Athanasius gave a howl of rage. His face was a contorted mask of hatred.
Hildegard gripped the wall with both hands and after a moment forced herself to look over the edge. Far below, Grizac’s fluttering red cloak came to rest over his broken body where he lay face down, bones shattered, in a spreading pool of blood.
**
The paste white face of Athanasius, twisted and stark under the black hood, expressed a profundity of evil like an astral force. It sucked all goodness out of the world and tried insidiously to draw her into its realm. He was motionless.
His shock at what the cardinal had done was obvious. Grizac had escaped him. Grizac had transcended his evil star. Grizac had triumphed.
The blanched lips curled in a snarl. ‘Are you going to follow him, domina? I suggest it as the better alternative to what awaits you.’
‘You heard what Cardinal Grizac said. I endorse every word. But I have not finished yet.’
As she spoke he made a furious, tottering step towards her, raising one hand with a knife in it but, as he brought it down in a glinting arc, she pushed him hard against the wall, shouting, ‘Out of my way, you creature!’
Do not trust him.
It was Athanasius, not Grizac. The prioress had tried to warn her about him.
Before he could gather himself and raise the knife again she tore across the roof to the door, burst through it and slammed it hard behind her, forcing her whole weight against it. With no idea what to do, where to turn next, nor whether Athanasius had recovered and was even now spidering across the roof after her, she suddenly noticed the key in the door. Grasping it with both hands she revolved it in the lock.
It bought some time. If only she could get past the sentry at the bottom of the stairs she could run to safety. She might even be able to saddle a horse and escape before Athanasius managed to free himself and call the guards.
Down the spiral staircase, twisting giddily, hands slithering down the walls on both sides to keep her footing, plunging down in a flying descent until she reached ground level, she saw, with a gasp of relief, that the sentry was not at his post. The empty passage stretched ahead.
More steps. Up, this time. Two at a time. Breathless. Another corridor. Through an arch. Running along a gallery on the other side she chanced on the hidden place under the buttress where the pages met.
A sudden idea. Edmund. Prepare a horse from the stables. Make her getaway under cover of darkness. She did not doubt that when Athanasius freed himself from his temporary imprisonment he would call out the militia and track her down. Then it would be the Inquisition. The heretics’ pyre in the market place.
She ducked under the arch with a sense of having found sanctuary. Mounds of straw untidily stacked as usual. How the boys emerged from it that time when she came to meet them. She saw it move.
Whispered, ‘Edmund? Are you here?’
The straw heaved. Someone. All not lost. Soon a horse and escape.
Then a shape reared up, shedding straw. A figure emerging, growing taller. Filling the space. Taller still. Too tall.
Not Edmund.
No, not Edmund. Not one of the pages. It was the pope’s personal bodyguard.
A big man, well over six feet, he had to cruck his head under the slope of the roof when he stood up, bulking in the tight space, the secret space above the Great Audience Chamber.
She was transfixed.
Armoured in a black leather cuirass, greaves, gauntlets and a leather casque covering his head with the upper half of his face concealed, he wore a broad sword in a leather scabbard on a low-slung belt with an extra knife stuck in a leather sheath near his right hand. His eyes were bright behind the slits of the mask.
‘Patience finds its own reward, just as they tell us.’ He took a step forward.
Hildegard. Still transfixed, stared.
‘I knew you‘d have to visit your boys some time,’ he chuckled, sly, confident, very much in charge. ‘Don’t worry, domina. We have them safe.’ He beckoned with his left hand. ‘Come, we have a reckoning, you and I, more even than you might guess. Make it easy.’
He slid the knife with a relishing slowness from its sheath.
**
They were less than a yard apart. She could smell the strong, feral scent of him. Hear him breathe. See the rise and fall of his muscular torso under the protective leather bands of his cuirass. She could even see the individual black hairs round his mouth. Beard roughly shaven. Lips moist. Teeth broken and black. Breathe foul.
He loomed over her.
‘You know me. And I know you,’ he paused then intoned with deliberate emphasis, ‘Hildegard.’
With one finger he slid aside his mask and she saw the scar running from brow to jaw in a livid, jagged line. Features she knew were suddenly, sickeningly, before her.
Plunging into the nightmare she could only croak, ‘Escrick Fitzjohn? Here?’
It was his voice she had recognised in that scuffle outside le Coq d’or the other night. Even with him standing in close proximity as now, part of her refused to believe it. It could not be Escrick. Not here.
He ran a finger down his scar. ‘Remember when you did this to me?’
She felt drenched in cold water and came to her senses. ‘I didn’t do it, Escrick. You did it yourself by attacking the lock-keeper near Meaux. You drew your sword on him. He was unarmed. You killed him in cold blood.’
He began to chuckle again. ‘Long, long ago, yes. In another world. What a strange business fate is. I’d put you well out of mind but now, like a gift from the angels, here you are, delivered safely unto my embrace to receive a final blessing.’
‘What mischance brought you here?’
‘You’ve met my handsome brother Jack?’ he sneered. ‘Where Sir John Fitzjohn goes I’m not far behind.’
‘I’m astonished to see you in Avignon of all places. What’s for you here?’ Her best hope was to keep him talking.
‘There’s plenty, believe me!’’
‘Did you come over with your brother’s retinue?’ Keep him talking. ‘I didn’t know you and he were allies again.’
‘With his usual lordly generosity he took me in when he was called to do service with our father in Castile – ’
‘With John of Gaunt?’
‘Yes. And when that little skirmish was over and he was crowned King John in Compostela we two bastards were no further use, so Jack went back to England to rejoin Woodstock -’ he shrugged.
‘And you?’
‘I didn’t.’
‘You deserted?’
‘Call it that if you like. You’re a nit-picking nun. I see it differently. No pay, no service. And you’ll certainly know what a tight-fisted devil Gaunt is even to his own flesh and blood. I decided I’d head back to France, maybe do better for myself fighting in the pope’s army. The winning one. The victor at Cesena.’
She felt sick at the thought. He had not changed. Blood on his hands. Death in his heart. Keep talking, she reminded. ‘And now you’re Clement’s personal bodyguard? That is some achievement.’
‘Our mutual friend, magister Athanasius, saw my potential at once. I could tell him everything he wanted to know about my sainted brother and his keeper, Woodstock.’
So he was not even loyal to his own kin.
He took her silence for a chance to boast. ‘I was with Hawkwood in the papal states when I first met Clement. When I turned up here he remembered me. We get on, we do. You might not believe it. And this place suits me.’ He paused but then could not resist adding, ‘It was me to encourage Woodstock to send the miners to Clement. It scotched de la Pole’s game and gave Clement something he wanted. A word to brother Jack and he fell for it. Clever, eh?’
Her mouth was dry. While he was talking he was playing with his knife, smiling to himself and moving so that her escape was blocked.