He clucked his horse forward. Behind him, Wighard muttered, “I’d better,” and followed that half-threat with low-voiced prayers—or were they heathen charms?
A brown-robed monk standing sentry on the wall hailed the magistrianos. That robe and the man’s tonsure and shaven face reminded Argyros he was in a foreign land. The monks he knew wore black and kept their beards and hair.
He shouted back, once more calling himself Petro the amber trader. “You’re faring all the way to Lithuania?” the monk said. “A long journey, that. May it be profitable for you.”
“My thanks,” Argyros replied, and asked if he might rest a few days at St. Gall. Receiving permission, he dismounted and led his horse into the monastery.
A large guesthouse for nobles and other prominent guests stood to the left of the entrance road; to the right were a smaller house for their servants and a building that lodged the monastery’s shepherds and sheep. All were of timber, in the northern style, with steeply pitched roofs to shed snow during the fierce mountain winters.
The entranceway led to the western porch of the monastery church, where, Argyros knew, all visitors were received. The porch lay between two watchtowers, one dedicated to St. Michael, the other to St. Gabriel. The church itself was a basilica, long and rectangular. Most churches in the Empire were built to the more modern cruciform pattern, but the timber-roofed stone building had an archaic grandeur; Argyros felt transported back to the early days of Christianity.
A monk emerged from the semicircular atrium of the church. He greeted the magistrianos with the sign of the cross, which Argyros returned. “Christ’s blessing upon you,” the monk said. “I am Villem, the porter. Tell me your name and station, so I may know where to lodge you.”
Argyros repeated the story he had given the sentry. Villem rubbed his chin. “What shall we do with you?” he said with a thin chuckle. “You are neither noble nor pilgrim nor pauper. Would you mind the pilgrims’ hospice?” He waved southeast. “It’s just on the other side of the passageway to St. Gabriel’s tower.”
“Whatever you suggest. I’m grateful for the charity.”
Villem bowed. “As best I can follow you, you’re well spoken.” Latin was plainly not his birth-speech; he had a harsh Saxon accent. He shouted back into the atrium, “Get out here, Michel, you lazy good-for-nothing! See to the gentleman’s horse.”
“Coming, Brother Villem!” Michel was a freckled-faced novice with curly red hair and a look of barely suppressed mischief. Under Villem’s glowering supervision, though, he greeted Argyros politely and took the horse’s reins from the magistrianos.
“This way, sir, if you please.” He led Argyros south, past the tower of St. Gabriel and kitchen and brewery for the hospice on his left and the lodgings for sheep and shepherds and goats and goatherds on his right.
Several monks were busy overturning the dungheaps in both animal pens and going through the compacted dung at the bottom of each heap. Trying not to breathe, Argyros looked a question at Michel. The novice guffawed. “They’re after the breath of the Holy Spirit,” he said. Seeing Argyros did not understand, he explained: “Saltpeter.”
“‘The breath of the Holy Spirit,’ eh?” the magistrianos said. He also smiled. Monks were men too, and saltpeter was said to quench lust. “A breeze that keeps the brothers cooled?”
“Huh?” Michel stared, then laughed again. “That too, of course.” He shouted the joke to one of the monks working at the midden. The monk gave back a rude gesture.
The stableman and his assistant were obviously capable, so Argyros left them his horse and let Michel take him back around the corner of the stable to the hospice. “They’ll feed you after vespers, when they light the hearth,” he said. The magistrianos nodded agreeably. Michel gave a half-shy bob of his head and hurried away.
An eight-bed dormitory lay on either side of the hospice’s main hall. The interior walls were only waist-high, to let heat from the hearth reach the sleeping-rooms. Argyros tossed his saddlebags on an empty bed, then thought better of it and put them on the floor. He stretched out on the bed himself.
Several men were already in the hospice, some on their way to religious shrines and the rest beggars. About half spoke one Latin dialect or another. Argyros made idle conversation with them. Fortunately, none was from Narbomart to give him away: he did not know his pretended hometown well.
