Silent Water Page 16

  “Besides, you found the note after she left Kraków, didn’t you?” Konarski’s voice reached me.

  I nodded. “So we know it wasn’t Helena,” I said, trying to sound light. “But we still don’t know who it was.”

  And if I was right, we had one more day before he killed again.

  When I returned to my chamber, walking past the guard posted outside my door, I was glad of the brisk fire one of the chambermaids had made up in the grate. As I stood in front of it to warm my fingers, the cathedral bell struck three o’clock.

  I listened to the distinct metallic notes. One for Zamborski, one for Mantovano, and one for someone who did not yet know his fate.

  Chapter 12

  January 6th, 1520, The Feast of Epiphany

  Morning

  I had the morning of the Feast of Epiphany off.

  By the fire in my chamber, I breakfasted on wheaten scones spread with butter and sweet comfits. Normally, I found this morning ritual relaxing. My parlor was small but comfortable, cozy with a garden-motif tapestry hung above the hearth. It was a refuge from the bustle of the court and the stresses of my work. But not today.

  I had slept poorly again, convinced as I was that something terrible was going to happen that night. I had gone over everything in my mind, beginning with the visit to the crypt under the cathedral, but I could see no clear suspect and no motive beyond the many unconvincing ones that had been put forward over the last twelve days. And with no suspect or motive, there was no way to alert the chancellor, the queen, or the captain of the guard in order to prevent another murder. The day had barely begun, but I was already exhausted.

  I went to my jewelry box and took out a small packet Doctor Baldazzi, seeing how tired I was, had offered me the day after Mantovano’s murder. It contained wrinkled, burned-looking leaves of some plant which the doctor procured at a great cost from merchants who had returned from the far eastern lands. I followed his instructions and poured boiling water over the leaves. Within moments the brew darkened to a deep brown color with flecks of gold, and it began to give off a delicate aroma. Despite the leaves’ unpromising look, the drink had a taste that, although somewhat bitter, was also quite pleasant. According to Baldazzi, it would restore clarity to the mind and energy to the body.

  He had also warned me that the Church looked upon this new beverage with a great deal of suspicion, worrying that there might be witchcraft involved. For who knew what incantations were pronounced over the leaves as they were being picked and dried in the heathen lands, where Christian monks or priests were not on hand to ensure that no spirits were being summoned to enhance their potency? So Baldazzi had to be discreet. But he swore that the drink’s following at the court—although still admittedly small—was devoted. The physician must have been making a handsome profit off it too, for the packet, only about three spoonfuls, had cost me a silver ducat.

  It took two cups of the brew to restore me somewhat, and at nine o’clock, I was luxuriating in a steaming bath, letting all thoughts dissolve like the fragrant attar of roses that the maid Marysia had added to the water.

  The bath chambers at Wawel Castle were set up in an ingenious fashion. Through a system of lead pipes, water was pumped from the castle well to be heated in vats placed over large hearths. A type of trough connected each stone tub to the wall, and that way the bathwater could be released to flow down a pipe to a special outdoor cesspool. The chief benefit of it lay in the ability to let some of the water out as it cooled, so the maid could add more hot water from the hearth, allowing the bathing to last as long as one wished, which was particularly enjoyable during winter months. It was an uncommon system; the ducal palace at Bari did not possess anything of the sort, and the queen, for all her admiration of France, liked to boast that even King François did not enjoy such conveniences at any of his palaces.

  I reclined in the tub, the liquid heat caressing my body. My hair was expertly bound up in a linen cloth to keep it from getting wet. Marysia, the maid who worked in our bath chamber, had done that for me, commenting on how straight and thick my hair was, and that it must be an Italian thing, for Polish women tended to have finer and wavier tresses, much harder to tame and to do up into intricate styles.

  After she had set fresh water heating on the hearth, Marysia left for a while, and I enjoyed the quietude. The chamber had a single window, and I watched as large snowflakes melted on the windowpanes, not falling thickly yet, but falling at an angle as if whipped by a rising wind. In the corners of the room, candles shimmered in sconces to add more light, and right then it was the most pleasant and peaceful place in the castle, maybe in the whole world.

  With timing born of experience, Marysia returned just as steam began to rise from the water in the vat. She filled a jug from it and brought it over, for my bath was already cooling.

  As she poured, she said, dropping her voice confidentially, “Her Majesty is angry that Jan Dantyszek has not shown up to collect her letter this morning.”

  “Hmm,” I murmured absently, even as I wondered how she would have that information—not about Bona’s temper, for that was often easy to hear if one was close enough to her apartments, but about the letter. Then again, the servants’ capacity for knowing things their masters considered to be private was prodigious. Marysia probably had it from one of the chambermaids. “I’m sure he will come. It’s still early,” I said, even though it was not that early at all. Given the hours the queen kept, she must have been waiting for him for at least three hours.

  Marysia squatted by the tub, the empty jug lifted high and to the side, and leaned toward me as if to impart a secret. I could see that her eyes were sparkling with excitement. “What if he’s murdered too?” she asked, her dark eyebrows rounding as they traveled up her forehead.

