Isabella looked up at the darkening skies over the city.
“It’s too late to go to Fampoux now,” she said, pulling her arms around her as if to illustrate the creeping gloom and cold. “It’s a good two hours’ walk from Arras. We’d never get there before dark.”
“I agree,” replied Tacit, sticking his hands in his pockets, as he trudged through the streets of the city back towards the centre and his lodgings. The hollow echo of explosions further east forced their way between the buildings. The Germans were renewing their onslaught on the British lines with gusto.
“You’re agreeing with me?” replied Isabella, with a brightening tone. “Don’t tell me you’re lightening up?”
Tacit ignored her comment. “We can’t go there tonight. Not unless we can find transport to take us out there more quickly.” A thunderous clatter sounded on the outskirts of the city, sending the last of the birds still to find shelter flocking to the skies. “And I suspect that’ll be difficult.” He scratched his chin and put his hand back into the depths of his pocket. “We shouldn’t go to Fampoux in the dark.”
“We shouldn’t be out in the open either,” commented the Sister, as another shell landed close to the first. The noise of it crumpling into the earth was followed, a short time later, by a cacophony of tumbling bricks and stones. Somewhere in the city a building had collapsed. “The Germans are making up for lost time. We should get inside.”
“I’ve been thinking,” said Isabella, pulling her cape tight around her.
“Really?” Tacit replied, doubtfully.
“We should go see the Cardinal.”
The comment surprised him. He was impressed with the Sister’s dedication to the case. After all, if he was tired, she must have been exhausted.
“Poré?” Tacit growled. “I don’t see why?”
“We should tell him about Sandrine. He might know her. Be able to explain the connection.”
“We know the connection,” retorted Tacit, his mind turning to the drink waiting for him back in the hotel. “The Father’s brother’s girlfriend. Maybe even the Father’s girlfriend for all we know?” The uttering of such a thought seemed to unsettle Tacit. He scowled and wiped his lips, as if the words had dirtied them. “Anyway, I don’t trust him.”
“Who? Poré? Why?”
“His unwillingness to allow us to interrogate the chorister.”
“Who you were threatening with a gun!”
“His lack of openness about just who was with Father Andreas at the end of Mass.”
“An oversight. Come on, Tacit. What have we got? Not much, and if you have your suspicions, a meeting with the Cardinal might help shed more light on just what is going on?”
Tacit scowled and sunk his thick neck into the folds of his cassock collar. “We know who the girl is and where she lives.”
“Yes we do, but Poré might be able to give us something more ahead of seeking her out.”
“I doubt it,” grunted the Inquisitor. “He seemed to make it clear he didn’t recognise her, that we’ll get nothing more from him.”
“Come on, Tacit. We’ve got nothing, other than a name and a description. We have no motive. Nothing. All we have is a body.” Isabella realised then how much she was enjoying the thrill of the assignment.
“Bodies,” the Inquisitor corrected.
A third shell thundered into the city, somewhere closer to where they were walking. The main square and the Cathedral were now just a few blocks away. Isabella fancied her chances more – if the barrage was intensifying – within the solid stone construct of a Cathedral, compared to the exposure of the street.
“Come on,” she insisted, “the Cathedral is just up here. Let’s see what Poré knows.”
“He’ll be starting Mass,” warned Tacit.
“Perfect. We can catch him afterwards. And we can both reacquaint ourselves with the Lord during the service.”
“I’d rather go around and talk to some of the locals.”
“Yes, I know what you mean by talk. I think my suggestion is safer. We’ve got to try and find out more before we head to Fampoux.”
“If she even got there,” Tacit warned, looking skywards. “The Germans are regrouping and attacking. Not easy getting there by road. She might never have made it.”
“If she went by road,” Isabella countered. “Seems to me she knew the tunnels under the city pretty well. Wouldn’t be surprised if she travelled underground the entire way.”
The side door to the Cathedral grated across the tiles as Tacit and Isabella entered, several parishioners nearby turning to look. Cardinal Poré stood at the pulpit performing the Communion Rite.
“Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sin of the world,” Poré announced across the congregation gathered beneath the yawning heights of the Cathedral ceiling. “Blessed are those called to the supper of the Lamb.” It wasn’t a disappointing congregation, considering the war, considering the latest barrage upon the city. Some saw it as their absolute duty to attend the church, even more so now, to seek favour before their Lord at Mass. “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.”
