The newly elected, and rapidly promoted, Father of the Cathedral of Arras, Father Xabier couldn’t have been more unfriendly if he had tried. He scowled when Isabella asked where Poré was to be found.
“He’s not at his residence,” Tacit added, unconsciously thumping a fist into a palm.
“He won’t be.”
“And why’s that?”
“Because he’s gone,” the Father replied briskly, striding across the ambulatory in a manner which showed his impatience and irritation.
The ambulatory, where it had first begun.
He was young and squat and well fed, Father Xabier. He had a complexion which suggested he preferred the outdoors to the cool confines of Cathedral interiors. He’d been brought in from the Basque region of France, where war was only rumour. Tacit secretly gave him six months before he reckoned the Father would apply for a secondment to a position more suited to his preference for the outdoors and warmer climes.
“All the other Fathers have gone off to war,” he revealed. “More fool them.” He said it with a scowl and an unconscious smoothing of his short, greasy hair. “So, for now, Arras has got me, whether the congregation like it or not. And, at the moment, I am late, my sermon is barely written, the books have yet to be set out and the new chorister is yet to learn his parts after the last one quit.”
Isabella cast a fierce glare at the Inquisitor at this particular piece of news.
“Where’s he gone?” asked Isabella. “Poré?”
“Paris. Left yesterday. Abruptly, by his personal carriage. For the Mass for Peace.” At this moment, the guns along the front started up their distant rumble and the ground began to shake, such was the massed barrage’s combined devastation. “Mass for Peace,” grumbled Father Xabier doubtfully, in reply to the rumble, ambling over to the pulpit and thrusting down his sermon notes. “Mass for Peace indeed. If the power of prayer hasn’t worked already, then I have no reason to believe that a Mass for Peace will work now. It would require something extraordinary to happen in order for the warring nations to sit up and take note, to listen to our combined Catholic voices.” He waved his hands as he spoke, conducting an invisible orchestra. “And more to the point, act in all our combined interests. In other words, not act solely for the Catholic Church, but for every religion, every person in the world to bring everyone together and act as one single combined force for good. And that, frankly, is a step too far, as far as I am concerned, seeing as we don’t even talk to half of them and they certainly don’t talk to us. It’ll take a miracle. And, if I am honest, the miracle that I currently need is for someone to ensure that this Cathedral is ready for its own Mass in just twenty minutes.”
He stopped and looked up, aware that the visitors had fallen silent during his rant. It was then that the Father found that he was alone.
The Cardinal’s door to his private quarters broke with a single kick of Tacit’s boot, the wood splintering around the lock and sending it tumbling noisily across the wood panelled floor.
“Church spends a fortune on quality locks and buys the cheapest wooden doors,” muttered Tacit, thrusting the doors wide.
“What are we looking for?” Isabella asked, stepping over the splinters into his study and peering around the small tome-lined room. Every available inch of wall, every surface appeared covered. The early afternoon Arras sun smudged the spines of books with its thin light.
“I don’t know,” Tacit replied, working his way along a shelf of books, tugging tomes from their place, letting some fall straight to the floor, whilst with others taking more time to peer through their pages before throwing them to the ornate carpet beneath his booted feet.
Across Pore’s desk were personal letters and oddments, letters from his congregation asking for assistance or prayers during the difficulties of war. All were innocuous, nothing which suggested anything untoward. Isabella shrieked in frustration and shook her hair into her face.
“Maybe it’s nothing after all,” she suggested, holding two handfuls of paper up. “Maybe this is just a dead end. Maybe the wolf was playing with you, a final parting gift, a trick to plant suspicion? A red herring?”
“No,” Tacit replied, gruffly. “There’s something. The wolf said it, like a taunt, like I knew those personally who were turning. We’ve gone full circle. The only place left now is with Poré. He must know something, something that can help.”
“What on earth do you think you are doing?” called an officious voice suddenly from the shattered open door to Poré’s apartment. “If you don’t leave at once, then I will call the Sodalitium Pianum!”
“If you don’t leave at once,” Tacit roared in reply, “I’ll break your nose!”
The Priest, dark haired with greying flecks, cassock bound, blanched and shook his head in disdain. He turned on his heel and marched away, his shoes clipping on the polished marble.
“Hey, hold yourself!” the Inquisitor called, thundering after the man and dragging him back to the busted doorway. “Where does Cardinal Poré keep his correspondence?!” he demanded to know, shaking him.
“If you think I am going to tell a common stranger like you, you, you, whoever you are, you have another think coming!”
But the Inquisitor and Sister traced where his eyes fell onto a wooden box in the corner of the room, hidden beneath piles of books and lengths of cloth.
“Thanks!” growled Tacit, connecting his ham-like fist with the bridge of the Priest’s nose. He went down with a cry, a dead weight, flat out unconscious, his nose split, blood pouring from his nostrils.
“You’re an excellent negotiator, Tacit,” Isabella mocked, as the Inquisitor heaved the partially hidden box from the shelf and manhandled it onto the table. She tried the catch.
Locked.
“We need a key,” said Isabella, looking around the walls, searching across the mantlepiece. She heard Tacit mumble something and the next thing she heard was the cracking of wood, as he inserted his fingernails into the space between the lid and the main body of the box and wrenched it open, shattering the lock and its casement. A number of papers shone like white gold inside.
“And an excellent lock picker, too,” she added, pulling the first few papers from the top of the pile. Tacit did the same, his eyes flittering across the pages. With each valueless sheet, disdainfully he let it drop to the floor or the desk. A sudden intake of breath from the Sister drew him away from his studies.
“Oh my God,” said Isabella, her hand to her mouth, “I think it’s Poré!”
Tacit stole forward, his face grim, and snatched the paper from her fingers.
“It can’t be!” hissed Tacit, his eyes keen on the paper. “Poré was attacked by the wolf!”
It was a letter, written on an old vellum parchment in a wild and chaotic scrawl, the words almost impossible to decipher, such was their savage and desperate style. The letters and words all ran into each other, as if the writer was possessed or incoherent with madness. But there could be no question that it was undoubtedly a letter written for and to Cardinal Poré. Within it, the sender had assured the Cardinal of his ultimate gift, his very own wolf pelt, in exchange for the task to be done, ‘… to accomplish our differing but combined ends.’ ‘An eye for an eye,’ the letter read in a bold and menacing font. ‘A tooth for a tooth,’ it finished.
It was signed ‘Frederick Prideux’.
“Prideux,” muttered Tacit.
“Sandrine Prideux’s father?” Isabella stuttered. “What do you think he means when he writes, ‘to accomplish our differing but combined ends’?”
Tacit shook his head. “I don’t know, but I’ve been so blind.” He turned on the Sister. “We should never have believed Poré when he said he was attacked! Stupid! Stupid!” he cried, casting the box of papers from the table with a crash, letters and documents tumbling out and over the floor. “Took his word for it. Took the word of a liar as gospel. So stupid.” He slammed a palm hard into his forehead, the sound like the crack of a circus master’s whip.
“So what do we do now?”
“Now? We catch a train. To Paris.”
“I just don’t believe it. Poré, he attacked the Fathers?” Isabella stuttered, sitting back on the desk and shaking her head incredulously. “He used the pelt! He attacked me! But why? What’s to be gained by killing the Fathers?”
“And why is he attending the Mass for Peace with it in his possession?”
Isabella rose her hand to her mouth and appeared to sob. “I can’t believe it. Everything you thought was sacred, everything you believed in and then suddenly, it’s gone.”
Tacit put his heavy eyes onto her. “Finally,” he growled darkly, “you’re beginning to understand.”