  Though said in jest, the words sent a cramp of pain through my stomach. “Hush! Stop saying such things,” I said, angry that she had spoiled my moment of relaxation. “It is not a joking matter.”

  “I am sorry, signora,” she replied guiltily, but she was not about to drop the subject. Like all servants, she thrived on gossip, one of the few sources of entertainment to relieve the tedium of their daily lives. In that, I reflected, she was not altogether very different from many of the highborn ladies of the court. “He probably just got drunk last night.”

  “What?”

  “Aldona told me the queen had sent a messenger to his house, and his housekeeper said he hadn’t returned home since yesterday.” Aldona was one of the chambermaids, so my guess had been correct. Then Marysia added, giggling, “I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s still asleep, tangled in some tart’s bedsheets.”

  I laughed too, but underneath it I felt a growing sense of unease. Could he indeed have been the next victim? Yet there was no evidence that anything bad had happened to him; it was only idle gossip. Besides, the banquet was still hours away. It did not fit the pattern.

  “I heard he’s not very popular at the court for his reformist sympathies,” Marysia resumed, forgetting my earlier admonishment. “Maybe someone took advantage of these two previous murders and offed him, too, for his dangerous talk.”

  “If you don’t stop talking about murder, I will send you away.”

  “I am sorry, signora,” she repeated, contrite.

  “Add more rose oil to my water.”

  “Yes, signora.”

  She dosed several more drops of the precious essence. As the scent of rose wafted up on the steam again, I sighed and lowered myself in the tub so that the water came up to my neck. I closed my eyes, but my peace was shattered. I would not be able to think about anything else until this matter was cleared up.

  I glanced at the maid, who busied herself at the vat again, blessedly quiet for a change. It seemed that everyone was an amateur crime solver these days. And this simple girl was not the worst of them. The queen’s advisor Carmignano had already suggested a religious motive with respect to Zamborski and Mantovano. Everyone had dismissed it then, bu
t if any harm had come to Dantyszek, that possibility would have to be considered again.

  I ran my hands vigorously over my face and inhaled the flowery scent to dispel my thoughts. Even if Dantyszek was indeed missing, there was no proof it was because he had been killed. I should not let my mind become deranged with conspiracies.

  “They say there is a big snow on the way,” Marysia said, unable to stay silent for long, as she laid out my chemise and a towel on a stool by the tub. “Biggest we’ve seen in a hundred years!” she added excitedly. “My sister works in the kitchens and says all the food for the feast was cooked ahead of time and brought to the castle to be warmed here tonight. They shut the kitchens down and won’t reopen until the snow is over and cleared.”

  “I see.” That explained why so many kitchen servants could be seen around the castle in the last two days. There was a special warming room behind the banqueting hall, and a few smaller ones scattered on different floors for that purpose. But they rarely handled the warming of food in such large quantities. It sounded like that snowstorm was going to be a headache.

  “I hope Panna Helena makes it home before the snow,” Marysia said.

  No sooner had those words left her mouth than the cathedral bell rang out. It tolled ten times, and the sound was strangely mournful in my ears. I was reminded of the conversation with Konarski’s cousin the day before and wondered again why Helena had lied to me. If she had wanted to get away from the court, she could have said so, and she would have been released. The only explanation that made sense to me was that she was indeed with child and wished to leave before her condition was discovered. After sending a letter claiming that she was still tending to her ailing father, she would enter a little convent somewhere, and when she returned in a few months, her father now well on his way to recovery, nobody would be any wiser.

  But what about Dantyszek? I remembered the blush rising to Helena’s face when I had told her that he would be leaving for Naples soon. Was it a coincidence that the ambitious Dantyszek, always hanging about the court, ready to please and serve, was nowhere to be found so soon after she had left, the letter that could make his career waiting, unclaimed, on the queen’s mahogany desk . . . ?

  I bolted upright, water streaming down my chest and shoulders. It seemed like a preposterous idea that Helena and Dantyszek would have eloped together. They did not even seem to like each other. But they would not have been the first to go from enemies to lovers. I had been around courts long enough to know that people were capable of doing the most foolish things while in the grip of passion.

  Hopeless anger rose up in me. Helena had made me a promise, broken it, then lied to me twice, and was now leaving me to pick up the pieces, to face the queen’s rage, and to possibly suffer dismissal. How could she?

  I sent Marysia away and stepped out of the bath, wrapping the towel around me. I cleared a section of the steamed-up windowpane with the side of my hand and gazed through it. The large wet snowflakes had turned into smaller ones, falling faster, and there was already a thin layer of white accumulation on the ground. Whether together or separately, how far could the two of them have gone with the weather deteriorating so fast? What would they do if the storm fully broke out while they were still on the road?

  I wrapped my dressing gown around me and went to the girls’ bedchamber. It was empty as they were all with the queen. I approached Helena’s neatly made bed and lifted the lid of her chest, a fine oak piece inlaid with mother-of-pearl. My heart was beating fast, and I had a momentary sick feeling that I would discover something horrible inside—a ruby-studded dagger, evidence of a grievous crime. I took a deep breath and reminded myself of the need to preserve my sanity.

