The Inquisitor''s Tale

  “Gwen, quiet!” Jeanne hisses.

  But Clotho has had enough, apparently, for he bursts through the blanket, his long brown tunic swinging around his bare knees. “What in Hell is that dog barking at?” He stares at us. None of us move. He is listening now. And then, his face goes slack. He’s heard it.

  “That’ll be the king.”

  Jeanne nods.

  “Ye won’t be able to see the causeway in the dark,” Clotho sneers. “Even if it is dry.”

  Marmeluc shakes his head.

  “It ain’t none of my business!” Clotho shouts. “I don’t know why I should care!”

  “Right,” says Jeanne. “You shouldn’t.”

  “I should let the king find ye and do what he likes with ye! Ye and your dog!”

  None of us moves. The hoofbeats have grown ever so slightly louder. Gwenforte begins to whine.

  Clotho looks miserable.

  “Oh, get up, ye layabouts!” the old man snaps. “Come on!” And, without so much as putting his pants on, he leads us outside.

  The sky is gloaming, and the waves of the sea are as thin as petals of nightshade as they swirl over the road to Mont-Saint-Michel. The great mountain abbey stands, a sentinel silhouette, in the distance.

  “Stay straight behind me!” the innkeeper hisses. In the east, the first sparks of sunlight streak forth from the horizon. “Don’t get no independent ideas, ye young fools! To the left or right of me is yer death. Do ye hear?”

  “We hear,” says Jeanne.

  We do indeed. I don’t know why straying from the causeway would be deadly. Something about “hungry sands,” I gather. But the dark waves slither back and forth like adders, and I am sufficiently afraid that I will do exactly what Clotho says. Jacob is standing very close to me. I reach out and put a hand on his shoulder. He looks up and smiles wanly.

  What I did to deserve the kindness of these children, I don’t know.

  Though following them to my death will, perhaps, be worth something.

  We start out on the watery road. Sea foam, gray in the darkness, runs over our shoes. Gwenforte whines and stays close to Jeanne. We splash forward, following the innkeeper’s lurching, splayfooted stride.

  “The sea is wetting the books,” Jacob informs William. So William hoists the sacks above his head, his great arms like the pillars of a church holding up the roof.

  Gwenforte stops. Her ears start to twitch as she gazes back the way we’ve come. Jeanne turns to see what Gwenforte is looking at. I do, too. She seems to be staring at the hill from which we looked down upon the bay yesterday. The sky is pale blue there, dewed with yellow. “What?” says Jeanne. “What do you hear, Gwenforte?”

  As if in answer to her question, a figure on horseback crests the hill.

  “Look!” I say. Jacob and William and Marmeluc turn and look. Clotho keeps on hauling his invisible sack of turnips through the surf.

  Another silhouetted rider on horseback has joined the first on the top of the hill. Then a third trots up beside the first two.

  The three figures stop there, taking in the same view we had last night. The bay is beginning to sparkle with the morning’s light—black eddies glowing golden in their creases, sea foam blushing chrysanthemum.

  There is a call from one of the riders. Small, like a gull’s out over the water. I can’t make it out. And then a horn blast bursts through the silent dawn. One blast and then another and then one more.

  “What did that mean?” Jeanne asks Sir Marmeluc.

  The knight exhales slowly. His breath is a cloud of vapor in the cool air. “It means charge,” he says.

  “What?” I say. “Just the three of them?”

  “No,” says Jacob, pointing. “Not just the three of them.”

  A line of knights, helms reflecting the sun rising in the east, crest the hill in a clattering silver wave.

  “Holy God . . . ,” William murmurs.

  The knights stand on the hill, like lightning frozen on the horizon. And then the thunder breaks. They course down the hill, their horses’ hooves booming. A second wave follows. And then a third. And then a fourth.

  “How many are there?” I moan. But really, the question is not relevant. The answer is enough. There are enough.

  “Run!” cries Jeanne. “Clotho, run!”

