Taking the chamber pot from under the bed, Georgette called a warning out of the window and waited an exaggerated time for any reply before emptying out the contents. She winced as the sewage joined the putrid rivulet below, and a pig waddled closer to sample the swill. On hot days, children splashed in the foul stream. She and her father had shaken their heads about this aspect of Paris. In the village, they recalled together, people threw their waste into a deep pit, and dug another when that one was full. When charcoal was scattered in regularly, the pit hardly smelled at all.
During the far too short but blessed three months that her father had lived with them before he fell ill and died, father and daughter had walked the streets, like the country folk they were, gawking at the tall buildings, pointing out the fine carriages, wondering at the luxurious goods for sale.
Their favourite stroll took them to a viewing place on the bank of the Seine. On the opposite side, hundreds of workers swarmed around a massive half-completed stone structure with a strangely beautiful shape. The outer walls shot true up to the sky, then curved gracefully towards each other and kissed at the sharp point at the top. It was a palace of a cathedral, a soaring, sacred building, called Notre Dame.
Tears came to Georgette’s eyes at the memory. ‘We were happy together, Father, weren’t we?’ she whispered.
Once she had cleaned the room, Georgette spent two quiet hours at her spinning. Then it was time to heat Robert’s pottage over the little stove. To save the money it would cost him to eat the midday meal in an alehouse, as many of the other students did, she always took his food to him, wrapping the warm bowl in linen cloths.
‘Tell me about your morning classes, Robert,’ she said, as they sat in a sunny corner of the great courtyard just inside the university walls and dipped their horn spoons into the same bowl.
‘There was a debate about the order that Brother Francis started,’ he said, and her eyes lit up. The experience they had shared the previous year, the journey that had made them everything to each other, had at the same time made them different from everyone else, it seemed. Their faith had been burned in a fire, beaten on an anvil, and emerged changed. Even at the university, where a new discipline, the formal study of theology, was taking shape, Robert had found no scholar who shared the exact timbre of his beliefs. Only the teachings of Brother Francis of Assisi came anywhere close.
‘Our teacher said that the Pope was right to tonsure Brother Francis and his disciples against their will, for a monk’s shaven head is a sign of submission to the Church.’
‘Did they explain why Brother Francis objected . . . ?’
But as Georgette began her question, they were both distracted by a little knot of students who had gathered around a stranger quite near them. He looked foreign, not only because of his unfamiliar cassock but for his dark complexion and strange accent. His voice was clear and it had carried to them a fragment that drew them to their feet and closer to his story.
‘Child slaves, French child slaves, I tell you.’
‘And you stood by as this happened?’ demanded one student.
Pain crossed the stranger’s face like a shadow, and his voice cracked as he defended himself.
‘I tried, indeed I did. When I heard the children utter some words in French, I went closer and asked them how they had come to such a sad plight. They said they were pilgrims on their way from Marseilles to the Holy Land. But they were captured by pirates and sold as slaves instead.
‘I begged the slave owners to release them to my custody. I said they were children of my faith and promised to reimburse them if they would give me a little time to raise the money from my community. They laughed at me and said I could never come up with enough money.
‘ “These are not just ordinary slaves,” ’ they boasted to me. ‘ “It is rare to find a group of such attractive child slaves, European children.” ’ It was clear that they expected to make a fortune from the sale.
‘When I persisted and threatened to seek the intervention of a certain Christian courtier in the employ of the sultan, they set upon me. They hit me over the head and dumped me, unconscious, beyond the city walls. By the time I came to, and ran to my superiors for help, the children had been sold and their captors had disappeared.’
Robert’s voice broke harshly into the group’s exclamations of disgust.
‘How long ago did you see these child slaves and where?’
‘’Twas but a few months ago, in my home country of Egypt, in the port of Alexandria, where slave auctions are held perhaps two times in each week.’
‘How many were there?’
‘Some hundreds, I would calculate. They said they were more at the start, enough to fill seven ships, but two ships were lost in a storm. The remaining five ships were met by pirates, ruffians who, strangely, seemed familiar to the crew. The children were chained to one another and transferred on to boats bound for the slave market.’
The students in the group were staring at Robert, who was usually silent and aloof, as he snapped his terse questions. Turning away abruptly, he drew Georgette quickly out of the courtyard and to a quiet corner so they could be alone.
The young couple never spoke about the Children’s Crusade. They would have shrunk from exposing to anyone else the cataclysm of that journey. And they felt no need to talk to each other about an experience they shared so intimately. Now, suddenly, the tragic conclusion of the Children’s Crusade felt raw and terrible again.
‘Patrice,’ Georgette whispered. ‘And the others. Tied up like animals, in a faraway land.’ Wild, independent Patrice. Or maybe she was dead at the bottom of the sea, pale young flesh nibbled by creatures of the deep. Georgette sobbed as she had sobbed only for the death of her brother and that of Father David. Robert held her tightly.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
One evening, not long after the encounter with the stranger, there was a firm knock on their door. The couple glanced at each other; they knew no one who would visit at this hour.
