Mathilde 01 - The Cup of Ghosts by Paul Doherty

and spat in my face. I kept still. He grasped my hand and felt the skin of my palm.
    ‘Soft,’ he whispered hoarsely, ‘like your flesh beneath.’ He pressed his groin against me. I flinched at his fetid breath. ‘You are one of the Secreti!’ he accused. ‘One of the gargoyles, one of King Philip’s legion of spies. Well, I’ll have my pleasure first.’ He pressed the tip of the dagger harder as he pushed up my skirt.
    ‘Please, please!’ I begged, trying to distract him.
    He laughed, lost in his own intended pleasure. I drew the Italian dagger from my own waistband, and as he pressed against me, one hand scrabbling at the points of his hose, I thrust deep, hard, into his left side up towards the heart. The shock and the pain sent him staggering back at a half-crouch, mouth open, coughing up his life blood. He lurched towards me. I moved quickly along the charnel house wall, which he hit, striking his head, before collapsing to the ground.
    I fled the Cemetery of the Innocents out on to the busy cobbled streets. Strange sights and sounds confused me, bells clanged, faces under wimples gaped in surprise, beggars scowled shrouded in their hoods, a pig nosed at the bloated corpse of a cat, a blind child clattered with his stick, a mastiff howled, hair raised, teeth snarling. I fled down an alleyway. An apothecary sign creaking in the breeze caught my glance. I remembered Uncle, his kindly eyes and gentle, soothing voice. I crouched in the narrow doorway of the shop, fighting for breath, wiping away the sweat. Narrow Face’s death was one thing, but the chatter he brought also frightened me. If it was no longer a rumour, if Isabella did not travel to England, what hope for me?
    I calmed myself. I had to return to Simon de Vitry; he would know what to do. I approached the merchant’s house avoiding the postern gate, I went up to the main door; it was off the latch. I opened it, stepped into the vestibule and was greeted by the horrors. A few paces away the manservant lay in a pool of his own blood, a crossbow quarrel firmly dug into his back; the clerk lay half out of the small chamber the merchant had first taken me to. At the bottom of the stairs the maid sprawled face down. She had taken a bolt in the chest, and the blood billowed out in a pool beneath her. I distinctly remember the balustrade was blood-free but I noticed a blur of blood high on the white plastered wall. I was so shocked by the horror of it all, I simply stared around this place of sudden death. I went back to the front door, pulling across the bolt, and gazed at the three corpses, all taken by surprise. Death had swept them into his net, suddenly, abruptly. I went across, gingerly edging round the pools of blood, and felt the skin of each corpse. They were not yet cold, the blood still congealing. I climbed the staircase, past the maid’s corpse, trying not to look at her staring eyes, shocked in death. I studied the bloodstain on the plaster and shook my head in surprise, then looked back at the servant girl’s corpse. She lay sprawled at the bottom of the stairs, slightly turned over; the crossbow bolt must have thudded into her and she had fallen forward, the blood splattering down her front on to the stairs. So how had the plaster been stained? Unless the assassin had moved the corpse then tried to climb the stairs, but he would have followed the same route as me, holding on to the balustrade, which was blood-free. I continued up.
    Monsieur Simon de Vitry lay on the small gallery just beneath a diptych showing Lazarus summoned from his tomb. The merchant was still wearing his nightgown, his flesh not yet cold. I reasoned that the assassin must have struck shortly before I came, then fled. I stepped over de Vitry’s corpse and entered his small bedchamber; its chests and coffers had been wrenched opened, papers and parchments tossed about. I examined the ground carefully, looking at the stains. How many assassins had there been? All I could