Free Mathilde 02 - The Poison Maiden by Paul Doherty

and perhaps reject what he’d written. I was proved correct. Under the table near the far leg lay a twisted piece of parchment. I picked this up, smoothed it out and glimpsed the scrolled letters. I slipped it into the velveteen purse on my belt. Demontaigu hurried across but I held a finger to my lips and gestured at the door.
    ‘Not now. Let’s first tend to the corpse.’
    Demontaigu went across to the window-door and shouted at the men-at-arms to be ready. He then told me to help him hold the rope. He sliced this expertly, took the strain and gently lowered the corpse. The soldiers, using the ladder, grasped the body and laid it out on the cobbles below. A macabre sight! The cadaver sprawled on its back. In the shifting pool of torchlight, Chapeleys’ white face seemed to stare up at me in reproach. I diverted myself by re-examining the knot in the noose which the soldiers passed to us.
    ‘A clerk’s doing,’ I murmured. ‘As they fasten the twine of a pouch containing a bundle of manuscripts, twice tied, the ends slipped back through the knot.’ I rose and scrutinised the chamber once more.
    ‘Nothing out of place.’ Demontaigu voiced my thoughts.
    ‘And that is the refrain the assassin wants us to repeat,’ I replied.
    We left the chamber and joined the men-at-arms, who carried the corpse across the palace grounds into the mortuary chapel of St Margaret’s, the parish church of those who lived and served in the palace. The Keeper of the Death House was waiting. He merrily welcomed, as he put it, his new guest into the Chamber of the Dead: a long, barn-like structure lying between the corpse door of St Margaret’s and God’s Acre, the parish cemetery. The walls inside gleamed with lime-wash, studded here and there with black crosses. The carefully scrubbed floor, set with pavestones, was strewn with crisp, freshly cut rushes. Mortuary tables, neatly arranged in three long rows, stretched from the door to the far wall. Most of these were, in the words of the keeper, a lay brother from the abbey, occupied by his special guests.
    ‘It’s the gallows, you see,’ he intoned mournfully. ‘They have to be cleared before the great feast, felons and villains! All quiet now, washed and anointed, ready for God.’
    Chapeleys’ corpse was laid on a table near the door. The men-at-arms were eager to be gone from such a gruesome place; it reeked of death and decay despite the pots of crushed herbs and boats of smoking incense placed on sills and ledges. Demontaigu also asked the keeper to withdraw. The lay brother would have objected, but the silver coin I drew from my purse and the promise of some lady bread and meat, the leftovers from the lavish royal banquet, sent him scrambling through the door, which he slammed noisily behind him.
    We turned to Chapeleys. In the light of the oil lamps and guttering wall torches, his face had a livid hue, eyes popping, tongue jutting out of his protuberant mouth, the skin a hideous, mottled colour. Demontaigu crossed himself, leaned over and whispered the words of absolution into the dead man’s ear. Afterwards, with a phial of oil he must have taken from his chamber, he swiftly anointed Chapeleys from forehead to feet whilst whispering the solemn invocation to St Michael and all the angels to come out and meet the dead man’s soul. We then stripped the corpse down to its pathetic soiled linen undershirt and drawers. I carefully examined the flesh for bruises and cuts but could detect none. No binding or force to the fingers, hands or wrists could be traced; nothing but that deep, broad purple-red weal round Chapeleys’ throat and the slight contusion behind the right ear where the knot had been fastened. I studied the discarded noose I’d brought with me; the slipknot was expertly done, still tight and hard. I searched amongst the dead clerk’s possessions. His wallet held a few coins which I left on the mortuary table. The dagger was still in its sheath and slipped