The Lady Agnes Mystery, Volume 1 (44 page)

The brutal truth of Annelette’s tirade brought Yolande suddenly to her senses. She whispered:

‘Forgive me. I humbly beg your forgiveness.’

‘Who brings you news of your son?’

Yolande pursed her lips and declared categorically:

‘I’m not telling you. You can threaten your worst but my lips are sealed. I’ve made enough mistakes already. I refuse to hurt someone who has shown only kindness by bringing me such solace.’

Annelette could tell from her tone of voice that it was pointless to insist. She wanted, however, to confirm the truth of what she had already deduced:

‘And do these secret exchanges take place at night in front of the herbarium, which cannot be seen from our Reverend Mother’s chambers or from the dormitory?’

‘Yes. That’s all I’m going to tell you.’

Éleusie felt appalled by the violence of the scene, but even more so by the discovery of yet another life destroyed. In a voice weak with exhaustion, she ordered:

‘That will be all, daughter. Leave us.’

‘Will your punishment …’

‘Who am I to turn my back on you when He opened his arms to Mary Magdalene? Go in peace, Yolande. My only reproach is that it took you so long to tell us the truth.’

Suddenly anxious, Yolande stammered:

‘Do you think that … if I had confessed sooner, Hedwige might have been …’

Annelette answered for the Abbess:

‘Saved? I doubt it. There’s no need for you to carry the burden of her death on your conscience. I suspect that she and Jeanne were a threat to the murderess and she decided to kill them. If we find out exactly why, we will discover who the poisoner is … or at least I hope so.’

After Yolande de Fleury had left, the two women stood facing one another for a moment. Éleusie de Beaufort was the first to break the silence:

‘I am … Is it true?’

‘Is what true?’

‘That you would never have taken holy orders if you had been able to practise as a physician or apothecary in the world?’

Annelette suppressed a sad smile before confessing:

‘Yes, it is. And if your dear husband had not passed away, would you be here among us?’

‘No. But I have never regretted my choice.’

‘Neither have I. Still, it was a second choice.’

‘You see, Annelette, despite the climate of resentment towards the Church, these nunneries where we are allowed to live in peace, to work, to act, to make decisions are a blessing to women.’

Annelette shook her head.

‘Behind this blessing lies a harsh reality: we women enjoy almost no rights in the world. Those who, like yourself, are better off might be fortunate enough to marry a man of honour, respect and love, but what about the others? What choice do they have? Freedom, it is true, can be bought like everything else. I was prepared to pay a high price for mine, but nobody was interested in my opinion, certainly not my father, who never even asked for it. As an unattractive spinster with no inheritance I could either look after my brother’s children – my brother who was a mediocre doctor but a man – or join a nunnery. I chose the least demeaning of the two alternatives.’

‘I’m afraid I must agree with Annelette,’ a high-pitched voice rang out behind them.

They turned as one. Berthe de Marchiennes was standing
uneasily before them. She seemed to have lost her usual air of superiority.

‘Berthe …’

‘I knocked several times but no one answered so I came in. I only overheard the end of your conversation,’ she added quickly.

She clasped her hands together, and it occurred to Annelette that this was the first time she had ever seen her stripped of her pious arrogance.

‘What is happening, Reverend Mother? It feels as though the world is collapsing all around us … I do not know what to think.’

‘We are as bewildered as you, daughter,’ the Abbess replied, a little too sharply.

The cellarer opened her mouth, seemingly lost for words:

‘I know that you don’t like me very much, Reverend Mother, nor you, Annelette, nor the others. It pains me even though I know I only have myself to blame. I’ve … It’s such a terrible thing to admit that you’ve never been wanted, loved. Even now at my age I don’t know which is harder: to admit it to the rest of the world or to myself. God has been my constant solace. He welcomed me into his arms. Clairets has been my only home, my haven. I confess … I was jealous and resented your appointment, Reverend Mother. I assumed that my seniority and the faultless service I had rendered guaranteed my position as abbess – more than that, I felt it was my due. During these past few days I have begun to realise how much I overestimated my abilities. I feel so powerless, so pathetically feeble in the face of these lethal blows raining down upon us, and I am infinitely grateful to you, Madame, for being our abbess.’

This astonishing display of humility must have been difficult for Berthe de Marchiennes, and Éleusie reached out her hand, but
the other woman shook her head. She moistened her lips with her tongue before continuing:

‘I want to help you … I must. I know you don’t trust me. I can feel it and I don’t blame you; I deserve it.’

‘Berthe, I …’

‘Don’t, Reverend Mother, let me finish. I deserve it because I am guilty of telling a cowardly lie in order not to … lose face. I cannot even give the excuse that I was afraid of upsetting you. No. My only motive was pride.’

