‘I am very sorry, Babylonne,’ says the priest.
Hah! If you were really sorry, you would have stayed and fought. Like the rest of us. ‘We had our revenge, though. Don’t think that they weren’t punished, those French.’ Toulouse would never bow to anyone for long— not even Simon de Montfort. ‘Those murderers came into Toulouse, and they took everything of value, and they tore down the walls and knocked the tops off the towers, and they put many citizens in chains. But when I was six, and again when I was seven, the French were massacred in the streets of the city. I remember it well. All the people came out of their houses with mauls and axes and mattocks and sickles. They built barricades out of coffers and planks and rafters from their roofs. They chopped up the French like cabbage, and skewered them like pigs. They dragged them behind horses to the gallows, and strung them up at every street-corner.’ I remember the blood. So much blood that you were stepping in pools of it. Falling over in it. ‘There was a man—he had his chest cut open. I could see everything in there. He stank. They all stank. Their bowels emptied when they died . . .’
He’s staring at me. A fixed, frozen stare. He looks like a ghost.
‘What is it?’ Stop gawping! ‘What have I done?’
‘Nothing, I . . . nothing.’ His gaze drops, and he wipes his hand across his face. ‘Forgive me. Yours has been a hard and bloody life. I am sorry for it, indeed I am.’
‘Salve! Pater!’
Who’s that? Who’s calling? Ah—I see. Over there, on that bank. Sitting under that tree.
Two monks. Two friars, in fact. Tonsured Dominicans, in grubby white and black, eating bread and cheese and drinking from a wine-skin. One has a band-age around his head, and a bruised cheek.
Someone must have attacked him. (With any luck.)
‘Salvete,’ the red-headed priest replies, and launches into a tangle of Latin. The injured friar doesn’t speak; he’s too busy stuffing his gullet. The other one has grey hair, and a brown, cheerful, dusty face. I think his name must be Durand. That’s what the redhead keeps calling him, anyway.
I can’t understand what else he’s saying, though. Except ‘Compostela’. And ‘Muret’. Muret is mentioned several times. There’s also a lot of hand-waving: to the south, to the north, to the west.
‘And where did you come from, boy?’ Durand suddenly asks me, in pure langue d’oc. ‘You have the look of a Moor about you.’
‘I found him in Toulouse,’ the priest says quickly, before I have a chance to reply. (Not that I could ever bring myself to speak to a Dominican.) ‘He is a good servant, this one. Very good.’
‘Is he? I’m surprised,’ says Durand, in a jesting tone. ‘There are so few good servants in Toulouse. A very proud city, full of proud people. They are always defying the church. When Father Dominic founded his priory there, the brothers were much troubled by demons.’
Very proud people! That’s good, coming from a Dominican. Dominicans think that they lead God around on a rope.
‘Indeed,’ says the priest, flicking a glance in my direction. ‘Well, that is much to be regretted. But I myself met Father Dominic once, when I was very young. A great and holy man.’
The friars are thrilled. They jump to their feet and approach the priest’s horse. They start talking about Prouille, and nuns, and preaching, and ‘heretics’, while I sit here biting my tongue and blinking back tears. How can I go on with this priest? How can I share food with a man who reveres Dominic Guzman?
I too met Dominic once, Master Skinny-Priest. When I was very young.
And he wasn’t so hospitable to me.
‘What troubles you, boy?’ Durand suddenly inquires. (Curse it! He’s noticed my wet eyes!) ‘Are you sorry to leave your home? Be of good cheer, for you are going to a far better place. Compostela is a city blessed by God. Not like Toulouse. Toulouse is a place of pits and snares, of sin and desolation.’
A nudge from the priest’s foot. But I can’t stop myself. I just can’t.
‘Only because there are so many friars in it.’
Oh dear. I shouldn’t have said that. Two jaws drop. Two pairs of eyes nearly spring from their sockets and bounce off my horse’s fetlocks.
‘Benoit!’ the priest says to me, sharply. The torrent of Latin that follows is directed at the friars, who are pushing their jaws shut and blinking their eyes back into their skulls. Having offered his excuses (for that’s what they probably are, all those long and elaborate arrangements of words) the priest turns to me. ‘Beg the Holy Fathers’ pardon,’ he orders.
