The Inquisitor's Tale

by Adam Gidwitz

  After a moment, they heard the sound of a woman’s voice. “Coming! Coming!”

  As they waited, hearts pounding from their flight from the monastery and the strange, terrifying encounter they had had there, Jeanne looked at Michelangelo. With red whiskers and fiery eyes and a fierce, fat face that had haunted her her entire life. Now, maybe, rescuing them. Maybe.

  William, beside her, gazed at the great man, too. Despite all that he had heard of him—the tales of his wickedness—he suddenly felt a strange affinity for the giant cleric. Like he had at last met someone of his own species.

  Jacob, meanwhile, stared in wonder at the mezuzah—the tiny prayer scroll that hangs on the doorframe of a Jewish home. Why were they here?

  The green door opened. Standing in the doorway was a plump, older woman, with gray hair pulled back in a messy bun behind her head. From within the house, the unmistakable smell of boiling chicken broth flooded the alley. “Michelangelo!” she cried. “I’m making dumpling soup! You always know! Come in! Come in! And who are these?”

  Michelangelo pushed the children inside. “Close the door, if you would, William.” The big boy complied. The plump woman stood before them expectantly. “Children,” Michelangelo intoned, “may I introduce Miriam, wife of the great rabbi?” At that moment, they heard the thud of a cane on the thin wooden floorboards, and an old man hobbled around the corner. He was bent over his walking stick, and his long white beard hung almost to his waist. But his eyes were bright and lively.

  “And this,” Michelangelo announced, “is her very lucky husband—Rabbi Yehuda.”

  Jacob’s legs went wobbly beneath him.

  “These,” Michelangelo continued, now speaking to Yehuda and his wife and indicating the children with a sweep of his hand, “are the saints.”

  I practically jump from my stool. “He called them saints? You’re sure?”

  The little nun smiles placidly at me.

  “Why does that matter to you so much?” Jerome asks, turning on me. “You seem rather preoccupied by that fact.”

  I return his gaze. After a moment, I look back to the nun. “Do you know more?” I ask her.

  “Indeed I do.”

  HAPTER 15

  The Fifth Part of the Nun’s Tale

  They sat on stools in the warm, aromatic kitchen. The place was strange to the children. The floor was made of wooden planks. There was a flat wood ceiling above them. And there was a small hearth in the house, like a miniature version of what one would find in a castle’s keep. In the hearth, a fire blazed under a pot of soup.

  Michelangelo was noisily slurping broth from a carved wooden spoon. Gwenforte was wrapped around his big feet. Jeanne was gazing over the rim of her rough bowl at the giant red monk and her dog. Why did Gwenforte seem so comfortable with Red, Fat, and Wicked?

  William had emptied three bowls of soup and was working on his fourth. Jacob, on the other hand, was not eating at all. He was leaning forward on his stool, peering around the house of Yehuda as if something might be hiding in it.

  Miriam hovered over the children to ensure that their bowls were never empty. She saw that William had cleared his, and she quickly ladled some more of the steaming broth into the rough clay vessel.

  Michelangelo paused at his soup and raised his head.

  “I have been looking for you,” he said to the children. “Four days now, nonstop, practically no food, absolutely no sleep.”

  “To kill us?” Jeanne asked.

  Michelangelo peered at the little girl on her wooden stool. “Why would I want to kill you, exactly?”

  “You killed Theresa, from my village.” Jeanne spat out her words like the pits of bitter plums.

  Michelangelo di Bologna’s great red eyebrows contracted over his strawberry of a nose. “Theresa . . . Theresa . . . Theresa of Ville Sainte-Geneviève?”

  Jeanne nodded as if this were obvious.

  Michelangelo laughed. “Kill her? I did not kill her! I do not believe she has died at all! She is doing God’s work in Burgundy as we speak!”

  “You took her away! To be put on trial and killed!”

  Michelangelo shrugged a great Italian shrug, which he performed both with his shoulders and his lips. “Perhaps that is what you were told. Indeed, I have let many believe things like this. But never have I done that. And never would I. Theresa is a woman of God. Your bailiff—Charles was his name?—he had denounced her as a witch. What could I do but take her elsewhere?”

