‘I remember you. Homesick, were you? Missing the old place?’
‘You will recall I mentioned my friends at the palace,’ I said calmly. He blanched, and the laughter died on his lips. I gestured to Jacopo. ‘This is Signor Corbinelli, secretary to the Queen Mother.’
Jacopo held out Catherine’s seal again. ‘You have been taking bribes to keep a prisoner here illegally. We have orders from the Queen Mother to release him.’
The mockery in his eyes gave way to fear. ‘But – I can’t allow—’
‘We are also commanded to arrest anyone who tries to obstruct us, in the name of Queen Catherine,’ Jacopo said, with the same steady air of authority.
‘He’s dead,’ the man said, panicking.
‘You’re a poor liar,’ I said.
‘Honest to God – he died this morning.’
‘I’d like to see for myself.’ I tried to shoulder past him but he blocked me, barring the entrance with his outstretched arms.
‘Look, I’ll lose my head if I let you take him.’ His voice was shrill with fright now.
‘You’ll lose it quicker if you don’t,’ I muttered.
‘No, he won’t,’ Jacopo said, behind me. ‘Beheading is for the nobility. He won’t be granted anything like that kind of dignity in the manner of his death. There’ll be nothing quick about it.’
‘Oh, Jesus.’ The man crossed himself as he stepped aside. ‘I only did as I was ordered, you understand – I didn’t know he wasn’t supposed to be here.’
‘You can save that for later. Just show us where he is.’
He led us back through the warren of passageways leading through the old Palais, until we stopped at the hatch of the dungeon. A shudder passed through me at the memory of it.
‘He’s in no fit state to be moved,’ the gaoler said, as he lowered a ladder down into the stinking darkness. His manner had turned ingratiating, as if he thought that cooperation was his best hope of immunity. ‘You’ve seen him, monsieur. You take him through the streets this cold night, it’ll kill him.’
‘Because he is so warm and comfortable now?’ I gave him a hard look. ‘It will be better for his health than staying where he is, I assure you.’
I took the lantern, filled my lungs and climbed down into the oubliette, trying to hold my breath against the stench. I had not forgotten those minutes of blind terror when I had believed I might be here for good; the fetid air stung my eyes, sharp with ammonia, bringing the memory back all the clearer. The dungeon was freezing, a bone-deep, damp cold that seeped in through the skin. From a corner, a scuffling noise alerted me to the presence of the prisoner, somewhere in the shadows beyond the reach of the lantern. I held up the light and picked out the wasted figure of the Count, cowering in a corner and making that strange inhuman whimpering sound I had heard before. He looked even more like a corpse than the last time I had seen him, if that were possible. Fighting my instinctive revulsion, I approached him slowly. He lifted his sightless sockets and appeared to sniff the air.
‘Who is there?’ he said, in that cracked voice.
‘Monsieur. Don’t be afraid. I have come to help you.’ I reached out and laid a hand on his arm. He shrank away from me. It was like touching dead flesh. ‘We are going to take you away from here, my lord.’
He tilted his head towards me. ‘Why do you call me that?’
‘You are a count, my lord. You are the Comte de Saint-Fermin.’
‘No longer. I am a dead man.’
‘Not if I can help it,’ I said grimly. ‘Do you remember me? I was with you here a few days ago. The Italian.’
He made an empty noise that might even have been laughter. ‘Days, years. I cannot distinguish one from another. It is all just darkness. The mind longs for oblivion, but the body stubbornly endures, beyond all reason.’
I should have realised he would have no concept of time passing. After a pause I felt his bony fingers clutch at my sleeve. ‘There was an Italian boy here,’ he said, lifting his chin as if listening for some prompt from the past. ‘He spoke to me of Circe.’
‘Your wife,’ I prompted, folding my hand over his.
‘In name, perhaps. But she was never mine, in her heart.’ I wanted to press him further, but he fell into a coughing fit that threatened to tear his fragile frame apart. When it subsided, I hooked an arm under his.
‘Come with me. You will have food and warmth, and rest. You will be free.’
‘Free.’ That dusty laugh again. To my surprise, I felt him resist with what little strength he had. ‘I am dying, boy. It no longer matters to me where I do it.’
‘It matters to me, my lord. If I leave you here, you will be dead by tomorrow.’
‘Then it cannot come soon enough.’
‘Please, my lord.’ I slackened my grip and bent closer to him. ‘What do you dream of, in here, when you remember your old life?’
‘The sun on my face,’ he said, without hesitation. He lifted his ravaged eyes upward. ‘Birdsong.’
‘Would you not like to feel that again, before you die?’
The claws around my arm tightened their grip.
‘I believe you would,’ I persisted. ‘I’m afraid it is December, so there are limits, but we will do our best. I can probably rustle up a seagull.’
He did not speak, but he stopped trying to pull away and I thought I saw him incline his head.
‘This journey will hurt you,’ I said, draping his skeletal arm around my shoulder. ‘I cannot help that, and I’m sorry for it. But at the end, there will be a soft bed, and hot food, and rest.’
‘Come, then,’ he said, in a voice so thin it was barely the ghost of a whisper.
I do not know how he endured the journey without screaming; thirteen years in that dungeon must have taught him
