The Butcher of Avignon (Hildegard of Meaux medieval crime series Book 6) Read online

  As always the prioress would know more than she could admit. It was for Hildegard to find out what she could and send back any information that would be useful for the defence of England.

  The prioress removed a small missal from inside her sleeve and handed it over.

  For the ciphers you will use in all correspondence. You know the drill.

  The long and treacherous miles from England had been brushed aside.

  You enjoyed travelling over the Alps to bring us the Cross of Constantine. You’ll enjoy this excursion as well. Pope Clement sees himself as the most celebrated prince of our age with the most brilliant court in all Europe.

  Her expression held a suggestion of derision, contempt even.

  He is said to dine lavishly. Luckily you’ll be there before Lent.

  It had been no easy decision for Hildegard whether to comply or not. On the verge of renouncing her vows for good she had hesitated. Before she could make up her mind one way or the other it was taken as given that she would renew them and so continue with her work to protect the king. When she was not absent on the king’s business she would reside at the Abbey of Meaux.

  To her secret joy the small house of half a dozen nuns on the other side of the Abbot’s Bridge, separate from the main abbey buildings, was once again her concern. Later, after giving the matter much thought on the long and tedious journey down into the south of France, she had reached the conclusion that her prioress understood her better than she understood herself. Of course she would decide to remain in the Order, she realised. To do what she could to protect the king was an honour and a joy. What better purpose in life could she have? Scruples concerning certain wayward feelings for Abbot Hubert de Courcy were by now, surely, a thing of the past.

  With the prioress’s warning to watch your step she had set out.

  **

  Hildegard peered over the heads of the people flocking inside the Great Audience Chamber. It was later the same morning, still early, scarcely day at all and Sir John Fitzjohn had still not put in an appearance. He must be asleep after his arduous journey, she surmised.

  To arrive so quickly on the heels of the courier of the previous night meant that he must have ridden like the devil from Westminster, been lucky in his crossing of the Narrow Seas, then ridden hard through hostile territory bristling with the armies of the Duke of Burgundy and other enemies of King Richard. It suggested extraordinary urgency in his mission.

  The seemingly endless war between France and England raged in sporadic chevauchees from across the water despite the peace treaty. Woodstock must have spent a fortune on papers of safe passage to get Fitzjohn to his destination. Hildegard assumed a secret agreement between Woodstock and Burgundy. The duke held vast tracts of territory from the Narrow Seas down to the gates of Avignon, halted only at the well-defended walls of the independent state of Pope Clement VII himself.

  Any deal between Woodstock, a prince of England, and Clement, the schismatic pope, would greatly interest those in England whom the Prioress represented.

  Two columns of monks, cowls pulled down, swayed and chanted in the glow of candlelight as they advanced to the foot of the dais at one end of the auditorium. It was stone built and must be six feet high with the throne on top. No-one would be able to get near enough the pope to harm him. His guards stood in a motionless column flanking the dais as added protection from assassins. As yet Clement had remained out of sight. The devout would imagine he was praying for heavenly guidance through the oncoming day.

  A host of onlookers were pressing in behind Hildegard but she found space in a niche near one of the five pillars in the waiting hall. At the far end in a double bay in the eastern chevet was a circular enclosure, the rota, where the pope’s auditors and men of law ruled on all matters referred to them. Nearby, the litigants sat on benches along the walls and a wooden barrier guarded by a couple of ushers separated the rota from everyone else. From where she stood she could see everything clearly and also who came and who left through the great double doors at the other end. She pulled her hood further over her face, looking like just one among the many white and black robed monastics who filled the place.

  Now and then a waft of incense was released from the heavily embroidered robes of the cardinals and foreign bishops as they pushed past. Their garments mingled ostentatiously with the threadbare wool habits of the monks, friars and nuns of countless different Orders. Gold thread glinted, with cloth of silver embroidered with roses, crowns and crosses and a wealth of emblems signifying devotion to the cross woven in silk on brocade, on damascene, on silk taffeta, on velvet, sleeves falling in a luxury of white linen to the floor, fabric as fine as spider webs trailing voluptuously from under silk-velvet copes, with trains of scarlet cloth held by acolytes no less sumptuously attired.

