The Lady Agnes Mystery, Volume 1

Words marked with an asterisk (
_^*
) are explained in the Historical References starting on page
582
; those marked with a plus sign (+) are explained in the Glossary starting on page
593
.

A
gnès de Souarcy stood before the hearth in her chamber calmly contemplating the last dying embers. During the past weeks both man and beast had been beset by a deadly cold that seemed intent on putting an end to all living things. So many had already succumbed that there was barely enough wood to make coffins, and those left alive preferred to use what little there was to warm themselves. The people shivered with cold, their insides ravaged by straw-alcohol, their hunger only briefly kept at bay with pellets of suet and sawdust or the last slices of famine bread made from straw, clay, bark or acorn flour. They crowded into the rooms they shared with the animals, lying down beside them and curling up beneath their thick, steamy breath.

Agnès had given her serfs permission to hunt on her land for seventeen days, or until the next new moon, on condition they distribute half the game they killed among the rest of the community, beginning with widows, expectant mothers, the young and the elderly. A quarter of what remained would go to her and the members of her household and the rest to the hunter and his family. Two men had already flouted Agnès de Souarcy’s orders, and at her behest the bailiffs had given them a public beating in the village square. Everybody had praised the lady’s leniency, but some expressed private disapproval; surely the perpetrators of such a heinous crime deserved execution or the excision of hands or noses – the customary sentences for poaching. Game was their last chance of survival.

Souarcy-en-Perche had buried a third of its peasants in a communal grave, hastily dug at a distance from the hamlet for
fear that an epidemic of cholera might infect those wraiths still walking. They had been sprinkled with quicklime like animal carcasses or plague victims.

In the icy chapel next to the manor house the survivors prayed day and night for an improbable miracle, blaming their ill luck on the recent death of their master, Hugues, Seigneur de Souarcy, who had been gored by an injured stag the previous autumn, leaving Agnès widowed, and no male offspring to inherit his title and estate.

They had prayed to heaven until one evening a woman collapsed, knocking over the altar she had been clinging to, and taking with her the ornamental hanging. Dead. Finished off by hunger, fever and cold. Since that day the chapel had remained empty.

Agnès studied the cinders in the grate. The charred wood was coated in places with a silvery film. That was all, no red glow that would have enabled her to postpone any longer the ultimatum she had given herself that morning. It was the last of the wood, the last night. She sighed impatiently at the self-pity she felt. Agnès de Souarcy had turned sixteen three days before, on Christmas Day.

It was strange how afraid she had been to visit the mad old crone; so much so that she had all but slapped her lady’s maid, Sybille, in an attempt to oblige the girl to go with her. The hovel that served as a lair for this evil spirit reeked of rancid mutton fat. Agnès had reeled at the stench of filth and perspiration emanating from the soothsayer’s rags as she approached to snatch the basket of meagre offerings: a loaf of bread, a bottle of fresh cider, a scrap of bacon and a boiling fowl.

‘What use is this to me, pretty one?’ the woman had hissed.

‘Why, the humblest peasant could offer me more. It’s silver I want, or jewels – you must surely have some of those. Or why not
that handsome fur-lined cloak of yours?’ she added, reaching out to touch the long cape lined with otter skin, Agnès’s protection.

The young girl had fought against her impulse to draw back, and had held the gaze of this creature they said was a formidable witch.

She had been so afraid up until the woman had reached out and touched her, scrutinised her. A look of spiteful glee had flashed across the soothsayer’s face, and she had spat out her words like poison.

Hugues de Souarcy would have no posthumous heir. Nothing could save her now.

Agnès had stood motionless, incredulous. Incredulous because the terror that had gripped her those past months had suddenly faded into the distance. There was nothing more to do, nothing more to say.

And then, as the young girl pulled the fur-lined hood up over her head, preparing to leave the hovel, something curious happened.

The soothsayer’s mouth froze in a grimace and she turned away, crying out:

‘Leave here! Leave here at once, and take your basket with you. I want nothing of yours. Be off with you, I say!’

The evil crone’s triumphant hatred had been replaced by a bizarre panic which Agnès was at a loss to understand. She had tried reasoning with her:

‘I have walked a long way, witch, and …’

The woman had wailed like a fury, lifting her apron up over her bonnet to hide her eyes.

‘Be off with you, you have no business here. Out of my sight! Out of my hut! And don’t come back, don’t ever come back, do you hear?’

If the fear consuming Agnès for many moons had not been replaced by deep despair, she would certainly have told the crone to calm down and explain herself. The extraordinary outburst would have certainly intrigued, not to say alarmed her. But as it was, she had walked away, a sudden, intense weariness weighing down her every step. She had struggled with the urge to surrender, right there in the mud soiled with pig excrement, to sleep, to die perhaps.

