Authors: Matilde Asensi
“So, I am now a Valencian Montesino.”
“First and foremost, you are a learned and prudent man, Brother Perquisitore, and you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that being known as a Hospitaller would hinder your work while a Montesino will always be well received in the places that you will be forced to visit.” He carefully untied the knotted rope that belted his fake Franciscan habit and pulled out some sealed letters from amongst the folds which he handed me. “These are the passes, permits and affidavit that the Pope mentioned, issued by the Order of Montesa. In them, you appear as a doctor. We thought it would be best for you in the case that you are ever in danger.”
Micer Robert wearily rose from his chair, stretching his muscles with a pained look on his face. My bones also cracked as I stood up.
“It’s late, Brother. The sun is out. We must get some sleep and rest. You have a long journey ahead of you. Where are you going to start?”
“With the documents that I have in this folder,” I replied, tapping on the file that John XXII had given me. “It’s never a good idea to do things without having first anticipated all of the likely moves of the game.”
On a chilly and cloudy dawn at the beginning of June, a few days after the visit to the Pope’s castle, Jonas and I set off towards Paris. Our horses looked great following several days of plenty of food and rest at the captaincy stables, and they also seemed to be very satisfied with their new luxurious garments. I, on the other hand, couldn’t say the same for myself. In addition to being tired, I felt uncomfortable and strange in this stuffy court outfit, imprisoned in an elegant brocade coat and looking ridiculous with the terrible red and gold boots with a curled toe.
The young Jonas was still angry with me, feeling little less than a victim of a shameful abduction. He had barely opened his mouth since the first night, only speaking to me when absolutely necessary, as if he didn’t have time for any nonsense, and as I was focused on the papal documents, I didn’t pay him the slightest attention.
Shortly after leaving Avignon, barely a couple of hours later, I came to a halt at the entrance of a small town named Roquemaure.
“We will stay here,” I announced. “Go on ahead to the inn and order us some food.”
“Here?” protested Jonas. “But this village doesn’t even seem to be inhabited!”
“Well it is. Ask for François’ inn. We will eat there. Take care of everything while I take a look around.”
I watched him enter the village with his head sunk between his shoulders, dragging behind him the mares we had been given in Avignon to carry our equipment and which, due to their large size, are highly sought after there and are known as haquenées. Jonas was actually a remarkable boy; he wasn’t to blame for his great pride, as it was a family trait that only improved over time and with the blows of life.
Roquemaure was made up of four or five peasant houses and, taking advantage of the fact that the Avignon-Paris road ran through the village, they all sold food and offered lodgings to travelers. Its proximity to the city somewhat lessened the benefits but it was said that, precisely due to its location, the prelates from the court of Avignon frequently went there to discretely meet their lovers which is how they all stayed in business.
Well, on the morning of the 20th of April 1314, the retinue of the poor, sick Pope Clement had stopped in Roquemaure. The Pope had begun a journey — which had ended in death —, to his hometown of Wlaudraut, in Gascony, to recover from what the medical reports in my leather folder described as ‘attacks of anxiety and suffering, whose only physical symptom was a persistent fever’. The deterioration of the Pope forced the retinue to stop and seek refuge in the only official inn in the village, the one belonging to the innkeeper François. A few hours later, between sharp spasms of pain, Pope Clement died, bleeding from every orifice in his body.
Faced with the inevitable, and to avoid rumors and nasty comments, given the village’s bad reputation, the cardinals of the Apostolic Chamber decided to discretely move the body to the Dominican priorate in Avignon, where the Pope had resided since the Council of Vienne in 1311. Clement’s personal servant, Cardinal Henry of Saint-Valery, had sworn on the cross that His Holiness had not had anything to eat or drink since breakfast, before leaving Avignon. Interestingly, shortly after, Cardinal Saint-Valery had requested to be sent to Rome as a vicar to take control of the Papal State’s taxes.
The inn’s dining room was a small, dark place, with a strong smell of food and was filled with the steam that was coming from the pots over the fire. Between the wine barrels, stacked here and there, the walls appeared to be stained with filthy grease spots which was not a good recommendation for delicate stomachs. Jonas was waiting for me, bored, at the only clean table in the establishment, playing with crumbs from a loaf of bread that he had been given to accompany the food. I sat in front of him, placing my coat to one side.
“What are they going to serve us?”
“Fish. It’s all they have today.”
