Fra Ferdinand had kept silent. The other travellers were nervous of him. He was gaunt, stern and mysterious, though his companions were grateful that he did not preach. The Black Friars were a preaching order, destined to wander the world in poverty and encourage it to godliness, and when the merchants turned southwards they gave him money, which Fra Ferdinand suspected was in gratitude for his silence. He accepted the charity, offered the donors a blessing, and walked north alone.
He kept to the wooded parts of the country to avoid strangers. He knew there were coredors, bandits, and routiers who would think nothing of robbing a friar. The world, he thought, had become evil, and he prayed for God’s protection and his prayers were answered because he saw no bandits and found no enemies, and late on a Tuesday evening he came to Agout, the village just south of the hills where the tower stood, and he went to the inn and there heard the news.
The Lord of Mouthoumet was dead. He had been visited by a priest accompanied by men-at-arms, and when the priest left the Sire of Mouthoumet was dead. He was buried now, and the men-at-arms had stayed at the tower until some Englishmen had come and there had been a fight and the Englishmen had killed three of the priest’s men and the rest had run away.
‘Are the English still there?’
‘They went away too.’
Fra Ferdinand went to the tower the next day where he found the Sire of Mouthoumet’s housekeeper, a garrulous woman who knelt for the friar’s blessing, but hardly ceased her chatter even as he gave it. She told how a priest had come, ‘He was rude!’, and then the priest had left and the men who remained behind had searched the tower and the village. ‘They were beasts,’ she said, ‘Frenchmen! But beasts! Then the English came.’ The English, she said, had worn a badge showing a strange animal holding a cup.
‘The Hellequin,’ Fra Ferdinand said.
‘Hellequin?’
‘It is a name they take pride in. Men should suffer for such pride.’
‘Amen.’
‘But the Hellequin did not kill the Sire of Mouthoumet?’ the friar asked.
‘He was buried by the time they arrived.’ She made the sign of the cross. ‘No, the Frenchmen killed him. They came from Avignon.’
‘Avignon!’
‘The priest came from there. He was called Father Calade.’ She made the sign of the cross. ‘He had green eyes and I did not like him. The sire was blinded! The priest gouged his eyes out!’
‘Dear God,’ Fra Ferdinand said quietly. ‘How do you know they came from Avignon?’
‘They said so! The men he left behind told us so! They said if we didn’t give them what they wanted then we would all be damned by the Holy Father himself.’ She paused just long enough to make the sign of the cross. ‘The English asked too. I didn’t like their leader. One of his hands was like the devil’s paw, like a claw. He was courteous,’ she said that grudgingly, ‘but he was hard. I could tell from his hand that he was evil!’
Fra Ferdinand knew how superstitious the old woman was. She was a good woman, but saw omens in clouds, in flowers, in dogs, in smoke, in anything. ‘Did they ask about me?’
‘No.’
‘Good.’ The friar had found a refuge in Mouthoumet. He was becoming too old to walk the roads of France and rely on the kindness of strangers to provide a bed and food, and a year earlier he had come to the tower and the old man had invited him to stay. They had talked together, eaten together, played chess together, and the count had told Fra Ferdinand all the ancient stories of the Dark Lords. ‘The English will come back, I think,’ the friar said now, ‘and perhaps the French too.’
‘Why?’
‘They search for something,’ he said.
‘They searched! They dug up the new graves even, but they found nothing. The English went to Avignon.’
‘You know that?’
‘That’s what they said. That they would follow Father Calade to Avignon.’ She crossed herself again. ‘What would a priest from Avignon want here? Why would the English come to Mouthoumet?’
‘Because of this,’ Fra Ferdinand said, showing her the old blade.
‘If that’s all they want,’ she said scornfully, ‘then give it to them!’
The Count of Mouthoumet, fearing that the rampaging English would plunder the graves of Carcassonne, had begged the friar to rescue la Malice. Fra Ferdinand suspected that the old man really wanted to touch the blade himself, to see this miraculous thing that his ancestors had protected, a relic of such power that possession of it might take a man’s soul directly to heaven, and such was the old man’s desperate pleading that Fra Ferdinand had agreed. He had rescued la Malice, but his fellow friars were preaching that the sword was the key to paradise, and all across Christendom men were lusting after the blade. Why would they preach that? He suspected that he was to blame himself. After the count had told him the legend of la Malice, the friar had dutifully walked to Avignon and recounted the story to the master general of his order and the master general, a good man, had smiled, then said that a thousand such tales were told each year and that none had ever held the truth. ‘Do you remember ten years ago?’ the master general had asked, ‘when the pestilence came? And how all Christendom believed the Grail had been seen? And before that, what was it? Ah, the lance of Saint George! And that was a nonsense too, but I thank you, brother, for telling me.’ He had sent Fra Ferdinand away with a blessing, but maybe the master general had told others of the relic? And now, thanks to the Black Friars, the rumour had infested all Europe. ‘“He who must rule us will find it, and he shall be blessed,’’’ the friar said.
‘What does that mean?’ the old woman asked.
‘It means that some men go mad in search of God,’ Fra Ferdinand explained, ‘it means that every man who wants power seeks a sign from God.’
The old woman frowned, not understanding, but she believed Fra Ferdinand was strange anyway. ‘The world is mad,’ she said, picking on that one word. ‘They say the English devils have burned half of France! Where is the king?’
‘When the English come,’ Fra Ferdinand said, ‘or anyone else, tell them I have gone to the south.’
‘You’re leaving?’
‘It’s not safe for me here. Perhaps I will return when the madness is over, but for now I am going to the high hills by Spain. I shall hide there.’
‘To Spain! They have devils there!’
‘I shall go to the hills,’ Fra Ferdinand reassured her, ‘close to the angels,’ and next morning he walked southwards and only when he was well out of sight of the village and sure that no one watched him did he turn north. He had a long journey to make and a treasure to protect.
He would return la Malice to her rightful owner. He would go to Poitou.
A small man, dark-faced and scowling, with a paint-spattered shock of black hair, was perched on a high trestle and using a brush to touch brown pigment onto an arched ceiling. He said something in a language Thomas did not understand.
‘You speak French?’ Thomas asked.
‘We all have to speak French here,’ the painter said, changing to that language, which he spoke with an execrable accent, ‘of course we damned well speak French. Have you come to give me advice?’
‘On what?’
‘On