Текст книги "The butcher of Avignon"

Автор книги: Cassandra Clark

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What little she had gleaned was enough to add to the puzzle.

The timing of the thief was interesting. He had evidently gone into the mortuary while everyone was at mid-day prayers. If he wanted to prise the dagger from Maurice’s fingers he would have had to know about the effects of rigor mortis. He would also have had to be somebody who was likely to be seen around the chapel without arousing comment, someone who could take his chance when it arose.

None of the chapel officials could have done it because they were involved very publicly in the ritual of the mid-day office. Those who had sufficient knowledge about the time the body was found and hence the best time to be able to remove the dagger from the corpse were few. There was herself, of course, then Athanasius and Grizac. There was probably also the house steward. Others in the Curia. And the guards. The latter would know the time they found Maurice but would they know exactly when they could pluck the dagger from his hand? It was debatable. Anyway, the nuns were adamant that they had left straightaway and would have mentioned if one of them had returned.

One other knew the time when the body was discovered. In English Saxon law he would be called the first-finder. It was Clement himself. The realisation of what this might mean took her breath away. She struggled to make sense of it.

So far she had no idea why she had been included in the initial inspection in the treasury. As a witness of some kind? The innocent observer whose word, should it come to it, would be taken on trust? But why? Who was acting for whom?

The cardinal was the one called on to make the official identification of the body. He had presumably been informed by the papal officials that it might be Maurice. Then he had come to Athanasius. That fact implied something about the nature of their relationship. It was an odd one, not friendship exactly, not with Athanasius’s alternate soothing and bullying of Grizac. But, like many relationships, it seemed to be based on a disparity of power.

And what had the nun said? Athanasius was a power.

Was that why he had been informed of the murder from the beginning? What sort of power could he wield from his small, bare cell? The nuns had clammed up and become distinctly chilly when his name was mentioned. Maybe some rumour had been picked up by them, a rumour spread by one of Athanasius’s rivals maybe. But how could a harmless old corrodian have rivals?

Frowning, she sipped her wine. The tormenting question she asked herself was whether the murderer knew Maurice before he drew his dagger on him, or whether it was a case of strike first, think later, an act committed in the heat of the moment. He might have come across him accidentally during the break-in. Did that make his death no more than an accident? Maurice caught in the wrong place at the wrong time? The sense that there was a sinister, planned aspect to his death would not leave her. Someone, other than the guards, had discovered that Maurice had broken into the treasury. It seemed to lead once more to Clement.

By now, the presence of an accomplice had been somewhat discounted and if it wasn’t an accomplice and a mere thieves’ quarrel, was it fanciful to suspect that the killer had acted with the definite purpose of silencing Maurice? It was an alarming thought. But what could the acolyte know that made it necessary to shut him up? Grizac had been distraught just now. Was it because he knew why Maurice had been silenced?

She found herself weaving back again to the old question which had still not been resolved, namely, what was Maurice doing in the treasury at all?

Everyone she had spoken to had jumped to the conclusion that he was after filling his pockets, for why else, they reasoned, would a servant be found in amongst a golden hoard more spectacular than a king’s ransom? In every sense it was certainly the wrong place whatever his excuse for being there.

With nothing to grasp hold of, no clues, no obvious beneficiary, no sense of a motive, it was as shifting shadows, like the echoing fortress-palace itself, shrouded in darkness, with its secret chambers and ill-lit corridors. Worst of all, there was no-one she could trust to help shed light.

**

The tower. The sentry. The same deferral to somebody inside.

‘That English nun again, captain.’

‘Let her in.’ Then came something barely audible about her wasting her time.

The sentry returned. ‘Trying to turn them into priests, domina?’

‘My greatest hope, captain.’ To deter him from thinking otherwise.

She climbed the same dank staircase.

‘Well, boys,’ she said when she opened the door and saw them playing dice again. Shackled. Throwing quite deftly now, after practice.

‘Are we out of here then?’

‘Patience is a virtue.’

‘So we’re told, domina, but we are less than virtuous, us, praise St Benet.’

‘I’ve had a look at the sumpter yard and feel that is not the way. But despair not. We refuse to be daunted.’

‘This John Fitzjohn,’ asked Peter. ‘Should we know him?’

‘Not especially. He’s a northerner born but bred in one of the houses given over to Gaunt’s mistresses somewhere down in Lincolnshire. He has a younger brother you’d not want to meet on a dark night. A fellow by the name of Escrick Fitzjohn. I’ve been unfortunate to encounter him twice before.’

