The Inquisitor''s Tale

  Jacob, blinking at Jeanne, says, “What?”

  “I had a vision last night,” Jeanne tells us, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “Michelangelo is here.”

  “Jeanne,” says William. “He’s dead.”

  Jeanne smiles. “You don’t think Saint Michael, Archangel, is bothered by a little fire, do you?” she replies. “Besides, I think this is his home.”

  William is carrying Blanche of Castile, Queen Mother and former Regent of all France, in his arms like a newborn calf. The sun has risen over the hills in the southeast, and the bay of Mont-Saint-Michel is flooded with the yolky blue of morning. The sea laps at our ankles, the water cold, the foam warm. Plovers run along the sand looking for tiny crabs, and gulls glide and cry overhead.

  Jacob walks behind William, his head high, his chest thrust forward. Next to him marches Jeanne, just as determined and resolute. Gwenforte trots alongside them, like the tiny battalion’s proud mascot. I follow behind, a silent witness. The causeway has become a sparkling road of stones and white shells, and the quicksand on either side, grim graveyard of nearly a hundred knights, looks as innocent as any beach.

  King Louis and Joinville stand at the end of the causeway, afraid to go any farther. I can see, even from a distance, that the king’s lank hair is damp with sweat, and his long cheeks are streaked with tears. Joinville’s chiseled visage is wan, his eyes haunted.

  “I can walk, you know,” Blanche snaps, as we approach the king and Joinville. William puts her down. Blanche throws her head back and walks, wobbly and caked with sand, the last few yards to her son. We follow.

  Blanche does not greet Louis or Joinville, and when Louis tries to embrace her she holds him off with a small sandy hand. “Yes, yes,” she says. “But I’d like to go home now.” And she starts walking back up the hill, in the direction of Paris, sand dripping in a trail behind her.

  “Are you going to walk?” Louis calls after her.

  “If I have to,” she calls back.

  Louis turns to the children. He holds them in his gaze for a long time. No one moves. Finally he kneels and bends his head. Joinville hurries to his knee beside the king. The king is bowing to the children. I am witnessing it with my own eyes. Otherwise, I would not believe it. Not in a thousand years.

  “Bless me,” Louis says. “Bless me, holy children—oblate, peasant, and Jew. Bless me.”

  They’re all as startled as I am. But no one is more startled than Jacob. “You knew I was Jewish?”

  “Always, my little dissembler.” Louis smiles, his head rising slightly. “You aren’t much of an actor.” The king exhales. “Since days of old, God has always worked his miracles through those we least expect. The weakest, the poorest, the youngest. Did not our Lord say, ‘the meek shall inherit the earth’? Well, it’s yours. The Talmuds, too,” Louis adds, staring at the shining shells at the children’s feet. “Keep them, and don’t let them spread.”

  But Joinville says, “Louis, they’re going to have them copied right here at Mont-Saint-Michel.”

  “I am going to pretend I didn’t hear that,” Louis replies. I can see the children smile. The king looks up. He rises to his feet, and Joinville does, too. “I hope,” says Louis, “that I see you again—in that land where I am not a king . . . and you are not a pain in my royal behind.”

  Then Louis nods, turns, and follows his mother up the hill.

  Joinville bows from the waist and says to the children, “It has been the greatest honor.” And then he bends down and rubs Gwenforte’s head, before collecting his and the king’s horses and hurrying after the royal family.

  And just like that, King Louis has lost his war.

  HAPTER 27

  The Fourth Part of the Inquisitor’s Tale

  Marmeluc and Clotho have already disappeared inside the fortress of Mont-Saint-Michel. The abbey is fortified and in its time has been an outpost against the Vikings, the French, the English, and the Bretons. The walls are thick bluish stone, and the only way in is blocked by a huge iron portcullis. But as we approach along the shimmering causeway, a wheel somewhere turns, chains tighten and groan, and the bars lift.

  Standing in the center of the cobbled road inside the iron gate is a giant. His nose and cheeks are ruddy, his hair and whiskers unruly, and his red-brown eyes are twinkling. I have never seen him before, but I know, in an instant, that it is Michelangelo di Bologna.

