‘Father, a moment of your time.’
‘I have pressing affairs this morning. Should you not be at your work?’
‘I am told my services are no longer required. Another mason is to be contracted to finish the work.’
‘What business is this of mine?’
‘I thought I might begin my work at the monastery all the sooner.’
‘Impossible. The prior has changed his mind. He has asked me to contract another man for the work.’
Simon tried to jerk the reins away from him but they were bunched in the stonemason’s fist and it would take a troop of the Count’s yeomanry to release them. ‘What is it that I have done to offend the Church?’
‘I do not take your meaning.’
‘Father, please, tell me what it is that I have done so that I might make amends.’
‘I do as my prior commands me. You should ask him these questions. Now please, remove yourself.’ He jerked at the reins but Anselm held fast, and his right hand closed on Simon’s wrist. Simon cried out in pain and Anselm stepped back, as if he had put a hand in a fire.
‘I am sorry, Father.’
‘You would assault me in the street?’
‘A thousand pardons. It’s just that . . . I felt sure you could aid me with this. I am at a loss.’
Above them, on the corbels of the Porte des Comptes, devils were devouring the private members of the damned. My repudiation from heaven, he thought, in God’s eloquent calligraphy. But I am too far gone in this now to turn back.
‘I am sorry for your misfortune, Anselm. But I know nothing of this business. Now good day to you.’
Anselm gaped at him, but then his confusion changed to outrage. Ah, he understands now, Simon thought. What was it that betrayed me? My own intransigence perhaps? My indifference to his plight? For the mason had lauded me as a good man and it had not, until this moment, occurred to him that he might be wrong. He worked with the hard certainties of stone and a man like that could never truly appreciate the ever-pliable, ever-shifting nature of the soul.
What would Anselm do now?
But he never had to find out; he slapped at his pony’s rump with his stick and urged it in the direction of the Capitole. Anselm went after him but was hemmed in by the passing of a mounted knight and his retinue, on their way to the castle. He looked back just once, saw Anselm standing outside the porte, a figure of despair as Toulouse jostled and shouted and laughed about him. He turned a full circle as if he was lost, put his head in his hands and then struck his knees with his fists. People stared at him, thinking him mad, stepping warily around this big man with the fingerless gloves and fists like hams.
Simon passed a beggar in the street, crumpled in the gutter with bandages on his bleeding sores. Not all these supplicants suffered, some only feigned their wounds, applying rags stained with mulberry juice to healthy limbs in order to beg alms and make their way through deceit. By day they cried out like the lost but at night they waited in alleyways to slit an honest man’s throat for his silver coins.
Look at his broken teeth, his lying eyes. It was like looking in a mirror.
*
When Anselm arrived home the first thing he did was put his fist through the door, splintering the wood and sending a spray of blood over his knuckles. Elionor gasped and ran to him, but he pushed her away. He turned to his daughter.
‘What did he do to you?’
Fabricia backed against the wall, terrified.
Elionor stepped between them. She had never seen her husband this way. ‘What is wrong with you, husband? Speak up. You’re scaring us.’
His eyes were wild. ‘I have been dismissed from my employment by the Bishop’s order. No reason was given. When I spoke to the priest from Saint-Sernin he said that the prior had hired someone else for the commission that he had promised to me.’
‘What has this to do with Fabricia?’ Elionor said, but even as the words were out of her mouth, she knew. ‘The priest!’ She slapped her fists against her husband’s great barrel chest. ‘What did I tell you? Why didn’t you listen to me?’
Anselm caught her hands and looked at Fabricia. ‘Is it true? Did he violate you, then?’
She could not find her voice; Elionor had no such impediment. ‘You said he was a good man! There are no good men, not in the Church!’
Anselm picked up his bradawl and headed for the door. ‘I’ll kill this bastard,’ he said, but immediately the two women were on him, one at each arm.
‘No!’ Elionor screamed at him. ‘Think about us! What will we do without our breadwinner? Have you thought of that? Kill a priest and they will show us no mercy!’
Anselm hesitated, let them pull him back into the house. He knew Elionor was right. There was nothing they could do, not against the Church.
They made up their minds that very day. He discussed it through the long afternoon with his wife and they concluded there was no other choice. Simon must have persuaded the prior who had persuaded the Bishop and with the Bishop against him he would find no employment on any church in Toulouse.
‘We’ll head south, into the Albigeois,’ he told his wife. ‘They haven’t any time for the Bishop down there. We’ll start again.’ He looked at Fabricia and fought back rage and pity. He would have liked to have crushed the priest’s skull like a nut. ‘Why didn’t she tell us?’ he asked his wife.
‘She was trying to protect you,’ she said and he knew straight away that she was right.
‘We’ll leave at the end of the week,’ he said. ‘This stinking city. Perhaps if we go south far enough we can find a little peace. I hope that bastard rots in hell.’
XVI
Vercy.
THE BELLS CHIMED for nones and he had still not returned, so Renaut rode down to the village to look for him. He found the seigneur’s horse cropping the grass outside the church.
He went in. A light burned in the sacristy. He took a moment to accustom his eyes to the dark and then went down the narrow steps to the vault, his boots echoing on the stone flags.
