The Inquisitor's Tale: Chapters 22–27

Each child looked haggard, haunted by the image of Michelangelo, surrounded by books, burning alive.

He looked up at her, angry and bemused.

Slumped against a wall are two leather sacks, speckled with the dried blood of the fiends of Malesherbes.

Gwenforte lies at their feet, gnawing on a mutton bone, her strong yellow teeth scraping away the last scraps of meat and gristle.

He ducks under his table, picks up a gittern—or maybe it's a lute, I can never tell the difference—and plucks a few notes.

The minstrel strums some new chords.

So Dietrich’s army first sent out
A warrior who was fierce and stout
but old and creased, like ancient elm.

Hadubrand answered, “My sire is him,
Now long dead, called Hildebrand,
Who died a hero in foreign lands.”

Chrétien points at her. "That's what I meant! That's my answer to your question! You asked why God would make bad things happen? I'll tell you why. God is a troubadour."

"Do you know how to get there?" I say. "To Mont-Saint-Michel?" I don't want to sound eager. Just an offhand question.

And then, because the truth is often a better ruse than a lie, I add, "I'm curious to see what happens to you next."

He fixes me with a quizzical stare and then consults his two smaller companions.

His gaze has become suspicious. I don't blame him. That was too cryptic an answer.

His question is shrewd. Too shrewd.

Jeanne points out that there's no use tramping over fields instead of on the road, since in the fields we'll be equally visible—and more conspicuous.

Jacob has opened one of the books and is translating—haltingly, but with obvious pleasure.

I try to stifle a laugh.

"I and a few others were chosen from Avignon, and other boys came from all over Christendom, to Rome, for our training. We learned the ways of investigation, of interview, how to listen, how to persuade, how to threaten. We learned how to be the eyes, ears, and nose of the papacy. And how, on occasion, to be the fist, too. We learned the ways, in short, of the Inquisition."

Inquisitors are supposed to be as chaste as monks.

"I fell in love. Our love was discovered, first by the villagers I was prosecuting, and then by my superiors. I was brought back to Rome in shame, whipped like the runt I have always been, and told that another failure would result in my defrocking and expulsion from the ranks of the Holy Inquisitors."

But if you die...if you are martyred...then the process of canonizing you as saints can begin!

The knife is gripped in my hand, undulating in the moonlight.

The setting sun shimmers off this sheet of water—blue and periwinkle and pink and cobalt and gray and slate and yellow and tangerine—running away from the shifting currents of foam, deepening to black as a current of ripples hurries along the surface, and then eddying, and finally spreading out with a sigh.

Gwenforte stands there, looking back at us, wet up to her haunches.

"The king and the queen mother are coming here," Marmeluc goes on. "With as many knights as they could muster. To get the books. And to get you."

He's bent, with a wild thicket of white hair that looks constantly buffeted by his own personal gale-force winds.

"They'll have bread and soup, thank you, Clotho," says Marmeluc.
"And I imagine you'll all want blankets for the night?" This sounds like an even greater imposition than the soup.

The sky is gloaming, and the waves of the sea are as thin as petals of nightshade as they swirl over the road to Mont-Saint-Michel.

The great mountain abbey stands, a sentinel silhouette, in the distance.

I grab Jacob's ankles and prepare to sink into the sandy abyss.

Jacob walks behind William, his head high, his chest thrust forward. Next to him marches Jeanne, just as determined and resolute.

Joinville's chiseled visage is wan, his eyes haunted.

Joinville's chiseled visage is wan, his eyes haunted.

"Always, my little dissembler." Louis smiles, his head rising slightly. "You aren't much of an actor."

William, too, apparently, is suffering from inane question syndrome.