The Inquisitor''s Tale

  “Hildebrand?” he said, at length,

  Trying to master his shaken strength.

  “And were you born by old Cologne?

  If so, I call you now . . . my son.”

  The battlefield fell deathly still.

  No sheep cried o’er the graying hills.

  “My son, my son,” the old man cried.

  “Who told you that your father died?”

  He fell upon a greaved knee

  And to his long-lost son he reached.

  “Take my hand, my darling boy.

  Take my hand, my life’s last joy.”

  But Hadubrand stood off and sneered

  At the old man shedding old-man tears.

  “You expect me to believe such games?

  You think I was born yesterday?

  This is how you’ve grown so old.

  With cowardly tricks and lies you’ve told.

  My father, Hildebrand, is dead.

  You’ve used his name. Now lose your head!”

  “Hadubrand! My darling boy!

  This is no game! No trick! No toy!”

  The old man wept and swore it true.

  But Hadubrand would not be moved.

  The ancient bones creaked with pain

  as Hildebrand stood up again,

  “Thirty years in foreign climes

  Always placed in the front lines.

  How many times have I fallen? None.

  But now I may fall—at the hands of my son.

  I could kneel down and forfeit to you.

  Perhaps you would then believe the truth.

  But thus my soldiers would be taken,

  And then I would deprive their children

  Of fathers, as were you deprived,

  Living an orphan, all of your life.

  So Hadubrand, my darling child,

  Who laughed and played so pretty and wild,

  And bounced and sang upon my lap

  And on my shoulder took his nap—

  Now you may kill me. Do your worst.

  Unless I kill you, my beloved, first.”

  Then they let sail their ashen spears

  And ran at each other, over years

  of absence and of childhood missed

  And fought one another when they should have kissed.

  They split each other’s bright oak shields,

  Hacking and hewing, refusing to yield.

  The troubadour, Chrétien, plays a few more notes, and then lowers himself onto a stool. The inn is cradled in silence. The haunting melody, with its simple drone, still echoes among the rough wooden benches and tables. The only other sound is the snoring of Master Bacon.

  William speaks first. “What happens? Who wins? The father or the son?”

  Chrétien replies, “We don’t know. That’s where the song ends.”

  “That’s the saddest song I’ve ever heard!” says Jacob. “I hated it.”

  “I love it,” murmurs Jeanne. “It’s so . . . rich and sad and beautiful. It feels . . . true.”

  Chrétien points at her. “That’s what I meant! That’s my answer to your question! You asked why God would make bad things happen? I’ll tell you why. God is a troubadour.”

  The troubadour’s rabbit-toothed companion pipes up from the corner, “Not self-important, are we, Chrétien?”

  “Listen!” He’s deadly serious. He leans forward on his stool, and though half the inn lies between him and the children, he seems to be whispering to them alone. “Life is a song, composed and sung by God. We are but characters in His song. Hildebrand doesn’t think his song is beautiful. He’s either going to kill his son or die himself. It’s not beautiful to him at all. But that’s because he can’t hear it. He’s in it. You can’t hear a song you’re in, right?”

  The children are squinting at the troubadour. “Right . . . ,” says William reluctantly.

  “So! If we could hear our own songs, if we could see God’s creation the way God does, we would know it’s the most beautiful song there is.”

  Jacob is frowning. “What kind of God is that, who would write such sad songs? Why would He make us suffer—for a beauty we can’t even see?” William and Jeanne nod, their faces illuminated by the flickering firelight. “Why,” Jacob continued, his voice rising, “would He destroy all the Talmuds in France? And make Michelangelo die? And my . . . my parents . . . ? What’s so—what’s so damn beautiful about that?”

  His voice echoes over the silent inn. Even the rain seems to have gone quiet.

  “Who’s Michelangelo?” Chrétien asks, after a space.

  “It doesn’t matter. A friend of ours. Our teacher. He’s dead.”

