• • •
When he had washed, William sat beside Jacob and Jeanne on the bank and told them of his expulsion from the monastery of Saint-Martin—“You broke a stone bench with your bare hands?” Jeanne said. “Really? Actually really?”—and then of his journey through the forest of Malesherbes—“Their heads exploded? That can’t be true. Though there was a lot of blood on you . . .”—When he got to the part with the donkey’s leg, they both began stammering at once. “What?” “No!” “Truly?” “It can’t be!”
But William swore it all was true.
As Jeanne listened to the tale, she began to think. Hard.
When he was done, William turned to Jacob. “I’ve told my story. How do you come to be here, my good Jew?”
“Well, my good Christian,” Jacob replied, eliciting a smirk from Jeanne, “it was because of a fire.”
Jacob told William what he had told Jeanne. William was less horrified than Jeanne—and more furious. “Do you know where those Christian boys live? Let’s go find them! I’ll tear them limb from—”
But Jacob said, “No. I’m sure you could. But don’t.” And then he told of his parents disappearing and finding the butcher lying beneath the wall and of healing his head with yarrow.
“It closed instantly?” William wanted to know.
“The time it took to say the Shema. A few lines.”
Jeanne’s mind was racing now.
The boys turned to her.
“Well?” said William. “Will you tell us why you’re here?”
“And, maybe, about that dog of yours?”
Gwenforte had been sleeping in a sunbeam, but now she stood up, shook herself, and padded over to Jeanne. The greyhound yawned, her tongue rising like a hill in her mouth, then shook herself, sat down, and looked at Jeanne as if she, too, wanted to hear the story.
Jeanne thought for a moment about the stories they had just told her. Then she pulled Gwenforte’s head into her lap and began stroking her long copper blaze.
Jeanne’s rustic peasant accent suited tale-telling well. The boys sat up, wrapped their arms around their knees, and watched the little girl stroke the dog. And they listened. She told them everything that we’ve heard already. Including about her visions.
Because, she realized, if she was going to be burned at the stake for magic—well, they would be, too.
When she told them about seeing the greyhound on Gwenforte’s grave, the boys stopped listening altogether and turned their attention entirely to the white greyhound. Suddenly, William whispered, “Hey, Brutus!”
The kids looked at him, but he was staring at the dog. She continued to lie in Jeanne’s lap.
“Here, Cassandra! Fido! Weston! Elsie!” The dog’s ears twitched with each call, but she lay still. At last, William said, “Gwenforte!”
The greyhound sat straight up and stared at him.
“That is weird . . . ,” Jacob murmured.
“That is beyond weird,” William said. “That is a miracle.”
“And then the knights showed up in the grove,” Jeanne said. “And they captured me.”
“And they brought you to the inn,” William concluded. “So now, will you take the greyhound home?”
Jeanne hesitated. “I . . . I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“The people in my village. They wouldn’t understand.”
“But your parents?”
“Don’t understand.” The memory of their faces, the last moment she’d seen them, made her feel like she’d drunk a bowlful of sour milk.
The boys were silent. The woods creaked in the morning wind. At last, Jacob said, “Well, you can always come with me to Saint-Denis.”
William bellowed, “Saint-Denis? My ass!”
Jacob and Jeanne both blinked and stared at William.
“What?”
“Where is my ass?” William shouted.
Jacob started to giggle. “Say that again?”
“Where in God’s name is my ass!?” William bellowed, standing up. “What did you do with it?”
Jeanne and Jacob were both giggling now. Jeanne managed to say, “What are you talking about?”
“My donkey! Where is my donkey?”
Jeanne’s and Jacob’s laughter began to subside. Jeanne said, “What donkey?”
William slapped his forehead with one huge hand. “I left my ass at the inn!”
Jeanne and Jacob burst out laughing again.
But William wasn’t laughing. “We must retrieve it!”
“What?” Jacob said.
“What?” Jeanne said, at exactly the same moment, in exactly the same tone.
