The Breath of the Rose. Andrea Japp

spluttered the young girl, on the brink of tears.

      ‘Oh, pull yourself together! Spare me your floods of tears. This is a serious matter and I’m in no mood to have to comfort you.’

      At this, Adélaïde went running into the garden where she burst out crying.

      Annelette’s eyes were riveted on the contaminated rye so she scarcely heard the young nun’s sobs. Who had prepared this flour and to what end? Who had hidden it in the herbarium and why? In order to incriminate her should it be discovered? More importantly, who but she was well versed enough in poisons to know about ergot’s horrific properties?

      Should she inform the Abbess? She was in no doubt. Éleusie de Beaufort was one of the few women at the abbey whom Annelette considered truly intelligent and for whom she consequently felt a combination of affection and respect. For this reason she was reluctant to upset her. The past few months had been a trying time for the Abbess, and the inquisitor’s arrival appeared to have sapped her usual strength.

      First of all she must think. What better place than a medicine cabinet to conceal poison. Moreover, it was conceivable that an intruder had managed to enter the abbey enclosure and slip into the herbarium. On the other hand, the idea of someone returning regularly to fetch the hidden substance was absurd. The poisoner must be attached to the abbey. The chaplain who took the services was an improbable candidate owing to his age, his near-blindness and his increasing tendency to fall asleep. This meant that the poisoner had to be a woman.

      During the next half-hour, Annelette went through a mental list of all the sisters. She began by eliminating the lay servants who had been dedicated to God. Not one of them could read or would be capable of preparing a poison whose existence was known only to a handful of scientists. She forced herself to ignore personal likes and dislikes, limiting herself to complete impartiality and objectivity – no small achievement for someone who tended to judge her fellow human beings harshly.

      Nonetheless, she immediately struck Éleusie de Beaufort off her mental list. Éleusie was a learned woman but her total lack of interest in the sciences made her a poor candidate. And Éleusie’s faith was so exacting that it would not tolerate any imperfection. She ruled out Jeanne d’Amblin on the same grounds, despite the antipathy she felt towards the woman – an antipathy she was honest enough to admit sprang from her envy of the extern sister’s freedom from the cloister. She doubted Jeanne even knew ergot existed. As for that sweet but silly girl Adélaïde, whom if anything she found exasperating, she was at a loss in any situation that did not involve plucking a bird, skinning a hare or scalding the bristles off a baby pig. And Blanche de Blinot, the senior member of the abbey who was Éleusie’s second in command, as well as the prioress, was so ancient that she looked as though she might crumple up at any moment. Her deafness, a source of occasional mirth to the younger sisters, infuriated Annelette to the point where she avoided talking to her for fear of being obliged to repeat the same sentence five times over. In contrast, the cellarer nun, Berthe de Marchiennes, with her permanent expression of devoutness, was a more than likely suspect. She was educated, the youngest member of a large but impoverished family that had looked upon her – the eleventh child and a female into the bargain – as superfluous. Berthe was one of those women who grow more graceful with age but who when young are extremely plain. Lacking both a dowry and good looks, the monastic life had offered itself as a last resort. Annelette froze. Couldn’t this be a description of her own life? The abbey had been the only place where she could exercise her talents. Another face replaced that of the perpetually pained cellarer nun: Yolande de Fleury – the sister in charge of the granary. Who was better placed than she, whose task it was to oversee the sowing of the crops, to have knowledge of crop disease and access to the contaminated rye? By the same token, Adèle de Vigneux, the granary keeper, must be considered a prime suspect. Likewise the treasurer nun, the infirmary nun and the sister in charge of the fishponds and henhouses, and so on … And yet, opportunity alone could not explain such a heinous crime as poisoning. The culprit needed a motive, but above all a killer’s instinct. Despite the low esteem in which she held her fellow human beings, Annelette was forced to admit that the majority of the other sisters possessed no such instinct.

      Night was falling when she left the herbarium, after removing the troublesome flour from the table top. She had whittled her list down to a few names, faces, possibilities. Still, Annelette Beaupré was clever enough to realise that she had very little evidence to back up her suspicions. She had simply used a process of elimination to exclude those she considered unlikely killers.

      After she had recovered from her fright and stopped crying, Adélaïde Condeau made what she considered an important decision: she would do without the sage and therefore avoid any further confrontation with that shrew Annelette. How unpleasant she was when she set her mind to it, that overgrown creature! Adélaïde immediately reproached herself for having such uncharitable thoughts. She screwed up her face as she finished the cup of lavender and cinnamon tea sweetened with honey that Blanche de Blinot, the senior nun, had kindly brought her. She had put too much honey in and it tasted sickly, especially taken cold. Her face broke into a smile: Blanche was very old, and it was well known that old people developed a taste for the only sweetness they had left in life.

      Rosemary was a perfect herb, and went well with game. Moreover, she had enough of it stored in the kitchens to make another visit to the herbarium unnecessary. Three novices had spent the morning gutting and quartering the hares that now lay in a macabre heap on one of the trestle tables. This was Adélaïde’s favourite time of day; vespers* was about to begin and the novices, who, like her, were excused from attending the service in order to prepare supper, were busy laying the table in the great hall under the watchful eye of the refectory nun. A moment of calm descended upon the enormous vaulted kitchen, broken only by the roar of the fire in the great hearth, the occasional patter of a sister’s feet hurrying to the scriptorium, the crackle of the stove or the gurgle of pipes.

      Adélaïde had been daunted at first by her promotion to head of kitchens and meals; it seemed to be more about accounts and inventories than pots and pans. Sensing her hesitation, the Abbess and Berthe de Marchiennes – the cellarer nun to whom she reported directly – hastened to assure her that her primary duty would continue to be that of providing them with food. For Adélaïde loved to chop, mix, prepare, purée, simmer, braise, thicken and season. She loved preparing food for people, nourishing them. No earthly pleasure could compare in her eyes with trying to invent new recipes for soup or crystallised fruit, as she frequently did. Perhaps the root cause was her precarious start in life; she had been close to starvation when a cooper discovered her at the edge of Condeau Forest.

      The long wooden spoon she was holding made a hollow sound as it slipped from her hand and bounced off the tiled floor. The bread. The rye bread she had secretly given the Pope’s emissary to nourish him on his journey. She had not ordered any that week from Sylvine Taulier, the sister in charge of the bread oven. So where had the little loaf come from? A sudden giddy spell nearly caused her to lose her balance and she clutched the edge of the table just in time. What was happening to her? She felt as though thousands of pins and needles were pricking her hands and feet, jabbing at her face and mouth. She tried to make a fist with her hand, but her limbs felt numb. Her stomach was on fire and a cold sweat poured from her brow, drenching the collar of her robe. She was finding it difficult to breathe. Still holding on to the edge of the trestle table, she attempted to move towards the door, towards the others. She wanted to cry for help but no sound came out of her mouth.

      She felt herself slump to the floor and she put her hand on her chest. She couldn’t feel her heart. Was it even beating? She opened her mouth and tried to breathe, but the air refused to flow into her lungs.

      Why had she been saved by that man, only to be poisoned a few years later? What sense was there in that?

      A last prayer. May death take her quickly. Her prayer would not be granted.

      For more than half an hour Adélaïde veered between pain and incomprehension. Fully conscious, the sweat running down her face, she could make out the other sisters flooding into the cavernous kitchen, frightened, shouting, weeping. She saw Hedwige du Thilay cross herself and close her eyes as she held her crucifix up to her lips. She recognised Jeanne d’Amblin’s