Stigmata (8 page)

‘You are welcome to wait here by the fire, if you wish,’ she said.

He sat down on a little stool, his mind blank with panic. He feared that he might not do what he came to do, and also that he would. He suddenly had no idea how to proceed.

How was this done? With a whore you paid your penny and she lifted her skirts, or so he had been told. A wife arranged herself dutifully in the marriage bed and awaited her master. Was there
another way? He overheard certain students at the university talking of the women of the town, when they thought he was not within hearing, discussing what some would allow and others would not. It
seemed that although it depended on the nature of the girl, it also depended much on the nature of the man, and his boldness with words and action.

He knew nothing of such stratagems. He could hardly believe his own ears when he heard himself say: ‘Fabricia Bérenger, I think of you day and night. I can think of nothing else. I
am on fire.’

He grabbed her arm and pulled her to her feet. There was no tenderness in him at that moment; he was just bent on getting the thing done, taking what he so desperately wanted. Like a common
thief.

He dragged her down on to the hard floor and lifted her skirts. She did not resist him, and he was insensible to her pain when he possessed her, nor did he hear her protests. It was over
quickly; there was a sudden gasping moment, which he tried to slow or stop, and then it was done.

It came too quickly, this boiling moment of ecstasy and despair; he cried out as he slipped to a moment’s heaven and was at once thrown out again. His body barely ceased its spasm when he
was overtaken utterly by the blackest shame. He heard the blood rushing in his ears, and he wished only to be anywhere but where he was. He caught his breath and held it.
I will be damned by
this moment for ever.

He felt physically sick with revulsion at what he had done. He leaped to his feet, pulled down his robe and ran from the house without looking back.

Vercy.

F
OR DAYS, WHENEVER
he looked up, Renaut was there, trailing him around like a lost dog, scampering away when he threw his
wine flask at him, always trotting back when he had exhausted his rage.

Renaut’s father, Gauthier, had been sergeant-at-arms to his own father; they had fought side by side in Outremer and it had made a bond between them. As a boy he remembered them sitting
together at the table in the great hall like brothers and getting drunk and leaning on each other and laughing too loudly. It was the only time Philip had ever seen his father bawdy.

Gauthier had had lost an eye at Acre fighting the Saracen and the cicatrice traced from hairline to jaw, so that one side of his face looked as if it had once been wax and left too near a fire.
It made him fearsome. When he had had too much wine it was his pleasure to chase the children and serving women around the hall growling like a bear. Philip himself only ever remembered a
good-tempered man with a fondness for candied fruit.

Gauthier and Philip’s father fell out just before his father died and Renaut’s father found employment elsewhere and Gauthier died before they could reconcile. It was his
father’s only regret and on his deathbed he made Philip promise that he would make amends. He has a bastard son somewhere, he said.

So when Philip was invested at Vercy, he sent for him, to the astonishment and relief of all.

He arrived on All Souls’ Day, on the wettest day Philip could remember, the rain falling straight down from a sky the colour of pewter, no wind, mud up to the ankles. Renaut sat on a
piebald pony, its flanks shivering with cold and misery, escorted either side by two squires barely older than he was.

They had rung the chapel bells for nones but already the light was seeping out of the day. The porter and the stable boys went out with Philip to meet him, all of them in a hurry to get back to
the fire in the great hall and a warm cup of spiced wine. Renaut was not a robust lad, even then; he had baby curls and a face like a stricken angel. But it was his eyes that signified most; they
were of the most startling blue.

‘Are you cold?’ Philip asked him.

‘I’ve been colder.’

Really? He had only a leather cloak over a thin tunic. Philip had seen drowned dogs with better aspect.

‘All right, young man,’ he had said. ‘How about a warm fire and some hot beef? What do you say, young sir?’

The boy hesitated, his face solemn. ‘I should first tend to my horse.’

‘Did your grandfather teach you that? Well, we have stable boys to attend to that here.’ He would have scooped him from the horse’s back as he would a child but instead Renaut
slid from the saddle and followed Philip back into the castle, hands clasped behind his back.

