Night was falling. A sharp wind had risen and was rattling the wooden shutters on the herbarium door. A pensive Annelette examined the contents of her tall medicine cabinet. She enjoyed these peaceful moments of solitude, this feeling of using her intelligence to rule over a domain that might be limited to the stout walls of the tiny building, but was hers.
Her fear had abated, as had her concern for the Abbess’s life. They had discussed the threat; now it was time to act. She was faced with a cunning enemy, clever as well as crafty – in short a worthy adversary. What had begun as a mission to protect the Abbess had turned into a personal challenge, a sort of wager with herself. Would she turn out to be the stronger, wilier opponent? Annelette’s foe, unbeknownst to her, had provided her with the chance to prove her ability. Annelette had waited all these years for an occasion to test the extent of her superiority, but had lacked any objective yardstick. Deep down, she was convinced that she was confronted with a creature whose brain worked exactly like hers, with the enormous difference that her opponent had chosen to serve evil. The apothecary nun had submitted fairly easily to the monastic rules of this community of women whom she mostly despised – just as she would a community of men. For her it was the lesser of two evils. And yet the thought of doing battle with another mind thrilled her. She would leave the prayers and supplications to others and make use of the intelligence God had given her. This was the most glorious mark of appreciation, the most complete form of allegiance she could show Him.
Annelette let out a sigh of contentment: the battle was about to begin and she would show no mercy. She would bring to bear all her scientific knowledge, her intellect and her loathing of superstition in the bid to combat her enemy’s cunning wickedness. She experienced a frisson of elation: when had she ever felt this free, this strong? Probably never.
She began by taking down all the bags of dried, powdered plants, the phials and jars containing the solutions, decoctions, spirits and extracts she had prepared during the spring and summer seasons. On the edge of the stone slab, she set aside for later use a small ampoule with a brown wax seal and then sorted the other remedies into two separate piles on the larger table. On the left, she placed those preparations which could not prove fatal in the tiny quantities a poisoner would use if adding them to food or drink: dried sage, thyme, rosemary, artichoke, mint, lemon balm and a host of others used to flavour food, as well as for treating minor ailments. On the right, she put the toxic substances that she would give to Éleusie to put in a safe place. Curiously, the phial of distilled Aconitum napellus root, which she used to treat congestive inflammations, general aches and pains and gout, did not appear to have been tampered with. Where, then, had the murderess procured the aconite that had killed poor Adélaïde? Unless she had been planning this for some time and had stolen the liquor the year before. Annelette then carefully examined the embroidered red lettering on the bags whose contents were toxic, and wondered which of them she might have chosen had she harboured evil intentions. Her gaze lingered on the crushed Digitalis purpurea74 leaves she used for treating dropsy and heart murmurs, the Conium maculatum75 she prescribed for neuralgia and painful menses, and the powdered Taxus baccata76 she mixed with handfuls of wheat in order to exterminate the field mice that attacked their granary. She was startled by how light the last bag felt. She hurried to the lectern where she kept her bulky register. In it she recorded the details of every prescription and what each bag weighed at the end of the week. She should have ten ounces+ of Taxus baccata. She rushed over to the scales. The bag weighed just over nine ounces. Nearly an ounce of yew was missing – enough to kill a horse, and therefore a man or a nun. Who would be the next victim? She scolded herself. She was looking at the problem from the wrong angle again. There were two possibilities. One was that their enemy was allied to the forces of darkness struggling to put an end to their quest. If this were the case, the poisoner would run into two obstacles in the form of her and Éleusie de Beaufort. The other possibility was more mundane but no less lethal. The poisoner was motivated by hatred or jealousy, in which case the next victim’s identity would be far more difficult to predict. Another thought occurred to her and she checked her register again for the date when she had last weighed the bag. She could now completely rule out one of her least likely suspects: Jeanne d’Amblin. The powdered yew could only have been stolen during the two days preceding Adélaïde’s murder – that is to say during one of the extern sister’s rounds. In any event it was a clever choice for there was no antidote. The symptoms of yew poisoning were nausea and vomiting followed by shaking and dizziness. The victim would quickly plunge into a coma before dying. The discovery confirmed Annelette’s suspicions: the murderess was knowledgeable about poisons … Or else she had been advised by someone who was, but who?
She must reflect, find a method of counter-attack. The bitter taste of yew could only be disguised in something very sweet and heavily spiced. In a cake. Or – and this would be the height of criminal ingenuity – in another bitter-tasting medicinal potion.
Thus whoever drank the nasty-tasting brew would not suspect that it contained poison.
It took Annelette a good hour to finish stacking the lethal substances in a big basket and replacing their phials and bags with harmless ones. She swapped aconite for sage, digitalis for milk thistle and filled with verbena the bag marked Daphne mezereum,77 that beautiful red-flowering plant, three berries of which were enough to kill a wild boar. The murderess could pride herself on having alleviated her next victim’s cough, colic or cramp if she decided to use it.