  Jeanne fell silent. She stared at the broad boards of the floor. Inside her, grand castles of comprehension, models of the world as she had understood it, shivered. She could not decide whether to let them crumble or to try desperately to save them.

  Jacob had now buried his head deep in his soup. He ate slowly, listlessly, stealing occasional glances at the old man sitting in the corner. Yehuda, too, kept his eyes in his broth, struggling to get dumplings to stay on his spoon.

  “Brother Michelangelo,” William said, “why did Hubert obey when you commanded him like that, as if you were his master, and not vice versa?”

  Michelangelo raised himself up on his little stool. Even seated, he towered over everyone else in the room. Even William. His red whiskers bristled like combs off his face. “There is worldly power, given by man to man,” he said, his voice rumbling. His r’s, instead of purring in the back of his throat in the French manner, rolled off his tongue in the Italian. “In that, Hubert outranks me. But there is also sacred power, given by God to man. In that, I outrank Hubert. By a very great deal. He knows this.”

  Jacob again glanced furtively at Yehuda. Miriam, who had been watching the little boy with interest since he’d come through the door, said, “What is it, my little dumpling? What do you want to ask the rabbi?”

  Jacob raised his head slowly. Yehuda’s sparkling eyes reluctantly abandoned his unruly dumpling and found Jacob across the room.

  Jacob whispered, “You are the Rabbi Yehuda? Of Saint- Denis?”

  Jeanne looked at the floor. She knew what was coming.

  “I am,” said the old man, his eyes soft and probing. He stroked his beard with a hand as blue and delicate as a bird.

  “Do you know my parents? Moisé and Bathsheba, of Nogent-sur-Oise?”

  The old man’s eyelids fluttered closed. Then they opened, a bit brighter than before. “Bathsheba, daughter of Jacob Solomon?”

  “Jacob Solomon was my grandfather. I never knew him.”

  “Of course you didn’t,” Rabbi Yehuda agreed. “But I haven’t seen Bathsheba since she was a little girl! Is she well?”

  Jacob’s chin was quivering violently. He tried to form words, but failed. Miriam was immediately at his side. She put her arms around him. He was shivering. She rubbed his thin shoulders.

  Jeanne spoke for Jacob, saying what he needed to say but could not. “She hasn’t come here? There was a fire in Jacob’s town. Set by some stupid boys. Jacob was separated from his parents. They told him they would meet him here.”

  The rabbi’s face fell. William bit his lip and stared at Jacob.

  The little room was quiet. At last, Yehuda said, “Did you see them escape?”

  Jacob’s face was now hidden in Miriam’s sleeve. He shook his head.

  “How many days ago was this?”

  Michelangelo answered. “Nogent-sur-Oise burned six days ago. It was . . . not good.”

  A great lump was forming in Jeanne’s throat. William’s face was drawn and bloodless. Miriam, stroking Jacob’s small back, looked from her husband to Michelangelo. Michelangelo grimaced and shook his head.

  Jeanne saw this and then—in a surprise even to herself—burst into tears. William stared into his lap. Gwenforte rose, looked back and forth between Jeanne and Jacob, and came and sat down between Jacob’s legs.

  “Okay! Get up!” Miriam announced. “Foll
ow me!” She led the children through an open doorway and into the second room of the house. There sat a large bed of straw and blankets in the corner. She made the children lie down on it. Gwenforte crawled in among them.

  “That dog better not have fleas,” the rabbi’s wife said as she returned to the front room.

  “They likely all have fleas,” Michelangelo replied.

  The children were more tired than they knew. Within moments, they were asleep. At dinnertime, they woke again but could not raise themselves from the soft straw and woolen blankets. William, who had been snoring like a mill wheel grinding grain, rolled over and threw his long arm over Jeanne and Jacob and Gwenforte. Jeanne tried to move it, but it was like trying to move a fallen tree. She left it. They fell asleep again.

  • • •

  The next morning, when the children awoke, Miriam was already gone to do her marketing. A steaming pot of porridge hung over the fire.

