The Lady Agnes Mystery, Volume 1 (29 page)

É
leusie de Beaufort, the Abbess of Clairets, shivered despite the heat given off by the fire in the hearth in her study. She had been chilled to the bone ever since first setting eyes on that inquisitor Nicolas Florin. The old nightmarish visions had found their way back into her waking thoughts, and assailed her to the point where she feared those moments of semi-consciousness that precede sleep.

If the Abbess had ever entertained any doubts as to the purity of the quest that bound her, her nephew Francesco and the late and good Benoît XI together, the arrival of that evil creature had silenced them for ever. But would the light they were striving to restore to the world be enough to defeat the Nicolas Florins who had darkened the centuries since the dawn of time? Francesco, whom she had brought up as her own son, was convinced that it would. And yet he had so little in common with other mortals; he was so much more like an angel who had come down from another world. And what did angels know of rage, terror and physical suffering?

Her eyes grew misty with tears.

Claire, my dear sister, your son is so like you. And yet he is so otherworldly. We are groping blindly through an endless labyrinth. We turn in circles, searching for the guiding thread. I am plagued by questions to which I can as yet find no answers. Why did you die at Saint-Jean-d’Acre? Why did you not foresee the massacre and flee? What did you know that I did not?

My nights have become a graveyard where I meet you all, my beloved ghosts: Henri, my sweet love, my husband; Philippine,
whose precious blood runs through our veins; Benoît, my dear Benoît; Clémence, Claire, my sisters, my warriors.

And she who is one of us. What does she really know of her true destiny?

I am tormented by anguish, Claire, by the thought that we might be mistaken, that it is all an illusion. What if there is no key, no door?

We are like that game of tarot the Bohemians have recently brought back from Egypt, or China. We play our cards without knowing their real significance. For who can truly claim to know?

I am afraid, Claire, and yet I cannot name my fears. There is a danger emanating from these stout walls, these sombre archways where I believed I would find peace. I sense it in every passageway, on every stair. An evil beast inhabits these places now. No one can see or hear him and few of us are aware of his presence. It would take Clémence’s courage or your foresight to defeat him. Or Philippine’s triumphant resolve. I am merely a frightened old woman, who has convinced herself she is erudite and therefore knows all there is to know about the human soul. And look at me now, alone, my limbs crippled with pain, plagued by visions I am powerless to comprehend, terrified by the depth of the abyss into which I find myself staring. I shiver with an inner cold that tells me evil is among us. It escorted Florin through these doors. It crept into our midst and has been spying upon us ever since, infiltrating our conversations, even our prayers. It is biding its time. Why, I do not know.

Do you remember the small town in Tuscany our parents took us to when we were young? Do you remember the peasant children brandishing a devil made of brightly coloured cloth and how it petrified me? I screamed and sobbed and refused to move.

You rushed over and snatched it from them, and they looked
on in anger as you hurled it to the ground and trampled on it. Then you walked towards me smiling and said: you give him strength by believing in him. The devil is generous. He is the scapegoat for all our sins and accepts the blame at no great cost to us.

You were right, dear sister, and I would be excommunicated if anyone were ever to find out what I believe. That there is no devil. That the eternal battle between good and evil exists in man alone. I have met one of evil’s willing adepts; I have touched him. He smiled at me and he was beautiful.

I am afraid, dear Claire.

Adélaïde Condeau, the sister in charge of the kitchens and meals at Clairets Abbey, scoured the contents of one of the cabinets in the herbarium, which was crammed with phials, sachets made of jute, earthenware flasks and a host of other receptacles. She almost felt guilty for being there without first asking permission from the Abbess or the apothecary nun, Annelette Beaupré, who treated the herbarium as if it belonged to her. She defended it jealously and at times with surprising vehemence. It was rumoured that Annelette, whose father and grandfather had both been physicians, had never accepted not being allowed in turn to practise their art and had joined the abbey because it was the only community that permitted her to do so. Adélaïde could not swear to the truth of these statements, though they might explain in part the apothecary nun’s arrogance and bitterness. Whatever the case, Adélaïde was in need of some sage with which to season the magnificent hares sent by a haberdasher
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from Nogent-le-Rotrou the previous day, and which she was planning to liven up with a purée made from plums picked after an early frost.

