with the house for centuries, was going to get a tongue-lashing later. ‘The anisette, merci,’ said St-Cyr.
Ah not that Quatsch again, swore Kohler silently as he grimaced at the thought of liquorice’s cloying taste. ‘Some coffee?’ he asked and swallowed.
‘Both, then. I’m honoured. Please … please find a seat. Move things … ah! be sure to put them back exactly in the same order. One grows old. One tends to forget in the heat of one’s thoughts.’
Rivaille turned to the cook. ‘Bénédictine, ma chère, our visitors look hungry. A little of the bread and chèvre, some of the prosciutto affumicato César so kindly brought us — he smokes it himself, Inspectors, with juniper and fir from the hills. It’s perfect. A dish of the olives, Bénédictine — they must try them, of course. All who seek succour at the hand of God must be given sustenance.’
And warned, was that it, eh? wondered Kohler, realizing that word of their not having eaten must have reached here some time ago. No longer used as a cloister, the villa’s seemingly endless corridors, salons and staircases had been hung with Old Masters, tapestries, crossed swords, heraldic shields and armour. There’d been bronzes, too, and marble statues, and a wealth of carpets and furnishings. But here there was none of that. Here there was at heart a simple man but one who was dedicated absolutely to an ideal, a dream.
‘The return of the Papacy to our fair city,’ breathed Rivaille, hesitantly watching them, for he must have sensed they would peel back the ancient manuscripts, thought Kohler, searching through their blotting paper flags if necessary until they damned well had what they wanted.
‘Please, I’m a consummate student and collector of our past. The bas-reliefs on the walls are pieces from the days of the Romans. Naked Gauls being taken to the coliseum to be torn to shreds — one can still hear their cries, can’t one? Maidens being debauched in the streets and then slaughtered mercilessly, their tresses caught in bestial hands, Christ unknown to them, poor innocents; God but in waiting.’
There were bits and pieces from more recent centuries, Renaissance floor tiles, plans of the Palais with each of its periods of construction, terracotta pottery, and hundreds of books and manuscripts, many in Latin. These last were arranged around the simple table-cum-desk in phalanxes with their spines facing upwards so that flags could extend from both the top and bottom of each book.
‘I learned to read while still a shepherd,’ he said. ‘Everything you see here I owe to the Church, especially the freedom to pursue independent lines of thought. The carpentry is, of course, my own and deliberately functional.’
Among flanking stacks of papers was the discourse Rivaille had been working on when interrupted. Dark, horn-rimmed glasses lay on top of pages where an irritated pen had released droplets of ink as it had been set down.
‘Bishop, a few..’ began the Sûreté only to hear Rivaille mildly chide, ‘Paris has informed me of this habit of yours. “A few small questions, nothing difficult.” Ah bon, let us get down to it. Sister Agnès removed a ring and this has understandably provoked you. A ruby, the stone blood-red and perfect.’
They waited. Chairs not being available, they sat, like he did, on the same side of the ‘desk’, on the small and simple benches of another age.
Rivaille unlocked a drawer. ‘This ring … These days one can’t tell who to trust and so trusts no one, am I not correct?’
The song of their times … well, one of them, thought Kohler wryly. Louis took the ring. Light from the desk lamp made the stone appear as if warm. A good four carats.
‘Open it,’ said Rivaille, his voice hushed by reverence.
‘You do it, then,’ said St-Cyr.
‘There’s a secret compartment in the bezel,’ confided the bishop. ‘Such things were very common in the Early Renaissance but this …’ The detectives would wonder now about his tone of voice and no doubt would think it motivated by thoughts other than holy when they realized what the compartment held, but God would judge. Only God.
He slid the compartment open and handed the ring back. For a moment the Sûreté was speechless. ‘It’s … it’s a coiled human hair. Bishop, what is the meaning of this, please?’
Ah Christ, thought Kohler.
Rivaille’s unrelenting gaze fell on each of them. ‘That,’ he said, ‘is from the head of the Virgin herself. Down through the ages the great masters have invariably depicted her hair as being auburn or very fair, but among them some such as Pontormo accurately revealed it to be a distinctly reddish strawberry blonde.’
Adrienne de Langlade, swore Kohler silently.
‘A thorn from Christ’s crown,’ interjected Louis, meeting the believer’s gaze with suitable awe. ‘Had I not seen these relics, Bishop, I might never have known they existed.’
Liar! thought Kohler. You don’t believe it any more than I do!
‘Irreplaceable,’ breathed Rivaille. ‘So you see why I absolutely had to have it returned and yet … and yet maintain that element of secrecy all such priceless relics demand.’
‘And the pendant box?’ asked Louis warily.
‘Coroner Peretti is, unfortunately, far too stubborn. He could never have guaranteed the safety of the thorn and when presented with Maître de Passe’s ultimatum, quickly found he had no other choice but to return it.’
‘What ultimatum?’ croaked the Sûreté.
It would be best to give the two of them a magnanimous shrug. ‘These things, they are understood without their being said.’
A little trip then, in a railway cattle truck to an unspecified destination in the east, or simply a case of what the Gestapo and the SS were fond of calling Herzlähmung. Cardiac arrest.
They went on to other matters. There was a small round stool between them, and on this, a game of jacquet whose marquetry gleamed. This board was removed and the tray of food set down. Somehow the coffee and cakes, the thick sandwiches of crusty bread and a small pewter pitcher of anisette, with matching cups, could never taste as well as had they been served before the threat that had just been made.
‘To the Babylonian Captivity, Inspectors, and to its return in this new and even brighter Renaissance,’ said Rivaille, lifting his cup. ‘These,’ he indicated the pewter, ‘are all that remain in Avignon of the personal effects of his Holiness Clément the Sixth. Each time I drink from one, I tremble at the thought of what must once have been and must return.’
Yet another warning they understood only too clearly, so bon, that was as it should be, thought Rivaille. He gave them a moment to satisfy hunger. The olives they would recognize as similar to those they had found in the girl’s rooms, the chèvre aussi. Each would realize they were eating like kings in these troubled times, and perhaps there were twinges of guilt, but both would make no mention of this, nor of the black-market origins of the bread, the ham and coffee. Neither of these two men could ever be bought and that, he told himself, could well be their downfall.