Conspiracy

FIFTEEN

Catherine blanched, but did not lose her composure; only her free hand flailed, clawing the air in search of support. I stepped to her side and she grasped my arm.

‘Where? How?’

‘In the gardens – she was found – all bloodied – oh madonna santa, what shall we do?’ Balthasar was struggling to form sentences between snatched breaths. He pressed his hands to his face. Catherine inhaled sharply, her eyes calculating. Only I could feel how hard her fingers were gripping my arm.

‘This must be kept quiet,’ she said, at length. ‘Get up. Have her brought in through the back door by the kitchen, down to the cellar.’

Balthasar rose unsteadily to his feet, shaking his head. ‘Too late for that, I fear – the people who found her made such a commotion it drew others to the site. Someone ran for the guards. They are bringing her to you now. They didn’t know what else to do,’ he added, spreading his hands to show his helplessness.

Catherine’s face tightened. ‘Through the palace? For all to see? God save us – does no one here think?’

‘You must have all the gates barred immediately,’ I said. ‘If she has been killed, the murderer must be here in the palace. He – or she – will most likely try to leave as soon as possible, if they have not already done so. Your guards should detain anyone attempting to escape in a hurry. If we are fortunate, we may even catch them with blood or a weapon on their person.’

She turned to look up at me with slow amazement, as if she had only now remembered I was there.

‘Do you give the commands here? We do not yet know what has happened. If these fools have sown panic, people will naturally rush to leave. I cannot keep them against their will while accusing them of murder. That will only make matters worse.’

‘Even if one among them is guilty of it? In the light of our conversation before …’

Her eyes hardened and I felt her hand clamp tighter. ‘Have I not just impressed upon you that I know how to govern my own household?’ She spoke through her teeth. ‘We must impose order on this situation immediately. Balthasar, mobilise the guards, make sure they prevent-’

But her orders were interrupted by a further crash and judder of the doors as two men barged their way into the gallery bearing a limp body between them, a curtain of dark hair hanging down and swaying with the motion. In their wake surged a crowd of guests, shrieking and shoving one another for a better look.

‘You!’ Catherine roared, pointing at the guards flanking the doors to her chamber. ‘Get those people out of my private apartments. Call your fellows and make sure the guests are confined to the public rooms downstairs. Find the captain of my household guard and send him to me. Keep the doors barred.’

Her armed men jumped to obey and after some struggle the spectators were pushed back and the outer doors to the gallery closed. The two guards carrying the body laid her down gently on the wooden floor, her hair and white cloak spreading around her. Smears of blood stood out bright crimson against the white. Balthasar turned his face away, shielding his eyes, just as the air was shattered by a chorus of women’s screams, as the nymphs burst from Catherine’s inner chamber and skidded to a halt before the corpse of their friend.

‘Get back inside,’ Catherine ordered, in a voice that brooked no argument; howling and clutching one another, the girls obeyed. Their laments could be heard loudly after the doors had closed behind them.

Left alone, Catherine looked from me to Balthasar. Her face was pinched but she kept her bearing erect. ‘Where is my physician? Fetch him here.’

‘I believe he did not attend tonight, Your Majesty,’ Balthasar whimpered, unable to take his eyes from Léonie’s body.

‘Send for him at his house, then. And find Ruggieri. Anyone who can tell me what happened here. And, Balthasar – fetch the King to me immediately. Whatever he’s doing, drag him from it bodily if you have to.’

Balthasar shot me a brief glance, lowered his eyes to the corpse and scurried away, a hand pressed over his mouth to stifle his grief. If he were not Italian and theatrical, I might have said he was overdoing it.

Catherine let go of my arm and walked around the body. The girl’s eyes bulged in terror, her face drained white, the lips peeled back in a grimace. Her wrists and arms were smeared with blood and dirt. Dead leaves had tangled in her curtain of hair.

‘Well. Whatever threat you thought she posed to the King, she is none now,’ Catherine remarked quietly. She did not seem particularly distraught by the murder of a young woman who had served her for thirteen years, but that did not necessarily mean anything; she belonged to an age when a queen was expected to conceal her private feelings at all costs.

