Heretic Read online

  At Astarac.

  THOMAS AND HIS MEN left Astarac in the early afternoon, riding horses that were weighed down with cuts of meat, cooking pots, anything at all that was of value and that could be sold in Castillon d’Arbizon’s marketplace. Thomas kept looking back, wondering why he felt nothing for this place, but also knowing he would be back. There were secrets in Astarac and he must unlock them.

  Robbie alone rode a horse that was not encumbered with plunder. He had been the last to join the raiders, coming from the monastery with a strangely contented expression. He offered no explanation for his lateness, nor why he had spared the Cistercians. He just nodded at Thomas and fell into the column as it started westwards.

  They would be late home. It would probably be dark, but Thomas was not concerned. The coredors would not attack, and if the Count of Berat had sent forces to intercept their homeward journey then they should see those pursuers from the ridge tops and so he rode without worries, leaving behind misery and smoke in a shattered village.

  “So did you find what you were looking for?” Sir Guillaume asked.

  “No.”

  Sir Guillaume laughed. “A fine Sir Galahad you are!” He glanced at the things hanging from Thomas’s saddle. “You go for the Holy Grail and come back with a heap of goatskins and a haunch of mutton.”

  “That’ll roast well with vinegar sauce,” Thomas said.

  Sir Guillaume looked behind to see a dozen coredors had followed them up onto the ridge. “We’re going to have to teach those bastards a lesson.”

  “We will,” Thomas said, “we will.”

  There were no men-at-arms waiting to ambush them. Their only delay occured when a horse went lame, but it was nothing more than a stone caught in its hoof. The coredors vanished as the dusk approached. Robbie was again riding in the vanguard, but when they were halfway home and the sun was a sinking red ball before them, he turned back and fell in beside Thomas. Genevieve was off to one side and she pointedly moved her mare farther away, but if Robbie noticed he made no comment. He glanced at the goatskins draped behind Thomas’s saddle. “My father once had a cloak of horseskin,” he said by way of breaking the silence that had lasted too long between them, and then, without adding any more details of his father’s curious taste in clothing, he looked embarrassed. “I’ve been thinking,” he said.

  “A dangerous occupation,” Thomas answered lightly.

  “Lord Outhwaite let me come with you,” Robbie said, “but would he mind if I left you?”

  “Left me?” Thomas was surprised.

  “I’ll go back to him, of course,” Robbie said, “eventually.”

  “Eventually?” Thomas asked, suspicious. Robbie was a prisoner and his duty, if he was not with Thomas, was to go back to Lord Outhwaite in northern England and wait there until his ransom was paid.

  “There are things I have to do,” Robbie explained, “to put my soul straight.”

  “Ah,” Thomas said, embarrassed himself now. He glanced at the silver crucifix on his friend’s chest.

  Robbie was staring at a buzzard that quartered the lower hill, looking for small game in the dying light. “I was never one for religion,” he said softly. “None of the men in our family are. The women care, of course, but not the Douglas men. We’re good soldiers and bad Christians.” He paused, plainly uncomfortable, then shot a swift glance at Thomas. “You remember that priest we killed in Brittany?”

  “Of course I do,” Thomas said. Bernard de Taillebourg had been a Dominican friar and the Inquisitor who had tortured Thomas. The priest had also helped Guy Vexille kill Robbie’s brother, and together Thomas and Robbie had chopped him down in front of an altar.

  “I wanted to kill him,” Robbie said.

  “You said,” Thomas reminded him, “that there was no sin that some priest could not undamn, and that, I assume, includes killing priests.”

  “I was wrong,” Robbie said. “He was a priest and we shouldn’t have killed him.”

  “He was the bastard turd of the devil,” Thomas said vengefully.

  “He was a man who wants what you want,” Robbie said firmly, “and he killed to get it, but we do the same, Thomas.”

  Thomas made the sign of the cross. “Are you worried about my soul,” he asked caustically, “or yours?”

