church and to the glory of Christ.’ He had made it sound as if the Pope had commanded the creation of the order, but it was all Bessieres’s idea. ‘A man who serves in the church’s order,’ he went on, ‘would never know the torments of hell, nor the agonies of purgatory. A man who serves our new order would be welcomed into heaven and sung into the company of saints by choirs of shining angels! I want you, Sir Robert, to serve in the Order of the Fisherman.’
Robbie was silent. He watched the cardinal. Men were cheering a performer who was juggling half a dozen flaming brands while balancing on stilts, but Robbie did not notice. He was thinking that his soul would be freed of its perplexities if he were to be a knight in the service of the Pope.
‘I want the greatest knights of Christendom to fight for the glory of our Saviour,’ the cardinal went on, ‘and each man, while he fights, will receive a small subvention from the church, enough to feed himself and to keep his attendants and horses.’ The cardinal placed three gold coins on the table. He knew Robbie’s propensity to gamble, and to lose. ‘All your sins will be forgiven,’ he said, ‘if you become a Knight of the Fisherman and wear this sash.’
He took from a pouch a scapular made of the finest white silk, edged and fringed with cloth of gold, and embroidered with scarlet keys. The Pope received gifts daily that were heaped in the sacristy at Avignon, and Bessieres, before he left that town, had hunted through the bundles and discovered a trove of scapulars woven by nuns in Burgundy and sent to the Pope, each of them lovingly embroidered with the keys of Saint Peter. ‘The man who wears this sash in battle,’ the cardinal continued, ‘will have God at
his side, the angels will draw their flaming swords to protect
him, and the saints will beseech our blessed Saviour to give him victory. A man who wears this sash cannot lose a fight, but neither can a man who wears this sash cleave to an oath made to a godless heretic.’
Robbie stared hungrily at the gorgeous scapular, imagining it around his waist as he rode to battle. ‘The Pope has enemies?’ he asked, wondering whom he would need to fight.
‘The church has enemies,’ Bessieres said harshly, ‘because the devil never ceases his fight. And the Order of the Fisherman,’ he went on, ‘has a task already, a noble task, perhaps none nobler in all Christendom.’
‘What task?’ Robbie asked, his voice low.
For answer the cardinal beckoned a priest to his side. To Robbie the newly invited priest, who had startling green eyes, appeared to be the cardinal’s opposite in almost every way. Bessieres had charm, but the priest looked stern and unbending; the Cardinal was plump, the priest was lean as a blade; the cardinal was swathed in red silk trimmed with ermine, while the lesser cleric was in black, though Robbie caught a glimpse of scarlet lining in one of the hanging sleeves. ‘This is Father Marchant,’ the cardinal said, ‘and he will be the chaplain to our order.’
‘By God’s grace,’ Marchant said. His strange green eyes rested on Robbie and his mouth twitched as if he disapproved of what he saw.
‘Tell my young Scottish friend, father, the holy task of the Order of the Fisherman.’
Father Marchant touched the crucifix hanging about his neck. ‘Saint Peter,’ he said, ‘was a fisherman, but he was so much more. He was the first Pope, and God gave him the keys of heaven and earth. Yet he also possessed a sword, Sir Robert. Perhaps you remember the story?’
‘Not really,’ Robbie said.
‘When the evil men came to arrest our Lord in the Garden of Gethsemane it was Saint Peter who drew a sword to protect him. Think of that!’ Marchant’s voice was suddenly passionate. ‘The blessed Saint Peter drew a sword to protect our Redeemer, our precious Christ, our Son of God! The sword of Saint Peter is God’s weapon to protect his church, and we must find it! The church is imperilled, and we need God’s weapon. It is God’s will!’
‘Indeed it is,’ the cardinal said, ‘and if we find the sword, Sir Robert, then the worthiest of the knights in the Order of the Fisherman will be permitted to guard the sword, and to wear it, and to use it in battle, so that God himself will be on his side in every fight. That man will be the greatest knight in all Christendom. So,’ he pushed the coins and the scapular a little closer to Robbie, ‘as it says in the scripture, Sir Robert,
And really there was no choice. Robbie reached for the sash and felt tears in his eyes. He had found his cause and he would fight for God.
‘Bless you, my son,’ the cardinal said. ‘Now go and pray. Thank God that you have chosen rightly.’
He watched Robbie walk away. ‘So,’ he said to Father Marchant, ‘that’s the first of your knights. Tomorrow you will endeavour to find Roland de Verrec. But for the moment,’ he pointed to Sculley, ‘fetch me that animal.’
And so the Order of the Fisherman was born.
Brother Michael was miserable. ‘I don’t want to be a hospitaller,’ he told Thomas. ‘I get dizzy when I see blood. It makes me feel sick.’
‘You have a calling,’ Thomas said.
‘To be an archer?’ Brother Michael suggested.
Thomas laughed. ‘Tell me that in ten years, brother. It takes that long to learn the bow.’
It was midday and they were resting the horses. Thomas had taken twenty men, all men-at-arms, their job merely to provide protection from the
‘Because you win,’ Karyl had answered simply. The German was a thin, quick fighter, whose right cheek was scarred by two parallel furrows. ‘The claws of a fighting bear,’ he had explained. ‘I was trying to save a dog. I liked the dog, but the bear didn’t.’
‘Did the dog die?’ Genevieve had asked.
‘It did,’ Karyl said, ‘but so did the bear.’
Genevieve was with Thomas. She would not leave Thomas’s side, fearing that if she was alone the church would find her again and try to burn her, and so she had insisted on accompanying him. Besides, she had told him, there was no danger. Thomas only planned to spend a day or two in Montpellier in search of a scholar who could explain a monk kneeling amidst snow, then they would all hurry back to Castillon d’Arbizon where the rest of his men waited.
‘If I can’t be an archer,’ Brother Michael said, ‘then let me be your physician.’
‘You haven’t finished your training, brother, that’s why we’re going to Montpellier. So you can be educated.’
‘I don’t want to be educated,’ Brother Michael grumbled. ‘I’ve had enough education.’
Thomas laughed. He liked the young monk and knew well enough that Michael was desperate to escape the cage of his calling, a despair Thomas knew himself. Thomas was the illegitimate son of a priest, and he had obediently gone to Oxford to learn theology so that he could become a priest himself, but he had already found another love, the yew bow. The great yew bow. And no books, no sacrament, no lecture on the indivisible substance of the triple-natured God could compete with the bow, and so Thomas had become a soldier. Brother Michael, he thought, was following the same course, though in Michael’s case it was the Countess Bertille who was the lodestar. She was still at Castillon d’Arbizon where she accepted Brother Michael’s worship as her due and was kind to him in return, but seemed oblivious to his yearning. She treated him like an indulged puppy and that made the young monk yearn even more.
Galdric, Thomas’s servant, and more than able to look after himself in a fight, brought Thomas’s horse back from the stream. ‘Those folk stopped,’ he said.
‘Close?’
‘A long way back. But I think they’re following us.’
Thomas climbed the bank from the stream to the road. A mile away, perhaps more, a small band of men were watering horses. ‘It’s a busy road,’ Thomas said. The men, he thought they were all men, had been behind
