Amaury stood stolidly in the cold and awaited the sentence. He hated the beatings. Not so much for the pain but for the humiliation of submitting to abominations like Ravenau. Of abdicating his will.
But there was to be no sentence. At least not yet. Ravenau had come with a summons. Amaury was to report to the syndic’s rooms immediately. Le Clerc. The head of the college.
Amaury slogged across the courtyard, the frigid droplets stinging his skin. The syndic’s chambers were on the top floor. Hunger and lack of sleep made the exertion of two flights of stairs near exhausting. He paused at the top, his temples pulsing in a dull, regular drumbeat. To the left of the hallway, a series of open vaults overlooked the courtyard. The entrances to the living quarters of the doctors were on the street side to the right. Three candles set in sconces along the right wall crackled, burned to their last bits of tallow, providing only bursts of illumination as they sizzled to extinction in the coming dawn.
At least this summons had not come three months earlier. If it had, Amaury would not be facing the ineffectual Le Clerc, but rather Noël Beda. Ascetic, unyielding, ever-righteous, soul-flaying Beda. A law unto himself. Beda, who had ordered men burned at the stake without consulting pope or king. But Beda, thank the Lord, had derided François’ authority once too often. After more than a decade of devout autocracy, Beda was finally gone. Probably dead. Le Clerc was mean and vindictive, it was true, but also pompous, vain, and fat. No half-herring, rotting-egg, stale-bread dinners for him. The new syndic was a man on whom no student feared foisting a whispered jibe. No one had ever made light of Beda.
Amaury blew out his own candle to preserve the remaining tallow. The sound of his breathing echoed softly off the stone. Even with one side open, the smell of mildew hung in the walkway. The heavy door was closed when Amaury arrived. He placed his candle on the small table next to the door, then rapped on the thick, darkened oak, as austere as the magisters whose privacy it ensured. His knuckles felt the scrape of hewn wood. He heard a metallic grate as the catch bolt was disengaged, then the door swung open to reveal Guillaume, Beda’s—now Le Clerc’s—ancient servant. Guillaume had likely been tall as a younger man but was now stooped and haggard, unshaven, virtually toothless, but with quick rat’s eyes and, it was suspected among the students, ears to match. More than once during Amaury’s tenure, the masters had acquired knowledge of whispered conversations held in the deepest secrecy.
Guillaume shuffled to one side. Amaury had never before entered these rooms. Inside were polished stone floors unadorned by carpets, and unpainted vaulted roof beams, oak like the door. The stone walls were largely bare, save for a case of books on the right. The books were old, folios, penned by scribes. No printed works here. The syndics lived for the past. A lectern for reading stood at the far end of the room under two small, plain windows. A pair of hard wooden chairs without cushions was set opposite the fireplace on the right, and a doorway on the left led to the master’s private chambers. Two candles, one on each wall, these freshly changed, provided muted light.
The room was empty aside from Guillaume. Amaury took two steps in and waited. No fire burned in the grate. A chill even more penetrating than that in the courtyard had settled in the room. He heard the door close behind him. Guillaume, who ordinarily was privy to every confidence, had not remained. Amaury waited. Finally, he heard shuffling in the other room, and then the sound of sandals on stone. Seconds later, the door creaked open and a figure emerged.
Passing through the doorway was not the fleshy Le Clerc, but rather, his face frozen in piety and perpetual accusation, the glowering figure of Noël Beda.
III
BEDA! HE WAS BACK. How was it possible? He had been arrested and exiled by the king himself. A sentence of death was said to have been applied by royal edict. And yet here he was, standing in his old rooms, the very personification of a wrathful God. Had he returned with François’ permission or in violation of the king’s order?
Tall and cadaverous, with a long, hooked nose and thin, bloodless lips, Beda moved slowly across the room, his arms buried to the elbow in the opposite sleeves of a maroon robe pulled in at the waist with a knotted ocher sash. He stopped at the near side of the lectern and turned to face Amaury straight on. His hair was white under a black peaked skullcap, his skin pallid, almost translucent, but his eyes—those eyes, which students said could peer into one’s very soul—appeared almost black in the flickering candlelight. At first he made no movement or sound. Amaury found it impossible to detect his breathing. The effect was awe inspiring, supernatural.