“Very well, then fish it is. And while we are waiting, we will talk. I know that you feel offended and I want to clear it up.”
“I don’t have anything to say,” he uttered haughty, to immediately add, “You made an oath to the prior of my monastery and you have gone back on your word.”
“When did I do such a thing?”
“The other day, when we arrived at your captaincy in Avignon.”
“But there wasn’t a Mauricense convent in the city! If there had been, Jonas, you would have slept there. Remember that I told you that you could leave.”
“Yes, well … But during our trip from Ponç de Riba to here, you haven’t taken me to sleep in any of my Order’s abbeys.”
“If I remember correctly, we made the journey at such a speed that we slept outside most nights.”
“Yes, that’s also true.”
“So, what’s your problem?”
I watched him as he agonized between the lack of arguments and the unprovable certainty that I would not allow him to return to the monastery. My silent observation of his impotence was not cruelty; I wanted him to find the way to logically defend what were simply feelings, speculations, that fought within him to find a way of expressing themselves.
“Your attitude,” he mumbled at last. “I don’t like your attitude. You don’t show the support that a master should give his apprentice to comply with his obligations.”
“And to what obligations are you referring?”
“Prayer, the daily holy service, Mass ….”
“And who am I to force you to do something that should come naturally? Look, Jonas, I would never stand in the way of you carrying out these activities but what I will never do is remind you that you have to do them. If it is your wish, do them. You are old enough to take your vocation seriously.”
“But I am not free!” he groaned like the small boy that deep down he really was, despite his height. “I was abandoned at the monastery and my destiny is to repeat the sacred vows. It is written as such in the Rule of St. Maurice.”
“I know that,” I said patiently. “It’s the same in the Cistercian monasteries and in other smaller ones. But remember that you can always chose. Always. Your life, from the time you begin to have certain control over it, is a formation of good or bad choices but at the end of the day, they are choices. Imagine that you are climbing a huge tree and you can’t see the top; in order to get there, you must chose the branches that appear to be the most suitable, constantly deciding against one and picking another which in turn will bring you to a new decision. If you get to where you wanted to go, it’s because you chose the right path. If not, it means that you made the wrong decision and your subsequent preferences were already conditioned by that mistake.”
“Do you know what you’re saying, frere?” he warned me, unnerved. “You are denying the predestination of the Providence, you are elevating free will above the secret plans of God.”
“No, the only thing I’m elevating is the hunger in my stomach which is beginning to protest with fury. And remember that you mustn’t call me frere from now on. Innkeeper! Innkeeper!”
“What!” replied an angry voice from the back of the kitchen.
“Is that fish coming or do you still have to go to the river and catch it?”
“The gentleman likes to joke, huh?” said the innkeeper, suddenly appearing behind the counter. He was a fat, vulgar-looking man, with huge sweaty jowls, and to complete his grimy look was a dirty apron tied at his waist which he used to clean the fish fat from his hands while he approached our table. The Provençal language he spoke was very similar to my Catalan mother tongue. In any case, we would have been able to communicate without difficulty thanks to the large similarities between the Romance languages.
“We’re hungry, innkeeper. But I see that you are hard at work and, for my own good, I do not wish to disturb you.”
“Well you did!” he said crossly. “Now you’re going to have to wait longer until the food is ready. Plus I’m on my own today. My wife and children have gone to visit relatives, so contain your stomachs with that bread.”
“Are you the famous François?” I asked, feigning admiration and watching him carefully. He turned to face me with a new expression on his face. So, you are vulnerable to vanity. Good, very good …! I said to myself, satisfied. Whenever I was working on a mission entrusted to me by my Order, I was accustomed to forgetting about the sword, the dagger and the spear, because on numerous occasions I had found them to be of no use when trying to get information from people. As such, I had the art of flattery, friendly persuasion, verbal tricks and manipulating the nature and temperament of others down to near perfection.
“How do you know who I am? I don’t recall seeing you here before.”
“And I have never been here but your food is famous throughout Languedoc.”
“Really?” he asked, surprised. “And who told you about me?”
“Oh, well, lots of people!” I lied. I was getting myself into a rut.
“Name one!”
