S. Parris - Conspiracy

It was a relief to escape the churchyard; the mood of the crowd promised violence before too long. I realised I had not eaten since the night before and my stomach was pinched with hunger. On the corner of rue Saint-Jacques I bought a galette in a greasy paper from a street vendor and demolished it in two bites. The noise from Saint-Séverin carried through the chilly air; the vendor shook his head and began to pack up his wares, anticipating a riot. Over my left shoulder, the façade of Notre Dame gazed downriver towards the Louvre, serene and implacable on its island.

The rabble and its leader clearly held the King responsible for Paul’s death, or were content to use it as an excuse, though I concluded that I had no choice but to proceed as if Henri were telling the truth: that he had nothing to do with the murder and that the Duke of Guise, having encouraged Paul to attack the King in his sermon, had then had him murdered with the sole purpose of inflaming further outrage against the House of Valois. If that were the case, it meant I was looking for evidence that would link the murderer to Guise, who already had more than enough reason to want me dead, if he too suspected that I had been instrumental in disrupting his plans to invade England. Guise had no firm proof that I had intercepted those letters in London, but that hardly mattered; since I was the only known enemy of the Catholic Church living in the French embassy at the time the conspiracy was uncovered, it hardly took advanced powers of reasoning to point the finger in my direction. As I had already observed, Guise was no fool. If the Duke found out I was trying to expose him a second time, he would have my balls roasted on a skewer, while the King looked the other way and studied his manicure. In that light, it became clearer why Henri had asked me to undertake this business and not one of his usual fixers: he considered me expendable.

I passed under the Porte de la Tournelle and paused in the shelter of the tower wall to wipe my forehead where the mist had condensed in cold droplets on my hair and brows. Behind me, under the shadow of the arch, I thought I glimpsed someone else stopping too. I twisted around, but saw only the usual stream of hawkers and goodwives, mules and handcarts, ragged children and dogs, all spattered with mud and weighed down with bales of cloth, coils of rope, barrows of vegetables or baskets of eggs, making their way in and out of the city to barter or beg. No one obviously loitering or watching me; and yet, after nine years of living in exile, one eye always open for anyone who might want to arrest me or knife me in a back alley, I had developed a finely tuned instinct for being followed, and now it quivered like a cat’s whiskers. I pulled up the hood of my cloak and moved on along the road away from the Porte, straining to catch any unexpected movement through the grey air.

The abbey church of Saint-Victor reared up in the distance behind its boundary wall and orchards, its spire a bony finger poking through a shroud of low-lying mist swirling up from the river. A lone crow called into the empty sky, as if announcing my arrival. I shivered, wondering if the night’s rain had washed Paul’s blood away from the track along the bank behind the abbey, by that small door in the back wall. Now there was a man in a friar’s habit to add to the picture, and I wished the curate’s testimony had not pointed me here again.

Saint-Victor – or at least its opulent library – had become a kind of sanctuary for me since my return to Paris. Four years ago, before I left for England, the old abbot had been pleased to grant me free access to the library, despite the misgivings of some of his brothers over my writings, but that was when I had the distinction of being a Reader at the Sorbonne and personal tutor of philosophy to the King, before the rumours of magic trailed after me. The new Abbé was deeply conservative in matters of religion and learning, a public supporter of Guise and the Catholic League; though Frère Guillaume Cotin, the librarian, had welcomed me back as a friend, we had kept the arrangement between ourselves. But I had come to depend on the library, and not merely because it would be impossible for me to finish my next book without access to its manuscripts. In all the turbulence of the last few months, I had come to find in its stillness and its smell of old books, polished wood and candles, a comforting sense of order. I did not want to lose my one refuge in Paris, nor did I wish to cause any trouble to Cotin, after his generosity to me. If Paul’s killer came from the abbey, he would have powerful men protecting him, and they would not welcome the intrusive questions of an ex-Dominican known to be a friend of the King.

An ominous silence hung over the scriptorium with its rows of chained manuscripts; at the hour of None, most of the friars would be in church. Two who must have had special permission to miss divine service were still working at desks under the west windows; they glanced up with mild curiosity as I entered. Cotin bustled across to intercept me. He had evidently been waiting.

‘Bruno! I thought you weren’t coming today. I feared—’ He glanced across the room at the two young copyists, who had turned to whisper to one another, and nodded me towards a spiral staircase in the corner. This led to an upper gallery, which in turn opened on to a series of connecting rooms, each with a locked door guarding the volumes considered either too valuable or too inflammatory for public display. Cotin unlocked the first of these doors from a key ring on his belt and pulled me inside, closing it behind him.

‘They’ve been looking for you,’ he said, breathless. He was well into his sixties by now; short and broad, with tufts of white bristle sprouting from his ears and nostrils and a bushy greying beard, as if all the hair had migrated south from his flaking scalp. Without his eyeglasses, his face appeared undefended, his pale blue eyes squinting and anxious, as if fearful of missing some vital detail. ‘There’s been a lot of talk, since yesterday, that business with the priest. What’s going on, Bruno?’

I shook my head. ‘Who’s looking for me?’

‘The Abbé wants to question you. They know the priest asked for you before he died, and spoke some words that you refused to share. The Abbé called me in to see him last night – gave me quite an interrogation. How long you had been coming here, which books you asked for, what you were writing. He was not happy that I had let you return without seeking his permission.’ He paused and grimaced, pulling the cloth of his habit away from his neck as if it was chafing.

‘I am sorry to have caused you trouble. I never anticipated—’

He tutted the apology away, glancing over his shoulder. ‘The Abbé is a pompous fool. I have learned to accommodate him. But there is a great commotion over this death, Bruno – apparently the priest was a close associate of the League, and the Duke of Guise regards his killing as a personal attack. The Abbé wants to know what secrets he whispered to you on his deathbed.’

‘I see. Prompted by his love of justice, of course.’

Cotin gave me a long look from under his brows. ‘The Abbé has his eye on a cardinal’s hat. He thinks Guise is his surest route to one. And he has no choice but to concern himself with this murder, since the priest died inside the abbey walls.’

‘He was attacked only yards from your back gate, too,’ I said. ‘I’d be surprised if that was a coincidence.’

His face contorted with distress. ‘God have mercy on us all. There is something I must show you, Bruno. You are the only man I dare tell.’ He stopped abruptly, laying his hand on my sleeve, head cocked as if listening. I thought I caught a sound from the room behind us. ‘Follow me. The servant on the gate will have told them you’re here by now. We’ll go out this way.’