Alys Clare - The Joys of My Life

Paul de Fleury had shared his workroom, deserted now, for inside were two plinths each bearing slabs of marble. De Fleury’s colleague was working on the statue of a saint — St John, Helewise noticed, for he bore the Agnus Dei in his arms. The marble on the other plinth was covered with a cloth. Josse twitched it aside.

De Fleury had made a start on his figure. Her outline could be detected emerging from the smooth stone, the head on its graceful neck bearing the strange horned headdress, but the work had a long way to go.

‘Here is our answer,’ Josse said quietly. ‘We are left, as I feared we would be, with a mystery. For some reason, de Loup fell out with his craftsman and, abandoning the commission, killed him.’

Helewise stepped forward to help Josse replace the cloth over the figure. ‘I still do not see why de Fleury could not simply have fallen from the beam,’ she said. It had been worrying her since Josse had first announced with such conviction that the poor man had been murdered.

‘There are two things to consider,’ Josse said as they stepped over the debris in the workroom and set off back up the track. ‘First, it is only an assumption that he fell; made, I think, because he was found directly beneath the beam. I intend to speak to those who are dealing with the body and I shall ask about the injuries and judge whether or not they are consistent with the theory. Second, if he did fall, then, my lady, what on earth was he doing up there?’

By nightfall, Josse had as clear a picture as could have been achieved in a day. He had spoken to the monks who were preparing Paul de Fleury’s body for burial and they had assured him that no man sustained such frightful and extensive injuries except as a result of falling from a great height. ‘We see all too many such wrecked bodies,’ one of them told Josse sadly.

He had also talked to the master mason who had identified the body and who, in answer to Josse’s question, said that de Fleury’s statue was to have been placed in a niche to the east of the South Porch, between windows dedicated to the Virgin and the Zodiac. This information, Josse reflected, provided no reason whatsoever for de Fleury to have been crawling about high above the nave.

He joined Abbess Helewise and Sister Caliste for the evening meal in the convent’s refectory, nodding across to Brother Saul and Brother Augustus, seated at the long table where the servants ate.

‘Will you take the brethren with you tonight?’ the abbess whispered. ‘There may be danger.’

‘That remained true while Philippe de Loup was in Chartres,’ he murmured back, ‘for it was always possible that news might have reached him that I had been on the Ile d’Oleron nosing around his tower. But I believe, my lady, that he has gone.’

‘If it is true that he killed de Fleury, then yes, I agree that he would not stay here,’ she hissed. ‘What if you are wrong?’

He shrugged. ‘Then I’ll just have to be careful,’ he said lightly.

‘Take one of our trusted lay brothers,’ she persisted.

‘No, my lady,’ he said firmly. ‘I shall have to slip in and out of the cathedral site without being spotted by the night watchmen, and that’s going to be difficult enough for one man alone.’

She sat back in her chair and he sensed that she had conceded the argument. They finished the meal in a slightly chilly silence but, as he got up and bade her goodnight, she looked up at him with a worried expression. ‘May God watch over you,’ she whispered.

‘Amen,’ he muttered. Then, summoning a quick and, he hoped, reassuring smile, he hurried away.

The moon illuminated the square too brightly for a man with a clandestine purpose. Josse stood in the shadows of a large house at the corner of the square for some time, studying the night watchman walking to and fro. He appeared to be alone and not over-conscientious, for quite soon he walked over to where a brazier burned a short distance from the cathedral’s west entrance and remained there rubbing his hands over the flames.

Josse took his chance and slipped down the side of the skeletal building, moving out from the shadows at the last moment and running up the steps and through the space where the South Porch was being put up. Inside, the cathedral was deserted. In the middle of the nave, there was a dark stain.

Josse went swiftly out into the open space and stared down at the mark left by Paul de Fleury’s blood. Then he looked up, verifying that the body had lain directly beneath the beam stretching from the north to the south walls of the nave. It was so high that it made him dizzy just staring up at it. It was daunting, for he was going to have to climb up there.

He ran lightly over to the south side of the nave and made his way along to where a ladder led up to the first level of scaffolding, three men’s height above. Working steadily, making very sure of his hand- and footholds and trying not to look down, slowly he ascended, past the top of the great arch at the side of the nave and on past a row of clerestory windows. Above them were spaces for more windows — at least two rows, he thought — and finally he was up at the point where the great ribs of the vaulted ceiling would spring out from the walls.

The beam from which de Fleury had fallen stretched out from where Josse now stood to the other side of the nave some twenty paces away and, in the moonlight streaming down into the roofless building, Josse could see it very clearly. Looking out, imagining a man walking confidently across — imagining a man falling — made him feel dizzy and sick. He shut his eyes tight. That was far worse, for suddenly he felt as if he were spinning through the air, out of control…

Hastily he opened his eyes. Get on with it, he commanded himself. Cautiously he moved forward until he stood just short of the point where someone would set off to walk along the beam if for some reason his craft demanded it. Men performed such feats, Josse well knew, and he could only imagine that long habit removed the terror. There were handholds, of a sort, offered by the falsework that would support the roof as it was constructed, although these were spaced quite far apart.

He looked down. There were footprints in the dust. He kneeled, taking the carefully wrapped pitch torch from where he had stored it inside the neck of his tunic and lighting it with his flint. Its light flared — surely too brightly! — but if the watchman spotted it, there was little Josse could do. He had to see.

There were two sets of footprints, one considerably larger than the other.

How had it happened? Josse wondered. Had the murderer enticed de Fleury up here on some pretext, got him walking out across the beam and then somehow dislodged him? But the body had been found in the middle of the nave — at the spot, Josse now realized as he looked down, that would be the very centre of the strange ringed pattern that had been laid out down there so far below.

Was that significant? What was that odd pattern, and why was it there? Josse did not know. So, he thought, forcing his concentration back to the present task, let’s say that the killer says to de Fleury, ‘I’ve thought of a better place for the statue of the goddess in the horned headdress, one where she can gaze out unseen on those below.’ Or maybe, he thought eagerly, there has been some protest about her pagan origins and in order to put her here at all, de Loup had to find somewhere less obvious. ‘We’ll put her high up where the roof joins the walls,’ he says to de Fleury, ‘so we’d better shin up and find a place.’ Then up they climb and when they reach this spot, de Loup asks his craftsman to check whether the opposite wall offers a better place. De Fleury sets out across the beam — something he must have done many times before, if not here then on other builds — and when he reaches the middle, de Loup…