“Father Medous will look after you,” the consul said. He gestured at the sergeants and led them back down the nave and out into the small square. “There is nothing to worry about!” the consul announced to the crowd. “Our visitor is a friar. He is a man of God.”
The small crowd dispersed. Twilight wreathed the church tower and closed about the castle’s battlements. A man of God had come to Castillon d’Arbizon and the small town was at peace.
THE MAN OF GOD ate a dish of cabbage, beans and salt bacon. He explained to Father Medous that he had made a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Spain to pray at the tomb of St. James and now he was walking to Avignon to fetch new orders from his superiors. He had seen no raiders, English or otherwise.
“We have seen no English in many years,” Father Medous replied, making a hasty sign of the cross to avert the evil he had just mentioned, “but not so long ago they ruled here.” The friar, eating his meal, appeared not to be interested. “We paid taxes to them,” Father Medous went on, “but then they went and now we belong to the Count of Berat.”
“I trust he is a godly man?” Friar Thomas asked.
“Very pious,” Father Medous confirmed. “He keeps some straw from the manger at Bethlehem in his church. I would like to see that.”
“His men garrison the castle?” the friar demanded, ignoring the more interesting topic of the baby Jesus’ bedding.
“Indeed,” Father Medous confirmed.
“Does the garrison hear Mass?”
Father Medous paused, obviously tempted to tell a lie, then settled for a half-truth. “Some do.”
The friar put down his wooden spoon and stared sternly at the uncomfortable priest. “How many are they? And how many of them hear Mass?”
Father Medous was nervous. All priests were nervous when Dominicans appeared, for the friars were God’s ruthless warriors in the fight against heresy and if this tall young man reported that the folk of Castillon d’Arbizon were less than pious then he could bring the Inquisition and its instruments of torture to the town. “There are ten of them in the garrison,” Father Medous said, “and they are all good Christians. As are all my people.”
Friar Thomas looked skeptical. “All of them?”
“They do their best,” Father Medous said loyally, “but…” He paused again, evidently regretting that he had been about to add a qualification and, to cover his hesitation, he went to the small fire and added a log. The wind fretted at the chimney and sent a back-draught of smoke whirling about the small room. “A north wind,” Father Medous said, “and it brings the first cold night of the autumn. Winter is not far off, eh?”
“But?” The friar had noted the hesitation.
Father Medous sighed as he took his seat. “There is a girl. A heretic. She was not from Castillon d’Arbizon, God be thanked, but she stayed here when her father died. She is a beghard.”
“I did not think the beghards were this far south,” the friar said. Beghards were beggars, but not just any importunate folk. Instead they were heretics who denied the Church and denied the need to work and claimed all things came from God and therefore that all things should be free to all men and women. The Church, to protect itself against such horrors, burned the beghards wherever they were found.
“They wander the roads,” Father Medous pointed out, “and she came here, but we sent her to the bishop’s court and she was found guilty. Now she is back here.”
“Back here?” The friar sounded shocked.
“To be burned,” Father Medous explained hurriedly.
“She was sent back to be burned by the civil authorities. The bishop wants the people to see her death so they know the evil is gone from among them.”
Friar Thomas frowned. “You say this beghard has been found guilty of heresy, that she had been sent here to die, yet she is still alive. Why?”
“She is to be burned tomorrow,” the priest said, still hastily. “I had expected Father Roubert to be here. He is a Dominican like yourself and it was he who discovered the girl’s heresy. Perhaps he is ill? He did send me a letter explaining how the fire was to be made.”
Friar Thomas looked scornful. “All that’s needed,” he said dismissively, “is a heap of wood, a stake, some kindling and a heretic. What more can you want?”
“Father Roubert insisted that we use small faggots and that they stand upright.” The priest illustrated this requirement by bunching his fingers like sticks of asparagus. “Bundles of sticks, he wrote to me, and all pointing to heaven. They must not lay flat. He was emphatic about that.”
Friar Thomas smiled as he understood. “So the fire will burn bright, but not fierce, eh? She will die slowly.”