‘To your triumph?’

‘I’m pleased to say so, otherwise I doubt whether I’d be able to say anything.’

‘Lethal, then?’

‘Very. He has the advantage of being extremely plausible such that even with a knife at your throat you can feel you’re in the wrong and he, with his mortal ambitions, has right on his side.’

‘I can’t see any smooth talker pulling the wool over your eyes, domina.’

‘He didn’t, but I felt a gobbet of compassion every time I met him.’

‘Compassion?’

‘At how life, or the devil, has made him so desperate he can willingly and defiantly put his soul in jeopardy by his actions. I was gullible when we first met. Softer. Younger. Now, however – ’

‘Hard as nails? Battle-hardened?’

‘You might say so.’

He chuckled. ‘For our sake I hope it’s true.’

‘Well, that’s Escrick. His brother may be the same for all I know, or he might well be a saint. I’ve never met him before now. He’s had more worldly success, I believe, a fact which may have added to Escrick’s ill-wishing on anyone and everyone.’

‘Where is this lethal fellow now, did you say?’

‘I didn’t because I don’t know. I imagine he’s far away. He was outlawed but did not stay the three tides. He absconded to join one of the white companies under Hawkwood, got bested in Florence then went I know not where.’

A chill came over her. His was a name she had not allowed into her thoughts for some time.

‘I brought you something to cheer you up,’ she shook off her feeling of foreboding that always returned at the mention of Escrick’s name and placed a flagon of very passable Rhenish on the floor beside them. ‘And this meat. Enjoy it. It’s the last you’ll get before Lent, I expect.’

‘Angels do exist. I always hoped they did.’

**

As she walked away her thoughts returned to the problem of Maurice’s murderer and she wondered how much Clement himself really knew about the matter. The story seemed simple enough: after lauds he found the treasury broken open and called his guards.

Did he at that point venture into the stronghold to view the body for himself? Or had he taken the advice of his advisors and left it for them to deal with? If he had seen and recognised Maurice that would be sufficient for Cardinal Grizac to be fearful. Very fearful indeed. But then, why the delay in taking him into custody?

She remembered how Athanasius had consoled him with the thought that the inquisitors had not yet sent the palace guards for him.

Grizac’s prime concern seemed to be to save his own skin. Above all he expressed a palpable fear of being implicated in a plot against the pope. He seemed to imagine he would be accused as the mastermind behind the attempted theft. But why would a man as obviously wealthy as Grizac be suspected of stealing, despite the involvement of one of his acolytes? It was preposterous.

Hildegard frowned. Could his greed be so unbridled as to lead him to such an act? Every instinct made her doubt it.

She returned to the question of what Clement himself knew of the matter. He made his announcement to the packed Audience Chamber just before prime. Yet the body was apparently discovered shortly after lauds. The delay in making the announcement suggested confusion. And later, was he present when the body was brought out of the narrow space of the treasury and up into his bedchamber? He would know then, at the latest, that the dead youth was Grizac’s acolyte so why the lies, or more charitably, the rumours surrounding the identity of the victim?

I’m going round in circles, she thought, but she could not stop herself. None of it made sense.

How, for instance, had the cardinal managed to evade the inquisitors if Clement knew who the boy was? Did Grizac have an even more powerful protector than that afforded by his own eminence? The guards must have recognised Maurice and informed him as soon as the body was discovered. And yet no-one had formally identified Maurice before Athanasius conducted Grizac to the treasury. If his identity had been known by others lower down the pecking order the information would have been impossible to keep secret and would have spread like wild fire round the palace. It was only now that the details were beginning to seep out. So who had kept a cap on things, and why?

She couldn’t escape the feeling that Grizac and Athanasius knew more than they admitted. She felt they saw her as just a useful fool. Someone to go about asking questions so that it appeared as if something was being done. The secret, whatever it was, shared between the two men, remained. Except that now something had gone wrong. Someone had stolen the dagger and they didn’t know who…and one of them, at least, was worried.

Again and again she came back to the same questions. Why? Who? Who gains?

When she reached her guest chamber she halted before opening the door. From within came the sound of a high Scottish voice at prayer. With a sudden change of mind she set off for the Chapel of St Martial instead, slipping into an empty place against the wall just as the priest began his oration.