‘No. Someone has made certain of that,’ I said. We looked at one another. I suspected we were both wondering the same thing. There was a long pause. I cleared my throat.

‘Your Majesty,’ I ventured, ‘I have some knowledge of anatomy and a little experience in instances of unnatural death. Might I be permitted to make a cursory examination?’

Her brow creased. ‘It would not be seemly for you to handle the body of a young woman. You are not a physician.’

‘Neither is Ruggieri. He is an astrologer.’ And a charlatan, I wanted to add, but held my tongue. ‘With respect, Your Majesty, I would not be seeing anything she did not already show to three hundred spectators this evening.’

Again, I had the sense that her first instinct was to slap me, but instead she regarded the body in silence, her jaw working from side to side. At length she prodded Léonie’s limp arm with the end of her stick, turning it to expose the inside of the wrist. ‘See here. I am no physician either, but this has the appearance of self-slaughter, would you not say?’ I caught a note of supplication in her voice; she wanted me to confirm her conclusion.

I had already registered the slashes to the wrist, but I had also observed Léonie’s face. I crouched by the body and looked up at Catherine.

‘The appearance, yes. If I may?’

She pursed her lips, then nodded a grudging agreement. I lifted the right hand to show her. ‘These wounds are too superficial to have bled out. They are made horizontally across the wrist. The vein is not severed – see? These cuts could not have killed her.’

‘Then – what?’ For the first time, I glimpsed the mask of control slip a fraction. Catherine de Medici was frightened. I could not blame her; we both knew the person who had felt most threatened by Circe that night was Henri, and that it was I who had planted that fear.

‘Look.’ I lifted the coils of hair that had draped across her neck. ‘See this bruise at the throat, and the flecks of blood in the eyes? She was strangled, with a ligature by my guess. I think the incisions were made afterwards.’

Garrotted, I thought, by someone who knew what they were doing. Just like Joseph de Chartres. It must have happened quickly, before she could scream for help; there had been enough couples seeking out a private spot in the wood for someone to have heard something otherwise. I recalled the cry that had echoed through the trees while I was tussling with the man in the Greek mask, that I had taken for a woman in the throes of passion; could that have been Léonie? My stomach knotted at the thought that I might have been close enough to save her.

Catherine appeared to be digesting this.

‘It is an interesting theory, Doctor Bruno. But as you say, you are not a physician. I suggest we do not leap to any conclusions. I will reserve judgement until I have heard an expert opinion.’

‘But you must have the clearing and the woods searched for any traces the killer may have left behind. The knife that was used, for a start. If she died by her own hand it would still be there.’

Catherine shifted her weight again and looked at me with a curious intensity. In the same instant I realised my mistake.

‘Clearing?’ she said, raising an eyebrow. ‘Woods?’

‘Or wherever she was found. Balthasar mentioned-’

‘Balthasar said she was found in the gardens, as I recall. You are the one who has introduced this clearing in the woods.’ Her gaze drifted again to my boots. I had a sudden dread that Gabrielle might have told her I was asking questions about Circe and that even now Catherine was drawing her own conclusions, pleased to have found a ready scapegoat.

But I was spared the necessity of responding as the door opened once again to admit a figure like a great crow, black wings flapping the length of the gallery. As he drew nearer I realised he was wearing the same costume as me, the Dottore from the Commedia, in black gown and sneering beaked mask. When he untied the mask and lifted it, the face beneath wore a remarkably similar expression of contempt.

Cosimo Ruggieri still wore his white beard long and forked, in emulation of some long-ago fashion of the Florentine aristocracy which he supposed gave him the look of a magus. He had developed more of a squint since I last saw him, presumably because he was too vain to admit his eyes were failing. He had always claimed to be older than his years in order to seem more venerable, but he must be at least of an age with Catherine; where she had grown stout, Ruggieri seemed to have shrivelled, his skin stretched tight over the bones of his face, dry and lined as one of his alchemical parchments.

‘Gracious Queen,’ he began, in his grandiose manner, offering her a sweeping bow but keeping his greedy little eyes trained on me, ‘it can be no accident that such black misfortune should befall your noble house on the day this Neapolitan sorcerer dares to show himself uninvited at your feast.’

