• • •
“Maybe we should split up,” Jacob said. They sat among a grove of smooth-barked beech trees, a day’s walk north of Paris.
Gwenforte raised her head. She was the only one. Both William and Jeanne were desperately hungry and very angry and they could barely make eye contact without shouting at each other.
“Jeanne could go home. I could go to Yehuda’s.”
“And where would I go?” William said. “Just a big Saracen wearing the king’s colors, wandering around France? You two go hide in nice, safe houses. I’ll wait until they find me and set me on fire.”
Jacob stared at the sky, fading from royal blue to indigo above the black buds of an ash.
“I could go find a leper community to live with,” William went on. His fingers had found the outline of the golden belt that ran through the loops of his underwear. “That’d be easier for you both, wouldn’t it?”
Jacob muttered, “I didn’t mean that.”
“My ass you didn’t.”
“What did you just say?” Jeanne snapped. She leapt to her feet. She looked wild, furious.
“Sit down, peasant girl,” William growled. “Don’t make me mad.”
“No!” Jeanne shouted. “What did you just say?”
He looked up at her, angry and bemused. “I said, ‘My ass you didn’t!’ So what? Do you want to fight me?”
“No, you idiot!” Jeanne exclaimed, grabbing his shoulders.
William pushed her off him. She went stumbling backward. He jumped to his feet. “Touch me again!” he bellowed. “Touch me again, I dare you!”
“Your ass!” Jeanne was shouting. “Your ass!”
William looked at her like she was going crazy. He glanced at Jacob, who looked just as confused. “I think she wants me to knock her out,” William said.
“Please don’t,” Jacob muttered.
“No, you dummies! William’s ass! It’s at the inn! We never got it!”
William’s face unclouded, like the night sky after a summer storm. “My ass! That’s true!” But then he shook his head. “So what?”
Jacob had gotten to his knees. Gwenforte stood beside them and barked once, as if to say, Yeah! So what? Or, more likely, Is it time to play with me?
Jeanne’s face glowed like a coal in a fire. “Weren’t you delivering books from your abbey to Saint-Denis? Where all the Talmuds were collected?”
William’s eyes started to grow and shine. “Good God . . . ,” he said slowly. “But—they weren’t in Hebrew.”
Jeanne’s face went gray.
“Did you read them all?” Jacob demanded.
“No . . . just a couple . . . and now that you mention it, I did see a strange one. I suppose it could have been . . . Perhaps . . .”
“For God’s sake!” Jacob shouted. “Let’s find out!”
• • •
They ran. Gwenforte sprinted out ahead, lost them, turned around and came pelting back, and, when she found them, sprinted off ahead again. They soon came to a road. Jacob was sent out to ask a peasant passing by if she knew the Holy Cross-Roads Inn. She did. It was on this road, to the east of where they stood. Jacob was much obliged.
They ran as hard as they could.
At this point, the nun stops speaking.
There are voices in the yard.
I get up from the table. The hair on my neck is standing on end.
The innkeeper has gone to the door and opened it, spilling the buttery light of the inn out onto the ground. “Who’s out there?” he shouts.
I have gooseflesh up and down my arms. All over my body. I am tingling. I stand behind the innkeeper.
The yellow light of the inn is being cast on three figures. A huge boy and two smaller children—a boy and a girl. Well, four figures. There is also a white greyhound, with a copper blaze down her snout. The children are still wearing the royal-blue garments from the palace.
I cannot breathe.
“I am looking for my ass,” says the big boy—William. “My donkey.” He is breathing hard—they all are. Even Gwenforte is panting. I am surprised by how high William’s voice is. A great big boy like that, I guess I expected him to have a voice like a man’s. But he sounds like a child. A big, pudgy child—who can shatter a stone bench with a bare fist.
“You’re looking for your donkey?” replies the innkeeper. “That’s good, because I’m looking for payment for lodging him and feeding him for going on a week now.”
The smaller boy—Jacob—says, “So you still have it?”
“Sure.”
The kids turn and break for the stable. I push past the innkeeper and follow them into the darkness.
William pulls the sliding door to one side. It does not budge. He pulls it harder. Nothing. “God’s bones!” he swears. And then he says, “Oh, wait.” He pulls it in the other direction. It slides open easily. They spill into the stable. I slide in after them.
There is a donkey in the far corner. William sees it, spins around, and nearly tramples Jeanne and Jacob—and me. I am not a large man, and when William pushes past me, thrusting me into the boards of the barn wall, I worry he’s cracked all my ribs. He’s bellowing, “Where are the satchels? Where in God’s name are the satchels?” Gwenforte is barking in the darkness of the yard.
The innkeeper, framed by the light of the inn, says, “Calm yourself! They’re inside! I brought ’em in for safekeeping.”
William allows himself a moment to bend over and put his big hands on his knees. “Thank God,” he pants. “Thank God.”
“Come on,” the innkeeper tells them. “I’ll show you.”
The children follow him inside. I peel myself from the wall of the barn, decide that maybe my ribs aren’t broken after all, and hurry after the miraculous children and their miraculous dog.
