Paul Doherty - The Cup of Ghosts

‘ Regardez .’ The harsh Navarrene accent of one of the soldiers caught my attention. I looked up at the palace wall: on the third tier, about nine yards above us, the great window casement had been opened.

‘ Et la, et la! ’

I followed his direction. Under the window was ranged a series of rusty iron brackets driven into the grey ragstone wall to secure ladders placed there so masons, carpenters and glaziers could carry out repairs. From one of these, glinting in the torchlight, hung a thick gold chain last seen around Pourte’s neck at the banquet the night before. Had Pourte dropped this, tried to retrieve it and fallen?

‘Mathilde! Mathilde!’ Isabella’s voice stilled the clamour. I too heard the dull thuds and faint shouts from within the palace. Isabella had retreated into a circle of men-at-arms; she was gesturing with her hand that I investigate the noise.

I hastened back into the palace. By then I knew my way. Pages were now lighting more torches. The galleries were full of spluttering lights and moving shadows; shouts echoed to the clatter of arms and the sound of running feet. I went up the stairs to the third gallery. It was long and narrow, with doors on either side; soldiers and servants thronged, some still rubbing the sleep from their eyes. Soldiers clustered round one of the doors. I recognised Casales and the olive-skinned clerk Rossaleti amongst the black shapes in the torchlight; they were forcing a door which, as I hastened down, snapped back on its hinges. Now I was Isabella’s dame de la chambre , but to those men clustering in that room I was simply a serving wench, of no more importance than the rodents which ran screeching and squealing from their presence.

Pourte’s chamber was large. I could make out a four-poster bed with its curtains pulled closed; the rest was dark, as the cold night air pouring through the open casement window had snuffed out the candles. Casales and the others, chattering in English, lit some candles and immediately checked certain sealed caskets, ignoring those chests with their lids thrown back. Casales sifted through parchments on the table; from the tone of his voice he believed Pourte’s death was an accident. None of the caskets or baskets from the secret chancery of England had been tampered with. Nothing was missing. They then clustered round the window; from their cries and shouts I gathered they’d glimpsed the golden chain. Marigny and others now stood in the doorway, reluctant to trespass into the chamber of an English envoy. Rossaleti invited them in and, in Norman French, quickly explained how it must have been an accident. Had they been roused by Pourte’s fall? Marigny asked. Rossaleti explained how he, Casales and Nogaret had been deep in conversation in des Plaisans’ chancery office when the alarm had been raised. They’d hurried up and forced the door. It had been locked and bolted, the key still inside; when they broke it down, this was what they had found. Rossaleti pointed to the window and the small stool beneath it. He explained how Pourte must have gone to the window to take the night air, dropped his chain, leaned over to recover it and fallen to his death. Nods of approval and grunts of assent greeted this. Rossaleti then turned abruptly, as if aware of my presence, and glared fiercely at me. I bowed quickly and left.

By now, the princess had returned to her own chamber. Servants, roused by the commotion, were cleaning the gallery where Philippe had vomited. The sullen-faced serjeant had returned to his post, the red welt on his cheek and his hostile glare clear testimony of Isabella’s fury at his earlier desertion.

‘You’re late!’ the princess snapped as I closed the chamber door.

‘My lady, I am tired.’ I snuffed the candles and lay down on my own bed, pulling up the coverlet to hide my face. I felt sick and tired, hot with a clammy sweat; so much had happened, such a nightmare of a day.

‘Mathilde,’ Isabella’s voice was soft, ‘Mathilde, I missed you, I was frightened!’

‘My lady, let us go to sleep.’

‘What happened to the Englishman?’ Isabella mocked. ‘Did he try to fly?’

‘No, my lady, they claim he went to the window to take the air, dropped a golden chain, tried to recover it and fell to his death.’

‘But you don’t believe that, Mathilde, not you with those sharp eyes of yours. You remind me of a cat I used to have. It always knew where the mice holes were. It never approached, it simply sat far off and watched.’

‘My lady,’ I struggled up and leaned against the feather-filled bolsters, ‘I find it difficult to understand why Sir Hugh Pourte, who was in his nightshift, should be carrying a gold chain to a window. The man had drunk deeply, he was tired. The night air was bitterly cold. Why should he open the window so far? Why should he be clutching a gold chain? Moreover, and I will have to reflect on this, but if he stood on a stool and leaned out he still could not have retrieved it. Why didn’t he take a hook or a sword, something to loop back the chain?’

‘So he didn’t fly and he didn’t fall. Are you saying he was pushed?’

‘Perhaps, my lady.’ I closed my eyes and recalled that corpse lying so crookedly in the courtyard; the bruises on the side of the head, the broken neck, the blood seeping out from the skull like yolk from a cracked egg.

‘And yet you say the door was locked and bolted from within.’

‘My lady, who is Ralph Rossaleti?’

‘Ah. .’ The princess giggled. ‘He is our watchdog, Mathilde, one of Father’s senior clerks. He is going to carry my secret seal in England; what I write, he will know. He will be our adviser.’

‘A spy, my lady? Your father’s spy?’

‘We’ll see.’ Again Isabella’s voice had a lilting tone. ‘We are to meet him tomorrow, he and Sir John Casales. Perhaps you could ask your questions then. Mathilde?’

‘Yes, my lady?’

‘Do you ever pray?’

‘I try to.’

‘I do! I pray. I prayed to be delivered from my brothers. You’re an angel, Mathilde, an answer to my prayer.’

I lay back down again, pulled the coverlet up and drifted into a sleep full of nightmares: of dark figures dancing on the end of scaffold ropes, of faces staring at me from a haunted cart rumbling across a cobbled yard. When I woke, just before dawn, I was sweat-soaked and thick-headed. The princess was asleep, deeply so, perhaps relieved about the dangers she had been rescued from. I opened the chamber door; the serjeant had been replaced by two more. I went back inside and splashed water over my face from the lavarium. Drying my hands, I quickly dressed and went out into the palace, up the staircase and back to Hugh Pourte’s chamber.

The broken door now leaned against the wall. The chamber had been stripped of all its possessions. I crossed to the bed and pulled back the curtains; the bed had not been slept in. I looked around. Pourte had filled a goblet full of wine. I picked this up, sniffed and tasted: nothing but the best from Bordeaux. I walked to the window, stood on the stool, opened the casement and leaned out. I recalled Pourte’s height; even he could never have reached that chain, so why had he tried? Was he inebriated? If he had been killed beforehand, how did his assassin enter and leave his chamber when the door was locked and bolted from the inside? I went down on my knees like a dog examining the floor between the edge of a Turkey rug and the stool near the window. I used my fingers and found a rusty-red stain, scraping at it I picked it up, and sniffed it; it wasn’t wine, but blood. I crawled nearer to the window and found other drops, but nothing on the sill or ledge. This blood could have been the result of anything; was it even Pourte’s? Had he been assassinated and killed in his chamber by a blow to the back of his head, his neck broken, the casement opened and his corpse tossed out? If so, how had the killer escaped? I went back to the window, stood on the stool and looked over the sill. The assassin could have climbed up from outside but the window would have been closed as the night was bitterly cold. He ran the risk of being noticed, whilst it would have been both difficult and dangerous for anyone to climb up by themselves on a dark freezing night.