The Inquisitor''s Tale

  “How did you know?” King Louis asked the little girl. I should tell you that our king is both gentle and firm, self-possessed and sympathetic. These apparent contradictions express themselves in everything that he does, down to his elocution. It is exact and perfect in every way—and yet it is not ostentatious. Like his clothes. The richest in France—and yet simple, almost forgettable. “You say you have never seen me before—and yet, you recognized me. How?”

  Jeanne opened her mouth—and then shut it again. She was appraising the king. As if she had a secret and could not decide whether it was safe to share it or not.

  I lost patience. “My lord, isn’t it obvious?”

  “Is it, Joinville?”

  “But of course. She’s seen a drawing, Your Majesty. A picture. Your royal seal, emblazoned with your face.”

  “Where on earth would she have seen my seal, Joinville? She’s a peasant!” the king retorted. He asked Jeanne, “Have you ever seen my seal?”

  She shook her head.

  “Have you seen a picture of me?”

  Again, Jeanne shook her head.

  “A manuscript? An image of any kind?”

  Jeanne continued to shake her head.

  “Then you gave it away!” I said. “Your kingly bearing, your imperious gaze. Your royal regard!”

  The king’s long face grew longer. “Did I give it away, my child?”

  Jeanne shook her head.

  My impatience boiled over. “Well? Does she speak? Will she shake her tongue and unlock the mystery of your identification?”

  The little peasant had trapped her lips between her teeth.

  I leaned across the table. “It is not wise to play games with the king.”

  She seemed to consider that. Her mousy hair all a-tangle on her head, her small eyes focusing first on the king, then on the table, then on the king again. She was afraid. I could see that. Afraid of letting something go that she had long guarded.

  Finally she opened her mouth to speak—and the heavy hand of Michelangelo di Bologna fell on her shoulder.

  “May I, Jeanne?” he said.

  The little girl’s eyes traveled up to the great monk’s red face. She closed her mouth and let him speak.

  “What I am about to tell you, Your Majesty, will surprise you.” He looked to me and added, “Your highly skeptical friend may not believe me at all. That notwithstanding, it is true.”

  The king moved forward on the plain wooden bench. I shifted uncomfortably.

  “These children are each capable of extraordinary acts. The boy here”—he indicated Jacob—“can heal a wound as fast as Saint Luke himself. The oblate, William, can perform feats of strength that would make Samson tremble. And this girl, this peasant girl, is taken by miraculous fits. She falls, she shakes, she cannot see nor hear, and yet she has visions of the future. True visions, Your Majesty. If I had to guess, I would hazard that she saw you in one of her fits. Is it true, Jeanne?”

  The refectory was totally silent as we waited for the little girl to speak.

  She still seemed to be wrestling with something, for though she stared at the king, she said not a word.

  Pious Louis leaned across the table, until his hair swung back and forth across his cheeks. “Did you see me in a vision, little girl?”

  Silence.

  And then, “Yes, Your Majesty. I saw you.”

  “And what else did you see?”

  Jeanne became very still. She studied the grooves in the wooden table.

  “My little friend, please, tell me—what did you see?”

  “I . . . I don’t want to say.”

  I barked with laughter. “You don’t want to say? I’m sorry, little peasant! You don’t exactly have a choice!”

  But the king rebuked me. “Don’t threaten her. Please, little girl. Your king is asking you to share your gift with him.”

  I didn’t mind the rebuke—it is an honor to be rebuked by the king. But I did not like him trusting her so soon, and so far.

  But, as has happened many times before, the king proved himself wiser than me. His goodness is contagious, for he gave Jeanne trust—and she felt it. And so, reluctantly at first, she gave her trust to him.

  “I had this vision long ago,” she said. “It is the strangest, most confusing vision I have ever had.”

  King Louis did not speak, but he nodded his head gently, encouragingly.

