Prince of Darkness (31 page)

Pushing his chair back from the table, he encountered resistance. He’d befriended one of Petronilla’s pampered greyhounds and as he glanced down, he expected to see its sleek brindle body stretched out behind him. But it was Yann, curled up in a ball like a cat, sound asleep. Justin looked pensively at the boy, who’d been trailing after him all day as faithfully as his absent dog, Shadow. Shadow was motivated by affection, though, Yann by fear. The Breton orphan was the proverbial fish out of water, stranded on unforgiving Parisian shores.

After making sure that Yann was sleeping, Justin said quietly, “I would to God I’d thought to leave the lad with the Earl of Chester at St James. The Welsh do not do well when they are uprooted from their native soil. I fear that the same may be true for the Bretons.”

“Well, you can always wed the Lady Claudine and adopt the boy.” But Durand’s mockery was habitual, not heartfelt; he had too much on his mind to enjoy tormenting Justin. “No man could be as good as the Breton claims to be. I know the stories told about him—that he comes and goes like a phantom in the night, that few men have even seen his face, that he is as elusive as a fox and twice as sly. Mayhap he did find proof positive that the letter is forged, but I’ll need to see it with my own eyes ere I’ll believe it.”

“It sounds as if your nose is out of joint, Durand,” Justin said, mildly amused. “For all we know, he has blood-kin at the Breton court, spying on his behalf. If he were able to tunnel under the walls whilst we had to assault the outer bailey, that would give him a huge advantage.”

Durand grunted. “No one knows for sure if he is even a Breton.”

“If he’s not, that would play havoc with my theory,” Justin conceded. “He might well be the bastard spawn of a Granville pirate, for all we know.”

The corner of Durand’s mouth twitched in what was almost a smile. “I’ve never laid eyes
upon the whoreson. That is a select brotherhood. John has met him. So has the queen. I am not sure if Richard has. Emma did, years ago with her brother, the old king, who knew him well, mayhap the only one who did. We can probably add the French king to the list and the Counts of Toulouse and Champagne and Flanders. Our master spy travels in rarefied circles, does not care to deal with underlings.”

“Underlings like us.” Justin took a swallow and made a face, wondering how long it would take his taste for wine to return. “We are still confronted with two crimes, the plot against John and Lady Arzhela’s murder. The Breton may have found out who is behind the forgery, but what of her killing?”

“I thought Simon settled that with his grand dive over the table at Fougères. Damn, I wish I’d seen that!”

“Something about this still does not fit,” Justin insisted. “We assumed that Canon Robert is the killer because of Simon’s action. But why, then, did she say ‘Roparzh’ with her dying breath?”

Durand shrugged. “Mayhap she was no longer lucid. Mayhap she was back in time and Roparzh was the name of the squire who’d taken her maidenhead twenty-some years ago. Or a fond name for her second husband. Or her favorite dog.”

“No. I saw her eyes, you did not. She knew she was dying and she was trying very hard to tell me her killer’s identity. I am as sure of that as I’ve ever been of anything.”

Durand shrugged again. “So who is Roparzh? We’ve been over this again and again, de Quincy. We met no one at the Breton court with that name.”

Before Justin could respond, a small voice piped up behind his chair. “Yes, you did.”

They both swung about to stare down at Yann. “What do you mean, lad?”

Yann sat up, yawning. “I was half asleep, heard you talking...” His words trailed off, for he was becoming aware of their tension. “I was not eavesdropping on purpose!”

“That does not matter, Yann. You said we knew someone named Roparzh. Who?”

“That canon you were talking about,” Yann said warily, still not sure he wasn’t in trouble. “Robert and Roparzh... They are the same name.”

Durand let out his breath. “You are saying that Roparzh is Breton for Robert?”

Yann grinned, gaining enough confidence to add impishly, “No, Robert is French for Roparzh!”

There was a long silence as they took this in. “This still does not make sense,” Justin said slowly. “She was trying to tell me who her killer was. Why did she not say ‘Robert,’ then? Why the Breton form of his name? If she’d called him Robert, we’d have thought of the canon straightaway. Why Roparzh?”

“She was dying, de Quincy. She was Breton-born, so why would she not be thinking in Breton at the last?”

“I suppose it is possible,” Justin said, not convinced. “She was so intent upon telling me—what? If she used the name Roparzh, it must mean something.”