  The chest was more than half-full. Most of Helena’s gowns were still there, though folded unevenly, as if in some haste. She had probably dug through it to retrieve what she needed for the journey and thrown the rest back in. No bloodied weapon. I sank to my knees in relief, chastising myself for my absurd suspicions. But even if Helena was not a murderess, the contents of her chest provided little by way of illuminating the situation. She was either coming back, pretending as though nothing had happened, or she did not care if she left the rest of her belongings behind, although both the chest and the gowns were of considerable value.

  I sat heavily on the bed, pressing my fingers to my temples, and went over everything in my mind again, hour by hour. Helena had left two days before in the morning, but Dantyszek had not been seen only since last night. She could have been waiting for him at one of the many travelers’ lodgings in town, yet that seemed like a lot of trouble to take. Why not leave on the same day, even at the same hour? With so many people going in and out of the castle—and in and out of Kraków—nobody would ever connect them to each other.

  I returned to my chamber and called my maid to help me dress and comb my hair. Then I put my best headdress on and slipped large emerald earrings, my most precious jewelry, into my earlobes. I needed something that would make me feel better as things seemed to be crashing down all around me. I would have to tell the queen the whole truth and accept the consequences, which I knew would involve being sent back home to face an uncertain future. But I would not tell her just yet. I had to make sure that I was right first, although I had no idea how to accomplish that.

  In the looking glass, I saw that my face was drawn. My complexion is lighter than the olive-hued skin tones common in the region I come from, and the glow of my bath was receding fast, revealing a pallor underneath and worry lines on my forehead. I pinched my cheeks to bring back some of the color, but I doubted that it would help for long. At one o’clock, the queen would be going to dine privately with the king, and I would accompany her there. Perhaps I would learn more about what was going on. Perhaps, I thought with a faint flicker of hope, Dantyszek would turn up by then.

  The queen was furious, I could see that right away. She paced the antechamber as the maids of honor sat still and quiet, not daring to raise their eyes. But she did not begin to talk until we stepped outside. She motioned to the guard who was to escort us to get moving, and she proceeded at a slower pace to put some distance between him and us. Walking slowly was so against the queen’s habit that she lost her usual gracefulness of movement and seemed almost awkward as her feet tried to get ahead of her will, but she wanted the time to apprise me of the morning’s developments.

  When Dantyszek had not arrived by seven o’clock, she sent one of her pages for him. Dantyszek kept a small but fashionable house in St. Anna Street, only a short ride from the castle. His housekeeper informed the boy that her master had not returned home the night before, and she did not know where he was. When she heard that, the queen went personally to the State Chambers to order the chancellor to send men to search his house.

  “Of course he tried to assure me that there was no need to raise an alarm yet,” she scoffed. “He probably knows that Dantyszek was going to undertake a mission to Naples for me, and he is glad that my plans are being ruined. Perhaps he has ordered him killed too, to prevent him from working for me,” she added, but her sarcastic tone told me that she did not mean it. “It was only after I had threatened to appeal to His Majesty that he finally ordered four men-at-arms to his house.”

  By nine o’clock the guards had returned, reporting the same thing. Dantyszek had not been home since the previous morning, and his housekeeper did not know where he could be found. They had searched the house, and after further interrogation, the housekeeper confirmed that none of his things were missing. His chests had not been packed, his clothes were still in their wardrobes, and his books were on the shelves. It was as if he had just stepped outside for a few hours.

  I imagined the poor housekeeper—probably an old woman, scared and confused—watching as the royal guards turned the house upside down only to find no evidence that Dantyszek had planned to go away for any length of time. It was very strange. If he had eloped, surely he would have taken at least a pair of clean shirts with
him?

  “The traitor!” the queen seethed as we reached the main wing, then she lowered her voice. “Gamrat saw him here in the castle after vespers last night, but he didn’t make it home. The profligate! He must have gone with some whore, who knifed and robbed him in a dark alleyway. Serves him right.”

  “There is no proof he is dead, Your Majesty,” I said as much to assure her as myself.

  “He seemed so bright and competent. I had such hopes for him,” she continued, ignoring me. “I cannot trust anybody here—except for you.” Unexpectedly, she reached out and squeezed my hand, her fingers warm and firm.

  I was moved by this rare display of affection and felt suddenly guilty for having let her down, compounded by the fact that she did not yet know about it. “Thank you. I am ever Your Majesty’s faithful servant.” The words, though meant sincerely, seemed somehow deceitful.

  “What should we do now?” she asked. She hated being without options, and I could see that.

  “While Your Majesty dines, maybe I will make inquiries with His Majesty’s household?”

  “You mean with Konarski?!” Bona boomed, and it was only God’s mercy that there was nobody around to hear that, except the guard who walked ahead of us.

  “Yes,” I replied, my face on fire. “I would ask him too.”

  “Do that,” she said as we turned the corner and approached the already open door to the king’s private dining room. She raised a finger, which she pointed in a general direction behind me before she swept inside. “If he is still alive, I will find him and make sure he is punished.”