  The children took cracked clay bowls from a pile on the worn wooden table and sat down on stools. Morning light, mote filled and yellow, streamed in through the narrow glassless window. Jeanne and William shoveled the porridge into their mouths with silent vigor. Jacob, meanwhile, pushed his breakfast around in his bowl.

  “You’re going to eat us out of house and home.”

  The children were startled.

  Rabbi Yehuda had been sitting on his stool in his habitual corner, and the children hadn’t even noticed him.

  Jeanne hurriedly put her bowl down on the table. William and Jacob paused, their spoons aloft, and looked uncertainly at the old man.

  “Eat! Eat!” He laughed. “God will provide more food. Money, probably not. But maybe food.”

  The children still waited, eyeing the old rabbi.

  “Eat! Eat! I’m just teasing. Eat!” His eyes danced, and a smile cracked his old, wrinkled face like an egg.

  Slowly, the children began to eat again. Soon, William had finished his porridge. He eyed the pot over the fire.

  “Seconds?” the rabbi said. “You want seconds?”

  William quickly shook his head.

  “Don’t listen to that old invalid!” Michelangelo’s voice boomed from the doorway. “He’s a liar and a satan and you should never believe him.” Michelangelo left the flimsy door standing open, so the fresh morning air swirled into the little house. “Trust him, but never believe him. Have seconds. Thirds. Miriam would insist.” The great man stood in the center of the room, his head nearly grazing the ceiling. William got up and ladled more porridge into his bowl.

  Michelangelo stomped his foot on the floorboards. “Have you ever seen these?” he asked, looking at Jacob.

  Jacob shook his head. His eyes were heavy and rimmed with shadows.

  “A new thing they’ve done,” Yehuda said. “To reduce disease, they tell us. Only in the most advanced cities. We live in a new Rome, my friend. An enlightened age!”

  Michelangelo frowned at the old rabbi. “He’s lying,” he said to the children. “As usual. Don’t believe him.”

  “Lying?” Yehuda said, with heat. “How, lying? With Crusades and murder, heretics and executions? And every penny going to that fortress of stone in the name of God—when not a man inside knows what, or who, God is? Surely the Messiah is come, and the Kingdom of Heaven has arrived!”

  “The Messiah IS come, you satan!” Michelangelo suddenly bellowed. Jeanne nearly fell off her chair. “And the Kingdom of Heaven is near indeed! The Cistercians have carved wood and bent iron into a pump of perpetual movement! In Chartres, they have erected a cathedral that literally touches the belly of Heaven! And wise men like you and Roger Bacon and Rashi show the benighted the error of their ways!”

  “And peasants,” the old rabbi replied, straightening his crooked back, his beard quivering, “pretend they are going to the Holy Land and descend on Jewish villages and loot and murder and burn! Surely, God is smiling!”

  “That makes God weep and you know it!” Michelangelo began, his voice swelling. But then he stopped. He glanced at William. “Our young brother, though, finds something funny.” They all looked at the young monk. Indeed, William was grinning.

  “What? Are you laughing at us?” Yehuda demanded.

  William shook his head, but he could not stop grinning. He said, “How are you two friends? A rabbi and a prior? Shouting at each other and calling each other satan?”

  “You call this friends?” Yehuda said, throwing his hands in the air. But then he laughed. “No, it’s true. You should be so lucky to have a friend like this.”

  And then Jeanne said, “He does. Two.”

  William took in his breath sharply. One corner of his left eye was suddenly damp.

  Jeanne turned to Michelangelo. “Why do you call him Satan?” If someone among the present company looked like Satan, Jeanne thought, surely it was Michelangelo. Jeanne saw that Gwenforte was curled around his feet again, while Jeanne’s bare feet were cold.

  Michelangelo replied, “He is satan! Or rather, a satan. In Hebrew, satan means an advocate of the alternative, the one who makes the arguments you don’t know how to refute.” Michelangelo looked to the old Jew, still grinning wickedly in the corner. “That satan is my best friend.”

