The proprietor of the hotel had insisted on showing Sister Isabella personally to Tacit’s room. He said the little act of goodness for a servant of the Lord would serve him well when he came to meet his maker, although this didn’t stop him staring longingly at her cleavage as she enquired as to the whereabouts of Tacit’s lodgings as they climbed the dark and winding stairwell, as decrepit and filthy as the bar downstairs. Every few steps, he stopped and looked back to examine the gently bouncing breasts, checking they were still safely secured beneath her tightly drawn top. She made no attempt to cover herself from his prying eyes but glared at him unremittingly outside the door to Tacit’s room when he tried to make small talk, until he slipped away awkwardly like a scolded dog caught stealing food.
She turned to look at the cracked and blackened door. She wasn’t surprised Tacit had chosen to stay here. Its decor matched Tacit’s charm. She knocked and the Inquisitor growled, “Open,” from the other side.
She turned the handle of the door and stepped into the dirty, pokey little room. There was a smell of stale sweat in the air. A single filthy unmade bed ran alongside one wall, its one measly sheet ruffled and marked. To the right of it was a casement window, bent and broken lattice across the glass. A sideboard stood on the wall opposite the bed, a jug and bowl set alongside a number of bottles, all showing different heights of brown coloured spirit inside, glasses set beside them.
A circular table, far too big for the room, stood in the centre of it. There was no chair. The only place to sit was the bed. Tacit stood by the window peering out into the early afternoon light.
She pulled a face and curled her fingers into her palms, as if to avoid dirtying them on any of the surfaces. She looked again at the bed and the stained sheet. She chose to stand.
“Just got up?” she asked with a smirk, looking again at the bed, and then folded her arms, resting back against the wall.
Tacit ignored her. He pulled a large leather bound case out from beneath the bed and thumped it down onto the table. He unbuckled the strap holding it shut and thrust it open, taking a moment to examine its contents.
He didn’t look up. He stared hard into the case, as if reacquainting himself with an old face.
Isabella stifled a yawn. “Cardinal Poré’s on his way,” she said. “He’s bringing the chorister with him. Says the chorister’s lost his tongue.”
Tacit looked up.
“Not literally,” the Sister assured him. She lent forward and untied her cape, looking around the room for a hook upon which to hang it. Despite the state of the room, it was at least warm. Too warm.
“Is there somewhere I can hang this?” she asked.
Tacit’s eyes rose to the curvaceous form of the Sister, emphasised by the clinging cotton of her gown. They rested on her breasts, her shoulders, the curve of her back, the round turn of her buttocks. He wrenched his eyes away and whispered something under his breath, forcing his attention back to the case and its contents.
Isabella caught a sense of the Inquisitor’s embarrassment and felt the draw of a smile on her face. She pursed her lips and held up the cape. “No hooks, no?” she asked, breathing in deeply so that her chest was even more pronounced.
Tacit, his eyes still locked on his belongings, pointed to the end of the bed. Isabella stepped over and laid the cape down upon it, whilst Tacit began to unpack the contents of the trunk: two silver crucifixes, one grey revolver, two vial racks, each with a row of vials tied securely within, three round bellied bottles containing unknown potions, three silver tipped crossbow bolts and a hand crossbow, a collection of wooden stakes, a mallet, one silver mirror, a bag containing a fine powdery dust, a heavy weighted tome, a short length of fine rope, a net bag containing herbs, bulbs and other flowery assortments. He huffed gruffly when the case was empty and its belongings covered the table.
“You really should learn to travel lighter,” Isabella suggested, stepping to the sideboard. “Must take you an age to get through customs. Do you have anything to drink other than …” She let her words trail off, as she looked along the bottles of liquor. “What’s with the booze?” she asked suddenly.
“What’s with the questions?” Tacit shot back, picking up the crossbow and feeling its weight.
Isabella leant back against the sideboard. She stared around the walls of the grubby room, taking in its shabby gloom.
“You’ve not put the symbol of our Lord up.”
“Meaning?”
