So in the morning, he had packed all his belongings and gone to the door. He had found one little reminder of the mountains — a small pale yellow flower which had always been one of Huguette’s favourites was blooming in their little garden. He picked it, and carefully pressed it between two pieces of horn which he liberated from a lantern. Over time, the flower dried, but it still looked lovely to him. Years old, it was now, yet it still held a little freshness for him. Of course, when he bore witness to the death of Agnes and saw the dreadful result of the bishop’s execution, he lost it together with all his other belongings. A convicted felon has few rights to anything — ownership of trinkets was not possible.
He wished he still had that little flower. No matter. There were more immediate matters to concern him. Such as, how to earn a few sous and keep his body and soul together?
When Simon and Baldwin entered the chapel, the corpse was already lying cleaned and tidied before the altar, and both bent the knee and crossed themselves with a little holy water from the font before marching along the pretty tiled floor to the bier.
‘Sir Charles, do you object to our looking at Paul’s body?’ Baldwin asked.
‘Why? He’s dead, man!’
It was so unlike the usually urbane Sir Charles that Baldwin gave a fleeting frown of surprise, but then he nodded to himself. ‘Yes, I understand, Sir Charles. However, it is possible that I may be able to learn something about his death which could help me to discover his killer. You want to find whoever was responsible?’
Sir Charles moved away from Paul’s body. ‘Very well. But when you learn who did this, I want to know first. You understand me? I want to know who it was.’
‘Sir Charles,’ Baldwin sighed. ‘If I could, I would be delighted. But there are some here who would be happy to see you seek out the killer and disrupt the talks here. Do you really want to see the negotiations fail?’
‘The talks? Pah! You think I care about all this horse shit, when my man has been murdered?’
‘And what if someone killed Paul deliberately to provoke you? What if this entire affair is nothing to do with you or Paul, but was intended to upset the truce between the two countries?’
‘Why would someone want that? If a Frenchman wished to damage the peace, he would advise Charles to demand that our king come over to pay homage. He would not do it, so the matter would be resolved. No need to kill my man.’
‘No need, perhaps. But if the same goal could be achieved without embarrassment to the Queen, a Frenchman would prefer it. Killing an English servant would be one effective method of provoking an English knight if that knight was known to have a temper. Do you want to achieve their aims for them?’
‘Sir Baldwin, you misunderstand me. I care nothing for them or their plans. All I want is the chance to avenge my man. I will do that. You find out who was responsible, if you wish, but when you do, I want to be told who it was. I will not want to learn that someone else has been given the name so that another can take the fellow. It is for me.’
‘You think it was one man, then?’ Baldwin asked, moving about the body. It was obvious that he would get no joy from Sir Charles. The man would have his revenge, no matter what.
‘I had thought it was a cut-purse whose attack went wrong.’
‘How could one man do this? Knock Paul down, then kill him in this manner? There were surely at least two. And in any case, if he was murdered at the gate there, wouldn’t the guards have heard it happen?’
‘Over the noise of the storm last night?’ Simon pointed out.
Baldwin considered. ‘Perhaps. But is it likely someone would want to commit a crime like this just outside the walls of a castle? More probable by far that he’d do it elsewhere, and then dump the body. I could imagine killing a man in a house, in a street, in the open countryside — but right outside the King’s own palace? That stretches my credibility too far.’
‘So? What of it?’ Sir Charles snapped.
‘Just this: if it was not an attack outside the castle, then it becomes a premeditated murder. Someone had planned it — possibly to avenge some form of insult real or imagined which Paul was supposed to have delivered, or to get to you, Sir Charles, or to damage the negotiations. Discover the motivation and we will be close to learning who was responsible.’
‘Find him, then. Find him for me.’
‘Him. Him, or them?’ Baldwin mused. He shook his head. ‘It is thoroughly unlikely that this was the crime of an individual. I cannot believe it.’
He pulled the sheet aside and peered at the wound while Simon averted his gaze. Sir Charles gazed on, unbothered by the sight. It was the fact of his friend’s death that concerned him, not the actual manner of it. He had seen death in too many forms, and inflicted too much of it himself, to be overly bothered by the sight of another corpse.
‘Here is the wound,’ Baldwin said. He enlisted Sir Charles’s aid to roll the body over. ‘Nothing on the back. No mark at all.’ Gently he allowed Paul to return to his recumbent position. ‘Only this great slash in his belly.’
‘What of his neck?’ Sir Charles asked.
‘Nothing there. No cut in his throat, no stab down from his collar. I’ve seen that often enough. No indication of throttling, either. No, just this one slash at his gut.’ He eyed the massive wound again, and then he frowned. ‘The sergent was right — this wound is aimed upwards. I suppose the killer could have thrust to the heart, and made the slash opening his belly once he was already dead.’
‘What would that tell us?’ Sir Charles demanded.
‘Perhaps nothing. Perhaps a lot. Until we have more, we cannot tell,’ Baldwin said thoughtfully. Then he beckoned Simon. ‘Come. Let us go and view the place where he was found.’
The place had been washed clean of most of the blood by some thoughtful person who had hurled some water over the spot. Baldwin stood and eyed it, but he could discern nothing from the general mess.
‘If there was anything to see, I rather think it would have been washed clean by now,’ he said as the two of them walked away.
They asked an old peasant woman, who directed them to a small house along an alley nearby. There, she said, they would find the sergent who had been at the scene that morning. It took little time to find the house, and the man was eating a late breakfast of peasant bread and some soft cheese. He eyed them as Baldwin spoke, and then shrugged.
‘There is nothing for me to do. The man was found, but no one saw nor heard anyone. I have reported already.’
He could, or would, say no more. Baldwin and Simon soon found themselves outside his little cottage. ‘What now?’ Simon asked.
‘I would think that we have more or less exhausted our enquiry already,’ Baldwin admitted. ‘If we were in England, I could round up all the neighbours in the hundred and interrogate them until someone broke. I would have the King’s authority to question whomsoever I wished. Here, though, I am powerless. Our king has no power here to compel people to respond. What should I try?’
‘Well, there was no evidence on the body,’ Simon mused. ‘In the absence of that, and with no witnesses, perhaps we should simply return and apologise to Lord John. He won’t like it, but at least there’s no evidence of a deliberate attempt to ruin the negotiations.’
Baldwin pulled a grimace. ‘That is what is niggling at me,’ he admitted. ‘There was the explosion in the night when Enguerrand de Foix died, which annoys me since it implicated me in the murder; then the death of that guard, too, in the castle on the way here. It makes me suspect more, perhaps, than I should.’