‘Simon, I swear I do not know how my dagger came to be in his breast,’ Baldwin said again as the sun rose and the walls of their tent lightened. He was lying back on his rugs, a cloak over him as he worried at the problem.
‘You are safe, anyway. Even Artois accepted that while you are a member of the Queen’s retinue, you are safe from prosecution.’
‘Yes. Even if all consider me guilty of murder in the middle of the night.’
‘I am sure the Queen doesn’t.’
‘No. She did graciously confirm her trust in me.’ Baldwin nodded. ‘But how did my dagger come to be used to kill him?’
Simon grunted. ‘I suppose you are sure that it was yours? Not merely a similar one?’
‘I took my dagger before leaving the tent, and the sheath was empty when you found me. No, there is no doubt.’ Baldwin scowled again with the effort of memory. ‘I remember that I had it with me — I took it out when I first heard the noise. And then there was the flash … the cannon … and I was blinded. I covered my eyes … I believe I must have dropped it then, but I cannot remember.’
‘So the man took your dagger and stabbed the count as he came closer.’
Baldwin could hear the doubt in his voice. ‘Either Foix was dead already and my knife thrust into him to throw suspicion on me, or he was not there, and hurried up after hearing the cannon go off, only to be stabbed.’
‘It seems unlikely. You always say that you dislike coincidence — here you propose that you and he, the only two men who have argued on this journey, should have met by chance in the middle watches, and a murderer happened by and fired a hand-cannon at you, then took your dagger and killed de Foix. He took your dagger only because you happened to drop yours after his gonne was fired. And he missed you, although he was close enough to singe your beard.’
‘Worse than that — the killer had no reason to guess that I would be up from my tent in the night. I do not believe it myself. If I was sitting in judgement over my own case, Simon, I would not consider my evidence credible either.’
‘No. It means someone knew you had a problem with de Foix, that he saw you get up from your tent, and already had the gonne prepared. He discharged it, scorching you, grabbed your dagger when you dropped it, and could then go and stab de Foix.’
‘Put like that, it hardly makes more sense,’ Baldwin said heavily. ‘It’s light, Simon. Let us go and see whether there is anything else we can learn.’
Simon nodded, and followed his friend outside. In the chilly light, he sucked in his breath at the sight of his friend’s face. ‘In Christ’s name, Baldwin! You have been speckled with flame.’
‘It feels as though someone has flung a panful of cinders at me,’ Baldwin said ruefully, gingerly touching his cheek, his brow and his nose. ‘The effect was most disconcerting.’
‘Yes. That I can easily believe,’ Simon said. His friend’s face was raw in some places. ‘It’s a miracle your eyes are all right.’
‘There is a little residual pain, but not much,’ Baldwin said. He squared his shoulders and set off towards the place where de Foix’s body had been the night before.
Under the orders of Artois, the body had been gathered up last night to protect it from marauding animals. Baldwin had been too tired and fractious to argue, although he did bitterly point out that any evidence in the area was likely to be lost in the dark. Artois had given him a not friendly stare for that comment, and Simon had hurriedly led him away.
Now it was plain that his words had been all too accurate. The whole area about the body was trampled into a mess of mud and broken stems of grass. Baldwin looked at it all in silence, before grunting in disgust. Still, he crouched down and peered at it closely for some little while.
‘Nobody found the gonne last night, did they?’
‘I don’t think so. I didn’t see it myself, but I’m not certain what it would look like.’
‘It was a cylinder of metal set atop a length of wood. Probably ash or beech, I would think. The pole was thrust into the rear of the cylinder, so it looked like one long staff, thicker at one end than the other.’
‘How long was the length of wood?’
‘About two and a half feet. And the cylinder itself was another foot or so long, I think. I saw it only the once, when he was discussing the explosion with me. Then I had no idea what it was, but a hand-cannon makes sense. It was like that.’
‘And it went off, burning you like that?’ Simon asked dubiously. ‘Surely, even if it was only a tiny cannon, there would have been a small stone or something in it. Shouldn’t it have hit you when it went off? Did it just miss you?’
‘I don’t know,’ Baldwin said. He could remember the scene again. ‘I saw the man as though crouched on the ground, and then there was a flash and flames were rushing towards me.’
‘That is all you recall?’
‘I seem to …’ He closed his eyes to aid his memory. ‘Perhaps there was a small glowing ember of some sort.’
Now he thought about it, he was almost sure he had seen a little red glow before that enormous burst of flame. And a sizzling line, like an incandescent, spitting snake. ‘Come with me!’
‘This is where you found me last night?’
They had stopped at a slight hollow in the ground. Nothing much, and in the snow it would have been hard to see, but there was a muddy puddle at the bottom which showed its curvature, and Baldwin could see where he had stood, then fallen, his hand prints showing distinctly in the mushy snow at the upper lip. And then he saw the blackened mess.
‘There was no gonne, Simon. The fellow simply set fire to a pile of black powder on the ground,’ he said. ‘That was why I was uninjured.’
‘But why would someone have done that?’ Simon said, hunkering down and prodding at the black residue.
It had lain on a flat board, a half-inch-thick plank of some light wood about three feet long. Simon ran his finger over it. There appeared to be a groove cut into it from one end to the other, and where the black residue was thickest there was a distinct hollowing, like a shallow dish.
‘This board would keep the powder away from the damp,’ Baldwin said musingly. ‘And the depressions would hold the powder in one place to be fired.’
That would make sense, so far as Simon was concerned. He had heard of black powder, the strange, explosive material that was used to fill the lethal cannons that hurled rocks at walls. Siege trains in the hosts of any king must always have their cannons now, no matter the fact that the damned things seemed to be the invention of the devil. From all he had heard, they were more dangerous to the labourers who loaded and fired the hellish things than to the enemy. But the powder was as temperamental as a girl on the cusp of puberty. Like his own daughter — although now she was a little older, thanks to God, she seemed to have calmed a little …
No. He must concentrate on the matter at hand.
Baldwin was frowning with perplexity, he saw. ‘Baldwin? What is the matter?’
‘Look at this, Simon. Whoever put this here was intending some mischief. What was it, though? Did he intend to disturb the camp, and perhaps put the Queen in fear of her life, or did he intend to waylay someone?’
‘And when you stumbled into him, he saw an opportunity, took your knife, and when someone else came to see him, stabbed him to death?’ Simon guessed.
‘It is more likely than someone trying to harm me personally,’ Baldwin admitted. Then he straightened and gazed about him. ‘Although I think the Comte was already dead. I guess he was met here, killed, and then set down. When I turned up, I made the killer panic. He set off the powder, and then saw me lurch away and drop my knife. He took it and thrust it into the Comte’s chest.’
‘Why the powder, though? What was it doing here?’
‘Let us go and talk to de Foix’s servants. Perhaps a little of his spare powder had been mislaid? If not, who else might have some of it here?’