“It is God’s will,” Father Medous said.
“Slowly and in great agony,” the friar said, relishing the words, “that is indeed God’s will for heretics.”
“And I have made the fire as he instructed,” Father Medous added weakly.
“Good. The girl deserves nothing better.” The friar mopped his dish with a piece of dark bread. “I shall watch her death with joy and then walk on.” He made the sign of the cross. “I thank you for this food.”
Father Medous gestured at his hearth where he had piled some blankets. “You are welcome to sleep here.”
“I shall, father,” the friar said, “but first I shall pray to St. Sardos. I have not heard of him, though. Can you tell me who he is?”
“A goatherd,” Father Medous said. He was not entirely sure that Sardos had ever existed, but the local people insisted he had and had always venerated him. “He saw the lamb of God on the hill where the town now stands. It was being threatened by a wolf and he rescued it and God rewarded him with a shower of gold.”
“As is right and proper,” the friar said, then stood. “You will come and pray to the blessed Sardos with me?”
Father Medous stifled a yawn. “I would like to,” he said without any enthusiasm.
“I shall not insist,” the friar said generously. “Will you leave your door unbarred?”
“My door is always open,” the priest said, and felt a pang of relief as his uncomfortable guest stooped under the door’s lintel and went into the night.
Father Medous’s housekeeper smiled from the kitchen door. “He’s a good-looking one for a friar. Is he staying tonight?”
“He is, yes.”
“Then I’d better sleep in the kitchen,” the housekeeper said, “because you wouldn’t want a Dominican to find you between my legs at midnight. He’ll put us both on the fire with the beghard.” She laughed and came to clear the table.
The friar did not go to the church, but instead went the few paces down the hill to the nearest tavern and pushed open the door. The noise inside slowly subsided as the crowded room stared back at the friar’s unsmiling face. When there was silence the friar shuddered as though he was horrified at the revelry, then he stepped back into the street and closed the door. There was a heartbeat of silence inside the tavern, then men laughed. Some reckoned the young priest had been looking for a whore, others merely supposed he had opened the wrong door, but in a moment or two they all forgot about him.
The friar limped back up the hill to St. Sardos’s church where, instead of going into the goatherd’s sanctuary, he stopped in the black shadows of a buttress. He waited there, invisible and silent, noting the few sounds of Castillon d’Arbizon’s night. Singing and laughter came from the tavern, but he was more interested in the footsteps of the watchman pacing the town wall that joined the castle’s stronger rampart just behind the church. Those steps came towards him, stopped a few paces down the wall and then retreated. The friar counted to a thousand and still the watchman did not return and so the friar counted to a thousand again, this time in Latin, and when there was still nothing but silence above him he moved to the wooden steps that gave access to the wall. The steps creaked under his weight, but no one called out. Once on the wall he crouched beside the high castle tower, his black robe invisibl
e in the shadow cast by the waning moon. He watched down the wall’s length where it followed the hill’s contour until it turned the corner to the western gate where a dim red glow showed that the brazier was burning strongly. No watchmen were in sight. The friar reckoned the men must be warming themselves at the gate. He looked up, but saw no one at the castle’s rampart, nor any movement in the two half-lit arrow slits that glowed from lanterns inside the tall tower. He had seen three liveried men inside the crowded tavern and there might have been others that he had not seen, and he reckoned the garrison was either drinking or asleep and so he lifted his black skirts and unwound a cord that had been wrapped about his waist. The cord was made of hemp stiffened with glue, the same kind of cord that powered the dreaded English war bows, and it was long enough so that he was able to loop it about one of the wall’s crenellations and then let it drop to the steep ground beneath. He stayed a moment, staring down. The town and castle were built on a steep crag around which a river looped and he could hear the water hissing over a weir. He could just see a gleam of reflected moonlight glancing from a pool, but nothing else. The wind tugged at him, chilled him, and he retreated to the mooncast shadow and pulled his hood over his face.