Making his voice stern, Robert called out through the locked door, ‘Who goes there?’
‘My name is Brother Thomas. I was a friend of Father David of Illiers many years ago.’
Robert turned to Georgette but she was already at the door, her fingers clumsy in their haste to open the bolt.
An old man dressed in the same humble black habit Father David had worn and the same rough wooden shoes was standing on the threshold with a tentative smile on his face. There was an openness and simplicity in his expression she had not seen since she left Father David for the Crusade.
‘Please enter, Brother Thomas,’ she said, drawing him inside. ‘I am Georgette and this is my husband, Robert.’ Robert offered their guest a seat close to the fire and handed him the mug of hot cider, which he had not yet had a chance to drink.
‘How in the name of the Lord did you find out that I was a friend of Father David?’ Georgette asked, her voice breaking over the dear name.
Brother Thomas stretched out his feet to the fire and murmured his thanks for the warming drink. ‘I had not been near Father David’s adopted village for many years, ever since we parted as young men, so when I found myself in the district I walked a good distance to visit my old friend. It was a great sadness to me that he had died in the meantime.’
Georgette bowed her head.
‘When I asked about his books, I was told that he had left them to a young girl he had helped to raise, and that the girl had married a man called Robert, who was studying at the University of Paris. That was some months ago. It happened that my work brought me to Paris this morning. I asked some questions of the students at the university, and this evening I followed my man home. Please forgive me for not approaching you directly, young Robert, but my business is with your wife and I thought it best to speak to her directly.’
Robert nodded and Georgette asked, ‘What is your errand, good brother?’
‘Father David owned some copies of the Gospel translated i
nto vernacular French,’ he replied. ‘These copies are very useful for . . . a certain purpose of which he approved. I hope to presume upon your generosity in requesting that you allow me to take the books with me on my travels.’
Robert and Georgette stared at him. Those two books were copied simply without decoration, but they were nevertheless valuable. It was an extraordinary request from a stranger.
‘I think we can talk about that business after dinner,’ Georgette prevaricated. ‘If you only arrived in Paris this morning and have been trailing my husband since then, you cannot have eaten. And following a man secretly is very tiring, I would imagine.’
Brother Thomas flushed, but she smiled back to show him she bore him no malice. Meekly he accepted her invitation to join them at the little trestle table for hot pottage and Georgette’s excellent honey mead.
There was no meekness in Brother Thomas’s conversation after dinner. He was passionate and articulate.
‘When Father David and I were studying at the seminary together, we drew close to a teacher whom we greatly respected. He told us about the ideas of a man called Peter Waldes, a nobleman from the town of Lyons who gave away all his earthly possessions forty years before Brother Frances of Assisi did so more publicly.
‘People who follow his creed are called Waldensians by outsiders. We prefer the name the Poor of Christ. I left the seminary before I was ordained and joined that community. Father David was greatly drawn to these beliefs too, but he told me our Mother Church was the only mother he had ever had, and he owed it to her to obey her faithfully.’
Georgette thought of the look on Father David’s face when she left on the Crusade. For his loyalty to the Church he had paid a high price in pain and regret.
‘Why are those French translations of the Gospel so important to you that you follow them all the way to our home?’ Robert asked.
‘Some of us among the Poor of Christ do not stay in one place but travel the country, preaching discreetly to those who seem sympathetic. We need copies of the Gospels in the French spoken by the people so that everyone can understand what is written. The Gospels in Latin seem but magical incantations to illiterate peasants. Priests benefit from the role of magicians who are the intermediaries between God and the people.
‘We want to reveal the treasure of Christ to everyone, instead of hoarding its jewels for only a few.’
Georgette and Robert alighted on the same memory.
‘The twin cooks at the abbey,’ she murmured.
‘They were drawn to the stranger with the book about Jesus in French,’ he confirmed.
They talked far into the night, the glowing fire sending sparks flying up into the shadows. Brother Thomas drew a picture of the beliefs and practices of the Poor of Christ that closely mirrored the understanding Robert and Georgette had reached through their sufferings on the Crusade. Finally there was someone they could confide in.
Robert had never forgiven Abbot Benedict for being unwilling or unable to talk to him about his anguish and confusion. Slowly, then in a flood of words, he unburdened himself to a very different teacher.
‘On that journey,’ he ended finally, ‘I saw the appetite for violence disguised as duty to God, hatred of others disguised as love of God. But those people are as sure of their rightness as I am. How can I know for sure what is right?’
Brother Thomas took Robert by his shoulders and gently guided him to the floor, to his knees. He knelt beside him.
‘O God,’ he prayed aloud. ‘Heal the soul of this boy who has seen the evil of man falsely committed in Your name. Comfort him. And teach him to ask only one question when he is uncertain: “What would my son Jesus have done when He walked on Earth?” Amen.’
The old man put his arms around Robert just as Father David had comforted Georgette as a child, and Robert cried.