**

The Holy Office of nones. She knew it backwards, made the expected responses on cue, knelt, prayed, stood, sang, chanted the words learned by rote many years ago in the haven of goodness at Swyne.

On leaving she found Abbot Hubert de Courcy by her side. He paced along for a moment or two then, apparently thinking better of it, and without exchanging a single word, increased his pace and disappeared up a flight of stairs to the consistory.

Had he wanted to say something? If so it was an odd experience to find him at a loss for words. It was more likely he was waiting for her to make some sign of contrition. She had probably spoken out of turn as usual the last time they met. She sighed, thinking, I’m wearied by all this – the currents and cross-currents of the place – then as she glanced up she saw him leaning over one of the window arches on the staircase of honour. He was looking down at her. When he saw her glance up he hesitated then moved back without acknowledging her and she saw a flash of white as he rapidly ascended the staircase. His intention, whatever it was, only added to her irritation. What, she asked herself, does this place have to do with me? I can’t be drawn into other people’s plots and contrivances to no purpose. I have my own interests to consider and they’re not dependent on the favour of anyone here.

She considered leaving Avignon altogether. Why not? Only the disapproving look of the prioress and her own sense of failure as she trailed home with only the barest information about Fitzjohn made her hesitate.

She thought of Westminster again and the momentous events that were taking place there. The fate of the king and his allies was far more important than the death, nasty though it was, of one unknown young man and the theft of an unimportant little dagger.

Transcending everything was the threat to King Richard. The security of the Plantagenet dynasty determined the fate of England. If King Richard fell, England fell.

For the first time she began to believe that the Prioress had made a grave mistake in sending her here. She must have lost her grip on events. It was obvious that she had been unaware of the great calamity about to befall her brother, the Archbishop of York, and his fellow advisors to the king. Usually so astute, and sitting at the centre of a network of informers, she had for once, it seemed, made a huge error of judgement.

Resigned for the moment to the futility of her sojourn here, Hildegard dutifully made her way to Athanasius’s cell to find out if his apothecary’s cure was taking effect.

**

The weather, fairly mild until now, changed abruptly when a strong wind brought great, bruising clouds rolling in from the north, with a deluge of rain that dropped indiscriminately onto the Great Courtyard. It cleared it in an instant the prelates, servants, and everyone in between, as they hurried to find shelter. Lightning flashed over the purple hills and thunder rolled around the valley, fading only in a series of distant reverberations.

Hildegard had chosen that morning to venture outside the palace to see if a walk by the river would reconcile her to a few more days here. When the rain started to fall in slanting arrows, kicking up the mud around her feet, she was standing on the bank looking at the swollen river where it had burst its banks. The water meadows were flooded, leaving animals stranded on little mounds of grass. The rain must have been torrential upstream to burst the banks of the river overnight. It had changed colour. Instead of the usual dark green it had become a swift-moving, murky yellow.

A little to her left it sluiced with an endless roar between the twenty or so arches of the bridge of St Benezet, the bridge of Avignon, hurling broken branches and other debris down river at great speed and where the water swirled past the wooden landing stage below it shook its supports, snatched at them and turned and eddied back on itself. In mid-river frothing shoals covered the sandbanks that had been visible only the day before.

I wouldn’t give much for the chances of anyone who fell in there, she thought, keeping safely to the higher ground at the top of the bank. The first drops of rain had begun to give way to a torrent. She pulled up her hood.

A small ferry boat was tied to a post below where she stood and the force of the current was making it buck and turn on its painter, almost tearing it free. She watched it crash again and again against the wooden pilings. The ferryman must have thought it best to risk losing his boat and keep himself dry inside his house because a stream of smoke flew above the thatch although there was no sign of him.

It was too late to run back to the palace. She would be soaked before she reached it. Tightening her grasp of her hood and looking for somewhere to shelter along the path, she resigned herself to a thorough drenching by the time she was half way back. Then a shout came from the depths of a thicket beside the track.

‘Here, sister!’

When she turned, a gloved hand beckoned from a hide of evergreens and she saw a flash of red and gold. Guessing it was someone from the palace she changed direction, skittering round the puddles that lay in the way, and lifting her hood just enough to make out several figures huddled out of the rain under a thick canopy of laurels. With a feeling of relief she hurried into this unexpected refuge.

A group of pages were huddled inside.

‘My thanks, masters. I wouldn’t have noticed this if you hadn’t called out.’

