‘The dagger was a gift to Clement in the days when he was a legate in Italy. It was a gift from the Duke of Milan.’

‘Notorious poisoners, the Milanese, I’m told.’

‘So it is rumoured.’

To suggest that it was more than rumour she mentioned Duke Lionel, second in line to the English throne some twenty years ago when his elder brother Edward, the heir to England’s crown, was still alive.

‘Lionel was betrothed to Violante of Milan, the duke’s daughter, but on his wedding night, before Violante could conceive, he was poisoned. That ended the English alliance with the Milanese. The rumour is - oh, forgive me, this is irrelevant to the problem at hand. Has anyone dared to open the hilt of the dagger yet?’

‘Our apothecary has done so. Of course, he found nothing in it. Whatever was in it had been removed.’

Hildegard gave him a straight look. He was lying. He knew she was aware of the fact.

‘This is not to say that there has never been poison in it,’ he hastened to add, to salve his sense of his own integrity. ‘What can we know? The river cleanses all things.’

She knew this was as far as he would go.

**

‘Please, domina, we have no-one else to speak for us. We’re in fear now. Taillefer’s death was foretold.’

‘Foretold?’

Edmund frowned at her look of disbelief. ‘That’s no astrologer’s prediction. It was a man in the yard yesterday who said it. He wore his vizor down.’

‘What blazon?’

‘None. We have no idea of his allegiance. But he said to Taillefer as clearly as I’m speaking to you now, “you will die,” and then strode off.’

‘Did Taillefer tell you this?’

‘No, we were all present. We heard him ourselves. We were just walking back from the tilt yard after making our plans for the game with the pig’s bladder.’

‘We took Sir Jack’s rage to heart and had been practising at the quintaine in a most exemplary manner,’ Peterkin interrupted.

‘No-one could have faulted us,’ added Bertram. ‘Then this man-at-arms comes up. Taillefer just laughed when he heard him. “Is that so, my man? And so will you if you are mortal,” he said. And we all chuckled and walked on as any man would at a mere verbal threat.’

‘Did this man-at-arms speak in French or some other language?’

‘In French but with a strange accent. He might even have been English. It was an uncouth mouthing whatever it was.’

‘We were not inclined to take notice of a warning issuing from such a fellow.’ Peterkin spread his arms. ‘Now, of course, we see he meant business.’

‘But why should Taillefer have invited such a warning?’ Hildegard asked.

‘That we don’t know.’

‘Was this before the plan for the miners was discussed?’

Edmund shook his head. ‘It was after that although our concern at that time was for the quintaine. We had no other thoughts in our head.’

‘Apart from the vow to track down Maurice’s killer,’ corrected Peterkin with a glance at Elfric. ‘Taillefer made no secret of his determination to find him.’

‘It wasn’t Taillefer who dared Maurice to break into the treasury was it?’ asked Hildegard, a light suddenly dawning. But her expectations were dashed when they dismissed the idea out of hand.

‘How do you know he didn’t?’ she demanded. ‘You didn’t arrive here until Maurice had been killed.’

‘We know Taillefer. We’ve met several times on the jousting circuit with our lords. He was aghast that anybody should try to enter the treasury. “He can’t have understood the depravity of the pope’s inquisitors to breach such a place,” he said, “There’s only one end to anybody foolish enough to risk it. And that’s the torture chamber. It’s a place of unutterable horror, the sure punishment should anyone try to steal from his holiness. Remember Cesena. Nobody is excused the wrath of Clement.” He believed it utterly. He lived in terror of the pope. He would not go near the treasury and nor would he encourage any of his friends to go there.’

**

By no means convinced by what Edmund had told her, she believed that their comments about the consequences of being caught suggested that the possibility had at least been discussed, even if in a desultory manner. Why else would Taillefer have expressed such fear of the punishment to be meted out to anyone who tried to do so if it hadn’t been mentioned?

**

She tried to find the sullen little page of the bedchamber who had received a dishonest penny and the chimerical promise of gold but discovered that this time he really had left for his village. It was a hamlet somewhere in the hills in the French Kingdom and she decided that what else he might be able to tell her would not be worth the difficulty of searching him out.

She made her way down to the ferryman’s cottage instead. Shuttered still. Smoke from the chimney. She rapped on the door.

It flew open and he stood four square in the doorway with his head slightly bent to avoid hitting it on the lintel. Aggrieved that his boat had been sequestered at the coroner’s insistence he at once poured out his anger against the pope and his interfering officials, demanding to know how he was supposed to turn an honest penny, not that anybody but a madman would want to use his boat with the river in spate, but even so, it wasn’t fair on a man.

She sympathised. Disclaimed any connection with the pope. He invited her in.

They sat in a cramped chamber below the thatch. With a couple of day’s stubble on his chin and wearing brown wool hose and a dark green tunic, he looked dependable, despite his grievance. It was reasonable, after all. A man had to eat.

‘I expect the bridge traffic takes a lot of your trade, doesn’t it?’ she began.

He nodded. ‘But not all, praise be, or where would I be then? There’s always folks wanting to get to the other side without going through them customs men at the other end. Even so they usually need to give a good account of themselves before being allowed through the Chatelet.’

‘Not much check on the river traffic then?’ This must be the route the miners had taken.

He tapped the side of his nose. ‘The river bank can’t be patrolled all along, can it?’

‘True.’ She allowed him to pour another dash of wine into her beaker and the silence achieved a greater fullness, broken only by the crackling of the fire. ‘Those logs burn nicely,’ she murmured.

‘Come spring I’ll have no time to be sitting round a fire,’ he excused.

‘It was sad about this body you pulled from the river. What do you think happened?’

‘You all want to know that. Man of the moment, me.’ Before she could ask who else had been ferreting around for information he said, ‘It was like this. I was out checking my boat just after first light when I noticed what I thought was a bundle of clothes caught between the arches on some driftwood. You never know,’ he explained, ‘there’s often stuff brought down that folks will pay a good price for. So I went over to have a look.’

‘And saw straightaway that it was a poor young boy.’

‘Not quite like that. It looked like a pile of clothes at first sight. Velvet, I thought. Get a good price for that. Only when I got near did I see what it was and by then a few folk on the bridge had spotted him and started to shout down to me.’

‘You did well to get him back to shore without losing anybody in the flood,’ she observed.

‘It’s my job,’ he agreed modestly. ‘You wouldn’t believe the things I dredge from these waters.’

‘And he was dead when you reached him. How long do you think he’d been there?’

He wrinkled his brow. ‘Not long. And I’ll tell you why. His clothes weren’t sodden through as you’d expect if he’d fallen in. Did you notice? I saw you having a good look. His undershirt was almost dry.’

‘Yes, I noticed that. What do you think it means?’