A second man entered from the private chambers, his robe black, tied with a black sash. He was younger than Beda, shorter, fuller without being thickset. He had even, almost handsome features, his face placid, unlined. The face of a man who discharged his duty without compunction or guilt. His mien might have been pleasing, even soothing, if not for the fact that his duty was often to order men and women to imprisonment, torture, or agonizing death.
Ory. The Inquisitor. Amaury knew him from the sermons he had preached at Montaigu. Sermons warning of the perils of flouting orthodoxy. Tales of branding, of hacked-out tongues, of slow burning at the stake.
Beda began to speak. “You are surprised to see me,” he said, his voice grown even more raspy since his exile. His lips moved only slightly, yet his words were clear and seemed to fill the room. “Perhaps you thought a mere king could overrule the will of God?” He paused and drew in a breath. “I have been charged with the stewardship of this faculty for thirteen years, a time when the Church has come under its greatest threat since our Lord Jesus Christ died to establish the True Religion. To protect our Catholic Church from those who would destroy it is a task that requires constant vigilance and my every energy. I work to neither king nor pope, but to God alone. Perhaps you think me extreme?”
“No, Magister, the Church needs you,” Amaury said firmly. Students had died from Beda-ordered floggings.
“There exists a disease in the world of Man,” Beda rumbled, as if from the pulpit or a mountaintop. “A cancer that seduces the people, does injury to the doctors, detracts from the power of the Church, overtly creates schism, contravenes and distorts Scripture, and blasphemes against the Holy Spirit. It was sown by the Antichrist, Luther, the besotted German who pretends that he alone has more knowledge than all the others in the Church, past or present. He dares to prefer his own judgment to that of the ancients and the doctors of the Church. To add to the sum of impiety, he means to invalidate the decrees of the sacred councils as if God had reserved for him alone the role of discerning what is necessary for the salvation of the faithful.
“We declare,” Beda went on, his voice rising, bitter in condemnation, “and commit our very beings that this wickedness, being destructive of the Christian commonwealth, must be wholly and publicly consigned to the flames.” The muscles at the corners of Beda’s jaw twitched and knotted, but he did not move his eyes off Amaury, not even to blink. “Wherever it is found.”
His imprecation done, Beda began breathing shallowly, a faint wheeze audible at the end of each breath. He reached out and placed a hand on the side of the lectern for support. Amaury was suddenly looking at an old man. How? Beda must have become ill during his exile. Was the titan close to death? Was Amaury to be somehow a part of his valediction?
“I am going to leave you now.” Bedas voice had become a grating whisper. “But everything that Magister Ory is about to tell you is with my approval and is to be held in the strictest confidence. If that confidence is violated, there is no penalty that will be deemed too severe. None. Do you understand?”
Amaury nodded.
Then, in a morning of strange happenings, came the strangest of all. Noël Beda moved slowly from the lectern and placed a hand on Amaury’s shoulder. His steps had become unsteady, but his grip remained powerful. Amaury felt as if he were clutched in a hawk’s talons. “Don’t forget, my boy,” the old man said. “You are to have a great charge. Th
e heretics must be exterminated. Exterminated without compunction or pity, as one would exterminate vermin. You are fighting for the soul of France, perhaps for all of Christendom.”
Beda removed his hand from Amaury’s shoulder, turned, and shuffled softly from the room. Just before the door of his private chamber clanked shut, Amaury heard a dry cough.
Ory’s demeanor, deferential in Beda’s presence, hardened once they were alone. He extended his fingers, palm up, toward one of the chairs. The wood was as hard as the stone floor, but Amaury found the curved, slatted bottom surprisingly agreeable. Ory settled into the other chair.
“As Magister Beda implied, we have a task for you. One that will require an absence from the college. Does that displease you?”
