Heretic (27 page)

Thomas laid Genevieve down. A dozen of the lepers crowded at the doorway and gaped at the newcomers until Brother Clement shooed them away. Genevieve, oblivious of the stir her arrival had caused, sighed, then blinked at Thomas. “It hurts,” she whispered.

“I know,” he said, “but you must be brave.”

Brother Clement had rolled up his sleeves and now he gestured that Genevieve’s mail coat must be taken off. That would be hard for the crossbow quarrel was still in her flesh and was jutting through the polished mail. But the monk seemed to know what to do for he pushed Thomas aside and first moved Genevieve’s arms so they were reaching above her head, then he took hold of the quarrel’s leather vanes. Genevieve moaned, then Brother Clement, with extraordinary delicacy, eased the bloody and broken mail and the leather jerkin that supported it clear up over the bolt. Then he reached down with his left hand and put it under the jerkin’s skirt, right up until he was holding the bolt and his left arm was supporting the armor to keep it from touching the quarrel and he nodded at Thomas, looked expectant, then jerked his head as if to suggest that Thomas should simply pull Genevieve out of the mail coat. The monk nodded approvingly as Thomas took hold of her ankles, then nodded encouragement.

Thomas shut his eyes and pulled. Genevieve screamed. He stopped pulling and Brother Clement made some guttural noises that suggested Thomas was being squeamish and so he pulled again, sliding her out of the mail, and when he opened his eyes he saw that her body was clear of the iron rings, though her outstretched arms and head were still encased by their folds. But the bolt was clear of the armor and Brother Clement, making clucking noises, eased the mail coat from her arms and tossed it aside.

The monk went back to the table while Genevieve cried aloud and turned her head from side to side in an effort to quell the pain of the wound that had started to bleed again. Her linen shirt was red from armpit to waist.

Brother Clement knelt by her. He put a water-soaked pad on her forehead, patted her cheek, made some more clucking noises that seemed to soothe Genevieve and then, still smiling, he put his left knee on her breast, both hands on the quarrel and pulled. She screamed, but the bolt came out, bloody and dripping, and Brother Clement had a knife with which he slashed the linen to reveal the wound onto which he dropped the wet pad. He motioned that Thomas should hold it in place.

Thomas did while the monk busied himself at the table. He came back with a lump of moldy bread that he had softened in water. He put it on the wound, then pressed it down hard. He gave Thomas a strip of sacking and mimed that it should be wrapped about Genevieve’s chest like a bandage. It hurt her, for Thomas had to sit her up to do it, and once she was upright Brother Clement cut away the rest of her bloodied linen shift, then Thomas wrapped the sacking about her breasts and shoulder, and only when the moldy, blood-soaked poultice was strapped tight was she allowed to rest. Brother Clement smiled as if to say that it was all well done, then he closed his hands prayerfully and put them beside his face to suggest that Genevieve should sleep.

“Thank you,” Thomas said.

Brother Clement opened his mouth in a big smile and Thomas saw the monk had no tongue. A rat rustled in the thatch and the small monk seized a triple-pronged eel spear and began jabbing violently at the straw which only succeeded in tearing great holes in the roof.

Genevieve slept.

Brother Clement went to see to his lepers’ needs, then came back with a brazier and a clay pot in which he had some embers. He lit a bundle of tinder in the brazier, fed the fire with wood and, when it was smoking and red hot, he shoved the quarrel that had wounded Genevieve into the glowing heart of the fire. The leather vanes scorched and stank. Brother Clement nodded happily and Thomas understood that the little monk was curing her wound by punishing the thing that had caused it. Then, when the offending quarrel had been punished by fire, Brother Clement tiptoed to Genevieve’s side, peered at her and smiled happily. He pulled two dirty blankets from under the table and Thomas spread them over her.

He left her sleeping. He had to water the horses, let them graze and then stable them in the monastery’s wine press. He hoped to see Abbot Planchard, but the monks were at prayer and they were still in the abbey church after Thomas, imitating Brother Clement, had made the mare scream by jerking the quarrel from her haunch. He had to step smartly back to avoid her lashing rear hooves. When she had settled he soaked the wound in water, patted her neck, then carried the saddles, bridles, arrows, bows and bags to the shed where Genevieve was now awake. She lay propped against a sack and Brother Clement, making his little clucking noises, was feeding her a soup of mushrooms and sorrel. He gave Thomas a happy smile, then tipped his head towards the yard from where came the sound of singing. It was the lepers, and Brother Clement hummed along with their tune.