What?
‘Do it. Now.’ His voice is hard and cold. His face is like chiselled granite. ‘Or you’ll be walking the rest of the way.’
Is he serious? I can’t tell. But maybe he’s right. I’m behaving like Sybille. No point baiting a trap with your own leg.
‘Forgive me, Holy Fathers.’ Whoops! That was a little too squeaky. A little too girlish.
But the priest puts a hand to his ear.
‘What was that?’ he says, each word chipped from a block of flint. ‘I didn’t hear you.’
‘Forgive me Holy Fathers and have mercy on a humble sinner, that I might walk in the way of the Lord.’
It almost sticks in my throat, but I manage to push it out. Hoarse and low. Durand doesn’t look the least bit mollified. He sniffs, and there’s another, endless exchange of Latin.
Come on, you stupid priest! Let’s go!
As we finally move away, the friars remain standing on the road, looking after us. They put their heads together and pass a few comments. The priest twists in his saddle; he smiles, nods, lifts a hand. He doesn’t lose his balance, or speak to me, or even glance in my direction. I think he must be waiting until we round the next corner, and are lost from sight.
Yes, I thought so. Here it comes. I can feel it coming.
‘Are you insane?’ It bursts out of him like juice out of a grape. Nevertheless, he sounds more astonished than angry. ‘What’s the matter with you? Do you want to be discovered?’
Oh, go and boil up your books with basil.
‘If they had found out that you were a heretic, they would have followed us to Muret, preaching every step of the way,’ he continues, glancing over his shoulder. ‘I had to tell them that your mother once begged from a friar in the street, and was rebuffed—because the friar, of course, had no money of his own, being a firm believer in holy poverty. I had to tell them that you are as faithful to the true Church as I am. Let’s hope that they believed me.’
I’m already beginning to feel ashamed. He’s right, it was stupid. Stupid. I could get myself killed doing something like that. What’s the matter with me?
‘The friars are good men, Babylonne. They eat the poorest foods, they walk everywhere, they preach, they own nothing—they are like the men you call Perfects.’ He’s holding my reins, steadying my horse. ‘They are worthy of your respect.’
‘Them!’ Don’t insult me! ‘They’re not worthy of my spit!’
‘Babylonne—’
‘Your precious Dominic—do you know what he did? He stood by while Simon de Montfort cut my mother’s throat!’ (That’s news to you, isn’t it? Yes. I can tell from your face.) ‘He stood by while my aunt was stoned to death!’
‘Oh no.’ He speaks slowly. Carefully. ‘I can’t believe that.’
‘Believe it! He was there! He was there at the siege of Lavaur, with Bishop Fulk of Toulouse, whose soul will breed maggots for all eternity! Riscende de Castanet saw them both!’
‘But Dominic Guzman was a man of peace . . .’
‘Oh yes, very peaceful! He was at Muret too, you know! The battle of Muret? When Simon de Montfort slaughtered the militia of Toulouse? When he killed the last King of Aragon? Dominic was there! I know, because Alamain de Rouaix lost a cousin—or was it a nephew? Anyway, Simon de Montfort chased them all into the river to drown, and Dominic stood by and watched as they died. Dominic and that Devil’s bastard Fulk, may his bowels be blown out like water.’
r /> The priest is silent. He releases my reins and attends to his own, his features set into lines of strain and fatigue. At last he says, ‘You have a great memory for battles and sieges. Were you taught nothing but these stories of bloodshed?’
‘Yes.’ I might as well make this clear right now. ‘I was taught never to trust a priest. Or a monk. Or a northerner.’
To my surprise, he doesn’t get angry. He doesn’t wince, or even look my way. Instead a wry smile tugs at one corner of his mouth.
‘Well,’ he says softly, scanning the horizon, ‘you can trust me when I tell you this: If you continue to insult passing friars, you will never reach your destination. Horse or no horse.’
And he offers me a drink of wine.
CHAPTER NINE
Yeeeoooooww!
Oh! Oh God, this is bad! My knees! My backside!
