‘For Jesus’ sake, try not to shed more blood inside these walls. Come.’ He replaced the statue of Saint Denis, carefully wrapped in the cloak, in its original hiding place behind the boxes of books in the opposite corner. When it was secure, he opened the door a crack and held up his lantern, peering out and listening for any movement. ‘Quick.’ He nodded towards the path. ‘All quiet for now.’
The mist had thickened – or perhaps it was just that the light was already failing. It must be close to four in the afternoon. If I was right, and the killer would wait until the abbey was asleep, I could be standing behind those crates for six hours or more. I had survived worse, I told myself. By the corner of the outbuilding, I unlaced my breeches and relieved myself in a steaming stream on the grass, trying not to think that it might be my last opportunity for some time, while Cotin kept his eyes trained on the trees ahead. I nodded to him when I was ready, and he waited until I had taken my place again in the recess behind the crates.
‘I’ll stay in the library tonight after the lights go out,’ he said. I could just make out the shape of him through the gap between the stacks. ‘I have special permission to work there if I am unable to sleep – they will see nothing unusual in that. If you have any trouble, you will know where to find me. Pray God you’ll have no need. Get what you came for and leave quietly. I will find you at the Swan tomorrow after dinner to fetch the keys – best you stay clear of this place for a while. And take care of yourself,’ he added over his shoulder, his voice gruff to disguise his concern.
I smiled to myself in the shadows. The door closed behind him, leaving me in darkness as the lock clicked into place. I fidgeted until I found a position that allowed me to lean my weight against the wall and settled back to wait, reminding myself that the discomfort would be worth it, that in a matter of hours I would deliver both murderer and evidence into the King’s hands. After that, how they chose to persuade the man to implicate the Duke of Guise would be Henri’s concern. I allowed myself to dream a little of how the King might choose to reward me for my service.
Perhaps if I had been less cocksure about my ability to apprehend the killer single-handed, so that I could prove myself to the King and take the credit, the night would have unfolded differently and another death might have been avoided. But I run ahead of my story, and it does no good to speculate on what might have been.
Muffled by fog and distance, the church bells of Saint-Victor tolled the passing hours, summoning the friars to observe the holy offices first of Vespers, then of Compline. The temperature dropped as darkness enfolded the abbey; in my coffin-like space behind the crates, my limbs grew so chilled I felt I was being paralysed from the inside out, my feet so frozen that hot currents of pain began to needle through them and up my legs. My back developed a fierce, dull ache; from time to time I dared slide out and stretch or stamp to restore some blood to my extremities. Despite the discomfort, I must have dozed, waking with a start each time I began to tilt sideways, wrenched from monstrous dreams of being buried alive. I wished I had asked Cotin to leave his lantern; I could have passed the hours looking through the boxes of forgotten manuscripts. But that was folly; I would not have had time to conceal myself if the door opened, and the smell of candle smoke would give me away. Instead I remained hidden in the darkness, listening to the squeaks and pattering of rats and the slow creak of old timbers, reviewing what I thought I knew.
Paul Lefèvre had intimated to me during our conversation in the confessional that he believed the King would not hold power for much longer. Though he had quickly tried to deny that he meant anything specific, it seemed likely that he had some concrete intelligence of a planned coup by the Duke of Guise and the Catholic League. But a priest like Paul would be small fry to Guise; useful while he could be persuaded to attack King Henri from his pulpit, but hardly someone to whom Guise would have confided plans for an act of treason. So Paul must have come by that knowledge another way; the burned scraps of letter in his hearth suggested that he had heard something in the course of a confession that had disturbed him so greatly he had considered breaking the holy seal of the confessional in order to warn the King. Some terrible harm planned by someone or something known as ‘Circe’. Whatever he had learned had troubled him so much that it had been the last thought to pass from his shattered brain to his lips as the life bled out of him. But here my theory foundered on a lack of certainty. There was no way of knowing whether Paul had sent a copy of that letter to the King, or whether he had changed his mind but someone had still felt he needed to be silenced.
The nature of the letter also puzzled me. Paul was a zealous supporter of the Catholic League; you would suppose that he would support any plot to topple the degenerate King and replace him with a righteous Catholic. What could be so terrible about the harm intended by ‘Circe’ that it could have induced the fervent Paul to consider betraying not only the sacrament of confession but his loyalty to the entire cause of the League? And who could have confessed such a conspiracy to him? I did not have the answers to these questions. I could only guess that, somehow, the Duke of Guise had anticipated betrayal and taken measures that he hoped would prevent it. But if so, that meant he must also know about the confession; presumably that person too would have to be silenced. Perhaps the killer would be able to shed more light on the plot once he was in the custody of the royal guard.
I was jolted from my theorising by the sound of a key in the lock. Wedged tight into the recess, I leaned across to make sure I could see through the narrow gap between the two stacks of boxes. Ignoring the pain in all my joints, I held myself still, terrified that the slightest sound would give me away and ruin my advantage. Despite what I had promised Cotin, I had no intention of allowing the killer to leave and hide his evidence. I was confident that, with surprise on my side and the help of a weapon, I could easily overcome him and force him at knifepoint to the gate, where the King’s soldiers would be waiting.
The door creaked open and a faint circle of light appeared; behind it, the outline of a figure, the cowl of his habit pulled up over his head. I heard the door click shut and the light brightened; I realised he had draped the lantern with a cloth to dim it on his way through the grounds. I held my breath, every fibre tensed. He crossed immediately to the boxes of books, set down his light and crouched to pull away the first crate. Silently, I eased out from my hiding place and drew my knife. The light from his lantern puddled on the floor; I caught a glimpse of his profile as he straightened, clasping the bundle with the statue to his breast with both hands like a Madonna holding an infant. I stepped forward; the movement startled him and he whipped around to face me, frozen with surprise.
‘Keep quiet, don’t move, and you won’t come to harm,’ I said, holding the point of the knife towards him. ‘I need you to come with me. Bring that with you.’
His face was still hidden in shadow, but I saw his eyes flick down to the statue, as if he had forgotten he was holding it. In an instant he seemed to recover his power of thought; he leaned back and, with considerable force, hurled the statue at me so that it struck me in the chin. I staggered backwards, touching my fingertips to my face, and in that unguarded moment he swung a punch that connected with the left side of my jaw. I dropped the knife; my mouth filled with blood as I struggled to recover my balance, but he reached out and pulled at the stack of crates beside us so that it toppled forwards. I managed to jump back as boxes of stone, glass and metal crashed across the floor, trapping me in the corner. I was fortunate that no flying debris struck me, but by the time I had clambered over the heap, he had already grabbed the lantern and plunged me into darkness as he closed the door behind him.
Cursing, I stumbled blindly across the room, spitting blood, relieved to find that he had not locked me in. Outside the mist was so thick now that I could not see more than four or five feet in front of me, but the lantern was just visible as a pinprick of fuzzy light between the bent shapes of trees ahead. I lurched after it, tripping on clumps of grass, branches clawing at my clothes, damp skeins of cobweb clinging to my face as trunks loomed out of nowhere and the light bobbed and grew