Bernard Cornwell - 1356 (Special Edition)

‘Leave?’

‘Jesus! To join the lord, of course!’

He meant the Lord of Douglas, Robbie’s uncle. ‘Is that what you want?’ Robbie asked, his voice dull.

‘What else? We came here to do a bloody job, not piss about with bloody fishermen.’

‘I’ll talk to Thomas,’ Robbie said, ‘and I’m sure he’ll give you a horse. Money too.’

‘The lord will want you back.’

‘I took an oath,’ Robbie said, then remembered that Thomas had just freed him of all his commitments. He could choose his own fate now. ‘I’m staying, Sculley,’ he said.

‘Staying?’

‘You can go to my uncle, but I’m staying here.’

Sculley frowned. ‘If you stay with this fellow,’ he gestured towards the other part of the house where he assumed Thomas had gone, ‘then the next time I see you I’ll have to kill you.’

‘Yes, you will.’

Sculley gobbed towards the cow. ‘I’ll make it quick. No hard feelings. You’ll talk to the man about a horse?’

‘I will, and I’ll ask him to give you coins for the journey.’

Sculley nodded. ‘That sounds fair,’ he said, ‘you stay, I go, and then I’ll kill you.’

‘Yes,’ Robbie said.

He was free.

Father Levonne, to his own astonishment, discovered a pair of boots in a chest that stood in a small upstairs room of the farm. ‘The farmer fled,’ he said, watching as Roland tried the boots on, ‘but we shall leave him money. Do they fit?’

‘They do,’ Roland said, ‘but we can’t steal them.’

‘We’ll leave more money than they’re worth,’ Father Levonne said. ‘Trust me, he’s a French farmer, he’d rather have gold than shoes.’

‘I have no money,’ Roland said, ‘or rather the money I have is in the castle.’

‘Thomas will pay,’ Father Levonne said.

‘He will?’

‘Of course. He always pays.’

‘Always?’ Roland sounded surprised.

‘ Le Bâtard ,’ Father Levonne explained patiently, ‘lives on the edge of English Gascony. To eat he needs grain and cheese and meat and fish, he needs wine and hay, and if he steals those things then the country folk won’t like him. They’ll betray him to Berat or Labrouillade, or to any of the other lords who’d like to hang Thomas’s skull in their hall, so Thomas makes sure they appreciate him. He pays. Most lords don’t pay, so who do you think is more popular?’

‘But …’ Roland began, then faltered.

‘But?’

‘ Le Bâtard ,’ Roland said in puzzlement, ‘the Hellequin?’

‘Ah, you think they’re the devil’s creatures?’ Father Levonne laughed. ‘Thomas is a Christian, and even, I dare say, a good one. He’s not sure of that, but he does try.’

‘But he was excommunicated,’ Roland pointed out.

‘For doing what you did, saving Genevieve’s life. Maybe you’ll be excommunicated next?’ Father Levonne saw the horror on Roland’s face and tried to alleviate it. ‘There are two churches, sire,’ he said, ‘and I doubt God takes any notice of an excommunication from one of them.’

‘Two? There’s only one church,’ Roland said. He gazed at the priest as though Father Levonne was a heretic himself. ‘ Credo unam, sanctam, catholicam et apostolicam Ecclesiam ,’ he said sternly.

‘Another soldier who speaks Latin! You and Thomas! And I too believe in one holy, catholic and apostolic church, my son, but that church is Janus-faced. One church, two faces. You were serving Father Marchant?’

‘Yes,’ Roland said in some embarrassment.

‘And whom does he serve? Cardinal Bessières. Cardinal Louis Bessières, Archbishop of Livorno and Papal Legate to the court of France. What do you know of Bessières?’

‘He’s a cardinal,’ Roland said, but plainly knew no more.

‘His father was a tallow merchant in the Limousin,’ Father Levonne said, ‘and young Louis was a clever boy and his father had enough cash to see that he was educated, but what chance does a tallow merchant’s son have in this world? He can’t become a lord, he wasn’t born, as you were, to privilege and rank, but there is always the church. A man can rise far in the holy, catholic and apostolic church. It matters not if he was born in a gutter, so long as he has a good brain, and a tallow merchant’s son can become a prince of the church, and so the church draws in all those clever boys, and some of them, like Louis Bessières, are also ambitious, cruel, greedy and ruthless. So

one face of the church, sire, is our present Pope. A good man, a little dull, a little too attached to canon law, but a man who tries to do Christ’s will in this wicked world. And the second face is Louis Bessières, an evil man, who wants, above everything, to be Pope.’

‘Which is why he seeks la Malice ,’ Roland said quietly.

‘Of course.’

‘And I told Father Marchant where to find it!’ Roland went on.

‘You did?’

‘Or perhaps where he can find it. I don’t know. It might not be there.’

‘I think you must talk to Thomas,’ Father Levonne said gently.

‘You can tell him,’ Roland said.

‘Me? Why me?’

Roland shrugged. ‘I must ride on, father.’

‘To where?’

‘A arrière-ban has been pronounced. I must obey.’

Father Levonne frowned. ‘You’ll join the army of the King of France?’

‘Of course.’

‘And how many enemies will you have there? Labrouillade? Marchant? The cardinal?’

‘I can explain to Father Marchant,’ Roland said hesitantly.

‘You think he’s amenable to reason?’

‘I took an oath,’ Roland said.

‘Then take it back!’

Roland shook his head. ‘I can’t do that.’ He saw the priest was about to interrupt so hurried on, ‘I know things are not black and white, father, and perhaps Bessières is evil, and I know Labrouillade is a vile creature, but is his wife any better? She is an adulteress! A fornicator!’

‘Half Christendom is guilty of that sin, and most of the other half wish they were too.’

‘If I stay here,’ Roland said, ‘then I condone her sin.’

‘Good God,’ Father Levonne said in astonishment.

‘Is it so bad to wish for purity?’ Roland asked, almost pleadingly.

‘No, my son, but you’re not making sense. You accept that you made oaths to evil men, but now you won’t break them. How pure is that?’

‘Then maybe I break the oaths,’ Roland allowed, ‘if my conscience tells me to, but why break an oath to support a man who fights against my country and who shelters an adulteress?’

‘I thought you were a Gascon. The English rule Gascony, and no one disputes their right.’

‘Some Gascons do,’ Roland said, ‘and if I fight I will fight for what I think is right.’

Father Levonne shrugged. ‘You can do no more than that,’ he agreed, ‘but at the very least you can say farewell to Thomas.’ He glanced out of the casement and saw that dawn was greying the world’s edge. ‘Come, he’ll want to thank you.’

He led Roland downstairs into the big kitchen. Genevieve was there, a bandage across her left eye, and Hugh was sleeping in the corner while Thomas sat beside his wife with an arm about her shoulder. ‘Father,’ he greeted Levonne.

‘The Sire Roland wishes to leave,’ Father Levonne said. ‘I tried to persuade him to stay, but he insists he will go to King Jean.’ He turned and gestured for Roland to say whatever he wished, but Roland said nothing. He was staring, entranced, at the third person sitting at the table. He seemed incapable of speech or, indeed, of motion. He just stared, and through his head were running all the lines of poetry that the troubadours had sung in his mother’s castle, lines about lips that looked like crushed rose petals, about cheeks as white as doves’ wings, about eyes that could light the darkest sky, and about hair that was the colour of ravens’ wings. He tried to speak again, but nothing came, and she was gazing back at him with eyes just as wide.