  Again she observed the monastics in their rough stamyn, the friars, Benedictines, Cluniacs, Dominicans, some barefoot, even, on the stone flags, others, Cistercians mostly, shod in kid boots, fur lined, and doubts tormented her. What, she wondered, has this to do with our true purpose in life? Why are we here, offering respect to this man? While she waited she wondered what the other pope, the real one, elected according to rule but against the wishes of the French, was doing at this moment in his palace in Rome.

  No doubt he was plotting with his allies, the Holy Roman Emperor, the German counts, the Dukes of Milan and Verona, the Signoria of Florence and the English and Flemish envoys. There seemed no end to their Schism. Neither one would give way to the other. The possibility of civil war in England would be nothing to a war between rival popes. They sat at the pinnacle of contention between the powers of Europe.

  Despondently concluding that no women would be consulted on the constant desire of men for war, she idled her glance over the arrival of a group just now entering the hall.

  Cistercians, she noted. Cowls pulled well over their faces. Hands hidden inside sleeves after a quick crossing of themselves. A modest pectoral cross glinted briefly on the chest of one of them as he turned to scan the crowd from under his hood.

  Cressets did little to lighten the gloom. Outside it must have been a morning of black clouds and rain. The clerestory windows had darkened. Then more light was brought in as a sign that the pope was imminent. A shuffling followed as everyone pressed forward.

  Quite a sea of people now, all looking upwards as if in rapture, an effect caused by the height of the dais, a small trick to create awe, she was thinking, like the priest with his chalice, his wine, his bread, his magnificence and his assumption of authority. Lollard thoughts. If anyone guessed what I am thinking the inquisition would have me burned in the market place.

  Even in Bohemia, that land of free-thinkers, the followers of blessed Wyclif were having a hard time against the Church. Even Good Queen Anne would find it difficult to return home to Prague carrying her translation of the Bible should she ever wish to leave King Richard’s side. But he would never let her go. They were devoted to each other, love’s greatest emblem in an ocean of infidelity and greed.

  Still Clement did not appear.

  King Richard had been promised the crown of the Holy Roman Emperor if Anne’s elder brother, Emperor Wenceslas, died without an heir. Archbishop Neville had had a little sculpture installed in York minster showing Richard with the Emperor’s crown on his head. As a token of our love and fealty, he had told her. Much good it was doing now. She shuddered at Neville’s possible fate.

  The crowd’s mood of excitement had subsided as the pope still failed to make his expected entrance.

  After what seemed like an age the cressets began to be dowsed as the rising sun pierced the shadows. It lit up the walls opposite, giving them a pink, fleshy appearance, and it caused the glass high up in the clerestory near the roof beams to sparkle like cheap tinsel.

  Do these people wait here like this every morning? she asked herself. For what? To see one ambitious churchman wielding his earthly powers? We’re all fools. Except that I have a deeper purp
ose and hope I shall never be dazzled by false light. Her thoughts strayed to Wyclif, the morning star as he was called, and how his death had been such a blow for freedom of belief in England.

  A commotion at the main doors interrupted her thoughts. It heralded the arrival of Sir John Fitzjohn with a troop of followers. The Cistercians, still standing near the door as if not sure whether they’d be staying or not, moved aside to let them enter. One of the monks was forced right in among the group of Englishmen as they found a space against the wall. She noticed his companion’s cowl lift slightly though not enough to reveal the face of the man under it. Fitzjohn briskly made the sign of the cross, looking around as he did so to see if he was noticed, and she saw him nod to someone in the crowd.

