The Châtelet Apprentice by Jean-François Parot Page B

crackled underfoot. They edged their way forward and eventually came upon some shapeless heaps, from which emerged hooves covered in frost. Bourdeau questioned one of the knackers.
    â€˜How long have these carcasses been here?’
    â€˜Four days, at least. With Carnival we haven’t worked Saturday or Sunday. In any case the frost has set in in the meantime. Now we’ll have to wait for the thaw to be able to handle the dead meat.’
    Old Émilie held out her hand and pointed to one of the piles. Bourdeau swept away the snow covering it and revealed thebody of a horse. One of its thighs had been cut into.
    â€˜Is it that one? Incidentally, what did you do with your trencher?’
    â€˜I can’t remember.’
    Bourdeau continued to work away, kneeling on the ground. A glint of blue flashed in the snow. He lifted up a butcher’s cleaver.
    â€˜Would that be your implement by any chance?’
    She grabbed it and held it tight against her as if it were something precious.
    â€˜Yes, yes, that’s my knife sure enough.’
    Bourdeau had to wrest it from her.
    â€˜I can’t return it to you quite yet.’
    Nicolas intervened.
    â€˜Don’t fret. You’ll get it back. Just tell me where you were watching from.’
    This calm voice reassured her. Automatically, she bent to the ground and huddled up to the carcass, peering towards the corner of a brick building situated a few yards away.
    â€˜It’s over there,’ Nicolas said in a hushed voice, helping her to her feet and dusting the snow off her. ‘Don’t be afraid. The inspector and I will go on our own. Stay here and wait for us.’
    They soon came upon several heaps covered with snow. Nicolas stopped, thought for a moment and then asked Bourdeau to go and find an implement to clear away the snow. It was quite obvious that these were not animal carcasses. While he was waiting he poked around in one of the piles. His fingers touched something hard, broken into several pieces, like the teeth of a giant rake. He forced himself to grip it with both hands and pulled hard. A heavy object came away from the frozenground, and to his horror he saw rising up before him a lump of flesh that he immediately recognised as the remains of a human thorax. By the time Bourdeau returned with a broom, Nicolas, pale as a ghost, was vigorously rubbing his hands with snow.
    A glance was enough for the inspector to grasp what the young man was feeling. Without exchanging a word they carefully cleared the ground all around, revealing a quantity of human remains mixed in with straw, and bones that were almost totally bare except for a few frozen and blackened scraps of clothing.
    They placed the remains alongside each other and little by little reconstructed what had been a body. The state of the skeleton with its coating of snow showed well enough how savagely the scavenging rats and beasts of prey had attacked it. One didn’t have to be a great anatomist to notice that many bones were missing, but the head was there, its jaw fractured. Near the spot where Nicolas had made his first discovery they found some clothes, a leather doublet and a blackish, torn shirt which appeared to be blood-soaked.
    Their last find confirmed Nicolas’s fears. Lardin’s cudgel was revealed, with its strange sculpted designs on the silver pommel and the snake-like creature curled around the stick. The inspector nodded; he, too, had understood. Other clues followed: a pair of grey calamanco breeches, some stockings, sticky with a black substance, and two shoes whose buckles had disappeared. Nicolas decided to add these items to everything else they had found, and to examine them in more detail later. He gave Bourdeau the task of finding something suitable in which they could carry away their macabre harvest. The inspector soon came back with an old wicker trunk bought from a knackerwho had kept his apron and tools in it. They quickly filled it