Henri, my sweet husband … At long last I will join you. I encountered many obstacles along the path I took to reach you. And my journey was often a lonely one. I always felt so cold without you. Now, at least I feel warm again.
One last effort, only one.
She managed to open her lips:
‘Live … my … friend. Live.’
A final, terrible exhalation. Her chest was motionless. It felt as though a huge red wave had unfurled in her head, blurring the edges of things.
A last gasp. Her body rose in an arch from the icy flagstones, resting only on her heels and the back of her head then slumped to the floor, lifeless.
‘Madame, Madame?’ sobbed Annelette. ‘No. No, it cannot be! No, it isn’t fair, it isn’t fair! It’s my fault, it’s all my fault. I was in such a hurry to prepare her decoction it never occurred to me that the rascal might have mixed her powders in with my herbs. My stupidity and negligence are to blame!’
And all of a sudden she was seized by a terrible rage. She crawled on her hands and knees over to the door and screamed at the top of her voice:
‘Die, you monster! Die! Rot in the darkest depths of hell for all eternity, even if I have to send you there myself!’
There was a sound of running feet, and the door burst open. The two women stumbling upon the grisly scene cried out as one. Thibaude de Gartempe and Berthe de Marchiennes, the cellarer nun. Thibaude knelt beside Annelette who was still hysterical. The apothecary, who was raging uncontrollably, struggled to free herself from her sister’s grasp:
‘Die! I’ll kill you if I have to …!’
‘Annelette, I beg you! Calm yourself. It is over. Calm yourself. Annelette, stop! We must attend to our Reverend Mother’s body.’
The apothecary’s hysterical screams ceased abruptly, and she stared wildly at the guest mistress. Then the dark cloud obscuring her pale-blue eyes cleared and she murmured:
‘My God …’
With Thibaude’s help she rose to her feet. Berthe was standing motionless, inches from the Abbess’s corpse, her face as white as a sheet. She stammered:
‘This place is cursed. I am sure of it now.’
‘You foolish old woman!’ growled Annelette. ‘The only thing in this place that’s cursed is the poisoner. I need your key to the safe; it was our Reverend Mother’s final wish. Give it to me quickly and leave here at once, both of you. I shall call for you later when it is time to destroy the seal.’
‘But …’
‘That’s an order!’
Berthe feebly attempted to counter her:
‘Given the advanced age of dear Blanche, our senior nun and guardian of the seal, and until such time as a new abbess is nominated, I am the …’
‘You are nothing!’ the apothecary shrieked violently. ‘Nothing but a suspect. Now give me the key.’
The cellarer nun’s sour expression became a scowl. She grabbed the leather thong from around her neck and hurled it into the other woman’s face before leaving the room, accompanied by Thibaude.
Annelette Beaupré lifted her robe and untied the small piece of cord around her waist, attached to which was a second key.
As she knelt beside the Abbess’s body, it occurred to her that the hardest part was yet to come. And yet she was overwhelmed by a feeling of infinite tenderness. She lifted the dead woman’s head carefully and slipped her hand down the neck of her robe. Death had relaxed the obscene rigidity of her limbs and jaw, restoring to Éleusie the dignity of a handsome woman in middle years. Annelette retrieved the third key and sat for a moment with the head of the friend she had discovered too late resting on her lap.
Éleusie’s last words to her had been: ‘Live, my friend. Live.’ They were the apothecary’s recompense for a life of bitter, self-imposed isolation, which she had only recently realised how much she detested. She stroked the dead woman’s brow, still damp with sweat, and kissed it before getting up to open the safe with the aid of the three keys. In it she found a heavy key – no doubt a copy of the key to the Abbess’s chambers – and another smaller key. The Abbess’s seal lay on top of a bulky letter. On it she had written in the long hand Annelette knew as if it were her own:
To be given to my dear nephew Francesco de Leone on my death. Should anyone go against the will of the deceased and read this letter, they will answer with their soul. God is my Saviour and my Judge.
Annelette leafed through the other documents: acts of purchase or sale of land or buildings, transfers of forests or mills. With the intention of hiding it, she took the parchment containing the plans the Abbess had mentioned. The only safe place she could think of was the library. She pulled the tapestry aside and discovered the low door.
Armed with one of the oil lamps she had lit what seemed like an eternity ago, she entered the vast, high-ceilinged room. She felt an icy draught on her head and looked up towards the horizontal arrow-slit windows at the top of the walls. Despite her wrenching grief, she gasped with emotion at the sight of the hundreds of volumes before her, scarcely daring to approach them.
Breathless, her mouth gaping in astonishment, she struggled against the superstitious fear that was paralysing her. Suddenly she hurled herself feverishly at the shelves. She devoured the titles, sighing with admiration, moaning with envy at the thought of all that science, of all that assembled knowledge. My God … To be allowed to remain in there for months reading everything, learning everything … She was gripped by a sudden panic: what if the newly appointed Abbess36 decided or was ordered to destroy these marvels? Annelette shuddered at the thought. She would keep the key until the knight Leone’s return. His grief would be terrible, far greater than her own. Annelette knew how much Madame de Beaufort had loved her adoptive son and she did not doubt that her feelings were reciprocated.
She must act quickly in case Berthe and Thibaude came barging in again. Those two fools were quite capable of imagining that she was taking advantage of being alone to forge documents using the seal. Petty souls frequently project their own guilty desires onto others.
As she was placing the letter and plans on a shelf, her foot struck an object. She stooped in the semi-gloom, which was barely illuminated by her lamp, and discovered the wicker basket full of sachets and phials of toxic substances from the herbarium which she had entrusted to the Abbess. So, this was where she had hidden them.
What was the fast-acting poison that produced such convulsions and stiffness of the limbs? She was convinced that the same substance had been used to kill Yolande de Fleury. The sister in charge of the granary must have scratched her own throat in an attempt to breathe before the paralysis spread to her limbs.
An animal. The poison was connected in some way to a large wild animal. No memory stirred. Perhaps the answer lay in one of these books.
No! They weren’t just scratch marks. The discoloration was too extensive, reaching right up to below her nose. Éleusie had cried out every time Annelette touched her. Had the merest contact caused her pain? Annelette imagined the murderess that night in the dormitory. The fiend! She had gripped Yolande’s neck with one hand and gagged her with the other. She had stood there watching her sister die. She would receive no mercy in this world or the next. Annelette swore on her life, on her soul, that the killer’s punishment would be swift and terrible.
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