The poisoned chalice

Dacourt abruptly asked. 'That Venner didn't drink the wine?'
    'Because the poor fellow only ever drank watered wine. But Sir Robert didn't care about that. He hoped we would be torn to death at the Tour de Nesle, and Millet would get the blame, whilst he would continue to pose as the noble English envoy who had narrowly escaped death.'
    Agrippa, who had hardly moved throughout the entire scene, suddenly leaned forward and tapped the pommel of his short dagger on the table.
    'Now,' he said to the hushed group, 'we come to the question of why.' He rose to his feet. 'However, gentlemen, that is not for every ear. Sir John, Master Peckle, Master Millet, you must withdraw.' 'I will not!' Dacourt bristled back.
    'Sir John, if you do not,' Agrippa replied quietly, 'you will never leave this chateau alive. I do not ask you to go. I beg you to, for your own safety!'
    The old soldier sighed deeply, shrugged, and walked quietly down the hall, Peckle and Millet following. Agrippa made sure the door was closed behind them.
    'Now, Sir Robert,' he announced, 'we shall tell you why you are a spy, a traitor and a murderer, as well as what made you smile a few minutes ago. Master Daunbey?'
    Benjamin moved to sit beside Clinton like some priest ready to hear confession.
    'I shall tell you a story, Sir Robert,' he began. 'About a young courtier, a soldier and a scholar, a friend of the king. Now this courtier loved his royal master and faithfully served him. He was sent on this errand and that and, when he returned, he and his beautiful wife were often together at the court of the king. What this diplomat did not know was that his royal master had an eye for a pretty face, no real feeling of friendship, and a raging lust which had to be slaked. The king seduced his friend's wife, treated her like a trollop, some courtesan from the city, and the courtier found out. All the loyalty, all the friendship, curdled and died. In the rottenness which was left, a black hatred and a deep desire for revenge were born.'
    Clinton suddenly put his face in his hands. When he took them away, I felt a twinge of pity at the dreadful look in his eyes. There was no hatred, nothing except a silent, eerie deadness as if his very soul had shrivelled up inside him.
    'This diplomat,' Benjamin continued, 'plotted a terrible revenge. He removed his wife to their family home, treated her most solicitously, yet all the time he was secretly poisoning her, so that she died a painful, lingering death, not from some abscess or tumour but due to the grains of poison he sprinkled in this dish or that cup. Once she was dead, or perhaps just before she died, this diplomat went to the French enemies of his king and offered to betray every secret he could. He would call himself Raphael, a mocking use of his wife's maiden name as well as the term he had once used about her, for Raphael is an angel of great beauty.' Benjamin looked down the hall, following Sir Robert's gaze, as if the murderer could see the ghosts of his victims moving through the shadowy darkness towards him.
    'Now, Sir Robert, most men would have felt their revenge complete but this diplomat was a scholar with some knowledge of medicine and the ravages of disease. Whilst in the service of his French masters, this man met a young noblewoman at a convent. Ostensibly, she had been put there to complete her education but she, too, harboured a dreadful secret. The only daughter of aged parents, she had the misfortune to fall in love with a young French nobleman who fought in Italy. Like others he came back not knowing he carried the traces of a ravaging venereal disease, syphilis. So virulent an infection that hundreds died of it on their return, but not before they had transmitted it to their wives and loved ones. The young French nobleman died a lingering death and his betrothed too showed traces of this disease, so she was sent to the nunnery, not only for education but for the nuns' tender care and expertise with the sick.' Benjamin paused. 'Sir Robert?'
    Clinton turned and stared like the man marked for death he was.
    'Sir Robert, you are that diplomat, Henry of England is the king, and the Lady Francesca the young girl from the convent.'
    'It's true!' she burst out. 'It's true! My betrothed returned from Italy ardent for me.' She looked up, tears brimming in her eyes though her lips curled in anger. 'He died but I'd already caught the disease. Sir Robert was kind. He chose to ignore it, married me, but said