  Clotho is still waddling along. “T’ain’t safe to run in the dark, the tides as they are,” the innkeeper calls back, peering casually over his shoulder, as if there were no place to hurry to, and no reason to hurry, ever, anywhere, no matter what. “T’ain’t safe at—” And then his eyes grow to the size of apples. And he shouts, “Run! Run!” He sets off, his right arm swinging, his splayed feet flailing in the shallow surf, following the curve of the causeway to the mountain. We don’t need any more prompting. We sprint after him, our ankles splashing in the sea foam. Gwenforte runs out ahead, and the sea sprays up around her like wings.

  The horses come pounding down the road, five or six abreast. When they hit the water, they fan out, forming a pincer like a crab’s. In some places the water is shallow, and in other places it is nearly gone, leaving sand and seashells glistening in the first rays of the morning. The horses’ hooves land like explosions on the water and sand.

  Out ahead of us, yellow beams of sunlight hit the stone monastery and shine off the glass windows of the church. Clotho’s slow waddle is holding us up, for we can’t go out ahead of him, lest we lose the causeway. Though I don’t know why we need to stick to the causeway when the water is so shallow. “Hurry!” Jacob is beseeching him. “They’re coming!”

  Indeed they are. The lines keep pouring over the hilltop. Seven, nine, twelve lines of knights, stampeding through the town and out into the bay.

  “We can’t outrun them!” Jeanne says.

  “Will they kill us?” Jacob wonders.

  “Yes!” shouts Marmeluc.

  “Can’t you stop them?” I plead with William.

  William, who is trying to hurry Clotho along, says, “I could stop a few of them. Five, maybe ten. Not however many that is.”

  “A hundred,” says Marmeluc. “The king mustered a hundred knights.”

  “I definitely can’t stop a hundred.” William adds, “They’ll cut us down like summer wheat.”

  And then, Jeanne has turned around. She has gone completely rigid. “That knight . . . ,” she says. “He . . . he disappeared . . .”

  Marmeluc swears. “God’s bones! Not another fit! Not now!” But I’ve turned and looked to see what Jeanne could have meant.

  And I scream, “Good God!”

  For I see it, too. A knight, galloping out front, suddenly disappears. As if he had just—just sunk, instantly, out of sight.

  Then another does the same. The horse seems to drop a fathom in a single step. It’s up to its chest in water, though the tide is but a few inches high. The horse begins to panic, flailing and bucking. Which only seems to make it sink faster. Faster and faster, until even the knight in his armor is gone beneath the gray and glimmering waves.

  “Look!” Jeanne cries. Jacob and William reluctantly slow and turn. The horses on the causeway have closed much of the distance. But just as the boys turn around, two more knights get swallowed by the bay.

  “God’s nose!” Marmeluc swears again. “What’s happening?”

  Clotho, still struggling through the shallow waves, peers over his hunched shoulder. Another knight goes down—horse flailing, pitching, and then disappearing beneath the parchment-thin layer of water. Clotho shouts, “Sand’s hungry. I told ye to stay on the causeway. Why do you think we call it the causeway? ’Cause it’s the only way!” He cackles—and keeps up his crazy, duck-like running.

  But Marmeluc, Jacob, Jeanne, William, and I just stand and stare. Knight after knight, clad in beautiful tunics of green and red and blue, helms shining, swords
drawn, are sinking into the sea. A burst of water shoots up around them—and they are gone.

  Over on the far shore—and I heard this later, from one who knows—King Louis, Jean de Joinville, and Blanche of Castile are sitting on their mounts. They are the three figures we saw cresting the hill. At Louis’s side, on foot, is his page, with the battle horn slung across his chest.

  Louis’s face is contorted with fear and horror. “What on earth?” he mutters, as the knights are swallowed, one by one. “God be merciful—”

  “My lord!” Joinville cries. “Call them back! Call them back before they all drown!”

  But Blanche snarls at them both. “Don’t be silly!”

  “No, it’s a sign! It’s a sign, my lord!” Joinville is pleading, thinking back, perhaps, to the stories he heard at the inn. “It is a sign from God! This is not His will! Call them back!”

  “Don’t be a coward!” Blanche snaps. “It’s not a sign; it’s a test! Only the pure of heart will cross the waters and snatch the books of heresy from the hands of the Devil!”