As dusk descended, he listened to the monks chanting the vespers service in the basilica. A few minutes later, as Michel had said, two came in to light the central fireplace. One bore a torch, the other a bucket of rags soaked in pitch. That perplexed the magistrianos until he noticed the hearth was full of charcoal, not wood; charcoal fires were always hard to start. But then he was puzzled all over again. None of the monasteries modeled after St. Gall had used charcoal, though they tolerated few discrepancies from one to the next.
The fire finally took light. The monks looked at each other, pleased with themselves. “Coals from the fire of the Father,” intoned the one who had carried the rags—not in prayer, Argyros judged, but as a comment he was used to making. Nodding, the other monk went around the hall lighting tapers. A charcoal fire burned hotter than wood, but gave off no more light than glowing embers.
Novices brought in a tray of large loaves, one for each man in the hospice, and several crocks of beer. The bread was coarse and dark. It was half wheat flour and half rye, the latter a grain Argyros had not known before this journey and one he did not much care for. He did not think highly of beer, either. A lifetime of drinking wine made it seem weak and bitter by comparison.
As he ate, the magistrianos paid desultory attention to the chatter around him. Had it not been for his theological arguments with Hilda, he might not have noticed, but these monks of St. Gall had a curious way of relating homely things to the Persons of the Trinity. His eyes narrowed in thought. Eastern or western, monks had a taste for allegory—and if St. Gall was what he suspected, what better subject for allegory than its fearsome secret?
Emptying his mug, he turned to the man beside him on the long bench, a tall thin fellow with the pinched cheeks and racking cough of a consumptive. He glanced around. No clerics were anywhere close. “So,” he said casually, “if charcoal’s the Father and saltpeter the Holy Spirit, what’s the Son?”
He had all he could do to keep from shouting when the fellow promptly answered, “Must be that yellow stuff—what do you call it?—sulfur, that’s it. The healer burned some t’other day to try and clear my lungs. Didn’t help much, far as I could see—just made a stink. But old Karloman called it the Son’s own kindling.” The beggar let out a bubbling laugh; a fleck of spittle at the corner of his mouth was tinged with pink. He said, “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, eh? Funny I never thought of that myself.”
“Crazy sort of Trinity,” Argyros agreed. Wits racing, he did not hear when the man said something else to him. Maurice was right, he reflected; these blond barbarians still knew nothing of security. Why, the Empire had kept the makeup of its liquid fire a mystery for centuries, but St. Gall’s secret was out after hardly more than a year. Charcoal, sulfur, saltpeter—there could be no other ingredients, or the monks would not have drawn the analogy with the three Persons of the Godhead.
No demons, either, the magistrianos thought with relief.
It also occurred to him that here was a trinity where the spirit might indeed proceed from both the other two elements, for he was certain that charcoal and sulfur by themselves were harmless. In a sense, then, Hilda had been right—not, of course, that the products of this world were truly relevant to theology and its perfection.
He was on the point of springing from his seat and running for his horse when he realized he had not yet won the whole battle. He still needed to know what proportion of the constituents went into the mix. One part of wine in five of water was safe for two-year-olds, but five of wine to one of water would put a grown man under the table in short order. He dared not assume it was different here
. He would have to stay a while longer.
Pilgrims, so long as they left with reasonable quickness, did not have to work for their meals; paupers did. Argyros worked before he was asked to. He spent a dreary half-day cleaning the monastery henhouse and goosepen before the fowlkeeper found out he was good with horses and sent him to the stables.
He walked west, the monastery granary on his left hand and on his right a square wooden building whose ripe aroma proclaimed it to be the monks’ privy. Just beyond it was a similar but slightly smaller structure. A couple of monks crossed his path, carrying wicker baskets full of robes, tunics, and bed linens.
They went into the building next to the privy: the laundry, Argyros realized. His head snapped around to follow them—what would red cloth be doing in a monastery’s washing? He was sure he had spied some, nearly buried though it was under drabber shades. He remembered the tales of scarlet devils who touched off the Franco-Saxon hellfire and grinned to himself. A perfect disguise, he thought, and one that ought to settle Wig-hard for good.
The monks came out, their baskets empty. Argyros ambled lazily toward the laundry, wanting to get a better look at the devil-suits, if that was what they were.