I could not hold my tongue. ‘Sing a different tune, Ruggieri. At least no one has ever accused me of keeping a child’s severed head on an altar to speak prophecies.’

He gave a dusty laugh that rattled in his throat. ‘What need have you of an intermediary, when it is known you commune with the Devil face to face?’

Catherine rapped her stick hard on the floor. ‘Gentlemen! A woman is dead. I did not call you here to bicker like children.’

Ruggieri looked briefly chastened, which gave me some satisfaction. ‘Tell me how I may be of service, Majesty,’ he said, holding out his hands in supplication.

‘I want you to look at this girl. Tell me what you think happened to her.’

His eyes darted nervously to me; clearly he feared it might be a trick question. He made a great show of pacing around the body, pulling at the twin points of his beard in contemplation. When he could delay no longer, he addressed Catherine.

‘It would seem she has dispatched her own soul to Hell. A sin against God and nature,’ he added, adopting a suitably sage expression. I snorted.

‘Doctor Bruno says otherwise,’ Catherine said, watching me carefully.

‘Doctor Bruno says the universe is infinite, but he has no proof of that either.’

Catherine allowed a flicker of a smile, but it did not touch her eyes. I considered confessing to her that I had encountered Léonie in the copse and repeating what she had said to me in error, but instinctive caution told me I would not help my own cause by placing myself at the scene of yet another murder, particularly after my ill-judged comment about the clearing, and in any case, the moment had passed; I should have spoken before Ruggieri arrived.

I glanced across at the old sorcerer. Léonie had been waiting for someone. She had been in a state of considerable distress, but had steeled herself to tell that person she could not go ahead with a task they had evidently demanded of her – a task she was terrified of carrying out, something so grave she believed it would damn her soul. I could think of few sins that would appear so terrible to a woman steeped in the casual debauchery of Catherine’s court, except murder. To my ears, Léonie’s wild words had as good as confirmed Paul’s letter and his dying warning: that she had been part of a plot to kill the King.

The more I turned over her outburst in my mind, the more tantalisingly this hypothesis took shape: she had been charged by some unknown person to assassinate Henri and had lost her nerve. The conspirators manipulating her realised she had become a danger to them – especially if they learned that she had confessed her treasonable plans to a priest – and decided she needed to be silenced. I could go so far as to speculate that, since she had once been Guise’s lover, the Duke may still have some hold over her; it seemed the most likely explanation. Although there was always an alternative possibility that could not yet be discounted: that the King, alarmed by my warning, had acted on impulse to disarm the threat of Circe for good. I could see full well that this was the fear behind Catherine’s reluctance to accept that the girl had been murdered. I wondered if Ruggieri had reached the same conclusion and scrambled to support his mistress with the verdict she wanted to hear; no one with even a passing knowledge of anatomy could seriously suppose the girl to have killed herself. But one other question troubled me: had Léonie mistaken me for the man she was expecting, because I was wearing the same costume?

Ruggieri shivered and wrapped his Doctor’s robe closer around him, the empty mask swinging from his hand.

‘We do not usually hear you so quiet, Bruno. Is it because you dislike being told you are wrong?’

‘I was only wondering,’ I said, ‘why you are so certain she took her own life? Did she have particular cause that you know of?’

Catherine made a gesture that seemed to imply the question was redundant. ‘Young women. Thwarted affair of the heart or some nonsense. She would not be the first to fall into despair because a man had cast her aside.’

‘But you just said your women do not involve themselves with men except at your command,’ I said. Her eyes narrowed. ‘I wondered,’ I continued, keeping my tone light, ‘if perhaps it could have been because she was with child?’

The silence that followed this was so profound I could hear the ice cracking on the window panes.

‘What makes you say that?’ Catherine asked, in a voice like a knife on a whetstone.

I was about to answer, but at that moment King Henri burst in, distraught and dishevelled, his doublet unlaced and his cream silk stockings caked with mud. He threw himself to his knees beside Léonie’s body and manoeuvred her torso clumsily into his lap.

