Catherine appeared to be digesting this.
‘It is an interesting theory, Doctor Bruno. But as you say, you are not a physician. I suggest we do not leap to any conclusions. I will reserve judgement until I have heard an expert opinion.’
‘But you must have the clearing and the woods searched for any traces the killer may have left behind. The knife that was used, for a start. If she died by her own hand it would still be there.’
Catherine shifted her weight again and looked at me with a curious intensity. In the same instant I realised my mistake.
‘Clearing?’ she said, raising an eyebrow. ‘Woods?’
‘Or wherever she was found. Balthasar mentioned—’
‘Balthasar said she was found in the gardens, as I recall. You are the one who has introduced this clearing in the woods.’ Her gaze drifted again to my boots. I had a sudden dread that Gabrielle might have told her I was asking questions about Circe and that even now Catherine was drawing her own conclusions, pleased to have found a ready scapegoat.
But I was spared the necessity of responding as the door opened once again to admit a figure like a great crow, black wings flapping the length of the gallery. As he drew nearer I realised he was wearing the same costume as me, the Dottore from the Commedia, in black gown and sneering beaked mask. When he untied the mask and lifted it, the face beneath wore a remarkably similar expression of contempt.
Cosimo Ruggieri still wore his white beard long and forked, in emulation of some long-ago fashion of the Florentine aristocracy which he supposed gave him the look of a magus. He had developed more of a squint since I last saw him, presumably because he was too vain to admit his eyes were failing. He had always claimed to be older than his years in order to seem more venerable, but he must be at least of an age with Catherine; where she had grown stout, Ruggieri seemed to have shrivelled, his skin stretched tight over the bones of his face, dry and lined as one of his alchemical parchments.
‘Gracious Queen,’ he began, in his grandiose manner, offering her a sweeping bow but keeping his greedy little eyes trained on me, ‘it can be no accident that such black misfortune should befall your noble house on the day this Neapolitan sorcerer dares to show himself uninvited at your feast.’
I could not hold my tongue. ‘Sing a different tune, Ruggieri. At least no one has ever accused me of keeping a child’s severed head on an altar to speak prophecies.’
He gave a dusty laugh that rattled in his throat. ‘What need have you of an intermediary, when it is known you commune with the Devil face to face?’
Catherine rapped her stick hard on the floor. ‘Gentlemen! A woman is dead. I did not call you here to bicker like children.’
Ruggieri looked briefly chastened, which gave me some satisfaction. ‘Tell me how I may be of service, Majesty,’ he said, holding out his hands in supplication.
‘I want you to look at this girl. Tell me what you think happened to her.’
His eyes darted nervously to me; clearly he feared it might be a trick question. He made a great show of pacing around the body, pulling at the twin points of his beard in contemplation. When he could delay no longer, he addressed Catherine.
‘It would seem she has dispatched her own soul to Hell. A sin against God and nature,’ he added, adopting a suitably sage expression. I snorted.
‘Doctor Bruno says otherwise,’ Catherine said, watching me carefully.
‘Doctor Bruno says the universe is infinite, but he has no proof of that either.’
Catherine allowed a flicker of a smile, but it did not touch her eyes. I considered confessing to her that I had encountered Léonie in the copse and repeating what she had said to me in error, but instinctive caution told me I would not help my own cause by placing myself at the scene of yet another murder, particularly after my ill-judged comment about the clearing, and in any case, the moment had passed; I should have spoken before Ruggieri arrived.
I glanced across at the old sorcerer. Léonie had been waiting for someone. She had been in a state of considerable distress, but had steeled herself to tell that person she could not go ahead with a task they had evidently demanded of her – a task she was terrified of carrying out, something so grave she believed it would damn her soul. I could think of few sins that would appear so terrible to a woman steeped in the casual debauchery of Catherine’s court, except murder. To my ears, Léonie’s wild words had as good as confirmed Paul’s letter and his dying warning: that she had been part of a plot to kill the King.
The more I turned over her outburst in my mind, the more tantalisingly this hypothesis took shape: she had been charged by some unknown person to assassinate Henri and had lost her nerve. The conspirators manipulating her realised she had become a danger to them – especially if they learned that she had confessed her treasonable plans to a priest – and decided she needed to be silenced. I could go so far as to speculate that, since she had once been Guise’s lover, the Duke may still have some hold over her; it seemed the most likely explanation. Although there was always an alternative possibility that could not yet be discounted: that the King, alarmed by my warning, had acted on impulse to disarm the threat of Circe for good. I could see full well that this was the fear behind Catherine’s reluctance to accept that the girl had been murdered. I wondered if Ruggieri had reached the same conclusion and scrambled to support his mistress with the verdict she wanted
