Conspiracy. S. J. Parris
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I emerged; I jumped again, but it was Cotin, pressed up against the wall.
‘Frère Joseph is not in his cell,’ he whispered, pulling me by the sleeve and pointing me to a door on the opposite side, towards the far end. I scuttled along, hoping that Albaric would conclude he had imagined a figure from his nightmares and fall back to sleep without feeling the need to raise an alarm.
I eased the door of Joseph’s cell shut behind me and leaned against it, trying to slow my breathing. When I had managed to light the candle again, I saw that the almoner’s room was laid out much as Albaric’s, though the few furnishings were more obviously expensive: a mattress on a wooden pallet under a small arched window, set high in the wall opposite the door; on the right-hand side, a table and on the left, a wooden trunk. At least this time the bed was empty; from the tumbled sheets it looked as if Joseph had left in a hurry. The table was also bare, save for a branched silver candlestick, but to my relief, the chest was not padlocked. I opened the lid and began to pull out whatever I could find: good quality linen undershirts; a pair of leather shoes; a rosary of amber beads, smooth as glass; a tortoiseshell comb … but nothing more. Not in a trunk open to anyone; I should have realised. I cast around to see where else he might have hidden personal effects. The room held no other furniture, no cupboards, no drawers. Where had I squirrelled away the writings I wanted to keep from prying eyes when I was a friar? My eyes lighted on the mattress.
I fixed my candle into the silver holder on the table and set it down by the bed so that I could grope along the underside of the mattress until I felt a split in the seam, just large enough to slip a hand inside; through the lumps of horsehair my scrabbling fingers closed around a sheaf of papers. I drew them out and untied the ribbon binding them as I brought them closer to the light. The topmost sheet was instantly recognisable; another crude sketch of King Henri mincing in women’s clothes while two sly-looking young men with lascivious pouts wrapped their fists around the sceptre he held erect in his lap, above a set of satirical verses about the Queen Mother’s desperate recourse to witchcraft to secure a Valois heir. The paper beneath was more unusual: it showed a series of drawings depicting a variety of imaginative forms of torture and execution, while a queen looked on, the name ‘Elizabeth’ emblazoned above her head. The text was an impassioned plea, shorn of all ribald jokes, urging the people of France to consider the plight of their fellow Catholics in England, and to rise up and exterminate heresy before they too suffered the same fate at the hands of the Protestants. The writer ended his polemic by calling on true Catholics to finish the work begun on the glorious night of Saint Bartholomew’s – an extraordinary exhortation for which he would certainly be executed, if his authorship could be proved. The style – and I could almost swear the handwriting – were identical to the ones I had found in Paul’s room. That, at least, was evidence of a connection between Frère Joseph and the murdered priest.
But there was another paper beneath, of better quality and written in a different hand. As I read, I felt my eyes widen.
Your fingerprints your mouth your tongue burn my skin long after you are gone. Only you know the secret places of my body, the way I ache for you, in the knowledge I should not. Yet for all the judgement and scorn arrayed against us, for all the punishment that might befall us if it were known, I would not have given up one single hour in your embrace. You consume me. My desire wills me to you like a hawk towards home.
Followed by more in this vein, though it was neither signed nor dated; hot words for a friar who had taken a vow of celibacy. Joseph was running a great risk in keeping such an inflammatory letter, but perhaps his high birth gave him immunity from routine searches. I held the paper up to my face and sniffed it; faint traces of perfume lingered behind the smell of stale horsehair. The writing was distinctive, the letters embellished with elaborate flourishes; an educated hand, but belonging to someone with a taste for ostentation. I decided to keep the note; Joseph de Chartres may be well connected, but proof of a forbidden love affair might make him vulnerable. I was not sure how much could be achieved without a signature to the letter, or any means of identifying his correspondent, but it would surely make him nervous to suspect that someone else had it in their possession, and that might give me leverage.
I tucked the papers carefully into the secret pocket sewn into the lining of my doublet – an alteration I had had made to all my clothes when I lived in London, for just such a purpose. Reaching again into the mattress to check I had not missed anything, I rummaged around until my fingertips touched another object; this time a leather purse, tied with a drawstring. I opened it and tipped the contents into my palm: two gold écus and a torn strip of paper, on which was scribbled, in the same hand as the pamphlets, Brinkley, 28 11 4h.
Was it a code? Who or what was Brinkley? It was an English name, if I was not mistaken. Many of the émigrés who had fled to Paris rather than renounce their faith under Elizabeth had established connections with the Catholic League; if Joseph de Chartres was involved in distributing propaganda against the King, he might also be collaborating with the English Catholics – the anti-Elizabeth pamphlet among his papers suggested as much. Or perhaps Brinkley was a reference to the mistress, and the money was for her. As I stared at them, it struck me that perhaps it was not a cipher at all, but a far more obvious explanation – 4h could mean simply a time, quatre heures, in which case the other numbers might be the date. The 28th of November was tomorrow. A rendezvous, then? Even if my guess were correct, I had no way of knowing where or with whom, but at least it was one more thin thread I could follow, now that I was certain that Joseph must be Paul Lefèvre’s killer. I touched a thumb to my bruised mouth. Evidently he had exaggerated the limitations of his crippled hand.
I was crouching to return the money to its hiding place when the cell door juddered open and light flooded the walls. I whipped around, startled; a figure filled the doorway, lamp held aloft. He appeared to be fully dressed, despite the hour.
‘Put down the weapon,’ he said, in a voice accustomed to giving orders.
I stood and held out my hands, palms up, to show I was not armed. He eyed the purse.
‘The one at your belt,’ he said, with a touch more steel. He was a solid man, tall and broad, nearing sixty but still possessed of a vigorous energy apparent in his florid cheeks and quick, sharp eyes under bristling brows. His abbot’s robes were trimmed with fox-fur and patterned in gold thread that winked in the light; a jewelled crucifix hung from his neck, so large it almost reached his belt and would have made a lesser man stoop. ‘Let us see, now,’ he continued, as I unstrapped my knife and dropped it to the floor, ‘carrying a weapon inside the abbey precincts – that is an offence in itself. Unlawful intrusion, theft, violent assault—’ he gestured to the blood on my lip. ‘Quite a list of charges to be going on with.’
‘It was I who was assaulted,’ I said.
He raised an eyebrow. I realised I would do better to affect a degree of humility.
‘Father Abbot – I can see how this must look. But I can explain. If you send someone to look outside the gate, you will find soldiers from the King’s personal guard who will vouch for me. My name is—’
‘I know exactly who you are, Doctor Bruno,’ the Abbé said. His look suggested this knowledge was not going to work in my favour. ‘As for the soldiers – there are armed guards here, but not, I fear, the ones you requested in this letter.’ He flicked his wrist up to show a piece of paper held between his first and second finger. My heart dropped to my stomach. ‘Do you imagine I allow messages in and out of this abbey without knowing what they contain? Especially ones addressed to the Louvre. Cotin should have known better. But perhaps he stood to gain as your accomplice.’
‘Father Abbot, you must listen. I believe you have a murderer in your abbey.’ I looked him in the eye and spoke solemnly. If I betrayed a hint of alarm, I would be giving him the confirmation he wanted.
‘I have a thief in my abbey, that much seems beyond doubt.’ He sniffed.
‘I am not a thief, Your Grace, I swear.’
‘That is your money, is it?’
We both looked at the purse in my hand.
‘I