‘Mon Dieu,’ he moaned softly, rocking her back and forth, her head hanging limply in his arms like a grotesque doll. He repeated this lament, the words muffled as he pressed his lips against her hair. The rest of us stood awkwardly watching this performance until Catherine clapped her hands and ordered her son to get up.

‘Have you been drinking? You know what the physician said about your constitution – you are not supposed to touch wine. Put the girl down, Henri,’ she added briskly, as if talking to a dog, though the King appeared not to hear. He remained folded over Léonie’s body, his face wracked with pain, but I could not have said for certain whether it was grief or remorse. Henri was prone to dramatics either way.

‘I will speak to the King in private,’ Catherine announced. ‘Ruggieri – take Doctor Bruno to the library and keep him there until I send for you again. Have the servants bring you meat and drink. And you-’ she raised her walking stick and pointed it towards me with finality – ‘will not repeat to anyone what you said just now. If that idle speculation finds its way into common gossip, I will have you arrested for slander. Do you understand me?’

I nodded. I, too, would have liked to speak to the King in private, but there was no question of that at present. Catherine meant to manage this situation in her own way. I tried to catch Henri’s eye, but he would not raise his head from the corpse in his arms.

I followed Ruggieri along the corridors, empty now of guests but with a noticeable increase of armed guards, halberds bristling at every set of doors, though they parted swiftly for the astrologer as he strode towards them with his hand raised like Moses before the Red Sea. When we reached the library, he bade me take a seat at a table in front of the fireplace, on which large star maps and charts of the heavens lay unfurled, curling at the edges, held flat by several measuring instruments. Though the papers were upside down to me, I leaned across and peered at them with curiosity while he bustled about lighting a sconce of candles. It looked as if Ruggieri had been plotting a natal chart; the margins of the map were filled with gnomic scribbles in his cramped handwriting. In the top right-hand corner I saw that he had drawn the figure of a dolphin.

‘Whose chart?’ I asked, tapping the map.

He blew out the taper and leapt across with surprising speed, gathering the papers and rolling them tightly together. ‘No business of yours.’

The way he pursed his lips, all puffed up with the importance of his confidential knowledge, made me determined not to give him the satisfaction of pressing him any further. He paced behind my chair while I ignored him. ‘Whatever made you say the girl was with child?’ he asked, at last. I swivelled to face him.

‘You did not observe her during the masque tonight?’

He made a derisive noise. ‘I did not. I was in here all evening, working. I don’t need to see those girls writhing about. Give me a seizure, at my age.’

‘Nonsense. I knew a man in Nola older than you, fathered twins.’

‘Well. No idea of continence, you Nolans. What would I want with twins?’ He raised his hands in retreat, as if someone were threatening to hand him a pair. ‘Tell me about the girl, then. I have seen her recently – I did not remark that she had a big belly.’

‘Not especially big at this stage. But there was a tell-tale sign, visible only because her gown tonight was so thin. She had the line on her belly, though very faint – she was still in the early months.’

‘Line?’ He frowned.

‘The dark line that forms on the skin from the navel to the pubis. Have you not observed this in a woman expecting?’

‘I am not a midwife, Bruno,’ he said, with a little shudder of distaste. ‘Your experience of looking at pregnant women unclothed is clearly broader than mine, but then you are a Dominican. Ah. I see that amuses you.’

I could hardly tell him I was nodding because it was true that my only previous experience of seeing a pregnant woman naked had been as a young novice at the convent of San Domenico Maggiore in Naples, though not in the way Ruggieri imagined.

‘Of course, I may be mistaken,’ I said, conciliatory. The suggestion that Léonie might have been pregnant had clearly caused Catherine further anxiety; I could guess why.

His shoulders relaxed. ‘You would do well to say so to the Queen Mother. Bad enough that this dreadful business has occurred during an event that was supposed to increase goodwill toward the royal family. She does not need you spreading malicious lies as well.’

‘Not lies. Merely speculation.’

‘Based on the scantest evidence and likely wrong, by your own admission. Like all your other theories, in your books which no one reads.’