  The room fell silent. The children’s gaze drifted between the two men, one huge, red, and robust, the other shriveled, bent, and so gray he was almost blue. Red whiskers and white. A crazy head of hair and almost none. It was a very strange pair.

  Michelangelo looked to Jacob. He was hunched over, leaning on his knees, staring out the open front door. In fact, it appeared that he hadn’t been listening at all. He had been peering through the doorway, the shadows under his eyes darkening, twisting and tugging on his curly hair.

  And then, before they could rouse him from his apparent stupor, he leapt to his feet and banged out the little house’s entryway and into the muddy alley.

  Jeanne and William were instantly after him.

  They found Jacob, standing in the narrow, muddy lane, staring toward the main street of Saint-Denis. Tears were coursing down his face. “Where are they?” he said. “Why aren’t they here yet?”

  William stepped down from the doorway, put a great arm around his friend’s small shoulders, and let him weep in the morning sunshine.

  “Why?” Jacob cried. “Why aren’t they here?”

  • • •

  Jacob sat on a low stool. Across the warm little room, his friends gazed sheepishly at him. There is something embarrassing about someone else’s grief. It is hard to know what to do around it. The right answer, always, is hugs. But Jeanne and William were sitting all the way across the room, and their arms weren’t long enough to reach Jacob. Besides, they didn’t know that hugs is always the answer. Listening is also a good response to grief. But unfortunately, Jacob wasn’t speaking.

  Michelangelo di Bologna was leaning against a wall. Yehuda’s eyes were closed, and his head was tilted back.

  Jeanne broke the silence. She had more questions for Michelangelo. Many more questions. She started with this one: “Michelangelo, when we came in, you called us saints. Why?”

  Michelangelo pursed his lips. Then he pushed off the thin wooden wall—making the house tremble slightly—and closed the front door. He came to the center of the room and looked down at little Jeanne.

  “What do you think?” he replied. She shrugged diffidently and eyed him from under her brown brows.

  “When you have a fit, Jeanne, what do you see?”

  “Things that . . . that will happen?”

  “Yes. You see the future.” He turned to William. “And have you ever met anyone who could break a stone bench with his fist? Or dispatch a dozen fiends using nothing but flesh and bone?”

  “You heard about that?” asked William.

  “Indeed. Your fame is spreading, children. And Jacob, you heal morta
l wounds with just your hands, some plants, and a prayer. Is this not unique?”

  Jacob’s hollow eyes gazed up at Michelangelo, but he did not reply.

  “To review: We have a dog that’s been resurrected, a peasant girl who sees the future, a supernaturally strong oblate, and a Jewish boy with the power of miraculous healing.”

  The children almost laughed in the silence that followed. When you put it that way, it sounded rather insane.

  “So yes, I believe you are saints.”

  Yehuda said, “Even Jacob? A Jew?”

  “Of course there are Jewish saints!” Michelangelo replied. “And Muslim saints, and saints in lands where they worship God in all sorts of ways.”

  The children sat in stunned silence.

  “Well,” said Yehuda at last. “I hope you’re mistaken.”

  “Why?” Jeanne wanted to know.

  “Being a saint is not a nice thing. The abilities may be useful, yes. But they aren’t worth what happens at the end.”

  “The end?”

  “Or course! You should know that, my Christian friend! Saints are martyred!”

  Gwenforte opened her eyes and raised her head.

  “Just think about Saint Denis!”

  “What happened to him?” said Jacob.

  “You don’t know the story of Saint Denis?” Jeanne asked.

  “How would I know the story?”

  William said, “He was the bishop of Paris in the time of the Romans. He converted many pagans to the True Faith.”

  “Judaism?” Jacob said.

  “Don’t try to be funny,” William retorted.

  But Yehuda chuckled. “I thought it was funny.”

  “Denis, Bishop of Paris,” William went on, always happy to share, “was decapitated by the Roman authorities for spreading Christianity. But after the Romans cut off Saint Denis’s head, he picked it up and walked from Paris all the way to where Saint-Denis is now. And the whole way his disembodied head preached a sermon. Now that’s a saint!”