The innkeeper leads the children to a back room, Gwenforte padding along beside them. I cannot believe what I am witnessing. William, Jeanne, and Jacob in the flesh. If William is more childlike than I had imagined, Jeanne is smaller, fiercer. Jacob is just a hair shorter than Jeanne, and his freckled face is alight with passion. There is something about these children that makes it hard to look away from them.
“They’re back here,” the innkeeper is saying.
The back room is small and lit by a single candle. A table, an iron strongbox, and a stool sit in the center of the room. Slumped against a wall are two leather sacks, speckled with the dried blood of the fiends of Malesherbes.
The children stop suddenly. I nearly crash into Jacob from behind.
They stand in the doorway as if they’re afraid to advance. Afraid to open the bags. Afraid to discover whether there is a single Talmud left in all of France.
Then Gwenforte barks once, and the spell is broken. William launches himself to the dirt floor beside the satchels. He throws one open, withdraws a book, and opens the cover. “Latin,” he mutters, and hands it to the innkeeper. My guess is the innkeeper has never held a book before, because he’s holding it gingerly, away from his body, like a first-time father holding a baby girl. William picks up another. “Latin,” he says, and it sounds like a curse this time, and he hands this book to the innkeeper, too. Jacob’s shoulders slump. Jeanne falls to her knees beside the oblate. William picks up another. “Latin!” He shoves this one at the innkeeper like it’s done something to him. He picks up another. “Latin!” And another. “Latin! . . . Latin! . . . God’s wounds!” He throws another and another at the innkeeper, who is now staggering under the weight of them. But he’s not going to protest. I don’t blame him. William looks ready to break something. Like a neck. The oblate opens another. “Latin!” he shouts, thrusting it away from him. William picks up one of the last in the sack. He flips the cover open.
Everything in the room becomes still. Jeanne and Jacob are craning their necks over William
’s shoulder. Gwenforte is staring up at his face. The innkeeper is balancing a dozen books in his arms. Even the flames of the candles seem unnaturally still.
And then Jacob murmurs, “My God . . .”
“Hebrew,” says William. “This one’s in Hebrew.”
I can just see the strange letters, inscribed on the page in pale brown ink.
Jeanne is already picking up the next book. She opens it. “Look!”
“Hebrew!” William shouts. They tear open the other bag. Latin books on top. But again, at the bottom, there are books in Hebrew. Mostly simple, leather-bound books. Some new-looking. Others ancient and delicate as a dried flower. There are five Hebrew books in all.
“Thank you, God,” Jacob murmurs, his throat thick, his nose running. He starts to laugh. He says it again. “Thank you, God.”
HAPTER 23
The Friar’s Tale and theTroubadour’s Tale
Jeanne, Jacob, and William are sitting at a table by a shuttered window. I’m across the room, watching.
They’ve eaten their fill. Gwenforte lies at their feet, gnawing on a mutton bone, her strong yellow teeth scraping away the last scraps of meat and gristle. The innkeeper agreed to give them room and board and to forgive the rent on the stable space in exchange for the donkey. The children thought the trade was more than fair. William told them he’d carry the sacks himself.
They now sit on the bench beside the children.
The sacks. With the books. The only Talmuds in all of France.
They balance in the children’s minds as on one end of a seesaw. I can see it in their faces. And on the other end, Michelangelo’s burned body. At some moments, the books are lifted into the air, and the children feel grateful and proud. And then, for no apparent reason, the balance shifts, and Michelangelo rises in their thoughts, his slumped body, the dancing flames, his burning flesh. And the books go plummeting to earth.
“It’s too much,” Jeanne says, pushing the last of her brown stew around with a spoon.
“What is?” William asks.
“Life is. How can you have such pain and such . . . such triumph . . . all mixed together? It’s like . . . it’s like that cheese.”
“What? It’s like cheese?” says William.
“Doesn’t matter,” Jeanne mutters.
But I know what she means.
“Why,” Jacob says, “does God allow it?”
Suddenly, a drunken voice rises from the far corner of the inn. “Ish that feology I hear?” The Franciscan, who was asleep on the table, has raised his tonsured head.
I can see the children exchange glances with one another. The glances say, Don’t answer him. Maybe he’ll go back to sleep.
“Hey!” the friar shouts, lurching to his feet and gathering his brown robes around him. “I wanna dishcush feology!”
“No one’s discussing theology over here,” William says, not turning his head.
But the friar says, “You’re a liar!” He pushes a stool out of the way and begins to stumble over to the children. His hair makes a curly fringe around his shining pate. He noisily, laboriously drags an entire bench from a neighboring table over to the children’s. The kids watch in slightly amused horror. “Sho,” he says. “What are we dishcushing?”
“Feology,” says Jacob. Jeanne suppresses a smile.
“Ah yesh!” says the friar. Then he puts his arms on the table and lays his head on them, as if he were going to sleep.
The children look at one another, not sure whether to laugh or to change tables.