I reminded myself silently not to rise to it. Fortunately I was distracted by the arrival of a boy in livery bearing a tray loaded with two plates of roast pheasant and large silver goblets of spiced wine. Ruggieri swept the remainder of his books from the table, not without a good deal of muttering, and the boy set the tray down with a bow, closing the door behind him.

Ruggieri and I looked at one another.

‘After you,’ I offered, indicating the plates.

‘But you are our guest,’ he returned, mirroring my gesture.

I smiled. ‘I find I am not hungry after all.’ It was a lie; my stomach growled, empty and sour from my earlier drinks, and the hot scent of roasted meat was making my gut cramp with hunger, but I would be a fool to ignore the advice I had given the King earlier, especially in these circumstances.

The old man gave one of his dry, rattling laughs. ‘Are you suspicious of our hospitality? Do you suppose she means to poison you?’

I said nothing. It was rumoured that Catherine had plotted to poison her own daughter not so long ago; she was more than capable of dispatching me without a second thought.

‘It is like a fairground riddle, is it not?’ Ruggieri continued, enjoying himself. ‘If I choose first, you will assume the other glass is poisoned. If I allow you to choose first, you will assume both are. If we were to drink at the same time, however-’

‘I don’t have time for your games,’ I said, irritated.

‘Pardon me, but you have all the time in the world. You are to remain Her Majesty’s guest here until further notice.’

I turned away and slumped back against the chair. ‘Drink or don’t drink, Ruggieri, it’s of no interest to me.’ I pressed my sleeve against my face to try and block out the scent of the meat.

‘Let this reassure you, then.’ He pulled up his chair again, picked up one glass and drank from it, followed by the other. He did the same with a piece of meat from both plates, smiling with what I assumed was meant to be encouragement, though it still looked menacing. Warily, after a few moments, I reached across and took one of the plates from his hand. The meat was tender and savoury, and I devoured it in a hurry.

‘There was a book,’ I said, licking the last of the juices from my fingers. His head snapped up, immediately alert. ‘About a year ago, Queen Catherine bought it from an English girl. I see you know the one I mean.’

He sat back, nodding. ‘Yes, I thought you might come sniffing after that sooner or later. The girl was keen to insist on her acquaintance with you. She seemed to believe that would lend the book veracity.’

‘And on the strength of that, Catherine bought it. Fifty écus, I heard.’

‘She asked me to examine it first, naturally,’ he said, ruffled. ‘I thought it might prove a worthwhile addition to her collection. I wanted to pay less but the girl bargained hard. You clearly schooled her well. I do wonder, though, that you should have allowed such a book out of your hands.’

I chose to ignore the implicit question. ‘You know what it is then.’

He folded his hands together on the table. His fingers were long and spindly with swollen joints, the tips stained purple from one of his concoctions, I presumed, though for a moment I had an image of him in his private room, picking through entrails to divine the future like an ancient Roman.

‘I can see what it purports to be. The lost book of the Egyptian sage Hermes Trismegistus. Last rumoured to have been stolen from a bookseller in Venice, though that was two decades ago. You will know, of course,’ he said, tapping a discoloured fingernail on the table as if instructing a child, ‘that that book was salvaged from the ruins of Byzantium and brought to Italy at the command of Cosimo de Medici. So, if it is the same one, it rightly belongs in the hands of his great-great-great-granddaughter. Though it is considered a dangerous book, and forbidden by the Church.’

‘Have you read it?’

He leaned forward, screwing up his face further to scrutinise me with his rheumy eyes, trying to divine whether I meant to catch him out.

‘Have you?’

I merely smiled in a manner I hoped he would find enigmatic. The truth was that the book had only been in my possession for less than a day before it was stolen from me (even now the memory of Sophia’s betrayal could make me grind my teeth involuntarily), but I already knew that the heart of it was written in a complex code as yet unbroken by scholars. Let Ruggieri believe I had cracked the encryption. Catherine would want to know the book’s content, after paying so much; it might enhance my value if she thought I was the only one who could read it. Besides, I felt confident that, given the time to make a proper study, I would succeed in deciphering the cramped handwriting that filled the ancient pages.

‘I would not profane its secrets by discussing them with a man such as you,’ he said loftily, after a hesitation long enough to reassure me that he had not managed to penetrate the book’s mysteries.

