The Burning Chambers

by Kate Mosse

  Vidal waved his hand. ‘You claim the Edict is not enough, and I say it is too much. Certainly, we agree it pleases neither side. Since January, there has been more religious strife, not less.’

  ‘That fault is not of Huguenot making.’

  ‘Monasteries sacked in the south, priests attacked at prayer, these outrages committed by Huguenots are well documented. None of this is a question of faith, it is barbarism. You must surely accept the Prince of Condé and his confederate, Coligny, have their sights on more earthly aspirations? They wish to put a Huguenot king on the throne.’

  ‘I don’t believe that. In any case, I was not talking of our leaders, but the common man. We do not want trouble.’

  ‘No? Explain that to those monks in Rouen who arrived to worship and found the altar of their chapel defiled in the most pernicious manner. You deny any atrocities committed by Huguenots –’

  ‘As do you those committed by Catholics. You overlook the drunken priests, the fornication, the spectacle of children being handed the keys to a bishopric as a familial inheritance. Jean de Lorraine was assistant bishop of Metz when he was but three years old and responsible for no less than thirteen sees! And you wonder why men turn away from your Church?’

  Vidal laughed. ‘Come, Piet, is that the best you can do? Whenever Reformers wish to attack the degeneracy of the Church, you offer that same worn example. If he is your only example of abuse, some thirty years past, then your case falls.’

  ‘He is but one of many whose abuse of their position is driving the devout into our arms.’

  Vidal made a steeple of his fingers. ‘There are reports that the Reformers – the men with whom you claim kinship – are arming themselves.’

  ‘We have the right to defend ourselves,’ Piet replied. ‘You cannot expect us to go like sheep to slaughter.’

  ‘Defence, I accept. Funding private armies, smuggling weapons, all paid for by Dutch and English sympathisers, that is another matter. It is treason.’

  ‘It is common rumour that Guise and his Catholic allies are funded by Hapsburg Spain.’

  Vidal waved his hand. ‘That is a ridiculous allegation.’

  For a moment, they both fell silent.

  ‘Tell me, Vidal,’ said Piet eventually, ‘do you never ask yourself why your Church is so threatened by the thought of us worshipping differently from you?’

  ‘It is a matter of security. A unified state is a strong state. Those who set themselves apart weaken the whole.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Piet replied, choosing his words with care. ‘Yet there are some who claim the true reason the Catholic Church tries to prevent us from being heard is because you fear we are right. You are terrified that when people hear the truth of the Gospels, God’s true message as it was intended – not how it has been interpreted by generations of priests – they will join us.’

  ‘Faith by faith alone? No need of priests, the right to worship in everyday language, no more convents, no more charity, no more good works?’

  ‘No more buying a way to heaven regardless of the veniality of their sins.’

  Vidal shook his head. ‘The people want their miracles, Piet. They want their relics and the sense of the magnificence of a God beyond comprehension.’

  ‘A blackened fingernail, a shard of bone from the body of a martyr?’

  ‘Or a piece of cloth?’

  Piet flushed at the reference. ‘Is God truly to be found in such tawdry objects?’

  Vidal sighed. ‘If you take away the mystery of God and reduce everything to the commonplace, you take away much of the beauty in their lives.’

  ‘How is it beauty to keep people downtrodden and unquestioning, terrified into submission? How is it beauty to stretch a man’s body to save his soul? I return to my previous point. There is no reason Catholics and Protestants cannot live together, respecting one another’s differences. We are all French. There is a kinship. It is dishonest to paint all Reformers as traitors.’

  Vidal pressed his hands together. ‘You know full well there are many of your faith who challenge the authority of the King and question his divine right to rule. As I say, my friend, that is treason.’

  ‘I own there are some who question his mother’s right to rule, but that is not the same thing. Everyone knows Charles cares more for his lapdogs and for hunting than he does for affairs of state. He’s a child. Every decision that is made in the name of the King is, in truth, made by Catherine, the Queen Regent.’

  ‘You have no more idea of the realities of life at Court than do I.’

