Glenn Cooper - Book of Souls

“Is it magic, my lord?”

He threw the pillow on top of it again and grabbed her. “If little Molly is so interested in magic, perhaps she would like to see my wand.”

Edgar was too involved with his amorous activities to hear his name repeatedly being called for supper. At a perfectly wrong moment, his father flung open the door to find his son’s pink bottom nestled in a jumble of pulled-up chemises, his face buried in a generous bosom.

“What the Devil!” the baron shouted. “Stop that at once!”

He stood there, slack-jawed, as the young lovers rushed to pull themselves together.

“Father…”

“Do not speak! Only I will speak. You, girl, will leave this house.”

She began to cry. “Please, your lordship, I have no place to go.”

“That is not my concern. If you are still at Cantwell Hall in one hour, I will have you flogged. Now get out!”

She ran from the room, her clothes askew.

“As for you,” the baron said to his cowering son, “I will see you at the supper table, where you will be informed of your fate.”

The long trestle table in the Great Hall was set up for the evening feast, and the extended Cantwell clan was noisily tucking into the first courses of supper. The roaring fire and the press of bodies had taken the chill off the winter night. Thomas Cantwell sat at the center, with his wife beside him. He was troubled by his son’s escapade but his appetite raged nonetheless, stoked by the exertions of hunting. He had greedily spooned down his meaty capon brewet and was starting in on his ham and leeks porray. Roasted boar, his favorite, was on the way, so room would have to be left.

All chatter ceased when Edgar came in, his eyes fixed on the floorboards rather than the faces of his family or the servants. He supposed everyone knew; he would have to bear it. His sniggering young cousins, and for that matter his uncles, were surely as guilty as he in these matters, but tonight he was the one ignominiously caught out.

He took his seat by his father and started in on an earthenware jug of wine. “You missed the blessing of the meal, Edgar,” his mother said quietly.

His brother William, who was seated at his mother’s side, grinned and wickedly whispered, “He had his own blessing, methinks.”

“Quiet!” the baron raged. “We will not speak of this at my table.”

As the feast progressed, the conversation was meager and subdued. One of the men had recently been to Court and asked the others what they thought of the king’s petition to the Pope that his marriage to Queen Catherine be annulled. The Cantwells much admired the piety of the queen and had no use for the whore Boleyn, but even among family, this kind of banter was dangerous. Henry’s influence bored into every parish. There would be an accommodation, Thomas assured his kin. The prospect of a schism with the Pope over this matter was unthinkable.

The carved and jointed boar was presented on a giant wooden platter, and it was hungrily devoured with slabs of dark bread. At the conclusion of the meal, frumenty custard was served, along with dried figs, nuts, and spiced wine. Finally, the baron wiped his hands and mouth on the cloth overhanging the dining table, cleared his throat, and once he was sure he had the full attention of his son, began his planned proclamation. “As my brothers and good wife know, I have been unsatisfied with your education, Edgar.” The raspy sternness of his voice caused the members of the dining party to lower their eyes.

“Have you, Father?”

“I had hoped for greater results. Your uncle, Walter, benefited greatly from his education at Oxford and he is now, as you know, an esteemed lawyer in that city. However, the standards at Merton College have surely become lax.”

Edgar’s lower lip began to twitch. “How so, Father?”

“Well, look at you!” the baron bellowed. “What more evidence do I require! You are more schooled in wine, wenches, and song than Greek, Latin, and the Bible! You will not be returning to Oxford, Edgar. Your education will be elsewhere.”

Edgar thought of his friends and his comfortable rooms at Merton. There was a cozy tavern near the college that would be the poorer. “And where is that, Father?”

“You will be going to the College of Montaigu at the University of Paris.”

Edgar looked up in fright and sought out the dour face of his cousin Archibald. This joyless monster had spent six years there and had long regaled Edgar with stories of its austerity and strictness.

His father rose from his seat and as he stalked out of the Great Hall he declared, “This college will tame you, by God, and it will make of you a proper God-fearing Cantwell! You are bound for Paris, boy! That wretched city will be your home.”

Archibald smirked and piled onto the miserable young man. “There are only three things you need to know about Montaigu, cuz: bad food, hard beds, and harsh blows. I advise you to finish your wine, for what little you will get there is mostly water.”

Edgar pushed himself to his feet. He would not let his damnable relations see him cry.

“A toast to my departing brother,” William said, his head happily swimming in supper wine. “May the good ladies of Paris respect and honor his newly found purity and piety.”

1527

Paris

Edgar Cantwell awoke shortly before four in the morning in a miserable state. It was just as well that the incessantly clanging college bells were rousing him from his fitful sleep. He had never been so cold in all his life. His window had ice on the inside, and he could see his own breath when he emerged from under his thin coverlet to light a candle. He had retired wearing all his clothes, even his cloak and his soft leather shoes, but he was still frigid as an icicle. In self-pity, he looked around his tiny room, as basic as a monk’s cell, and wondered what his friends at Merton would think if they could see his wretched circumstances.

Montaigu was living up to its reputation as hell on earth. Better if he were in prison, he thought. At least then he would not have to read Aristotle in Latin and suffer the whip if he failed to memorize a passage.

It was a bleak existence, and he was only weeks into it. The term would run until July, which seemed a lifetime away.

The mission of Montaigu College was to prepare young men to become priests or ordained lawyers. Under the absolute rule of Principal Tempete, a conservative Parisian theologian of the most venomous ilk, Montaigu strictly controlled its pupils’ moral lives. They were forced to search their consciences in regular public confessions of their sins and to denounce the behavior of fellow students. To keep them in the proper repentant state of mind, Tempete kept them in a perpetual fast, with coarse food and small portions, and in the winter made them suffer the cold without succor. Then there were the merciless beatings at the hands of ruthless tutors and, at his pleasure, Tempete himself.

Edgar had to be up at four o’clock to attend the morning office in the chapel before stumbling off to his first lecture in a near-dark classroom. The lectures were in French, which Edgar had learned at Oxford, but now, painfully, he was forced to use it as his primary language. Mass was at six o’clock, followed by communal breakfast, its brevity assured by the fact that all they were served was a slice of bread with a dot of butter. Then came the grande classe on the topic of the day-philosophy, arithmetic, the scriptures, done in a format that Edgar dreaded.

The quaestio was a one-man disputation a member of his class had to endure each day. Tutors with whipping rods ready posed questions based on a passage of reading. The student would answer, eliciting in turn, another question et cetera, back and forth, back and forth, until the underlying meaning of the text was thoroughly explored. For the keen student, the process meant a continually stimulating creative involvement. For Edgar, it meant blistering beatings on the shoulders and back, insults and belittlement.