Bernard Cornwell - 1356 (Special Edition)

The men guarding the gates began to swing them shut. ‘You’ll have to wait till morning!’ they called to the carters.

‘Wait,’ another guard called. He had seen eight riders crossing the cleared ground, their horses’ hooves kicking up puffs of ash and dust as they hurried towards the city. ‘Some bloody lord or other,’ the guard grumbled. One of the riders unfurled a banner to show that they came on noble business. The flag displayed a green horse on a white background, though the leading rider had a black jupon that carried the badge of a white rose. All eight horsemen wore mail and carried weapons. ‘Make way for them!’ the guard shouted at the carters.

‘If you’re going to let them in,’ a carter who had a load of firewood pleaded, ‘then why not us?’

‘Because you’re scum and they’re not,’ the guard said, then bowed to the riders, who clattered through the arch. ‘I have business here,’ the leader of the riders explained to the guards, who demanded no further explanation, but just slammed the big gates closed and dropped the bar into its brackets. ‘My thanks,’ the leader of the riders said, and rode on into the city.

Roland de Verrec had come to Montpellier.

Five

‘The proposition,’ Doctor Lucius bellowed loud enough for his words to be heard by the fish in the Mediterranean six miles to the south of Montpellier, ‘is that a child who dies unbaptised is thereby condemned to the endless torments of hell, to the eternal fires of perdition, and to separation from God for ever with all the pain, agony, remorse, regret and tribulation that this doom entails. My question: is this proposition true?’

No one answered.

Doctor Lucius, who wore an ink-stained white gown of the Dominican order, glared at his cowed students. Thomas had been told that the Dominican was the cleverest man in all Montpellier’s university and so had come with Brother Michael to the doctor’s lecture hall, which, to Thomas’s eyes, appeared to be a hastily constructed chamber made by roofing over a small cloister of the Monastery of Saint Simeon. The good weather had vanished overnight to be replaced by low angry clouds from which the rain fell to drip through the ill-laid tiles of the lecture hall’s roof. Doctor Lucius was sitting on a platform, behind a dais, while facing him were three rows of benches on which a score of dull-faced students slumped in robes of black or dark blue.

Doctor Lucius stroked his beard. It was a massive beard, falling to the frayed rope belted about his waist. ‘Are we dull-witted?’ he demanded of his students. ‘Are we asleep? Did we drink too much of the grape last night? Some of you, God help His holy church, will become priests. You will have a flock to care for, and among that flock will be women whose infants will die before they receive the sacrament of baptism. The mother, tearful and eager for your comfort, will ask whether her infant has been received into the company of the saints, and what will your answer be?’ Doctor Lucius waited for a response, but none came. ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ the doctor snarled, ‘one of you must have an answer.’

‘Yes,’ a young man with a scruffy black student’s cap from which long black hair fell half over his face answered.

‘Ah! Master Keane is awake!’ Doctor Lucius cried. ‘He has not travelled all this way from Ireland to no purpose, God be thanked. Why, Master Keane, will you tell the grieving mother that her dead infant is in paradise?’

‘Because if I tell her it’s in hell, doctor, she’ll go on bawling and crying and there’s few things worse than a wailing woman. Best just to get rid of her by telling the poor creature what she wishes to hear.’

Doctor Lucius’s mouth twitched, perhaps in amusement. ‘So you do not care, Master Keane, about the truth of the proposition, only that you will be spared the sound of a woman weeping? You would not think it a priest’s duty to comfort the woman?’

‘By telling the poor thing that her wee babe has gone to hell? Jesus, no! And if she was comely I’d certainly be wanting to offer her comfort.’

‘Your charity knows no bounds,’ Doctor Lucius said sourly, ‘but let us return to the proposition. Is it, or is it not, true? Anyone?’

A pale young man whose cap and gown were spotless cleared his throat, and most of the other students groaned. The pale boy, skinny as a starved rat, was plainly the assiduous student whose achievements belittled the efforts of the rest of the class. ‘Saint Augustine,’ he said, ‘teaches us that God will not remit the sins of any but the baptised.’

‘ Ergo ?’ Doctor Lucius asked.

‘Therefore,’ the young man said in a precise voice, ‘the child is condemned to hell because it was born containing sin.’

‘So we have our answer?’ Doctor Lucius enquired. ‘Upon the authority of Master de Beaufort,’ the pale boy smiled and tried to look modest, ‘and of the blessed Saint Augustine. Do we all agree? Can we now move on to discuss the cardinal virtues?’

‘How can a baby go to hell?’ Master Keane asked, disgusted. ‘What has it done to deserve that?’

‘It was born of a woman,’ the student called de Beaufort answered sternly, ‘and lacking the sacrament of baptism the child is doomed to suffer for the guilt of the sin it thereby contains.’

‘Master de Beaufort cuts to the quick of the argument, does he not?’ Doctor Lucius suggested to the Irish student.

‘God is not commanded by the sacraments,’ Thomas interjected, speaking, like everyone else, in Latin.

There was silence as everyone turned to look at the stranger who leaned, dark and hard-faced, against a pillar at the cloister’s edge. ‘And who have we here?’ Doctor Lucius asked. ‘I trust you have paid to attend my teaching?’

‘I’m here to say that Master de Beaufort is full of shit,’ Thomas said, ‘and does not understand or has not read the teachings of Aquinas, who assures us God is not bound by the sacraments. God, not Master de Beaufort, will decide the baby’s fate, and Saint Paul tells us in his first letter to the Corinthians that a child born to a couple of whom one parent is a pagan is holy to God. And Saint Augustine, in The City of God , declared that the parents of the dead child could find a way to redeem its soul.’

‘Could, not would,’ yapped de Beaufort.

‘You are a priest?’ Doctor Lucius ignored de Beaufort and asked the question of Thomas, who was swathed in a black cloak.

‘I’m a soldier,’ Thomas said. He let the cloak fall slightly open to reveal his mail.

‘And you?’ Doctor Lucius demanded of Brother Michael, who had backed into one of the old cloister arches in an effort to dissociate himself from Thomas. The young monk was unhappy being anywhere near the university and seemed to be sulking. ‘Are you with him?’ Doctor Lucius asked Brother Michael, gesturing at Thomas.

Brother Michael looked flustered. ‘I’m looking for the School of Medicine,’ he stammered.

‘The bone-setters and piss-sniffers give their lectures in Saint Stephen’s.’ Master de Beaufort sniggered as the doctor looked back to Thomas. ‘A soldier who speaks Latin!’ the Dominican said in mock admiration, ‘God be praised, but it seems the age of miracles has returned. Shouldn’t you be killing someone?’

‘I’ll get around to that,’ Thomas said, ‘after I’ve asked you a question.’

‘And once you have paid for my answer,’ Doctor Lucius retorted, ‘but for the moment,’ he now gestured for the attention of his students, ‘though I have no doubt our visitor,’ he waved an inky hand towards Thomas, ‘wins his arguments on the field of battle by brute force, he is entirely wrong in this matter. An unbaptised baby is doomed to the endless torments of hell, and Master de Beaufort will now demonstrate why. Stand, Master de Beaufort, and enlighten us.’