  ‘It is common knowledge,’ Piet pressed. ‘The Huguenots are being offered nothing more than the chance to be second-class citizens. You know this to be true. And yet even these scraps of tolerance are challenged. Guise and his supporters do not believe we should even be citizens at all. To them, any concession is too much, even the granting of the right to worship in our own language.’

  ‘You say that as if the right to worship in French is a small matter.’

  ‘It was the old King himself – a true and devout Catholic – who set Marot the task of translating the Psalms from Latin into French. How can something that made a man a pious Catholic thirty years ago, now see him branded a heretic?’

  ‘Things are different now. The world is a harsher place.’

  ‘I tell you, if we do not take care,’ Piet said fiercely, ‘we will find ourselves emulating the pyres of England or the vile excesses of the Inquisition in Spain.’

  ‘Such inhumanity will never happen in France.’

  ‘It could, Vidal. It could. The world we know is unravelling quicker than we think. There are those in Toulouse who preach it is a pious Catholic’s duty to kill Huguenots. A duty to kill in the name of God. A duty to wage a Holy War. They use the language of the Crusades even though they speak of fellow Christians.’

  ‘Who are, to their eyes, heretics,’ Vidal replied quietly. ‘It seems you believe that no one who protests against any Reformist teachings – the eating of meat during Lent, say, or the ridiculing of our most sacred relics – can do so for reasons of true and devout faith.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ Piet said. ‘I accept there are some who are genuinely offended by our practices, but the Duke of Guise and his brother are a barrier to a lasting peace. They encourage their followers not to accept the Edict. They will lead France into civil war.’

  Vidal frowned. ‘You speak with the same words used in this very citadel to justify the Cathar heresy.’

  ‘What if I do? The Inquisition, founded in the first instance to extirpate the Cathars, still has a seat here in La Cité, does it not?’

  ‘Three hundred and fifty years have passed since St Dominic preached in the cathedral and—’

  ‘Persuaded no one,’ Piet interrupted. ‘And because of his failure, so the burning chambers were born. Faith enforced in the agony of the flames.’

  ‘Men are not so backward as in those times. France is not England, France is not Spain. Our Holy Mother Church these days seeks to lead by example.’

  Piet shook his head. ‘By breaking a man’s spirit, his bones, to save his soul? I do not care for your theology, Vidal, if it stinks of blood and sulphur and despair.’

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  ‘Villain! Get your hands off me!’

  There was an explosion of shouting, the sound of wood shattering, in the street outside. Piet stood up and walked directly to the window.

  ‘Take no notice. It will be nothing,’ Vidal said. ‘It is a hazard of lodging opposite La Cité’s most quarrelsome tavern.’

  Piet looked out into the darkness. There was a knot of men staggering arm over shoulder towards the well. One fell to his knees and puked the contents of his stomach onto the cobbles. Piet recognised the drunkard who’d assaulted the doxy earlier, and he stepped away from the window.

  ‘Revolting.’

  ‘You are fastidious for a soldier,’ Vidal said wryly. ‘Are your comrades all as delicately minded as you?’

/>   ‘It is a matter of decorum,’ Piet countered, allowing Vidal’s misapprehension about his occupation to stand. ‘A man who cannot hold his drink cannot hold his tongue.’

  Vidal took a sip of his wine. ‘There is truth in that.’

  Piet picked up his own cup and sat down. ‘You cannot be unaware of the methods used by the inquisitors.’

  Vidal’s eyes flickered with zeal. ‘If a man is found guilty of blasphemy or heresy he is handed over to the Civil Court for sentencing. You know that well enough.’

  Piet laughed. ‘The idea that your Church keeps her hands clean by asking the Civil Courts to dispense justice, after the horror of torture, deceives no one.’

  ‘We concern ourselves solely with matters of doctrine. The Inquisition has no role in civil society.’

  Piet paused. ‘Did you say “we”?’

  ‘We, they, what does it matter?’ Vidal said, waving the word away as if swatting a fly. ‘We are all servants of the same Holy and Apostolic Church.’

  Ill at ease, Piet stood up again. ‘You talk as if mankind has learnt the lessons of the past. That we have improved ourselves. I fear the opposite. That human beings have learnt rather to repeat the mistakes of the past, and more vilely. I fear we are sleep-walking towards a new conflict. It is why so many Frenchmen, who share my beliefs, have fled to Amsterdam.’

