The Inquisitor''s Tale

  And Marmeluc answers, “He has a twin sister. She would not speak to him when he returned. I believe he cries for his sister.”

  • • •

  The next morning, everyone’s a bit groggy, a bit surly, as men’ll be of a morning. They pass around some sacks of vinegary wine to wash the funk from their mouths. I steal a sip wifout Fabian noticing.

  We get out on the road, still heading west. As the sun climbs in the sky, we find ourselves among wide brown pastures. No one’s talking much. Just watching the sheep cropping on the hillsides.

  Which is how Haye spots it.

  He leaves the road—he don’t say why—and walks to the stone wall at the edge of the pasture. His brow’s all furrowed and wrinkled up. I’m curious, ain’t I? So I follow him.

  We see the strangest fing. There’s a deep cut in the earf. Not just in the dirt. Deeper. Into the stone below, like. And even the stone looks like it’s been cut into—I tell you, it looks like claw marks to me. The biggest claw marks you ever saw. Beside it is a long track of burned grass.

  Well, we’re all staring at it, trying to figure out where it come from, what it could be, when Jeanne starts shaking like dice in a cup.

  Jacob says, “Jeanne. Jeanne, are you okay?”

  She don’t answer.

  “Jeanne!” he says again. “Jeanne!”

  I look a little closer. Her teef are grinding in her head. Her neck looks like it’s got tree roots running up and down it. Her arms are shaking. And then, she topples over like a tree cut down wif an axe. Luckily, Jacob catches her and eases her to the ground. She lies there, trembling and shaking like nuffing I’ve ever seen.

  Fabian starts shouting, “What’s going on? What is this?”

  Jacob says, “I think she’s having a fit.”

  Fabian gets down right beside Jeanne and starts yelling in her face. “Peasant! PEASANT! Get up! You’re not fooling anyone!”

  But she can’t hear him any more than the stone wall can. That’s clear as the morning.

  He stands up. “Georges. You carry her the rest of the way to Lord Bertulf’s if she won’t walk herself.”

  “She don’t look so good.”

  “She’s fine. Carry her.”

  But Georges says, “This is weird. I don’t like it.”

  Then, with no warning, Jeanne’s body stops trembling and goes limp. We all see it. She’s not faking it—I can tell. I’ve faked a number of medical conditions in my time. That weren’t no fake.

  Jacob gets right down close to her and says, “Jeanne, are you all right?”

  She’s heaving and sweating, like she’s got a fever.

  We’re all staring at her. Baldwin in particular looks terrified.

  “Did you see something?” Jacob asks.

  Jeanne nods.

  “What?”

  When she finally speaks, it sounds like her breaf is being torn from her froat.

  And all she can say is, “I saw a dragon.”

  Renard leans back on his stool. “That’s it!”

  “What? You can’t stop now!” I say. “Was there a dragon? Did you see it?”

  The jongleur looks at me like I’m insane. “You fink I stayed around after this girl says there’s a dragon about? Are you out of your mind?”

  Marie laughs.

  “I knew where they was going now, didn’t I? Didn’t he say Lord Bertulf’s? So what reason on God’s green earf could you give for me for sticking around after hearing there’s a dragon about?”

  “So you believed she was having a vision? Foretelling the future?”

  “What do you fink she was doing? Jigging a lark?”

  “I don’t know what that means. So you left to tell Michelangelo di Bologna. Did you find him?”

  “Who—Red, Fat, and Wicked? I couldn’t find him, could I? Big as a mountain he is, and I still couldn’t find him.”

  “And would you really have told him where they were if you had?”

  The jongleur sticks his tongue out. “Don’t bring your morality around me. Morals is for people who’s already got food. Sure I would have. And then I probably would have helped ’em bust out of prison before they was executed, wouldn’t I? Because a friend alive is more valuable than an enemy dead, ain’t he?”

  The innkeeper pushes himself to his feet. “Yeah, that’s about as far as my hospitality extends, Renard. Everybody check your purses. Renard, you want to stay, you can sleep in the stables.”

