Celestial Chess

by Thomas Bontly

  “Is there anything else I should know about him?”

  “That about covers it. He’ll either subvert your politics, marry you off to his daughter, bore you to death with his cant, or bugger your backside.” Archie laughed. “There’s still time to call it off. I could use the company during the last days of my vigil.”

  “I think I’d better go to Abbotswold. But I’d like to come up to Yorkshire to see you, once you’re settled. I hope to be here through the summer, at least.”

  “That would be splendid. I’m sure we’d have all sorts of lurid adventures in those factory towns.”

  “There’s an old monastery I want to visit—a place called Wellesford.”

  Archie put the back of his hand to his brow. “You and your monasteries! Perhaps you don’t realize it, embedded in the twelfth century as you are, but we’ve been industrialized in England, oh, for centuries now.”

  “So you keep telling me. But aside from your lab work, and those nasty explosives you make, you don’t seem very keen on that side of English life either, Archie.”

  “Why should I be? And my explosives are not nasty. We’ve recently developed a formula which the munitions people are dying to get their hands on. But don’t you see? That’s just the point! We’re all immune to commerce behind these protective walls. You don’t know what it does to one, morally, to come of age in a place like this. It’s a pretty little fairy-tale land, but it’s all too bloody safe. It blinds a man to what life is really like out there, in the howling wastes of poverty and greed. Don’t you wonder what’s out there?”

  “You forget,” I said, “that I hail from those howling wastes. We have plenty of poverty and greed where I come from—plenty of reality, if that’s what you want to call it.”

  “Yes, I know,” Archie sighed. “I’ve seen plenty of your kind—refugees from that brave new world you have over there. Pilgrims in search of your Mecca—only you have no Mecca. You’ve rejected one world and can’t quite smuggle your way into another, so you wander like lost souls amongst all the libraries, museums, palaces and cathedrals of Europe, never quite seeing or catching hold of anything that lies outside those musty though God knows elegant interiors. It’s called, ‘Finding oneself,’ I believe—as if a self can exist at the end of some tourist’s itinerary like a pot of gold. Yet it’s a kind of fear, isn’t it? A fear of life.”

  “Well—aren’t you afraid?”

  “Of course I am! I thought you understood. I hate to give all this up. It’s beautiful—but it’s also false as hell, and I do believe that in a way I’m actually lucky to have been one of those called but not chosen. Oh, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, and I shall scratch pitifully at the door and beg to be readmitted, but eventually I’ll go off to meet my fate in Yorkshire.”

  I finished my drink and stood up. “Good luck, pal. May you find yourself a beautiful, loving, red-haired female Yorkshirite, and fornicate your way to reality.”

  “Ah,” Archie said, beaming. “I shall go in that hope!”

  I left Archie’s room and made my way along corridors I’d learned to fear after dark. Safely back in my own room, I threw a few things in a suitcase for tomorrow’s departure, then sat by the window for a while with the lights off, looking down on the Old Court. It was true enough, everything Archie had said, and it reminded me again of Yvetta’s parting words in the London station. So I was afraid. So I was incomplete as a man. So my infatuation with a batch of medieval manuscripts was simply a neurotic’s attempt to avoid all those aspects of life at which he’d proven wretchedly inadequate. So be it! It was my life, and I’d waste it as I chose!

  I was surprised to see a light appear behind one of the windows directly across the court, and I idly wondered if, with so few of the College still in residence, the shade of some long-dead scholar hadn’t returned to cram for a long outdated examination. “Don’t worry about it,” I wanted to tell the ghost. “It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters any more—except to fools like you and me.”

  King Henry II was a traveling man with a sprawling domain to oversee, and everywhere that Henry went—off across the British Isles or beyond the Channel to Aquitaine and Anjou—his court was sure to follow. And wherever Henry laid the royal head and fed the royal person, be it the castle of a vanquished earl or the hut of a swineherd, his court was, as it were, in session.

