Pagan's Daughter (11 page)

Prayer and self-mortification? Oh no. Not another Dulcie.

‘What is it?’ he says. ‘What are you looking at me like that for?’

‘You . . .’ (Let’s see. How shall I put it?) ‘You don’t go around beating yourself with a willow switch, do you?’

‘I don’t make a habit of it, no.’

‘Or wearing prickly undergarments?’

The priest regards me for a moment. ‘You disapprove?’ he finally asks.

‘Oh well . . . not really.’ It’s good and pious behaviour, I suppose. ‘I just don’t like washing clothes that have blood all over them.’

‘Ah.’

‘I mean, I’ll have to wash your clothes, won’t I? If I’m your servant?’

He blinks, and raises his eyebrows. ‘I don’t know,’ he says slowly. ‘I hadn’t thought.’

‘Well . . . I wouldn’t worry about it. Not yet. They look pretty clean to me.’ That hem, for instance, can be brushed. ‘You probably won’t need anything washed for another two weeks, if it doesn’t rain.’

‘I see.’

‘Black’s a good colour, too. Not even blood shows up on black.’

‘Oh, there won’t be any blood.’ He clears his throat. ‘You must understand that any reference to self-mortification would be purely a means of gaining you your own private room. Personally, I find that flesh is torment enough without seeping scars. Or scratchy drawers.’

Hear, hear. My own flesh is
killing
me. But I have to keep walking; I have to hobble through the inner gate, and turn right—because there’s no street leading straight up to St Sernin. Though I can see the church tower over the roofs in front of us, getting to it will be a matter of following the line of the outer defences. Otherwise we’re going to get lost.

There’s a woman (a wet nurse?) sitting on an upturned bucket, suckling a baby in a small patch of late-afternoon sun. She glares at the priest as we go by, and I wonder: is she a believer? Just in case she is, I’d better keep my head down. If she’s a believer, she might have been to Laurac or Castelnaudary. She might know someone who knows someone who knows me.

The priest, for his part, doesn’t notice the woman. Or doesn’t
seem
to notice her, anyway—perhaps because her big, white breast is exposed to the air. Priests might be lecherous, but they know how to hide it. Mostly they behave as if women don’t exist.

Ah! And here’s a well. I was wondering when we’d reach one. You always find people sitting around a well, and in Muret it’s no different; about ten people watch us trudge past, their chatter dying on their tongues. One or two of them bow slightly to the priest. A bareheaded girl whispers to her friend, who giggles.

Up ahead looms the citadel, throwing long, deep shadows across the square. It’s not a big square. And the church isn’t a big church. You could fit it inside St Etienne, only you wouldn’t want to, because St Sernin is dull, dull, dull. Small windows. Lots of blank walls. Hardly a carving to be seen. The cloisters and chapels attached to it look like afterthoughts—like a collection of pig-pens and fowl-houses tacked onto the back of a shepherd’s hut.

The priest stops.

‘I can’t see any canons around, can you?’ he says. ‘They may be at worship, though I didn’t hear any bells.’

‘You go in.’ Those people by the well are probably listening, so I can’t raise my voice above a murmur. ‘I’ll stay here with the horses while you find someone.’

He hesitates. He’s frowning. I feel so much like snapping at him, but remember the eavesdroppers just in time. ‘I won’t make off with the horses, if that’s what you’re worrying about.’ (Hissing through my teeth.) ‘I’m much too sore.’

To my surprise, he actually smiles. ‘I’m not worried about the horses,’ he says quietly. ‘I’m worried about you. I’m worried about leaving you on your own.’

Hah! A nice little lie, my friend, but you can’t fool me. ‘In a town like this, I’ll be safer on my own than with a priest.’ Or haven’t you noticed? ‘Some of the people here don’t like priests. I can tell. And the rest probably think that you’re an easy target. Ripe for the plucking, I mean.’ He’s gazing down at me with an arrested expression on his face—and I
wish
he’d stop doing that! ‘What? What is it?’

