by Hana Cole
‘Well,’ Lady Isabelle exclaims as the crowd begin to shift in their seats. ‘These claims against the Lord of Maintenon brought by such esteemed witnesses are far too grievous to dismiss. We will contact the Provost of Marseille who may also be able to corroborate these young men’s testimonies. In the mean time the authenticity of the deeds of title for Gazeran and the other lands will be verified by my clerks.’ She fingers the parchment. ‘If the claim is found to be good, the land will return to the Count of Blois’ fisc and leased to Mistress Agnes for a percentage of yield to be arranged, if the charges of heresy are then confirmed to be false by the Bishop of Chartres.’
‘Which they will be,’ adds the Count of Saintes.
Etienne can hardly believe what he is hearing. The urge to jump into the air feels like it is pulling him off the ground. Heart soaring, he looks to his friend in wonder. A smile playing on his lips, Christophe returns a shrug. Isabelle of Chartres coughs.
‘Thank you, my lady.’ Etienne bows to the Lady of Chartres. The hall rises for Lady Isabelle and her entourage to depart. Etienne runs his hand through his hair to find his head is damp with sweat.
‘That was too close,’ he says to Christophe as they file out. ‘Your father is crazy.’
‘You have no idea.’ His friend shakes his head and they begin to laugh.
Outside the late afternoon sun is casting an amber glow over the rooftops and it looks as though the world is encased in bronze. Etienne inhales the warm, sweet air of this new world. He has seen a thousand sunsets like this but somehow everything looks different to him, as though a film has been peeled from his eyes. He feels as though he is everywhere and nowhere, as though time itself has come to a standstill and everything is hovering on the promise of something new.
Still light-headed with euphoria, he doesn’t notice her at first. It is only when Lady de Coucy calls out a greeting that he takes in the woman standing on the path ahead with one hand at her hip, the other at her brow, scrutizing them.
‘Mother!’ He races towards her, but she doesn’t move, and suddenly he is hit by a jolt at the memory of her words. I won’t risk it. I won’t risk you. For all the land in the kingdom of France. With all the high emotions he has forgotten how much he has risked. He knows he has been irresponsible, how badly wrong things could have gone if it hadn’t been for Christophe’s father. His gait sags at the possibility he has not had time to consider: that his mother will be impossibly furious with him for defying her wishes.
As scary as it was to face Isabelle of Chartres, his heart feels like it is racing twice as fast as he approaches Agnes. Lady de Coucy reaches her first. She takes his mother’s face in her hands and he watches them embrace like old friends, realising that Margeritte’s mother must have told her their plan. Still, his breath is in suspension as he looks at Agnes, her face a solemn mask, just like his father’s when he didn’t want you to know what he was about to say.
‘I am sorry I defied you, mother,’ he mumbles at the ground, even as it occurs to him that she is just mimicking Gui. Agnes, expression still grave, presses her lips together and he braces himself for the worst, but when she opens her mouth, her lips part to a grin.
Etienne leaps into the air. ‘We won! We won back your land!’ He throws his arms around his mother, and she yelps in surprise as he picks her up and twirls her round. She is shaking her head at him and he knows she meant to tell him off, but she can’t, because she is laughing too much, laughing at the tears of joy that she is trying to blink away.
Suddenly he remembers. He rummages around inside his tunic.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says, offering up her St Christopher’s pendant on his palm.
Agnes brings her hands to her mouth. ‘Dear Lord. That was my father’s.’ She turns it over in her palm. ‘It has been all the way to Egypt?’
Etienne nods sheepishly. His mother unclasps the small silver cross from her neck and threads the golden pendant onto the chain. Etienne gives his best smile. For all the times he had held it, praying for it to send him home safely, he feels a twinge of sadness to be losing it.
‘Then truly, St Christopher has delivered a miracle,’ Agnes says, hooking the chain around his neck and placing a kiss on the crown of his head. ‘Quite literally.’ She presses a kiss into Christophe’s russet thatch as well. Christophe blushes furiously.
‘He is a fine young man, you boy.’ Count Roger strides over and takes Agnes’s hand to his lips for a moment that lingers a little too long.
‘Do you think your father will let me ride one of the stallions?’ Etienne whispers.
‘Maybe,’ he says.
*
The city jail in Marseille is below ground. What little light there is comes from a small vent that takes its breath from the street above. Bernard de Nogent is tethered to the wall directly beneath it, privileged to the sounds of the world outside; seagulls screeching over the city’s harbour, stray dogs barking late at night, the low rumble of cart wheels bringing their load to port. On occasion, he catches the agonising smell of fresh baked bread as its vendors trudge by in the early hours of the morning.
