The Lady Agnes Mystery, Volume 1 (9 page)

C
ardinal Honorius Benedetti marvelled at the relief provided by the magnificent fan made of fine strips of mother-of-pearl. It had been given to him one morning, following a long and wakeful night, by a rosy-cheeked young lady from Jumièges – a pleasant souvenir over twenty years old. One of the few remaining from his brief secular life before it was touched by grace, leaving him changed and at the same time disoriented. The only son of a wealthy burgher from Verona, he had been companionable and a lover of the fair sex. Few of his qualities predisposed him to the cloth, least of all his penchant for the material things in life, at any rate when these proved pleasurable. Nevertheless, his rise through the religious hierarchy had been vertiginous. He had been helped by a towering intellect, a vast knowledge and, as he freely admitted, by simple cunning. And, no less, by a certain appetite for power – or rather for the possibilities it offered to those who knew how to manipulate it.

The sweat was streaming down Honorius Benedetti’s face. For days now the city had been in the grip of an unbearable heatwave that seemed determined never to loosen its hold. The young Dominican sitting opposite him was surprised by his visible discomfort. Archbishop Benedetti was a small, slender, almost frail man, and it was difficult to imagine where he stored all the fluid that was drenching his silky grey hair and rolling down his forehead.

The prelate cast his eye over the nervous young friar whose hands trembled slightly as they lay stretched out on his knees. This was not the first accusation of cruelty and physical abuse
involving an Inquisitor to be brought before him. Not long ago, Robert le Bougre* had caused them a good deal of trouble and disgrace. The then Pope, Gregory IX, had lost sleep over the horrors uncovered during the investigation ordered by the Church. Naturally he recalled only too well his own error of judgement, for he had seen in that repentant former Cathar* a valuable ‘rooter-out’ of heretics.

‘Brother Bartolomeo,’ continued the Cardinal, ‘what you have told me about the young Inquisitor Nicolas Florin puts me in a very awkward position.’

‘Believe me, Your Eminence, I regret it deeply,’ the novice apologised.

‘If the Church, drawing on our late lamented Gregory IX’s constitution
Excommunicamus
, decided to recruit her Inquisitors from the Dominican and, to a lesser extent, from the Franciscan orders, it is undoubtedly owing to their excellent knowledge of theology, but also to their humility and compassion. We have always viewed torture as the very last means of obtaining a confession and thus saving the soul of the accused. To have recourse to it from the outset of a trial is … The expression “unacceptable” that you used just now will do. For indeed, there exists a – how should I say? – a scale of penalties and punishments which can, which must be applied beforehand, whether in the form of a pilgrimage – with or without the burden of the Cross – a public beating or a fine.’

Brother Bartolomeo stifled a sigh of relief. So he had not been mistaken. The prelate measured up to his reputation for wisdom and intelligence. And yet, having finally been ushered into the study of the Pope’s private secretary, after a three-hour-long wait in the stuffy atmosphere of the anteroom, he had felt suddenly apprehensive. How would the Cardinal respond to his
accusations? And was he, Bartolomeo, clear in his heart, and in his conscience, about the true nature of what had motivated his request for this interview? Was it a noble desire for justice or was there something more shameful involved: denunciation of a feared brother? For it was hopeless to try to deceive himself: Brother Nicolas Florin terrified him. It was strange how this angelic-faced young man appeared to take a sinister delight in brutalising, torturing and mutilating. He plunged his hands into the raw, screaming flesh without even a ripple of displeasure creasing his handsome brow or clouding his expression.

‘Naturally, Your Eminence, since our only duty is to achieve repentance,’ ventured Bartolomeo.

‘Hmm …’

More than anything Honorius Benedetti feared a disastrous repetition of the Robert le Bougre affair. A silent rage mingled with his political concern. The fools! Innocent III had laid down the rules governing the inquisitorial process in his papal bull
Vergentis in senium
. His aim had not been to exterminate individuals but to eradicate heresies that threatened the foundations of the Church, holding up, among others, the example of Christ’s poverty which – judging by the vast landed wealth of nearly all the monasteries – was not held in high esteem. As for Innocent IV, he had removed the final obstacle by permitting, from 1252 onwards, the use of torture in his papal bull
Ad extirpanda.

Torturers. Inept, base torturers. Honorius Benedetti did not know whether he felt more angry or sad. And yet, if he were honest, he too had accepted the bizarre notion that love of the Saviour could, at times, be imposed by means of coercion or even extreme violence. He had felt absolved by the fact that a pope had opened the way before him. Ultimately, was not the
boundless joy of having saved a soul, of having returned it to the bosom of Christ, what counted?