  “I was talking to the abbot in Astarac,” Robbie said, ignoring Thomas’s question, “and I told him about the Dominican. He said I’d done a dreadful thing and that my name was on the devil’s list.” That had been the sin Robbie had confessed, though Abbot Planchard was a wise enough man to know that something else worried the young Scot and that the something else was probably the beghard. But Planchard had taken Robbie at his word and become stern with him. “He ordered me to do a pilgrimage,” Robbie went on. “He said I had to go to Bologna and pray at the blessed Dominic’s tomb, and that I would be given a sign if St. Dominic forgives me for the killing.”

  Thomas, after his earlier conversation with Sir Guillaume, had already decided that it would be best if Robbie went, and now Robbie was making it easy for him. Yet he pretended to be reluctant. “You can stay through the winter,” he suggested.

  “No,” Robbie said firmly. “I’m damned, Thomas, unless I do something about it.”

  Thomas remembered the Dominican’s death, the fire flickering on the tent walls, the two swords chopping and stabbing at the writhing friar who twitched in his dying blood. “Then I’m damned too, eh?”

  “Your soul is your concern,” Robbie said, “and I can’t tell you what to do. But the abbot told me what I should do.”

  “Then go to Bologna,” Thomas said and hid his relief that Robbie had decided to leave.

  It took two days to discover how best Robbie could make the journey, but after talking to a pilgrim who had come to worship at St. Sardos’s tomb in the town’s upper church they decided he would do best to go back to Astarac and from there strike south to St. Gaudens. Once at St. Gaudens he would be on a well-travelled road where he would find companies of merchants travelling together and they would welcome a young, strong man-at-arms to help protect their convoys. “From St. Gaudens you should go north to Toulouse,” the pilgrim said, “and make sure you stop at the shrine of St. Sernin and ask for his protection. The church has one of the whips used to scourge our Lord and if you pay they will let you touch it and you will never suffer blindness. Then you must continue to Avignon. Those roads are well patroled, so you should be safe. And at Avignon you must seek the Holy Father’s blessing and ask someone else how to journey farther east.”

  The most dangerous part of the journey was the first and Thomas promised he would escort Robbie to within sight of Astarac to make sure he was not troubled by any coredors. He also gave him a bag of money from the big chest in the hall. “It’s more than your share,” Thomas told him.

  Robbie weighed the bag of gold. “It’s too much.”

  “Christ, man, you have to pay in taverns. Take it. And for God’s sake don’t gamble it away.”

  “I’ll not do that,” Robbie said. “I promised Abbot Planchard I’d give up gambling and he made me take an oath in the abbey.”

  “And lit a candle, I hope?” Thomas asked.

  “Three,” Robbie said, then made the sign of the cross. “I’m to give up all sins, Thomas, until I’ve prayed to Dominic. That’s what Planchard said.” He paused, then smiled sadly. “I’m sorry, Thomas.”

  “Sorry? For what?”

  Robbie shrugged. “I’ve not been the best companion.” He sounded embarrassed again and he said no more, but that night, when they all ate together in the hall to say farewell to Robbie, the Scotsman made a great effort to be courteous to Genevieve. He even gave her a portion of his mutton, a succulent piece, spiking it on his knife and insisting she let him put it on her plate. Sir Guillaume rolled his surviving eye in astonishment, Genevieve was gracious in her thanks and, next morning, under the lash of a cold north wind, they left to escort Robbie away.

  THE COUNT O
F BERAT had only visited Astarac once and that had been many years before, and, when he saw the village again, he hardly recognized it. It had always been small, malodorous and poor, but now it had been ravaged. Half the village’s thatch had been burned, leaving walls of scorched stone, and a great smear of blood scattered with bones, feathers and offal showed where the villagers’ livestock had been butchered. Three Cistercian monks were distributing food from a handcart when the Count arrived, but that charity did not prevent a rush of ragged folk surrounding the Count, dragging off their hats, kneeling and holding out their hands for alms.

  “Who did this?” the Count demanded.

  “The English, sire,” one of the monks answered. “They came yesterday.”

  “By Christ, but they’ll die a hundred deaths for this,” the Count declared.

  “And I’ll inflict them,” Joscelyn said savagely.

  “I’m almost minded to let you go to them,” the Count said, “but what can we do against their castle?”

  “Guns,” Joscelyn said.

