‘I do! I pray. I prayed to be delivered from my brothers. You’re an angel, Mathilde, an answer to my prayer.’
I lay back down again, pulled the coverlet up and drifted into a sleep full of nightmares: of dark figures dancing on the end of scaffold ropes, of faces staring at me from a haunted cart rumbling across a cobbled yard. When I woke, just before dawn, I was sweat-soaked and thick-headed. The princess was asleep, deeply so, perhaps relieved about the dangers she had been rescued from. I opened the chamber door; the serjeant had been replaced by two more. I went back inside and splashed water over my face from the lavarium. Drying my hands, I quickly dressed and went out into the palace, up the staircase and back to Hugh Pourte’s chamber.
The broken door now leaned against the wall. The chamber had been stripped of all its possessions. I crossed to the bed and pulled back the curtains; the bed had not been slept in. I looked around. Pourte had filled a goblet full of wine. I picked this up, sniffed and tasted: nothing but the best from Bordeaux. I walked to the window, stood on the stool, opened the casement and leaned out. I recalled Pourte’s height; even he could never have reached that chain, so why had he tried? Was he inebriated? If he had been killed beforehand, how did his assassin enter and leave his chamber when the door was locked and bolted from the inside? I went down on my knees like a dog examining the floor between the edge of a Turkey rug and the stool near the window. I used my fingers and found a rusty-red stain, scraping at it I picked it up, and sniffed it; it wasn’t wine, but blood. I crawled nearer to the window and found other drops, but nothing on the sill or ledge. This blood could have been the result of anything; was it even Pourte’s? Had he been assassinated and killed in his chamber by a blow to the back of his head, his neck broken, the casement opened and his corpse tossed out? If so, how had the killer escaped? I went back to the window, stood on the stool and looked over the sill. The assassin could have climbed up from outside but the window would have been closed as the night was bitterly cold. He ran the risk of being noticed, whilst it would have been both difficult and dangerous for anyone to climb up by themselves on a dark freezing night.
I left the chamber and went down to the palace death house which stood at the end of a long path leading to one of the orchards. I opened the door and walked in. The death house contained a long row of wooden tables, some empty, others covered with dirty sheets. A rusting brazier, glowing with ash and strewn with herbs, did little to hide the reeking odour of death and decay. Along the whitewashed wall was a crude picture which brought alive Ezekiel’s vision of the Valley of Dry Bones: stark depictions of skeletons thrusting up through the iron-grey soil. The brooding silence and those lumps of flesh under their dirty sheets provoked a deep unease. I pulled back one covering; an old man lay sprawled beneath. On the next table was Pourte. He’d been washed and smeared with some herbal oil. I examined his body; it was scarred and bruised, though nothing recent, except the purple-red bruise on the side of his face, the skull cracked like a shell and his neck as loose as a piece of slack rope. I scrutinised the corpse carefully and wondered again what had really happened. Why should Pourte be killed here, and by whom? Did his death concern me or Isabella, my mistress?
I walked out of the death house. The light was still murky, the wind shifting the mist into swirling wisps as if an army of ghosts was milling about. I was so absorbed with myself, I tripped over the halberd deliberately placed across the threshold. As I tumbled forward, a piece of coarse sacking, reeking of tar, was thrown over my head, and an arm, tight as a noose, went round my throat. The voice was slurred, nothing more than a hoarse whisper:
‘Mathilde, Mathilde, tell your mistress not to pry! Keep to your chambers and your embroidery!’
The grip tightened. I began to choke, then I was released and pushed violently forward. The grip had been so vice-like, the sacking wound so carefully around me, that by the time I had recovered and torn off the blindfold, my assailant had gone, and there was nothing but the mist, the smells of that open wasteland and the muted sounds of the palace coming to life. I picked myself up.
When I returned, Isabella was at her prie-dieu, dressed and gowned, demure as any convent novice. For a while I just stood leaning against the door, wondering who had attacked me and why. My throat and neck felt sore, my cheeks burned hot, my body was drenched in a clammy sweat. I took a deep breath, came up behind her and peered at the small, beautifully scripted book of hours she was reading from. The capital A of the prayer Adjutorium nostrum in nomine Domini — Our help is in the name of the Lord — was exquisitely painted, though the miniature itself made me smile: the painting showed a collection of ravens, bedecked like princes, being preached at by a cat garbed in the mitre and cope of a bishop.
Isabella turned sharply, eyes bright with mischief.
‘Master Rossaleti painted that. He’s a trained scribbler as well as a clerk. He was once a Benedictine monk.’ She chattered on. ‘Well, he was married once but his wife was crushed by a cart, so he became a clerk.’
‘So you know Rossaleti well, my lady?’
‘Of course; he was my tutor. He knows all the stories about Arthur and his knights.’
‘But you said he was a spy.’
‘It’s logical,’ Isabella laughed, getting to her feet. ‘Everyone in my household, apart from you, is a spy! The Secreti, the Secret Ones, Marigny’s coven, hover everywhere. Anyway, we have to meet Rossaleti and Casales just after noon.’ Her smile faded as she noticed the scuff marks on my face and neck, and her hand went out. ‘Oh Mathilde, what is wrong?’ She touched my chin gently, her blue eyes troubled. ‘Mathilde, what happened?’
I told her about my visit to the death house and the assault that ensued. Isabella sat down and listened, tapping her foot against a stool. When I’d finished, she picked at a thread on her cuff.
‘I do not know,’ she murmured, ‘why someone should attack you. Was it because of last night? Your visit to Pourte’s chamber or the death house?’ She shrugged. ‘Anyone could be responsible: Louis, one of the Secreti?’
She turned to the table and closed the book of hours. ‘Listen to the palace, Mathilde! We sit and hear the sounds. We see people go here and there but we don’t know the truth behind what is really happening. The same is true about you, about me. .’
I stared at this young woman, in many ways a mere cipher in her father’s plans, a child amongst adults, a dove amongst the hawks. Or was she? At times she betrayed a cunning and astuteness of which her father should have been proud.
‘The Templars, the massacre at de Vitry’s house, the death of the Englishman Pourte have one thing in common.’ She smiled. ‘Me!’ She pulled a face as I stared in puzzlement. ‘My father has to pay a huge dowry to the English, but his treasury is empty. The plunder of the Temple will fill it. De Vitry was one of his bankers. He negotiated on behalf of the Temple and other merchants, such as the Black and White Frescobaldi of Italy. De Vitry’s death,’ she nodded, ‘might be a blow to him!’
‘And Pourte?’
‘Ah, the Englishman. Edward chose well. Both he and Casales are of the English royal council. I understand they speak for my marriage.’
I remembered the banquet the night before. Pourte and Casales did not really believe the message they had brought; that was why they had been chosen, to give as little offence to the French as possible. Both men had clearly been discomfited, having to argue a policy they did not believe in.
‘Webs within webs,’ I replied. ‘So why were de Vitry and Pourte murdered? Was it because of you, because of me?’ I did not wait for an answer. ‘Of course,’ I whispered, ‘there may be other reasons, whilst I was warned simply because I was caught prying.’
‘And there’s something else.’