  Then, after this minor excitement, to her dismay a sleeping patience seemed to descend again. What was Clement doing? He must be in his bed, she decided, or maybe breaking his fast in as lavish a manner as her prioress had mentioned. One thing he was probably not doing and that was praying for the souls he had condemned to death at the siege of Cesena or, more recently, by burning here in the town of Avignon. She had passed the site of the public burnings in the market place and couldn’t get it out of her mind. It made her think acidly of the men who commanded such punishment of their fellow beings.

  She pictured Cesena again with all the old feeling of horror.

  **

  The final cresset was dowsed. The vast, crowded space of the audience chamber was by now a blaze of sunlight. Still everyone hung on. Patience is a virtue. Hildegard was almost asleep on her feet when there was a sea-change among those nearest the dais.

  Nothing much seemed to have happened. A cardinal appeared unobtrusively through the door at the back where Clement was expected. As they pinned their hopes on him he moved to the edge of the dais. Diffidently he began to address them. When he spoke it was in Latin so that everyone could understand.

  The gist was that his holiness had been detained by an unholy event. He begged and prayed for their understanding. Soon he would appear before them when he would impart to them what had befallen.

  Hildegard sighed with impatience and earned a look of reproof from the monk standing beside her. Suppositions cascaded through her mind. Was he sick? Had the war between England and France broken out again? Was that perhaps the message Fitzjohn had brought last night?

  A glance across the bowed heads, already mouthing prayers, showed him say something to one of his pages with a scowl of annoyance. He bent his head to say something more and the page forced a path through the press towards the doors. One of the Cistercians also thought it a waste of time to hang about and followed in his wake.

  Hildegard closed her eyes. The prioress, content in Swyne, had no idea what her nun had to endure in her service. The Alps had been nothing to the tedium of waiting for someone who could not or would not deign to appear.

  **

  It was almost on tierce, the third hour, when a piercing fanfare cut through the mumblings of people too devout to leave their places to go to mixtum now being served in the refectory. The horn players looked delighted at having something to do at last. Hildegard craned her neck to see over the heads in front of her towards the door at the back of the dais.

  After another screech of the horns, the door inched open in the silence that followed. Then a dazzling, bejewelled figure appeared on the threshold. The silence lengthened.

  The guards, squaring their shoulders, gazed more ferociously at the invisible enemy in front of them. A sound like the wind rising echoed around the auditorium as people began to cross themselves and fall to their knees in a cloud of fabric.

  Clement, dark visaged, hook nosed, face as expressionless as a stump of wood, took several tottering paces towards his throne. His garments glittered in the sun light. Two silvery acolytes fussed in his wake and when he came to the steps leading up to his gilded throne they took an arm each to guide him onto it in his cumbersome robes. Before sitting, he turned and made a perfunctory sign over the heads of his flock.

  Everyone, Hildegard realised, was on their knees. Even the Cistercians near the door. As unobtrusively as possible she slid down the pillar she had been leaning against until she was kneeling, albeit in a cramped and crouching posture, at its foot. A glance backwards showed that the Cistercian who had followed Fitzjohn’s page outside had returned and followed him back in. For a moment he glanced out over the bent heads towards the dais, then he too, sank down among the rest.

  Clement’s voice carried easily into the corners of the vast hall. Latin, of course.

  ‘My faithful friends, my dearly beloved. Please rise to your feet.’ A sound of dull thunder followed. He began speaking only when all was quiet again. ‘I humbly beseech your pardon for this unwonted delay in starting our daily business. May your patience be rewarded here on earth as in heaven.’ He paused and clasped his hands helplessly, eyes darting from one corner of the chamber to the other. ‘I bear evil tidings, my friends. This day, sometime after matins, a most dreadful fate befell one of my beloved flock.’

  He paused again and Hildegard silently applauded his sense of the theatrical. His eyes were focussed on something in the roof beams. His guardian angel, maybe, although to look downwards to the pit of hell, she thought, might be more appropriate.