  Another knight disappears beneath the shimmering waves. His horse pitches forward and then cries out. The knight is halfway submerged in the bay. The horse flails, and the knight is up to his cobalt-cloaked chest in water. He tries to plant his hands beside him and push himself upward, but the action only drags him farther down. “Help me!” he screams. “God have mercy, help me!” And then he disappears beneath the waves.

  “That was Nicolas de Montagne!” Joinville screeches. “Louis, sweet Louis, good Louis, kind Louis . . . I have never known you to be a fool before. Please—call back your knights.”

  Before Blanche can say another word, Louis has turned to his page. “Retreat,” he murmurs.

  “Sorry, my lord. What was that?”

  “I said, retreat . . .”

  The page lifts the horn to his lips. He blows two long blasts, waits, and blows two more. The knights begin to turn.

  We cannot believe what we are hearing, what we are seeing. “That’s the retreat!” Marmeluc says, his voice aquiver. “They’ve sounded the retreat!”

  Indeed, the knights are turning around. But those who had ridden on the causeway now loop out over the sand. As many as were lost on the way out now sink on the way back to shore. The screams of horses and riders is unbearable. Like the wailing of children. Gwenforte is whining. Jeanne looks away.

  The remaining knights, finally, come back to the king’s side, their tunics soaked, their horses frothing at the mouth, eyes of men and horses wild and afraid. A hundred knights had ridden out into the bay. Twenty have come back.

  Joinville’s words are no more than breath. “It is a sign—”

  Blanche spits, “Please! It’s a sign that you’re a coward. If I’m the only one whose faith is strong enough to trust in the hand of the Almighty, so be it! Knights! Follow me!”

  Blanche of Castile kicks her horse and goes galloping out into the bay. A few knights follow her.

  “Mother!” cries Louis. “Don’t!”

  He spurs his horse, but Joinville has already grabbed the reins. Louis turns on him, furious, but the courtier says, “France cannot lose a queen and a king in one day, my lord. We would not survive.” So Louis turns to see his mother galloping across the shallow surf. Around him, the rest of the knights watch, their helms under their arms or in their laps, breathing hard, afraid.

  We watch her come. It is clearly the queen mother. Her skirts fly out behind her, her leather riding breeches are dyed red, and her thin crown flashes in her dark, braided hair. She rides out ahead of the other knights, faster and faster, framed by the bluing sky and the water flaming red from the rising sun. Her horse’s white hooves pound the surf.

  Closer.

  Closer.

  Closer yet.

  We watch her. And I think we all realize, all at once, that we are more afraid for her than we are for ourselves.

  The knights behind her begin to sink. One by one their horses crash forward, panicked, crying out pitifully, pulling the knights below the surf, until at last there is only Blanche, riding, riding, riding like Jesus walking on water, the sky ablaze behind her.

  And then her horse pitches forward, and Jeanne screams, and the horse disappears into the foam, and the queen is bellowing now, swiftly sinking into the hungry sand.

  For one instant, no one moves. We just watch her—Blanche of Castile, Queen Mother of France—flailing and sinking into the crescent bay.

  And then Gwenforte lights out, running toward the queen, skimming over the shallow water like an angel. Jeanne and Jacob do not hesitate, do not pause long enough to think. They sprint after Gwenforte. William throws the sacks of books at Marmeluc so hard they almost knock the knight over. Then he follows Jeanne and Jacob as they run, keeping the glistening causeway beneath their sopping leather shoes. I run after them as fast as I can. If their martyrdom is come, I will witness it. A thought strikes me: Perhaps I will return home in glory after all.

  The queen is sinking, sinking, sinking, her arms flailing above her head, and she is screaming and pleading with God, but she is sinking, and soon just her head and elbows and her flailing hands are visible. The children have to leave the causeway now, if they are to save her.

  I come up behind them.

  They are hesitating. Even Gwenforte.

  Will they? Will they martyr themselves for Blanche of Castile?

  Suddenly, I wonder: Would I want them to?

  To my shame, I must admit—I do not know.

  And then, I do know.

  For Jeanne has started out over the quicksand. And William and Jacob and Gwenforte are following her. I know what I want. I know, at last.