Another crooked smile. A little shake of the head. ‘Sometimes,’ he says, ‘you’re so much like your father.’

He goes before I can recover my breath, shoving the reins into my hands and hurrying off across the dusty square. Lying priest. I am not like my father! I might look like him (I must, if the priest recognised me) but I don’t resemble him in any other way. I do
not
.

And what’s this? An audience. Now that the priest’s gone—now that he’s vanished inside the church, like a wolf into its den—all the little scurrying animals can emerge again from their hidey-holes. Here’s one. And there’s another. Rat-faced gutter-creepers. Shaggy-headed street-boys, dressed in rag girdles and scraps of old blanket and bits of discarded sacking.

They’re both quite young. They don’t have beards yet.

‘Can I hold your horse?’ says the smaller one, who’s still a lot bigger than I am. I’ll just ignore him. (Hold my horse? He must think that my brains are boiled!)

‘Where are you from?’ asks the larger one, who’s got a wart on his cheek the size of a fortified farm. If I let drop a mouthful of nonsense, they might believe that I’m a foreigner speaking a foreign tongue, and shut the hell up.

‘Oodle-pargabarranturnis.’

Sure enough, it works. They start talking to each other loudly, as if I’m not even here.

‘I told you,’ says Wart-face. ‘I told you he was foreign. See how dark he is.’

‘There are saddlebags,’ his friend replies. ‘On the grey palfrey.’

Wart-face nods, and sidles away in a suspicious manner. His gap-toothed friend flashes me a big grin, and strokes my horse’s nose. ‘You—Catalan?’ he asks, pointing at me. ‘You—Lombard?’

What’s Wart-face doing back there? Stay away from those books, you leprous little horse-fly!

Gap-tooth is still in my face. Trying to distract my attention. Trying to make me forget his friend. ‘You— blackamoor?’ (Both of my hands are full of reins; I can’t let go of either horse. One horse on each side, like towers on a gate, and what am I going to do? I’m anchored.) ‘You—Infidel?’ Meanwhile, Wart-face is behind me, fumbling in a saddlebag.

Time to fight, or they’ll strip the horses clean.

My feet are my only defence. A quick kick in the groin, and Gap-tooth’s on his knees, yelping. Wart-face nearly bolts with a book, but—whoops! He’s too slow to turn. Not like me. The grey mare’s reins come in handy; they slip over his head like a hangman’s noose. One quick jerk and his feet fly out from under him.

He falls backwards, almost onto my feet. His head hits the cobbles. The horses don’t like it; they’re skittish, and toss their own heads. Gap-tooth is on his feet again, behind me, bent almost double. Wart-face is rolling about on the ground, shielding his face from dancing hoofs.

He’s dropped the book, God curse it.

If that book gets trampled, I’m dead. The priest will kill me. I can’t afford to mess around.

Gap-tooth has to go. He’s still bent double, so—
whack—my knee slams up into his forehead. Ow! That’s done him. I might be limping, but he’s out of the fight. As for the other one, he’s crawling away. A boot up the backside might get rid of him sooner.

‘Gaagh!’ he cries, as my kick makes contact. Over by the well, someone says something—and the tone sounds very unfriendly.

Never mind. With a horse on each side of me, I’m practically indestructible.

‘
Benoit
?’

It’s the priest. He’s calling from the church door. There are two men behind him, one of them another priest in a white robe.

Gap-tooth begins to reel away on knees made of carded wool. Wart-face staggers to his feet and runs. I must try to keep the horses away from that book.

‘Guilabert Sagnator!’
shouts the priest in white, shaking his fist at Gap-tooth’s retreating figure.
‘You stay away, do you hear me?’
Turning to
my
priest— Isidore, the Doctor—he lowers his voice and says something that I can’t quite hear from a distance.

I don’t know if Isidore heard it, either. He’s already striding towards me, his black robes billowing out behind him like a crow’s wings. The priest in white (who’s small and fat) has to run to keep up.