Annelette refrained from intervening, having understood that this confession was not addressed to her. The cellarer took a deep breath before continuing:

‘I … for a few days I mislaid the key to your safe that was in my charge. Or at least I thought so at the time. I was terrified that you might ask me for it in order to validate some deed. I searched high and low. I couldn’t understand for the life of me how I had managed to lose that long leather thong I wore tied round my neck. I found it four days later at the bottom of a little mending basket I keep under my bed …’

The two other women stared at her in astonishment.

‘I was so relieved that I did not stop to think how strange it was that I should find it there.’

‘What do you mean?’ Éleusie asked, fearing she knew the answer already.

‘I had already twice emptied the contents of the basket onto my bed, thinking that if the thong had come untied, the key might have dropped down. The knot on the thong was intact. I am now certain that someone took it while I was asleep and then stuck it in the first hiding place they could find.’

‘Not a very good hiding place since you had already looked there,’ remarked Annelette.

‘On the contrary, sister, a perfect hiding place, and one that shows the thief’s contempt for me. She must have known that I had turned my bed, my mending basket, my whole cell upside down and she was counting on my pride, on my relief at having found the key without needing to admit my incompetence. I am therefore guilty of the sin of pride … But if that monster thinks I’m a coward, she’s very much mistaken.’

A
gnès had been overcome with drowsiness soon after diligently chewing the bitter ball and forcing herself to swallow the mouthfuls of unpleasant saliva it produced. The nightmare she no longer wished to fight against had gradually given way to a sort of waking dream. She had let her body slide down the wall, slowing its descent with her hands.

Crouched in the corner of a tiny room, dark and dank and stinking. Crouched on the muddy floor that has coated her skimpy dress, her calves and thighs with a foul greenish film. Crouching, straining in the darkness, trying to make sense of the sounds she heard. There had been a voice barking out orders, obscene laughter, and cries followed by screams of pain. Then a terrified silence. And yet Agnès felt outside it all. She felt as though she were slowly sinking back into the wall. Crouching, trying hard to merge into the stone walls, hoping to dissolve there, to vanish for ever. Steps came to a halt outside the solid-looking, low door. A voice declared:

‘At least they say this female's pleasing and comely!'

‘She used to be. She looked more like a beggar when I brought her back down from the interrogation room.'

‘Come on, let's take her. At least the women aren't as heavy to carry back as the men after they've fainted.'

The familiar sound of the bolt being drawn back. And yet she did not stir. She felt as though she were drifting, suspended in a foglike stupor.

‘On your feet, Madame de Souarcy!' bellowed one of the men who had just walked into her cell. ‘On your feet, do you hear?'

She would have preferred to remain like that, sitting in the stinking mud. But she knew instinctively that she must hide the nature of her apathy. Florin must not sense that she felt as if she were floating outside her body since she had swallowed the brownish ball. She managed to raise herself on all fours then rise to her feet. She was swaying like a drunkard. One of the men remarked sarcastically:

‘You need less than my goodly wife to reach seventh heaven.'

The other man let out a coarse laugh of approval that Agnès did not understand. What in heaven's name were they talking about?

Her body was weighed down by a pleasant languor and they had to drag her along the corridor.

The other guard, the one who had laughed, declared:

‘They shouldn't starve them like that … then we wouldn't have to carry them. Look at her, she can barely put one foot in front of the other. I tell you she won't last out the first half-hour,' he predicted, referring to the timing of the torture sessions.

The procedural rules stipulated that there should be no more than half an hour of torture per question. It was an extraordinarily meticulous quantification of pain and one many inquisitors did not respect. They only needed to confess and be pardoned by one of their colleagues since each had the power to absolve the others.

They propped her up, holding her under the arms, while one of them opened the door to the torture chamber. What she saw inside made her blood run cold.

A long table, long enough for a human body to lie stretched out on. A long table glistening dark red. Beneath it a trough filled with a curious viscous substance. Blood. Blood everywhere.

Blood on Florin's face, blood on his forearms up to his rolled-up
sleeves. Blood on the leather apron of the executioner, who was standing in a corner, arms crossed. Blood on the walls, blood on the straps hanging from the table. A sea of human blood.

Nicolas Florin glided towards her. His face was bathed in sweat and his eyes shone gleefully. Suddenly, Agnès understood the nature of his ecstasy: the blood, the screams, the endless torment, the ripped flesh, death.

She stared at him and declared calmly:

‘You are damned, beyond atonement.'

He leaned forward and smiled, brushing her lips with his.

‘Do you really think so?' he whispered into her mouth.

He turned round, walked gracefully over to the executioner and barked:

‘That's enough chatter. There's work to be done and I have a burning desire to begin. What a fitting expression!'

A rough hand tore away the top half of her dress and pushed her towards the table. Another hand shoved her hard in the back and she lurched forward. The congealed blood on the wooden table touching her stomach plunged her into a bottomless pit of despair. She was bathing in the blood of another, in the martyrdom of another who had entered this hell before her. She barely felt the straps tighten across her back.