  The greyhound, light and fleet, gets ahead of Jeanne and reaches the queen first. I can see, from the safety of the causeway, that Blanche’s chin is submerged, and her head is tilted back so that her nose and eyes, along with her wrists and grasping hands, are all that remain above the water. Gwenforte grabs with her teeth the cuff of one of Blanche’s sleeves and begins to pull, but Blanche is heavier than the dog, and soon Gwenforte, too, is sinking into the sand. William reaches the queen mother next. His legs are submerged in the bay, and he, too, is sinking, but he reaches out and grabs her hand.

  “Lie down! Lie down!” Clotho is hobbling up behind me, with Marmeluc at his side. He is cupping his hands and shouting through them. “Lie down, damn it!”

  Jacob, with no idea why he is doing it, throws himself onto his stomach. Jeanne does, too. William, still holding Blanche’s hand, lets himself flop forward onto his belly. Now their faces are half submerged in the sucking sand. Jacob spits it from his mouth. Jeanne begins to choke.

  I stand on the causeway, frozen with fear.

  “Grab each other!” Clotho yells.

  William holds both of Blanche’s hands. Gwenforte still has her sleeve. Jeanne, coughing and choking, crawls to where she can put her arms around William’s chest. Jacob grabs Jeanne’s outstretched ankles and turns his head like a swimmer gasping for air.

  “Now pull!” Clotho calls. “Crawl back and pull!”

  But Jeanne is coughing and choking and Jacob is gasping like a beached fish and William, great William, is sinking. Gwenforte is submerged to her backward-bending knees.

  “Pull, ye layabouts!”

  The wet sand is all over Jeanne’s face. Jacob’s mouth is full of it, and his nostrils are closed. When he tries to breathe, he’s pulling sand into his nose, his throat, his lungs. And William is going down, down, down.

  This is it. Their martyrdom.

  “PULL!” Marmeluc pleads.

  They try to. They try to drag themselves backward, unable to breathe, coughing and choking and gasping. They drag themselves, unable to see, salty seawater burning their eyes. They drag their heavy bodies, back and back and back, though their brains must be cloudy w
ith lack of air, while the other side of existence, whatever is beyond life, is pulling them down.

  They sink into the sand.

  And there, I watch them die.

  At least, that’s what it feels like. But at the last moment, as Jeanne is choking and Jacob is not breathing at all and William is totally submerged in sand, I throw myself forward on my face.

  This is no courage on my part. No heroism. It is that—despite all my plans to witness their martyrdom for my own gain—I cannot watch them drown. If they are to die, I will die with them. This is what I want, I know at last. I want to live in a world that possesses these children, or I don’t want to live at all.

  I grab Jacob’s ankles and prepare to sink into the sandy abyss.

  And then I feel a pair of hands around my legs. I turn my head, sand clogging my nose and my mouth, and I see Marmeluc, on his knees on the causeway, pulling me toward him. I tighten my grip on Jacob.

  He pulls me and I pull Jacob and Jacob pulls Jeanne, who is hanging on to William, who pulls Blanche and, with her, Gwenforte.

  One crooked neighbor, pulling another, up from the depths.

  Slowly, the queen mother emerges from the quicksand—first her arms, then her neck, then her shoulders, until even her feet are free, and she is being dragged, sandy and sopping wet, across the surface of the bay.

  Finally Blanche, Jeanne, Jacob, William, Gwenforte, and I are lying on the causeway, heaving for breath, snorting up sand, staring at the blue sky streaked with red and gold. Above our heads, gulls wheel and cry, unaware that the queen mother nearly drowned just a dozen yards below.

  William pulls himself to his feet. He is soaked through and caked with sand, as are we all. He scoops the queen mother up in his arms—to my surprise she does not protest—and he starts back along the causeway, toward the bank. “Take those books to the abbey,” William calls over his shoulder at Marmeluc.

  “Yes,” says Jeanne. “Give them to Michelangelo. He’ll be waiting for them.”

  William trips. Blanche shrieks. William manages to recover his balance and, still holding the dripping queen, he turns around.