This young Bartolomeo and his love for his fellow man had placed him in a difficult situation, for he could no longer feign ignorance. What a fool to have received him! He should have left him mouldering in the anteroom. He might have ended up leaving, bored or annoyed. No, he was not the type to grow tired or impatient. His little mouth withered from the heat, the courage visible in his demeanour – even as his eyes were full of fear – his faltering but determined voice, all pointed to the doggedness of the pure and, in some way, evoked Archbishop Honorius Benedetti’s own distant youth. There was only one way out: punishment or absolution. Absolution would be tantamount to endorsing an unacceptable cruelty and would fuel growing criticism among thinkers throughout Europe. It would provide Philip IV of France with a rod to break their backs, even though the monarch himself had not hesitated to resort to the methods of the Inquisition* in the past. It would be – and here the childishness of this last reasoning almost brought a smile to his lips – to disappoint the young man sitting opposite him, who believed in the possibility of governing without ever being content to compromise one’s faith. So what about punishment? The prelate would be only too pleased to fight this Nicolas Florin, to make him choke on the power that had corrupted him, perhaps to demand his excommunication. And yet by sacrificing one diseased member of the flock he risked bringing disgrace upon all the Dominicans and the few Franciscans who had been named Inquisitors, and consequently upon the papacy itself. And the path from disgrace to rebellion was frequently a short one.

These were such troubled, such volatile times. The slightest scandal would be blown out of all proportion by the King of
France, and other monarchs, who were just waiting for such an opportunity.

Just then, one of the innumerable chamberlains that haunted the papal palace crept silently into his study and, bending down towards his ear, informed him in a whisper that his next visitor had arrived. He thanked the man more effusively than was his custom. At last, the excuse he had been waiting for to rid himself of the novice.

‘Brother Bartolomeo, someone is waiting to see me.’

The other man leapt to his feet, blushing. The Cardinal reassured him with a gesture and continued:

‘I am obliged to you, my son. I am unable, you understand, to reach any decision regarding the fate of Nicolas Florin on my own. However, I assure you that His Holiness will no more tolerate such monstrosities than I. They go against our faith and are a discredit to us all. Go in peace. Justice will soon be done.’

Bartolomeo left the vast chamber as though he were floating on air. How foolish he had been to harbour so many doubts and fears! His daily tormentor, the man who hounded, humiliated and tempted him, would soon darken his days, and his nights, no more. The butcher of humble folk would vanish like a bad dream.

He smiled feebly at the hooded figure waiting in the anteroom. It was only once he was outside, striding across the vast square with the euphoria of the triumphant, that it occurred to him that the person must have been very hot wearing all those clothes.

T
he mist enveloping Clément was so thick and close to the ground that he could barely see where he was putting his feet. Mists were common in that part of the country. Agnès found them poetic. She maintained that the swirls that clung to the wild grasses and bushes softened the too-sharp outlines of things. But today this veil was heavy with the scent of death.

The swarm of frenzied flies crawled over the evil-smelling carcass. A piece of half-torn flesh hanging from the cheek almost touched the ground, and moved to the rhythm of the tiny beetles boring below the cheekbone. The upper thigh and buttocks had been gnawed down to the bone.

The child let the small crossbow Agnès insisted he carry for his protection in the forest fall to his feet. He took another step forward, trying with difficulty to suppress the little gulps that brought an acid saliva into his mouth.

It was a man – a serf, no doubt, judging from his filthy rags, stained with viscid fluids and dried blood. He was lying on his side, his face turned up to the sky, his eye sockets staring towards the setting sun. The blackened leathery skin, mostly that on his hands and forearms, looked charred as if it had been exposed to naked flames. Had the man been attacked? Had he defended himself? Had he been set alight and then robbed? Of what? Beggars like him carried nothing of any value. Even so, Clément glanced around at the undergrowth and the bushes. There was no sign of any fire. Another step forward, then another. When he was less than a yard from the man, he forced himself to smell the air. The lingering odour of decaying flesh made his stomach
heave. And yet he could detect no smell of burnt wood or smoke. The child recoiled suddenly, clasping his hand to his mouth. He was not afraid. The dead, unlike the living, were without guile and harmless. Moreover, what was spread out before him on the forest floor bore no resemblance to the descriptions he had read of plague victims.

Lying a few yards from the corpse at Clément’s feet was a peasant’s walking stick. He picked it up and examined it. It looked like the branch of a young ash, and had the pale milky hue of freshly carved wood. It bore no traces of blood. One detail surprised him: the pointed metal tip meant to strengthen it and give it more hold on the ground. What serf would have laboured to add such a feature when he could carve as many walking sticks as he wanted? Clément pointed the metal tip at the corpse and, aiming at the hand, he poked it. The wrist broke away partially and the forefinger dropped to the floor.

