‘I need to know not out of curiosity but because two young men are dead,’ she pointed out.

The man tightened his lips. She could not bring a smile to her face. She was sick of lies and half-truths. Everything about him was unyielding and she wondered if he had been warned not to talk.

‘You must have been on duty earlier today when the body was fished out of the river.’

‘I was and I heard - ’ he stopped as if afraid of saying too much.

‘Heard what?’

‘I heard somebody had fallen onto some rubbish that had been carried downstream. If he’d gone into the river they’d never have found him.’

‘Didn’t you hear anything while you were on duty?’

He glanced hurriedly at his companion but he was eager to get off home now his shift was done and missed the plea for help.

‘It’s all the talk at the palace,’ he added lamely, ‘but I heard nothing of it until they showed up at first light with their grappling hooks. By then the bridge was open to merchants and there was quite a crowd up there. They’d been keeping me busy. I didn’t bother looking out until somebody said there was something wrong.’ He glanced over at the high, grim walls with the flag of Pope Clement fluttering from the highest pinnacle as if to find help there. ‘I heard it was a retainer in the pay of the Duc de Berry. That’s who it was. Wandering outside the walls at night. What did he expect?’

He gazed over towards the lane he had just walked along to where an inn stood on the corner surrounded by the usual characters who frequent such places.

A furtive expression came over his face. ‘See that place, domina? What do you think goes on there at night? Prayers?’ He sniggered. ‘The poraille do their drinking there and then they go under the arches. You nuns would blush to hear what goes on there. Me, I keep out of it.’

If I have to go and talk to the inn keeper I shall have to change my clothes, she registered. Monastics were plainly anathema to this surly fellow and the same would probably go for anyone down there too. ‘I take it you don’t remember anybody who crossed over the bridge early this morning?’

He was silent.

‘You must have been asleep at your post.’

Affronted, he started to contradict her.

‘In that case you must surely be able to name them?’

The first sentry chuckled. ‘She’s got you there, Emil. She’ll be getting you into hot water with the captain if he thinks you’re were sleeping on duty!’

‘All right, all right,’ the sentry replied irritably. ‘As I said, there weren’t many about because of the storm. So let’s see.’ He counted them off on his fingers. ‘Cardinals Bellefort, Fondi, Grizac and Montjoie. That’s about the lot.’

‘Anybody accompanying them?’

‘A page or two. That one with his little daughter.’

‘Name?’

‘Fondi.’

‘Did he have the child with him?’

‘That’s what I just said. And his woman.’

‘Did they all cross together?’

He shook his head. ‘Montjoie came first, then Fondi. Followed by Bellefort and after that Grizac with his page. Oh, and there was that English abbot.’

‘What English abbot?’

‘Meooks. Something like that.’

‘Are you sure about this?’

‘It’s what I’m telling you. Who crossed. That’s all I can remember.’

Hildegard could scarcely speak. Hubert had crossed the bridge? He was the only English abbot around that she knew of. ‘And you saw them all cross to the other side?’

‘Nah, I was in my shelter. I told you, it was pelting down. Windy. A nasty night. I let ’em go. They were bona fide.’

‘Did you hear an argument? I’m told there was one,’ she added when he seemed about to shake his head at whatever she asked next.

‘First I heard of it. The wind was howling off the river. You don’t hear nothing inside that niche. Isn’t that so, Jeanot?’

The other sentry, stalled by curiosity from going off duty, agreed. ‘That’s right. Can’t hear a thing. See nothing. Hear nothing. Know nothing. Once they’re on the bridge it’s their own look out till they get to the other side. There’s the chapel half way along if they need it. We just take the tolls and check the baggage for duty, and beat off beggars.’

Does this mean I have to go across to the Villeneuve sentries and cross question them as well? Hildegard’s spirits sank. She was getting nowhere.

If the men he named crossing the bridge were over in the palace for matins then stayed for lauds they all had cast iron alibis. The priest said he heard the argument just before he rang the bell in the chapel. If anyone had arrived late for lauds it would have been very late as it would take a fair time to walk from the bridge down the lane, past the guard house and into the labyrinth of the palace itself before finally reaching la Grande Chapelle. The short service at that time of night would have been almost over. Then the return with everyone else?

She was wasting her time even considering it. Anyway, they were prelates.. There was no-one more unlikely to be involved in cutting a boy’s throat than any of the men named by the sentry.

The question of Hubert, Abbot of Meaux, was another question entirely. What was he doing out? She could not deal with that just now.

‘Just tell me again,’ she invited, ‘nobody else crossed the bridge that night?’

‘Nobody.’

‘Thank you for your help.’ She gave him a coin and because the other fellow was still hanging about gave him one as well.

What would Athanasius make of all this? she wondered as she walked away. Maybe now the dagger had been recovered he would have no further interest in the unexplained murders of Cardinal Grizac’s acolyte and an esquire of the Duc de Berry.

**

She found the sentry at the other end of the bridge guarding the entry to Villeneuve. He was leaning over the parapet and looking thoughtfully into the rushing current ten feet below. She greeted him and he turned with a grimace. ‘Life’s short, domina. I could fall over this parapet and that would be that.’ He clicked his fingers to demonstrate the brevity of life. ‘So what can I do for you?’

She explained. ‘I’m trying to find out who crossed the bridge between matins and lauds this morning.’

‘I didn’t see the lad that got cut, if that’s what you’re asking. He didn’t come from over here.’

‘It’s the others I’m interested in.’

‘You won’t get much joy there, either, if you’re looking for somebody to blame. Nobody but cardinals and their hangers-on came back. The same ones that went over to dine early on.’

It had to be one of them.

‘Can you name them?’

‘I can indeed.’ He reeled off the same names as the other one, except that he gave Hubert’s abbey the French pronunciation. She wondered if that meant he had seen it written down.

‘Can you read?’ she asked.

He nodded, pleased with himself.

She could not help asking, ‘And has the Abbot of Meaux crossed over the bridge before?’

‘Never seen him before. I was told to expect him by Cardinal Fondi. He wrote his name down for me so I wouldn’t forget it but then he came over with him. I hear he’s in the running to be made a cardinal,’ he added, looking pleased at being the one to have the latest news.

Hildegard went cold. If true, this was proof - if she needed more of it - that Hubert was one of Clement’s men and an enemy of King Richard. ‘I expect it’s just a rumour,’ she murmured.

‘Not a bit of it. I hear it’ll be only days before they make the pronouncement.’

With no reason to linger on Villeneuve she walked leadenly back to the Avignon side.

**

To Athanasius. He was sitting up at his lectern again, looking much better than last time she had seen him. When she finished speaking he summed up in his usual dry, meticulous tones.

‘The involvement of the cardinals we must discount as too preposterous.’ He shot a sudden dark look at her as if inviting her to reveal what she knew about absconding miners.