‘A man such as me?’ I laughed. ‘Oh, come, Ruggieri – if you did not have Catherine’s protection they would have burned you for a witch long ago. You call yourself a scholar, but you are little better than a village wise-woman. Love-philtres and divination by guesswork, that is the extent of your occult wisdom.’

He half-raised himself out of the chair, leaning on both hands across the table. ‘Do not think yourself so far above me, Giordano Bruno. For all your degrees in philosophy and theology, I know you have studied natural magic too. Why else would you want that book? And do not think to mock me – my prophecies have shaped this kingdom-’ He broke off suddenly, as if stricken by a terrible premonition, and stared at the rolled charts in his hand until I coughed, bringing him back to himself. He squinted hard at me. ‘We are two sides of the same coin, you and I. Look – we are even wearing the same costume tonight. People would be hard pressed to tell between us.’

‘If I had known, I would have worn something different. I would not wish to be mistaken for you,’ I said carefully. ‘By some woman you had made a tryst with, for instance.’

He gave a dry laugh. ‘Hardly a danger these days. I always come as the Doctor to a costume ball, everyone knows it. You should have recalled that. You being the one who professes the art of memory,’ he added, unable to resist the barb.

I was too preoccupied with the thought of my encounter with Léonie in the clearing to respond in kind. It had been almost completely dark, and I was standing outside the reach of her lantern; I could not know for certain whether she had seen my costume and spoken as she did because she had been waiting for a man dressed as the Doctor from the Commedia and assumed I was he. But it made no sense to think she had been expecting Ruggieri; he was Catherine’s man to the bone, he would be the last person to incite anyone to harm the King. I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes; I was tired and still blurry from drink, and my mind was making wild leaps without the aid of reason. I needed to rein it in and proceed logically.

‘Speaking of memory,’ I said casually, ‘do you remember the girl’s name? The one who sold you the book.’ I scratched at a splinter of wood on the table so as not to look overly interested.

‘She was trying to present herself as a boy, I recall. No one was fooled by that.’ He paused to pick a shred of meat from his remaining teeth. ‘When she finally admitted her deception, the name she gave was very ordinary. Something that made me suppose it was a false name too. Anne, perhaps? Jane? Mary?’

I tried to suppress my irritation. ‘Well, which?’

He shook his head. ‘I never had the benefit of your lessons in memory, of course,’ he said, with a malicious little smile. ‘Might have been Mary.’

‘And the surname?’ I asked, already knowing this was pointless.

‘Something like Gifford,’ he said, unexpectedly. ‘One of those peculiar English names.’

I sat up. ‘Mary Gifford. You are sure?’

‘Not how you knew her, I take it?’

‘She has had many names since I’ve known her.’

Ruggieri pulled at the points of his beard. ‘She sounds like a handful of trouble, Bruno. You must be made for each other.’

I stared into the fire, my thoughts scattered. Sophia Underhill. A boy called Kit. Mrs Kate Kingsley. And now Mary Gifford. At least I had a means to begin looking. Made for each other. There were times when I feared that might be true, and not in a comforting way.

Bells chimed the hour from a distant part of the palace. The candles burned low. I must have dozed a little, listening to the fading crackle of the fire and the sound of Ruggieri sucking the bones for the last scraps of meat. Eventually the chewing gave way to the rhythmic gargling of an old man’s snores. I roused myself and saw that he had fallen asleep, his head lolling on to his chest like a hanged man. I pushed my chair back and stood, as silently as possible. We were alone in the vast space of the library, wooden stacks filled with books stretching away into the darkness in both directions. I had no idea how much time had passed, but I decided that, whatever the consequences, I would rather not wait for Catherine’s summons. I picked up my mask from the table and tied it tight around my head again, flinching at the clamminess inside. Ruggieri might be deep in the arms of Morpheus but I supposed the guard was still outside and I was unarmed since the loss of my dagger. I cast around for anything I might use as a weapon and my eye fell on a poker in the fireplace. Tucking it behind my back, I tiptoed across to the door and turned the handle. Ruggieri shifted and snorted in his sleep; I froze, my throat tight, but he settled himself like an old dog and slumbered on. I slipped out, closing the door behind me and keeping my back pressed against it.