  “I have sent for the gun in Toulouse,” the Count said angrily, then he scattered a few small coins among the villagers before spurring his horse past them. He paused to stare at the ruins of the castle on its crag, but he did not ride to the old fortress because it was late, the night was near and the air was cold. The Count was also tired and saddle-sore, and the unfamiliar armor he wore was chafing his shoulders and so, instead of climbing the long path to the shattered fortress he went on towards the dubious comforts at the Cistercian abbey of St. Sever.

  White-robed monks were trudging home from their work. One carried a great bundle of kindling, while others had hoes and spades. The last grapes were being harvested and two monks led an ox pulling a wagon loaded with baskets of deep purple fruit. They pulled the wagon aside as the Count and his thirty men-at-arms clattered past towards the plain, undecorated buildings. No one in the monastery had been expecting visitors, but the monks greeted the Count without fuss and efficiently found stabling for the horses and provided bedding among the wine presses for the men-at-arms. A fire was lit in the visitors’ quarters where the Count, his nephew and Father Roubert would be entertained. “The abbot will greet you after compline,” the Count was told, then he was served a meal of bread, beans, wine and smoked fish. The wine was the abbey’s own and tasted sour.

  The Count dismissed Joscelyn and Father Roubert to their own rooms, sent his squire to wherever the lad could find a bed, then sat alone by the fire. He wondered why God had sent the English to plague him. Was that another punishment for ignoring the Grail? It seemed likely, for he had convinced himself that God had indeed chosen him and that he must perform one great last task and then he would be rewarded. The Grail, he thought, almost in ecstasy. The Grail, the holiest of all holy things, and he had been sent to discover it; he fell to his knees by the open window and listened to the voices of the monks chanting in the abbey church and prayed that his quest would be successful. He went on praying long after the chanting had stopped and thus Abbot Planchard discovered the Count on his knees. “Do I interrupt?” the abbot asked gently.

  “No, no.” The Count winced with pain from his cramped knees as he climbed to his feet. He had discarded his armor and wore a fur-lined gown and his customary woolen cap. “I am sorry, Planchard, most sorry to impose on you. No warning, I know. Most inconvenient, I’m sure.”

  “The devil alone inconveniences me,” Planchard said, “and I know you are not sent by him.”

  “I do pray not,” the Count said, then sat and immediately stood again. By rank he was entitled to the room’s one chair, but the abbot was so very old that the Count felt constrained to offer it to him.

  The abbot shook his head and sat on the window ledge instead. “Father Roubert came to compline,” he said, “and talked with me afterwards.”

  The Count felt a pulse of alarm. Had Roubert told Plan-chard why they were here? He wanted to tell the abbot himself.

  “He is very upset,” Planchard said. He spoke French, an aristocrat’s French, elegant and precise.

  “Roubert’s always upset when he’s uncomfortable,” the Count said, “and it was a long journey and he’s not used to riding. Not born to it, you see? He sits his horse like a cripple.” He paused, staring open-eyed at the abbot, then let out an explosive sneeze. “Dear me,” he said, his eyes watering. He wiped his nose with his sleeve. “Roubert slouches in his saddle. I keep telling him to sit up, but he won’t take advice.” He sneezed again.

  “I do hope you’re not catching an ague,” the abbot said. “Father Roubert was not upset because of weariness, but because of the beghard.”

  “Ah, yes, of course. The girl.” The Count shrugged. “I rather think he was looking forward to seeing her burn. That would have been a fitting reward for all his hard work. You know he questioned her?”

  “With fire, I believe,” Planchard said, then frowned. “How odd that a beghard should be this far south. Their haunt is the north. But I suppose he is sure?”

  “Entirely! The wretched girl confessed.”

  “As would I if I were put to the fire,” the abbot said acidly. “You know she rides with the English?”

  “I heard as much,” the Count said. “A bad business, Planchard, a bad business.”

  “At least they spared this house,” Planchard said. “Is that why you came, my lord? To protect us from a heretic and from the English?”

  “Of course, of course,” the Count said, but then moved a little closer to the truth of his journey. “There was another reason too, Planchard, another reason altogether.” He expected Planchard to ask what that reason was, but the abbot stayed silent and, for some reason, the Count felt uncomfortable. He wondered if Planchard would scoff at him. “Father Roubert did not tell you?” he asked.