“My donkey had two satchels full of books for Saint- Denis. That’s where I’m going, too! To Abbot Hubert, at Saint-Denis! So first we’ll go retrieve the books, and then we’ll all go to Saint-Denis together!”
But Jeanne was shaking her head. “That’s the last place I’d go. That’s where the knights came from. That’s where they wanted to take me. To Michelangelo di Bologna.”
Suddenly, William’s face had an expression that neither Jeanne nor Jacob had seen on it before. He said, “That is not good.”
“Who are we talking about?” said Jacob.
William explained, “Michelangelo di Bolonga is the most evil monk in all of France. Red, Fat, and Wicked—that’s what they call him. He’s bigger even than I am, they say. And meaner than a hungry bear.”
“He took my best friend, Old Theresa, away to be burned at the stake. He lives at Saint-Denis.”
“And that’s exactly why you should go there!” William exclaimed. “Straight into the lion’s den!”
“That makes no sense,” said Jeanne. Jacob agreed.
“But it does!” William insisted. “For this lion is not the king of beasts! There is one greater than him. His abbot, Hubert the Good. Do you want to tame the lion? Go to his master!”
“And say what?”
“Ask for pardon, for you and for Gwenforte.” The greyhound looked up, cocked her head at William, and then laid her head back in Jeanne’s lap.
“That’s crazy,” Jeanne said.
“If Michelangelo wants to find you, do you think you can escape him? He strikes terror into the heart of every peasant, monk, and noble. Once he knows you’ve escaped from the knights, he’ll hunt you down. You stand no chance.”
Jeanne frowned down at Gwenforte. Then she looked to Jacob.
He shrugged. “It’s not a bad argument.”
“Go to his master. Hubert’s wisdom and piety are famous across Christendom. I’m bringing some books to him anyway. Come with me, and we’ll tell him all about the crimes of the wicked Michelangelo.”
Every one of Jeanne’s instincts told her to refuse. Don’t trust this monk. Don’t go to Saint-Denis. Don’t put your life in the hands of an abbot you’ve never met. Don’t get any closer to Michelangelo than you have to.
Every instinct, that is, but one. The two boys gazed at her like they wanted her to come with them. Like they wanted her.
Her voice was quieter than the wind in the ashes. “You’ll stay with me?”
William grinned. “I swear it on my life.”
“All right.”
“All right?”
“All right.”
“So we’re all going to Saint-Denis?” Jacob said.
“We’re all going to Saint-Denis,” Jeanne conceded.
“But first,” cried William, “my ass!”
• • •
The sun was warming, and the children could hear the scattered chirruping of the first birds, returned from the south.
They tramped one after the other, trying to find their way back to the inn. Their flight last night had been wild and at random. No one was quite sure in which direction the
inn lay.
William started in front—it seemed to be in his nature. Jeanne and Jacob were noticing this—always to be loudest, biggest, first. Strangely, though, it wasn’t annoying. Some children push themselves ahead just to lord it over other children, because they’re insecure or selfish. But William was not like that. He just burned with enthusiasm from within. He was always out in front because he could not wait to see what was next.
But they quickly moved him to the back. First, because he was by far the easiest to spot; the children wanted to see the knights before the knights saw them. And second, because he was so large that every branch he passed snapped back violently. After both Jacob and Jeanne had taken turns receiving lashes to their eyes and cheeks and chins, they made William walk in the rear. Gwenforte walked beside Jeanne, rubbing her white flank up against the little girl who she had loved so much and lost for so long.
They continued to talk as they made their way through the forest. Their accents were unique. Jacob’s was inflected with the rhythms of the Hebrew Bible and the beit midrash where the men of his village studied and argued. William, on the other hand, spoke the high French of the monastery, which was infused with Latin. Jeanne’s speech was broad and flat like the fields her people tilled.
