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
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.
“I ran to the fields and wandered for six years before I came across my master. He found me and took me in and looked after me until I was ready to look after him.”
Olivier looked anguished, made the childish gurgles and chortlings that were the nearest he could now get to speech to interrupt her, but she went on doggedly nonetheless. “That abbot was a great man, and became greater still. A few years later he began to be known as Pope Clement the Sixth.
“When you came for me that night, to take me to the palace, I knew the temptation. I took a potion my master had, which he had always told me never to touch as it was a powerful medicine, dangerous if not taken with care. I put it in my bag, and when I got the chance, I poured it into the well. The moment I’d done it, there was a great shout, and someone grabbed me.”
She paused and smiled. “I tried to explain, you know. I said it was all my doing and tried to tell them why. But they weren’t interested. They thought I would never have done such a thing without my master’s instruction. The stupid thing is that it wouldn’t have worked anyway. Gersonides has told me it was quite harmless when diluted to such an extent. I wanted to confess, but my master said there was no point. No one would believe me, because they wanted to believe Jews were poisoning wells.”
She went down on her knees and kissed his cheek. “You are a good man, Olivier, far better than I am. I hated, and risked the life of my master, and subjected you to this for my hatred. And you now must hate me, too, and I know you will never want to see me again.”
He leaned forward and took her in his arms; he wished more than anything to speak to her and reassure her; his heart was full of wonderful poems; all sorts of words and phrases sparkled in his head, none of which anyone but he would ever hear. But he held her nonetheless, rocking her gently backward and forward, doing his best to