  In April of 1158 the royal caravan was nearing London after an Easter Court at Worcester. At the fore of this lengthy train of mounted knights and marching minions rode the king himself and his noblest nobles—the Lord High Steward, the Lord High Chancellor, the Lord High Treasurer and diverse other Lord Highs. Behind them came the petty nobles, advisers and parasitic kinsmen, followed closely by the king’s guard of horsemen, archers and foot soldiers. Behind the soldiers came the young bureaucrats of the court—the clerks, limners, scriveners, lawyers and officials of small account. This sizable contingent was followed in turn by the royal servants—chaplains, heralds, watchmen, huntsmen and hound-keepers, falconers, tentkeepers, washerwomen and water carriers, cooks, servers, stewards of the larder and workmen of the buttery. Finally, bringing up the rear of this great parade, came the itinerant scholars and poets who clung to the royal train—the actors, singers, dancers, dicers, gamesters, jugglers, prostitutes, pimps, buffoons and barbers. The king’s possessions (including the voluminous legal paper his chancellery produced at every stop along the way) were hauled along in carts. A few mounted guards hung back to protect the carts and the carriages of the ladies, but Henry had little to fear from thieves or marauders, England having become under his vigorous rule a most peaceful and well-ordered kingdom.

  For four years the king’s justice and passion for administrative efficiency had been at work in the land, and the wounds of a long period of tyranny, anarchy and civil strife were nearly healed. London, into which this troop of regal gypsies now rode, had become one of the most prosperous cities of Europe. Had the bankers, artisans and merchants had ticker tape and confetti ready to hand, they would surely have sent it blizzarding down across the path of the burly, bug-eyed, flushed and laughing king.

  Back up the road, the party of chancellery clerks had come in sight of the city’s gate.

  “Well, Gervaise,” said a red-bearded young man in a gray woolen tunic, “I expect I know where you’ll be off to as soon as we’re settled at Westminster. Which bawdy-house will you tear apart this evening?”

  Geoffrey Gervaise, a tall, thin man with a black beard and long black hair, his lean face distinguished by a pair of fiery dark eyes, looked straight ahead at the rooftops and spires of the city. ‘‘No, Bartholomew, there’ll be no whores for me tonight. I gave them up for Lent, and now that Lent is over and Our Lord has risen once again, I see no reason to fall back into my old ways. I like feeling worthy, for a change, of this cross which hangs around my neck.”

  The redbeard laughed and slapped the ass’s hindquarters to keep pace with Gervaise. “You’ve entirely too much conscience for your vocation! If you meant to practice celibacy, you should’ve stayed in the monastery. I give you two nights; a week at most. After all, who knows where we’ll go from London, or when again we’ll encounter such a plenitude of fat, sassy tarts? Unless, of course, it’s back to Aquitaine, where even noblewomen will spread their legs for a clerk.”

  “I hope not Aquitaine,” Gervaise said, eyes fixed on one of the distant steeples. They might have been the eyes of a prophet, burning with desert brilliance—or the eyes of a madman.

  “If you’re determined to be good,” Bartholomew said, “I suppose I can be good with you—for tonight, at least. How about a game of chess? You promised me a chance to avenge myself.”

  Gervaise’s smile deepened slightly beneath his beard. “If you like. But I warn you, Bartholomew, I can’t be beaten.”

  ‘‘Not even by our chancellor?’’

  “I’ve played Becket twice. We drew both matches. But once I understand his game, I’ll beat him as well.”
>
  ‘‘Ha! No one will ever understand Thomas à Becket’s game! He’s a deep one, Gervaise. I just hope he’s smart enough to keep on Henry’s good side.”

  “The king loves Becket.”

  “Aye, but the more he loves them, the more vicious he becomes if he ever turns against them. Our fortunes depend upon Becket’s, and frankly, I wish he were a shade less brilliant and a good deal less familiar with our king. That’s my opinion, for what it’s worth.”

  “No doubt it would be worth a year in the dungeon if the wrong people heard you voice it,” Gervaise said. ‘‘We are clerks, and the inner machinations of the king’s court have nothing to do with us.”

  “Gervaise, your ingenuousness astounds me. The rumor is that Henry’s just waiting for old Theobald to die so that he can make Becket the archbishop. And then he’ll need a new chancellor, won’t he? Where do you think he’s going to find one? From the chancellery, of course.”

