He grasped her hands affectionately and murmured:
‘There is no greater pleasure than the sight of a friendly face. Is she sleeping?’ he added, pointing at the closed door to Éleusie’s bedchamber, which was almost as Spartan as a prison cell.
The woman stared at him, her jaw clenched, her pale-blue eyes frozen in a grave expression. She pronounced each syllable:
‘She is dead. Dead, do you hear! Poisoned, before my very eyes.’
‘Pardon?’ he asked, incredulous, desperately trying to understand how the word ‘dead’ could be applied to his beloved aunt.
‘She collapsed in front of me and there was nothing I could do.’
‘No!’ he cried, shaking his head violently.
‘That fiend has struck again. It would appear she mixed poison into one of my remedies for lung infections. It was I who gave your aunt the potion that killed her … The traitor will pay. I have sworn it before God.’
It took a while for Francesco to grasp the full implication of her words, for their meaning to sink in. Dead, poisoned.
He pictured the lovely, graceful lady, hampered by her dress, laughing at her clumsy attempts to teach him how to play soule,37 a village sport that involved kicking, throwing or batting a leather ball into a circle in order to score points. He recalled her veils scented with mallow and lavender, and how he would sometimes bury his face in them before going to sleep. He could almost feel her cool slender hands stroking his brow as a child, as a youth and then as a grown man. Overwhelmed by grief, he staggered over to the long dark oak table and slumped on top of it, his head in his hands.
Annelette stood motionless, devastated by their common grief, incapable of offering a word or gesture of comfort. Grief required time and space in order for it not to be all-engulfing.
She watched him leap back to his feet. He brought his powerful fists down on the table again and again and again, causing it to judder each time. She heard him groan, and repeat in one long breath:
‘Accursed wretch, you’ll pay for this. Accursed wretch …’
After what seemed to Annelette like an eternity, his arms fell to his sides. When he turned to face her, he was unrecognisable. The blood dripped from his hands onto his surcoat, red upon red.
‘She went to God peacefully,’ the woman murmured.
‘I am sure she did, sister. But I mean to send that poisoner straight back where she came from, to hell.’
‘That is impossible, knight. What is more, you must leave here before daybreak. If I occasionally slip into my late Reverend Mother’s chambers, I have no right to be here and you even less so. I have kept her keys. So far nobody has dared ask me for them, discouraged by my legendary bad temper, which it is now in my interests to exaggerate. However, I will have to hand them over to the new Abbess. Have no fear. I will take care of the murderess. We haven’t much time. There are many things I need to explain to you. I must give you a letter, as well as the secret plans of the abbey, which you must hide in a safe place, outside these walls.’
For the next hour, under the feeble light of two sconce torches,38 Annelette told Francesco of the recent calamitous events at Clairets Abbey. Some of them he had already learnt from his aunt, others left him shocked and devastated.
‘… And the final wickedness of these monsters is to have denied us our right to grieve. We have no time, you see, we have no time to mourn the dear victims …’
The apothecary’s anxious voice trailed off, and she sighed.
He corrected her:
‘Unfortunately, I doubt that this will be their final wickedness.’
Francesco was stifling the panic that had threatened to overwhelm him since she announced the theft of the manuscripts and his notebook. For a split second he had been tempted to admit defeat, to lay down his arms and surrender, to stop everything and go back to Cyprus. To retreat for ever inside those forbidding citadel walls on that faraway island. To surround himself with memories of Éleusie and Henri de Beaufort, of his mother Claire, of his sweet sister Alexandrine … Like a beckoning whisper in his mind ravaged with grief.
‘No! Never give up. Fight to the death, and beyond.’
Éleusie? Claire? His aunt Clémence, whom he had scarcely known? Or the eldest, Philippine, the warrior so adored by her sisters? He could not say. He had never met Philippine. Éleusie, and Claire before her, had rarely spoken of her, as though the mere mention of her name evoked a magnificent past that only belonged to them. Why did it suddenly feel so urgent for him to remember every snatch of conversation, anything he had been able to glean about her, however insignificant?
Éleusie had remarked one day:
‘She knew that she was the strongest, the most single-minded, and she sacrificed herself for us.’
His aunt had soon changed her mind and clammed up, refusing to yield before Francesco’s insistence.
Whom had she been discussing with Claire in private that day when he had stood in the doorway to his mother’s chambers:
‘She is so like Philippine that my heart stopped when I first saw her.’
He was still a child then. The two women had gone silent when they saw him. He had been too polite to ply them with questions.
‘Knight? Knight?’
A hand squeezing his arm brought him back to the study where he had so eagerly wanted to be and which he now detested.
‘I know that my grief, however terrible, cannot compare to yours, knight. You have lost a mother. I have lost a sister and my only friend. One of our brightest guiding lights has been extinguished, and such lights are so rare that, when one goes out, it causes insufferable pain. But time is running out, knight, I implore you … it will soon be matins.+ Accompany me to the library so that I can give you the letter and the plans.’
He followed her, feeling as though each step required a superhuman effort. Annelette fetched the precious documents she had left on a shelf and handed them to him. He put the parchment into one of his surcoat pockets and turned the letter over in his hands. He pictured Éleusie behind her huge desk, her eyes lowered, forming the words that he was almost afraid to read. When? Had she sensed that her end was coming? Misinterpreting his hesitation, Annelette suggested in an unusually gentle voice:
‘Do you wish me to leave so that you may read it alone?’
He shook his head and declared:
‘Please stay, sister. Your presence is a solace to me. It is only that … that …’
‘She is so close that she surrounds us even though we cannot see her?’
He stared at her, amazed and moved by how easily she was able to read his thoughts. She added:
‘This is what happens with beautiful, powerful souls like hers. They stay with us and guide us through the darkness.’
He lowered his eyes and broke the seal on the letter, dated a few days before she was murdered. She had known, then.
My darling boy,
When you read these lines, I will no longer be there to kiss your brow. However, you may be sure that I shall continue to watch over you always. God will grant me this favour, I know.
It falls to me now to fill in some of the gaps in your knowledge of our lives – at least those parts of which I alone am aware. If it has taken me this long to make up my mind, it is because we feared that some of this information might lead you astray. Who do I mean by we? Four sisters: Clémence, Philippine, Claire and myself.