  “Look, I fink I’ve been a very sociable member of this little—”

  The innkeeper grabs Renard by the arm, lifts him off the ground, and carries him to the door.

  “It was a pleasure to meet you all, ladies and gentlemen!” the jongleur is shouting over the innkeeper’s shoulder. “If we should meet again, I beg that you look kindly on a poor jongleur, and share some—”

  He is thrown out into the darkness.

  Aron the butcher says to me, “You believe this story? That she foretold a dragon? You think such things really exist?”

  “I don’t know.”

  And then, a figure approaches the table. He is tall and thin. He peers down from tiny round eyes over a long equine nose. “I can answer your question.”

  The man has the strangest accent. His r’s roll like hills.

  I invite him to pull up a stool. He does. Even sitting, he’s taller than any of us. His cheeks are so hollowed and pitted, he looks like he subsists entirely on turnips. He smells that way, too.

  “I am Brother Geraldus Scotus—Gerald the Scot. I come from Aberdeen. Do you know Aberdeen?”

  I’ve heard of it. The far north of the Isle of Britain. The farthest reaches of Christendom. This Gerald comes from the edge of the earth.

  “I’ve traveled from the Hebrides, down the coast of England, across the Channel, to the Low Countries, and then followed a peripatetic path to this very place. Wherever I go, I write down what I see. I am making a chronicle of our times. I have seen many a strange thing. Strange beasts. Strange sights. Strange men. But never have I seen anything so strange as what I saw when I met these children you’re asking about.”

  “What did you see?”

  He smiled and sniffed through his huge red nostrils.

  “My brothers and sisters, have you ever heard of the Dragon of the Deadly Farts? No? Then let me tell you.”

  HAPTER 11

  The Chronicler’s Tale

  I first met the children in the hall of Lord Bertulf and Lady Galbert-Bertulf.

  Lord Bertulf, as you may know, is a great man. By that, I mean he’s very chunky. He’s about as round as he is tall. And he has no hair on him. Not anywhere. His eyebrows are bare, his head is bare, his cheeks are bare as a baby’s bottom—but chubbier. He’s not a great lord. He’s not even really a middling lord. He’s got an estate and a stone keep and a wall around his bailey—but the wall is made of wood and isn’t all that high. He hails from Flanders, which means he has an accent even stranger than mine. His esses are like zeds, and his effs are like vees. He’s a weird little man, if I’m to be honest with you. And I always am. It’s my vocation.

  His wife, Lady Galbert-Bertulf, is from a fine family here in the valley Oise. She is even shorter than her husband. She looks like a little vole, really. And she’s very warm, and very kind. Until you threaten her money, that is. Then she shuts up like a clam, she does. And bites like a badger.

  On the evening in question, I was sitting at their high table with them in their great hall. It is a low and musty place, with a dozen tables on a dirt floor and a raised dais with a moldy tapestry behind the high table.

  Six dirty knights came striding in like they were the most important people in the world. Behind them, slinking like beaten cats, were two children. I noticed the red marks of ropes recently removed from their throats.

  The
lord and lady welcomed the knights warmly. Well, the lady did. Lord Bertulf just sat in his chair behind the table, like a stick of butter slowly melting.

  “Come here! Come here!” the lady cried, leaping down from the dais and bustling from knight to knight. Then she swept Fabian up to the high table, asking him for his “report.”

  I saw the boy, Jacob, lean over to the girl, Jeanne. “Fabian works for them?” he whispered. “I thought he was working for Michelangelo di Bologna?” Jeanne also looked perplexed. Then she was grabbed by her arm, and Jacob was grabbed by his, and the knights took them to the nearest corner, out of earshot of Fabian and the Bertulfs. Jacob wrinkled his nose, and Jeanne covered her mouth. This was the corner where the lord and lady relieved themselves during dinners and banquets.

  I watched from the floor as Bertulf and his wife huddled with Sir Fabian. At first, the knight was talking and gesticulating, pointing at the two children. But then Lady Galbert-Bertulf took over and Fabian’s eyes went wider and wider as she spoke. Finally he stood up like a bolt, toppling his bench over, staring at Jeanne and pointing. “She’s a witch!” he’s shouting. “A sorceress! A pagan witch!”