‘Take it slowly,’ says the priest. ‘That’s it . . .’
‘Ow!’
‘Hold onto me.’
I can’t believe how stiff I am. I can’t even move properly. And someone’s laughing, over there by the gate. Laughing at me. When he’s the one with a face like a fresh cowpat!
‘Hold on, I said.’ The priest is reaching out to help. ‘You’ll fall . . .’
Get off! Don’t touch me! I can—
Whoops!
Down off the horse, and he catches me just in time. Ow! My knees!
‘Are you all right?’ he wants to know. If he wasn’t holding me up, I’d be flat on my face. ‘Don’t fret, you’ll find that it gets easier. Your muscles will adapt.’
Well I certainly hope so. Help! Every step is agony.
‘Can you walk on your own?’ he asks. ‘I have to take the horses.’
‘I’m fine.’ Gruffly, so that I sound like a boy. (There are too many people listening. We ought to get out of here.) ‘Where are we going, anyway?’
The priest glances around. He seems hesitant, and I don’t blame him: so far, Muret doesn’t strike me as a very desirable destination. I remember passing it last year, and thinking how impressive it looked from a distance, with its walls rearing up out of the marshy plains. At close quarters, however, you can see that it hasn’t worn well. Though it’s been fifteen years since the battle of Muret, a lot of scars remain: lopped towers, patched woodwork, gaps in the battlements. Everything has a dirty, run-down appearance—at least compared to Toulouse. The region around the East Gate is all soggy straw and lounging militia and discarded nutshells. You can hardly see the cobbles for the manure.
Wouldn’t you think that they’d pick up their dead dogs, occasionally?
‘Those friars suggested the priory of St Gemer,’ the priest says in a low voice. ‘They mentioned that it’s near the Toulouse Gate somewhere.’
The priory of St Gemer! ‘We’re not going there.’ Thank you very much. ‘Bishop Fulk stayed there, during the siege.’
‘Bab—I mean, Benoit—’
‘It was pounded by the Toulousain mangonel. Pounded. With huge boulders.’
‘Oh.’ The priest frowns, and I know exactly what he’s thinking. He’s thinking about leaky roofs and crumbling walls. ‘St Sernin, then. It’s supposed to be near the citadel.’
‘Wait.’ By tugging at his sleeve, I can make him stoop until his eyes are nearly level with mine. ‘Must we stay in a cloister?’ (Quietly.) ‘Can’t we go to an inn?’
He shakes his head. ‘There would be more questions about me at an inn than there would be about you in a cloister,’ he murmurs. ‘There is also more privacy in a canons’ guest house than in the loft of an inn. Only look—we’re attracting attention already.’
It’s true. We are. (I blame the horses, which will always attract a crowd in an out-of-the-way place like this. If you have a horse in Muret, you must be important.)
I can see the beggars converging.
‘We’ll go to St Sernin,’ the priest decides. ‘It’s more likely to have decent stables.’
Very well, then. If you say so. When we start to move, we’re only just in time—because someone empties a bucket of slops from the parapet of the city wall. If we’d lingered, it would have hit us.
Someone else (that man in the green cloak, who looks like an interesting collection of unwashed root vegetables) laughs noisily. He scowls at my response.
‘Benoit!’ gasps the priest. ‘Where did you learn that gesture?’
‘You mean the sign of the pike up the—’
‘Shh! Behave yourself.’
He sets a course through the Chatelet, weaving between heaps of flyblown dung, turning right and right again until we reach the next gate. And here we are in the marketplace, which is long and narrow and set directly under the eastern wall of the city. At this time of day, there’s nothing much in it. Except for the squashed grapes and pig-mess and urchins with sticks.
The urchins all stop what they’re doing to gawk at us.
‘This is such a one-church town.’ Look at them all. No one in Toulouse stares at strangers like that; we might as well be in Laurac. ‘You’d think we had udders growing out of our ears.’
‘Shh!’ says the priest.
Ahead lies an inner wall with a gate—rather like the Portaria in Toulouse, only smaller. Even the garrison militia on the battlements are staring down at us. You can tell that they aren’t real soldiers. They must be bakers and cutlers and wool carders and rope makers, doing their garrison duty in borrowed leather and horn. Real soldiers wouldn’t take their eyes off the city approaches for an instant.