How long had the body being lying in this tiny clearing over half a league from the nearest dwelling? It was difficult to tell, especially given the state of the shrivelled brown skin. Then again he saw no sign of any bluebottles, although it was the season for them. He circled the pitiful remains and crouched a few feet away. Through a tear in the linen shirt he glimpsed a large blister covering the small of the back that was filled with a yellowy liquid. Aiming again with the end of the stick, he burst it, and turned his head just in time to avoid vomiting on his breeches. A small sea of maggots tumbled from the wound cavity. The bluebottles had had the time to lay their eggs, and the warm weather had favoured the larvae’s development. The man must have been dead for at least three weeks.

Clément rose to his feet – in a sudden hurry to continue on his way. There was nothing more anyone could do for this poor
wretch. The child had decided not to tell a living soul about his discovery, hardly eager to have to go all that way back just to show the bailiffs. He was struck by something odd. The man had mid-length hair, almost certainly light chestnut – though it was hard to tell with all the detritus, mud and parasites sticking to it. And yet, the tiny tonsure on his crown was still visible. The hair had grown back, but not enough to hide the trace of the barber’s knife. Who might he have been? A cleric? Or perhaps one of those scholars who requested the tonsure as a sign of devotion and repentance?

His curiosity proved stronger than the queasiness he felt from his proximity to the stinking remains. He removed the crusts of bread and the plants from his shoulder bag, and thrust his right hand inside. Using the improvised glove for protection, he pulled aside the evil-smelling rags covering the man’s body. Sweat poured down the child’s face and ran into his eyes, and yet the nausea of the past few minutes had given way to exhilaration, to the extent that the putrid odour no longer affected him so strongly. He fought off the insects – exasperated by the disruption of their feast – driving them away with his gloved hand, and proceeded to inspect every inch of the corpse. Why would the man be wearing rags if he was a scholar? And if he was a friar, then where was his habit? Had he been travelling on foot? Where had he come from? What had caused his death? Had he perished in the clearing, or had somebody left him there after partially burning him somewhere else? Unfortunately, it was impossible for him to judge from the state of the hands, which were shrivelled up like pieces of old leather, whether the corpse had been a scholar or a peasant. Nothing, no object or any other particular feature, besides the tonsure, gave him any clues. Had he been robbed? If so, was it before or after he died? The obvious
thought occurred to him that the hair on the man’s head, and the body hair clinging to the flesh on his forearms and on his chest ravaged by vermin, though soiled with putrefaction, was intact. There was no sign of any singeing on the torn clothes hanging in shreds, which meant the man had not been set alight, for they would have caught fire before the skin could be attacked by the searing flames.

Clément struggled to roll the massive corpse onto its back and was almost propelled backwards by its weight. He peeled off the large piece of cloth adhering to the skin on the abdomen. The viscera were heaving with bloodless maggots. It was then that he noticed in the narrow strip of flattened grass where the man had been lying on his side a tiny hole no bigger than the size of a coin in the forest floor. It looked as though somebody had pushed their finger into the ground. Clément scraped carefully. Hidden beneath an inch or so of loose leaves and earth lay a wax seal. He cleaned the wax medallion and examined it closely. His mouth went dry. It was the ring of the fisherman! The papal seal. He was certain, having already come across it in the secret library at Clairets Abbey. But who was this man? An emissary of the Pope in disguise? Had he tried to bury the seal so that no one would find it? But what had become of the private missive the seal protected? Had he delivered it to Clairets Abbey – the only religious order of any importance in the vicinity? The child cast his gaze over the area immediately surrounding the tiny opening. What was that mark about a foot away? It looked like a letter of the alphabet. He leant closer and blew on the dried earth. There was a curved stroke like the beginning of the letter
M
or
N
or even a capital
B
or
D
. No. There was a tiny bar lower down – an
E
perhaps? No. There was no question: it was an
A
. Without knowing what motivated his gesture, he brushed the earth with
his fingers, rubbing out all trace of the letter. He spent a moment longer filling in the hole that had shown him where to find the seal.

What did the
A
mean? Was it a surname? A Christian name? The name of the man’s murderer? Or of a loved one who must be found and warned? Had the dead man left a sign for whoever found him? If this were the case, then he had indeed died in the clearing, and his death had been slow enough to enable him to hide the seal and to scratch the letter.

Clément silenced the clamour of questions racing through his mind. He must leave this place, and quickly. If the messenger was really as important as he seemed, then they were most likely searching for him already – or at least for the letter he had been carrying. The bailiffs were capable of anything to please their superior and the Comte d’Authon – not to mention the Pope. Anything, even roasting an innocent boy, provided it meant being left in peace.

Clément put the seal into his shoulder bag and hurried away.