“Well, let me think … Ah, yes! The first was my friend Langlois, who passed through here one day on his way to Nevers, and he told me: ‘If you ever go to Avignon, make sure that you eat at François’ inn, in Roquemaure.’ Another one who springs to mind is Count Fulgence Delisle, who I’m sure you remember, who had the good taste to try your food a while ago when he stayed here on his way to a party in Toulouse. And lastly, my second cousin, Cardinal Henry of Saint-Valery, who specially recommended you.”
“Cardinal Saint-Valery?” he asked, looking at me suspiciously out of the corner of his eye. Here, I told myself, is a man with a secret. The pieces started to fall together just as I had suspected. “He’s your cousin?”
“Oh, maybe I exaggerated slightly!” I rectified with a laugh. “Our respective mothers were second cousins. As you will have noted by my accent, I’m not from around here. I’m from Valencia, on the other side of the Pyrenees. But my mother was from Marseilles, in the Provence.” I gave Jonas a slight kick under the table for him to shut his saucer-like eyes. “I know that my cousin visited you frequently when he was serving Pope Clement. He himself told me that on more than one occasion before he died.”
I was playing all in but it was an interesting round.
“So he’s dead?”
“Oh, yes! He died two months ago, in Rome.”
“Oh, hell!” he let slip in surprise, and then, realizing what he had said, changed direction: “Heavens, I’m sorry, sire!”
“It’s fine. Don’t worry.”
“I’ll bring you your food straight away,” he said, quickly disappearing into the kitchen.
Jonas looked at me terrified.
“Frere Galceran, you just told a pack of lies!” he stammered.
“My dear Jonas, I have already told you not to call me frere. You must learn to call me sire, micer, sir, Knight Galceran, or whatever comes to mind but not frere.”
“You lied!” he repeated, insistently.
“Yes, so what? I will burn in hell, if that makes you feel better.”
“I think I’ll be returning to my monastery very soon.” For a moment I was paralyzed. Due to a mistaken feeling of secret possession for the boy, I had not anticipated that he could appeal to his freedom and return to Ponç de Riba; but rather I had assumed that by my side, he would feel free for the first time in his life, far from the monks and traveling the world. But naturally, he didn’t know my plans for his future and was unaware that his real training was just about to begin. Nevertheless, it seemed that my method was completely wrong. I had to ask myself what I would have liked and how I would have acted if I was Jonas’ age again.
“O.K., boy,” I said, after a few moments of silence. “There is something that you need to know. Although this knowledge requires the utmost secrecy on your part. If you are willing to swear that you will keep your silence forever, I will tell you. If not, you can return to the monastery right now.”
I presume that, deep down, he never had the intention to leave me, even if it was just because he was scared of the long journey home. But that rascal was as cunning as me and he was learning from me how to play dangerously.
“I knew there was something behind all this,” he said, satisfied. “You have my word.”
“Good, but I won’t tell you anything yet. We are in the middle of the fire, do you understand?”
“Of course, sire! We are doing something that has to do with the secret.”
“Exactly. Now careful, the innkeeper is coming back.”
The fat François came towards us holding an enormous steaming pot with the pleasant smell of fish escaping from it. He was wearing his best smile.
“Here you go, sire, the best fish from the Rhone, prepared Provençe style, with herbs from the County of Venaissin!”
“Splendid, innkeeper! And a little wine to go with it? If you serve wine in this inn, that is.”
“The best!” he said, waving to the barrels on the other side of the room.
“Well have some wine with us while we eat and you can keep us company.”
I made him talk until we saw the bottom of the pot and we soaked up the broth with the loaf of bread. Meanwhile, Jonas filled up the innkeeper’s goblet as soon as he emptied it, and he emptied it various times throughout lunch. In the end, he had told me all about his life, that of his wife, of his children and much of the Apostolic Curia. I still haven’t found a better way of getting the information I need from someone than gaining their trust, making them talk about themselves, about their loved ones and about the things they feel proud of, accompanying attentive listening with gentle appreciative gestures. When we had finished the cheese and grapes, François was well in my power.
“So, François,” I commented, cleaning my fingers on the fine silk of my clothes, “you are the man in whose house the Holy Father Clement died.”
His pig-like shiny face suddenly paled. “What? How do you know that?”
“Come, come, François! Do you mean to tell me that you hadn’t thought my presence in this house rather strange, exactly two months after the death of my cousin?”
François opened his mouth to say something but nothing came out.
“You really weren’t suspicious of such a curious coincidence? I can’t believe that from a man as intelligent as yourself!”