  Gwenforte barks, and Jeanne breaks into a run. The little peasant girl, wet and sand-soaked, collides with Michelangelo’s huge belly and throws her arms as far around him as they can go. Which is not very far. Gwenforte jumps around them, barking and leaping and spinning in circles.

  Jacob and William just stare at Jeanne, embracing the giant red monk.

  “I—I don’t believe it,” William stammers.

  Michelangelo looks up. His great red face is split with an enormous smile. “A hug from a child!” he exclaims. “Perhaps God’s greatest invention!”

  Jacob approaches Michelangelo slowly. He reaches out and touches the monk’s fleshy red hand, as if he wants to test his physical existence. “You are Misha-el? God’s beloved? The angel?”

  Michelangelo’s great head goes up and down, slowly, once.

  “You don’t look like an angel,” William objects.

  “What? You mean clean-shaven and slim?” Michelangelo laughs. “With beautiful flowing locks? I’ve seen the images you mortals make of me. They’re humiliating.”

  “So, you live here?” Jacob asks. His confusion is so deep it can only be represented with the most banal questions.

  “If they named a spot this pretty after you, you’d spend as much time as you could there, too.”

  “But . . . you’re not from Bologna?” William, too, apparently, is suffering from inane question syndrome.

  “No, but I do love that town. They call it ‘red, fat, and learned.’ It’s what inspired this form I made for myself.” Michelangelo looks down at his own body, as if it were a favorite hat.

  “You made for yourself . . . ,” William murmurs.

  “Sadly, it’s all used up now. Half of Paris saw it burn. So I’ll need a new one.” He reaches out and pinches William’s arm. “This one’s nice.”

  William yanks his arm out of reach. “It’s taken, thank you!”

  Jeanne looks up, her arms still attached to Michelangelo’s stomach. “And is that why Gwenforte liked you so much? Because she knew you were an angel?”

  Michelangelo gently detaches himself from Jeanne’s embrace and kneels down to stroke Gwenforte’s head. “We spent some lovely years together, before God sent her back to earth.”

  We all stand there, marveling at the fat monk, petting the white dog. They are both pilgrims from Heaven. How strange. But, in fact, how very believable. Obvious, almost.

  Something, though, is not obvious to Jacob. “Why did God do it?” he demands fiercely. “Why did He send Gwenforte back? And give us these miracles to perform? And put us through . . . through Hell?” His throat sounds thick and his face is contorted with anger. “Why?”

  “What do you mean, why? To save the Talmuds. To cure the dragon. To find the Holy Nail. To open the eyes of the king and his mother, if only a little bit.” Michelangelo’s great hand strokes the greyhound’s soft white fur. A seagull swoops down out of the dawn-colored sky, lands nearby, and cocks its head at us.

  “But why not just . . . just make it happen? You know”—Jacob snaps his fingers angrily—“poof!”

  “Because God does not work like poof!” Michelangelo says, snapping his fingers back at Jacob. Gwenforte looks at Michelangelo’s big fingers curiously and then tries to lick them. He laughs and lets her. “God works through people. Like you.”

  Jacob mutters, “It’s a strange way to run the world.”

  “Yes,” Michelangelo agrees. “Even to me, it is myst
erious. Full of wonders—and endlessly maddening.”

  He looks at me. “Étienne, how nice to see you.” I am surprised, for a moment, that he knows me. And then I think, Of course he knows me. He knows us all.

  “It is an honor,” I say, bowing my head.

  “Following the children and collecting their story, are we?”

  “Yes.”

  “And threw away our knife?”

  “Yes . . . sir . . .” I want to address him. Call him something. But what do you call an angel?

  “That’s a good boy.”

  My face turns red. I am pleased and embarrassed all at once. I say, “I saw the error of my ways. Thanks to these children—and Marie the brewster and Jerome the librarian and Aron the butcher and Gerald of Scotland and a little jongleur-thief—oh, and Joinville himself.” I don’t know why I’m recounting all this. What do you say to an archangel? “And a little nun. She knew a great deal of the story. More than I would have thought possible.”

