The abbey courtyard was in total uproar – monks were running here and there, shouting their sorrow to the skies. The bell of the abbey-church was tolling a slow, dolorous beat; the senior monks had fallen to their knees on the beaten-earth floor of the courtyard and were praying aloud – and in the centre of that space was the Cardinal’s huge chair, with the Cardinal still enthroned within it. His little eyes were half-open, his head cocked to one side and lolling backwards, the front of his red robe was sheeted with wet blood and it was clear that the big man was dead. I walked towards the chair and its vast dead occupant, but when I got to within a yard or two, I felt a hand on my arm that stopped my progress and turned to see the anxious face of the hosteller at my shoulder.
‘Sir Alan,’ he said, ‘it is not seemly that you disturb His Grace.’
I looked at him, feeling as if I was in some kind of awful dream, and said: ‘I believe that he is well beyond disturbing now, Brother; I only wish to see how he died.’
The monk frowned: ‘I think that in the pain of our loss, perhaps inquisitive strangers should not be among us,’ he said. ‘We must wash our Cardinal, and bind up his wounds, and prepare his body for burial. I beg you to allow us to be alone with our grief.’ It was polite, I must admit, but I was being firmly asked to leave the abbey forthwith.
‘Before I go, can you tell me what happened to him?’
The monk seemed to hesitate for a moment, and then he said: ‘Cardinal Heribert was set upon by footpads in his own city. He was returning to the abbey from the castle after dinner and a gang of armed men, routiers, gutter scum, men of the lowest sort, attacked his procession. His men-at-arms were swiftly killed and the monks driven away by these vermin – may God strike them down!’ The hosteller paused and gulped; there were tears in his eyes – and I had no doubt that his grief was genuine.
‘They stole his ring,’ the hosteller blurted out, and I turned again to the gigantic corpse in the chair. I saw that the index finger, the damp, dog-smelling finger that had once borne a proud jewelled ring, had been roughly severed at the knuckle. I looked further up his body, and saw through the blood-crusted scarlet robe a dark hole, a stab wound a little to the left of his sternum, made by a dagger thrust directly into his heart.
Hanno was at my shoulder: he leaned forward to peer closely at the wound in the Cardinal’s chest. ‘It is perfect,’ he said. ‘It is the perfect kill – a single blow, exactly on target, resulting in instant death. Perfect!’
I gathered up my men, our horses and possessions, and we made our way as quickly as we could out of the city of Vendôme. The sun was touching the western horizon and I knew the town gates would be closed at dusk; but I had worse concerns than being locked inside the city for the night. As the three of us cantered through the gates, across the wooden bridge and on to the road leading north towards King Richard’s encampment, one thought was flapping around in my head like a panicked bird trapped in a bedchamber. Three clerics were dead; three innocent men of God had been murdered, and every time I tried to find out about my father, another man died. Somebody was trying to prevent me from learning any more about the life of Henri d’Alle – and that somebody was prepared to kill indiscriminately, even to kill those protected by Holy Mother Church, protected by God himself, to prevent me from finding out the truth.
Chapter Nine
There was no sign of Robin when I reached our camp. I found Little John with two of the Locksley farriers, helping the men to shoe a dozen of our company’s horses. I only heard about half of that conversation with John, for it was punctuated by ringing blows of a hammer on an anvil as the head farrier struggled to get his task done as quickly as possible. We were expecting to fight the French in the morning and Robin wanted his cavalry all to be well-shod for the coming encounter. The Earl of Locksley himself, I gathered through the clanging of red-hot iron and the hiss of burning hoof, was out scouting the enemy positions and would not be back in camp any time soon, and so I left Little John to his work and retired to my tent to think.
It seemed to me that Father Jean in Verneuil and Cardinal Heribert in Vendôme had both been killed by the same man, and in the same manner – a single dagger thrust to the heart. I was not sure about Brother Dominic – I still felt that it might be possible that he had been killed by Mercadier. And then it occurred to me that all three might have been Mercadier’s victims. But why? I could understand – though not, of course, forgive – the murder of Brother Dominic. That was a strike at me to pay me back for spoiling his vicious fun when I rescued the old monk from his tormentors; I could see that I might have injured Mercadier’s pride or his standing before his men by my actions and that he might wish to make a statement about his power. But why should he also want to kill a powerless small-town priest or a powerful cardinal? It made no sense.