  ‘‘Not necessarily,” Gervaise said, though his eyes seemed to glow brighter at the prospect.

  “He’ll choose the man Becket recommends,” Bartholomew said. ‘‘Perhaps you’d better let him win a game or two from you. The way I hear it, you presently stand very high with Becket.”

  “There are abler men than myself in the chancellery,” Gervaise said. But Bartholomew, catching a glimpse of the pride and hunger in his eyes, knew that his friend was no less ambitious than himself. And the devil will probably beat me out, he thought. Of course, they must know Gervaise is mad. He’ll do something crazy and they’ll have to boot him out. And that, God knows, is my only chance!

  The party of clerks was nearing the open gate, passing through the gardens and orchards that surrounded the city’s walls. The trees were just coming into bud and green shoots had begun to break the loamy soil. Mist hung over the river, but through it came the soothing warmth of the April sun. Gervaise smelled the river. He felt the reawakening of those pagan gods who lived in the soil and in the sap of budding trees, in the gentle breezes and hazy sky of spring. O God, he prayed silently, hold me to my vows! And let me remember my sister not as she was in the days of Megin the witch and Carn the serpent, but as she was, please God, at Evesham on Thursday last . . .

  For it was on Holy Thursday that Gervaise had ridden away from Worcester and across the countryside to the small convent on the banks of the Severn, where, after an interview with the cautious prioress, he was allowed to see his sister in the cold and dusky garden near the river. Her pale face looked ghostly to him, the face of a being whose spirit had obliterated bodily needs and cravings.

  ‘‘Good Geoffrey. Have you found peace at last?”

  “No, my sister. None, or very little. But are you happy here?”

  If she had told him she wasn’t, he would have carried her away, and damned be the Church and all its laws. But he knew her answer before she spoke.

  “Yes, brother. I am very happy now. And I pray for you every day.”

  “No doubt I shall need those prayers. As you see, Margarette, I am a priest now—but not a very worthy one, I fear.”

  “And does it still trouble you so much, what we did when we were young? You must not think of it. It is all behind us, and God has forgiven us.”

  “How can I forget it, Margarette, when I still love you? And when I still hear Satan calling me like the wind off the moors?”

  “You must forget it, Geoffrey! Megin was an evil woman to fill our heads with such fears—a witch who did the devil’s work while mouthing corrupted pieties. I have learned much since coming here, and I know that Our Lord’s love and forgiveness is unceasing. Have you no faith, Geoffrey?”

  “Very little. And yet I think often of theological matters. Perhaps I have had too much education and seen too much of the world . . . but I still hope for my salvation.”

  “The Lord will help you. I will pray for you without ceasing! Do not despair, my brother. Perhaps God will send you a sign to strengthen your faith. And now I must leave you. I am expected in the chapel.”

  Gervaise took the hand she held out to him and raised it quickly to his lips. Its flesh was cold against his fevered face. With a sob of protest, Margarette tore away, turned and ran through the garden, her black cloak floating over the stones as if no body but only spirit moved beneath it.

  A bride of Christ, Gervaise thought. And he, a jealous rival, having found his sister again after years of searching, guarded queries, false hopes—having found her at last, only to see how fully she belonged to another. But was he not pleased by his sister’s peace? On the way back to Worcester, Gervaise saw only the familiar stars blossoming across the black meadow of night. There was no sign.

  Nor had one yet appeared, though Gervaise believed that the prayers of a Margarette could scarcely go unanswered. Was the Lord perhaps as jealous of him as he . . . But no; that was blasphemy! Passing through London’s northeastern gate, Gervaise saw the gray mass of the Tower rising above the rooftops, the cathedral spires of Saint Paul’s still wrapped in wooden scaffolding. The streets were crowded with humanity, riotous with commerce. There were horse droppings in the mud, garbage and human excrement carelessly tossed from the windows of the narrow houses along the way. Gervaise caught the scent of sawdust and fresh mortar, the yeasty odor of a brewery and the seaweed stench of fish from a merchant’s cart. He remembered Paris. He remembered all the towns and villages he had seen since becoming a member of the king’s traveling retinue. Where, in all this busy, thriving world, had he ever known peace? Nowhere, it seemed, but in old Eadmer’s monastery. Perhaps he would return to that life someday, but not until he had learned to rule the demons which possessed him. At least here at court, all his resolutions notwithstanding, he could cut his temptations short by surrendering to them. He could barter desire for remorse, exchange the dagger of lust for a bludgeon of guilt. But was this a life worthy of a rational man?

