‘Not at all.’
‘Where was the little devil?’
‘On the stairs where we had already been searching. He must have hidden somewhere then crept out when he thought everyone had gone.’
Fondi reached out and stroked the squirrel’s smooth head. ‘We must let him sleep. It’s his season for sleeping. There’s a time to sleep, a time to dance, all that, so very wise.’ He registered the bell. ‘And a time for going to prime which I fear we shall miss. Flora, go and eat something and take Bel Pierre with you.’
He turned to Hildegard when she had gone. He too was one of those dark, quiet men - but not deadly, surely? She recalled Hubert’s proposition that the murderer of all three victims was a professional assassin. A man with a cool nerve and the ability to simulate friendship.
Fondi had been in the pope’s private chapel on the night of Maurice’s murder but who would say he had not left for the few minutes it takes to run a knife over a youth’s throat?
At the crossing of the bridge he might have gone on ahead of Hubert and the others, unseen in the darkness and noise of the storm, one moment and a life ended.
And the Scottish nun, with the paw marks in the dust under her bed.
Urb.Md.
The cardinal from Urbino.
He was smiling at her now with something apologetic in his manner. Light filtered through the roughly closed shutters and lay in bars across the floor, across his cloak, across his face.
He was offering her something to drink. She saw him go to a stand with a carafe and goblets on it, watched him take up a small clay jug, heard him call for more wine, and pour something into one of the goblets, turn, offer it. A servant entered with another flagon.
‘Forgive Carlotta,’ he remarked as she took the goblet from him. ‘I believe she resents Hubert’s affection for you.’
‘Tell her she has no need. Our vows are firm.’ She did not intend it to sound like a reproof.
He did not take it as such. ‘Vows do not obliterate the feeling. She’s jealous, a hard life before she met me, a furiously passionate woman. She can’t help herself.’
‘I’m sorry to hear she has had a hard life.’
‘So be it.’
‘I have one question only.’ She gave him a look that should have extracted every nuance of truth from him but met only his handsome, bland, concerned stare. ‘I noticed something odd in my cell when I returned after the nun had been murdered there.’
His brows came together.
‘It was something so small as to be almost negligible but what it means is of far greater consequence.’
His frown deepened.
‘It was the paw marks of a squirrel - and its droppings,’ she added in case he should brush aside her words.
He turned away and went over to the window where the light fell more brightly through the slats of the shutter across his tortured expression. He rubbed his fingers over his temples as if in thought.
With a sudden exclamation he turned, swept past Hildegard and went into the bedchamber next door. She heard a sharp argument then Carlotta, hair hanging loose to her waist, barefoot, her silk night gown creased, a fur being placed over her shoulders by Fondi, stood glowering in the doorway.
‘Tell her,’ Fondi ordered.
‘Oh caro, don’t bully me so.’
‘Tell her, will you.’
‘This is about that damned squirrel again.’ She gave Hildegard a reproachful look. ‘I admit it. I went into your bedchamber and I had Bel Pierre with me. He’s a warm little thing and it’s so cold here, and anyway, I must have put him down on the floor.’
‘Was the body there?’ Hildegard croaked. Her fingers tightened round the goblet containing her untouched drink.
‘It was. Already laid out by the woman who does such things. It was a shock, I can tell you. I would have thought they’d take it away quickly enough but no. I suppose it’s normal with you people, death, dead bodies.’ She shivered.
‘Why did you go?’
She gave a shamefaced look at Fondi. ‘I wanted to see if you were there.’
‘Dead, you mean?’
‘I hadn’t heard about the murder at that point. I just wanted to see if you had really gone away with Hubert.’ She was mumbling now and went quickly over to Fondi, putting her arms underneath his shirt and burying her face in his shoulder. ‘It means nothing, caro. I just wanted to know.’
He patted her head much as he had patted Bel Pierre.
**
Hubert. Striding up the steps towards the Fondi apartment. Hildegard leaving the same. He noticed the expression on her face. He stopped. ‘I apologise for Carlotta.’
‘Everyone apologises for Carlotta. Tell me, does she deal in poison?’
She stared him out until he was forced to reply, ‘You know I can’t answer that.’
‘I have no time for you, de Courcy!’
He stepped back as if she had slapped his face.
**
It was true then. The velvet cloaks, the embroidered silks, the linen so fine it was transparent. And the furs. The jewels. The horses. The villa and all its rich appurtenances. Paid for by dealing in the instruments of death. It must be true. What other explanation for Hubert’s dismay?
**
She turned a corner but there was no guard on duty at the foot of the steps. Quickly she wound her way up to the roof of the tower and stepped through the door, breathing in the clear, fresh gusts of a westerly wind that seemed to promise and end to corruption.
With no rain the sky was pale blue, rinsed clean, heralding spring and new life. Resting her head against the cold stone of the battlements she eyed the distant country, seeing the horizon as a promise of home and safety.
Back at the Abbey of Meaux, however, there would be no escape. Hubert de Courcy ruled. How could she ever have dealings with him again? He knew about Urb.Md. Mandrake of Urbino. He must surely know about the purpose of it here in Avignon, the devilish reason it had been brought here by the poison-maker and sold on to Clement.
Something so potent no-one could survive it.
Nothing so tellingly demonstrated Hubert’s allegiance to the Clementists.
He was a fallen star. A Lucifer. A traitor.
Her enemy and her love.
A sound behind her made her spin round and she saw Cardinal Grizac standing in the low doorway. He was panting slightly. He must have followed her.
He bent his head and stepped out onto the roof. A gust of wind blew his cloak out like the wings of a hawk. His cross gleamed with a sinister authority. He was not the bullied and apologising figure she had witnessed earlier. He was as he had been when he uttered that furious invitation at the top of the stairs. Tell your mentor I know who the guilty man is.
Hildegard felt behind her for the reassuring solidity of the wall as Grizac strode heavily towards her.
‘Did you tell him what I asked you to?’
She shook her head. ‘He is no more my mentor than -’ she struggled to find the most unlikely person she could think of and blurted, ‘than Thomas Woodstock!’
Grizac gave a start. ‘Woodstock? How did you know he was involved?’
She decided to risk everything with a shot in the dark. ‘Isn’t it obvious? He had the miners kidnapped to give to Clement in return for a poison that could not be detected. But you set Maurice to steal it before his vassal could get his hands on it. I don’t understand why.’
Grizac did not contradict her nor enlighten her. She found herself slipping into a quagmire where all the questions and suppositions she had made over the last few days were flying together in one inchoate mass and in a moment she would be overwhelmed by some incontrovertible fact that would be an epiphany, revealing the truth.