The Breath of the Rose. Andrea Japp

secretary’s unexplained disappearance, Nogaret had dispatched a messenger to his uncle, Giotto Capella, carrying a missive whose unequivocal content bristled with threats. Had a sudden illness confined Francesco to his bed? To Nogaret’s mind there could be no other acceptable explanation for his absence, and he would hate to have to hold Giotto Capella responsible for misleading him by extolling the virtues of a nephew whose behaviour had turned out to be so rude and unreliable.

      The letter had thrown Giotto Capella into a panic, and his first impulse had been to leave France without further ado. Then he had taken to his bed, curling up under a pile of counterpanes as he envisaged his life hanging by a thread were the King’s counsellor ever to discover his role in this deception. He had spent hours snivelling and trembling as he sweated under the heavy coverlets, justifying his actions with any excuse he could find. What else could he have done faced with Francesco de Leone’s blackmail threat? Leone and the other Knights Hospitaller knew that he was responsible for the Mamelukes breaking through the last defences of the Saint-Jean-d’Acre stronghold. What other choice did he have but to obey Leone by passing him off as his nephew and providing him with the false identity he needed in order for Seigneur de Nogaret to engage him? Naturally, the moneylender had suspected that the knight’s intention was to spy on the King’s counsellor. But what good would it have done to admit it? None at all. At least not as far as he was concerned. Weary of his own despair, Capella had decided to crawl out of bed and compose a blustering reply. In it he related his nephew’s sudden interest in a young lady and his equally unexpected departure from Paris in order to follow her to Italy. He portrayed himself as the despairing uncle, fearful of having offended Monsieur de Nogaret, and ended with a bitter diatribe against the recklessness of youth. Monsieur de Nogaret had been unconvinced, regarding his reply as no more than a feeble excuse.

      The King’s counsellor felt a cold rage welling up inside him as he put down the page of spidery scrawl. In fact, he could not forgive himself for having allowed a fellow feeling to develop between him and this Francesco Capella, for having deemed him intelligent and possibly divulged too many secrets. He had reflected long and hard on the information he had shared with him and felt reassured when he recalled nothing of any importance. Nevertheless, he would give that weasel Giotto cause to regret recommending his relative. Nogaret would see to it personally that the scoundrel never obtained the post of Captain General of the Lombards of France that he had so long coveted.

      That morning Guillaume de Nogaret was still in a bad mood: he had lost a diligent secretary as well as an agreeable companion. He immersed himself in his accounts. His thin lips became twisted in a grimace of displeasure as he drew up the inventory of the King’s brother’s most recent expenditure of treasury money. How could he put a stop to Charles de Valois’s* extravagance without angering the monarch? Valois dreamed of war, of reconquering lost territories; in brief, of raising and commanding armies. Francesco Capella was right to have expressed concern. Just as he was recalling his vanished secretary, he heard a loud bark coming from the royal quarters. One of Philip’s lurchers. Nogaret swung round to face the tapestry on the wall behind him and the red stitching of the dogs’ mouths on the blue background. He rose to his feet and lifted the hanging. What if Francesco Capella had been sent to spy on him? But by whom? Certainly not by Giotto Capella. He examined the padlock on the safe built into the wall and could see nothing suspicious. Still, he was assailed by doubt. He seized the key hanging on the chain he kept around his neck at all times, and placed it in the small opening. The lock seemed stiff, though he could have been imagining it. He opened the safe and rifled through its contents. Nothing was missing. But why was the black calfskin notebook on top of the pile of letters? Surely he had written or received these since he had last consulted the notebook. Logically it should have been somewhere underneath or in the middle of the pile. Could he be sure of this? After all, the lock had not been forced. The habit of power had made him more mistrustful. Francesco’s sudden departure and his uncle’s clumsy explanation had heightened his suspicions. Since he could no longer question the nephew he would force the uncle to talk. Nogaret walked over to the door of his office with the intention of calling an usher, but changed his mind as he clasped his fingers round the handle. Would it not be a mistake in these dark and troubled times to admit to a possible lapse in judgement, a mistake for which he might pay heavily? Enguerran de Marigny, who was already the King’s chamberlain, was manoeuvring himself into the monarch’s good graces with the help of the King’s beloved wife, Queen Jeanne of Navarre, to whom he was both confidante and trusted ally. Nogaret, the fearful, timid worrier, envied his rival’s self-assurance. Marigny possessed the ability to converse, argue and theorise with such poignancy or passion that his audience took his every word to be gospel. Guillaume de Nogaret knew he was incapable of matching the man’s eloquence and manner. If he admitted to the King that he had been spied upon by a man whom he himself had engaged, Marigny would be sure to use this blunder to undermine his reputation. He might feel avenged by delivering Giotto Capella into the hands of the executioners, but it would only weaken his position at court.

      After all, nothing in the safe had gone missing. No doubt he was scaring himself unnecessarily.

      And yet how on earth did that notebook come to be on top of a bundle of confidential letters he had only recently placed in the safe?

      Nogaret sat down at his desk again and studied the nib of his quill pen. No, the shadowy figure whose services he employed was not resourceful enough to be of any use to him in this matter. The King’s counsellor detested that cowled sycophant who had admittedly served him well hitherto. And yet the henchman’s palpable loathing, bitterness and thirst for revenge made his blood run cold. Hurting others appeared to relieve his tormented soul. Nogaret was no villain. If he were guilty of scheming or worse, his motivation, and perhaps his justification, was always to serve the greatness of the monarchy.

      No. He could not use the cowled figure to dig out the truth about Francesco Capella. As for the usual spies, they were all in the employ of the King and most of them also reported to Marigny for a fee. Any inquiry undertaken by Nogaret was in danger of being brought to the attention of his main rival, who would not hesitate to use it against him at the first opportunity.

      For the moment his best course of action was to pretend that nothing had happened.

      Nogaret sighed with exasperation. He needed a spy, one not driven by envy or fanaticism, an intelligent spy. His isolation at the Louvre was weakening his position. He had gained the King’s respect, possibly even his gratitude, but had failed to win his friendship. Nogaret, who found emotions deeply puzzling, had nonetheless learned something important from observing them: however foolish or misguided, emotions were what dictated people’s actions. Intelligence only came into play after the fact, to justify or absolve. He need look no further than the King’s own weakness on the subject of his warmongering brother, Monsieur de Valois.

      A spy. He must find a clever spy who would answer only to him. How would he go about it, knowing that his enemies were watching his every move?

       Clairets Abbey, Perche, October 1304

      ÉLEUSIE de Beaufort, the Abbess of Clairets, shivered despite the heat given off by the fire in the hearth in her study. She had been chilled to the bone ever since first setting eyes on that inquisitor Nicolas Florin. The old nightmarish visions had found their way back into her waking thoughts, and assailed her to the point where she feared those moments of semi-consciousness that precede sleep.

      If the Abbess had ever entertained any doubts as to the purity of the quest that bound her, her nephew Francesco and the late and good Benoît XI together, the arrival of that evil creature had silenced them for ever. But would the light they were striving to restore to the world be enough to defeat the Nicolas Florins who had darkened the centuries since the dawn of time? Francesco, whom she had brought up as her own son, was convinced that it would. And yet he had so little in common with other mortals; he was so much more like an angel who had come down from another world. And what did angels know of rage, terror and physical suffering?

      Her eyes grew misty with tears.

      Claire, my dear sister, your son is so like you. And yet he is so otherworldly. We are groping blindly through an endless labyrinth. We turn in circles, searching for the guiding thread. I am plagued by