It both surprises and troubles him that he has fallen such easy prey to this carnal torment when he has never had any difficulty in keeping his dinner plate abstemious. Could it really be that the Devil has come so soon to tantalise him with a fantasy of the senses? It is effort enough to keep thoughts of the Evil One at bay without these additional temptations. Why, after all he has done in the service of the Church, has the Lord seen fit to abandon him to this squalor? How can it be that he deserved such a rigorous test? Ever has he pursued false believers and sinners with all the vigour that his faith requires.
The business with Amaury of Maintenon was regrettable, that he knows. But what price the souls of a few abandoned heretic children when the gain is the eternal righteousness of the word of the Lord? A momentous new Order, a magnificent shrine to eclipse all those that have come before it, stamping out the new falsehoods that bloom like mushrooms in these fetid days. An inspiration of monasticism before the glory of God.
The Lord, who knows all, must know that it was never his intention to become embroiled in this trade, that it had been his full intention to turn Amaury de Maintenon over to the authorities when the time was right, and repurpose all his ill-gotten gains in the service of God. Amaury de Maintenon. Bernard’s face pinches as he mutters the name aloud. How long will he have to languish here before Maintenon sends men to pay for his release?
Above his head de Nogent hears the familiar positioning of feet over the grate, as a man calls out to his friend to wait. A contented murmur of relief accompanies the warm liquid that comes splashing in through the vent and down the walls to bathe the former inquisitor.
‘De Nogent?’ The coarse vowels of a southern peasant holler his name.
‘Here!’ The inquisitor squawks. Is this it? My prayers answered?
He can feel the foul breath of the guard in his face, but no matter he thinks, Christ sends his mercy disguised in many ways. The bald headed man leans over him and picks up his chains with a gloved hand.
‘It’s time for a few questions,’ the man says, and fondling the handle of the baton that hangs from his belt, begins to chuckle.
*
Half a day into the journey home they stop to eat, pulling up their wagons under the crumbling stables of a small, forgotten village. Christophe is buzzing around the food hamper, announcing the buffet as his father’s manservant withdraws cloth-wrapped packages. ‘Soft cheese! Game pie! Rouen caramels!’ It warms Etienne’s heart to see his friend’s eyes flood with delight, but there is something dismally familiar about this ramshackle village that prevents him from truly being able to share his friend’s joy.
Perhaps it is the two old men who sit motionless, watching as a villein tills his strip of earth beneath the accumulating clouds. Most likely they have been there all day and will be there again tomorrow, as fixed a part of the landscape as the oak tree they are
sitting under. Or maybe it is just the emptiness of the place - the grey, unchanging skyline that makes his skin itch to move on. Etienne sighs.
‘Cheer up, lad. The soil of Gazeran is good,’ Count Roger says, rubbing the dark brown earth between his fingers. ‘But you’ll have to get on to harvesting. This wheat won’t wait.’
‘You mean we are still in the castellany of Gazeran?’ Etienne makes a peak of his hand at his brow. As far as he can see, plains of golden wheat sway beneath the fast moving clouds. ‘It takes half a day to ride through it?’
The count smirks with one side of his mouth and nods his head towards Agnes, who says, ‘It’s three manors if you count your grandfather’s land on the other side of Maintenon.’
For the first time since Lady Isabelle of Chartres bestowed her judgment, the reality of their boon hits home. Etienne scratches his head. He had imagined himself standing in fields under a soft, setting sun, two or three men gathering in the bushels with him. But not this. These fields go on forever.
‘How are we going to farm all this land?’ he cries.
Count Roger of Saintes breaks a chunk of bread and laughs.
‘Don’t mock him, father,’ says Christophe. ‘You’re not. Look.’ His friend points vaguely towards the figure toiling beyond.
‘The land is already farmed, Etienne,’ his mother explains. ‘We will collect the rents and the yield and the County of Blois will give us a percentage back.’
‘Right,’ says Etienne, and he feels his cheeks colour. ‘That’s good. I was just worried about you having to work as well,’ he says chewing on a fresh bread crust. Buoyed by this news he picks himself up and saunters over to get a caramel from Christophe. He is itching to ask his mother and Count Roger how much they think all this land will yield once the Count of Blois has taken his share, so he can work out what sort of horse he can buy. He is almost certain he will have enough to buy himself whatever horse he likes. Not some short little working palfrey, but a fine destrier, jet black, a fearsome beast that only he can ride.
Above his head a pair of swallows dart between the rooftops, shrilling as they ride the oppressive air currents. Instantly it reminds him of the birds in the governor’s garden. All the horrors of his journey seem so far away now, lost to the memories of vast desert landscapes, the sweet smell of frankincense burning in roadside campfires, domed minarets against the warm, pinking skies of evening. And the girls, their deep, velvet eyes and their glowing brown skin. It’s funny how you never remember the bad things, he thinks popping a caramel into his mouth.