The icy cold, which had been pushed out towards the bare stone walls when there had been a fire in the enormous hearth, now enveloped her, claiming its revenge. She pulled her fur-lined cloak tightly round her and removed her slippers of boiled wool. Mathilde, her one-and-a-half-year-old daughter, would be wearing these in a few years’ time if God saw fit to spare her life.

Agnès walked barefoot down the spiral staircase leading from the vestibule beside her bedchamber into the main hall. She crossed the black flagstones. Only the dull echo of her feet seemed real, the rest of the world had died away, leaving her with no other course of action, no other purpose than the moments that were about to follow. She smiled at the pale skin on her hands turning blue, at her heels sticking to the frost on the granite floor. Soon the biting cold would stop. Soon something else would replace this pointless waiting. Soon.

The chapel. It seemed as though a wave of ice had stopped time within those sombre walls. A frail shadow stood out against one of its wall. Sybille. She walked towards Agnès, her cheeks bloodless from the cold, from hardship and also from fear. She wore a long thin tunic that stretched over her belly, revealing the life that had grown big inside her and would soon be clamouring to see the light. She stretched out her bony hands towards the
Dame de Souarcy and her face broke into an ecstatic smile:

‘Death will be sweet, Madame. We shall enter the light. My body is weighed down, so impure. It was already unclean before I soiled it even more.’

‘Hush,’ Agnès commanded.

She obeyed, bowing her head. She was overwhelmed by a perfect peace, like a longing. All that mattered to her now was the infinite gratitude she felt towards Agnès, her angel, with whom she was about to leave this world, this corrupted flesh, saving herself from the worst fate and saving, too, this beautiful, kind woman who had seen fit to take her in, to protect her from the evil hordes. They would die a thousand deaths and weep tears of blood when they realised their terrible mistake, but at least she would have saved Agnès’s dove-like soul, at least she would be saved, she and this child she could feel moving with such force below her breast. Thanks to her, her lady would enter the infinite and eternal joy of Christ. Thanks to her, this child she did not want would never be born. It would become light before ever having to suffer the unbearable burden of the flesh.

‘Come along,’ Agnès continued in a whisper.

‘Are you afraid, Madame?’

‘Hush, Sybille.’

They approached the altar that had been hurriedly set straight. Agnès untied her cloak, which dragged behind her for a moment like a ghostly train before falling to the floor. As she walked, she unfastened the fine leather thong around her waist and stepped out of her robe. At first she felt almost numb. Then her naked skin began to prickle, burning her almost. The unrelenting cold brought tears to her eyes. She gritted her teeth, fixing her gaze on the painted wooden crucifix, no longer conscious of her thoughts, and slumped to her knees. As though in a dream, she
watched the tremors shaking Sybille’s deathly-pale little body. The young woman rolled herself up in a ball below the altar and began repeating the same incessant prayer:
Adoramus te, Christe. Adoramus te, Christe. Adoramus te, Christe
.
1

Sybille’s body went into a spasm. She stumbled over the words of the prayer, seemingly unable to breathe, then repeated it once more:

‘
Ado … ramus te … Christe
.’

There was a gasp, followed by a cry and a long-drawn-out sigh, and the emaciated legs of her lady’s maid went limp.

Was that death? Was it so simple?

It seemed as though an eternity had passed before Agnès felt her body fall forwards. The icy stone floor received her without mercy. The flesh on her belly protested, but she silenced it, stretching her arms out to form a cross, and waiting. There was nowhere else for her to surrender.

How long did she spend praying for Mathilde’s life, how long accepting that she was sinning against her body and soul and deserved no mercy? And yet one was granted her as she gradually lost consciousness. She no longer felt the relentless cold of the stone floor biting into her. The blood no longer pulsed through the veins in her neck. She would soon be asleep, with no fear of ever waking up.

‘Stand up! Stand up this instant.’

Agnès smiled at the voice whose words she did not understand. A hand roughly grasped her hair, which spread out in a silky wave across the stone floor.

‘Stand up. It is a crime. You will be damned and your child will suffer for your sins.’

Agnès turned her head the other way; perhaps then the voice would stop.

A heavy layer of warmth covered her back. A rush of hot air burned her neck and two hands burrowed under her belly in order to turn her over. It was the weight of another body lying on top of hers in order to warm her.

The nursemaid, Gisèle, struggled with the young girl’s rigid body. She wrapped her coat around her and tried to pull her to her feet. Agnès fought with every last fibre of her frail body against being saved. Tears of rage and exhaustion rolled down her cheeks, turning to ice on her lips.

She murmured:

‘Sybille?’

‘She will soon be dead. And she’s better off that way. You will stand up if I have to thrash you. It is a sin, and unworthy of one of your lineage.’

‘And the child?’

‘Presently.’