  “I saw Christ on the cross,” Jeanne said. Instantly, we crossed ourselves—thumbs inward, shoulder to shoulder, forehead to sternum. Everyone, that is, save Jacob, who saw it happen too late to try to imitate us. At the time, I noticed and wondered, just for an instant, if this boy was not of our faith. But the thought quickly escaped my mind, as greater things presented themselves for my attention.

  “Christ was on the cross,” Jeanne went on, “but it must have been by magic, because there were no nails in his hands or his feet. But they were still bleeding . . .” She halted.

  “And?” the king asked. “Is there more? Was I there?”

  “You were at the foot of the cross. You were crying.”

  “How crying? Crying aloud? Weeping?”

  “I am sorry, Your Majesty. You were . . . you were kind of . . . throwing a tantrum.”

  The king sat straight up, stung. I laid a hand on his shoulder. “It is becoming to weep at the sight of Our Lord’s crucifixion,” I assured him.

  “Yes,” he replied, “but tantrums are less becoming in the presence of God, I would think.”

  “Don’t be too proud, my lord,” I said.

  My beloved king turned to me and said, “You’re telling me not to be proud?” His other companions laughed. I was pleased to be the butt of his joke. And then he asked, “Is there more, little girl?”

  “No . . . well, there was a huge bird—an eagle or a vulture, I guess—flying overhead, in circles around the cross. It was crying, like it was hungry. Like I said, it was the strangest vision I ever—”

  Jeanne stopped speaking. The abbot had entered the refectory. His face was so dark, I was certain he brought news of someone’s death. He walked to the king’s side, and then gestured for Michelangelo to join him. They knelt together, the three of them, and the abbot began to whisper. A feeling of great darkness and foreboding entered my heart.

  I was right to worry.

  For just then, a scream ripped through the stillness of the abbey. It was my beloved king. “By the scallop of Saint James!” he wailed. “By Saint Hilda’s hair, it cannot be!” The king launched himself onto the floor and began tearing at his clothes. The greyhound scrambled out from under the table. “It cannot be!” the king was shrieking. “It cannot be! Why, Lord, oh, why? I would rather the best city of my kingdom ruined! Razed to the ground by the infidel!”

  “My lord,” I cried, beseeching him, “My lord, what’s happened?”

  But he could not string two coherent words together. I thought at first, of course, of his mother. He is closer to no one on earth. Surely, she had suddenly died? The king writhed on the floor like he was being stung by a swarm of wasps.

  So I turned, desperately now, to Michelangelo di Bologna. The prior looked like he had been struck in the face. “What is it?” I pleaded with him. “What’s happened?”

  Michelangelo’s voice was like the pealing of a funeral bell. “The Holy Nail, at Saint-Denis, has been stolen.”

  I nearly fell off the bench on which I sat. The other companions to the king covered their faces with their hands or cried aloud in horror.

  Amidst the commotion, Jacob turned to William and whispered, “What’s the Holy Nail?”

  William turned on him like he was a two-headed cat. “What do you mean ‘What’s the Holy Nail?’”

  “I don’t know what that is!”

  The commotion continued. Crying and shout
ing and literal hand-wringing.

  William hissed at Jacob, “The Holy Nail! The Holy Nail!”

  “That’s not helping me,” Jacob informed him.

  “From the hand of Christ on the cross! The nail that held the Lord God in place during his crucifixion!” William practically shouted.

  “Oh!” Jacob said. “Oh . . . I guess that’s pretty important.”

  William replied, “You think so?”

  The king was moaning and squirming on the cold stones of the refectory. “The Holy Nail . . . ,” he whimpered. “The Holy Nail . . .”

  Which is when I fixed my gaze on Jeanne. It could not have been more than a murmur when I said it, but it silenced the whole refectory: “There were no nails in his hands or his feet.”

  • • •

  My dear king was still weeping. We had collected him off the ground and made him sit on a bench. He sat with his shoulders slumped, his hands pressed between his knees, his tears streaming steadily down his pale, soft cheeks. If someone had told him to “sit up like a big boy,” it would not have felt out of place. The greyhound had stationed herself between the king’s legs and was periodically reaching up and licking his face. He did not resist.

