S. Parris - Conspiracy

The damp air snuffed my candle as soon as I stepped outside. After a couple of attempts to relight it I was forced to concede that I did not have the time to lose; I would have to rely on my sense of direction. If the King’s guards had not stopped my attacker, there was always the chance that he would run around the perimeter of the abbey wall and try to enter another way, but the main gate would be barred at this hour and surely he would not want to wake the gatekeeper and explain himself. My guess was that he would wait and return eventually through the back wall in search of the statue. I had no idea what time it might be by now, but I must not be found sneaking around the abbey when the friars were awakened for the office of Matins at two o’clock. I could not afford to end up wandering lost in the mist. From the storehouse I set out through the trees away from the wall that separated the abbey grounds from the river path and tried to steer myself in a straight line. As a novice, I had been taught to recite certain Psalms as a means of measuring time without the need for clocks or church bells, and though I no longer spoke them in worship, I still had them all by rote, and they proved useful when I needed to mark the passing time. So it was that, after around ten minutes of determined walking, one step after another, into the white blankness, I saw the bulk of the abbey church against the sky a hundred yards ahead. Relieved, I quickened my steps towards it and the cloisters that lay beyond; in my haste I collided with a tall figure who reared up out of the mist, arms outstretched over me. I stifled a cry and jumped back, dropping the statue and grabbing for my knife as my heart hammered at my ribs, but my assailant did not move. After a moment, my shoulders slackened and I let out a panicked laugh at my own folly. I had run into a stone angel, wings spread, empty eyes raised to heaven. Taking another step back I almost fell over an object at knee height; I turned to find a moss-covered cross and realised I had wandered into the abbey cemetery. Picking my way through the graves, I found a path that I could follow as far as the church. There had been plenty among my brothers at San Domenico who would have been gibbering prayers to the Virgin and all the saints had they found themselves alone in a mist-shrouded graveyard at this hour, but I had never shared that monkish fear of the unquiet dead. It was only the living who would creep up on silent feet and put a blade in your neck.

There was no trace of light from the windows of the library, but the door was unlocked, so I slipped in as quietly as I could and lit my candle. Shadows leapt back and I felt a pulse of affection at the sight that greeted me; Cotin had fallen asleep at his desk with his head on an open book, resting on the crook of his arm, his lamp burned down beside him. I crouched and shook him by the shoulder.

‘Wha—?’ He jerked awake, turning unfocused eyes on me. I motioned for him to be quiet.

‘Where’s Albaric’s cell?’

‘Eh? Dear Lord, what happened to your face?’

‘Not important. I need to look in Albaric’s cell. You have to show me which one it is.’

He levered himself up, wincing at the complaints of his joints. ‘I had hoped not to see you again tonight.’ He eased his neck from side to side.

‘My apologies. We need to hurry.’

‘Why, what hour is it?’

‘No idea. But he could return any moment.’

‘It is him, then? You are sure?’

‘No. But it seems the most likely possibility. He had a key and there was nothing wrong with his hand.’ I ran my tongue along my swollen lip and tasted blood. ‘That’s why I want to see his cell.’

Cotin eyed the statue under my arm, muttered a half-hearted protest and motioned for me to follow. At the door, he blew out my candle, in case the light gave us away to the night watch, and we both pulled our hoods around our faces. Keeping to the shadows against the walls, he led me around the arcades of the cloister and into the courtyard behind. The friars’ dormitory, directly ahead, was a long building of unadorned stone with rows of individual cells on two storeys facing one another across a wide corridor. I followed him up the first flight of stairs to the upper level. From the recess of the staircase, he pointed to the left-hand row of doors and held up four fingers. My eyes had begun to grow accustomed to the dark; I handed him the statue and left him hidden on the stairs while I crept along until I came to the fourth door. I glanced about me to either side before putting my hand to the latch. The atmosphere was oddly silent here, not even the usual snores or grunts you might expect from a house of sleeping men. It was as if every friar were holding his breath in anticipation. All the doors I could see appeared to be closed fast, but in my experience that did not necessarily mean no one was looking.

I let myself into Albaric’s room without a sound, keeping my hood up, and struck my tinder-box until the damp candle caught flame. By its light I saw a plain table against the wall by the door, with a large leather-bound book lying on it. That would be a place to start, at least; letters might be hidden between pages or inside bindings. I picked up the book, trying to hold the candle steady, but the volume was too large to lift with one hand, and as I was shaking it by the spine it slipped from my grasp and landed with a loud slap on the table. I froze, every muscle taut and trembling, eyes fixed on the door as I waited to see if the noise had disturbed anyone.

‘What in Jesu’s name—?’ said a voice behind me.

I whirled around with a gasp, to see Frère Albaric sitting up on the mattress against the far wall, tangled in a woollen blanket. He stared at me, equally amazed, his eyes dazed and puffy with sleep. His hair stood up in tufts around his tonsure; one cheek was marked with a crease from his sheet and I could see that he was wearing a linen nightshift. His face bore the naked vulnerability that comes from being jolted out of deep sleep. I had been so convinced that he must have been the man in the storeroom I had no more than glanced at the bed to register a heap of blankets. I recovered my presence of mind before he did and blew out the candle as I slipped back into the corridor, hoping he had not had a chance to see my face.

A hand shot out from the darkness and grabbed my arm as I emerged; I jumped again, but it was Cotin, pressed up against the wall.

‘Frère Joseph is not in his cell,’ he whispered, pulling me by the sleeve and pointing me to a door on the opposite side, towards the far end. I scuttled along, hoping that Albaric would conclude he had imagined a figure from his nightmares and fall back to sleep without feeling the need to raise an alarm.

I eased the door of Joseph’s cell shut behind me and leaned against it, trying to slow my breathing. When I had managed to light the candle again, I saw that the almoner’s room was laid out much as Albaric’s, though the few furnishings were more obviously expensive: a mattress on a wooden pallet under a small arched window, set high in the wall opposite the door; on the right-hand side, a table and on the left, a wooden trunk. At least this time the bed was empty; from the tumbled sheets it looked as if Joseph had left in a hurry. The table was also bare, save for a branched silver candlestick, but to my relief, the chest was not padlocked. I opened the lid and began to pull out whatever I could find: good quality linen undershirts; a pair of leather shoes; a rosary of amber beads, smooth as glass; a tortoiseshell comb … but nothing more. Not in a trunk open to anyone; I should have realised. I cast around to see where else he might have hidden personal effects. The room held no other furniture, no cupboards, no drawers. Where had I squirrelled away the writings I wanted to keep from prying eyes when I was a friar? My eyes lighted on the mattress.