‘Even if one among them is guilty of it? In the light of our conversation before…’
Her eyes hardened and I felt her hand clamp tighter. ‘Have I not just impressed upon you that I know how to govern my own household?’ She spoke through her teeth. ‘We must impose order on this situation immediately. Balthasar, mobilise the guards, make sure they prevent—’
But her orders were interrupted by a further crash and judder of the doors as two men barged their way into the gallery bearing a limp body between them, a curtain of dark hair hanging down and swaying with the motion. In their wake surged a crowd of guests, shrieking and shoving one another for a better look.
‘You!’ Catherine roared, pointing at the guards flanking the doors to her chamber. ‘Get those people out of my private apartments. Call your fellows and make sure the guests are confined to the public rooms downstairs. Find the captain of my household guard and send him to me. Keep the doors barred.’
Her armed men jumped to obey and after some struggle the spectators were pushed back and the outer doors to the gallery closed. The two guards carrying the body laid her down gently on the wooden floor, her hair and white cloak spreading around her. Smears of blood stood out bright crimson against the white. Balthasar turned his face away, shielding his eyes, just as the air was shattered by a chorus of women’s screams, as the nymphs burst from Catherine’s inner chamber and skidded to a halt before the corpse of their friend.
‘Get back inside,’ Catherine ordered, in a voice that brooked no argument; howling and clutching one another, the girls obeyed. Their laments could be heard loudly after the doors had closed behind them.
Left alone, Catherine looked from me to Balthasar. Her face was pinched but she kept her bearing erect. ‘Where is my physician? Fetch him here.’
‘I believe he did not attend tonight, Your Majesty,’ Balthasar whimpered, unable to take his eyes from Léonie’s body.
‘Send for him at his house, then. And find Ruggieri. Anyone who can tell me what happened here. And, Balthasar – fetch the King to me immediately. Whatever he’s doing, drag him from it bodily if you have to.’
Balthasar shot me a brief glance, lowered his eyes to the corpse and scurried away, a hand pressed over his mouth to stifle his grief. If he were not Italian and theatrical, I might have said he was overdoing it.
Catherine let go of my arm and walked around the body. The girl’s eyes bulged in terror, her face drained white, the lips peeled back in a grimace. Her wrists and arms were smeared with blood and dirt. Dead leaves had tangled in her curtain of hair.
‘Well. Whatever threat you thought she posed to the King, she is none now,’ Catherine remarked quietly. She did not seem particularly distraught by the murder of a young woman who had served her for thirteen years, but that did not necessarily mean anything; she belonged to an age when a queen was expected to conceal her private feelings at all costs.
‘No. Someone has made certain of that,’ I said. We looked at one another. I suspected we were both wondering the same thing. There was a long pause. I cleared my throat.
‘Your Majesty,’ I ventured, ‘I have some knowledge of anatomy and a little experience in instances of unnatural death. Might I be permitted to make a cursory examination?’
Her brow creased. ‘It would not be seemly for you to handle the body of a young woman. You are not a physician.’
‘Neither is Ruggieri. He is an astrologer.’ And a charlatan, I wanted to add, but held my tongue. ‘With respect, Your Majesty, I would not be seeing anything she did not already show to three hundred spectators this evening.’
Again, I had the sense that her first instinct was to slap me, but instead she regarded the body in silence, her jaw working from side to side. At length she prodded Léonie’s limp arm with the end of her stick, turning it to expose the inside of the wrist. ‘See here. I am no physician either, but this has the appearance of self-slaughter, would you not say?’ I caught a note of supplication in her voice; she wanted me to confirm her conclusion.
I had already registered the slashes to the wrist, but I had also observed Léonie’s face. I crouched by the body and looked up at Catherine.
‘The appearance, yes. If I may?’
She pursed her lips, then nodded a grudging agreement. I lifted the right hand to show her. ‘These wounds are too superficial to have bled out. They are made horizontally across the wrist. The vein is not severed – see? These cuts could not have killed her.’
‘Then – what?’ For the first time, I glimpsed the mask of control slip a fraction. Catherine de Medici was frightened. I could not blame her; we both knew the person who had felt most threatened by Circe that night was Henri, and that it was I who had planted that fear.
‘Look.’ I lifted the coils of hair that had draped across her neck. ‘See this bruise at the throat, and the flecks of blood in the eyes? She was strangled, with a ligature by my guess. I think the incisions were made afterwards.’
Garrotted, I thought, by someone who knew what they were doing. Just like Joseph de Chartres. It must have happened quickly, before she could scream for help; there had been enough couples seeking out a private spot in the wood for someone to have heard something otherwise. I recalled the cry that had echoed through the trees while I was tussling with the man in the Greek mask, that I had taken for a woman in the throes of passion; could that