The heavy clouds above them yield to rain, sparsely at first, but the big, heavy drops tell him a proper summer downpour is coming. It only rained once in Egypt the whole time they were there. It probably doesn’t rain in Spain much either he guesses, otherwise the Moors wouldn’t care to stay there. He wonders how much further Spain is from Marseille. Not too far probably. The knights of the Hospital there would surely be glad of a young man with a fine destrier to help them fight the Moors. And once the Moors were vanquished in Spain they could set their sights on the North African coast and the Holy Land itself. Who knows, maybe he would see Jean again. They could go and find Marc, and even persuade Daniel to join them.
A vein of bronzed light spills from a fracture in the dark grey clouds and it catches on the horse’s mane. Etienne feels his heart warm. He inhales deeply, a smile breaking on his face. His mother wanders over and drapes her arm over his shoulder.
‘What are you plotting?’ She asks.
‘Nothing,’ says Etienne as he stares out across the endless, golden plains. ‘Nothing at all.’
Author’s note
In the spring of 1212, a young shepherd called Stephen of Cloyes began to preach Crusade in the Chartrain: his mission to recover the True Cross and liberate the Holy Land. According to the accounts of contemporary chroniclers, this popular movement attracted several thousand “pueri” or youths, whose number included shepherd boys as well as urban underclasses. Simultaneously, in Germany, a boy named Nicolas of Cologne began his own children’s crusade, mirroring Stephen’s success.
Although the Pope had forbidden them from continuing, their zeal to fulfil their holy mission remained undimmed. Some made pilgrimage to Rome, others went to ports such as Marseille, seeking a way Oultremer. The vast majority of them were never heard of again. Chroniclers provide us with a smorgasbord of tragedy: some starved en route, or whilst attempting to return home, others fell prey to sickness, others still were forced into domestic servitude in Italy, or were sold by unscrupulous merchants into slavery abroad.
Whilst the events that set the background for this novel are real, the characters are all works of fiction. Some of the family names of French noble houses are real, as are some of the Christian names, taken from genealogical registers. However, in no way are any of these characters based upon the lives of their namesakes.
I have endeavoured to keep the chronology of events and the details of medieval life as close to historical reality as possible. Some creative license has, of course, been taken to serve the story in a number of places. For example, the incipient Inquisition was not yet the dread and coherent organisation that it would be later become. The historian in me would also mention slave prices and the use of currency. Source materials from this period are scanty, accounting practises not uniform and currency exchanges for the myriad of different coins in use fluctuated greatly. The prices of Mediterranean-trafficked slaves generally appear in Venetian ducats - and I have exchanged them into French livres parisis or tournois only on a best endeavours basis.
Of the countless atrocities and victims of the Crusades, the so-called Children’s Crusade holds its own particular, emotive horror. It is remarkable in itself that thousands of France’s youth, already labouring under an oppressive feudal system, found the spirit to turn their outrage at the corruption around them into action by undertaking such a perilous journey. Led astray by those holy men whose message had so inspired them, only to be exploited by a cynical world, it is perhaps not surprising they met the fate that they did. If it seems unimaginable now that children could rally courageously or be so cynically exploited, it should not. According to Save the Children, 168 million children are victims of forced labour today, many lured into it by false promises of a better life.
For those interested in conducting their own research, I would recommend Gary Dickinson’s, The Children’s Crusade (Palgrave Macmillan 2008). For the Crusades in general, the sweeping study of Sir Steven Runciman, A History of Crusades, Vols 1-3, (Penguin 2016) is a comprehensive introduction. Additional reading could include Christopher Tyerman’s, God’s War: A New History of the Crusades (Penguin, 2007). For Arab perspectives, see Carole Hillenbrand, The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives (Routledge, 1999) or Amin Maalouf, The Crusades through Arab Eyes, (Saqi Essentials, 1984). Those wishing to investigate the history of the slave trade, could look at Bernard Lewis’s work Race and Slavery in the Middle East (Oxford University Press, 1990). Estimates of the revenues of the French monarchy and nobility came from John Benton’s article on the revenue of Louis VII in Speculum (1967, vol 42, 1).
My thanks go to my husband Patrick, for reading early drafts, his nose for story and the juggling he does to accommodate my juggling. Thanks in equal measure to my daughter Eleanor. Conceived at the same time as this novel, the knowledge that there are still millions of children who fall prey to the modern day successors of medieval child traffickers was, in many ways, the engine that drove this work to completion.
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