“I am here to do God’s will,” Amaury replied.
“Very deft,” Ory said with a small, stiff smile. Amaury began to protest, but Ory silenced him with a raised finger. “Deftness will not work against you here, Faverges. Quite the contrary. But, for the moment, a modicum of honesty is required. You do not like Montaigu, yes?”
Amaury considered his alternatives. If Ory or Beda wished to condemn him, they could have done so at their whim. No meeting would have been necessary. His father’s position would not have mattered one whit.
“Perhaps not,” Amaury conceded. “But I cannot see why those sentiments matter so long as I discharge my obligations.”
“And you feel you do?”
“I attempt to.”
“Hardly, Faverges. You are intelligent and a fine scholar. One of our best, I suspect. So why do you not excel? Why do you remain baccalarius? You should have long since achieved baccalarius formatus. You seem to find canon law and theological disputation unworthy of your efforts. Your interests apparently lie elsewhere.”
“My only interest is to be a worthy student.”
“Theology is a calling,” Ory continued, ignoring him. “And you have a secular bent. But in secular scholarship—arts and science—you would simply have ended up as a clerk. Or an arts master.” Ory used the term with derision. “Even illegitimate, however—like you—doctors of theology are positions of enormous stature. You might even gain a seat on a parlement. That is why your father insisted you matriculate here. Completion of the course was his price, was it not? If you leave Montaigu, the pope will receive no petition of legitimacy, and you will live out your days as an outcast, a royal bastard of the Duke of Savoy.”
“My father had only my welfare in mind,” Amaury lied.
“Of course,” Ory lied in return. “A fine and pious man. And you have been dutiful in acceding to his wishes.” Ory reached across and tapped his index finger on Amaury’s knee. “Or perchance your desire for legitimacy overwhelmed your loathing.” Ory shrugged, exaggerated and artificial. “But no matter. Despite what you may think, your feelings do not concern me in the least. What does interest me is that, in your desire to continue your scientific studies, you have bribed a servant to aid you in sneaking out during the day to purchase forbidden tracts, which you have secreted in a rented room, and then you slipped away in the dead of night to read them. You have read heterodox interpretations of the structure of the human body, of the cause of illness, of the origin of tides, and even the configuration of the heavens themselves.”
“How do you know that?” Amaury was stunned. “You have been in my room?”
“Of course. And to the bookseller from whom you purchased most of your library. You have no secrets from me.” Ory shrugged again. “But, as it happens, your malfeasance coincides nicely with the requirements Magister Beda and I have for the mission I am about to propose. You will be rewarded for sin. Because you are secular, you will not betray yourself among our enemies at the first heretical statement, as would your more pious classmates. This is your opportunity to achieve what you sought by coming here, only at a far greater level. You are not, I take it, averse to opportunity.”
“Only a fool is averse to opportunity.”
“Precisely.” The Inquisitor clasped his fingers under his chin, as if making a final decision on his offer. After a moment, he put his hands back in his lap and leaned forward. “The rewards of a grateful Church for the successful completion of this mission will be as great as the challenge. No man who expresses his faithfulness in so crucial a task should then be forced to go through life penalized by an accident of birth. The Holy Father himself supports our aims and will, upon your return, sign a decree of legitimacy.” Ory nodded, three slow bobs of the head, as if to digest the magnitude of the favor himself. “You will be free to attain high office in the Church and perhaps even inherit your father’s title and his lands.” He paused. “That is better than waiting six years to achieve the same end here, is it not?”
No reply was necessary.
“Your duties,” Ory said, adopting an inquisitor’s monotone to make even plainer that he was speaking with an inferior, “will consist of helping us ensure a steady flow of information from elements of the Lutheran cabal. We must know not only what our enemies are doing but what they plan to do.”
“You want me to be a spy.”
“No!” Ory snapped with a determined shake of the head. “Not a spy. Spies undermine the righteous for the sake of the evil. You will be an agent of God.”
