‘And was knifed.’
‘That’s about it.’
He calls that simple, she registered with disbelief.
‘Look, I can’t account for it. He must’ve gone up with somebody. An accomplice. I don’t know! That’s enough!’
She looked at the coins and began to reach for them. ‘When did you go up?’
He shifted. Mumbled a bit. Hildegard leaned forward, ‘When did you say?’
‘During lauds,’ he admitted.
‘Not the start as you’ve just said?’
He mumbled again. ‘Just before the end, in fact.’
‘You call that not long?’
‘It’s the middle of the night. The night shift. None of us like it.’
‘What does Clement do between matins and lauds?’
‘He stays up there as I’ve already told you, listening to the singing.’
‘I thought the murdered acolyte was a chorister?’
‘They don’t have the full choir at that time. Maybe his Holiness talks among his friends? How would I know what they do? You imagine I’m allowed in there?’
‘All right. I was only asking. So, given that Gaston changed places with Maurice, how do you think the murderer got inside? You seem to have forgotten him. Who did he swop places with?’
‘You tell me.’
**
She failed to get any more out of him and was left with the question whether the murderer had been lying in wait when Maurice arrived and if so, who had tipped him off that an attempt was going to be made on the treasury, for why else would he be there?
**
‘Gaston, I understand you’re about to be sent back to your village?’ She had found him just in time.
He grunted an assent.
‘And I hear you changed places with Maurice on the night he was murdered? Did he pay you to do that?’
The page, pale, sullen, badly treated, knew better than to show insolence to add to his calamitous lack of judgement. He nodded. When Hildegard asked him how much he mentioned a pitifully small sum then tightened his lips in distaste at his own folly, as she assumed.
‘What did Maurice say to you? Did he give any reason for wanting to get inside?’
‘He didn’t need to. Why else would somebody break into a treasury but to steal as much gold as they could get their hands on?’ His tone was scornful.
‘Did he promise you more gold if he was successful?’
The boy gave a miserable nod. She could imagine what he was thinking: all this trouble and for what? The promised riches had not materialised. They were nothing but a chimera.
Some people live to be fooled and fooled again. And here was one, led into folly by the lure of a little stolen gold.
‘So what did he say exactly when he put this idea to you?’
‘I knew it was ‘cos of the gold. I’m not stupid. But he tried to tell me it was a dare. He said: “I want to see if I can outwit the gryphon.” A dare, I ask you! He said, “You’ll profit by it, you’ll get your reward.”’
‘And that convinced you?’
‘Of course it did.’
‘What did he mean by the gryphon?’
The boy shook his head.
‘A gryphon is a mythical beast set to guard treasure.’
‘It did a bad job then, didn’t it?’
**
Now things had been explained she saw how easy it had been to set up. Simple, as the guard claimed. He was right in so far as Maurice was concerned. All it took was a cap, a cloak and nerves of steel. Once inside all he had to do was fill his bags and lie in wait until the guards moved off. He would have been able to hear their mailed boots on the stone flags above his head and judge when they were out of the way. Then it was a short step to freedom. The mystery was how the murderer, whoever he was, had got inside without being seen by anyone. It was stretching credulity to imagine he had also bribed somebody to let him in. He must have entered at the same time as Maurice despite the guard claiming that he saw only one figure going up.
He might have even have been the one to give the would-be thief the idea in the first place, putting himself forward as a trusty accomplice, or maybe he was someone Maurice himself had confided in, boasting the way boys will, of what he intended to do, maybe inviting his friend along to witness his escapade.
Maybe the page of the bedchamber himself had tipped someone off, perhaps for another small reward. Or maybe the murderer had taunted Maurice that he hadn’t the nerve to face the gryphon and Maurice had brazened it out, taking the other along as a witness, later to help himself to enough trinkets to keep him in comfort for the rest of his life.
There were a hundred possible versions of what might have happened but they had one thing in common, the murderer must surely have known about the plan beforehand.
In despair at the lack of evidence she decided that the easiest solution was to lay the blame at the feet of the two guards on duty between matins and lauds. Have done with it, she told herself. Even then the question remained: why kill him?
**
No nearer an answer, she mingled with the rumour-mongers before going up to fulfil her duty towards Athanasius. There was nothing new to be heard. Everybody seemed to be losing interest already. The feeling seemed to be that it was only the death of a retainer, a sneak thief, better off dead. He was no-one of importance and was probably the victim of a personal tiff over some trivial rivalry.
The only thing she did discover was that the clerks were busy checking everything in the treasury against an inventory to find out what had actually been stolen. Their activities were unconcealed, in fact blatant, as if to frighten the thief into a public confession. Meanwhile everyone was watching his neighbour in the hope of detecting a sudden show of affluence, although it was unlikely that anyone would be so foolish as to betray themselves in that way.
When she went up to see Athanasius, Cardinal Grizac was already there, sitting on the bench gasping for breath and wiping his brow with his sleeve. ‘Those stairs,’ he greeted her.
She asked him if he would be gracious enough, once he had recovered his breath, to show her the stairs to the pope’s chamber again. It was at the centre of a labyrinth of stairs and passages. She would never find her own way.
Grizac was panting again as they climbed the steps to the vestibule where the guards waited when it was time to change duties with their comrades. Then two stone staircases led to the private chapel and library and the other into the pope’s privy chambers and the treasury. The guard would have seen anyone climbing up because the place where they sat and presumably played dice was on the landing where the stairs divided.
Without complaint Grizac led her up to have another look.
‘The idea,’ he explained, ‘is that in time of danger a wooden ladder on the lower floor can be drawn up inside the tower to prevent anyone getting in to attack the pope. Or to steal from the treasury,’ he added as an afterthought. ‘The builder who designed the tower took no chances. The palace is truly a fortress and although it might be besieged for months on end, it can never be taken. If it did succumb, the treasury itself could not be breached.’
‘Except by one daring youth with a very simple plan.’
‘Quite so.’
**
She tried to get back in to the tower to see the English prisoners and to find out what the inquisitors had wanted to ask John, but the guard refused.
‘They’re sleeping now.’