He’ll do, Philip thought.

Steam rose from him as he stood by the fire. Even his lips were blue. The men laughed and the women fussed. ‘My name is Renaut,’ he said.

‘I know who you are.’

The women rubbed him with linen towels and were about to strip him there in the hall but he intervened. ‘We gentleman shall retire to dress in private,’ he said and led the boy
upstairs to the bedroom.

That had been ten years ago. In the intervening years he had taught him to tilt a lance at the quintain, how to fight with sword, mace and dagger, and how to ride straight-backed in the saddle.
He had also showed him how to use a longbow and the boy had the steadiest hand and best eye of any man he had ever seen. He had planned to purchase a palfrey, armour and a sword for him in the new
year, and have him dubbed a knight at the Easter festival.

He had grown in the year he had been gone; just a twig before he left, now there was meat on him and he answered back. He had blue eyes and sandy hair like his father, stubborn as he was, and
loyal to a fault.

‘Seigneur, you should eat,’ he said.

‘I’m not hungry,’ Philip growled.

But he let Renaut help him to his feet and he staggered downstairs. Dogs picked at the gnawed meat bones on the floor, sniffed at a litter of half-eaten brown pears. Mud all through the hall and
no one had thought to sweep the rushes. There was the sound of snoring from the straw by the cold fire and laughter from the stables. He went to the window, saw the stable boys playing knucklebones
in the yard. They should be feeding the horses and mucking out the stalls.

He dragged the nearest of the servants to his feet and took him by the ear. ‘Your master’s home, and is done with his grieving now. Today it is just a scolding; tomorrow I shall come
down with the whip. Be sure to be about your business.’

He rolled the rest of them out of the straw with his boot. They ran off: he would not need the whip. He would not have used it anyway, but they did not need to know that.

He went down to the scullery, stepped over a kitchen boy asleep on the stairs. There were weevils in the flour, mouse droppings in the larder. Grain crunched under his boot. Rats had chewed
through every one of the grain sacks and a pheasant lay unplucked on the bench. It seemed that no one had thought to salt the pork and it had turned rotten.

‘I tried to tell them,’ Renaut said. ‘They wouldn’t listen to me. There was even talk that perhaps you were not coming back.’

‘There’s mildew in the pot, for the love of God.’

What did I expect? he thought. When I put on the cross, it had fallen to her to pay the soldiers, scold the servants, have the hides tanned and the grain milled and keep count of the spice boxes
and the candles. Perhaps she was right, God’s cause was better served here in Vercy than in Jerusalem.

‘When the lady Alezaïs died . . .’

‘I understand. The fault lies with me, no one else.’ The boy was awake now, standing by the cold hearth, wide-eyed with fright. ‘Get the servants here now,’ he said to
him. ‘There’s work to be done.’

The boy ran off.

He turned to Renaut. ‘The sun is out. I want all the bed and table linen washed. Have we enough firewood for the winter? Get it done. Now that I am home I think you will find they listen
to you better. Tomorrow we go hunting. Let us pray we find a stag or two and fat boars or it’s going to be a lean winter.’

Somewhere in the castle a child was crying.

‘In God’s name, what is that?’

‘He does not have a name yet,’ Renaut said. ‘Do you want to see him?’

‘Not now.’ He turned for the stair. ‘I’m going to see to the stable boys, throw their dice in the moat. Then they can saddle my horse.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘I need to talk to my wife.’

Toulouse

F
ABRICIA GROANED AND
rolled on to her side. She put her hand between her legs and stared at the slimy, watery mess of
blood. She imagined this might be what it was like to be a young man knocked down in a fight, robbed and beaten by the companion with whom you were so taken a few minutes before.

And she had thought him so sad and so gentle.

She must get up off this floor; her mother would soon be home from the market. Would she tell her? But then her mother would tell her father and he would act upon that knowledge. Her family
would be brought to ruin.