The guard looked surprised at my appearance; he gripped his halberd with both hands and demanded to know what I was about.

‘It is time for me to return to the Queen Mother’s apartments,’ I said.

He frowned. ‘I was given no orders.’

‘No, but I was. She told me to return at this hour.’

He glanced along the corridor to left and right, as if some explanation might be waiting. I suspected this one was not overburdened with wits.

‘We don’t want to keep her waiting,’ I added, with a warning note. ‘She will be angry if she hears you stopped me.’

He hesitated. ‘I will have to accompany you.’

‘Of course. Is it down here?’ I took a step forward in the wrong direction.

‘This way.’ He moved to usher me along, turning as he did so to point ahead; in the same moment I swung the poker with both hands to catch him on the back of the skull. He was a tall man, but not heavy; he fell on his face with a thud like a sack of flour dropped from a height, narrowly missing the blade of his weapon as he toppled forward. I murmured an apology as I fumbled at his belt for the short knife he carried there. It was a poor substitute for the beautifully crafted Damascus steel I had lost, but at least I felt a little better prepared. I ran along dim corridors where the sconces had burned down to one wavering flame on a mound of melted wax, winding my way through the now-deserted palace, keeping close to the walls, until a draught of cold air led me to a side door that opened on to the gardens.

A brittle dawn light was spreading slowly up from the horizon, the sky cold and smooth as glass, the air charged with the metallic taste of frost. A lone seagull drifted above me with a mournful cry, wings motionless, floating like a sheet of paper on the wind. Ahead, the gardens were emerging into a patchwork of shadows, the detritus of the night – abandoned masks, gloves, lanterns – outlined on the whitened grass. The bowl of the great fountain loomed out of the retreating darkness. The gardens too seemed abandoned; I guessed the night’s revellers had been packed off into boats before panic and scandal could spread too far.

I set out briskly on the path towards the copse, my feet so quickly numbed by the cold that it hurt to walk. The torches that had lit the way a few hours earlier had all burned to blackened stumps or been appropriated by couples seeking the shelter of the wood. I had no need of a lantern to find the place now, though when I reached the clearing where I had encountered Léonie, I wished I had thought to bring one; the trees overshadowed the ground and the frail light barely penetrated here. I walked carefully around the fallen trunk where she had been sitting, crouching to sift through piles of dead leaves with my fingers. After a few minutes, I sat back on my haunches and blew on my frozen fingers. It was still too dark to make out footprints clearly and in any case, so many lovers seemed to have made their way through the clearing I was unlikely to find anything that would show who had encountered Léonie here.

I stood, hearing my knees crack, and followed the direction she had taken in such haste when she realised she had said too much to the wrong person. She had run wildly into the trees where there was no path, but by proceeding slowly I could see from the broken branches and traces of her white fur cloak snagged on twigs the course of her panicked flight. Some fifty yards into the wood, my eye was caught by a pale streak on the ground. I pushed through the thicket of branches and bent to pick up a white silk scarf, sown with tiny pearls and embroidered with silver thread and tassels, now trampled and muddied. A knot had been tied midway along. I stared at it, recalling Léonie’s body, the bruise at her throat. Whoever killed her had known this trick with the knot, just like Joseph de Chartres’s murderer.

I tucked the scarf inside my doublet and stumbled back into the clearing, wrapping my hands inside the folds of my cloak. The sun had almost risen above the horizon; in the chilly light I saw a figure moving among the trees on the other side, by the path back to the palace. I froze, but a twig snapped beneath my feet and it was too late to hide; I drew the small dagger I had stolen as he whipped around and I realised he was not wearing a mask.

‘Jacopo!’ I sheathed the weapon with relief and pushed my own mask on to my head.

‘Bruno?’ He took a step towards me, frowning. The pouches under his eyes were deeply shadowed; he had evidently been up all night too. ‘What on earth are you doing out here?’

‘Looking for anything that might tell us what happened to the girl. You?’