Philip had lit a candle beside her resting place, and he was curled on top of her tomb, his rabbit’s fur cloak wrapped around him. His breath froze on the air. It was crowded with death down here, every member of the baron’s family had been buried in this cellar for five generations, and there was little enough space now for more.
‘What are you doing here?’ Renaut said.
‘Saying goodbye.’
‘You will freeze to death.’
‘I do not mind that.’
‘Death is a false friend, my lord. It makes you forget your duty to the ones who are still alive and rely on you.’
Philip rubbed the rough stone of the tomb with a gloved finger. ‘She must have suffered before she died. I never understood why death must take so long about his work. Especially to those who themselves are not cruel. She deserved better.’
‘Yes. She did.’
‘I had a friend in Outremer. He was a southerner, from the Languedoc. A good man. Once I saw him knock some ruffian down for abusing a horse. And twice he saved my life. He was devout in his faith, went regularly to communion and would never do any man harm. But the manner of his death was beyond imagining. He took a wound to the belly in a skirmish and died a week later, still howling. He deserved a sweeter fate. Yet other men, they wore the cross even while they raped women, took greatest pleasure in torturing their prisoners, and these men survived our wars in good humour and good health. I confess, I do not understand the workings of God or the life He has put us in.’
‘Yet we are here, and we must make the best of it.’
Philip laughed. More a bark really, of surprise, or perhaps he was just abashed at having spoken so plainly with his own squire. He sat up. ‘Yes, you are right. We must to our duty. And yet . . .’ He traced the carving of her name on the stone. ‘Sometimes, if you take a single man or woman from the world, it is suddenly empty.’
‘She left you something to remember her by.�
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‘This runt of mine took her life from me.’
‘I am sure he did not wish to be without his mother. He is as wronged as you in this grief. And what of your good wife in heaven now, pray God? Would she want you to abandon him?’
Philip sat up slowly, reluctantly, and clapped him on the shoulder. ‘How did you come to be so wise when you only have eighteen summers? You are right. Enough now. Show me my son.’
*
The wet nurse who held him had a kind face and seemed reluctant to let him go. He was almost half a year old now, a milksop who kicked and grinned and chewed like a hungry woodsman on his fist. When he saw Philip he offered a toothless grin.
Philip had entered the chamber prepared to meet the enemy who had murdered his wife but with this one stroke he was naked and disarmed. ‘But he’s perfect,’ he said to Renaut, as if the child had been handed to him by accident.
‘He is a fine boy. He has black curls like you.’
‘But he has his mother’s eyes. See, Renaut, they are just the same. It is as if she is staring at me.’
‘He thrives. Look at him. He will be a giant like you one day.’
‘I feel her in him.’
‘He needs a name, my lord.’
Philip turned to the wet nurse. ‘By what name do you call him now?’
She ducked her head. ‘Just petit m’sieur, my lord.’
‘Has he not been blessed by a priest?’
‘When he was born. The priest called him Philip, after you.’
‘No, I don’t want him to be like me. The Philips of this world make war when they should be making peace. We will call him Renaut and hope that he will grow up as fine a young man as my young squire here.’ Renaut’s cheeks flushed bronze, overwhelmed by this honour. Philip handed the child back to the nurse. ‘I let them down, both of them. I left when I should have stayed. I will never let it happen again.’
PART TWO
XVII
Saint-Ybars, in the Pays d’Oc
spring, 1209
THERE WAS IN the hour before the sun disappeared behind the mountains a time when the light was at its most perfect. Fabricia felt as if she could reach out a hand to touch each stunted thyme, each lavender bush and dwarf oak of the garrigue. In the valley below the wheat fields and pastures, the faratjals, looked like a giant’s chessboard.
There were buds on the almond trees in the valley and, though the sun was still pale and the fire in the hearth had no warmth at all unless you sat right by it, a slow thaw had begun. Melted snow trickled down the lanes, the ice that hung from the roofs and lintels dripped steadily during the day, and the snow that yet clung to the shadowed alleys had turned to a dun-coloured slush. The air was so clear she could make out the grey branches of birch and ash on the far side of the valley.
Soon there would be no good excuse to wear her woollen gloves each day.
She watched the hunchback Bernart make his slow and difficult way out of the east portal, back to his ostal on the other side of the valley. Over his shoulder he carried the few meagre onions he’d brought to the market to sell. Some small boys were following behind, mocking him and throwing rocks. One of the stones caught him a glancing blow on the side of the head and he toppled into a ditch.
She set down her pannier and ran after them. They scattered into the lanes. ‘I know who you are!’ she shouted after them. ‘Your mothers will know about this!’
Bernart was lying on his face in the ditch. At first she thought he was dead but when she shook him he opened his eyes and sat up. He did not seem to know where he was, and started to scramble for the onions that were scattered over the path. ‘Are you hurt?’ she said.
‘No, not hurt,’ he said. He was accustomed to such usage, she thought. Like a dog, you kick it, and it still licks your hand.
‘You’re bleeding,’ she said. The stone had knocked off his cap and now she laid her hand on his head to examine the wound. It was an old head, and twisted, shaped like a bean; they said he was born that way, deformed when he came out of his mother’s womb.