  Michelangelo’s face falls. “Was she a tiny thing, with silvery hair, shining blue eyes, and an impish smile?”

  I say she was.

  Michelangelo pulls himself up to his towering height and stares off at the horizon.

  “Why?” William says. “Who is she?”

  “I didn’t see any of those people at the inn,” says Jacob. “Aron was there?”

  “Yes,” I say. “He went to bed. And the nun—” But suddenly I realize that the nun had been inside when the kids arrived in the yard of the inn. But where had she gone? I went out to the stable with them, and when I came back, she wasn’t there . . .

  Michelangelo’s voice sounds like the tolling of a bell. “There are only two beings in Creation that I fear,” he said. “One above, and one below. Strangely, when they walk the earth, they both take the same form. Of a little old woman, with silvery hair, sparkling eyes, and a knowing smile.” He swallows hard.

  And then Michelangelo shrugs. “No matter.”

  I am not sure if I believe him.

  But Jeanne has another concern: “What will happen to us now?” she asks.

  “Well, that is up to you.”

  “It is?”

  “Of course.”

  “But don’t you know?” Jeanne insists.

  “I do not. You are free to do whatever you like, Jeanne. Though you might go home. Your parents miss you terribly.”

  “They do?”

  “Of course.”

  Jacob had begun staring at the paving stones below his feet as soon as the word parents was mentioned.

  Michelangelo adds, “Jacob, so do yours.” Jacob looks up. “Though you will not see them again for some time, I hope.”

  Jacob exhales, nods, and wipes his eyes with his sleeve.

  “For now, though, Yehuda and Miriam would love for you to come to live with them. They would be honored to have you.”

  William is now looking hard at nothing at all.

  Michelangelo has not failed to notice this. “William, there is a place waiting for you at Robert de Sorbonne’s college, should you want it.” As William hears this news, his back straightens, his neck elongates, and his whole body seems to expand. Which I had really not thought possible. Michelangelo adds, “Between the debates and the fistfights, I think you’ll fit right in.

  “But,” he goes on, “it’s up to each of you. You can do whatever you want. Maybe you will want to stay together. Maybe you will want to continue traveling around France, doing God’s work.”

  “Maybe we will,” Jeanne says.

  I inhale the fresh wind of the sea. It smells, for some reason, like sadness.

  “At least,” she adds, “until our martyrdom comes.”

  “Which will be . . . when, exactly?” Jacob wants to know. So do we all.

  Michelangelo’s red hair dances in the sea spray. “William, you should have an answer to that.”

  “I should?”

  “Indeed. What is martyr in Latin? Or in Greek, for that matter?”

  William says, “My Greek’s not so good. In Latin, it means ‘witness.’”

  “Correct. And have you not already witnessed on behalf of goodness and beauty and justice and God? To Louis and Blanche and dozens of others? Whether you go your separate ways or stay together, you will continue to witness—against ignorance, against cruelty, and on behalf of all that is beautiful about this strange and crooked world. Yes, children, you will be martyrs. Just as you always have been.”

  He turns to me. “And what will you do?”

  I have known the answer since the moment I threw myself, stomach first, into the quicksand. “I will follow these children, wherever they go, and record their works and their miracles,” I say. “I will witness their witnessing, so that all the world may share their gifts.”

  And Michelangelo replies, “Amen.”

  Jacob reaches out and takes Michelangelo’s hand. Jeanne leans in and takes Michelangelo’s other hand and wraps it around herself, so that she is enfolded in one of his great warm arms. Gwenforte slithers underneath Jeanne and wedges her head up between Jacob and Michelangelo. Finally William wraps his arms around them all.

  And Michelangelo sighs. “Ah,” he says. “Another miracle.”

  Author’s Note:

  Where Did This Story Come From?