One of them spits, and his spittle lands suspiciously close as we plod past house after house with big cracks in their walls.
‘St Sernin might not be a wealthy foundation,’ the priest remarks softly, and it’s obvious that he’s looking at the cracks too. ‘I’ll ask for cells to sleep in, but there may only be dormitories.’ He glances down at me, and in a dry voice adds, ‘I’ll say that I must have my own quarters, because I spend all night in prayer and self-mortification, and will keep you awake if we share a room.’
Prayer and self-mortification? Oh no. Not another Dulcie.
‘What is it?’ he says. ‘What are you looking at me like that for?’
‘You . . .’ (Let’s see. How shall I put it?) ‘You don’t go around beating yourself with a willow switch, do you?’
‘I don’t make a habit of it, no.’
‘Or wearing prickly undergarments?’
The priest regards me for a moment. ‘You disapprove?’ he finally asks.
‘Oh well . . . not really.’ It’s good and pious behaviour, I suppose. ‘I just don’t like washing clothes that have blood all over them.’
‘Ah.’
‘I mean, I’ll have to wash your clothes, won’t I? If I’m your servant?’
He blinks, and raises his eyebrows. ‘I don’t know,’ he says slowly. ‘I hadn’t thought.’
‘Well . . . I wouldn’t worry about it. Not yet. They look pretty clean to me.’ That hem, for instance, can be brushed. ‘You probably won’t need anything washed for another two weeks, if it doesn’t rain.’
‘I see.’
‘Black’s a good colour, too. Not even blood shows up on black.’
‘Oh, there won’t be any blood.’ He clears his throat. ‘You must understand that any reference to self-mortification would be purely a means of gaining you your own private room. Personally, I find that flesh is torment enough without seeping scars. Or scratchy drawers.’
Hear, hear. My own flesh is killing me. But I have to keep walking; I have to hobble through the inner gate, and turn right—because there’s no street leading straight up to St Sernin. Though I can see the church tower over the roofs in front of us, getting to it will be a matter of following the line of the outer defences. Otherwise we’re going to get lost.
There’s a woman (a wet nurse?) sitting on an upturned bucket, suckling a baby in a small patch of late-afternoon sun. She glares at the priest as we go by, and I wonder: is she a believer? Just in case she i
s, I’d better keep my head down. If she’s a believer, she might have been to Laurac or Castelnaudary. She might know someone who knows someone who knows me.
The priest, for his part, doesn’t notice the woman. Or doesn’t seem to notice her, anyway—perhaps because her big, white breast is exposed to the air. Priests might be lecherous, but they know how to hide it. Mostly they behave as if women don’t exist.
Ah! And here’s a well. I was wondering when we’d reach one. You always find people sitting around a well, and in Muret it’s no different; about ten people watch us trudge past, their chatter dying on their tongues. One or two of them bow slightly to the priest. A bareheaded girl whispers to her friend, who giggles.
Up ahead looms the citadel, throwing long, deep shadows across the square. It’s not a big square. And the church isn’t a big church. You could fit it inside St Etienne, only you wouldn’t want to, because St Sernin is dull, dull, dull. Small windows. Lots of blank walls. Hardly a carving to be seen. The cloisters and chapels attached to it look like afterthoughts—like a collection of pig-pens and fowl-houses tacked onto the back of a shepherd’s hut.
The priest stops.
‘I can’t see any canons around, can you?’ he says. ‘They may be at worship, though I didn’t hear any bells.’
‘You go in.’ Those people by the well are probably listening, so I can’t raise my voice above a murmur. ‘I’ll stay here with the horses while you find someone.’
He hesitates. He’s frowning. I feel so much like snapping at him, but remember the eavesdroppers just in time. ‘I won’t make off with the horses, if that’s what you’re worrying about.’ (Hissing through my teeth.) ‘I’m much too sore.’
To my surprise, he actually smiles. ‘I’m not worried about the horses,’ he says quietly. ‘I’m worried about you. I’m worried about leaving you on your own.’