‘No, my lady,’ he said firmly. ‘I shall have to slip in and out of the cathedral site without being spotted by the night watchmen, and that’s going to be difficult enough for one man alone.’
She sat back in her chair and he sensed that she had conceded the argument. They finished the meal in a slightly chilly silence but, as he got up and bade her goodnight, she looked up at him with a worried expression. ‘May God watch over you,’ she whispered.
‘Amen,’ he muttered. Then, summoning a quick and, he hoped, reassuring smile, he hurried away.
The moon illuminated the square too brightly for a man with a clandestine purpose. Josse stood in the shadows of a large house at the corner of the square for some time, studying the night watchman walking to and fro. He appeared to be alone and not over-conscientious, for quite soon he walked over to where a brazier burned a short distance from the cathedral’s west entrance and remained there rubbing his hands over the flames.
Josse took his chance and slipped down the side of the skeletal building, moving out from the shadows at the last moment and running up the steps and through the space where the South Porch was being put up. Inside, the cathedral was deserted. In the middle of the nave, there was a dark stain.
Josse went swiftly out into the open space and stared down at the mark left by Paul de Fleury’s blood. Then he looked up, verifying that the body had lain directly beneath the beam stretching from the north to the south walls of the nave. It was so high that it made him dizzy just staring up at it. It was daunting, for he was going to have to climb up there.
He ran lightly over to the south side of the nave and made his way along to where a ladder led up to the first level of scaffolding, three men’s height above. Working steadily, making very sure of his hand- and footholds and trying not to look down, slowly he ascended, past the top of the great arch at the side of the nave and on past a row of clerestory windows. Above them were spaces for more windows — at least two rows, he thought — and finally he was up at the point where the great ribs of the vaulted ceiling would spring out from the walls.
The beam from which de Fleury had fallen stretched out from where Josse now stood to the other side of the nave some twenty paces away and, in the moonlight streaming down into the roofless building, Josse could see it very clearly. Looking out, imagining a man walking confidently across — imagining a man falling — made him feel dizzy and sick. He shut his eyes tight. That was far worse, for suddenly he felt as if he were spinning through the air, out of control…
Hastily he opened his eyes. Get on with it, he commanded himself. Cautiously he moved forward until he stood just short of the point where someone would set off to walk along the beam if for some reason his craft demanded it. Men performed such feats, Josse well knew, and he could only imagine that long habit removed the terror. There were handholds, of a sort, offered by the falsework that would support the roof as it was constructed, although these were spaced quite far apart.
He looked down. There were footprints in the dust. He kneeled, taking the carefully wrapped pitch torch from where he had stored it inside the neck of his tunic and lighting it with his flint. Its light flared — surely too brightly! — but if the watchman spotted it, there was little Josse could do. He had to see.
There were two sets of footprints, one considerably larger than the other.
How had it happened? Josse wondered. Had the murderer enticed de Fleury up here on some pretext, got him walking out across the beam and then somehow dislodged him? But the body had been found in the middle of the nave — at the spot, Josse now realized as he looked down, that would be the very centre of the strange ringed pattern that had been laid out down there so far below.
Was that significant? What was that odd pattern, and why was it there? Josse did not know. So, he thought, forcing his concentration back to the present task, let’s say that the killer says to de Fleury, ‘I’ve thought of a better place for the statue of the goddess in the horned headdress, one where she can gaze out unseen on those below.’ Or maybe, he thought eagerly, there has been some protest about her pagan origins and in order to put her here at all, de Loup had to find somewhere less obvious. ‘We’ll put her high up where the roof joins the walls,’ he says to de Fleury, ‘so we’d better shin up and find a place.’ Then up they climb and when they reach this spot, de Loup asks his craftsman to check whether the opposite wall offers a better place. De Fleury sets out across the beam — something he must have done many times before, if not here then on other builds — and when he reaches the middle, de Loup…
What? he wondered. What could he have done to make de Fleury fall?
Slowly he bent down and put his hands either side of the beam. Straining, he tried to move it. To his surprise, it moved quite easily. It did not move far, but then it would not have had to. Even a hand’s breadth would have been enough. He sat back on his heels and extinguished his torch; he could manage the climb down without it once his eyes had adjusted and it was better not to be seen.
I will not swear that’s how it was done, he thought. Only that it’s how it could have been done.
Then, doing his best to rid his mind of the vision of a man falling through the air, carefully he went back down the scaffolding to the safety of the solid ground far below.
He did not know it, but someone other than the oblivious night watchman had been observing him ever since he had entered the cathedral. The people in the secret encampment knew about the man who had fallen to his death in the centre of the labyrinth and they knew they must counteract the evil that had sullied this most precious spot. They had ordered the powerful figures among their number to stand vigil in the cathedral by night, calling down the powers of good and beseeching them to push back the threatening darkness. This first night, the sunset watch had fallen to one of the men. The second watch was Joanna’s.
She had had no idea that Josse was here in Chartres; all she had been told was that he had gone to France. So great had been her surprise when she had identified the tall, broad-shouldered figure in the nave that she had all but cried out. She had restrained herself — whatever her private feelings, she was here to do a job and abandoning her post to run out to Josse was no part of it — and settled back to watch what he would do. She guessed his purpose as soon as she saw him crouch down by the dark stain at the heart of the labyrinth and, as she watched him clamber up the scaffolding to the beam across the vault of the roof, she knew her guess was right. With her eyes fixed on his distant figure, she prayed to the Great Mother to make sure he did not fall. So fierce was her concentration that she thought she saw a faint shimmering figure made of light put out its arms to him.
She waited until he came down and willed him to leave the cathedral via the opening by which she was standing. As he came level, she drew her light cloak carefully around her and said softly, ‘Josse.’ As his shocked eyes met hers and he opened his mouth to cry out, she added urgently, ‘Hush!’
He grabbed her arm, pushed her back against the wall and hissed, ‘What are you doing here?’ Then, as understanding dawned, he said, ‘This is the place you told me about, isn’t it? The place where your people have to come to protect something that’s under threat?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That’s what I’m doing now. The death here has brought a shadow and, in addition to our original purpose, we have to try to disperse it.’
He stared intently into her eyes. ‘It was murder, or so I believe.’
She hesitated, but as he seemed to know already there was surely no harm in telling him. ‘Some of my people were here last night,’ she said. ‘I can’t explain but it’s to do with the labyrinth.’ She pointed to the markers in the nave. ‘They saw two men climb up to the roof and one went out to sit astride the beam. He was looking down as if he were trying to find the centre of the maze, and the other man was giving him instructions. The man on the beam said, “I’m over the centre now,” and then the other man kicked the beam sideways with his foot. The man on the beam slipped off but managed to wrap his arms tightly round it, but then the other man kicked out hard again and again and in the end he let go.’