“Tomorrow morning.”
“She will burn with or without you, father,” the Count said, “and the devil will take her soul whether you are there to rejoice or not.” He peered at the friar. “Or is it that you like to watch women burn?”
“It is my duty,” Father Roubert said stiffly.
“Ah yes, your duty. Of course. Your duty.” The Count frowned at a chessboard on the table, trying to work out whether he should advance a pawn or retract a bishop. He was a short, plump man with a round face and a clipped beard. He habitually wore a woolen cap over his bald head and, even in summer, was rarely without a fur-lined gown. His fingers were perpetually ink-stained so that he looked more like a fussy clerk than the ruler of a great domain. “But you have a duty to me, Roubert,” he chided the Dominican, “and this is it.” He gave the Cardinal Archbishop’s letter to the Dominican and watched as the friar read the long document. “He writes a fine Latin, does he not?” the Count said.
“He employs a secretary who is properly educated,” Father Roubert said curtly, then he examined the great red seal to make certain the document was genuine. “They say,” the friar sounded respectful now, “that Cardinal Bessières is regarded as a possible successor to the Holy Father.”
“So not a man to offend?”
“No churchman should ever be offended,” Father Roubert answered stiffly.
“And certainly not one who might become Pope,” the Count concluded. “But what is it he wants?”
Father Roubert went to a window screened with a lead lattice supporting scraped horn panes that let a diffuse light into the room, but kept out rain, birds and some of winter’s cold winds. He lifted the lattice from its frame and breathed the air which, this high up in the castle’s keep, was wonderfully free of the latrine stink in the lower town. It was autumn and there was the faint smell of pressed grapes in the air. Roubert liked that smell. He turned back to the Count. “Is the monk here?”
“In a guest room,” the Count said. “He’s resting. He’s young, very nervous. He bowed to me very properly, but refused to say what the Cardinal wants.”
A great clash in the yard below prompted Father Roubert to peer through the window again. He had to lean far forward for even here, forty feet up the keep, the walls were nearly five feet thick. A horseman in full plate armor had just charged the quintain in the yard and his lance had struck the wooden shield so hard that the whole contraption had collapsed. “Your nephew plays,” he said as he straightened from the window.
“My nephew and his friends practice,” the Count corrected the friar.
“He would do better to look to his soul,” Father Roubert said sourly.
“He has no soul, he’s a soldier.”
“A tournament soldier,” the friar said scornfully.
The Count shrugged. “It is not enough to be wealthy, father. A man must also be strong and Joscelyn is my strong arm.” The Count said it forcibly, though in truth he was not sure that his nephew was the best heir for Berat, but if the Count had no son then the fief must pass to one of his nephews and Joscelyn was probably the best of a bad brood. Which made it all the more important to have an heir. “I asked you here,” he said, choosing to use the word “asked” rather than “ordered,” “because you might have some insight into His Eminence’s interest.”
The friar looked at the Cardinal’s letter again. “Muniments,” he said.
“I noticed that word too,” the Count said. He moved away from the open window. “You’re causing a draught, father.”
Father Roubert reluctantly replaced the horn screen. The Count, he knew, had deduced from his books that for a man to be fertile he must be warm and the friar wondered how folk in cold northern countries ever managed to breed. “So the Cardinal isn’t interested in your books,” the Dominican said, “but only in the county’s records?”
“So it would seem. Two hundred years of tax rolls?” The Count chuckled. “Brother Jerome will enjoy deciphering those.”
The friar said nothing for a while. The sound of clashing swords echoed from the castle’s curtain wall as the Count’s nephew and his cronies practiced their weapons in the yard. Let Lord Joscelyn inherit here, the friar thought, and these books and parchments would all be put to the flames. He moved closer to the hearth in which, though it was not cold outside, a great fire burned and he thought of the girl who must be burned to death next morning in Castillon d’Arbizon. She was a heretic, a foul creature, the devil’s plaything, and he remembered her agony as he had tortured the confession from her. He wanted to see her burn and hear the screams that would announce her arrival at the gates of hell, and so the sooner he answered the Count the sooner he could leave.
“You’re hiding something, Roubert,” the Count prompted him before the friar could speak.
The friar hated being called by his simple Christian name, a reminder that the Count had known him as a child and had paid for his elevation. “I hide nothing,” he protested.
“So tell me why a Cardinal Archbishop would send a monk to Berat?”
The friar turned from the fire. “Do I need to remind you,” he said, “that the county of Astarac is now a part of your domain?”
The Count stared at Father Roubert, then realized what the friar was saying. “Oh, dear God, no,” the Count said. He made the sign of the cross and returned to his chair. He peered at the chessboard, scratched an itch beneath his woolen cap and turned back to the Dominican. “Not that old story?”
“There have been rumors,” Father Roubert said loftily. “There was a member of our order, a fine man, Bernard de Taillebourg, who died this year in Brittany. He was pursuing something, we were never told what, but the rumors say that he made common cause with a member of the Vexille family.”
“Good Christ Almighty,” the Count said. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“You wish me to bother you with every vaporous story that gets told in the taverns?” Father Roubert retorted.
