“Are you sure you were not hurt, my lord?” he asked, his eyes flicking to those profuse bloodstains. “Thank God you had a man with you in the cemetery! We feared you’d go in alone.”
“I did.” John paused in the act of mounting. “He is not one of mine, is one of yours. I do not know his name, but I recognized him after, assumed you’d sent him to follow me.”
“No,” Justin said, “we did not.” His eyes met Durand’s, but the knight seemed just as baffled. Looking no less perplexed now, John led them over to the wounded man. As the torch flames fell upon that ashen, familiar face, Justin caught his breath. “My God, it is Morgan!”
CHAPTER 21
March 1194
PARIS, FRANCE
Morgan had probably never gotten so much attention and coddling in his life. Unfortunately, he was in no condition to enjoy it. Petronilla provided a private bedchamber for the injured man, and she and Claudine hovered around his bed like benevolent butterflies as they waited for the doctor to arrive. Women were expected to have some knowledge of the healing arts, but Justin was touched by their solicitude, for it seemed genuine. He was not surprised when Emma showed no inclination to visit the sickroom, for it took more imagination than he possessed to envision her nursing the poor, the maimed, the halt, and the blind. Nor was he surprised by Ursula’s indifference; she did not even appear all that troubled by John’s close brush with death.
Justin was very surprised, though, by John’s obvious concern, for gratitude had never been one of his more conspicuous virtues. But he’d sent at once for the French king’s own physician and insisted upon seeing for himself that Morgan was comfortably settled. Only then had he gone to clean off a dead man’s blood.
As soon as he’d bathed and changed, John had summoned Durand and Justin and banished a pouting Ursula from his bedchamber. Servants had brought wine and a fire burned in the hearth but that richly furnished room was still as cold and forbidding as a crypt.
“Tell me,” John had commanded, and they did, taking turns as they laid out their reasons for believing the Breton was Arzhela’s killer. John listened without interruption, but they were not expecting his response. “No,” he said, “I think not.”
“So, by purest chance, those hired killers just happened to be lurking in the graveyard instead of the man you were to meet?”
“No, Durand, I do not believe that. I am not a fool, as you’d do well to remember.”
“What, then, are you saying?” Justin interposed. “Why would the Breton have tried to murder you if he’d not slain the Lady Arzhela?”
“I am saying I do not think he killed Arzhela to keep her quiet. You do not cut off your toe to treat a blister.”
Seeing that they did not understand, John said impatiently, “The Breton was not guilty of a personal betrayal. All know his services are available to the highest bidder. Would I have been wroth to find out he’d offered his skills to Constance? Of course. Would I have done whatever I could to make him regret it? You could safely say that. But I would not have declared a blood feud against the man and he was shrewd enough to know that. I might even have made use of his talents again should the need arise. Killing Arzhela would have changed all the rules of the game.”
“You do not believe he killed her, then?”
“Do not fret, de Quincy. I am not finding fault with your logic or your conclusions. I do think the Breton killed Arzhela, for nothing else explains his mad attack upon me tonight. But there is a piece missing from the puzzle, his real motive for the murder.”
At that moment, there was a knock on the door and Claudine popped her head inside. “My lord John, the doctor wants to talk to you about Morgan.”
Justin would have liked to accompany him, but John offered no invitation, and he sank back in his seat. While John was gone, he and Durand speculated about his reasoning. They still thought the need to silence Arzhela was a sufficient motive for murder, but they conceded that John knew the Breton better than they did. John returned before they could pursue this subject at length, and the news he brought was not good.
“The doctor cannot say if he’ll recover, claiming it is too early to tell. If you ask me, physicians have found the perfect way to fleece their flock. The patient will live or die. No way they can be wrong, is there? Rather like a soothsayer telling a woman with child that she’ll give birth to either a boy or a girl.” John flung himself down upon his bed. “‘Wounds to the head are difficult to heal,’” he mimicked. “Fool doctors. We do not need them for the injuries that are easy to heal.”
“What does he say we should do for Morgan?”
“He promises to be back on the morrow with more potions and herbs. But for all his fine talk, I’d say Morgan’s best chances rest with the Almighty.” Reaching for his wine cup, John drank, frowned, and drank again. “So if neither of you sent Morgan to the cemetery, why was he there? Why would he have followed me?”
Justin shook his head. “My lord, those are questions only Morgan can answer.”
John grimaced. “It seems to me that we have an abundance of questions and a dearth of answers, and I am getting heartily sick of it. As far as we know, there are two men with the answers we need. I doubt that either of you are capable of running the Breton to ground, but you ought to be a match for Arzhela’s hotheaded lover. Find Simon de Lusignan even if you have to search every hovel and tavern and bawdy house in Paris. Find him!”
Security was increased at Petronilla’s town house, and while she did her best in her role as gracious hostess, she had the bemused expression of a woman aware that she’d utterly lost control of events. John instructed Garnier to take men and prowl the city’s taverns in search of Simon de Lusignan, a task they embraced with commendable enthusiasm. Claudine volunteered to sit by Morgan’s bedside in case he regained consciousness. And Justin and Durand left the house unnoticed and unheralded, pursuing a hunch.
They walked along the rue de la Draperie, heading for the Grand Pont that linked the Right Bank to the Ile de la Cite. This river island, anchored in the middle of the Seine, was the beating heart of Paris, the left ventricle ruled by the Crown, the right ventricle by the Church. In a domain divided between the French king and the Bishop of Paris, here were located both the royal palace and the cathedral of Notre-Dame, only partially completed but already giving promise of the magnificence it would eventually obtain. And here, too, was their destination, the Hotel-Dieu.
“I hope you are right, de Quincy. Without some luck, we do not have a prayer in Hell of finding de Lusignan. What’s one fish in a sea of forty thousand?”
“What made me think of this,” Justin said, “was a similar hunt back in London. You remember Gilbert the Fleming. Well, we were trying to track down his mad dog of a partner, and it finally occurred to me that a man like that was bound to run afoul of the law. So we went to Newgate Gaol and there he was, already facing the hangman’s noose. Sometimes the most obvious answer is the one overlooked.”
“So you’re guessing that Simon might be in need of a doctor’s care.”
“All that blood was convincing evidence that someone had been hurt, and we know Simon had bloodstains on his clothing. We also know he did not die on the way to Paris. So why has he not contacted John? Changed his mind? Not likely after riding nigh on two hundred miles.”
By now they’d reached the Grand Pont. Justin was very impressed, for unlike the old London bridge, this one was of stone, almost twenty feet wide, and so well fortified that the moneychangers and even some goldsmiths chose to operate their businesses from the small stalls and booths lining both sides of the span. It was so thronged with people and carts and horses that it took them a quarter hour to cross over to the island. It was slow going there as well, for the streets were barely as wide as a sword’s length in places. Justin was content to follow Durand’s lead, as he’d boasted there was not one of Paris’s three hundred streets he couldn’t find blindfolded.
The Hotel-Dieu was the oldest hospital in Paris, under the supervision of the canons of nearby Notre-Dame. When they were ushered into the great salle, they halted in astonishment, for it was enormous, more than three hundred feet long and filled with beds. Not only was every bed occupied, many held two patients and a few even