Bernart closed his eyes at her touch. ‘Are you all right?’ she said.’
He swayed on his knees, then reached up and took hold of her wrist. She drew back. He had frightened her.
‘I’m sorry. It just felt so good. Like a cool river running through me.’
She felt immediately ashamed of her fear. Old Bernart would not hurt anyone. She helped him back to his feet, gave him his cap, gathered the rest of the onions from the ground and put them back in the sack. ‘Dieu vos benesiga,’ she said.
‘God bless you too, Fabricia,’ he said and limped away.
Fabricia hurried back to the village. The bayle closed the gates at sunset and she got there just in time. It was late in the year for wolves but Catalan brigands roamed here from time to time. A muddy lane snaked between the houses huddled side by side up the hill. Chickens scattered fussing out of her way.
She saw a man in a brown cassock making his way towards her and she stopped, looked for another way, hoping to avoid him. But it was too late.
‘Fabricia,’ the priest said.
‘Father Marty.’
‘Have you been in the fields?’ He stopped in front of her, blocking the way. A big man – he might have made a fine stonemason, her father had said. Instead of a lousy priest, her mother answered. He had a broad smile and greedy eyes, a glance quick to calculate a tithe or a dispensation. He once carried off the bedclothes of a dying man to whom he had just administered extreme unction and who was otherwise unable to pay. Or so they said.
His brother was the bayle so you watched yourself around him. Half the unmarried women in the village, and a good portion of the wives, had been his mistress at one time or another.
‘I’ve been collecting herbs for my mother.’
He took her pannier from her to see what was in it. He doesn’t want the thyme or the belladonna but he’ll still take some, just to show that he can. ‘Is it true she’s a wise woman?’
‘Are you sick, Father?’
He didn’t reply, just gave her back the pannier, lighter than when he took it.
‘It is almost dark. I must get home,’ she said.
He grabbed the sleeve of her dress and pulled her into a doorway. ‘I heard you had a lover in Toulouse, a priest like me.’
‘Hardly a lover. He raped me.’
‘You women, you always say it’s rape afterwards.’
It was dark in the lane, no one to see. She could scream, but then what might he do? Better to try and talk my way out of this, she thought.
‘Are you worried about sin, little Fabricia? For I tell you, a lady who sleeps with a true lover is purified of all sin. The joy of love makes the act innocent for it proceeds from a pure heart. If you are happy to do it, you will not displease God.’
‘Unless you do it with a husband, you go to hell.’
‘Who told you that?’ he said and tried to kiss her.
‘Please, Father, I am afraid for my soul.’ But mostly it is because you repulse me, she thought. But if I say it, you and the bayle will make life miserable for my father, and haven’t I done enough to him?
‘Then confess to me on Sunday and I will absolve you.’ He put his hand on her breast and pressed hard against her. She thought about Simon and the bright, watery blood on the rushes after he was done with her and instinctively she brought up her knee, hard, and Father Marty crumpled to his knees. Fabricia twisted away and ran. She did not stop until she reached their domus, high up the hill, near the bayle’s château.
*
In Toulouse they had lived in a stone house with solid doors fitted with locks and there were fine hangings on the walls. Each time she came home to their new ostal in the village, Fabricia experienced a stab of shame for how they were reduced. Draughts whistled under the door, and just a single ham hung from the rafters by the hearth, instead of the flitches of bacon, black puddings and rillettes they had before. They were rich compared t
o the other villagers, they had a stone fireplace and even a solier, a room above the foganha, where her parents slept. Most of the other houses were just wood and daub. But it was still nothing compared to Toulouse.
Her mother was chopping herbs and onions and throwing them into the payrola that bubbled in the hearth in the centre of the room. Anselm was toasting his toes before the fire. His hair was almost completely grey now, for he was getting to be an old man, almost fifty.
Her mother could sense straight away that something was wrong.
‘Are you all right, girl? You’re white as a sheet.’
‘I saw old Bernart as I was coming back from the fields. The baker’s sons were tormenting him again. They hit him in the head with a rock. I get so angry. Why don’t they leave the poor man alone?’
‘They say he is possessed,’ Anselm said.
‘Because he has a hump on his back?’
‘A sign of the Devil.’
‘He is not possessed! He is utterly harmless. He has a crooked back, but the sweetest nature of any man in the village!’
‘Don’t talk to your father that way!’ Elionor said.
‘Even the priest says it,’ he mumbled.
‘Father Marty is from the Devil if anyone is.’
‘You see? I’m not the only one in this family who hates those vultures,’ her mother said.
‘Did God not make all things, Papa?’
‘He did.’
‘And did He not make Bernart also?’
Anselm looked sulky, as he always did when trapped in argument.
‘Why did God make such a creature as Bernart unless He meant him to be that way? How can a God that is truly good make something that is evil?’
‘Because God did not make the world!’ her mother said. ‘It is like the bons òmes say, the world belongs to the Devil. That is why!’
‘Basta!’ her father shouted. ‘Enough! I won’t listen to heresy in my own house! And Fabricia, what have you done to yourself? You’re bleeding.’
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