  While my beloved king recovered from the shock of losing the most precious relic in France, I turned on the children and their guide, Michelangelo.

  “As I see it,” I said, standing before them, my legs set apart, my hands on my hips, “there are two possible explanations of what has just occurred. One is highly unlikely. The other is very disturbing.

  “The first: that you are a group of modern saints. One of you just happens to have a vision predicting the disappearance of France’s greatest treasure. Then, you stumble upon the king—just moments before he learns of the loss of the Nail. It should be noted that this ‘saint’ claims never to have seen the king before, and yet she recognizes him from her highly convenient ‘vision.’

  “The second explanation, both more likely and more disturbing: This was all a plot. You stole the Holy Nail. You knew where the king would be, perhaps through friends of Michelangelo’s here in the abbey. You present yourselves as miracle workers—without the faintest evidence, I might add—in an attempt to gain the king’s trust. I don’t know what you did with the Nail. Sell it? Or maybe you’ll return it, having ‘found the culprit’ and pinned your crime on some poor fool? Either way, you’ll have ingratiated yourselves with the king. Which, I imagine, would have been the prime purpose of the plot.”

  After letting my accusation hang in the quiet air of the refectory for a moment, I added:

  “If this second explanation is the case, I must note, you are incredibly good actors, because right now you all look completely flabbergasted.”

  It was true. They did. All four of them stared at me with their brows knitted and their mouths hanging open.

  The king had, thankfully, stopped weeping by now. Occasionally a tear would slide down his royal nose and dangle from its curved tip, but at least the loud sobbing had ceased. He was paying attention to my trial. Interestingly, the dog was, too. She came and sat between myself and the children, and her head moved back and forth between us, like a spectator at a university debate.

  After a moment of stunned silence, Michelangelo replied, “Do we even know that the Nail was stolen? The abbot here tells us it was lost while it was passed around for pilgrims to venerate. Might it not have just fallen from its jar?”

  “You keep the Holy Nail in a jar?” Jacob said.

  “Well, a vase, really. It is passed around in its vase for the pilgrims to kiss. The vase and the Nail are kept in a great golden reliquary, adorned with gems and precious metals and the great eagles of Charlemagne, who had the reliquary made.”

  “Great eagles?” said William.

  “Yes,” I said, “Charlemagne’s coat of arms was an eagle—” I stopped speaking, for I suddenly knew what William had meant. He was referring to Jeanne’s vision.

  Louis understood, too. He stood up and turned to the abbot. “Do you have horses?”

  “Of course, my liege.”

  “Fast ones?”

  “Yes, of course . . .”

  “Saddle them now!” He turned to Michelangelo and the children. “You will not leave here till the Nail is found.” The greyhound barked at the king. He looked at the dog. “Nor you neither.”

  • • •

  Before I left the abbey with the king, I instructed one of the monks to listen behind a door at the side of the refectory, in case Michelangelo and the children revealed some treachery. This is what he witnessed:

  As soon as they were alone, William announced, “Either they find the Nail, or they hang us from our thumbs until we tell them where we’ve hidden it.”

  “Indeed,” Michelangelo said, sighing. “Our mission may be over before it has begun.”

  “Our lives may be over before they’ve begun,” Jacob added, cradling his head in his hands.

  “Why did you tell the king about my visions?” Jeanne snapped at Michelangelo. “After he’s done hanging us by our thumbs he’s likely to burn us as heretics and magicians.”

  Michelangelo frowned and stared at the floor.

  “Well?” Jeanne demanded.

  Michelangelo shrugged. “I thought it would help.”

  “It’s more likely to get us killed.”

  Michelangelo tugged at the fat under his chin. Then he said, “I do hope he finds the Nail.”

  Jacob groaned. Jeanne put her head on a table and covered it with her arms.

