Too distant to hear what was being said Hildegard looked round at the other diners. A lot of wine was being downed. Bellefort's noisy group at another table were urging one of their number to get up and sing. He was lifted up onto their table where he launched into a popular chanson. The pope’s personal entertainers had not yet arrived. A lute player, inaudible in the developing uproar, doggedly continued with what was evidently a ribald song he was mouthing to judge by the guffaws of the men sitting near enough to hear the punchline.
When no-one was looking Hildegard got up and began to make her way towards the doors.
**
Apart from one guard sitting at the top of the steps with a stoup of ale in one hand there was no-one else guarding the upper floors. They were all carousing inside the Great Tinel.
The cressets had not been fired up yet and the passage grew darker further along towards the guest chambers. Her soft boots made little sound on the tiles as she walked to the end.
The body of the nun would have been removed by now.
When she reached the door she hesitated.
From far off came the sound of musicians, the shrill squeal of bagpipes sounding as macabre as a stuck pig, followed by the muffled war thump of a bodrum adding a more ominous undernote to the roar of conversation and masculine guffaws. The arrival of the musicians marked the start of the night’s entertainment. Eventually everyone would pour into the Grande Chapelle to sing lustily to the saint in whose honour they were enjoying themselves. Close at hand was only a thick silence. If she listened she could hear herself breathing and the whirr of blood through her veins.
Lifting the latch slowly enough not to make a sound, Hildegard pushed open the door and stepped inside.
**
It was early evening. The sun had appeared from behind the clouds for a last show of brilliance throwing a dazzle of light across the chamber through the narrow window slit. There was no need for any additional light.
Illuminated in its brief gleam was the nun’s bed against one wall. It had been stripped to its straw pallet. A faint stain showed at one end, no more than a shadow’s breath. Her own bed, unillumined, on the other side had been made up as if for its next occupant. A few belongings lay orphaned on the blanket.
Facing the door, in the same stream of light was a wooden stool, empty. The floor had been swept. In the glare of the sun the polished stone gave off a transient lustre the colour of a nightingale’s egg.
Hildegard moved further inside. Nothing here to speak to her. Nothing to say what had happened. Who had caused it to happen. What the nun’s last thoughts were. Nothing here.
She went over to the window, sunlight catching her in a hard dazzle and she turned, blinking, to view the chamber from a different point of view.
When her sight cleared she hesitated.
The servant had been too hasty after all. The job was only half done. Under the nun’s bed was a layer of dust.
There was something…picked out in the harsh light. She crouched down to get a better look. In a scuffle of paw marks there was a little pile of mouse droppings.
She remembered the many cats slinking around the palace.
Not a mouse, surely?
Straightening, she searched round to find something to contain the crusted heap until she could have another look at it in a good light.
Already the beam of the setting sun had shifted, falling now into an empty corner and, as she searched her sleeves for something to wrap the droppings in, the light decayed little by little, leaving her in a silver gloaming.
She bent down and scooped the droppings into her scrip. In the sudden darkness as the sunlight shifted something made her glance towards the door. A movement on the threshold made her freeze.
Someone was watching her.
**
A blur of white emerged from the darkness and a figure stepped into the chamber.
Hildegard jerked to her feet. ‘Hubert! What are you doing here?’
‘Why did you leave us?’
‘I knew I’d left some things here,’ she told him, feeling the lie was justified.
‘Get them then and let’s return to the others.’
‘I didn’t think you’d notice I’d left.’
He stepped aside as, quickly picking up her few belongings from the bed, she walked out into the passage.
‘Let me carry those for you.’ He insisted on taking each article separately, her comb, leggings and missal. ‘Is this all?’
‘Yes.’ Except for the small parcel hidden in her scrip she added silently.
She stepped aside so he could lead the way. She did not want anybody walking behind her just now. Especially one of Fondi’s allies.
Not after what she had just found under the bed.
**
All her old suspicions of Hubert were swarming back as they made their way down into the Tinel.
‘Why on earth did you follow me?’ she rounded on him before they sat down.
‘To make sure no-one else did.’ He was curt.
Throughout the rest of the feast he avoided her glance but she caught him once or twice giving her a surreptitious appraisal that baffled her. Everyone’s attention, however, was on Carlotta.
She was gorging on peaches and figs, brought in from the hotter climate of Outremer, and every now and then she would feed one to Fondi with a great show of sensual pleasure as his strong teeth bit into them and made the juices run.
Food was so plentiful it arrived in any sort of order. Fish with sugar subtleties. Fowl with lobster. Crayfish with hare. Wild boar with eel.
Enormous meat platters were brought in, spilling over with haunches of venison, hams, pig’s trotters, steaks and sausages, and when wild boar, rare and bloody, was placed before them Carlotta with a loud laugh speared a piece Fondi cut off for her, and tipped it on the end of her eating knife into her mouth with a sigh of pleasure.
Blood ran down her chin and Fondi, with an amorous smile, put out the tip of his tongue to lick it away. Soon their faces were smeared with grease. What remained of the torn carcase swam in its own blood. Carlotta’s sharp knife speared it again and again.
Hubert, noticed Hildegard, ate little and must have been fasting because he avoided meat altogether and only picked at a few shreds of fresh water fish cooked in almond milk, toying with each piece before slowly putting it into his mouth and chewing with pensive deliberation.
Clement was dining in full view of everyone to fit the importance of this last rich meal before Lent, instead of alone in his privy chamber as usual. He was leaning comfortably back among the braided cushions of his wooden dining chair, an object gilded and grand enough to be called a throne, both hands clasped in front of him under his pectoral cross. A stouter man would have rested them on his stomach but Clement was lean and rested them lightly as if prepared to use them.
He had a cold look, with very black, all-seeing eyes that continually flickered over the faces of the diners. They scraped unblinking over her own table, paused, returned, then moved on to encompass the rest of them.
Countless dishes continued to be heralded forth to be piled on the trestles in front of them, servants hurried back and forth to the kitchens, the botteler brought more wine from the cellars. The music played. The temperature rose.
A page went up to the enclosure, bowed with a pretty flourish, said something at which Clement’s lips drew back in a narrow smile, and received a morsel from the holy platter as a reward.
Subtle concoctions of sugar in the shape of gilded castles and ships in full sail were brought in to accompanying cries of wonder. Soon after that Clement rose to his feet as if wearied, called his guards and, as they formed a path of honour so that he could leave, processed formally down the centre of the Tinel. Everyone clattered to their feet, those who could, knelt, crossing themselves.