Sage was a common remedy used in the treatment of headaches, stomach pains, paralysis, epilepsy, jaundice, swellings, aching legs, fainting fits and a host of other ailments. The apothecary nun must have stocked up on it during the summer months, especially since this medicinal herb also made a delicious sauce when mixed with white wine, cloves, ginger and black pepper. Adélaïde searched in vain for a large bag embroidered with the words
Salvia officinalis
. She found
Pulicaria dysenterica, Salicaria, Iris foetida
, nettle, borage and betony, but no sage. Exasperated, she wondered whether the apothecary nun had placed the bag on one of the top shelves. After all, she was as tall and robustly built as any man. The young nun dragged over a stool and clambered onto it. She saw no sign of any sage. Groping with her fingers behind the first row of sachets and phials, she discovered a jute bag that had fallen down the back. She pulled it from its hiding place.

Adélaïde jumped off her perch and emptied the contents of the little bag onto the table used for weighing and making up preparations. The sour-smelling yellow-brown flour had to be rye, but what were those little black flecks? She leaned over to smell it and the pungent odour made her recoil.

‘Sister Adélaïde!’ a voice rang out behind her.

The young nun almost leapt into the air and clasped her hand to her chest. She turned to face the apothecary nun, whose vast medicinal knowledge was no excuse for her tetchiness, not in Adélaïde’s eyes anyway.

‘What are you doing here?’ the other woman continued in an accusatory tone.

‘I just … I just.’

‘You just what, pray?’

The young girl in charge of meals finally managed to stammer out an explanation as to what she was doing in Sister Annelette’s jealously guarded sanctuary.

‘In short, I was looking for some sage for my sauce.’

‘You could have asked me.’

‘I know, I know. Only I couldn’t find you anywhere so I decided to look for it myself. I even stood on a stool and …’

‘If you had a modicum of good sense, dear sister,’ remarked the other woman disdainfully, ‘you would know that I am hardly likely to keep a remedy I use so frequently in such an inaccessible place. Sage is …’

Annelette paused in mid-sentence. Her eye had alighted on the mound of flour on the table top. She walked over to it, frowning, and demanded:

‘What is this?’

‘Well, I confess I don’t know,’ said Adélaïde. ‘I found that bag on the top shelf. It had fallen behind the others.’

Incensed, Annelette sharply corrected the girl:

‘My bags and phials do not fall; they are arranged in perfect rows after being weighed and listed in my inventory. You must be aware that some of these preparations are highly toxic and I need to be able to identify their content and usage at a glance.’

It was the apothecary nun’s turn now to lean over the small mound of powder. She pushed aside the blackish clusters with the tip of her forefinger. When she raised her head again, her face had turned deathly pale. Her voice betrayed none of its usual arrogance as she stammered:

‘D-dear God!’

‘What!’

‘This is ergot.’

‘Ergot?’

‘Ergot is a fungus that grows on rye – small kernels form on the ears. Ancient texts claim that it causes gangrene, giving the limbs the blackened and withered aspect of charred skin. The corpses look as though they have been burnt. Some scholars attribute “St Anthony’s fire”
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to it – the violent delirium accompanied by hallucinations
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we hear so much about, which some fools take to be visitations or possession. This powerful poison is probably responsible for wiping out entire villages.’
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‘But what do you use it for?’ asked the increasingly anxious Adélaïde.

‘Have you taken leave of your senses, Sister Adélaïde! Do you really imagine that I would prepare such quantities of a harmful substance like this? Admittedly, I always keep a small sachet of it – for it possesses excellent properties. It relieves headaches,
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incontinence and haemorrhages
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in older women. But never as much as this.’

‘How should I know … Please don’t be angry with me,’ spluttered the young girl, on the brink of tears.