They told one another about where they were from, what their lives were like, their friends back home—though they discovered, to their mutual surprise, that none of them really had any friends back home. Each of them seemed nice to the others, easy to get along with. But at home, it turned out, they had all felt the same way: as if they were different from the other children. As if they had thoughts buzzing around in their heads that, if said aloud, would make them seem strange.
They laughed to hear one another describe this feeling they had all felt, but never before put into words. William, Jacob, and Jeanne, despite their differences, found it remarkably easy to talk to one another. As if, despite their different accents, they had finally met someone who spoke their native tongue.
Soon, they came to a broad road and saw an inn. Peering from the trees, across the road, though, it was quite obvious that this was not the inn they had come from.
“I think we’re lost,” Jacob announced.
“We are definitely lost,” agreed Jeanne.
“We’re not!” William, who had been choosing their path, even from behind, objected. “We’re just taking a different route.”
“A route so different it takes us to a different inn?” Jacob asked.
Jeanne laughed, and William blushed. A familiar feeling crept over him. Two children, pink skinned and of the same size, laughing together. At William. “I meant to take us here!” he growled.
Jeanne said, “Look!” She put her hand on William’s arm. William recoiled. He had been touched by a daughter of Eve! He was about to snap at her—when he saw where she was pointing. He followed the line of her finger, past the mottled, mossy tree trunks.
Down the road, there was a market, bustling with buyers and sellers. The sounds of bargaining and laughter echoed over the road.
“There,” said Jeanne. “Let’s go there and ask how to get back to the inn.”
“Good idea!” William agreed. He took a step toward the road.
Jeanne stopped him. “Not you! If the knights are anywhere nearby, they’ll spot you from a mile away. Gwenforte, too. Stay here with her. Jacob and I will find out where the inn is, and be right back.”
The nun stops talking.
Someone is standing at my elbow. I turn—and see that he doesn’t reach my shoulder. And I’m sitting down. His hair is so red it looks like it’s on fire. And his face is all freckles. He grins at me, and his two front teeth are broken.
“I know somefing,” he says. “Saw it all, I did. Saw what happened to those poor kids. Saw what he did and what they did and all the terrible fings that happened after that.”
He’s a child. But he looks like the kind of child who has seen too much of life, who’s seen more than most adults. His eyes are both sharp and dead at the same time. As if he won’t miss anything, because he’s seen it all already.
“But if you want somefing, you gotta give somefing, know what I mean?”
“Get out!” the innkeeper says, rising to his feet. “I told you twenty times, Renard, you don’t come in here! Never again! I will skin you with a branch if I gotta!” The innkeeper’s jowly face is turning as red as the boy’s hair. I stand up and grab the innkeeper’s arm and guide him back to his stool.
“I want to hear his story,” I say.
“Don’t you believe a thing he says,” the innkeeper spits. “This kid will steal the shoes off your feet while you’re running after him to get your purse back.”
The boy—Renard—looks hurt. I say, “That may be. But I need to hear the rest of the story. And if he knows it, I’ll listen.”
Renard winks at me. “Get me a mug of ale—the strong stuff—and the story’s yours.”
“No!” the innkeeper says.
I add, “No ale. But you can have a plate of food. On me.”
The innkeeper scowls, but I’m already pulling up a stool to the table for the flame-haired boy.
HAPTER 9
The Jongleur’s Tale
I’m a jongleur. I’ll set me up in a market on market day, sing songs, juggle a little, whatever it takes to make a penny or two for a poor boy like meself.
So I was set up in the weekly market just south of Belair-sur-Oise, and I was keepin’ the people entertained, as I do, when I notice the strangest sight. There’s some woods next to where they set up the market. And I see, lurking in them woods, a white dog, wif a copper blaze down her snout. And then, beside her, I see the biggest bloke I ever saw. And browner than a serf in summer, I swear it. I nearly forgot the song I was singing, ’alfway frew. That’s how surprised I was. And then, next to the big boy, I see two kids about my age, a boy and a girl, and I’m pretty sure the boy’s a Jew. Not that he looks all that different. But you know, being a jongleur, you gotta know people. Where they’re from, what kind of jokes they’ll like, which God to make fun of, where they keep their purse—that sort of fing.