  Vidal’s mouth tightened in displeasure. ‘Why do you not follow, if life in France is so disagreeable to you?’

  ‘You are asking me that, Vidal?’ Piet said, disappointed. ‘When you know the debt I owe to the Midi? And why should I be exiled from my own country, simply because I think differently from those who currently hold power at Court? I am French.’

  ‘Part French.’

  ‘With the exception of a brief sojourn in England, and my earliest years in Amsterdam, I have lived my whole life in France, as well you know. I am French through and through.’

  Piet was not speaking the entire truth. His love for his Dutch mother, who had suffered so greatly in her short life, was inextricably linked with his love for his childhood in Amsterdam. Living in boarding houses and charity missions between the waters of Rokin and the great Singel canal. Going down to the port and watching the fluyts getting ready to sail for the Indies. The seductive whispering in the rigging as they waited for the wind to change.

  ‘My father’s blood runs in my veins,’ Piet said. ‘Why should I be deprived of my birthright?’

  Vidal raised his eyebrows. ‘I appear to have touched a nerve.’

  Piet looked at his old friend, the distinctive white flash in his hair. The line of Vidal’s jaw seemed stronger, his eyes harder. They had both reached their twenty-seventh year, yet Vidal looked older.

  ‘You are still guided by your heart not your head,’ Vidal said. ‘You have not changed.’

  Piet took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. He blamed the Church for turning its back on his dear mother in her hour of need, but Vidal was not responsible for that. He was fighting an older battle.

  He put up his hands in surrender. ‘I did not seek you out to quarrel with you, Vidal.’

  ‘Though my life is given in service to God, Piet, do you think I don’t understand the way of the world? We are all frail creatures, priests and men alike. Only the Lord can judge the sins of man. Vengeance is His. Justice is His to administer.’

  ‘I was not suggesting otherwise,’ Piet said quietly. ‘I know well you are a man of honour. I accept this is not a matter of abstract doctrine for you.’

  ‘Even now, you seek to flatter me while you continue to attack the very institution to which I dedicate my life.’

  A sudden knock on the door halted the conversation.

  ‘Come,’ said Vidal.

  A manservant came into the chamber carrying a brass tray with a flagon of wine and two goblets, a platter of cheeses, bread, figs and sweet sugar biscuits. To Piet it struck an odd note, as if the action was somehow for show. He felt the servant’s eyes on him. Dark and heavily built, the man had a ragged scar running the length of his right cheek. He looked familiar but the recollection wouldn’t come.

  ‘Set the tray down there, Bonal,’ Vidal said, gesturing to the sideboard. ‘We will wait upon ourselves presently.’

  ‘Very good, Monsignor,’ Bonal said, then passed his master a note. Piet watched Vidal read it, before screwing up the paper and throwing it in the fire.

  ‘There is no answer,’ Vidal said.

  ‘Monsignor? You are a monsignor now?’ Piet said lightly, once the servant had withdrawn. ‘I should congratulate you.’

  ‘A courtesy, nothing more.’

  ‘Is he your own man from Toulouse?’

  ‘The Chapter has many servants they deploy within the cathedral precincts and beyond. I know few of them by name.’ He waved his hand. ‘Shall we?’

  Piet served himself to a little cheese and bread to give himself time to gather his thoughts. He knew the time had come, but he was reluctant, even now, to broach the subject that had brought him here.

  Piet was suddenly weary to his bones. He shut his eyes. He registered the sound of the stopper and wine splashing into pewter goblets, then Vidal’s footsteps crossing the wooden floorboards.

  ‘Here,’ he said.

  ‘I have drunk more than my fill already.’

  ‘This is different,’ Vidal said, pressing the cup on him. ‘A local wine, Guignolet. It will soothe you.’

  The thick, red liquid was both sour and sweet. Piet wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Occasional sounds from the street outside permeated the seclusion of the chamber.

  ‘So here we sit,’ Vidal said eventually, ‘as we were wont to do.’

  ‘Debating, talking late into the night.’ Piet nodded. ‘They were good days.’