If I am to go to the nunnery then my maidenhead is no longer of concern to any future husband, so no harm done there, she thought. Unless he has got me with child. But there is an old woman who
lives just outside the city walls who they say can give a girl a potion of herbs that will flush away a babe before it has a chance to grow.

All this decided and I have not yet pulled down my skirts.

She dragged herself to her feet, brushed the rushes from her clothes, smoothed down her hair. No bruises, then, no marks.

I feel as if I have been ripped and I want to spend the day weeping but I shan’t, and yes, aside from this, no harm done.

Silence then, and the old woman at the wall.

The city glared back at him. He shared conspiracy with the meanest cutpurse; the lowest beggar glanced up at him from the filthy alleys and knew his sin to its core.

He avoided a leper who passed him on the street, shaking a rattle to warn of his approach; but who shall taint whom? he thought. He went down a street of butchers, the blood from their
slaughterhouses running through the sea of mud and rubbish. Flies swarmed around the banquet.
There lies my soul.

He wandered blindly for hours before returning to the priory, where he went direct to his cell and fell to his prayers. He knew that he must now confess what he had done to the prior.

If only he might have the morning again, to undo what had been irrevocably done. He wanted to weep and could not. Each time he closed his eyes he saw again his loathsome sin.

But he did confess to the prior and within a day a curious thing happened. He began to want her again.

His desire began as a perverse whisper inside his head, at first scarcely heard among the screams of self-loathing. But before the second day was out she had already begun her haunting of him,
even as he tried to exorcize her. As he prayed abjectly for forgiveness, a part of him wished to sin again.

He kept to his cell, feigning sickness. The prior, concerned, sent the infirmarian, who prescribed a potion of herbs and, of course, a bleeding. Simon accepted his medicines without complaint
and with not a little disdain. He knew he must take action against his importunate desires if he was to save his soul, and when the way and means of it finally suggested itself, he was so low in
spirit and in mind that there was in him no resistance to the terrible cure.

T
HE BRIEF SUMMER
must be paid for. The weather passed from June to midwinter in just a day, the wind turned to the north
and now there was ice in its breath and the sky was the colour of a dead man’s shroud.

Simon turned up the hood on his cloak as a flurry of rain soaked him. Outside the common round of the Toulousains were crowded in the streets before the monastery of Saint-Sernin, in all their
stinking ardour for commerce and congress, no matter what the weather. Life must go on. Simon’s pony shied from an ox-cart, skittish on the frost-hard cobbles. He was hemmed in by the
water-carriers and onion-sellers.

A hand caught the reins. Blessed Jesus, save us; he must have been waiting outside the gates all morning. Should he feign impatience or outrage?

‘Anselm! What is the meaning of this? I have business to attend to. Release the halter, if you please.’

‘Father, a moment of your time.’

‘I have pressing affairs this morning. Should you not be at your work?’

‘I am told my services are no longer required. Another mason is to be contracted to finish the work.’

‘What business is this of mine?’

‘I thought I might begin my work at the monastery all the sooner.’

‘Impossible. The prior has changed his mind. He has asked me to contract another man for the work.’

Simon tried to jerk the reins away from him but they were bunched in the stonemason’s fist and it would take a troop of the Count’s yeomanry to release them. ‘What is it that I
have done to offend the Church?’

‘I do not take your meaning.’

‘Father, please, tell me what it is that I have done so that I might make amends.’

‘I do as my prior commands me. You should ask him these questions. Now please, remove yourself.’ He jerked at the reins but Anselm held fast, and his right hand closed on
Simon’s wrist. Simon cried out in pain and Anselm stepped back, as if he had put a hand in a fire.

‘I am sorry, Father.’

‘You would assault me in the street?’

‘A thousand pardons. It’s just that . . . I felt sure you could aid me with this. I am at a loss.’

Above them, on the corbels of the Porte des Comptes, devils were devouring the private members of the damned. My repudiation from heaven, he thought, in God’s eloquent calligraphy. But I
am too far gone in this now to turn back.

‘I am sorry for your misfortune, Anselm. But I know nothing of this business. Now good day to you.’