The Count did not answer. Instead he was thinking of the Vexilles. The old Counts of Astarac. They had been powerful once, great lords of wide lands, but the family had become entangled with the Cathar heresy and when the Church burned that plague from the land the Vexille family had fled to its last stronghold, the castle of Astarac, and there they had been defeated. Most had been killed, but some had succeeded in running away, even, the Count knew, as far as England, while ruined Astarac, home to ravens and foxes, had been swallowed into the fiefdom of Berat and with the ruined castle had come a persistent story that the defeated Vexilles had once held the fabled treasures of the Cathars in their keeping, and that one of those treasures was the Holy Grail itself. And the reason, of course, that Father Roubert had made no mention of the new stories was because he wanted to find the Grail before anyone else discovered it. Well, the Count would forgive him that. He looked across the wide room. “So the Cardinal Archbishop believes the Grail will be found among those things?” He gestured at his books and papers.
“Louis Bessières,” the friar said, “is a greedy man, a violent man and an ambitious man. He will turn the earth upside down to find the Grail.”
The Count understood then. Understood the pattern of his life. “There was a story, wasn’t there,” he mused aloud, “that the keeper of the Grail would be cursed until he gave the cup back to God?”
“Stories,” Father Roubert sneered.
“And if the Grail is here, father, even if it is hidden, then I am its keeper.”
“If,” the Dominican sneered again.
“And so God cursed me,” the Count said in wonderment, “because all unknowingly I hold his treasure and have not valued it.” He shook his head. “He has withheld a son from me because I have withheld his son’s cup from him.” He shot a surprisingly harsh look at the young friar. “Does it exist, father?”
Father Roubert hesitated, then gave a reluctant nod. “It is possible.”
“Then we had best give the monk permission to sea
rch,” the Count said, “but we must also make sure that we find what he is looking for before he does. You will go through the muniments, Father Roubert, and only pass on to Brother Jerome those records that do not mention treasures or relics or grails. You understand?”
“I will seek the permission of my regent to perform that duty,” Father Roubert responded stiffly.
“You will seek nothing but the Grail!” The Count slapped the arm of his chair. “You will start now, Roubert, and you will not stop till you have read every parchment on those shelves. Or would you rather I evicted your mother, your brothers and sisters from their houses?”
Father Roubert was a proud man and he bridled, but he was not a foolish man and so, after a pause, he bowed. “I will search the documents, my lord,” he said humbly.
“Starting now,” the Count insisted.
“Indeed, my lord,” Father Roubert said, and sighed because he would not see the girl burn.
“And I will help you,” the Count said enthusiastically. Because no Cardinal Archbishop would take from Berat the holiest treasure on earth or in heaven. The Count would find it first.
THE DOMINICAN FRIAR ARRIVED at Castillon d’Arbizon in the autumn dusk, just as the watchman was shutting the western gate. A fire had been kindled in a big brazier that stood inside the gate’s arch to warm the town’s watchmen on what promised to be the first chill night of the waning year. Bats were flickering above the town’s half-repaired walls and about the tower of the high castle which crowned Castillon d’Arbizon’s steep hill.
“God be with you, father,” one of the watchmen said as he paused to let the tall friar through the gate, but the watchman spoke in Occitan, his native tongue, and the friar did not speak that language and so he just smiled vaguely and sketched a sign of the cross before he hitched up his black skirts and toiled up the town’s main street towards the castle. Girls, their day’s work finished, were strolling the lanes and some of them giggled, for the friar was a fine-looking man despite a very slight limp. He had ragged black hair, a strong face and dark eyes. A whore called to him from a tavern doorway and prompted a cackle of laughter from men drinking at a table set in the street. A butcher sluiced his shopfront with a wooden pail of water so that dilute blood swilled down the gutter past the friar while above him, from a top-floor window where she was drying her washing on a long pole, a woman screamed insults at a neighbor. The western gate crashed shut at the foot of the street and the locking bar dropped into place with a thud.
The friar ignored it all. He just climbed to where the church of St. Sardos crouched beneath the pale bastion of the castle and, once inside the church, he knelt at the altar steps, made the sign of the cross and then prostrated himself. A black-dressed woman praying at the side altar of St. Agnes, disturbed by the friar’s baleful presence, made the sign of the cross too and hurried from the church. The friar, lying flat on the top step, just waited.
A town sergeant, dressed in Castillon d’Arbizon’s livery of gray and red, had watched the friar climb the hill. He had noticed that the Dominican’s robe was old and patched and that the friar himself was young and strong, and so the sergeant went to find one of the town’s consuls and that official, cramming his fur-trimmed hat onto his gray hair, ordered the sergeant to bring two more armed men while he fetched Father Medous and one of the priest’s two books. The group assembled outside the church and the consul ordered the curious folk who had gathered to watch the excitement to stand back. “There is nothing to see,” he said officiously.
But there was. A stranger had come to Castillon d’Arbizon and all strangers were cause for suspicion, and so the crowd stayed and watched as the consul pulled on his official robe of gray and red cloth trimmed with hare fur, then ordered the three sergeants to open the church door.