  ‘They were.’ Vidal put his goblet down on the table. ‘But we are no longer students. We no longer have the luxury of such unguarded talk.’

  Piet felt his heart speed up. ‘Perhaps not.’

  ‘This morning, you said you wished to tell me of what happened that night in Toulouse when the Shroud was taken. That happier time when we were boon companions, the closest of friends.’

  ‘Boon companions, yes.’

  ‘It will go ill should we be discovered in conversation together. Neither my bishop – nor, I wager, your comrades-in-arms – would be minded to think this meeting of ours innocent.’

  ‘Dat is waar. True.’

  ‘If you have something you wish to say, you must speak now. The hour grows late.’

  ‘Yes.’ Piet steeled himself. ‘You will forgive me my reluctance. In the cathedral this morning, you asked me if I stole the Shroud of Antioch. I give you my word, I did not.’

  ‘But you knew the theft was to be attempted?’

  ‘I knew nothing until after the event.’

  ‘I see.’ Vidal leant back in his chair. ‘You know I was accused of being involved? That the crime of your Huguenot comrades put me under suspicion?’

  ‘I had no idea,’ Piet said. ‘I am sorry for it.’

  ‘I was put under investigation. Questioned about my faith, about my loyalty to the Church. Forced to defend myself, my friendship with you.’

  ‘I am sorry, Vidal. Truly.’

  Vidal stared at him. ‘Who was responsible?’

  Piet raised his hands and let them drop. ‘I cannot tell you.’

  ‘Then why are you here?’ Vidal said fiercely. ‘What fealty or loyalty do you owe to the thief that you continue to protect his name? Is it greater than that you owe to our friendship?’

  ‘No!’ The denial burst out of him. ‘But I gave my word.’

  Anger flickered in Vidal’s eyes. ‘In which case, I again ask why you sought me out if you can tell me – will tell me – nothing?’

  Piet ran his hands through his hair. ‘Because . . . because I wanted you to know that, for all my sins, I am not a thief.’

  ‘And you think this gives me comfort?’

  Piet refused
to hear the bitterness in Vidal’s voice. ‘No one has had sight of it since that night, at least only one other. I have taken good care to make sure the Shroud remains safe.’

  Piet was suddenly overwhelmed by memories of the day, each hard on the heel of the one before until he felt dizzy: the room above the tavern in rue de l’Aigle d’Or, the look of greed on Devereux’s face and the awe in Crompton’s eyes as fervent as any Catholic zealot; then the tailor in Toulouse who had laboured for long hours in candlelight to create a flawless copy of the Shroud, all the time spent choosing a delicate material that sang of antiquity, the faithful mirroring of the stitching, the processes required to infuse the forgery with a texture of age. His thoughts slipped further still, to the first moment when he had held the true Shroud in his hands and imagined the fabric anointed with the scents of Jerusalem and Golgotha. Then, as now, Piet felt a shiver, the clash between his reason and the ineffable and mysterious.

  He took another sip of Guignolet and felt the strong heat seep into his blood. He hesitated. He could not break his vow of secrecy, but he could try to give his old friend – once his dearest friend – some fragment of hope.

  ‘All I can promise, Vidal, is that the true Shroud is safe. I could not let something so beautiful be destroyed.’

  ‘Even though, by your own words, you despise the “cult of relics”,’ Vidal said, throwing his own words back at him. ‘This is cold comfort.’

  ‘The Shroud of Antioch, even though it is but a part of the whole, is magnificent in its own right,’ Piet replied. ‘That, in and of itself, is sufficient to want to preserve it.’

  Vidal suddenly stood up, taking Piet by surprise.

  ‘But since I do not have it, what use is that?’

  The floorboards cracked, like wood on a fire, and his red robes swirled around him like flames. The white stripe in his black hair seemed to glow silver, like a flash of lightning in a dark sky.

  ‘Where is the Shroud now?’ he snapped. ‘Still in Toulouse?’

  Piet opened his mouth but found he could not speak. The chamber was suddenly too hot, airless. He loosened his ruff and the hooks of his doublet, wiped his forehead with his kerchief. He took another gulp of Guignolet to slake the sudden dryness in his throat.