A smile spread across Annelette’s lips. She had come to the final stage of her plan. She removed the piece of cloth covering the crate of eggs she had filched from under the nose of the sister in charge of the fishponds and the henhouses. Poor Geneviève Fournier would probably have a fit when she discovered that fifteen of her beloved hens had not laid. She saw in the number of eggs she collected each morning proof of her good ministering to her birds and of the Lord’s munificence in her regard. The more eggs they laid, the more puffed up with pride she became, until she took on the appearance of a plump, contented mother hen. Annelette frowned at herself for thinking such uncharitable thoughts. Geneviève Fournier was a charming sister, but her harping upon the necessity of singing canticles to her hens, geese and turkeys in order to fatten them up for eating bored the apothecary sister as rigid as the necks of the ducks Geneviève crammed with grain.
She looked up as she heard a muffled sound coming from outside. It was well after compline.+ Who was up at this time of night? She lowered the covers of the two lighted sconce torches and walked towards the herbarium door. The sound started up again: cautious footsteps on the pebble paths that formed a cross separating the herb beds. She pulled open the shutter and found herself face to face with Yolande de Fleury, the sister in charge of the granary and one of her prime suspects, for who could obtain contaminated rye more easily than she? The plump woman turned white with fright and clasped her hand to her chest. Annelette demanded in an intimidating voice:
‘What are you doing here at this time of night, sister, when all the others are in bed?’
‘I …’ the other woman stammered, her cheeks turning red.
‘You what?’
Yolande de Fleury gulped and seemed to spend a long time searching for an explanation as to why she was there:
‘I … I felt an attack of acid stomach coming on just after supper … and I …’
‘And you thought you might find the right remedy yourself.’
‘Blackthorn usually …’
‘Blackthorn can be used for a range of ailments. It possesses diuretic, laxative and depurative qualities, as well as being very good for curing boils. You aren’t suffering from boils or acne by any chance, are you, sister? As for acid stomach … Milk thistle, centaury and wormwood are preferable. In short, any number of medicinal herbs other than blackthorn. I will therefore ask you again: what are you doing here?’
‘I confess that my excuse was a clumsy one. The truth is that I am upset about what has been happening, about poor Adélaïde’s terrible death, and I needed to take the air, to think …’
‘I see. And despite the hundreds of acres of land around our abbey you felt it necessary to “take the air” outside the herbarium?’
The other woman appeared even more distraught, and Annelette thought she might burst into tears. And yet something in her manner, although secretive, convinced Annelette that Yolande de Fleury was not prowling around in the hope of stealing poison from her medicine cabinet. Moreover, the murderess must already be in possession of the powdered yew.
‘That’s enough, sister! Go back to your dormitory this instant.’ Yolande then astonished the apothecary by clutching the sleeve of her robe and whispering nervously:
‘Will you report my presence here to the Abbess?’
Annelette pulled her arm free and, stepping back, retorted:
‘Naturally.’ She felt suddenly angry and scolded the other woman sharply: ‘Have you forgotten, sister, that there’s a monster in our midst? Don’t you realise that the murderess may have procured the poison from my cabinet, the poison that caused the horrific death of the sister in charge of the kitchens and meals? Or are you simply hare-brained?’
‘But …’
‘No buts, sister. Go back to the dormitory straight away. The Abbess will be duly informed.’
Annelette watched the young woman’s hunched, weeping figure vanish into the darkness. What had the foolish woman really been doing there? Her inept excuses had made Annelette frankly doubt that she could be the poisoner. And yet … What if her clumsiness were a clever façade?
She went back into the herbarium to finish preparing her masterstroke. She replaced the bags containing the switched contents in the cabinet, and pulled a face as she picked up the tiny ampoule with the wax seal that she had set aside earlier. Cracking the eggs one by one, she separated the slippery whites into an earthenware bowl before adding a few drops of the almond oil which she had had sent from Ostia and used for treating chilblains and cold sores. She stirred the mixture vigorously then sighed as she held her breath and opened the phial. The foul stench of rotten teeth or stagnant marshes filled her nostrils instantly. The substance was essence of Ruta graveolens – commonly known as fetid rue or herb of grace. Annelette suspected that the plant’s alleged effectiveness as an antidote to bites from poisonous snakes or rabid dogs78 did not explain the appellation herb of grace, choosing to give credence to a more mundane explanation: despite the Church’s condemnation, humble folk for whom another mouth to feed would spell disaster used fetid rue as an abortifacient. In a more concentrated or wrongly administered dose it could prove fatal. She quickly emptied the contents into the foamy egg whites and stirred the mixture vigorously again with her spatula, trying hard not to retch. Finally, when she was satisfied, she spread a layer of the mixture on the floor directly in front of her medicine cabinet. The oil would prevent it from drying too quickly and make it stick better to leather or wooden soles. She then heaved the big basketful of lethal substances onto her hip and left without locking the door behind her.
The Abbess was expecting her. Annelette Beaupré listened attentively as she walked through the darkness, guided only by the feeble light of a sconce torch. In fact, she did not really feel afraid. The murderess was almost certainly not endowed with the kind of physical strength that would enable her to carry out a direct attack, certainly not on somebody her size.