‘We aim to please, sister.’ To her surprise a tall youth, no more than fifteen or sixteen, standing eye to eye, rose up out of the bushes. She realised he was scarcely old enough to shave, nor were the others, as a swift glance showed. They wore the colours she had recognised the other night when Fitzjohn arrived from England, the red, blue and gold worn by Woodstock’s retainers. She had already noticed them about the palace.

‘English, God be thanked!’ The boys gaped as she threw back her hood. She had pulled off her coif earlier and her damp hair fell in a blonde sheen to her shoulders.

‘Forgive me,’ she murmured at their astonishment. ‘I expected to be alone when I set off just now and I get so sick of wearing this on my head.’ She pulled out the damp linen coif from her sleeve, put it on and stuffed her hair out of sight.

The tall youth said, ‘And so are you, sister. English, I mean. We guessed you were. Well met.’ He gave a cramped bow in the crowded den. ‘I am Edmund, squire to Sir Jack Fitzjohn. This is Peterkin,’ he indicated a sandy-haired Saxon youth with a thin, intelligent face covered in freckles. ‘And this miscreant is Bertram of Stowe.’ A thickset, dependable looking boy ducked his head in a bow. He was dark haired, confident, and might be a merchant’s son.

‘And I’m Simon Lorimer,’ piped up the youngest of the boys, no more than ten or so, and already growing out of his tunic.

‘Greetings. I’m Hildegard of Meaux.’

‘Of the Abbey there?’

‘Indeed.’

‘Should we know where it is?’ asked Edmund.

‘Only if you’re Yorkshire born,’ she replied. ‘It’s close to Beverley and only a day’s ride from York.’

They asked what she was doing so far from home. She explained her presence at Avignon as ‘being on church business.’ It was as far as she could go. They told her about themselves with, she suspected, equivalent reticence.

‘The only one of us who’s missing is Elfric. He’s from your part of the world, a place called Pocklington. It’s near York, he tells us. At present he’s running errands in the dry.’

‘I saw you arrive,’ she told them. ‘I guessed you were English by the blazons on your tunics. I’m pleased to find I’m not alone here.’ Except for Hubert de Courcy and his brother monks, she added to herself. ‘Do you know why you’ve been sent so far south?’

‘We simply follow our lord as he commands. We get to see foreign parts.’ It was the first youth again, the one called Edmund. He gave an ironic shrug. ‘We broaden our minds, domina, at his expense.’

‘I noticed a companion of yours in the chapel,’ she ventured. ‘He seemed upset.’

Silence followed her words while everyone watched the rain pelting down. It was falling with such venom it turned to mist as it smacked the ground then threw up clods of mud and ran in separate streams down the bank to join at the bottom in one expanding puddle that was quickly turning into a quagmire as they looked on.

The silence of the boys lengthened until eventually Bertram gave a sigh. ‘The companion you mentioned would be poor little Elfric. His brother died and he won’t believe it. He’s mad with grief.’

‘We told him he’d get over it but he said never, as long as he lives,’ added Peterkin.

‘I’m truly sorry to hear that. Only time can soften the sharp grief of losing someone we love.’ Rivera sprang to mind.

To her relief the boys began to argue in the courtly fashion they had been taught on the topic of whether the death of a brother or a father was hardest to bear.

‘My old pa is the devil incarnate,’ Peterkin announced, ‘that’s what everybody says, so it’s not just my opinion. I was glad to get away from him.’ He frowned. ‘It might be unnatural but it’s true to say he might as well be dead. It makes no difference to me, either way. He’s ruined my life.’

‘Ruined it?’

‘You’ll never believe it, domina, but when I wanted to take holy orders he told me I had to serve as page to one of Jack Fitzjohn’s knights until I was old enough to know my own mind. Then he beat me because I objected. I couldn’t walk for a week.’

‘You’ll never know your own mind, Peterkin.’ A casual scuffle ensued but was soon broken up.

‘So was Elfric’s brother back home in England?’ she asked when things quietened down.

‘Not at all. He was here in Avignon.’

‘What, retained by your lord Fitzjohn too?’

‘No,’ Simon piped up. ‘He was whisked from York years ago to attend a foreign cardinal who’d taken a fancy to him on account of his voice and poor Elfric hadn't seen him since he was a babe in arms.’

‘Not quite that,’ corrected Peterkin, the erstwhile priest. ‘He would never remember him if he’d been a baby. He must have been at least five or six. He remembers being carried on his shoulders and playing in the mead with him.’