“Here, you, who are you and where do you think you’re going?” someone barked at him.
He turned slowly, found himself facing a stocky, craggy-faced monk of about fifty, with hard, cold eyes. “Your Brother Marco told me to go help look after the horses,” he answered, as innocently as he could. He could tell at once that this was no fellow to trifle with.
“Hmm! A likely tale,” the other said. “You come along with me.”
He marched Argyros back to the fowlkeeper, and scowled when Brother Marco confirmed the magistrianos’s story, quavering, “It’s just as he said, Karloman.” He seemed more than a little intimidated by Argyros’s captor.
With poor grace, Karloman apologized to the magistrianos. “Get on with you, then, and no snooping about.” Feeling the monk’s eyes burning into his back, Argyros hurried past the laundry without so much as a sideways glance.
The stablemaster was a mine of gossip; Argyros learned every small scandal that had amused St. Gall in the past year. He did not, however, find out any of what he was after, and ended the day annoyed and frustrated, a condition that persisted for most of the next week. When his break came at last, it was, oddly enough, Karloman who gave it to him.
The magistrianos had been dreaming of roast goat and onions soused with garum, of smooth white wine from Palestine and the famous red of Cyprus, said to come from vines planted by Odysseus before he sailed for Troy. Waking up to rye bread and beer was disheartening.
Then any thoughts of breakfast, however mixed, vanished from his head, for one of his companions lay groaning in bed, staring fearfully at a fast-rising boil near his armpit. Men crowded away from him and each other. The terror of plague was never far away. Someone went pelting off for the healer.
Argyros soon heard two men approaching the hospice at a run. He recognized Karloman’s gruff voice at once. “Which one is he?” the monk demanded; his tonsure was gleaming with sweat. Before the man who had fetched him could answer, he went on, “No need to tell me—that one grizzling over there, am I right?”
“Yes, sir.”
The healer strode up to the terrified man. “Let’s see it, Ewald,” he said with rough joviality, but his patient was too frightened to raise his arm and have his fears confirmed.
“Grab him, you, you, and you,” Karloman ordered, pointing. Argyros was the second “you.” Along with a newly arrived pilgrim and the cadaverous man who had known about sulfur, he seized Ewald so the fellow could not wriggle. Karloman jerked the man’s arm up.
The healer studied the eruption for a moment, then gave a shout of relieved laughter. “It’s nothing but a common carbuncle, Ewald, you fool. I expect you’ll die in the stocks yet, just as you deserve.”
“It hurts,” Ewald whined.
Karloman snorted. “Of course it hurts. Stay there; I’ll bring you an ointment to smear on it.” He stomped out of the hospice, returning a few minutes later with a steaming bowl full of what looked like honey but had a very different odor.
Ewald sniffed suspiciously. “What stinks?”
“You mean, besides you?” Karloman grunted. “This is half sulfur and half borax, mixed in hot olive oil. It’ll draw the matter out of your boil. Ai! Grab him again, you all!” Ewald tried to bolt, but the men the healer had drafted were too strong for him. Karloman dipped a rag in the bowl, slathered his medicine on the pilgrim’s carbuncle.
Ewald let out a pitiful wail. “It burns. I can feel it eating the skin off me!” He squirmed like a worm on a hook.
“Oh, twaddle,” Karloman said. As Argyros had already seen, he did not have much kindness in him, despite being a healer. He laughed again, this time unpleasantly. “Now if you’d run across another, ah, potion, I dreamed up a while ago, one sulfur to four saltpeter and a charcoal, why that might have just taken the whole arm.”
Ewald, horrified, nearly writhed out of Argyros’s grasp. Karloman wheeled furiously. “What’s the matter with you, merchant? Hold him tight, God curse you.”
“Sorry.”
Karloman was only making a rough joke to frighten the man a little. He could not have expected anyone there to take its full meaning, not even Argyros—his suspicion of the magistrianos had been based on general principles. But he had given the game away, and Argyros forgot what he was supposed to be doing and almost let Ewald get loose.