  The people along the streets greeted the procession with smiles, friendly gestures, a few shouts of welcome. Gervaise saw a young woman lurking in the doorway of a public house. She smiled up at the priest from beneath a tangle of dirty hair, then tugged down her blouse to reveal a full white breast and dark nipple. Gervaise tore his eyes away. Damn these women! Damn their filthy devilish cunts! And damn that fiend within his own breeches who would not give him a moment’s peace.

  I shall keep a vigil at the chapel tonight, Gervaise thought. I shall spend the entire night on my knees, praying for a sign.

  “Nearly home,” Bartholomew sighed, as the procession neared the west gate and the road to the palace. “I suppose we’ll get another wretched supper. The cooks will barely have time to unpack their pots and pans. But at least the fish and meat should be fresh, and the wine good. Don’t forget our game of chess this evening.”

  “I won’t,” Gervaise said, thinking how it was only at the chessboard that he experienced a temporary suspension of torment and doubt. The game had been for years his only taste of freedom.

  The Lord, Gervaise thought, will not be served by slaves.

  Nor by hypocrites like good Bartholomew.

  Nor by madmen like me.

  ~§~

  There were documents and supplies to see safely stowed away in the chancellery, and Gervaise was busy with these arrangements for the remainder of the afternoon. Near suppertime, a page with the crafty look of an experienced pimp (one of Queen Eleanor’s French urchins, Gervaise thought) put a note into the priest’s hands and left without awaiting an answer. Gervaise carried the scrap of parchment over to a window, away from the flurry of clerks and servants still unpacking supplies. He saw that the note was written in French：

  Dear Priest—I am in great need of shriving and cannot bare my soul to the queen’s chaplain. As you love God and hold dear your sacred office, come to my chamber tonight when you see me leave the hall. This I command in the name of her royal highness, whose kinswoman I am. Yours in faith,

  Annjenette DeLorreaux

  Gervaise crumpled the pa
rchment in his large fist and let his head rest against the stone casement. So! He had forsworn the whores of the city only to fall prey to the whores of the court!

  He had seen Annjenette looking thoughtfully at him when last he brought papers to the king’s private chambers and had wondered then if he was to be chosen the next of her victims. Queen Eleanor’s cousin, just turned seventeen, with the face of an angel and the body of a pagan goddess . . . how many knights had she teased and taunted and finally taken to her chamber? How many had written their insipid verses to gain her favor, had strutted and posed and sung mournful ballads, challenging one another to battle in the tourneys over the dubious issue of her honor? Gervaise had once overheard a conversation between Becket and the king：

  “Marry the slut off to some provincial baron, my lord. You must get her out of the court before she destroys the moral fiber of your best knights.”

  “Thomas, my friend, that’s easier said than done. The queen is fond of her company, and used to having her way in such matters. But why don’t you marry her? Couldn’t we keep her in court as your wife?”

  “I would not have such a harlot to wife! Besides, I have not entirely forsaken the notion of one day taking holy orders.”

  “Perhaps it’s just as well. I could use you, Thomas, in the Church—if only I could spare you at the chancellery.”

  I won’t go, Gervaise thought. Better by far that he should mount the fat and stinking whores of the city. Such simple, honest sins, plainly branded and sincerely regretted in due course, were far less dangerous to one’s soul than the pagan whimsies and heresies such a woman might put into the mind of a poor, lust-ridden priest.

  But what if she did need a priest to hear her confession? Could he turn down an earnest plea for aid? Then why should she scorn the queen’s own chaplain and turn to a lowly clerk?