‘He said his brother used to send him messages by courier from Avignon to York.’ Simon, keen to put himself in the right, told Hildegard, ‘He lived to hear from him. When Fitzjohn told him he was coming down here he was in heaven, thinking he’d meet his brother in the flesh again. Then this.’

‘What ‘this’ exactly?’ asked Hildegard.

‘Done in,’ Peterkin crossed himself. ‘His brother, that is.’

‘Nobody knows yet who did it but we’ve all vowed to bring the murderer to justice,’ Edmund explained darkly. The others nodded in agreement.

‘I was the first to find out about it.’ Peterkin spoke again. ‘It was when I went down to the kitchens to fetch Sir Jack his bread and wine. You were there, domina.’

‘I knew I’d seen you somewhere before.’ Hildegard looked him up and down. So Elfric’s brother was the acolyte of Cardinal Grizac.

Peterkin gave her the same disarming smile he had bestowed on the kitcheners. ‘You were the nun sitting quietly by while they all pitched in with their crackpot opinions.’

Alarmed by their vow to find the murderer, Hildegard was moved to warn them. ‘You’re brave and loyal lads, without a doubt, but you must tread carefully. This place is full of danger, especially to us English. Under Clement’s rule we’re seen as the enemy here.’

‘I support Pope Urban,’ Bertram announced in an emphatic tone.

Instantly there was a small cheer.

‘I think that’s a view you must certainly keep to yourselves.’

‘What about you, domina? Where do your sympathies lie?’ probed Peterkin.

‘My Order, to my sadness, has come out in favour of the antipope Clement,’ she told them.

‘But what about your own secret view?’ Peterkin asked, with childlike persistence.

‘That is for me to know,’ she replied lightly. ‘Just remember to step carefully, I beg you.’

‘That means she’s on our side but can’t say so,’ Bertram announced with an air of solemnity.

The rain still howled over them, tugging at the bushes as if to uproot them. Despite that it felt strangely safe under their shelter. They were away from prying eyes for once. Hildegard realised how oppressive she found the atmosphere in the palace. It was not only the acolyte’s murder but the sense of being watched whatever she did, wherever she went. It was more than the natural claustrophobia of living in an enclosed community. It was enemy territory and there was no way of forgetting it. Perhaps the boys felt like this too, forming a little brotherhood in a nest of enemies.

The leaves rattled in the gusts of wind that now and then threw rain in their faces but they were sheltered well enough. Hildegard felt sorry for these lads, so close in age to her own son, an esquire in the Bishop of Norwich’s army and, like him, far from home, in a place among knights whose dangerous machinations they were too inexperienced to understand.

‘I shall remember Elfric,’ she told them, ‘and especially his brother.’ Remembering something Athanasius had told her she asked, ‘What was his real name?’

‘It was Hamo but they frenchified it to Maurice when he came over here.’

‘And he came here with Cardinal Grizac?’

‘You know the cardinal?’

‘I’ve met him.’

‘What’s he like? They say he was going to be made pope and then something happened and Clement was elected instead.’

‘Yes, so I believe.’

‘Something?’ mocked Edmund. ‘A massacre, that’s what happened. Fear made them follow Clement like sheep.’

She peered out from between the leaves. ‘The rain seems to be slowing down. We might take our chance and run for the gatehouse. Will Sir Jack be looking for you?’

‘He can’t blame us for having the sense to preserve our garments from the depredations of the weather.’ It was Peterkin. The others laughed.

‘You’ll always talk us out of trouble, won’t you, Peterkin?’

‘I’ll certainly have a good try or die in the attempt.’

‘Talk yourself out of that, then.’ Laughing, they bundled him out into the rain.

In a burst of energy they rest of them exploded from the shelter in a turmoil of movement and shouts and wet leaves.

More slowly Edmund courteously lifted aside the low-hanging branches for her. ‘Forgive them, sister. Bertram is a sound man in a fight as is Peterkin. He’s older than he looks and soon to be an esquire against his wishes, as you heard. The two pages are still learning how to conduct themselves in an adult world.’ He gave her a conspiring smile.

‘And Elfric used to receive letters from his brother?’

‘He reads well.’

A patch of blue sky had appeared although rain still fell in long, single streaks.

