Which was why the Count had summoned Father Roubert, the chief Dominican in the town of Berat, to the great hall of the castle, which had long ceased to be a place of feasting, but instead was lined with shelves on which old documents mouldered and precious handwritten books were wrapped in oiled leather.
Father Roubert was just thirty-two years old. He was the son of a tanner in the town and had risen in the Church thanks to the Count’s patronage. He was very tall, very stern, with black hair cut so short that it reminded the Count of the stiff-bristled brushes the armourers used to burnish the coats of mail. Father Roubert was also, this fine morning, angry. ‘I have business in Castillon d’Arbizon tomorrow,’ he said, ‘and will need to leave within the hour if I am to reach the town in daylight.’
The Count ignored the rudeness in Father Roubert’s tone. The Dominican liked to treat the Count as an equal, an impudence the Count tolerated because it amused him. ‘You have business in Castillon d’Arbizon?’ he asked, then remembered. ‘Of course you do. You are burning the beghard, are you not?’
‘Tomorrow morning.’
‘She will burn with or without you, father,’ the Count said, ‘and the devil will take her soul whether you are there to rejoice or not.’ He peered at the friar. ‘Or is it that you like to watch women burn?’
‘It is my duty,’ Father Roubert said stiffly.
‘Ah yes, your duty. Of course. Your duty.’ The Count frowned at a chessboard on the table, trying to work out whether he should advance a pawn or retract a bishop. He was a short, plump man with a round face and a clipped beard. He habitually wore a woollen cap over his bald head and, even in summer, was rarely without a fur-lined gown. His fingers were perpetually ink-stained so that he looked more like a fussy clerk than the ruler of a great domain. ‘But you have a duty to me, Roubert,’ he chided the Dominican, ‘and this is it.’ He gave the Cardinal Archbishop’s letter to the Dominican and watched as the friar read the long document. ‘He writes a fine Latin, does he not?’ the Count said.
‘He employs a secretary who is properly educated,’ Father Roubert said curtly, then he examined the great red seal to make certain the document was genuine. ‘They say,’ the friar sounded respectful now, ‘that Cardinal Bessières is regarded as a possible successor to the Holy Father.’
‘So not a man to offend?’
‘No churchman should ever be offended,’ Father Roubert answered stiffly.
‘And certainly not one who might become Pope,’ the Count concluded. ‘But what is it he wants?’
Father Roubert went to a window screened with a lead lattice supporting scraped horn panes that let a diffuse light into the room, but kept out rain, birds and some of winter’s cold winds. He lifted the lattice from its frame and breathed the air which, this high up in the castle’s keep, was wonderfully free of the latrine stink in the lower town. It was autumn and there was the faint smell of pressed grapes in the air. Roubert liked that smell. He turned back to the Count. ‘Is the monk here?’
‘In a guest room,’ the Count said. ‘He’s resting. He’s young, very nervous. He bowed to me very properly, but refused to say what the Cardinal wants.’
A great clash in the yard below prompted Father Roubert to peer through the window again. He had to lean far forward for even here, forty feet up the keep, the walls were nearly five feet thick. A horseman in full plate armour had just charged the quintain in the yard and his lance had struck the wooden shield so hard that the whole contraption had collapsed. ‘Your nephew plays,’ he said as he straightened from the window.
‘My nephew and his friends practise,’ the Count corrected the friar.
‘He would do better to look to his soul,’ Father Roubert said sourly.
‘He has no soul, he’s a soldier.’
‘A tournament soldier,’ the friar said scornfully.
The Count shrugged. ‘It is not enough to be wealthy, father. A man must also be strong and Joscelyn is my strong arm.’ The Count said it forcibly, though in truth he was not sure that his nephew was the best heir for Berat, but if the Count had no son then the fief must pass to one of his nephews and Joscelyn was probably the best of a bad brood. Which made it all the more important to have an heir. ‘I asked you here,’ he said, choosing to use the word ‘asked’ rather than ‘ordered’, ‘because you might have some insight into His Eminence’s interest.’
The friar looked at the Cardinal’s letter again. ‘Muniments,’ he said.
‘I noticed that word too,’ the Count said. He moved away from the open window. ‘You’re causing a draught, father.’
Father Roubert reluctantly replaced the horn screen. The Count, he knew, had deduced from his books that for a man to be fertile he must be warm and the friar wondered how folk in cold northern countries ever managed to breed. ‘So the Cardinal isn’t interested in your books,’ the Dominican said, ‘but only in the county’s records?’
‘So it would seem. Two hundred years of tax rolls?’ The Count chuckled. ‘Brother Jerome will enjoy deciphering those.’
The friar said nothing for a while. The sound of clashing swords echoed from the castle’s curtain wall as the Count’s nephew and his cronies practised their weapons in the yard. Let Lord Joscelyn inherit here, the friar thought, and these books and parchments would all be put to the flames. He moved closer to the hearth in which, though it was not cold outside, a great fire burned and he thought of the girl who must be burned to death next morning in Castillon d’Arbizon. She was a heretic, a foul creature, the devil’s plaything, and he remembered her agony as he had tortured the confession from her. He wanted to see her burn and hear the screams that would announce her arrival at the gates of hell, and so the sooner he answered the Count the sooner he could leave.
‘You’re hiding something, Roubert,’ the Count prompted him before the friar could speak.
The friar hated being called by his simple Christian name, a reminder that the Count had known him as a child and had paid for his elevation. ‘I hide nothing,’ he protested.
‘So tell me why a cardinal archbishop would send a monk to Berat?’
The friar turned from the fire. ‘Do I need to remind you,’ he said, ‘that the county of Astarac is now a part of your domain?’
The Count stared at Father Roubert, then realized what the friar was saying. ‘Oh, dear God, no,’ the Count said. He made the sign of the cross and returned to his chair. He peered at the chessboard, scratched an itch beneath his woollen cap and turned back to the Dominican. ‘Not that old story?’
‘There have been rumours,’ Father Roubert said loftily. ‘There was a member of our order, a fine man, Bernard de Taillebourg, who died this year in Brittany. He was pursuing something, we were never told what, but the rumours say that he made common cause with a member of the Vexille family.’
‘Good Christ Almighty,’ the Count said. ‘Why didn’t you tell me this before?’
‘You wish me to bother you with every vaporous story that gets told in the taverns?’ Father Roubert retorted.
The Count did not answer. Instead he was thinking of the Vexilles. The old Counts of Astarac. They had been powerful once, great lords of wide lands, but the family had become entangled with the Cathar heresy and when the Church burned that plague from the land the Vexille family had fled to its last stronghold,