‘Your book!’ It comes out as a squeak before I can help myself. Lower your voice, Babylonne! ‘They tried to take your book . . .’

Isidore puts a finger to his lips. He scoops up the book and tucks it back into his saddlebag.

‘Ah, it is a great shame to us!’ The priest in white catches up, coughing pitifully and holding his sides. ‘They would steal the (cough-cough) hair from a (cough-cough) dead man’s head.’

‘Did they hurt you, Benoit?’ Isidore wants to know. He doesn’t seem the least bit worried about his book. (After all the trouble I took to protect it!) ‘Did they attack you? No? But you’re limping. You’ve injured your knee.’

Before I can respond, the priest in white interrupts again.

‘Bring him inside with us. Bruno (cough-cough) will take the horses. Bruno!’ He barks at the third man, who must be a servant of some sort, to judge from the clothes he’s wearing. They look as if they’ve spent several weeks in a goat’s stomach. ‘Bruno, take the horses in. Go on! Give them some oats.’

Bruno moves, but I can move faster. Those saddlebags aren’t going with Bruno, not if they have books in them. I wouldn’t trust Bruno as far as I could spew a bad mushroom.

‘It’s all right, Benoit.’ Isidore reaches out and peels my fingers off the leather stitching. ‘Leave them. You mustn’t worry.’

‘But—’

‘Trust me,’ he says.

And I’ll have to, I suppose.

No matter how foolhardy it may seem.

CHAPTER TEN

A room of my own. I’ve never had one before.

Not that it’s very big, or very fine. There’s no lock on the door. The window doesn’t have shutters. The bed is just a palliasse dumped on hard stone, with a couple of blankets tossed over it.

But there’s a latch. And a chest. And a glazed piss-pot. And the priests have stretched some kind of pale cloth across the window, to keep out the rain.

I can’t believe that it’s
mine
. All of it! For tonight, anyway.

I should put my things in this chest: my boots and my money and my scissors. The trouble is, this chest doesn’t have a lock. And I wouldn’t feel safe, leaving my most precious possessions in an unlocked chest. Suppose someone gets in? The door will be latched, but suppose there’s another entrance that I don’t know about?

I think I’ll sleep on my money. And my scissors. And my pepper. I don’t want to sleep undefended.

Knock-knock-knock
.

‘Oh!’ A visitor! My very first visitor. ‘Come in.’

It’s the priest, of course. Isidore. He went off to find food, and now he’s back with . . . what’s that in his hands?

‘Bread,’ he announces, laying a small, wrapped bundle on the chest. ‘Goat’s cheese. And this is a jug of mulled wine.’

Goat’s cheese! ‘Is this . . . is this all for me?’

‘It is. And I want you to eat it. You’re much too thin.’

Goat’s cheese. I suppose it’s no worse than a hen’s egg. It wasn’t killed, after all; why shouldn’t I eat it?

‘What’s wrong?’ he asks. (He must have been watching me again. The way he does. Like a hawk watching a field-mouse.) ‘Don’t you like goat’s cheese?’

‘I—I’ve never eaten cheese. Any kind of cheese.’

‘It’s good. You’ll like it.’

‘It’s the product of fornication.’

‘Ah. Yes.’ He nods. ‘I remember. But it’s Perfects who aren’t allowed to eat such things, surely? And you’re not a Perfect.’

Good point. I’m not a Perfect. I’m not even in training. After all, Gran and Navarre were going to marry me off.

‘I suppose it’s all right.’ I won’t contaminate them by eating cheese in their house. Not any more. ‘I can eat cheese now because nobody minds.’ Except God, perhaps. Curse it. What should I do? ‘Some believers eat cheese. It’s not good, but it’s not . . . it’s not
really
bad. I don’t think.’

‘It seems to me, Babylonne, that God made cheese for one purpose only. I mean to say, you can’t burn it, can you? Or wear it? Or build churches out of it?’ Isidore sets the wine down carefully next to the bread. ‘There’s nothing you
can
do with the stuff, except eat it.’