After Ewald was finally medicated to Karloman’s satisfaction, Argyros waited until the crowd had dispersed, then gathered his gear and slipped away for the stables. He had just finished saddling his horse when the stablemaster stuck his head in the door. “I thought I heard someone here,” he said in a shocked voice. “You must not ride out now, not before Sunday prayers.”
Argyros blinked. In the excitement over Ewald, he had forgotten it was Sunday. He walked to the church with the monk. After what God had granted him this morning, He deserved thanks.
No lesser shrine could impress a man who had prayed in Hagia Sophia, but the church of St. Gall was not to be sneered at. Its proportions were noble, the colonnades that separated the two aisles from the nave fairly good work. Altars stood by every column, all the way up to the transept.
The monks had the nave to themselves; laymen worshipped in the aisles, with wooden screens separating them from the clerics. Karloman and Villem the porter stood just on the other side of the screen from Argyros. Villem nodded pleasantly. “God with you, Petro,” he whispered.
“And with you,” the magistrianos replied.
The healer did not waste time on small talk.
The Mass began. Argyros had been in the west long enough to follow the Latin version with ease and to make the proper responses. But he was so full of excitement over his discovery that he did not notice he was automatically omitting the filioque clause whenever it came up in the liturgy.
He also did not see Karloman’s eyes widen when the monk caught his first omission, or narrow as he left out the offending word time after time. “A heretic!” Karloman cried in outrage, pointing at Argyros. The magistrianos’s blood ran cold. “He rejects the filioque!”
And then the healer must have remembered Argyros’s unwonted curiosity about the monastery laundry and his own inadvertent revelation of that morning. He clapped a hand to his forehead. “A spy!” he shouted.
The choir went on for a few ragged notes, then fell silent. There was a confused, half-angry murmur from clerics and laymen alike. Karloman’s bellow cut through it: “Seize him!”
But Argyros had already whirled and was twisting past gaping pilgrims and beggars. He cursed himself for the carelessness that had thrown him into danger at the moment of his success.
The consumptive pauper grabbed at his wrist as he dashed by. He struck the man a blow that stretched him out groaning on the floor.
Two monks stood in the doorway
that led out of the church’s western porch. They were staring at each other, not sure what was going on. “I’ll get help!” Argyros shouted, which held one of them in place.
The other had quicker wits. He sprang out to bar the way. He was slight, though, and in his late middle years. He went down like the beggar when Argyros lowered a shoulder and bowled him over.
The magistrianos ran out into the sunlight. He sprinted south past the tower of St. Gabriel for the stables. Having lodged in other monasteries modeled after St. Gall served him in good stead: he was more familiar with the layout of the place than he could have become in the few days since his arrival.
The sounds of pursuit rose behind him. Fortunately, nearly the entire monastic community had been in church. There was no one to answer shouts for help. Long legs flying, Argyros was some yards ahead of everyone as he reached the stable building.
Gasping thanks to the Mother of God for letting him get his horse saddled, he sprang onto the animal. By the time he spurred out the stable door, he had his sword unshipped.
His pursuers were very close, but fell back in dismay at the sight of the gleaming blade. Almost all: Karloman, brave as well as clever, leaped forward to lay hold of the horse’s reins. Argyros slashed, felt the sword bite flesh. Karloman fell. Argyros roweled his horse into a gallop, rode down another overly intrepid monk, and dashed for the monastery gate.
Karloman was not dead; Argyros heard him shouting, “Never mind me, you fools. After him!” At the healer’s bawled orders, monks ran to get weapons, saddle horses, turn loose the monastery hounds.
That command alarmed the magistrianos, but it was the last one he heard. Urging his mount ahead for all it was worth, he thundered through the open gates and down the road.
His horse’s muscles surged against his thighs; the wind of its headlong gallop tore tears from his eyes. St. Gall’s fields of wheat, rye, and barley blurred by on either side. Someone in one of the watchtowers sounded a horn. Argyros had no trouble guessing what the call meant.
To escape the all-seeing eye up there, he made for the woods, where he hoped Wighard was still waiting. A glance over his shoulder showed there was still no mounted pursuit. He let his panting horse slow from its sprint to a fast trot. If it broke down, he was done for.
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