The watchman reappeared, but only strolled halfway up the wall where he paused, leaned on the parapet for a time, then wandered back towards the gate. A moment later there was a soft whistle, jagged and tuneless like the song of a bird, and the friar went back to the cord and hauled it up. Knotted to it now was a rope, which he tied around the crenellation. “It’s safe,” he called softly in English, and then flinched at the sound of a man’s boots scuffing on the wall as he climbed the rope.
There was a grunt as the man hauled himself up the rampart and a loud crash as his scabbard thumped on the stone, but then the man was over and crouching beside the friar. “Here.” He gave the friar an English war bow and a bag of arrows. Another man was climbing now. He had a war bow slung on his back and a bag of arrows at his waist. He was more nimble than the first man and made no noise as he crossed the battlement, and then a third man appeared and crouched with the other two.
“How was it?” the first man asked the friar.
“Frightening.”
“They didn’t suspect you?”
“Made me read some Latin to prove I was a priest.”
“Bloody fools, eh?” the man said. He had a Scottish accent. “So what now?”
“The castle.”
“Christ help us.”
“He has so far. How are you, Sam?”
“Thirsty,” one of the other men answered.
“Hold these for me,” Thomas said, giving Sam his bow and arrow bag, and then, satisfied that the watchman was out of sight, he led his three companions down the wooden steps to the alley which led beside the church to the small square in front of the castle’s gate. The wooden faggots piled ready for the heretic’s death were black in the moonlight. A stake with a chain to hold the beghard’s waist jutted up from the waiting timber.
The castle’s tall gates were wide enough to let a farm cart enter the courtyard, but set into one leaf was a small wicket gate and the friar stepped ahead of his companions and thumped the small door hard. There was a pause, then a shuffle of feet sounded and a man asked a question from the gate’s far side. Thomas did not answer, but just knocked again, and the guard, who was expecting his companions to come back from the tavern, suspected nothing and pulled back the two bolts to open the door. Thomas stepped into the flamelight of two high torches burning in the inner archway and in their flickering glow he saw the guard’s look of astonishment that a priest had come to Castillon d’Arbizon’s castle in the darkness, and the man still looked astonished as the friar hit him hard, straight in the face, and then again in the belly. The guard fell back against the wall and the friar clamped a hand across the man’s mouth. Sam and the other two came through the gate, which they locked behind them. The guard was struggling and Thomas brought up a knee which made the man give a muffled squeal. “Look in the guardroom,” Thomas ordered his companions.
Sam, with an arrow on his bow’s string, pushed open the door which led from the castle’s entrance. A single guard was there, standing by a table on which was a skin of wine, two dice and a scatter of coins. The guard stared at Sam’s round, cheerful face and he was still gazing open-mouthed when the arrow took him in the chest and threw him back against the wall. Sam followed, drawing a knife, and blood slashed up the stones as he cut the man’s gullet.
“Did he have to die?” Thomas asked, bringing the first guard into the room.
“He was looking at me funny,” Sam said, “like he’d seen a ghost.” He scooped up the cash on the table and dropped it into his arrow bag. “Shall I kill him too?” he asked, nodding at the first guard.
“No,” Thomas said. “Robbie? Tie him up.”
“What if he makes a noise?” Robbie, the Scotsman, asked.
“Then let Sam kill him.”
The third of Thomas’s men came into the guardroom. He was called Jake and he was a skinny man with crossed eyes. He grinned at the sight of the fresh blood on the wall. Like Sam he carried a bow and an arrow bag, and had a sword at his waist. He picked up the wine skin.
“Not now, Jake,” Thomas said and the lanky man, who looked older and far more cruel than the younger Thomas, meekly obeyed. Thomas went to the guardroom door. He knew the garrison numbered ten men, he also knew that one was dead, one was a prisoner and at least three were still in the tavern. So five men could be left. He peered into the courtyard, but it was empty except for a farm wagon heaped with bales and barrels, and so he crossed to the weapon rack on the guardroom wall and selected a short sword. He tested the edge and found it sharp enough. “Do you speak French?” he asked the captive guard.