On which side of that equation one fell depended on one’s definition, Amaury thought, but he remained silent.
“I warn you, however,” Ory added, “we deal with a committed and ruthless enemy, and in order to save the Church we must show equal commitment . . . and, when necessary, equal ruthlessness. Are you prepared for such dedication?”
“I would not accept a charge that I was unprepared to execute faithfully.”
“We shall see. Your task is specific.” Ory lowered his voice. “There is a conspiracy among the Lutherans. A conspiracy so great that few are even aware of its existence. It has come to us that these conspirators plan to unveil some great revelation, something of such significance and import that, as they put it, ‘The old ways will be torn down forever.’”
“What sort of revelation?” Amaury asked. “The notion sounds preposterous.”
“I assure you it is not. These foul heretics claim to be able to disprove the Holy Scriptures . . . at least the Holy Scriptures as they are now accepted by all of the True Faith. It concerns the Book of Genesis.”
“What? That isn’t possible. Genesis is the word of God himself. No one can disprove it.” The proposition would be laughable if it were not emanating from the Inquisitor of France, a man who had likely never uttered a laughable sentence in his life. “And further, why would the Lutherans wish to disprove Genesis? It is part of their creed as much as it is ours.”
“I agree,” Ory replied. “Nonetheless, that is precisely what the Lutherans intend to do.”
“I don’t mean to question you, Magister, but are you certain this is not simply a grand hoax?”
“Quite sure. One of the faithful ingratiated himself with the Lutherans and assured us that the conspiracy is genuine.”
“Why is he not able to discover its nature then?”
“Bad luck. Or betrayal. He was murdered in the streets last night. Stabbed in an alley near porte de Temple. It had the look of a simple robbery. Perhaps it was. A dozen men each night meet such an end in Paris. I hope for your sake it was a random act. But whatever the case, someone must now continue in his stead. Does the danger give you pause?”
Amaury thought for a moment. How much worse was death than to be crushed for six more years in the cleft of the buttocks of Mother Theology?
“I am not dissuaded,” he said simply.
“I thought not. We will take extraordinary steps to shield you from discovery. No one will know of your mission save Magister Beda and myself. You will leave Montaigu, expelled from the college after forbidden tracts are found in your room. You may retrieve your science texts. Do so tonight using your customary means. You will not return to your rented room after that. We have other plan
s for your living arrangements.
“We will give you some Lutheran material as well. Word will go out that you were only saved from execution because of the position of your father. Your expulsion will include a beating, I’m afraid. Magister Ravenau will be unaware of the deceit, but his . . . enthusiasm . . . will help convince any who might be suspicious. We will not meet again. You will report regularly to a member of the faithful, whose identity you will only learn at the appropriate moment. He will watch over you.” Ory smiled slightly. “Others may watch over you as well.”
Spies for the spy.
“Have you any questions?”
“Who was the murdered man?”
Ory tilted his head to the side. “Ah, yes,” he said after a moment. “Another student. Only in his first year. Giles Fabrizy. I believe you knew him.”
Amaury, by a sheer act of will, did not change expression. “Only slightly,” Amaury said. “He seemed like a fine student.”
“Yes.”
“I would like to see the body.”
“An odd request.”
“You are asking me to risk my life, Magister. I would like to understand fully what has gone before.”
The Inquisitor considered this, but could not seem to detect any nefarious motive. “Very well. Someone must arrange for Fabrizy to be returned here for burial. You will be assigned the chore.”
“Thank you, Magister.”
“There is one last thing,” Ory noted, as if he were remembering something that had slipped his mind. “A formality. We will need you to take an oath.”
IV
AS A CORNERSTONE OF HIS LEGACY, King François was determined to transform Paris into the most magnificent city in the world, and thereby banish the specter of Italian social superiority once and for all. As part of his beautification campaign, he had decreed that murder victims were no longer to be left in the streets until the dead cart happened by, but rather were to be hauled offby gendarmes to one of the most storied buildings in all Paris, the Conciergerie, on Île de la Cité.
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