‘The same,’ he said, after a pause. I noticed that he looked past me towards the trees as he spoke. ‘I thought Catherine had you under guard in the library?’

‘I thought I might spend my time more usefully.’

He glanced fearfully in the direction of the gardens. ‘She will be angry when she finds you gone.’

‘Ruggieri can take the blame for that. Though he will probably claim I bewitched him.’

‘Did you find anything?’

I unbuttoned my doublet and reached into the inside pocket. ‘I cannot tell you how glad I am to talk to you, Jacopo. There is something I must show you.’ I told him briefly of my earlier encounter with Léonie and what she had said, then handed him the gold medallion she had left behind. ‘She dropped this when she ran from me. I suppose it is valuable – she was worrying at it like a holy medal when I interrupted her.’

He started visibly as I laid the disc flat on his palm, the side with the dolphin engraving uppermost, and the colour drained from his face. ‘Dear God. Do you know what this is?’

‘A piece of jewellery, I guessed. But I do not understand its significance.’

‘Better you do not.’ He pressed his lips together and closed his fist over the medal. ‘Leave it with me – I will see it returned to its rightful owner. You must not be found with it on your person. In fact, you should not be found at all.’ He checked quickly in both directions. ‘Come with me. I helped smuggle you in – the least I can do is show you out. And God help us both if we run into anyone.’

I followed him back to the path, but instead of turning towards the palace, he led me in the other direction, along the edge of the wild part of the gardens in the shadow of the riverside wall, until we reached a small gate tucked away at the far end. Jacopo took a bunch of keys from his belt and unlocked it.

‘You can get a boat across the river from the steps at the Tour du Bois, there should be boatmen about at this hour,’ he said, chivvying me through. ‘And Bruno – tell no one else of what the girl said to you. Do not even mention that you saw her in the clearing. I told you before – it is safer for you to keep your distance from all this.’

‘All this? So you know that this murder is connected to the others?’

He laid a hand on my arm. ‘I know you believe so. Catherine told me what you said to Henri tonight, about Circe.’

‘I heard the girl, Jacopo, only minutes before she died, protesting she could not go through with it or she would damn her soul. What else could she have meant? Someone had corrupted her to their cause to kill the King, I am certain of it. She must have confessed to Paul Lefèvre, who wrote anonymously to the King to warn him. Henri never received the letter, but whoever was behind the plot found out by some means. Paul was killed to silence him, so was Joseph. When it became clear that Léonie had lost her nerve, she too was silenced.’

Jacopo looked at me with great weariness in his dark eyes, his face grave. ‘It sounds a wild theory to me, Bruno. But these deaths should be reason enough to leave the business alone. Let Catherine deal with it now as she judges best. Léonie de Châtillon was a member of her household.’

‘Guise and his sister are behind it, I am certain. It is just a question of finding proof.’ I felt my fists clench as I spoke; I had almost forgotten my obligation to Guise. But I still could not fathom why he had set me on to investigate the previous murders if he knew the trail would lead back to his associates.

‘Then you must certainly leave it to Catherine. She is practised in negotiating with the Duke of Guise – if he is responsible, she will find a way to have satisfaction.’ He darted a quick glance over his shoulder and squeezed my arm. ‘Now I must go. Promise me, Bruno, that you will not put yourself in any further danger?’

I laid my hand over his. ‘I can promise you that I will not take undue risk.’

‘That is not the same thing,’ he said, his eyes stern.

‘I have been given a task by the King, and until he releases me from it I consider myself under royal command.’

He sighed. ‘Too stubborn, Bruno. One day it will be the end of you. The King is hardly himself at the moment, surely you can see that?’ When I said nothing, he shook his head with an air of paternal disappointment. ‘Go, then. But come and dine with me this week. I will send you word when I am free.’

‘Thank you, I will.’ I pressed his hand. ‘One more question – are the Gelosi staying at your house this week?’

‘They will be there for today, collecting their belongings. Tomorrow they move to the Hotel de Montpensier – they have been offered rooms while they entertain the Duke tomorrow night. After that I believe they are bound for Lyon.’

‘Good. I want you to pass a message to Francesco. Tell him I need to take him up on his kind offer to join the company.’