There was more soup and bread for Thomas. After he had eaten, and when Brother Clement had gone to wherever he spent his nights, Thomas lay beside Genevieve. “It still hurts,” she said, “but not like it did.”

“That’s good.”

“It didn’t hurt when the arrow hit. It was just like getting a punch.”

“You’ll get better,” he said fervently.

“Do you know what they were singing?” she asked.

“No.”

“The song of Herric and Alloise. They were lovers. A very long time ago.” She reached up and traced a finger down the long unshaven line of his jaw. “Thank you,” she said.

After a while she slept again. Small shafts of moonlight came through the ragged thatch and Thomas could see sweat on her forehead. But at least she was breathing more deeply and, after a time, Thomas fell asleep.

He slept badly. Sometimes in the night he dreamed of horses’ hooves and of men shouting and he woke to find it was no dream, but real, and he sat up as the monastery’s bell began to toll the alarm. He pushed off the blankets, thinking he should go to see what had caused the disturbance, but then the bell stopped its clamor and the night became quiet again.

And Thomas slept once more.

T
HOMAS WOKE WITH A START,
realizing there was a man standing above him. It was a tall man, his looming height outlined against the pale light of dawn showing in the hut doorway. Thomas instinctively twisted away and reached for his sword, but the man stepped back and made a hushing sound. “I did not mean to wake you,” he said softly in a voice that was deep and held no threat.

Thomas sat up to see it was a monk who had spoken. He could not see the monk’s face for it was dark in the hut, but then the tall, white-robed man stepped forward again to peer at Genevieve. “How is your friend?” he asked.

Genevieve was sleeping. A strand of golden hair shivered at her mouth with every breath. “She was feeling better last night,” Thomas said softly.

“That’s good,” the monk said fervently, then stepped back again to the doorway. He had picked up Thomas’s bow as he stooped to look at Genevieve and now he examined the bow in the thin grey light. Thomas, as ever, felt uncomfortable when a stranger handled the weapon, but he said nothing and, after a while, the monk propped the bow against Brother Clement’s medicine table. “I would like to talk with you,” the monk said. “Shall we meet in the cloisters in a few moments?”

It was a cold morning. A dew lay on the grass between the olive trees and on the lawn in the cloister’s center. There was a circular communal trough at one corner of the cloisters where the monks, with one prayer service already behind them, splashed their faces and hands, and Thomas first looked for the tall monk among the washing men, but then saw him sitting on a low wall between two pillars of the southern arcade. The monk gestured to him and Thomas saw that he was very old, with a face deeply lined and somehow full of kindness. “Your friend,” the old monk said when Thomas joined him, “is in excellent hands. Brother Clement is a most skilled healer, but he and Brother Ramon don’t agree about things, so I have to keep them apart. Ramon looks after the infirmary and Clement tends the lepers. Ramon is a proper physician, trained at Montpellier, so of course we have to defer to him, but he seems to have no remedies other than prayer and copious bleeding. He uses them for every ailment, while Brother Clement, I suspect, uses his own kind of magic. I should probably disapprove of that, but I am forced to say that if I was sick I would prefer Brother Clement to treat me.” He smiled at Thomas. “My name is Planchard.”

“The abbot?”

“Indeed. And you are most welcome to our house. I am sorry I could not greet you yesterday. And Brother Clement tells me you were alarmed at being in the lazar house? There’s no need. My experience is that the condition is not promoted by contact with others. I have been visiting the lepers for forty years and have yet to lose a finger, and Brother Clement lives and worships with them and he has never been touched by the disease.” The abbot paused and made the sign of the cross and Thomas at first thought the old man was warding off the evil thought of catching leprosy, then he saw that Planchard was looking at something across the cloister. He followed the Abbot’s gaze and saw a body being carried on a stretcher. It was obviously a corpse for the face was covered with a white cloth and there was a crucifix balanced on the chest which fell off after a few steps so that the monks had to stop and retrieve it. “We had excitement here last night,” Planchard said mildly.

