‘Yes.’
‘Does she have children?’
‘Bertille? None.’
‘That’s a blessing. If she had children, that wretched Labrouillade would use them to lure her back. Instead you can just kill Labrouillade and make her a widow! That’s an excellent solution. Widows have so many more choices.’
‘Is that why you’re here?’
She shrugged. ‘It’s a refuge, I suppose? My son doesn’t like me, his wife hates me, and I was too old to find a new husband. So here I am, just me and Nicholas.’ She stroked the cat. ‘So Labrouillade wants you dead, but he’s not here in Montpellier, is he? So who was chasing you?’
‘Labrouillade sent a man to fight me. He started the chase and the students all joined in.’
‘Who did Labrouillade send?’
‘He’s called Roland de Verrec.’
‘Oh, my dear!’ The countess seemed amused. ‘Young Roland? I knew his grandmother very well, poor soul. I hear he’s a wonderful fighter, but oh dear, no brain.’
‘No brain?’
‘It’s been rotted by romances, my dear. He reads all those ridiculous stories of knightly valour and, being brainless, believes them. I blame his mother; she’s a forceful creature, all prayers and spite, and he, poor thing, believes everything she says. She tells him chivalry exists, which I suppose it does, but never in her husband, who was a goat. Not like his son! The virgin knight!’ she chuckled. ‘How silly can a young man be? And he’s very silly. You heard how the Virgin Mary appeared to him?’
‘Everyone’s heard that.’
‘He was just a silly boy and I suppose his mother made him drunk! I’m sure the Virgin Mary has better things to do than spoil a young man’s life. Dear me, poor boy! Now young Roland dreams of being a knight at your King Arthur’s round table. I’m afraid you’ll have to kill him.’
‘I will?’
‘You’d better! Or else he’ll regard you as a quest and pursue you to the ends of the earth.’
‘He pursued me here,’ Thomas said ruefully.
‘But what on earth are you doing in Montpellier?’
‘I wanted to consult a scholar.’
‘There are plenty of those here,’ she said dismissively, ‘and a very motley band they are too. They spend their time fighting each other over the silliest things, but maybe that’s what scholars do. Can I ask why you wanted to consult one?’
‘I’m looking for a saint.’
‘Those are in very short supply! What kind of saint?’
‘It was a painting I saw,’ Thomas said, and described the monk kneeling in the grass around which the snow had fallen thick. ‘It tells a story,’ he said, ‘but no one seems to know it, and no one can tell me who he is.’
‘A frozen saint, by the sound of it, but why do you need to know?’
Thomas hesitated. ‘My liege lord,’ he finally said, ‘has charged me with finding a relic, and I think that saint has something to do with it.’
‘You’re as bad as Roland! On a quest indeed!’ she chuckled. ‘There’s a book somewhere on that table, my dear. Bring it to me.’
Before Thomas could find the book there were women’s voices sounding close outside, and then a timorous knock on the door. ‘Madame? My lady?’ someone called.
‘What do you want?’
‘Are you alone, my lady?’
‘I have a man in here,’ the countess called, ‘a young man, and very virile. You were right, Sister Veronique, God does answer prayers.’
The door was pushed, but the countess had bolted it. ‘Madame?’ Sister Veronique called again.
‘Don’t be silly, sister,’ the countess said, ‘I mumble aloud, nothing more.’
‘Very good, madame.’
‘Bring me the book,’ the countess said, lowering her voice slightly. It was a small volume, hardly bigger than Thomas’s hand. The countess untied the laces and unwrapped the soft leather cover. ‘It belonged to my mother-in law,’ she said, ‘and she was a dear woman! Lord knows how she gave birth to a monster like Henri. I suppose the stars were badly aligned when she conceived him, or else Saturn was in the ascendancy. No child conceived when Saturn is rising will come to any good. Men never care about details like that, but they really should. It’s rather pretty, isn’t it?’ She handed Thomas the book.
It was a psalter. Thomas’s father had owned one, though not as richly decorated as this book, which interspersed the words of the seven penitential psalms with beautifully painted illustrations touched with bright gold leaf. The letters were very large so that only a few words could be written on any one page. ‘My mother-in-law didn’t see well,’ the countess explained when Thomas remarked on the size of the words, ‘so the monks made the letters big. That was kind of them.’
Most of the pictures, Thomas saw, were of saints. There was Radegonde with her crown, pictured amidst a pile of masonry while, behind her, a great church was being built. He turned the stiff page to see an horrific depiction of Saint Leodeger being blinded, a soldier piercing the bishop’s eye with an awl. ‘Isn’t that horrid?’ The countess was leaning forward to see the pictures. ‘They tore his tongue out too. Henri always threatened to tear mine out, but he never did. I suppose I should be grateful. That’s Clementin.’
‘Being martyred?’
‘Oh indeed, disembowelment is a certain path to sainthood, poor man.’ Then there was Saint Remigius baptising a naked man in a great cauldron. ‘That was Clovis being baptised,’ the countess explained, ‘and wasn’t he the first King of France?’
‘I think so,’ Thomas said.
‘I suppose we should be grateful that he became a Christian then,’ the countess said, then leaned forward to turn a page and so reveal Saint Christophe carrying the infant Jesus. The slaughter of the innocents was painted in the background, but the bearded saint had safely taken the baby Christ away from the field littered with dozens of blood-spattered dead and dying children. ‘Saint Christophe looks as if he’s going to drop the baby, doesn’t he? I always think Jesus must have just wet him, or something. Men are quite hopeless with babies. Oh, poor girl.’ This last comment was because Saint Apolline was shown being sawn in two by a pair of soldiers. Her belly was ripped open, blood spilling down the page, while she looked prayerfully towards angels peeping from behind a cloud. ‘I always wonder why the angels don’t come down and save her!’ the countess said. ‘It must be very unpleasant, being sawn in half, but they just hover in the clouds doing nothing! That’s not very angelic. And that man’s a fool!’ Thomas had turned a page to show a depiction of Saint Maurice kneeling amidst the remnants of his legion. Maurice had encouraged his men to be martyred rather than assault a Christian town, and his fellow Romans had obliged his pious wish, and the painter showed a swathe of broken, bloodied bodies scattered across a field while the killers advanced on the kneeling saint. ‘Why didn’t he fight?’ the countess asked. ‘They say he had six thousand soldiers, yet he just encourages them to be slaughtered like lambs. Sometimes I think you must be extremely stupid to become a saint.’
Thomas turned the last page and froze.
Because there he was, the monk in the snow.
The countess smiled. ‘You see? You didn’t need a scholar, just an old lady.’
This picture differed from the painting in Avignon. The monk in the book was not kneeling in the cleared patch, but lying down, curled up in sleep. There was no Saint Peter, but there was a small house on the right-hand side, and a second monk was peeping through a window. The sleeping monk, who had the halo of a saint, was lying on grass, but the rest of the landscape, like the roof of the cottage, was smothered in deep snow. It was night- time, and the stars were painted against a rich dark-blue sky, and a single angel watched from among those stars, while in the page’s flower-painted border was the name of the saint.
‘Saint Junien,’ Thomas said. ‘I’ve never heard of him.’
‘I doubt many people have!’
‘Junien,’ he said the name again.