‘We would be honoured if you’d come and watch us tilting at the quintaine. We’ll demonstrate how we can trounce these Avignon weevils and make you proud to remember the glories of Crecy and Poitiers.’

‘I shall be honoured to accept. There’s much pleasure to be found in the joust.’

‘For now, sister, we shall accompany you back to the palace gatehouse.’

**

The guard looked through the grille and saw the soaking wet figures approaching up the muddy lane towards the palace. When he recognised Hildegard among them he grudgingly let them back in.

‘Sir John has been searching for them pages. Nothing but trouble, they are.’

‘We had to shelter from the squall,’ she told him.

He grunted. ‘You keep them under control, domina.’ He glowered at the boys as he unlocked the gate. His face disappeared for a moment as he stepped back to let them in and he was still scowling when he reappeared.

Ignoring him the boys accompanied her across the Great Courtyard. It was full of puddles and devoid of the usual bustle of folk attending to their duties and they arrived almost unnoticed. Before parting at the steps leading up into the first antechamber, Hildegard asked Edmund if he was the leader of the group.

‘I’m not the leader, only the tallest. We don’t believe in leaders. Peterkin is the strategist in our guild.’

‘Guild?’

‘We’ve seen how our elders organise themselves for protection and how the apprentice boys at the Great Rising were outwitted by their lack of efficient planning. We want to copy the best of what our elders do while keeping to the ideals of the apprentices. We’ve formed a guild of retainers the better to serve our interests – and to be prepared for any sudden changes.’ he added grimly.

‘I wonder what Sir Jack thinks?’

‘He won’t know until he steps over the line.’

‘The line – ?’

‘He often goes too far, cuffing me on the head, using a peremptory tone to me, continually carping over nothing. It puts me into such a boiling rage I could – ’ he bunched his fists.

‘And how will forming yourselves into a guild help you?’

He gave her a sudden innocent smile. ‘Forgive me, my lady. We are but wild boys who talk no sense.’ He bowed with such grace and formality he looked twice his age and she judged that he had been well-trained by Fitzjohn whether he liked it or not.

‘I must go. Don’t forget our invitation to watch us at the quintaine,’ he called over his shoulder as he sped after the others up the steps to where Fitzjohn was no doubt waiting with a hard question or two about where his attendants had been hiding.

The quintaine was the wooden target on a swivel that the boys practised riding at with short, wooden lances as a training in the skills required for the joust and later, of course, for the battle field. She imagined she might very well find her way down to the tilt yard to watch them one day.

Meanwhile, her excursion out of the purlieus of the palace had cleared her mind and raised her spirits, as well as providing a useful insight into the situation that most concerned the cardinal.

She wondered if he had known that Maurice corresponded with Elfric, the younger brother who lived in what had become enemy territory.

**

Athanasius was looking worse than ever. He waved her back when she appeared.

‘Approach not, domina, for fear of contagion.’

Hildegard regarded him dubiously. ‘I can’t recall a cure more effective than the one you’re already using.’

‘Not your concern. Anything to report?’

‘How is Cardinal Grizac this morning? Still at liberty, I trust?’

‘He has been appointed official searcher on the grounds that the victim was his own retainer. His spirits are consequently much lighter.’ Athanasius gave an ironic shrug. ‘He believes it shows he is trusted.’ He gave her one of his long, considering stares. ‘What do you think, domina? Would you feel trusted in similar circumstances?’

‘I can hardly have an opinion, magister. Are you hinting that they’re mistaken?’

‘Do not disappoint me, domina. Now we’re alone you can speak your mind. Tell me what you think about our absent friend.’

She decided to answer directly rather than feign ignorance. He was accusing Grizac of being behind Maurice’s treasury break-in. ‘I fail to see any motive for encouraging Maurice to commit a crime against his Holiness.’

There, it was said, the invitation issued, and she watched the old monk for his first unguarded response. His expression did not change, however. Instead, he remained wooden-faced and stared thoughtfully at her for a few moment before saying, ‘Come now, don’t fail me. We can’t ask who gains, because clearly anyone who gets their hands on Clement’s treasure gains a fortune. Better to ask who would imagine that was a sufficient motive to take such a risk?’

‘I imagine the cardinal is uninterested in acquiring even more wealth than he already has.’

‘Sometimes there’s no limit to greed, you would agree?’

‘Do you see your friend as someone driven by greed?’

‘Oh, now, you can’t ask me that. Think, there’s another question we need to ask but what is it?’