“Where’s the crucifix? Standard protocol for travelling Priests. To hang up a crucifix so –”
“I’m not a Priest,” Tacit scowled, slamming shut the lid of the case and placing the crossbow upon it.
Isabella looked at the weapon and then the Inquisitor, crossing her arms beneath her breasts. “So why do you drink?”
She watched as Tacit raised his head, staring straight ahead to the empty wall with his cold, dark eyes. “So why do you dress like a prostitute?” he shot back.
“I dress how I like. It doesn’t affect my work.”
“You’re a Sister. You should dress accordingly.”
“Meaning?”
“All those eyes on you.”
“Like yours?” Isabella retorted, raising an eyebrow and the edge of her mouth.
The air around Tacit darkened. “You should remember your vows of celibacy,” he warned.
“I never took them.”
With how he was standing, she couldn’t see Tacit’s face. He was relieved.
A knock on the door drew them both away from the rising tension.
“It’s open,” they called together. The door was pushed open, Cardinal Poré standing in its doorway, a small and terrified looking boy in front of him. The Cardinal’s hand was on his shoulder and he gave the boy a gentle nudge to encourage him inside.
“Cardinal Poré,” Isabella called, stepping around the table to welcome them. “I didn’t expect you to have accompanied the boy. You could have sent him alone.”
“As feared, the boy is terrified. His tongue is lame,” the Cardinal replied. “I thought it wiser to accompany him, especially as there are ill tidings abroad.”
Isabella crouched down so she was level with the boy’s eyes.
“Hello,” she said, smiling warmly. “I’m Sister Isabella. What’s your name?”
The chorister looked at her with wide terrified eyes and turned his head to the Cardinal.
“I am afraid you’ll find the child will not speak,” Cardinal Poré announced, closing the door behind him gently. He drew his hands into the cuffs of his sleeves. “He has been … shocked into silence by events,” the Cardinal continued, looking over to the hunched figure of the Inquisitor staring hard and suspiciously at the child. He then looked about the room with disdain. “Are the surroundings adequate, Inquisitor Tacit? I could reserve you a room at the Cathedral residences which would perhaps suit you better?” he suggested, looking dismissively around the shoddily cleaned and decorated room. Tacit ignored him.
“Did he ever speak?” he growled, his cold unmoving eyes on the boy.
“Who, the boy? Yes, of course,” replied Poré, placing an arm across the child’s shoulder. “He has a beautiful voice, both in speech and song. But these terrible events, they have choked it from him, the poor boy.”
Tacit grunted, making the child turn to look. Isabella cupped the child’s face in her hands and drew his gaze back to hers. He had a beautiful face, pale skin like china.
“Has the voice got lost somewhere inside you, little man?” she asked, kindly, her French fluent, as if she was a local of Arras.
The boy nodded cautiously in reply, before looking up at the Cardinal for guidance.
“Well, what we need to do is find that little voice again because we need to ask it some questions about yesterday. Would that be okay, to try and do that?” Isabella pressed gently.
The child began to nod his head but, as he did so, he stopped and began to shake it instead.
“It’s Julio, isn’t it?” she asked.
A nod grew out of the shake.
“That’s a lovely name,” the Sister said to the boy. “Okay, why don’t you sit yourself down here on the end of the bed, Julio, and we’ll try and find that little voice inside of you? Okay?”
She led the boy to the bed and sat him down on her gown, crouching before him. Isabella trusted that the boy’s backside was cleaner than Tacit’s bed. Tacit looked down at them contemptuously and made no attempt to a hide a yawn.
“So, my name is Sister Isabella,” she began in a warm and deliciously inviting voice. “I am here to help find out what happened and to try and make everything all okay? Okay, Julio?”
The boy nodded, looked up at the Cardinal and then looked back at the Sister, nodding again.
“So, you’ve had a horrible fright and you don’t want to talk about it and I completely understand that.” She rested her hands on the thin thighs of the boy in front of her. “It was awful what happened to poor Father Andreas and that is why we need you to tell us what you know, what you saw, anything that might help us find who did this to the Father.”