  “He talked of nothing but the beghard.”

  “Ah,” the Count said. He did not quite know how to phrase his quest and so, instead, he plunged into the center of it to see whether Planchard would understand what he was talking about. “‘Calix meus inebrians,’” he announced, then sneezed again.

  Planchard waited until the Count had recovered. “The psalms of David. I love that particular one, especially that wonderful beginning. “‘The Lord rules me and denies me nothing.’”

  “‘Calix meus inebrians,’” the Count said, ignoring the abbot’s words, “was carved above the gate of the castle here.”

  “Was it?”

  “You had not heard it?”

  “One hears so many things in this small valley, my lord, that it is necessary to distinguish between fears, dreams, hopes and reality.”

  “‘Calix meus inebrians,’” the Count repeated stubbornly, suspecting that the abbot knew exactly what he was talking about, but wanted to cloud the issue.

  Planchard looked at the Count in silence for a while, then nodded. “The tale is not new to me. Nor to you, I suspect?”

  “I believe,” the Count said awkwardly, “that God sent me here for a purpose.”

  “Ah, then you are fortunate, my lord!” Planchard sounded impressed. “So many folk come to me seeking God’s purposes and all I can tell them is to watch, work and pray, and by doing so I trust they will discover the purpose in their own time, but it is rarely given openly. I envy you.”

  “It was given to you,” the Count retorted.

  “No, my lord,” the abbot said gravely. “God merely opened a gate onto a field full of stones, thistles and weeds and left me to till it. It has been hard work, my lord, hard work, and I approach my end with most of it still to be done.”

  “Tell me of the story,” the Count said.

  “The story of my life?” Planchard countered.

  “The story,” the Count said firmly, “of the cup that makes us drunk.”

  Planchard sighed and, for a moment, looked very old. Then he stood. “I can do better than that, my lord,” he said, “I can show you.”

  “Show me?” The Count was astonished and elat
ed.

  Planchard went to a cupboard and took out a horn lantern. He lit its wick with a brand from the fire, then invited the excited Count to follow him through a dark cloister and into the abbey church where a small candle burned beneath a plaster statue of St. Benedict, the only decoration in the austere building.

  Planchard took a key from under his robe and led the Count to a small door which opened from an alcove that was half hidden by a side altar on the church’s north side. The lock was stiff, but at last it gave way and the door creaked open. “Be careful of the steps,” the abbot warned, “they are worn and very treacherous.”

  The lantern bobbed as the abbot went down a steep flight of stone stairs which turned sharp right into a crypt lined with great pillars between which bones were stacked almost to the arched ceiling. There were leg bones, arm bones and ribs stacked like firewood, and between them, like lines of boulders, lay empty-eyed skulls. “The brothers?” the Count asked.

  “Awaiting the blessed day of resurrection,” Planchard said and went on to the farthest end of the crypt, stooping under a low arch and so into a small chamber where there was an ancient bench and a wooden chest reinforced with iron. He found some half-burned candles in a niche and lit them so that the small room flickered with light. “It was your greatgrandfather, God be praised, who endowed this house,” he said, taking another key from a pouch under his black robe. “It was small before that and very poor, but your ancestor gave us land to thank God for the fall of the House of Vexille, and those lands are sufficient to support us, but not to make us wealthy. That is good and proper, but we do possess a few small things of value and this, such as it is, is our treasury.” He bent to the chest, turned the massive key and lifted the lid.

  At first the Count was disappointed for he thought there was nothing inside, but when the abbot brought one of the candles closer the Count saw the chest contained a tarnished silver paten, a leather bag and a single candlestick. The abbot pointed to the bag. “That was given to us by a grateful knight whom we healed in the infirmary. He swore to us it contains St. Agnes’s girdle, but I confess I have never even opened the bag. I remember seeing her girdle in Basle, but I suppose she could have had two? My mother had several, but she was no saint, alas.” He ignored the two pieces of silver and lifted out an object that the Count had not noticed in the chest’s deep shadows. It was a box that Planchard placed on the bench. “You must look at it closely, my lord. It is old and the paint has long faded. I am quite surprised that we did not burn it long ago, but for some reason we keep it.”