  After a sufficiently long pause he spoke in a soft voice. ‘Sometime after lauds a young thief was found in that most secret of places where our fortune is stored.’ A whisper of speculation arose but he stalled it with one raised hand. ‘I mean this as no reference to the soul of souls where each man’s fate is coiled but in that place where our wealth is stored, I mean where that gold belonging to all of us, is for safety kept, the better to further our ministry among the ungodly.’

  His black glance swept the crowd like a passing storm cloud.

  ‘Our treasury, of which many of you will be unaware, has been breached! To our sorrow we are not birds of the air. We cannot live on the crumbs of fortune. We must show prudence in the management of base, worldly affairs. This necessary wealth is such that vile men, driven by cupidity, are attracted to it, are drawn to it, are tempted to break into the holy place and to steal from it for their own devilish designs.’ He waited until this news had sunk in.

  Clement gave an odd kind of smile as he held the last morsel of the outrage under his control. And then he let them know it. ‘So was the thief discovered this day in our treasury and I may tell you, friends, so he received his just reward. Blessed be the humble. God go with you. Amen.’

  Almost before anyone could respond to his astonishing words he exited on the arms of his acolytes. The door closed with finality behind him. The guards stared at nothing, blank as wooden effigies.

  At once a confused whisper of speculation broke out. Who had dared? What did his just reward mean? How much did he get away with? What treasure?

  The monk beside Hildegard cried out, ‘God preserve us. Such brazenness. Here, in the palace of our blessed pope.’ He turned to Hildegard, ‘Did you ever hear of such a thing, sister? What is the world coming to?’

  ‘We live in troubled times, brother.’

  ‘The enemy is verily within the gates. The end days are nigh!’

  ‘How could anyone penetrate the secret treasury? There are guards everywhere. How is it possible?’ she asked.

  ‘With the help of the devil and his minions, surely. How else?’ The monk shook his head in mystification. Someone touched him on the sleeve and he bent his head to listen.

  Everyone was leaving now. Litigants, lawmen, scribes, clerks. All those with a petition to present. Thwarted now. Pouring out through the great doors, pages jostling to force a pathway for their masters, sharp elbows being used to effect. Soon, flooding into the Great Tinel, the refectory, their voices rose from a murmur to an excited rumble as soon as they were able. Those who were vowed to silence looked with chagrin at their companions. One or two risked penitential punishment by speaking aloud their astonishment. Questions were asked
about the treasury, about what was meant by the thief’s just reward. The devil was mentioned with prayers to assorted saints for belated protection. St Martial, the palace’s patronal saint, was called upon.

  Hildegard allowed herself to be drifted into the Tinel with everyone else until she found an empty place at the long table reserved for nuns, lay sisters, and female guests. A storm of gossip soon took over making one or two high up in the chain of authority look down their noses at the avid interest others were showing in such material affairs. One of them, an abbess by the look of it, chose to make a comment.

  ‘We cannot know anything at this stage, dear sisters. We must leave it for his holiness to scry forth the identity of this thief. Eschew gossip, I beg you. The thief is apprehended. There let the matter rest.’

  ‘And his just reward?’ murmured Hildegard. ‘What do you imagine that can be?’

  ‘Our Holy Father decides how sinners shall be rewarded,’ the nun replied with complaisant finality.

  Preserve me. Hildegard bent her head, hiding her contempt as best she could and as soon as her morsel of bread was eaten and the watered wine was swallowed, she got up and made her way to the guest hall.

  **

  It was no different here. The buzz of excitement where townspeople, secular petitioners as well as clergy mixed was feverish. Rumours flew. One thing everyone seemed agreed on. By just reward, Clement meant one thing: death.

  ‘Blood everywhere,’ opined a merchant who could not have had first-hand knowledge of such a thing unless he’d been present and wished to incriminate himself. Nobody pulled him up. Everyone could predict death from Clement’s words and with death came blood. Lots of it.

  ‘They say an angel struck the thief down at the very moment he touched one of the blessed gold crucifixes his holiness keeps in there,’ said another.