“Excitement?”

“You probably heard the bell? It was rung too late, I fear. Two men came to the monastery after dark. Our gate is never shut, so they had no trouble entering. They tied the gatekeeper hand and foot, then went to the infirmary. The Count of Berat was there. He was attended by his squire and three of his men-at-arms who had survived a horrid little fight in the next valley,” the Abbot waved a hand towards the west, but if he knew or suspected that Thomas had been involved in that fight, he made no comment, “and one of the men-at-arms was sleeping in the Count’s chamber. He woke up when the killers came, and so he died and then the Count’s throat was cut and the two killers ran for their lives.” The old abbot recounted these events in a flat voice, as though foul murders were commonplace in Saint Severt’s.

“The Count of Berat?” Thomas asked.

“A sad man,” Planchard said. “I quite liked him, but I fear he was one of God’s fools. He was astonishingly learned, but possessed no sense. He was a hard master to his tenants, but good to the Church. I used to think he was trying to buy his way into heaven, but actually he was seeking a son and God never rewarded that desire. Poor man, poor man.” Planchard stared as the dead Count was carried to the gatehouse, then smiled gently at Thomas. “Some of my monks insisted you must be the murderer.”

“Me!” Thomas exclaimed.

“I know it was not you,” Planchard said. “The real murderers were seen leaving. Galloping into the night.” He shook his head. “But the brothers can get very excited and, alas, our house has been much disturbed of late. Forgive me, I did not ask your name.”

“Thomas.”

“A good name. Just Thomas?”

“Thomas of Hookton.”

“That sounds very English,” Planchard said. “And you are what? A soldier?”

“An archer.”

“Not a friar?” Planchard asked in grave amusement.

Thomas half smiled. “You know about that?”

“I know that an English archer called Thomas went to Castillon d’ Arbizon dressed as a friar. I know he spoke good Latin. I know he took the castle, and I know that he then spread misery in the countryside. I know he caused many tears, Thomas, many tears. Folk who struggled all their lives to build something for their children saw it burned in minutes.”

Thomas did not know what to say. He stared at the grass. “You must know more than that,” he said after a while.

“I know that you and your companion are excommunicated,” Planchard said.

“Then I should not be here,” Thomas said, gesturing at the cloister. “I was excluded from holy precincts,” he added bitterly.

“You are here at my invitation,” Planchard said mildly, “and if God disapproves of that invitation then it will not be long before he has a chance to demand an explanation from me.”

Thomas looked at the abbot who endured his scrutiny patiently. There was something about Planchard, Thomas thought, that reminded him of his own father, though without the madness. But there was a saintliness and a wisdom and an authority in the old lined face and Thomas knew he liked this man. Liked him very much. He looked away. “I was protecting Genevieve,” he muttered, explaining away his excommunication.

“The beghard?”

“She’s no beghard,” Thomas said.

“I would be surprised if she was,” Planchard said, “for I very much doubt if there are any beghards in these parts. Those heretics congregate in the north. What are they called? The Brethren of the Free Spirit. And what is it they believe? That everything comes from God, so everything is good! It’s a beguiling idea, is it not? Except when they say everything they mean exactly that, everything. Every sin, every deed, every theft.”

“Genevieve is no beghard,” Thomas repeated the denial, though the firmness of his tone did not reflect any conviction.

“I’m sure she’s a heretic,” Planchard said mildly, “but which of us is not? And yet,” his mild tone vanished as his voice became stern, “she is also a murderer.”

“Which of us is not?” Thomas echoed.

Planchard grimaced. “She killed Father Roubert.”

“Who had tortured her,” Thomas said. He drew up his sleeve and showed the abbot the burn scars on his arm. “I too killed my torturer and he too was a Dominican.”

The abbot gazed up at the sky that was clouding over. Thomas’s confession of murder did not seem to disturb him, indeed his next words even suggested he was ignoring it completely. “I was reminded the other day,” he said, “of one of the psalms of David. ’
Dominus reget me et nihil mihi deerit.
’”

“‘In loco pascuae ibi conlocavit,’”
Thomas finished the quotation.