Pagan's Scribe (2 page)

‘The priest is at a deathbed, Father.’

‘Sweet saints preserve us.’ He stamps his left foot. (What a restless little man he is.) ‘That’s typical,’ he rages. ‘That’s all I need. What’s your name, boy?’

‘Isidore.’

‘Isidore? Good. Then you can come here, Isidore, because I need your help.’

Come here, Isidore. Go there, Isidore. I’m like stubble before the wind, in this place. Ah well. Better it is to be of humble spirit with the lowly, than to divide the spoil with the proud.

And speaking of the proud, this little man is no parish priest. Out in the sunlight, it’s possible to see how supple and expensive his boots are. He’s not wearing any jewellery, but his black robes are glossy and full, finely woven and finely stitched, like the feast-day vestments back in Pamiers. And look at his horses! At least, I assume they’re his horses. None of the locals can flaunt a pair of beasts like those. In fact no one in this village owns any horses at all.

Perhaps that’s why these two have drawn such a big crowd. At least half-a-dozen staring peasants have gathered near the church steps, wary but fascinated: the usual crew of eaves droppers, including Bernard Lagleize and Bernard Belot and Bernard Lagleize the Younger, chewing like cows, spitting and scratching and picking their noses. When they see the little man beside me they cross themselves, because he has very dark skin – strange, dusky skin – and these people are so dense, so incredibly insular, that they’re frightened by anything out of the ordinary. Witness the way they behaved when I first showed up. Anyone would think that red hair was a mark of the Devil.

‘Look! Just look at him!’ The little man points at one of his horses: there’s a hunched figure on top of it. ‘See that steaming heap of garbage over there? That used to be my scribe. He’s not fit to travel, because he’s evacuating continuously from both ends. That’s what happens when you’re a greedy pig, and eat bad fruit against the advice of your elders. Where’s the priest’s house, Isidore? I’ll have to put this idiot to bed.’

The priest’s house? Oh no. I can’t invite you into the priest’s house, little man. The priest’s house belongs to the priest.

‘It’s all right.’ He’s looking at me, squinting in the harsh noonday glare. ‘My name is Father Pagan,’ he says. ‘I am the Archdeacon of Carcassonne. If your priest objects, he’ll have me to answer to. Now, where does he live?’

‘Over there.’ Pointing. ‘Around the corner.’

‘Good. Let’s go, then. You can lead that horse, and I’ll lead this one.’

Lead the horse? But I don’t know anything about horses. What am I supposed to do with it? What if it bites me? Just look at its great yellow eye, rolling like the stone of Sisyphus. Just look at its great yellow teeth.

‘Go on, she won’t hurt you.’ The Archdeacon has seized the reins of his scribe’s mount, right up under its bristly chin. But when I try to do the same for mine, it snorts, and tosses its head.

Help! This animal doesn’t like me. Somewhere in the crowd, someone laughs: the village square seems to be full of mangy peasants, all waiting for me to make a fool of myself. God curse them. May their increase be given unto the caterpillar, and their labour unto the locust.

‘Come.’ The Archdeacon crooks a finger. ‘I’ll give you these reins, and I’ll take yours. There. All right, now? Just pull him along gently, and you won’t have any trouble.’

Gently. Pull gently. One little tug, and the horse starts to move: I can feel its hot breath on my wrist. The scribe moans with every step it takes; he’s curled up in the saddle, his greenish face pillowed against his mount’s neck. He wears a canon’s robe and a tonsure.

‘Julien!’ The Archdeacon speaks from behind me. ‘I warn you, Julien, if you dare throw up on my beautiful horse, you’ll be
licking
the mess off, understand?’

But there’s no response from Julien. The crowd follows us around the side of the church, towards the little mud-brick dwelling propped up against its southern wall. Ernoul is standing on the threshold, open-mouthed and pop-eyed: with his skinny frame and spiky hair, he looks exactly like a broom.

‘Who’s that?’ the Archdeacon enquires. ‘Does that fellow belong to the priest?’

‘Yes, Father, he’s our servant.’

‘Good. Then he can hold the horses. You, there! Fellow! Come and hold these horses! And you – Isidore – you can help me with Julien.’

Julien certainly needs some help. One small nudge and he tumbles down like an autumn leaf, emitting the most monstrous fart in the history of the civilised world. It puts me in mind of a bison’s fart, which (as everyone knows) sets fire to every tree within three acres.

‘God preserve us!’ the Archdeacon exclaims, staggering under Julien’s unwieldy tangle of limbs. ‘You smell like a leper’s latrine, you dung-bag!’

‘I’m going to be sick,’ Julien sighs. But the Archdeacon won’t have that. He sticks one small brown finger into Julien’s heaving breastbone. ‘No, Julien,’ he snarls, ‘
I’m
the one who’s going to be sick.
You’re
going to be sorry. Now stand up and stop whining. Come on, Isidore, take his other arm.’