Tacit and Isabella found seats at the rear of the congregation and sat waiting for the service to finish. Tacit felt around in a pocket and drew out a battered silver hip flask. He pursed his lips for a drink and felt the Sister’s cold stare on him. He offered her a drink in a gentlemanly fashion, which as quickly surprised the Sister as it was rejected. The Inquisitor guzzled thirstily at the mouth of the flask, his face gathering itself into a scowl as he swallowed. He enjoyed the warmth seeping its way through his body. He wondered how he’d allowed himself to agree to visit the Cathedral tonight, why he had not stuck to his original plan in his mind and headed for the hotel and the bar. He didn’t just desire another drink, he needed a drink. The nauseous vestiges of last night’s wine still clung to fragments of his soul, still needing to be supplanted.
They watched the Cardinal draw the Concluding Rite to a close and with it the service. The congregation rose and slowly gathered themselves and their belongings together, shuffling out of the Cathedral. There were mutters of dismay as people drew open the doors and became aware of the falling artillery barrage spattering the far edges of the town, the Cathedral having masked much of the sound with its broad and high walls. Hats and capes were hurriedly donned and worshippers bustled out to their homes beneath a fiery sky.
Tacit and Isabella waited until the final member of the congregation had left before they wandered slowly towards the ambulatory and antechamber into which the Cardinal had disappeared. Tacit’s heavy boots on the tiled floor drew Poré out to investigate.
“Inquisitor Tacit,” he called, with as much warmth as a stream in December. “Sister Isabella. I trust you are both well?”
“Better than some,” spat Tacit, rubbing a hand under his nose.
“Yes, I have heard about Father Aguillard.”
“Did you know him?” asked Isabella, looking for somewhere to rest herself against and realising that her tired limbs would have to hold her up a little longer.
“I did,” Poré replied, sounding more dismayed than when he revealed the final moments of Father Andreas’ death. “Whilst he travelled much, he was a frequent visitor to Arras. I knew him well.”
“Any enemies?” Tacit enquired.
“And here we are again, Inquisitor!” hissed Poré in reply, any sign of dismay dropping from his manner in an instant. “Asking the vagrant question of enemies!”
“You have any better suggestions, Poré?” Tacit growled, squaring up to the Cardinal. “You got any light to shed on what’s happening here?”
“You’re the Inquisitor,” the inscrutable Cardinal replied, looking down his nose with a disdain which secretly delighted him. “However, it seems that I alone have my Lord’s blessing.” The Cardinal waited for either of them to enquire further as to what he meant by such an perplexing comment. But when they said nothing he continued. “It seems that Father Andreas or Father Aguillard were not the sole names on our murderer’s list.” He said the word ‘murderer’ with scorn.
“What do you mean?” Sister Isabella asked.
“I mean, Sister, that I was attacked by the beast, this very lunchtime. And, yes, I say beast, for that is what I saw with my own eyes. Hombre Lobo, Tacit! Werewolf!”
If, with that address, the Cardinal had intended to draw some reaction from the Inquisitor, then he was sorely disappointed. Tacit scratched the side of his head and looked to the shadows of the Cathedral.
“So, I can see you’re still not convinced?” Tacit didn’t even give the question the honour of a reply. “So, you doubt the words of a Cardinal do you, Inquisitor, standing here, before you? You accuse him of lies when you doubt his words.”
“I doubt my eyes.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I mean, you must be an apparition then, Poré. If you’d met a true wolf, there’d have been no escape.”
“How did you escape?” Isabella asked, more to defuse the mounting argument between them.
Poré turned his eyes to the antechamber. “See for yourself. I locked myself in the chapel. The beast savaged the door but was unable to penetrate the rock.”
“Quite an escape then?” Tacit said, in a tone heavily laden with sarcasm as he lurched in the direction of the side room.
“You mock me, Inquisitor! At least I’ve been able to see who our murderer is with my own eyes, which is more than you’ve been able to do! An Inquisitor?” the Cardinal spat, wandering a few steps behind Tacit and Isabella as they examined the gnarled and scarred stone. “Pah!”
