them for two days now, but they were making no attempt to catch up.
‘They’re the Count of Armagnac’s troops,’ Karyl said confidently.
‘Armagnac?’
‘This is all the Count’s territory,’ the German said, waving an arm to encompass the whole landscape. ‘His men patrol the roads to keep the bandits away. He can’t tax merchants if they’ve nothing to tax, eh?’
The road became even busier as they neared Montpellier. Thomas had no wish to draw attention to himself by entering the city with a large band of armed men so, next afternoon, he looked for a place where most of his men could wait while he entered the city. They found a burned mill on a hilltop to the west of the road. The nearest village was a mile away and the valley beneath the mill was secluded. ‘If we’re not back in two days,’ he told Karyl, ‘send someone to discover what’s happened and send to Castillon for help. And keep quiet here. We don’t want the city consuls sending men to investigate you.’ He could tell the city was close by the smear of smoke in the southern sky.
‘If people ask us what we do here?’
‘You can’t afford city prices so you’re waiting here to meet the Count of Armagnac’s men.’ The count was the greatest lord in all southern France and no one would dare interfere with men who served him.
‘There’ll be no trouble,’ Karyl said grimly. ‘I promise.’
Thomas, Genevieve, Hugh and Brother Michael rode on. They were accompanied by just two men-at-arms and by Galdric, and they reached Montpellier that evening. The two hills of the city, the towers of its churches and its tile-roofed bastions cast long shadows. The city was surrounded by a high, pale wall from which hung banners showing the Virgin and her child. Others showed a circle, red as the setting sun, against a white field. Outside the wall was a weed-strewn wasteland, and beneath the weeds were ashes, while in a few places there were stone hearths showing where there had once been houses. A woman, stooped and ancient with a black scarf over her hair, grubbed close to one of the hearths. ‘You lived here?’ Thomas asked.
She answered in Occitan, a language Thomas scarcely knew, but Galdric translated. ‘She lived here till the English came.’
‘The English were here?’ Thomas sounded surprised.
It seemed that during the previous year the Prince of Wales had come close to Montpellier, very close, but at the last moment his destroying army had sheered away, but not before the city had burned every building outside the walls to deny the English any hiding places for archers or siege engines. ‘Ask what she’s searching for,’ Thomas ordered.
‘Anything,’ was the answer, ‘because she lost everything.’
Genevieve tossed the woman a coin. A bell was tolling inside the city and Thomas feared it was the signal to close the gates, so he spurred his men forward. A line of wagons laden with timber, fleeces, and barrels waited at the gate, but Thomas passed them. He was in mail, carrying a sword, and that marked him as a man of privilege. Galdric, riding close behind, unfurled a banner showing a hawk carrying a sheaf of rye. The badge was the old banner of Castillon d’Arbizon, and a useful device when Thomas did not want to advertise his loyalty to the Earl of Northampton or his command of the feared Hellequin.
‘Your business, sire?’ a guard at the gate demanded.
‘We are on a pilgrimage,’ Thomas said, ‘so want to pray.’
‘Swords must remain sheathed inside the city, sire,’ the guard said respectfully.
‘We’re not here to fight,’ Thomas said, ‘just to pray. Where do we find lodgings?’
‘There’s plenty straight ahead, close to Saint Pierre’s church. The one showing the sign of Saint Lucia is the best.’
‘Because it belongs to your brother?’ Thomas guessed.
‘I wish it did, sire, but it’s owned by my cousin.’
Thomas laughed, threw the man a coin, and rode under the high arch. The sound of his horse’s hooves echoed from the buildings, the bell tolled steadily and Thomas rode towards the church of Saint Peter, besieged suddenly by the fecal stench of a city. A man in a red and blue tunic and carrying a trumpet with the banner of the Virgin dangling from its pipes ran past the horses. ‘I’m late!’ he called to Thomas.
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.
‘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?’