“Let me know if you figure it out.” Durand picked up his cup, saw that it was empty, and reached over to claim Justin’s. “I think I’ll stop torturing myself with riddles and go win some money at raffle.” But although he glanced across the hall toward the dice game, he did not move, no more able than Justin to let go.

Yann looked from one to the other, yearning to help. If only he’d not left the Lady alone. She’d paid with her life for his greed, for those few coins he’d filched from the sleeping poacher. “If the Lady called him Roparzh,” he ventured, “mayhap he was Breton.”

“No, lad,” Justin said, as kindly as he could. “He was from Toulouse, though that was likely a lie, too. But even if he were Breton-born, why would it matter? Why would Lady Arzhela have wanted me to know that?” He had no answer, and neither did Durand.

Rising, Justin coaxed Yann to his feet, and started to lead him toward a corner where he could sleep without fear of being stepped upon. He stopped almost at once, struck as if by lightning by an improbable idea. “Durand, this is going to sound crazed. Hear me out, though. What if Arzhela were trying to tell us that Robert was the Breton?”

“You said yourself it would not matter if he were Breton.”

“Not
a
Breton.
The
Breton.”

“That is preposterous!”

“Is it? Think about it. If Constance and her barons wanted to entrap John in a web not of his making, who better to do it than a legendary spy?”

“I’ll grant you that much. But we need more to go on than your sixth sense, de Quincy!”

“Why else would Arzhela have called him Roparzh? She was telling us his true identity. She was suspicious of him from the first, was convinced he was feigning illness at Vitré to avoid us. And she was right, Durand. But it was not you or me he was evading, it was Emma—Emma who could recognize him!”

They looked at each other and then turned as one, a perfectly coordinated movement in Emma’s direction. She glanced up, startled, as they bore down upon her, but once she understood what they wanted of her, she could not give them the certainty they craved. “I did meet him,” she confirmed. “But I do not remember anything that distinctive about him, nothing like a scar or red hair or even freckles. He was attractive in a subdued sort of way, and well spoken. His hair was brown, I think. He was neither uncommonly tall nor unusually short. In other words, he was a man who’d not call undue attention to himself, a useful attribute for a spy. You truly think this Canon Robert is the Breton?”

They could not blame her for sounding dubious. “We are exploring the possibility,” Durand said dryly. “Let us assume that you are right, de Quincy. Arzhela learns through pillow talk with her lover who Canon Robert really is. He then learns of Simon’s slip of the tongue. He knows that Arzhela has a past with John. So he kills her to keep her from telling John of his double-dealing. But then he has a new problem: Simon de Lusignan.”

“And not one he’d anticipated,” Justin said. “He did not realize that Simon truly cared about Arzhela. So now he has Simon set upon collecting a blood debt, awkward at best, dangerous at worst. We’ve been approaching this from the wrong end. Everyone assumed that Simon had broken out and then gone in search of Canon Robert. What if it were the other way around? If Canon Robert had come in the night to silence Simon?”

Durand nodded thoughtfully, accepting that premise. “So he enters the storeroom, intending to make sure Simon does not blurt out any inconvenient accusations on the morrow. But he finds that Simon is not as easy to kill as Arzhela; we can testify to that. They fight and... what then?”

“The toll collector said Simon had blood on his clothes. Let’s assume he was the one wounded. But he got away, stole a horse, and fled. I can understand that if he had the Breton on his tail. Once he had escaped, though, why did he not return and seek out the duchess for help? Why ride for Paris?”

Durand saw where Justin was going, for his thoughts were heading along that same sinister path. “John is here,” he said flatly, and Emma turned to stare at him in astonishment.

“You think he came to Paris to tell John how and why Arzhela died?”

“If I were the Breton,” Justin said, “I’d be wondering that, too.”

Emma was shaking her head. “How could he betray the Breton without betraying his own involvement in the plot? What man would willingly put himself at John’s mercy?”

“A desperate man. A man wanting vengeance and seeing no other way to get it,” Justin said without hesitation, for he was becoming increasingly convinced of the Breton’s guilt. “But even if de Lusignan was not coming to Paris to seek John out, the Breton would fear he was. He could not take that chance, would have to follow Simon and stop him, whatever the cost.”