  “I’m sorry,” says the troubadour. “That isn’t beautiful at all.”

  “So your theory’s stupid.”

  “Your teacher’s death isn’t beautiful. And your parents’ death certainly isn’t,” Chrétien continues. “But the song might still be.”

  No one speaks. The rain begins again.

  The innkeeper stands up and raises his arms above his head, arching his back and pushing his round belly out as far as it can go. “Bedtime,” he says, sighing. “Look, your dog has joined Roger in the land of dreams.” Indeed, Gwenforte is now curled on the floor right under Master Bacon’s bench, her flank rising and falling with shallow breath. “And tomorrow?” the innkeeper asks the children, as the troubadours collect their instruments. “Where’re you off to?”

  William does not wait to consult his friends. “Mont-Saint-Michel,” he says. “We have some books to save.”

  This is my moment. I see it, like a break in the clouds when the sun shines through. It is an opportunity that may never come again. Don’t screw it up, I tell myself.

  “Do you know how to get there?” I say. “To Mont-Saint-Michel?” I don’t want to sound eager. Just an offhand question. “It’s pretty far.”

  The children look at one another. William shrugs. Jeanne and Jacob shake their heads.

  “I can lead you, if you want,” I say. And then, because the truth is often a better ruse than a lie, I add, “I’m curious to see what happens to you next.”

  William says, “We’ll have to move quietly. Stay hidden. Sleep in ditches and behind walls.”

  “That’s not a problem. I do that all the time.”

  He fixes me with a quizzical stare and then consults his two smaller companions. “It’s better than having to stop and ask for directions at every town,” he admits.

  Jeanne and Jacob glance at each other. Jacob turns his palms upward.

  “You can come,” Jeanne tells me.

  I am elated.

  I try not to show it, though.

  The morning is wet and shining, and I am swelled with the idea that I’ll be setting forth with the children. The famous children. And their dog. I wish I could tell myself that I had planned it this way.

  Sometimes, though, God smiles on the fox and puts the rabbit right in his path.

  The innkeeper gives us breakfast, and we set off, among the dripping branches and raindrop-gilded ferns, for Normandy.

  “So,” William says to me, after I’ve pointed out the road north, and Gwenforte has sniffed out a path just east of it, in the shadows of the trees, “what is your station in life? Or your trade?”

  I am prepared for the question. “My trade is tales,” I say. “I collect them.”

  “Like a chronicler?” William asks.

  “Sort of.”

  “Do you tell them?” Jeanne wants to know. “Like a troubadour?”

  “To the right people, and at the right time,” I reply.

  “Are we,” Jacob says, “the right people?” His gaze has become suspicious. I don’t blame him. That was too cryptic an answer.
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  “You don’t need to hear the story I’m collecting now,” I say. “You know it already. It’s your story.”

  “Why would you collect our story?” Jeanne wants to know.

  “Don’t you think it’s interesting? Special?” I ask.

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Of course it is!”

  “And who,” William asks, “are the right people to hear our story?”

  His question is shrewd. Too shrewd. You walked into that one, Étienne, I think.

  I say, “There’s a turning just ahead. Let’s not miss it.” I push forward through the brush, trying to catch up with Gwenforte. I can feel the children’s eyes on my back.

  The first day passes swiftly. We keep to the woods as long as we can, clambering over fallen trees and beating our way through thorn bushes. By sunset, though, the forest has disappeared, replaced by rolling wheat fields and cow pastures: Normandy, breadbasket and butter churn of France.

  Jeanne points out that there’s no use tramping over fields instead of on the road, since in the fields we’ll be equally visible—and more conspicuous. Smart kid. So as the yellow sun falls to its knees on the horizon, we return to the road.

  That night we lie down in a sheepfold, deep in a pasture. Gwenforte scares off the sheep as we approach, which leaves the structure vacant—but cold. As we settle in, I wish at least a couple of sheep had stayed behind. Now I understand why Jeanne’s family sleeps with their cow.

