Conspiracy. S. J. Parris
in the air. After a few paces I could no longer see the lantern at all. I thought I heard a low laugh from just behind my left shoulder, though it might as easily have been a magpie. I realised he had led me into the orchard deliberately to confuse me. There was no sound now but the stillness of the night and my own blood thudding in my chest. Turning again to what I believed was the direction of the path, I moved with caution, but before I found the edge of the trees I glimpsed the light again, jouncing up and down a few yards ahead. I ran towards it, only to see it disappear as I heard the sound of a gate slamming and the key turning in the lock.
‘Merda,’ I muttered. A few feet further on I found the path leading to the door in the wall; my quarry had slipped out while I was stumbling among the trees. I hesitated, trying to decide my best course. I had Cotin’s key; I could pursue him, but he might have hidden himself along the river track with the idea of ambushing me if I followed. He had already shown himself unafraid to kill a man on that path; I did not want to go the same way, and I was unarmed now. Besides, I thought, brightening – if all had gone smoothly, he would have run straight into the arms of the King’s soldiers. I hoped they would have the wit to hold him until I caught up with them. But there was still the matter of evidence; while he was away from the abbey, this was my chance to see if there was anything more than the cloak and statue that would serve to condemn him beyond doubt. Perhaps he had kept some correspondence hidden in his cell that would make explicit who had set him on to kill Paul – any such letter would be a thousand times more valuable than a bloodied statue. It was worth a try. I ran my fingers gingerly over my swollen lip; though I had still not had a clear view of his face, I could be fairly sure that punch was not thrown by a man with a crippled right hand. If Cotin was right, there was only one other friar with a key to the storeroom. At least that meant I had an idea of where to start.
I turned my steps away from the gate and followed the path back to the outbuilding. Feeling along the shelf behind the door where Cotin had found the lantern, my fingers closed over a stub of candle. I drew my tinder-box from the pouch at my belt and fumbled with frozen and trembling fingers to strike a spark from it. The room was a chaos of broken stone, metal and glass, strewn over the floor where he had pulled the crates down to slow me. Scrabbling one-handed while I tried to hold up the feeble light, I found my knife, then unearthed the statue, still tangled in its cloak, and bundled it under my arm.
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