Florin twisted the mass of auburn locks that had lost their shine and tossed them to one side with regret. He misconstrued the cause of his victim's distress and in a purring voice declared:

‘Come, come … We haven't started yet. A little nudity is surely nothing in comparison with the rest. You will soon see for yourself. Agnès Philippine Claire de Souarcy, née Larnay, you have been summoned here today before your judges to answer to the charges of complicity in heresy; individual heresy aggravated
by latria; the seduction of a man of God, for which you are to be tried at a later date; sorcery and the invocation of demons. I ask you one last time, do you confess?'

The blood smelled of iron. Can a man be identified by the smell of his blood? Can one pray for him with one's mouth pressed into the pool of red liquid that was once his life?

‘You do not confess your guilt?' Florin concluded hastily, for the contrary would have driven him to despair.

He felt a warm sensation spread across his belly and a rush of blood to his groin. He had waited so long for this moment. He struggled to hold back his mounting pleasure, to keep his eyelids from closing. He struggled not to hurl himself onto her back and bite into her, ripping at the beautiful pale flesh of his magnificent prey with his teeth until her blood ran down his throat.

‘Clerk!' Florin shouted in the direction of an oil lamp that appeared to be floating a few inches above the floor. ‘Note down that Madame de Souarcy refuses to confess and chooses to remain silent, a sure sign of her guilt.'

The young man sitting cross-legged on the floor nodded and recorded the refusal.

‘Executioner, the lashes, quickly!' Florin snarled, thrusting his hand out towards the tall man in the leather apron. ‘Clerk, note down that we are respecting proper procedure by first inflicting upon the accused the punishment reserved for women. If our generosity is not rewarded with a confession, we shall consider alternative methods of persuasion.'

Florin turned towards the open fire where some thin-bladed knives were being heated above the flames until they were red-hot.

Her body tensed when she heard the swish of the whip being
raised. She cried out as it struck her back with full force. And yet the sting of the thick leather thongs felt bearable. The blows rained down on her for what seemed like an eternity. Her body jolted with each punishing new wave. She could feel her skin splitting, but it seemed relatively painless. Something smooth and warm ran down her sides and dropped onto the table. Her flesh was smarting and yet it almost wasn't hers. A thought flashed through her mind, a soothing thought: her blood was mixing with the blood of the poor soul who had lain on that same table before her. She felt her torturer's hands kneading her raw flesh. She felt the powder being sprinkled onto her wounds. A crippling pain made her cry out despite the little brown ball. Salt. The wicked man was rubbing salt into her wounds.

She felt herself drifting into oblivion and willed it with all her might. Florin's hysterical screams came to her as if in a nightmare. He was gasping with pleasure, crowing as he ordered her to confess her sins. He cried out in a voice quivering with excitement:

‘Executioner, this witch refuses God … The irons … The irons and let them be white-hot …'

There was a loud knock at the door. Agnès let out a sob before plunging into merciful unconsciousness.

Jean de Rioux stood before the inquisitor. He avoided looking at the tortured woman, feigning disinterest.

Florin was panting, hunched over, his face covered in sweat, his eyes glazed over. The Dominican felt his gorge rise and struggled with an overwhelming urge to kill the man right there in that cellar that he had transformed into an unspeakable playroom for his own enjoyment. But Leone's instructions had been categorical: the judgement of God. He silently handed the missive to the torturer.

As soon as the inquisitor saw the seal, the glazed look in his
eyes disappeared. Incredulous and excited, he murmured:

‘The halved bulla?'

This message could only have come from one of the two camerlingos, and had almost certainly been sent by Honorius Benedetti himself. He trembled as he broke the seal. How extraordinary. Such was his power that the camerlingo now addressed letters to him in person.

He read and reread the contents, written in Latin:

‘It is essential that the correct procedure be applied to Madame de Souarcy so that her trial cannot be judged null and void. We now share the same enemies and this links us definitively. My messenger will recover this missive. H.B.'

A sober Florin gazed up at the tall, grave-faced man. So, he was the camerlingo's secret emissary. This explained his objection to Mathilde de Souarcy's evidence. His mission was to ensure that Madame de Souarcy could not be saved due to some procedural error. Why had he not spoken up? If only Florin had known, he would not have wished him dead for demanding that the foolish young woman's accusation be thrown out. But Jean de Rioux was no doubt sworn to the utmost secrecy.

‘We now share the same enemies and this links us definitively.' What a magnificent prospect … Rome, greatness would soon be his!

Jean de Rioux's voice almost made him jump.

‘Guards … Take Madame de Souarcy back to her cell. Have her wounds cleaned and bandaged.'

The astonished guards looked questioningly at Florin, who chivvied them:

‘Go on … Do as you're told! The half-hour is up. The torture will resume tomorrow.' Then, turning to the Dominican, he added in a hushed voice: ‘I shall walk back with you, my brother in Christ.'