The man shook his head, too terrified to speak.
Thomas left Sam to guard the prisoner. “If anyone knocks on the castle gate,” he said, “ignore it. If he makes a noise,” he jerked his head towards the prisoner, “kill him. Don’t drink the wine. Stay awake.” He slung his bow on his shoulder, pushed two arrows into the rope belting his friar’s robe, then beckoned to Jake and Robbie. The Scotsman, dressed in a short mail hauberk, had his sword drawn. “Keep it silent,” Thomas said to them, and the three slipped into the courtyard.
Castillon d’Arbizon had been at peace for too long. The garrison was small and careless, its duties little more than to levy tariffs on goods coming to the town and dispatching the taxes to Berat where their lord lived. The men had become lazy, but Thomas of Hookton, who had pretended to be a friar, had been fighting for months and his instincts were those of a man who knew that death could be waiting at every corner. Robbie, though he was three years younger than Thomas, was almost as experienced in war as his friend, while cross-eyed Jake had been a killer all his life.
They began with the castle’s undercroft where six dungeons lay in fetid darkness, but a flickering rushlight showed in the jailer’s room where they found a monstrously fat man and his equally corpulent wife. Both were sleeping. Thomas pricked the man’s neck with the sword’s point to let him smell blood, then marched the couple to a dungeon where they were locked away. A girl called from another of the cells, but Thomas hissed at her to be quiet. She cursed him in return, then went silent.
One down, four to go.
They climbed back to the courtyard. Three servants, two of them boys, were sleeping in the stables and Robbie and Jake took them down to the cells, then rejoined Thomas to climb the dozen broad steps to the keep’s door, then up the tower’s winding stair. The servants, Thomas guessed, would not be numbered among the garrison, and there would doubtless be other servants, cooks and grooms and clerks, but for now he worried only about the soldiers. He found two of them fast asleep in the barracks room, both with women under their blankets, and Thomas woke them by tossing in a torch he took from a becket on the stairway. The four sat up, startled, to see a friar with an arrow nocked on his drawn bow. One woma
n took breath to scream, but the bow twitched and the arrow was pointing straight at her right eye and she had the sense to stifle her alarm.
“Tie them up,” Thomas said.
“Quicker to slit their gizzards,” Jake suggested.
“Tie them up,” Thomas said again, “and stuff their mouths.”
It did not take long. Robbie ripped a blanket into strips with his sword and Jake trussed the four. One of the women was naked and Jake grinned as he tied her wrists and then hoisted her up to a hook on the wall so that her arms were stretched. “Nice,” he said.
“Later,” Thomas said. He was at the door, listening. There could be two more soldiers in the castle, but he heard nothing. The four prisoners were all being half suspended from the big metal hooks that normally held swords and mail shirts and, when the four were silenced and immobilized, Thomas went up the next winding stair to where a great door blocked his path. Jake and Robbie followed him, their boots making a slight noise on the worn stone steps. Thomas motioned them to silence, then pushed on the door. For a moment he thought it must be locked, but he pushed again, harder, and the door jerked open with a terrible shriek of rusted metal hinges. The sound was fit to wake the dead and Thomas, appalled, found himself staring into a great high room hung with tapestries. The squeal of the hinges died away, leaving silence. The remnants of a fire burned in a big hearth and gave enough light to show that the hall was empty. At its far end was a dais where the Count of Berat, the Lord of Castillon d’Arbizon, would sit when he visited the town and where his table would be placed for any feasts. The dais was empty now, except that at its rear, hidden by a tapestry, there was an arched space where another flicker of light showed through the moth-eaten weave.
Robbie slipped past Thomas and crept up the side of the hall beneath the slit windows, which let in slanting bars of silvered moonlight. Thomas put an arrow on the black bow, then drew the cord and felt the immense power of the yew stave as he took the string back to his right ear. Robbie glanced at him, saw he was ready, and reached out with his sword to pull back the threadbare tapestry.