‘Oh, pull yourself together! Spare me your floods of tears. This is a serious matter and I’m in no mood to have to comfort you.’

At this, Adélaïde went running into the garden where she burst out crying.

Annelette’s eyes were riveted on the contaminated rye so she scarcely heard the young nun’s sobs. Who had prepared this flour and to what end? Who had hidden it in the herbarium and why? In order to incriminate her should it be discovered? More importantly, who but she was well versed enough in poisons to know about ergot’s horrific properties?

Should she inform the Abbess? She was in no doubt. Éleusie de Beaufort was one of the few women at the abbey whom Annelette
considered truly intelligent and for whom she consequently felt a combination of affection and respect. For this reason she was reluctant to upset her. The past few months had been a trying time for the Abbess, and the inquisitor’s arrival appeared to have sapped her usual strength.

First of all she must think. What better place than a medicine cabinet to conceal poison. Moreover, it was conceivable that an intruder had managed to enter the abbey enclosure and slip into the herbarium. On the other hand, the idea of someone returning regularly to fetch the hidden substance was absurd. The poisoner must be attached to the abbey. The chaplain who took the services was an improbable candidate owing to his age, his near-blindness and his increasing tendency to fall asleep. This meant that the poisoner had to be a woman.

During the next half-hour, Annelette went through a mental list of all the sisters. She began by eliminating the lay servants who had been dedicated to God. Not one of them could read or would be capable of preparing a poison whose existence was known only to a handful of scientists. She forced herself to ignore personal likes and dislikes, limiting herself to complete impartiality and objectivity – no small achievement for someone who tended to judge her fellow human beings harshly.

Nonetheless, she immediately struck Éleusie de Beaufort off her mental list. Éleusie was a learned woman but her total lack of interest in the sciences made her a poor candidate. And Éleusie’s faith was so exacting that it would not tolerate any imperfection. She ruled out Jeanne d’Amblin on the same grounds, despite the antipathy she felt towards the woman – an antipathy she was honest enough to admit sprang from her envy of the extern sister’s freedom from the cloister. She doubted Jeanne even knew
ergot existed. As for that sweet but silly girl Adélaïde, whom if anything she found exasperating, she was at a loss in any situation that did not involve plucking a bird, skinning a hare or scalding the bristles off a baby pig. And Blanche de Blinot, the senior member of the abbey who was Éleusie’s second in command, as well as the prioress, was so ancient that she looked as though she might crumple up at any moment. Her deafness, a source of occasional mirth to the younger sisters, infuriated Annelette to the point where she avoided talking to her for fear of being obliged to repeat the same sentence five times over. In contrast, the cellarer nun, Berthe de Marchiennes, with her permanent expression of devoutness, was a more than likely suspect. She was educated, the youngest member of a large but impoverished family that had looked upon her – the eleventh child and a female into the bargain – as superfluous. Berthe was one of those women who grow more graceful with age but who when young are extremely plain. Lacking both a dowry and good looks, the monastic life had offered itself as a last resort. Annelette froze. Couldn’t this be a description of her own life? The abbey had been the only place where she could exercise her talents. Another face replaced that of the perpetually pained cellarer nun: Yolande de Fleury – the sister in charge of the granary. Who was better placed than she, whose task it was to oversee the sowing of the crops, to have knowledge of crop disease and access to the contaminated rye? By the same token, Adèle de Vigneux, the granary keeper, must be considered a prime suspect. Likewise the treasurer nun, the infirmary nun and the sister in charge of the fishponds and henhouses, and so on … And yet, opportunity alone could not explain such a heinous crime as poisoning. The culprit needed a motive, but above all a killer’s instinct. Despite the low esteem in
which she held her fellow human beings, Annelette was forced to admit that the majority of the other sisters possessed no such instinct.

Night was falling when she left the herbarium, after removing the troublesome flour from the table top. She had whittled her list down to a few names, faces, possibilities. Still, Annelette Beaupré was clever enough to realise that she had very little evidence to back up her suspicions. She had simply used a process of elimination to exclude those she considered unlikely killers.