  • • •

  Rain was falling outside the small, high windows, tiptoeing on the black branches and cold soil when we returned to the refectory. The earth smelled of thaw, and the smell, which is both hopeful and sad, seeped into the room, riding the wetness of the air.

  We entered like a funeral procession.

  First the abbot. Then I, and the other companions, and finally the king.

  Or perhaps it was more like an execution.

  The king walked directly to Jeanne. He stood over the little girl.

  “Stand up!” I shouted.

  Jeanne stood. Jacob and William and Michelangelo did, too. The dog began to whine.

  The king said, “We have searched the church.”

  Jeanne closed her eyes. The rain was falling harder now, beating the roof of the refectory like the drums of war, running down the sluices in torrents.

  And then the little girl was lifted into the air. She opened her eyes. She was suspended above the king. By the king.

  “We found it!” the king cried. “We found it!”

  Michelangelo bellowed, “God be praised!” We started laughing, clapping the children on the back and rubbing their heads. William turned and threw his arms around Jacob, who was nearly crushed to death.

  And still the king carried Jeanne around the room, beaming up into her face, singing, “We found it! We found it!” Gwenforte danced at the king’s feet.

  Jeanne managed to say, “Where?”

  The king stopped dancing. He kept Jeanne suspended above his head. He looked into her eyes. “It had fallen into the mouth of one of the eagles. All the way down its throat and into its hollow belly. A hungry eagle indeed!” He laughed and started dancing again. “We found it! We found it!”

  I watched Jeanne, hoisted up and down in the air by the king. She glanced at the other children. Their lips were lined with sweat, their faces drawn. But they were smiling at her.

  As the king thrust her over and over again into the air, she tried to return her friends’ smiles. But as she was going up and down, up and down, she was mostly focusing on not being sick all over the king’s head.

  Outside the inn, a rooster crows.

  Joinville stops speaking and looks up, as if woken from a dream. “Was that the cock?” he demands.
r />   “Just the first,” I say. “Calm yourself. It is long before dawn.”

  “But I don’t have until dawn!” he says. “I have to be back in Paris tonight! We set out in the morning. I just stopped in to have some food, and I got caught up in your tales . . .” He stands and quickly bows. “My apologies for leaving my tale half told. But I hope to be by the king’s side when he brings these outlaws to justice. He and his hundred knights.”

  “When did they become outlaws? And why?” I cry. But Joinville is already banging his way through the crowded inn and out the door, into the fallen darkness. I look around, at a loss. “Does anyone know?”

  And then, my eyes swivel to the little nun. She has not moved from her stool. During Joinville’s tale, she seemed to have grown smaller, more thoughtful. Now she looks up. She doesn’t say a word. But of course she knows.

  “Please,” I say, “Sister, tell me. What crime did these children commit that they have fallen so far, so fast?”

  “A crime most terrible,” says the nun.

  HAPTER 18

  The Sixth Part of the Nun’s Tale

  The king asked if he might take the travelers back to Paris, and Michelangelo eagerly agreed. They traveled in caravan—two carts, each pulled by strong horses. The king and Joinville sat in the back of the first cart, and the king insisted that Michelangelo and the children ride with him. The rest of his companions rode in the second cart.

  The rain was still falling, so the cart drivers suspended woolen blankets between four stakes that stuck up from the corners of the carts. Though the king and his companions were still wrapped in their cloaks of gray, no one would mistake them for monks, for, as William noted silently, what monk would ruin a perfectly good blanket just to keep the rain off his back?

  As they rode toward Paris, Louis peppered the children with questions. About their gifts and about their histories. Jacob was careful to keep clear of any hints of his religion and therefore obscured his own story as much as possible. William, on the other hand, was happy to share details of his exploits with the king and his companion Joinville. The big oblate could barely contain his enthusiasm, and he recounted his history very amusingly. The king seemed utterly taken with the children. Can you imagine how the most pious king in the history of France would feel about sharing a cart with living, breathing saints?