Iain Pears - The Dream of Scipio

“I returned to public life on your advice, madam,” he said stiffly.

“Yes; I advised it. I said if learning must die it should do so with a friend by its bedside. Not an assassin.”

She looked up at him, with tears in her eyes. “You were my last pupil, Manlius. And you have made what you have done into my legacy, as well as your own. You have taken what I had and corrupted it. Used what I taught you to kill and justify your killing. For that I will never forgive you. Please leave me alone now.”

She turned back to face the valley and closed her eyes in contemplation. Manlius waited for a moment, hoping she would begin talking to him once more, then turned and walked away. He never spoke to her again.

JULIEN HAD ONLY glimpses of what Olivier did in the last few hours before he was attacked. Olivier himself scarcely understood what he was doing; he did not proceed rationally, but rather went by instinct, almost in a dream. In many ways, he was behaving purely selfishly, in contrast to the idealism that motivated both Ceccani and Cardinal de Deaux in their different ways.

He left the palace and walked through the streets of Avignon until he saw a servant of the Comte de Fréjus, someone he had seen before. He walked up to him. “Say, my friend,” he said. “Would you do me a favor?”

The man turned and nodded in vague recognition.

“Would you run straight to your master and say you saw me? Say I am going to the house of the Italian painter Pisano. Tell him the news: that I said I know who murdered his wife, saw the culprit with my own eyes, and that I will inform the magistrates this afternoon. Make sure he understands. I know who murdered his wife.”

The man frowned in puzzlement.

“Do not ask me questions,” Olivier said urgently. “Just discharge this service, and I will be in your debt forever.”

And he turned and walked away. He went back to Pisano’s lodgings. He waited for four hours, during which time he wrote his last poems, the final four that came down to Julien, including the most puzzling of them all, the one that begins “Our lonely souls swim to the light . . .” a verse that only Julien ever properly understood, its strange imagery, and tone oscillating between the regretful and the joyous being too eccentric to be readily appreciated.

And then they came, as he knew they would. Olivier folded his papers and pushed them under the door of Pisano’s neighbor, with a note that he should take them to the pope. Then he knelt down to pray as he heard the footsteps coming softly up the stairs. He looked up and saw the Comte de Fréjus himself with three other men standing in the doorway.

“I have been expecting you,” he said quietly as they came in.

THE REST OF the story took place in public, although what it meant was swiftly obscured. Only Clement, perhaps, held all the strands. When de Fréjus fled, leaving Olivier bleeding on the floor all but dead, his hands smashed beyond use, his tongue cut off so that he could never tell his secret to anyone, the news traveled fast. The count was seen entering the building, seen leaving it two hours later covered in blood; the screams as Olivier was tortured were heard for hundreds of yards around. No one dared intervene. It was then that the story began to circulate that the assault was revenge for Olivier’s murder of Isabelle de Fréjus; the tale protected the count’s reputation, for no one wanted the truth made public, but it did not fool Clement. A horse-man left the papal palace within the hour, heading for the Countess of Provence’s court; the comte’s seneschal was removed from Aigues-Mortes and the command taken over by her own cousin; extra soldiers were sent in. The English force materialized off the coast, waited three days, then sailed back to Bordeaux.

As a power, Ceccani was finished, his desire for the papacy to return to Rome dead. He even returned to his bishoprics, visiting each in turn and winning a reputation as a good shepherd of his flock, in contrast to the absentees of Avignon, who took their dues but gave precious little in exchange.

And three days after the attack, Olivier had his reward as he lay in a quiet room in the papal palace, attended by the pope’s own physician. For Clement was a thorough man; he not only blocked Ceccani’s plan for Aigues-Mortes, he moved to demolish the power base his cardinal had built himself as well. The great bull Cum Natura Humana , a thunderous declamation that echoed across the whole world, was issued. The Jews were innocent of any charges laid against them in the matter of the plague. They were the fathers of nations, as was now the pope himself. To injure them was to injure the pope, and all Christians as well. Clement took them under his personal protection. Anyone who harmed them in any way would be excommunicated and would have to answer to the pope himself. They were not to be attacked, nor to be forcibly converted, for obedience without faith was pointless. They were to be left alone.

And those people who attacked them, the men like Peter the flagellant and all his followers, were excommunicated, to be hunted down. And all those who helped them were to be excommunicated as well. They were to be chased from the society of men, spurned and shunned, thrown out of any town they approached, or arrested and kept imprisoned until they repented. Rather than using them to persecute the Jews, he turned the full force of papal power and authority on the persecutors. The results were not swift, but they were effective; the assaults on Jews spluttered out, bit by bit, the flagellants and those who came to the surface under the cloak of their piety were crushed.

It was—and is—an extraordinary document, with a few antecedents but no parallels. The sound it made, true, was drowned out by other more raucous voices; the tumult first stirred in Provence by Manlius proved more attractive and more tempting. And yet the little flicker it represented stayed alight for long enough, embodying something of the soul of Olivier de Noyen, and communicating itself down through the centuries until it whispered into the ear of Julien Barneuve as he trudged the last few kilometers to his house.

OLIVIER LIVED OUT the remaining part of his life in the monastery of Saint Jean outside Vaison, whose abbot was appointed under the guidance of Cardinal de Deaux. He arrived one night, in a litter escorted by the pope’s own troops, and no one in that place ever knew his story. All they knew was that he was under the protection of their cardinal, and of the pope himself. He had rendered great service to the church, it was whispered, although what this was was unclear.

He did little in that period; could not talk and could not write. Nor did he attend services unless he had to. Rather, he sat in the sun most of the time, read a great deal—his friends sent him manuscripts to read as they were discovered—and walked. His favorite place was the chapel on the hill about a day’s march away, where his friend had begun painting the life of Saint Sophia. He slept there often, and spent much time in prayer to the saint; it gave him great comfort.

And Rebecca came to him there. Gersonides and she returned to their house when peace came back, and they felt safe. The ordeal had weakened the old man, though; she knew it would not be long before he died.

Olivier tried, and eventually managed, to communicate to her that she should marry, if possible. Or she would be utterly defenseless in the world. But it was not what she wanted.

One day as they were sitting together, looking out over the hills, she stood up suddenly and turned to him. “You were wrong in what you did, you know,” she said. “To protect me, I mean. I did not deserve it. You suffered for nothing.”

He reached out and tried to touch her, to get her to be quiet, but she pulled away from him and continued, the words coming out in a rush now she had summoned the courage to speak at all. “I was born in a small village near Nîmes, and someone betrayed us. There was a monastery nearby and the case was taken to the abbot. And at the end of it, he gave orders that everyone accused of heresy should be executed. They told me it was merciful, that otherwise the monks would come and do as they had before and kill everyone in the region. That this was a kindness on his part to save many others. But still my parents were killed by this act of kindness.