Next fing I know, the Jew and the peasant are out in the market. They look like they’re having a grand ol’ time. I mean, I fink they’re out on a mission—trying to figure out where they are or somefing. But the market—that’s an intoxicating place, isn’t it? You got every maker and craftsman from every little town nearby, settin’ out their blankets, settin’ out their wares. You got honey and beeswax, you got ale from brewers and brewsters like Marie here, you’ve got leather and horn and blacksmiffs and cheese like any good Frenchman could never say no to.
And the best part of the market—and I know this personal—is there ain’t no lords nor priests as to tell you what to do. You come to the market wif your own labor, your own money, to buy and sell what you can. That’s the life for me, I tell you. None of this sweating in the fields. You earn what earn as you can. By hook or by crook, by spit or by wit. It don’t matter.
And Jeanne and Jacob—those were their names, I know now—they felt it. As they walked into the market, they began to feel freer, more fresh wif life. That’s what a market’ll do to you. They’re looking at all the stalls. Jacob picks up some spun wool and twirls it between his fingers. Jeanne pushes around some new nails on a smith’s table.
The big boy watched from the woods, and I could just about feel the envy and insecurity rising from him. I don’t blame him. He probably feels left out all the time, looking like he does.
After a while, Jeanne and Jacob seem to remember what they’re about. They stop by a lady selling goose eggs and ask her if she knows a Holy Cross-Roads Inn. She don’t. They ask a fat man who’d been listening to my song. He wipes his brow and says he don’t know neither. They turn to a little lady, about to ask her the same question.
Which is when Jeanne saw
him.
Time changed. I felt it—like a plunging rock hitting the surface of a stream and slowly starting to sink. Dust hung in the air. Peasants practically froze. And there, in the middle of them all, was a huge man.
He’s taller than every other man there by a head, or more.
He’s got bushy red whiskers and orange-red hair, sticking up at crazy angles from his scalp.
His big ol’ cheeks are crimson.
And his tiny red eyes, buried in fat, are trained wif a mixture of wonder and fury on Jeanne.
Yeah, you know who it is.
It’s Red, Fat, and Wicked himself. Michelangelo di Bologna.
Suddenly, he’s pushing people, just shoving ’em out the way, bellowing at the top of his lungs, “Stop! Stop those children!”
Jeanne don’t wait. She bolts off in the opposite direction, grabbing Jacob and yanking him behind her.
At first, she seems headed for the forest, where the big boy and the dog are hiding, but then she finks better of it—why lead Red, Fat, and Wicked right for the dog?—and zigzags off in another direction.
Jacob is struggling to keep up, trying to duck and weave past all the peasants and peddlers in the road. Jeanne is jumping over blankets wif wares on ’em, provoking the nastiest curses from the merchants. Until Michelangelo comes, that is, and then their curses are worse, because he just stomps straight over whatever they’re trying to sell. I sawed him mash some crockery to shards. And he’s gaining on the kids.
But Jeanne gets clever now. She ducks down, real low, so she’s hidden among all the bodies in the market. Jacob does the same. And now Red, Fat, and Wicked is lost. He’s turning around and around, trying to clap eyes on ’em again.
Meanwhile, they’re sneaking out the back of the market and onto the road heading souf.
Well, I see me a little opportunity here. I slip out of the market after ’em and head down the road. I look back. Michelangelo is spinning around like a top, trying to find the kids. Off in the woods, I bet the big boy is wondering what on earf he should do.
Jeanne and Jacob get around the bend in the road as quick as they can. But they don’t slow. Jeanne keeps running, and she calls out to Jacob, “Faster!” She’s lost her wits a bit, I fink. Everyone’s scared of Red, Fat, and Wicked. But she seems particularly scared. I’m hurrying after ’em. They don’t notice a fing.