What did the people expect? A devil to erupt from St. Sardos’s? Did they think to see a great charred beast with crackling black wings and a trail of smoke behind his forked tail? Instead the priest and the consul and two of the sergeants went inside, while the third sergeant, his stave of office showing the badge of Castillon d’Arbizon, which was a hawk carrying a sheaf of rye, guarded the door. The crowd waited. The woman who had fled the church said that the friar was praying. “But he looks evil,” she added, “he looks like the devil,” and she hurriedly made the sign of the cross once more.
When the priest, the consul and the two guards went into the church the friar was still lying flat before the altar with his arms spread wide so that his body made the shape of the cross. He must have heard the nailed boots on the nave’s uneven flagstones, but he did not move, nor did he speak.
“Paire?” Castillon d’Arbizon’s priest asked nervously. He spoke in Occitan and the friar did not respond. “Father?” The priest tried French.
“You are a Dominican?” The consul was too impatient to wait for any response to Father Medous’s tentative approach. “Answer me!” He also spoke in French, and sternly too, as befitted Castillon d’Arbizon’s leading citizen. “Are you a Dominican?”
The friar prayed a moment longer, brought his hands together above his head, paused for a heartbeat, then stood and faced the four men.
“I have come a long way,” he said imperiously, “and need a bed, food and wine.”
The consul repeated his question. “You are a Dominican?”
“I follow the blessed St. Dominic’s way,” the friar confirmed. “The wine need not be good, the food merely what your poorest folk eat, and the bed can be of straw.”
The consul hesitated, for the friar was tall, evidently strong and just a bit frightening, but then the consul, who was a wealthy man and properly respected in Castillon d’Arbizon, drew himself up to his full height. “You are young,” he said accusingly, “to be a friar.”
“It is to the glory of God,” the Dominican said dismissively, “that young men follow the cross instead of the sword. I can sleep in a stable.”
“Your name?” the consul demanded.
“Thomas.”
“An English name!” There was alarm in the consul’s voice and the two sergeants responded by hefting their long staves.
“Tomas, if you prefer,” the friar said, seemingly unconcerned as the two sergeants took a menacing pace towards him. “It is my baptismal name,” he explained, “and the name of that poor disciple who doubted Our Lord’s divinity. If you have no such doubts then I envy you and I pray to God that he grants me such certainty.”
“You are French?” the consul asked.
“I am a Norman,” the friar said, then nodded. “Yes, I am French.” He looked at the priest. “Do you speak French?”
“I do.” The priest sounded nervous. “Some. A little.”
“Then may I eat in your house tonight, father?”
The consul would not let Father Medous answer, but instead instructed the priest to give the friar the book. It was a very old book with worm-eaten pages and a black leather cover that the friar unwrapped.
“What do you want of me?” the friar demanded.
“Read from the book.” The consul had noticed that the friar’s hands were scarred and the fingers slightly twisted. Damage, he thought, more fitting for a soldier than a priest. “Read to me!” the consul insisted.
“You cannot read for yourself?” the friar asked derisively.
“Whether I read or not,” the consul said, “is not your business. But whether you can read, young man, is our business, for if you are not a priest then you will not be able to read. So read to me.”
The friar shrugged, opened a page at random and paused. The consul’s suspicions were roused by the pause and he raised a hand to beckon the sergeants forward, but then the Dominican suddenly read aloud. He had a good voice, confident and strong, and the Latin words sounded like a melody as they echoed from the church’s painted walls. After a moment the consul held up a hand to silence the friar and looked quizzically at Father Medous. “Well?”
“He reads well,” Father Medous said wea
kly. The priest’s own Latin was not good and he did not like to admit that he had not entirely understood the echoing words, though he was quite sure that the Dominican could read.
“You know what the book is?” the consul demanded.
“I assume,” the friar said, “that it is the life of St. Gregory. The passage, as you doubtless recognized,” there was sarcasm in his voice, “describes the pestilence that will afflict those who disobey the Lord their God.” He wrapped the limp black cover about the book and held it out to the priest. “You probably know the book as the Flores Sanctorum?”
“Indeed.” The priest took the book and nodded at the consul.
That official was still not entirely reassured. “Your hands,” he said, “how were they injured? And your nose? It was broken?”
“As a child,” the friar said, holding out his hands, “I slept with the cattle. I was trampled by an ox. And my nose was broken when my mother struck me with a skillet.”
The consul understood those everyday childhood accidents and visibly relaxed. “You will understand, father,” he said to the friar, “that we must be cautious of visitors.”
“Cautious of God’s priests?” the Dominican asked caustically.
“We had to be sure,” the consul explained. “A message came from Auch which said the English are riding, but no one knows where.”
“There is a truce,” the friar pointed out.
“When did the English ever keep a truce?” the consul retorted.
“If they are indeed English,” the Dominican said scornfully. “Any troop of bandits is called the English these days. You have men,” he gestured at the sergeants who did not understand a word of the French conversation, “and you have churches and priests, so why should you fear bandits?”
“The bandits are English,” the consul insisted. “They carried war bows.”
“Which does not alter the fact that I have come a long way, and that I am hungry, thirsty and tired.”