“That would not be easy,” Emma pointed out, “not in a city the size of Paris.”

“No, it would not,” Durand agreed. “It would be easy enough, though, to find John.”

It took a moment for Emma to realize the full implication of his words. “No, he would not dare!”

“Then why,” Justin said, “did he send John that message? A message we know to be untrue.”

“But all of this is based upon supposition,” she objected. “You are assuming that Canon Robert and the Breton are one and the same. What if they are not?”

“If we are wrong,” Durand said grimly, “it does not matter much. But if we are right, John has been lured into a trap.”

The cemetery of the Holy Innocents was the primary burial ground for Paris. Situated on the right bank of the Seine, in the area known as Champeaux, it was close to Les Halles, the large indoor market of the weavers and drapers. Until a few years ago, the cemetery had been an open, marshy field. But the French king had got so many complaints about the unsanitary conditions and the brazen behavior of the prostitutes, thieves, and beggars who congregated in the graveyard that he had ordered it to be surrounded by walls and closed at night.

As John and his escort rode along the rue de la Ferronnerie, several of the men grinned when they passed a narrow, adjoining alley, for one of the city’s more notorious brothels was to be found in that dark, winding lane. Listening to their ribald bantering, John grinned, too, thinking he might let them stop there or at the equally infamous bawdy house in rue Pute-y-Muce, Whore-in-Hiding Street, on their way back. If the Breton’s information proved accurate, he’d have good reason to celebrate.

When they reached the first of the cemetery gates, he called a halt and ordered the men to dismount. “You will await me here,” he instructed Garnier, the household knight he’d chosen to command his men. “I’ll not be long.”

Garnier was young and eager and not happy at being excluded from his lord’s mysterious graveyard meeting. “Are you sure you do not want some of us to accompany you, my lord? Would it not be better to have us there in case some mishap should befall you?”

“What sort of mishap, Garnier? You think I might fall into an open grave? Or be snatched away by a demon on the prowl?”

Garnier did not think it was wise to jest about evil spirits, especially so close to a burial ground. Unable to remonstrate with his lord, he contented himself with a dutiful “As you will,” and John relented enough to offer an explanation.

“You need not fret on my behalf, Garnier. I agree that a graveyard is an odd place for a meeting, but the man I am meeting is rather odd himself. He shuns the daylight more than a bat does, prefers to skulk about in the shadows where none will notice his passing. This is not the first time I’ve met him at Holy Innocents, nor will it be the last.”

Approaching the gate, John smiled at the sight of the broken lock. “I see he got here first.” Reaching for Garnier’s lantern, he shoved the gate back and stepped inside. Holy Innocents, like most urban cemeteries, was laid out like a monastery cloister, with the church and charnel houses enclosing an inner expanse of open ground. There the poor were buried in common grave pits; the affluent sought their final resting places under the charnel house galleries or within the church itself. By daylight, the cemetery would offer an ironic affirmation of life, for many activities besides funerals were conducted here. People came to gossip, to flirt, to strike bargains with peddlers, to rejoice that they were not yet one with the bones piled in the spaces above the charnel house arches. But by night, Holy Innocents was the realm of the dead.

The sky was splattered with clouds and very little moonlight was trickling through into the cemetery. Light did glow from the
Lanterne des Morts,
the Lantern of Death that was a common feature of French graveyards. A stone column shaped like a little lighthouse, its lamp had been lit at dusk, but its feeble illumination was no match for the encroaching dark. John was not sure of its purpose, whether it was intended to protect the dead from the Devil or the living from ghosts, but as he cautiously made his way across the marshy, uneven ground, he hoped it was the latter.

For all his bravado, John was not happy to be meeting the Breton in a burial ground. He was willing to indulge the spy’s whim because so much was at stake, but he was not as indifferent to his spectral surroundings as he’d have Garnier believe. One of the more unpleasant experiences of his childhood had taken place in a cemetery. He’d been about four or five years old. It had been one of those rare occasions when most of his family had gathered under the same roof, probably a Christmas court, and he’d been tagging after his older brothers Richard and Geoffrey, much to their annoyance. When they’d attempted to lose him by detouring into a graveyard, he’d doggedly followed and fallen into an open grave. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been trapped, but for months afterward he awakened screaming, and he never believed his brothers’ avowals that they’d not heard him crying out for help.