It seems a very long way to Father Fulbert’s kitchen. Julien doesn’t have the strength to put one foot in front of the other, so it’s a matter of dragging him, step by step, through the front door. And here to welcome us is the mountainous Mengarde, displaying her toothless gums in sheer astonishment. Her hands are covered in flour.

‘Mengarde, this is the Archdeacon of Carcassonne, and this is his scribe Julien. Julien is feeling sick –’

As if to demonstrate, Julien suddenly erupts. A spray of vomit hits the earthen floor in front of us, and the smell of old bacon fat is overlaid by an even nastier smell. Mengarde jumps backwards.

By the blood of the Lamb of God, this is disgusting.

‘Julien,’ says the Archdeacon, through his teeth, ‘you are without doubt the most obnoxious individual ever to impose on my good nature. I’m finished with you.’

‘What do you want?’ Mengarde’s high, quavering voice. ‘What are you doing?’

‘We’re putting this man to bed.’ (So kindly get out of the way, old woman.) ‘You must take care of him.’

‘I?’ She raises her hands in protest. But the Archdeacon is looking around: at the low, smoky rafters, hung with hams and garlic; at the greasy table and benches; at the hearth and the woodpile and the baby pig, asleep in one corner. ‘Where shall we dump this useless sack of swill?’ he demands. ‘Through there, do you think? What’s through that door?’

That door? ‘That is the priest’s room, Father.’

‘Oh.’ He frowns. ‘And where do your guests usually sleep, Isidore?’

‘They sleep in my bed.’

‘Which is where?’

Which is over there, beside that barrel. He peers as I point, noting the grimy old sheepskin on top of the lumpy straw palliasse. He seems surprised. ‘I see,’ he says. ‘And where do you sleep when your bed is occupied?’

‘On the table, Father.’

‘Hmmm.’

Julien is making ominous noises again. I can feel his shudders, and the sweat soaking through his clothes. The Archdeacon turns to Mengarde.

‘Get a bucket!’ he snaps.

‘But –’

‘
Get a bucket
! Or would you prefer to clean up some more mess?’ Whereupon Mengarde begins to waddle around frantically, wailing and whimpering, because all her buckets are full. She’s fat and slow-witted, and she keeps bumping into things.

She makes me think of a big, stupid cow on the loose in a marketplace.

‘Oh no you don’t,’ the Archdeacon splutters, as Julien gags. ‘Come on Isidore, we’ll put him on the table; I don’t want him soiling your bedclothes. By rights he should be out with the pigs – he doesn’t deserve anything better. Shut up, Julien, I’m not talking to you.’ He leads the way across the floor, and almost throws his scribe onto the tabletop. (For such a small man, he’s remarkably strong.) ‘Incidentally, Julien, if you think I’m going to wait around here, cleaning up your vomit and wiping your loathsome spotty behind, you can think again,’ he says. ‘I have far more important things to do. And I’m also in a hurry. Isidore? I want a word.’

With me? But why? I’m just the parish clerk – I’m as lowly as the chaff on the summer threshing floors. There’s nothing
I
can do for anyone. Nevertheless, he grabs my arm and pushes me through the door, back into the sunshine, away from the sick-room smells of the kitchen. Out here the air is fresher, though not much, because of the dungheap along the side of the house. And of course there’s the pungent fragrance of our delightful neighbours, who are still hovering about, discussing the new arrival and looking for all the world like hens at a trough. They fall silent when we make our appearance.

‘Tell me, Isidore,’ the Archdeacon says, standing there with his gaze on the crowd, ‘can you read, by any chance?’

Can I read? Little man, that’s an incomplete question.

‘Can I read what, Father?’

‘Why,
books
, of course!’ He frowns at me, squinting. ‘Can you read books?’

‘That depends on the language they’re written in.’

His eyes widen: they’re very big, and very dark, as dark as the Third Horse of the Apocalypse. I wonder what he’s thinking? I wonder if he thinks at all? So many priests don’t. Take Father Fulbert, for example; Father Fulbert’s head is full of air, like an empty stomach. He must have stopped thinking years ago.

‘Very well,’ the Archdeacon says, quietly. ‘I’ll rephrase my question. Can you read Latin, Isidore?’

‘Yes, Father.’

‘Can you read any other languages?’

‘Yes, Father. French, German, and the
langue d’oc.
But not Greek.’

‘How old are you?’

‘Fifteen.’

‘You’re very well educated.’

‘Yes, Father.’ I am indeed. I’m very, very well educated. But what does it profit me? As the Preacher says: He that increaseth knowledge, increaseth sorrow.