  For Jeanne, the world stopped moving. I could see it in her face. Fabian was frozen for her, and his words were echoing, over and over, in her ears.

  The bald knight was saying, “What is it, Fabian? What’s happened?”

  And Fabian answered, “There is a dragon . . .”

  • • •

  We stood on the ramparts of the keep, looking out between the stone crenellations at the bare trees and scarred hills of Bertulf’s domain. The air was still and warm for early March. A yellow haze had descended on the horizon.

  Lord Bertulf pointed at me with a finger like a butter churn. “You!” he barks, his accent more Flemish than French. “Tell vat you know of de dragon!”

  The knights and the children, the lord and the lady, they all turn to me, and listen.

  “Last month, I arrived from Scotland, looking to chronicle all that is weird and worthy of being written down. Soon after my arrival, I was told of a horrible beast that was terrorizing the people of Flanders.

  “It was a wingless dragon, and they said it came up out of the sea. That may be so, for it is black and sea-green and spattered with sharp white bumps like barnacles. It began by attacking small creatures—chickens and cats mostly. But it grew, and it grew. It moved on to sheep. Now it’s so large it can kill and devour a bull in an afternoon. Nor does it only kill animals. It has killed many a brave knight who has tried to challenge it.

  “At first, it killed with its teeth and its claws, which are large and deadly enough. But it has of late developed a new diabolical power. I first witnessed it in Burgundy. I had followed the beast there, chronicling its devastation. In Burgundy, the great knight Sir Ewan the Bold set out to fight the dragon. He was shimmering in his armor, his red crest shining like the rising sun. A group of us followed, intent to see the great champion bring down the beast. He discovered it in the ruins of a famous inn, the Ale and Cheese. The patrons and innkeeper were all scattered or dead, and the dragon was making quick work of the provision they’d left behind.

  “Sir Ewan drove the dragon from the inn by setting the ruins ablaze. Then, in the pasture beyond, they fought. Sir Ewan spurred his horse and charged the beast. He leveled his lance, aiming right between the dragon’s eyes. The dragon faced him—and then, in a moment of cowardice or treachery, he turned and expelled a great and thunderous fart.

  “I must admit, we, the spectators, laughed at first. But when the wave of that fart hit brave Sir Ewan, he and his horse, his armor and his lance, all burst into flames. He screamed, and the dragon fled, and we stood powerless as Sir Ewan roasted in his own armor.”

  At that point, Jacob interrupted me.

  “Wait. You’re saying it kills people by farting on them?”

  I nodded gravely.

  “It has deadly farts?”

  “Yes.”

  “Poisonous gas-passing?”

  Jeanne muttered, “We get it, Jacob.”

  “Its farts are so smelly, you burst into flames?”

  “I don’t know why you find this so hard to believe.”

  “I don’t know why you don’t find this so hard to believe.”

  Lord Bertulf held up a flabby white hand. He turned to Jeanne. “All dis you foresaw, little vitch?”

  Jeanne hesitated. She looked at me. Then little Jacob reached out and took her hand. She looked down, surprised. Now that I know more about Jacob, I understand why—I’d never seen a Jew and a Christian holding hands before, either.

  But Jeanne seemed to take strength from it. She said, “I didn’t foresee it all. But the dragon I did. Also, I foresaw a sickness in the land.”

  “Dere your magic fails you, little sorceress,” Bertulf replied. “Dere is no sickness here.” He turned to Fabian. “Zo, vill you fight it?”

  Fabian took a step back. “What? Fight it? You’re joking.”

  “Vat, are you scared?”

  “No,” said Fabian, looking very scared indeed. “I just . . . why should I?”

  “Dere vould be a great revard!”

  “Great enough to buy me my life back?”

  “Ach! Zo you are scared! I didn’t tink dat you—”

  A high, thin voice interrupted Lord Bertulf. “Jacob can fight it.”

  We all turned in the direction of the voice. It was Jeanne’s.

  “Vat did you say?”

  “Jacob can fight it,” the little girl said again.