  Before the darkness settles completely, William opens the blood-flecked sacks of books. Jeanne examines a Latin volume with beautiful illuminations in blue, red, and gold leaf. I don’t think she can read, but her brown hair swings over the page as her eyes follow the curling vines and grotesque beasts that run up and down the margins. She cries out when she finds an illustration of a greyhound. She shows it to Gwenforte, but Gwenforte just tries to lick it. William cradles a book by Saint Augustine in his big hands. Grand capitals, in bright red ink, announce the beginning of each new chapter. Jacob opens a slim volume of Hebrew and balances it on his knees. No illuminations in these pages. Just the shaky letters of an amateur scribe.

  “How did you learn to read?” I ask Jacob as his fingers scan the letters, right to left.

  “We have a beit midrash in our village,” Jacob says, then catches his breath. “Had a beit midrash, I mean. All the boys learned to read there. A lot of girls, too.”

  The children go back to their books. I am not tempted to read one myself. These children are more interesting to me than any book. They look so young, their faces bent over the pages, squinting against the dying light. William looks so much like a child. A very, very big child. Jacob looks a lot like I did when I was his age. Small and thin and wary. And little Jeanne, peering at the illuminations in the book on her lap, is no daughter of Eve, bringer of sin into the world. Looking at her now, pushing her tangled hair from her face, the idea is ludicrous. An insult.

  I’d really rather not kill them.

  Jacob puts down one book and opens another. “Hey!” he says. “This isn’t a Talmud! This is the Bible!”

  “It is?” Jeanne leans over, as if looking at the page of Hebrew will help.

  “Listen: Vayakom melech chadash, al mitzrayim asher lo yada et Yosef.”

  Jeanne and William look at him blankly.

  Jacob tilts his head back. “‘A new king rose over Egypt who did not know Joseph.’ It’s the beginning of Sh’mot—Exodus. The second book of the Bible.”

  William says, “I don’t think my abbot would have sent a Bible to be burned.”

  “Does he read Hebrew?”

  William hesitates. “I think he reads a little . . . Not like Brother Jerome.”

  “So maybe he didn’t know.”

  William is silent.

  Jacob says, “I wonder how many Bibles were burned yesterday.”

  I wonder, too. I look out into the darkness. But when I look back at the children, I can tell they’re not thinking of Bibles burning. They’re thinking of Michelangelo.

  Out in the fields, a sheep bleats in the pattering rain.

  Later, as the children sleep, I take the knife out of its scabbard under my shirt. I rub the edge with my fingers. It is very, very sharp.

  I watch the children sleeping, the breath flowing in and out of their innocent bodies.

  The morning shimmers with fallen rain, but despite the mud on the road, we make good time. That night, we sneak into a mill that is lying quiet for the evening. The children lean against a wooden wall in the last light of sunset.

  I did not sleep last night. Doubt tormented me like a devil’s pitchfork. I could have acted as the children lay in dream, and I did not. Why? Why couldn’t I?

  Now I feel ill. But at least my decision has been made.

  Tonight.

  I grip the knife under my cloak.

  Jacob has opened one of the books and is translating—haltingly, but with obvious pleasure. “‘And so,’” Jacob reads, “‘one day a stranger came to one of the leading Jewish sages, Shammai.’”

  “Is this the Bible?” Jeanne says.

  “No. Talmud.”

  “Yes! Read us the Talmud!” William exclaims. “I want to hear what all this has been about! Let’s hear the wisdom of the Jews!”

  Jacob bends his head over the brown letters. “‘And the stranger said to Shammai, “Can you teach me the whole Torah while I stand on one foot?” Do you know what Rabbi Shammai did? He took a stick and beat the stranger with it until the man finally went away.’”

  I try to stifle a laugh.

  Jacob stops reading. He looks up at his friends.

  “That’s the Talmud?” Jeanne says.

  “That’s the story . . . ,” Jacob mutters, his pale forehead creasing.