The Archdeacon makes an impatient noise. ‘Damn, but you’re a difficult person to talk to,’ he mutters. ‘
Why
are you so well educated, Isidore?’

Why? ‘Because I chose to be.’

‘Hmm.’ He’s squinting at me again, as if he can’t quite focus his eyes; his forehead is tense with concentration. Suddenly he pats my elbow. ‘Just sit down here on the doorstep, will you?’ he remarks, and shoots across to where Ernoul is holding the horses. The crowd immediately takes a step backwards, all together, as one man. The Archdeacon fishes around in his saddlebag, and draws out a leather satchel.

‘This,’ he announces, in tones that ring out across the sun-baked square, ‘is my portable writing desk. I designed it myself.’ He returns and places the satchel on my knees: it smells of leather and horse-sweat. There’s a hard, thin wooden board sewn into a leather pocket, and a flap covering several sheets of high-quality parchment, and a piece of blue ribbon holding everything together. And what’s this? A little drawstring bag, containing a vessel of ink, a stick of sealing-wax, and a knife to cut goose-quills. What a wonderful invention! What beautiful objects!

‘I want you to write a letter,’ he says, removing the seal from the ink bottle. ‘A letter to your Bishop. Is he the Bishop of Pamiers?’

‘Yes, Father.’

‘Yes, I thought as much.’ He dips a quill in the ink for me, and points at the smooth, pale surface of the parchment. ‘In Latin, of course. Begin “To blessed Odilo, Apostolic Father of the See of Pamiers, greetings from Pagan Kidrouk, Archdeacon of the See of Carcassonne . . .” ’

Kidrouk! Of course! I remember now. This must be
the
Father Pagan. The man who – yes, I recall, he was from the East. A foreigner. And there was something else, too . . . was he an Infidel? An Infidel converted to the True Faith? Something of the sort. They used to talk about him, back at the cathedral.

No wonder his complexion is so dark.

‘Come on, Isidore, I haven’t got all day.’ He pokes me in the ribs. ‘ “To blessed Odilo, Apostolic Father of the See of Pamiers, greetings from Pagan Kidrouk . . .” ’

Beato Odilo
,
patri apostolico . . .
How good this pen feels. How sweetly it glides across the page, like a duck across the surface of a pond. How much I’ve missed this glorious sensation!

‘ “. . . In accordance with the command of my beloved Father, Bernard Raymond de Roquefort, Bishop of Carcassonne, and to fulfil his most ready devotion and his deepest wish in Christ, I have been pursuing the good of the Faith in your territories, as I informed your paternity when I last spoke to you.’’ ’

Secundum mandatum patris mei . . .
Slow down, slow down!

‘New paragraph. “By divine grace I am well in myself, but my scribe Julien has been struck down by a grievous illness, just a few miles out of Pamiers. Beloved Father, without a scribe I am as a barren fig tree, for my eyes, which discern the world clearly at a distance, are crippled when presented with the forms of things close to my face.’’ ’ The Archdeacon pauses: there isn’t a sound to be heard except the scratching of my nib against the creamy parchment. ‘ “Therefore,’’ ’ he continues, ‘ “because my scribe lies ill in the village of Merioc, I have been obliged to secure the services of your loving son, Isidore . . .” Do you have another name, Isidore?’

‘Yes, Father.’

‘What is it?’

‘Orbus.’

‘Orbus?’ He sounds surprised. ‘Isidore the Orphan?’

‘Yes.’

‘I see. That’s interesting. Well – “. . . where was I? Ah yes. the services of your loving son, Isidore Orbus, whom you sent there as parish clerk, through God’s inspiration. My own scribe, Julien, will remain in his place until you have chosen a substitute, and my venerable master, the Bishop Bernard, will make worthy satisfaction to you for your pains. May the angel of good counsel be with you, so that you understand what is right and act in accordance with it. Farewell.” Have you got all that?’

Angelus consilii boni . . . vale . . .
‘Yes, Father.’

‘Read it through to me, then.’

‘
Beato Odilo
,
patri apostolico . . .
’ (I can’t believe this. Is it really happening? O Lord, have you answered my prayer?) ‘. . .
petebam salutem Fidei . . .
’ (But it won’t be easy, serving this little Archdeacon. Not only is he a profane, bossy, discourteous man – he’s a former Infidel, too! How can I bow my neck to his yoke? It will be very difficult.)‘. . .
iuxta faciemmeam . . .
’(However, I’m in no position to pick and choose. As the old saying warns us:
Selde cumet se betere –
rarely does a better one come next.) ‘. . .
servitia filii dilecti . . .
’ (After all, if I don’t take advantage of this God-given opportunity, I may never have another chance to get out of here.) ‘. . .
secundum quod sit iustum. Vale.
’