The boy looked up at the Cardinal and then back down into his lap. Isabella smiled and rubbed the side of his head.
“Did you like the Father?” she asked.
The boy nodded slowly and sniffed.
The boy nodded and sniffed again, twisting his hands together in his lap.
“Oh, poor lamb,” Isabella continued. “Then help us find who did this thing to your friend.”
The boy twitched with his mouth and looked up from Isabella to the Cardinal and back again. He pursed his lips, as if willing himself to speak, but then shook his head and dropped his eyes back to his lap.
“Speak boy!” shouted Tacit, resting an elbow on the top of his case. Isabella shot him a glare. The child stared up at him wide eyed. “Stop wasting our time! Tell us what you know!”
“Please, Tacit!” the Cardinal cried, his hands together in prayer. “Be gentle with your questioning. This child has witnessed much and his torment is terrible. He’s scared witless!” As if the words had awoken a sudden protectiveness within the Cardinal, he strode forward, his hands held aloft. “Enough!” he announced, reaching out to gather the child from the bed.
Instantly, Inquisitor Tacit picked up the steel revolver from the table and pointed it directly at the child.
“Speak,” he growled, staring down the long barrel of the gun into the wide terror of the child’s eyes.
The chorister cried out and froze. The Cardinal fell against the wall muttering, his hand to his mouth.
“Tacit, have you lost control of your senses?” he cried.
Tacit gritted his teeth and cocked the pistol.
“Speak!”
Isabella hung her head in a hand and shook it gently. She slipped to one side, her back against a wall, her face deep in her fingers, hiding a look combining disbelief and shame. The child began to sob uncontrollably and looked fearfully from the barrel of the gun to the Cardinal. He began to raise his hands to the Cardinal as a means of rescue.
“Please, for all that is holy in the world,” Cardinal Poré begged, stepping forward to guide the Inquisitor’s aim to one side.
Tacit stepped beyond him and pushed the barrel tight into the forehead of the child. “Speak,” he said. “Last chance.”
“For goodness sake!” the Cardinal cried, but at the same time the chorister blurted out, “The woman!” through tears and sobs.
“The woman, what?” Tacit asked, the gun still tight to the child’s forehead.
“She’d come to see Father Andreas, yesterday, earlier on, that morning, before lunchtime.” He ran the words into each other, as if he couldn’t get them out quick enough. “She came to see him. She carried a parcel. She gave it to him. Father Andreas seemed upset, but he took the parcel.”
“Parcel? What was it like?”
“Wrapped in paper. Size of a, I don’t know, a baby or a large fish.”
“What did he do with it?”
“Put it in the antechamber of the Cathedral.”
“In its paper wrapping?”
The boy nodded despairingly, moans and tears clutching in his throat.
“What’s her name? The woman?”
“I don’t know,” the boy whimpered.
“Seen her before?”
“No.”
“Did you hear what they said to each other?”
The chorister tried to shake his head but found the revolver made any movement difficult. “No, I was sent away to collect the hymn books for the Mass that evening, while they talked.”
“How long did she stay?”
“A few minutes.”
“Did she say anything to you as she left?”
“No. She just left.”
“Had you seen her before?”
“No.”
“What did she look like?”
“Dark hair. Tall. Slim.”
“Do you recognise the description?” Tacit threw the question at the Cardinal.
“Good heavens, no!” Poré roared back, his face crimson with fury.
“Did Father Andreas say anything else, after she had left?” Tacit asked Julio again.
The boy hesitated, misunderstanding what Tacit was asking.
He scowled and raised his voice even louder. “Did he say anything more about the woman to you, after she had gone?” the Inquisitor hissed, pushing the barrel hard into the skull of the child.
“No. No, he didn’t.”
Tacit’s finger tightened around the trigger of the gun. The chorister cried out, pleading to be spared. Cardinal Poré screamed, reaching forward for the revolver.
The gun clicked.
Tacit turned and wandered nonchalantly back to the case, Isabella staring open mouthed at him.
“It’s okay,” he grunted, as he put the revolver back onto the table. “The gun was never loaded.”