  William says, “That’s the book Michelangelo died for? For that?” He looks like he’s going to be sick.

  Jeanne begins to stroke Gwenforte’s back. Hard. The greyhound wriggles away from her and trots over to a hole in the flimsy wooden wall and sniffs at it.

  Jacob examines the page. “Wait, there’s more.”

  “I hope it gets better,” says William.

  “‘Then the stranger went to the great teacher Hillel. The stranger said, “Teach me the whole of the Torah while I stand on one foot.” Hillel did not beat him with a rod.’”

  William buries his head in his hands.

  “‘Hillel said, “Fine. Stand on one foot.” So the stranger did. And then the rabbi said, “What you would hate to have done to you—do not do to other people. That is the whole of the Torah. The rest is commentary. Now go, and study.”’”

  William raises his face to Jacob. “What you would hate to have done to you, do not do to other people,” he repeats.

  “That’s what Jesus says in reverse,” says Jeanne. “Do unto others as you would have them do to you.”

  “Which came first?” William asks.

  Jacob says, “My rabbi used to say that Hillel was one of Jesus’s teachers. I don’t know if that’s true, though.”

  “It’s true,” I say. The children look at me. I feel feverish. I press the cold blade of the knife against my skin. “I learned that at the Cathedral School of Avignon.”

  “You went to a cathedral school?” William asks. He sounds skeptical. I don’t blame him. The cathedral schools are for the wealthiest and most promising boys in Christendom. Dressed as I am, in cheap traveling clothes, I seem to have fallen far in the world. And I have. I have.

  I say, “Jesus taught that the greatest commandment was to love God with all your heart and all your soul and all your might.” Why am I talking? Keep quiet. You’re going to give yourself away. “And the second greatest commandment was like it: to love your neighbor as you love yourself. I never got that. How is loving God, almighty and perfect and divine,
like loving your sinful, crooked neighbor? They’re completely different. They couldn’t be more different!” Am I shouting? I grip the knife inside my cloak. I feel dizzy.

  “You think?” says Jeanne. She leans back against the wood of the old mill and sleepily pulls her royal-blue tunic over her head. “I don’t know. They seem the same to me.”

  Gwenforte goes and lies down beside Jeanne.

  But William’s eyes are roving over my face.

  “Who are you?” he says quietly.

  Sweat is pouring from my scalp, over my eyebrows, into my eyes. What is wrong with me?

  The children are staring at me. Jeanne sits up. They can tell something is wrong. They can tell. I know it.

  I feel like I’m standing on the top of a bell tower, staring at the ground forty fathoms below.

  “My name is Étienne d’Arles,” I say.

  I am at the top of a bell tower, and the wind is blowing hard at my back.

  My thumb brushes against the blade of the knife. It splits the top layer of my skin.

  “Tell us,” Jacob says. I have the strange sensation that he is looking through me. “Tell us more.”

  “Yes,” says Jeanne. “Please.”

  The famous children are asking me. Me. I cannot . . . I cannot stop myself.

  HAPTER 24

  The Inquisitor’s Tale

  “I am Étienne,” I say again. “The seventh son of Guilhem d’Arles. The runt of the litter. The Runt of Arles. My oldest brother will inherit the domain. My other brothers—tall and strong and quick with lance and sword—will be his vassals. But me? I’m useless to them. I always have been, scrambling around their heels, trying to be heard and not kicked. The Runt of Arles. That’s me.” Sweat is pouring down my back. I am soaked through.

  “But then I was sent off to the cathedral school. None of my brothers are clever enough for that. They can’t read a line of Latin, much less books and books of it, like me. I was a good student. One of the best.”

  The children’s eyes are on fire. My eyes are on fire. My vision is blurred. Why am I still talking?

  “And then, a special invitation came. From the pope himself. He was looking for the keenest boys. Those who could speak French and Italian and, of course, Latin. The more languages the better. Quiet boys, His Holiness wanted. Listeners. Watchers.