But then he lifts his wobbly head. “You ashked de tuff—de tuff—de hardesht queshtion in all feology. If God ish all good and if God ish all powerful, why doesh God let bad fings happen?”
The children stop smiling. The stragglers in the far corner have put their mugs down on the sticky tabletop and are watching the group of strange children and the drunken friar.
“Yes,” Jacob says, after a moment. “That’s my question.”
“Itsh hard,” says the friar. He raises himself from the bench. His two thin hands are gripping the edges of the table as if the floor were pitching beneath him. He fixes Jacob with a dizzy, furious stare. “Who are you!?” he suddenly shouts.
The men in the corner laugh. The innkeeper looks up from where he’s swabbing a table. “Master Bacon, if you can’t keep civil, I’ll throw you out.”
But the friar—Master Bacon, apparently—is still staring at Jacob and rocking slightly back and forth. “Who are you?!” he bellows again. I can smell his stale ale breath from two tables away.
“I’m—”
“That ish what God asked Job, when Job asked what you asked: Who are you?”
“Huh . . . ,” says Jacob. “Fascinating.”
William covers a smile with his wide hand.
“Listen. Itsh not funny,” Master Bacon says to William, listing forward as if the inn had just crested a wave. “Who are you? God asked. Were you there when I created de great whale?” As his argument gains momentum, he begins to regain mastery of his tongue. “When I created the monsters of the deep? The fings you don’t even know about? Were you there?” The friar looks down on Jacob as if the point were undebatable.
“Uh . . . no,” says Jacob. “I wasn’t.”
“AHA!” the drunken master shouts, pointing a long finger, white and bony and red at the tip, at Jacob. “You weren’t there! So how can you know what’s good and what’s bad? How can you understand God’s plan? It’s greater than you! Can you see every leaf in the forest?”
“No.”
“Do you know where every bird is on the face of the earth?”
Jacob shakes his head.
“Can you track de paths of the fishes as they swim? Every fish? In every river and ocean?” Master Bacon is waving his long finger about like a sword.
“No. I can’t.”
“So you can’t understand God’s plan! Only God can! But we must try! We must try! I have devoted my whole life to trying! I study the birds and the bees and the stars and the trees . . .”
Now Master Bacon appears to be singing.
“The rivers and the streams, the sun and the moonbeams . . .”
Jeanne starts to laugh, which seems to bring Master Bacon back to reality.
“We weren’t there when God created de earth. But we live on the earth now. So we must try to study it as best we can, since it’s all a part of God’s plan. Then, when bad fings happen, at least we can understand them a little bit. And that helps! God knows, that helps . . .” Master Bacon sighs. And then he lies down on his bench. “Quod erat demonshtrandum.”
The children stare. After a moment, the friar is snoring noisily.
I watch Jeanne and Jacob and William look at one another. William scratches his head.
“I’ve got an answer to your question.”
This is a different voice, coming from the far corner of the tavern, where the two men have been sitting. One of them stands up, and I see that he’s wearing the fancy sleeves of a troubadour, though they’re caked with the dirt of the road.
The one who’s still sitting—he’s got big front teeth like a rabbit—says, “Aw, no one wants to hear your theories, Chrétien.”
Chrétien ignores his companion. “You’ve gotta hear a song, first, though. Do you want to hear a song?”
Well, there’s only one right answer to that question. At least when it’s asked by a troubadour. When else do you get to hear real music, outside of church? The children confer with just a glance. Of course they do.
“I’m no cheap jongleur, either, you know. I sing for lords and ladies! One day I’ll sing for the king himself!”
“Sure you will,” says his companion, his lip curling back around his two prominent teeth.
Chrétien ignores him. He ducks under his table, picks up a gittern
—or maybe it’s a lute, I can never tell the difference—and plucks a few notes. “This is an old song,” he says. “From the time of Charlemagne. ‘The Song of Hildebrand.’”
He begins to sing. His voice is pure and round and haunting, like the call of an owl. Gwenforte comes out from under the table and cocks her head. Master Bacon snores on his bench. Outside, it has begun to rain.
The tale of Hildebrand I sing.
Quiet, while I pluck these strings.
Do not, dear children, turn away—
I think you’ll like this, if you stay
And hear my song of war and death
And blood and warriors’ last breaths.
The minstrel strums some new chords.
In wars of old they spared the lives
Of soldiers young, and weeping wives,
By sending forth a champion
To fight alone, just man to man.
One sunny day, across a dell,
King Dietrich faced Lord Haberfel.
So Dietrich’s army first sent out
A warrior who was fierce and stout
but old and creased, like ancient elm.
He stood out front, with sword and helm.
And then from out the other side
famous Hadubrand came striding wide
Into the center of the field
Till the two men stood, shield to shield.
The older man announced, “I will
Know the name of the man I kill.
What is your land? Who is your kin?”
Hadubrand answered, “My sire is him,
Now long dead, called Hildebrand,
Who died a hero in foreign lands.”
Staggered, was the older man,
His chain mail shook, he scarce could stand.
His lips did ope, but no sound came.
His ears resound’d with his own name.