Читать книгу Lady Agnes Mystery Vol.2 - Андреа Жапп - Страница 19

Éleusie de Beaufort had hesitated at length. The thought of having to meet Madame de Souarcy made her uneasy. And yet she could not refuse to see her without giving an explanation. She rose to her feet with a sigh and made her way to the reception room where Agnès was waiting. The young woman got up from the small bench beside the fireless hearth and stretched out her arms, a joyous smile on her face. Éleusie immediately regretted having agreed to meet her. How would she avoid answering the questions Agnès was sure to ask? Would she be capable of concealing the truth? A sudden feeling of dizziness forced the Abbess to sit down. This young woman had no idea how incredibly important she was and she mustn’t find out.

‘Thank you for seeing me at such short notice, Reverend Mother. I know how full your days are.’

‘Don’t mention it. You come and see us so rarely. Are you recovering from the ordeal of your iniquitous trial? And how is that little rascal Clément?’

‘He has been wonderful and is a great comfort to me since …’ She did not finish her sentence, certain that the Abbess would understand the allusion to Mathilde. ‘As for the trial, I am trying my best to put the whole experience behind me, although I fear I may never … I have to tell you about the astonishing visit I received in my dungeon …’

Éleusie listened attentively, pretending she knew nothing of it.

‘Your nephew, the Knight Hospitaller, came to see me.’

‘Really?’ the Abbess replied, clumsily feigning ignorance, and making it clear to Agnès that she already knew.

She went on:

‘Ah … I thought perhaps that you had sent him to comfort me. I must confess that I don’t understand how he learnt of my imprisonment. Indeed, I was unaware that he even knew of my existence.’

The Abbess’s pale cheeks became suffused with blood and she declared:

‘I may have mentioned your name and your troubles at Souarcy.’

‘I see … I thought your nephew was in Cyprus.’

‘Oh, he is. I mean, he is based at the Limassol citadel.’

Agnès was growing more and more perplexed by the direction their conversation was taking. Éleusie’s visible unease and the fact that she was clearly lying alarmed her and confirmed her intuition. Something was being hatched which concerned her, though she had no idea what it was. She paused; it would be impolite to persist as the Abbess appeared unwilling to provide an explanation. So be it! Éleusie knew something and Agnès was determined to force it out of her.

‘You spoke to me of him one day, of the bond between you, and of your motherly love for him.’

‘He is my sister Claire’s son. After her death at Saint-Jean-d’Acre, my now deceased husband and I, having no children of our own, brought Francesco up as our son. He completed our union. The three of us loved one another dearly …’ She smiled at the memory of her charmed life before entering the stout walls of Clairets Abbey.

Agnès clung to these initial confidences.

‘I … That is why I took the liberty of coming here today … Sweet Lord, how can I say this … I thought … I imagined that fever and exhaustion accounted for the strangeness I felt when I recalled my brief encounter with your nephew. And yet …’

‘Did you say strangeness?’

Something was wrong. Éleusie seemed unsurprised to learn that her adopted son had been at Alençon. And she had not asked about the knight’s reasons for visiting Agnès, and yet her face had grown sullen. She was hiding something. Agnès was now certain that the terrible events that had nearly cost her her life were connected. Eudes, her half-brother, had played an insignificant role in a plot that far outreached him. Her voice became sharper as she demanded:

‘Madame, I beg you to attribute my persistence to the abject fear I experienced. I need to understand and … your unease leads me to believe that you might have some explanation.’

She was taken aback by the Abbess’s abrupt response. Éleusie de Beaufort stood up. Her pretty face wore an expression of intense pain, and yet there was a look of tenderness in her eyes. She replied curtly:

‘Please go, Madame. I must … There’s been a fire and … er … some manuscripts have been … destroyed.’

‘No. You … dishonour your position, your calling, by brushing aside my request in this way. Do you realise what I have been through?’

Éleusie de Beaufort fought back her tears. She composed herself and breathed:

‘Oh … I know, I felt it in my body, to a degree you cannot imagine.’

The Abbess’s visions, her incessant nightmares. The lashes raining down on her back, flaying her skin. The indescribable pain of the salt that monster rubbed in her wounds – in Agnès’s wounds, which racked Éleusie’s body.

‘I beg you, don’t abandon me like this,’ the young woman implored. ‘You spoke of manuscripts that have been destroyed? What manuscripts? The Vallombroso treatise?’ Agnès declared suddenly, on impulse.

An icy hand stroked her cheek then fell away. Éleusie de Beaufort murmured:

‘It is not my place … not yet, not I. May God protect you always.’

She left the reception room like a woman fleeing, accompanied by the sound of her footsteps and the rustle of the heavy folds of her robe. Agnès sat motionless, stunned.

A novice hurried over to Agnès and offered to help her climb into the saddle. The Dame de Souarcy refused the generous offer with a polite smile and said to the young girl with strange pale-amber eyes:

‘You are most kind, but I must manage on my own. I have a … stiff back, it’s nothing serious. Besides, I won’t always have you to help me.’

The novice disappeared through an arched doorway in the enclosure wall.

After dragging herself up onto Églantine’s back, Agnès was overcome by a wave of fatigue. The huge Perche mare stood patiently as she settled into the saddle.

Ladies’ saddles25 at the time were only a slight improvement on the sambue that was still used in Madame Clémence’s day. The sambue was a chair-like affair perched on the horse’s hindquarters, which did not allow the rider any control over the steed, making it necessary for a servant to lead the animal on foot. In fact, the palfreys26 ridden by ladies in days gone by were trained to walk at a steady pace so that their riders would not lose their balance and fall off. The reason for this was that sitting astride a horse, which was far better suited to trotting or galloping, was considered detrimental to procreation.

Églantine fell into a steady pace. Unbidden thoughts of Mathilde flashed through Agnès’s mind. She had received no news of her daughter since the trial. She had tried to imagine how she would react, what she would feel when she stood before her most zealous accuser. Would she demand an explanation from this child whom she had carried in her womb? Would she retreat into silent disapproval? Would she mourn the terrible loss, the destruction of what she continued to believe were some of her fondest memories? Mathilde as a baby, when she began to walk and later on as a little girl. She must stop lying to herself! Loss and destruction certainly – the words were not too severe. As for her fond memories, they had been undermined, not to say destroyed, by Mathilde’s hostility towards her during the trial. Her daughter had dissolved before her eyes to be replaced by a ruthless accuser, a merciless informer. She might as well admit the truth: her fondest memories were of Clément, and she had no idea what her reaction would be when she found herself face to face with Mathilde. And yet a terrible realisation had gradually dawned upon Agnès: Mathilde did not only detest Clément and the harsh life at Souarcy, she also detested her mother more than anything. Agnès pursed her lips, holding back the overwhelming sorrow engendered by this thought. Still, it was out of the question that she leave her daughter any longer in Eudes’s predatory hands. If necessary, she would ask the chief bailiff, Monge de Brineux, to go to Château de Larnay to fetch her, to drag her back to Souarcy if need be. She intended to write to Eudes without delay and inform him of her decision.

Agnès banished these dispiriting thoughts from her mind, and focused on her strange meeting with the Abbess, which had only served to deepen her confusion. Besides feeling disillusioned and uneasy, she had come away from the meeting certain of one thing: she and Clément were not losing their minds. They had been swept away by a wave whose proportions far surpassed them, had fallen by accident into a gigantic whirlpool that was buffeting them ferociously.

She was wrong.