J. Janes - Madrigal

‘The chimney is huge, Inspector. A pyramid in the octagonal shape.’

Nothing remained of the bake ovens and yet one could sense the constant comings and goings. Well over four hundred retainers, cooks, scullions, guards and porters — thirty chaplains alone and all of their servants — would have occupied the Palais, in addition to the guests and the family of the pontiff. The spongers.

‘There are pantries and storerooms in this tower,’ said Biron. ‘Other kitchens below us, all of whose flues go up and into the central chimney, which is unique for these parts and for such times.’

Again Kohler used his torch. The mistral played fitfully with the flame of the lantern. The downdraught carried a trail of smoke towards the open entrance where tall wooden doors would once have stood.

‘The Revolution destroyed them,’ said Biron of the doors. ‘The pots, pans and stone or clay crocks — everything was smashed, burned or stolen. One can but regret the loss, the pages of history which are gone from us for ever, the …’

‘Just cut the travelogue, eh? and show me where they dumped the bodies of the Royalists that were imprisoned and then murdered in 1791.’

The Glacière Massacre of that October. ‘The Latrines Tower is just through here. On each floor of the Palais, latrines gave relief and refuge to servant, dignitary, guard and pontiff alike. Rainwater and kitchen slops joined the waste, and the refuse fell to a large pit that had been sunk into the rocks far below. A drain then carried this waste to the Sorgue which soon joined the Rhône.’

The torchlight didn’t shine down the shaft nearly far enough. Biron went on about how, during a siege, invaders had entered the drain, waded across the cesspool and then had climbed into the Palais to surprise the guards.

‘What happened to the bodies of the Royalists?’

‘Quicklime was dumped on top of them. When the stench became too great, they were removed through an opening.’

‘Is that opening still there?’

‘An iron grille keeps all but the smallest of animals from entering.’

‘Then you’d better show it to me, hadn’t you, especially as some son of a bitch must have tidied up and dumped her things down there.’

Ah merde , did this one miss nothing? ‘We will need a hammer and cold chisel.’

‘Then get them. Bring help if necessary.’

Though an hour had passed, the body of Mireille de Sinéty had still not been cut into. ‘I thought you were going to question the sisters?’ asked Peretti, not looking up from her hair.

‘I lied,’ murmured St-Cyr. ‘Avignon has already tainted me.’

Nothing more was said. Peretti was in his late fifties. The face was angular and often sad, for he’d seen death many times, both in such places and on the field of battle. But the hands that could break bones if necessary could also be gentle. Something was teased from her hair and carefully mounted on to a microscope slide. Without pausing, he pulled the instrument from its case and set to work.

St-Cyr turned back to the trinkets which had been carefully arranged on a nearby pallet. The girl had carried no papers, but to walk the streets without them was to invite arrest, interrogation and possible deportation to one of the camps. Had her killer relieved her of them? he wondered, cursing the Renaissance’s lack of pockets. Had she parked them on a ledge or tucked them into a crack?

You were a Libra and of the House of Balance, he said silently. Among the zodiacal signs is the oft-repeated hand-held weighing scale, but did you then seek rooms in the Balance Quartier for good luck perhaps, or for some deeper reason?

Superstition had played such a part in the daily life of the Renaissance. Her gimmel ring set lapis lazuli side by side with a saffron-yellow topaz which matched exactly the colour of her gown. Yet the pattern on the gown, in a faint and delicate shade of brown, was of oak leaves and branches that were entwined with grapevines. Had this, too, had meaning for her and for others to puzzle over? And wasn’t the background pattern in the frescoes of Clement VI’s bedchamber of spiralling vines and oak branches and the deeper blue of lapis lazuli?

On the soft leather of her girdle he found, among so many other things, the sign of the Archer in gold. A tiny medallion. The Centaur’s arrow was pointed away from a silver House of Balance and towards a Goat that had been cast in lead.

The House of Balance weighed a tiny lapis lazuli cabochon against that of a saffron-yellow topaz, the two stones of equal weight.

She would tease and she would dare but had such things led to her death?

The little silver bells were very old, and he wondered how she had come by them, by all of this, for the trinkets and jewels dated from the Renaissance, whereas the clothing had been cut and sewn by herself.

‘Lapis is the stone of fertility,’ grunted Peretti impatiently. ‘What I’ve found in her hair isn’t much, I admit, but perhaps it’ll be enough.’

Down through the ocular of the microscope, and at thirty times magnification, the image of a tiny clot of coarse black wool rushed at the eye. ‘A cassock …’ breathed St-Cyr.

‘Or cloak, overcoat or sweater.’

‘The bishop …’

Back came the Commissaire de Police’s warning. Break glass and you’ll be cut. Tamper with the Host and the Blood of Christ and watch out.

‘Be careful,’ sighed Peretti. ‘I meant what I said.’

‘We will.’

‘How sure are you of that partner of yours?’

‘Hermann? We are like two perpetually crossed fingers. God’s honest cops trying to stop themselves from drowning in a torrent of officially sanctioned crime.’

Everyone was only too aware of what the Bodies , the Germans, and those who would collaborate with them were stealing. ‘Then leave me with her, Jean-Louis. Go and warn him to be very careful. I’ll lock everything up. No one will touch a thing.’

‘Just let me go over it once more. I must see if something, other than her papers, is missing. I must find what the bishop was looking for when he gave her Extreme Unction.’

And sent two of his nuns to police the corpse and have a look themselves or to thieve an item or two! thought Peretti. ‘He’s one of the Black Penitents, as is de Passe.’

‘Hence his wearing a simple black cassock when giving her the last rites?’

Peretti indicated the microscope slide. ‘Unless he was trying to tell you any one of them could have killed her, including himself.’

Several brotherhoods, including les Pénitents Noirs , dated back to the Baylonian Captivity when there were no fewer than sixty churches and thirty-five monasteries and Rabelais had described Avignon as the bell-ringing city, while Petrarch had called the Palais ‘the habitation of demons’.

‘Some of them practise flagellation,’ snorted Peretti. ‘Our bishop happens to be one of them and regularly scourges himself, or so it is rumoured.’

‘With a martinet? ’

A small but many-thonged whip that some parents used to discipline delinquent children …‘Two of his fellow “brothers” hold him while he thrashes himself, Jean-Louis, but to purge himself of what sins, I know not.’

‘The Black Penitents also were and are men dedicated to good works,’ countered St-Cyr.

‘But for whom, Jean-Louis. For whom?’

The bishop, the préfet and others of the establishment were implied. ‘There’s a tiny silver martinet among her jewels.’

‘Then perhaps you have your answer.’

Dawn broke, and from the battlements of the Trouillas Tower some fifty-two metres above ground and next to the Latrines Tower, the view was of those ancient times. Eerie, steeped in mystery and deceit, damned cold and utterly heartless.