‘The Poor of Christ do not believe in violence,’ Brother Thomas elaborated as they settled before the fire again. ‘The Crusades by their very purpose are violent. When Sister Sabrina was preaching last week, she –’
‘You have women preachers?’ exclaimed Robert and Georgette simultaneously.
‘Indeed we do, for the Word may emerge as clearly from a woman’s mouth as from a man’s.’
Georgette lost the thread of the conversation for a while after that, her mind busy with thoughts she had never confessed, even to Robert. Why couldn’t she study at a great school? Why couldn’t she sit in the library at the university and have access to the riches of books there? She had a sudden image of herself preaching to a small group of men and women. Blushing at her own hubris, she returned her attention to her guest.
‘What about those who will not believe in Jesus Christ?’ Robert was asking the priest. ‘The Jews, the Muslims, the unbelievers of the world?’
‘They are not unbelievers; they have different beliefs,’ Brother Thomas said. ‘We pray that they will find their way to Jesus Christ, but such a path cannot be forced. As long as they believe in the kingship of God, they will pursue lives of good deeds. Jesus would wish us to love them for that alone.’
Eventually, Brother Thomas had to take his leave. He believed he would probably not return to Paris. ‘Unless I am summoned to the Council to be tried as a heretic,’ he added calmly.
‘So we will not talk to you again?’ Georgette cried.
Brother Thomas hesitated before replying. ‘The nobleman who conceived our beliefs, Waldes, lived in Lyons, and although the Archbishop of Lyons is a dangerous opponent, there are still more members of the Poor of Christ in Lyons than elsewhere. If you should wish to learn further about our beliefs, or if you should ever decide to join our community, go to that southern city, and speak discreetly to the man who owns the baker’s shop immediately to the left after you enter the town gates.’
Georgette couldn’t imagine leaving the city she had grown to love. But she was moved that Brother Thomas was entrusting them with this dangerous information.
‘Thank you for your offer,’ she said. ‘We have much to ponder on now that we have spoken with you.’
Brother Thomas bade them kneel and he put his hands on their heads gently and blessed them. Then he departed, carrying the two French copies of the Gospels.
‘Pride,’ Robert said thoughtfully after the door closed. ‘The self-pride that is my greatest fault. Of course, other people have thought what I think. But I assumed we were the only ones to come to such conclusions.’
Georgette was deep in her own thoughts. ‘Such purity, such simple worship of Christ. There is a light and a comfort in my soul that I have not had since I was with Father David.’
Robert flushed. Still now, he thought, still, even as I acknowledge my pride, I am absorbed by self. Yet Georgette is not distracted. Like a bee, she travels straight to the sweet essence.
In the darkness before they fell asleep that night, Robert said quietly, ‘I never had a true home. But when Brother Thomas was explaining, I had the strangest feeling that I saw my home ahead. I have asked our Lord to direct my steps in that path.’
Not many weeks later, Robert returned home from his classes with a heavy step. All the university was humming with reports of the Fourth Lateran Council in Rome, attended by the most powerful churchmen in Europe.
‘The Council has declared the Waldensians – and several other religious sects – heretics,’ he told Georgette. ‘Anyone who joins them or even listens to their words will be excommunicated and may even be sentenced to death.’
Georgette gave a little gasp. Robert sat in thought, his lunch untouched. He had only one weapon against these ignorant – or willful – distortions of God’s love for all men, and that was his brain. He must use it wisely, he must find a way to put it to effective and meaningful use. He did not doubt his brain, but he did doubt his courage. The Council’s decree had multiplied the danger of disagreeing with the Church. Robert shivered.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Robert was too obviously brilliant, too singleminded and
unsociable, to attract friends at the university, but he did occasionally bring home for a drink of beer a few clever students for the pleasure of the philosophical arguments that followed. Georgette heard, not from her husband but from these colleagues, that Robert, despite his youth and the brief time he had studied at the university, was widely acknowledged as one of its most brilliant students.
Robert was secretly delighted by their compliments. It was a struggle for him not to boast of his successes to Georgette and he was gratified that she heard of them at these times. What he wanted most was to be accepted by the Guild of Masters as a Master of Theology so that he could teach at the university. He loved to teach and was surprisingly free of his habitual arrogance while he explained complex issues to fellow students with clarity and directness. Far sooner than he could have dreamed, an opportunity arrived.
The season for inception lectures was approaching. Final-year students who were hoping to be accepted as masters were required to deliver an inception lecture in their chosen subject before they were admitted to the Guild. They faced the daunting prospect of teaching in front of a number of esteemed masters, their fellow students, and a distinguished panel of guests.
Perhaps the most fear-inducing guests were the colourfully costumed bishops and other senior members of the clergy. The rector and the masters were frequently reminded that powerful churchmen were keeping a watchful eye on these young cloisters.
For the first time, the university had decided to offer a crowd-pleasing side show: a student from the first-year class would be selected to give a lecture too, providing a base line from which to measure the development of fully educated graduates.
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