  My interest in the Middle Ages is entirely my wife’s fault. We met in college. Even back then she knew that she wanted to be a professor of medieval history. Our first trip together was to Northern England, where we went on a week-long scavenger hunt for missing pieces of medieval stained glass. (We found them!) We continued to take trips to Europe to visit museums, monasteries, castles, churches, libraries, dungeons, ancient forests, and medieval garbage dumps. (In fact, my wife spent a whole week excavating one.) We even lived in Europe for a year. My wife spent all day, every day, in libraries, reading medieval books. I spent all day, every day, cooking, eating, and dreaming up this novel.

  So how much of this novel is real, and how much is made up?

  That’s a complicated question.

  Many of the characters are real. King Louis, Blanche of Castile, Jean de Joinville, Robert de Sorbonne, Roger Bacon, Gwenforte the Holy Greyhound (yes, there was a Holy Greyhound, though she was a he, and his name was spelled Guinefort).

  Some of the events really happened, too. The Holy Nail really was lost (and found). Knights really did sink into the quicksand surrounding Mont-Saint-Michel. And, tragically, some twenty thousand volumes of Talmud really were burned in the center of Paris.

  Other events in the book are inspired by legends of the Middle Ages: William’s battle with the fiends, the dragon of the deadly farts, Jeanne recognizing the true king.

  Below are some notes to help you sort through what is history, what is legend, and what is completely made up in The Inquisitor’s Tale.

  JEANNE’s character was very loosely based on Joan of Arc (whose name, in French, is Jeanne). Joan of Arc was a peasant girl, and she, like my character Jeanne, had visions. There is also a legend about her being brought before the King of France and kneeling to one of his courtiers—who turned out to be the real king in disguise. The similarities between Jeanne and Joan of Arc end there, though. Joan lived two hundred years after my story takes place, was a military genius even as a child, led the armies of France against the English, was captured, horribly tortured, and then executed.

  My wife and I lived for a time in Rouen, France, right across the street from where some of the worst torture took place. The more I learned about Joan of Arc, the more upset I became. I felt that her fate wouldn’t have been nearly so gruesome or so tragic had she not been both a peasant and a girl. To the lords of the Middle Ages, there was no figure more powerless and more exploitable than a peasant girl. I wanted to depict that in my story—but more gently. After all, not every peasant g
irl was treated as badly as Joan of Arc.

  By most counts, PEASANTS accounted for ninety percent of the European population in the High Middle Ages, when The Inquisitor’s Tale takes place. Just like Jeanne, peasants typically lived in villages near farmland. None of the land they worked or lived on belonged to them, though. It belonged to the “land lord,” who was usually either a noble or a religious institution. Each peasant family was given a plot of land to build a house and raise animals on, as well as a furrow of the fields to grow food for themselves. In exchange, they had to work the lord’s land, the demesne, once a week, and also pay rent or taxes to the lord once a year.

  There was a hierarchy of peasants in the Middle Ages. Some were “free peasants,” who didn’t own any land but could, at least, move to another manor if they wanted. Bonded peasants, or serfs, could only leave if their lord gave them permission. Serfdom wasn’t quite slavery (they couldn’t be bought or sold, for instance), but it was close. If you want to learn more about peasant life, or about any of the topics I take on in this book, I recommend a variety of sources in the Annotated Bibliography.

  The story of GWENFORTE—how she protected an infant from a snake, and how she was killed and then venerated as a saint—comes from the diary of a real inquisitor named Stephen of Bourbon (who inspired my Étienne of Arles). Stephen was sent to a small village in France to stamp out the saintly veneration of a dog. Upon arriving, he learned the incredible story of the greyhound and the snake, and recorded it in his notes. As I said above, the real Gwenforte was called Guinefort, was a male dog, and, sadly, did not come back to life and start an adventure with the child whose life he saved. I made all that up. Interestingly, the story of the “faithful hound” shows up in stories from all over the world. There’s a very similar story, for example, from Wales about a dog named Gelert.

  WILLIAM was inspired by the legend of Guilhem, or Guillaume d’Orange, a real lord from southern France who became the subject of many tall tales after he died. During his life, he made a name for himself fighting in Spain against the Muslims who had recently conquered that land. But once he was dead, he grew in stature and fame, becoming something like a mix between Paul Bunyan and the Incredible Hulk.