  “Wait . . . what?” Jacob demanded.

  “You can.”

  “I can what?”

  “You can defeat the dragon.”

  “That’s ludicrous!” Lady Galbert-Bertulf exclaimed.

  “Yes it is!” Jacob agreed.

  “No it isn’t. Just as I see the future, Jacob has powers of his own.”

  Jacob retracted his hand from Jeanne’s.

  “His abilities are far greater than mine.”

  “That’s not tru—”

  But Jeanne cut him off. “With my help, and the help of these brave knights”—that description surprised Fabian and his comrades, I can tell you—“Jacob’s magic can overcome the dragon.”

  “I find dis hard to belieff,” Bertulf muttered.

  “So do I,” said Jacob.

  “But,” Jeanne said, “if we conquer the dragon, you’ve got to let us go free. We were peacefully on our way to see the abbot of Saint-Denis when we were unlawfully kidnapped by these . . . well . . . these brave knights.”

  Lord Bertulf squinted at Jeanne. “You vere on your vay to Saint-Denis?”

  Jeanne nodded. Lord Bertulf’s bare brow folded into a dozen furrows. At last, he said, “Fine. You rid us of dis dragon, and Zir Vabian and his knights vill escort you to Saint-Denis under my own banner.”

  “Wait!” said Jeanne. “Not to Michelangelo di Bologna. To Abbot Hubert, and no one else.”

  Bertulf studied Jeanne. He had never negotiated with a little girl before, much less a peasant girl. After a moment, he said, “Fine. As you vish.”

  “You swear?” Jeanne said.

  “I svear,” Bertulf replied.

  “Wait,” said Jacob. “I’m supposed to kill a dragon?”

  “Shall I go on?” Gerald the Scot asks.

  “YES!” we all cry at once.

  “It’s not easy to tell this story . . .”

  “Please!” we all say. “Don’t stop now!”

  “. . . when I’m so thirsty,” Gerald concludes.

  We all laugh. And I say, “For God’s sake, get him another drink! Now!”

  The innkeeper obliges, and Gerald goes on.

  HAPTER 12

  The Second Part of the Chronicler’s Tale

  That
night, we ate in the great hall of Lord Bertulf and Lady Galbert-Bertulf. It was a classic meal of the French lords. It started with boiled meats, moved on to grilled meats, continued with fried meats, and ended with cheese.

  The lord and lady sat with Fabian at the high table. I wanted to learn more about the two children who were, supposedly, miracle workers, so I sat at a table near the front of the hall with them and the other knights.

  I noticed right away that Jacob was very picky. The first dish was a boiled swan, head still attached, which he would not touch. Next was a grilled pig. He wouldn’t eat that either. That’s when I began to suspect that he was not a Christian, but a Jew. When a plate was brought filled with fried meats, he asked what was on it. The server did not know, and so he didn’t eat that either.

  Finally the cheese was served. It had a bright orange rind, and it came in small, round, flat-bottomed containers of birch bark. These rounds were placed between every two diners. Jacob eagerly grabbed a rind of bread and went to dip it in the cheese—and then he reared back like he’d been slapped.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Jeanne.

  “Ugh, it’s putrid!”

  Jeanne smelled it. “Blech! It’s rotten!” She looked up, and saw that Marmeluc was about to dip his bread into the cheese. “Sir Marmeluc,” she whispered urgently, “don’t eat it! It’s gone bad!”

  Marmeluc cocked an eyebrow at her. Then, with a dash of theatricality, he took the bread, dipped it, and then lifted it, dripping with yellow, soupy cheese, to his mouth. He paused, inhaled the odor of the cheese deeply, and then popped it in his mouth. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back, chewing slowly. Jeanne and Jacob watched the performance in horror. Finally Marmeluc swallowed, and smiled, and leaned toward the children. “It’s not rotten. It’s Époisses. From Burgundy. The best cheese in the kingdom of France.” He paused. His eyes became misty and distant. “Which probably means that it’s the best cheese . . . in the world.” He kept staring into the distance.

  “Maybe it’s poison,” Jeanne whispered. “I think he’s lost his mind.”