‘Madame, I beg you to attribute my persistence to the abject fear I experienced. I need to understand and … your unease leads me to believe that you might have some explanation.’
She was taken aback by the Abbess’s abrupt response. Éleusie de Beaufort stood up. Her pretty face wore an expression of intense pain, and yet there was a look of tenderness in her eyes. She replied curtly:
‘Please go, Madame. I must … There’s been a fire and … er … some manuscripts have been … destroyed.’
‘No. You … dishonour your position, your calling, by brushing aside my request in this way. Do you realise what I have been through?’
Éleusie de Beaufort fought back her tears. She composed herself and breathed:
‘Oh … I know, I felt it in my body, to a degree you cannot imagine.’
The Abbess’s visions, her incessant nightmares. The lashes raining down on her back, flaying her skin. The indescribable pain of the salt that monster rubbed in her wounds – in Agnès’s wounds, which racked Éleusie’s body.
‘I beg you, don’t abandon me like this,’ the young woman implored. ‘You spoke of manuscripts that have been destroyed? What manuscripts? The Vallombroso treatise?’ Agnès declared suddenly, on impulse.
An icy hand stroked her cheek then fell away. Éleusie de Beaufort murmured:
‘It is not my place … not yet, not I. May God protect you always.’
She left the reception room like a woman fleeing, accompanied by the sound of her footsteps and the rustle of the heavy folds of her robe. Agnès sat motionless, stunned.
A novice hurried over to Agnès and offered to help her climb into the saddle. The Dame de Souarcy refused the generous offer with a polite smile and said to the young girl with strange pale-amber eyes:
‘You are most kind, but I must manage on my own. I have a … stiff back, it’s nothing serious. Besides, I won’t always have you to help me.’
The novice disappeared through an arched doorway in the enclosure wall.
After dragging herself up onto Églantine’s back, Agnès was overcome by a wave of fatigue. The huge Perche mare stood patiently as she settled into the saddle.
Ladies’ saddles25 at the time were only a slight improvement on the sambue that was still used in Madame Clémence’s day. The sambue was a chair-like affair perched on the horse’s hindquarters, which did not allow the rider any control over the steed, making it necessary for a servant to lead the animal on foot. In fact, the palfreys26 ridden by ladies in days gone by were trained to walk at a steady pace so that their riders would not lose their balance and fall off. The reason for this was that sitting astride a horse, which was far better suited to trotting or galloping, was considered detrimental to procreation.
Églantine fell into a steady pace. Unbidden thoughts of Mathilde flashed through Agnès’s mind. She had received no news of her daughter since the trial. She had tried to imagine how she would react, what she would feel when she stood before her most zealous accuser. Would she demand an explanation from this child whom she had carried in her womb? Would she retreat into silent disapproval? Would she mourn the terrible loss, the destruction of what she continued to believe were some of her fondest memories? Mathilde as a baby, when she began to walk and later on as a little girl. She must stop lying to herself! Loss and destruction certainly – the words were not too severe. As for her fond memories, they had been undermined, not to say destroyed, by Mathilde’s hostility towards her during the trial. Her daughter had dissolved before her eyes to be replaced by a ruthless accuser, a merciless informer. She might as well admit the truth: her fondest memories were of Clément, and she had no idea what her reaction would be when she found herself face to face with Mathilde. And yet a terrible realisation had gradually dawned upon Agnès: Mathilde did not only detest Clément and the harsh life at Souarcy, she also detested her mother more than anything. Agnès pursed her lips, holding back the overwhelming sorrow engendered by this thought. Still, it was out of the question that she leave her daughter any longer in Eudes’s predatory hands. If necessary, she would ask the chief bailiff, Monge de Brineux, to go to Château de Larnay to fetch her, to drag her back to Souarcy if need be. She intended to write to Eudes without delay and inform him of her decision.
Agnès banished these dispiriting thoughts from her mind, and focused on her strange meeting with the Abbess, which had only served to deepen her confusion. Besides feeling disillusioned and uneasy, she had come away from the meeting certain of one thing: she and Clément were not losing their minds. They had been swept away by a wave whose proportions far surpassed them, had fallen by accident into a gigantic whirlpool that was buffeting them ferociously.
She was wrong.
Manoir de Souarcy-en-Perche, December 1304
An eerie stillness awaited her when she entered the quadrangle. No dogs, no busy farm hands. She felt as if she were stepping into a fairy tale where a spell has been cast turning the inhabitants of a house to stone.
She glanced around and called out: ‘Hello. Is anybody there?’
Gilbert the Simpleton shot out of one of the barns and came running over to her with surprising agility for someone so massive.
‘He’s here, my lady. Oh, dear Lord Jesus … What a to-do! He arrived this afternoon without warning! He appeared out of nowhere!’
‘Who did, Gilbert?’
‘Why, he did of course,’ he replied, flushed with excitement, flailing his arms like an angry goose.
‘Calm down, Gilbert dear, and tell me who.’
Églantine did not bridle when he rushed to help Agnès dismount, seizing her by the waist and lifting her up as if she were as light as a feather before gently setting her down on the ground. It occurred to her that this giant, who had the mind of a child, was strong enough to wring a bull’s neck with his bare hands.
‘Thank you, dear Gilbert. Try to calm down and think. Who arrived?’
‘Our lord, my good fairy. “Our lord”, that’s what Clément said.’
She felt cold with rage as she spoke the man’s name through gritted teeth:
‘Eudes?’
‘No, not the evil dwarf. I’ll crush that pest under my boot if he shows his ugly face here again. Our noble lord, from over there on the other side of Authon Forest.’
Agnès trembled.
Ah, dear God … Lord Artus. But how, why, when? Why had he not warned them? She looked despairingly down at her dress, which had been dragging in the dirty snow, and at her nails, which were stained green from the cheap dye in her riding gloves. She must look dishevelled and dirty – in short, a fright, and Gilbert’s admiring gaze would not convince her otherwise. She regained her composure and ordered calmly:
‘Take Églantine back to the stable, please.’
Gilbert walked off slowly, whispering in the mare’s ear. It was odd how all the animals, even the bees, liked Gilbert. Some invisible bond seemed to connect him to them.
Quick. What must she do? Go to her chambers and clean herself up? No. The Comte must have heard her calling out to the servants. She ought to have been annoyed and resented his unannounced intrusion. She suppressed a smile. He had done it intentionally. Nonetheless, she felt sure he would give her one of those clumsy excuses, which even the most intelligent men were prone to. Was it not endearing how they imagined they could trounce women at their own game? Agnès chortled. Come now, gentlemen, we are