Great claw marks ran the length of the doorway, the stone gouged and disfigured as if it was soft clay. But the stone had proved sufficiently deep and hard to deter the beast from getting to the Cardinal on the other side.
“Perhaps we’ve not seen the murderer, this is true,” said Tacit, turning away from the door after the briefest of looks. “Or perhaps we have? I’m not sure. But we do have a name.”
The Cardinal raised an eyebrow and looked at him from behind his hooded eyes. “A name, you say?”
“Sandrine Prideux.”
“Who?” he asked, with an exhausted tone.
“Do you know her?” Isabella replied.
“Sandrine Prideux? Of course I don’t know a Sandrine Prideux!”
“Are you sure?” Isabella pressed.
“Never heard of her. Who is she?”
“The woman who visited Father Andreas the day he was killed,” growled Tacit, his eyes throughout on the Cardinal. “She lives in Fampoux. Anything you can tell us about her?”
“Like I said, I don’t know her.”
“She seemed to know the Father’s brother,” Tacit continued.
“Fascinating.”
“Knew him well.”
“Well? Well, what?” retorted the Cardinal, his manner now one of disdain and boredom. He stifled a yawn. “Inquisitor Tacit, I heard you were good. I now wonder if you are responsible for your own publicity?” He played with the threads on his cassock. “You come to me with the name of a woman I have never heard of and tell me she was a friend of the Father’s brother?”
“I never said friend,” hissed Tacit.
“What is this? Some sort of joke? And you expect me to be appreciative of your work here? Inquisitor! We have two Fathers who have been killed by a werewolf and a Cardinal who, by good fortune and sense, is lucky to be alive. The case is clear and simple. If you choose not to look at the basic facts that is fine, but don’t come to me claiming you’re in the middle of a detailed murder investigation when you have no details, no evidence and with nothing more than a name of some unknown woman!”
Tacit could feel the blood pump behind his ears. He recalled a similar feeling when his work eradicating a coven of witches in the Ukrainian town of Lutsk had brought derision from the local Priest, who claimed the Inquisitor was performing witchcraft himself. Tacit took the blasphemous Priest to a dry well and dropped him down it. To his knowledge, the Priest’s body was never found. Tacit shot forward and took the Cardinal by the scruff of the neck, the collar of his cassock cutting into Poré’s neck, bulging veins. The Cardinal’s eyes burned in his head. Isabella cried out, her hands on Tacit’s wrist, pulling him away.
“Oh yes, Inquisitor,” hissed Poré when released from Tacit’s clutches, pulling his cassock straight against his body. “You’ve quite shown yourself to be the man you are. No wonder they’re saying things about you.”
“If you didn’t want an Inquisitor in your midst, why did you invite one?” Tacit seethed.
“What do you mean? Invite an Inquisitor to an already troubled city, especially one like you? Are you quite mad?” Poré almost spat the words. “Do you honestly think I would give myself the trouble of inviting one of your kind into my midst?”
Tacit stared across at Isabella and then at the Cardinal from the corner of his eye.
“No, I don’t understand either?” Poré lamented back, spotting Tacit’s perplexity. He shook his head and rubbed his shorn scalp with the flat of a hand, regaining a little of his poise and finesse. “Your coming here was not of my doing.”
“So, if you didn’t want an Inquisitor sniffing around, why so vocal?”
“Vocal?”
“About a werewolf attack, Cardinal? You seem awfully keen to press for their involvement here in this case.”
“Because unlike you, Inquisitor, I look at the facts before me and make a judgement instead of creating a fantasy to allow me to play the big man.”
Tacit looked ready to spring towards the Cardinal, but Isabella was prepared this time and set herself between the pair of them.
“Well, if that’s so, Cardinal,” Tacit hissed, fighting against Isabella, as she forced him from the Cathedral, “then I hope you’re ready for your own day of judgement.”
The Sister manhandled him onto the central aisle. As soon as his boots touched the hard stone, he instantly turned and strode from the ambulatory, as if the aisle was a river sweeping him away. Poré called after them as Tacit vanished into the gloom of the building and out into the city. “My day of judgement, Inquisitor? It seems someone already planned it, but it would appear it is not yet time for me to be judged. Perhaps, Tacit, it should be of your own judgement that you take greatest care?”