Crusade (7 page)

Middle-aged and round, they were comically identical, except that one had a scar from a burn on his right hand. Robert looked carefully at each cook’s hand before looking into his face whenever they met, and gradually he learned to distinguish mischievous, forgetful Brother Puck from steadier Brother Peter. Robert was by far the youngest boy living in the abbey and the kind cooks quickly made him their pet.

‘Psst, young Robert!’ Brother Puck would hiss. ‘Come to the kitchen when you can slip away from your lessons.’

Looking around to make sure that Abbot Benedict was nowhere in sight, Robert would dart into the kitchen and crouch under the chefs’ long trestle table. He waited. The sneaking of treats by the twins had its own sweet ritual.

After a few minutes, Brother Puck would exclaim animatedly, ‘Is that a rat next to the stove?’ or ‘I think I smell burning – check the bread!’

While the assistant cooks were distracted, a spicy little sugar-almond cake or a bit of salted herring would be thrust under the table by Brother Peter, and Robert would seize it and pop it into his mouth.

Chewing rapturously, he admired Brother Puck’s creativity in coming up with new distractions. When he had wiped his mouth and his hands on his breeches, he expressed his appreciation silently by patting the two pairs of worn comfy slippers peeping under the table. Then he hurried back to Abbot Benedict.

‘Jesus forgive us for leading the boy astray,’ Brother Peter would mutter uneasily, but Brother Puck had no qualms.

‘And who else but we two adds anything sweet to that lad’s day?’ he demanded. ‘He studies so hard and learns so fast you’d think the abbot would give him a little treat occasionally or even a word of praise. But have you ever seen him smile at the boy? Have you?’ And Brother Peter was forced to admit he had never observed the abbot’s grim visage softened by a genuine smile.

During the first five years, Abbot Benedict kept Robert near him almost all the time, even during the night hours, with Robert sleeping on a straw pallet at the foot of the abbot’s plank bed. But as the abbot’s feverish ambition made him less and less able to sleep through the night, he decided that the slight sounds of breathing from Robert might be contributing to his insomnia, and so Robert was assigned his own cell, adjoining that of his master. He even had his own oil lamp, an earthenware dish filled with water on which the oil and wick floated. The abbot gave it to him with instructions to continue his studies in the night if he was unable to sleep and observations on the sinfulness of wasting oil and wicks unnecessarily. It was the only thing his guardian had ever given the boy, and thus it was precious.

By this time, Robert was nearly twelve. He had not realised while he lived in the abbot’s cell how much he needed to have some time alone with his thoughts, pacing if he wished without being reprimanded, away from constant observation and shaping. For the first time, the boy, previously all mind, began to explore his heart. Feelings of any kind were frowned upon by the abbot, and Robert had had little chance to recognise his own. But with the luxury of hours alone in a room of his own, he began to think about
 . . .
himself.

He wasted little time wondering who his parents were. The only past that he could remember was an early childhood of loneliness, humiliation and hunger. He preferred to forget what was over and done with. The future held some great deed in which he would glorify God. Of that he was as sure as any young boy imagining the future.

It was the present that absorbed almost all his emotions. He felt increasingly constrained by his guardian’s relentless supervision. He endured waves of resentment at the man’s peremptory commands and demands at all hours of the day or night. At these times, his childhood habit of self-restraint helped him to keep his reaction well below the surface. But he promised himself repeatedly that in the years to come he would find a way to end the dependence he hated.

It was soon after Robert turned twelve that the abbot announced the boy was to accompany him on a trip to Paris.

Robert’s eyes opened wide with delight but the abbot cautioned him. ‘This is not a mere jaunt, Robert. I have been honoured with an invitation from a member of the standing council of judges, a distinguished jurist who wishes to discuss my writings on canon law.’

The abbot’s pale cheeks flushed a faint tinge of pink as he made this announcement, and Robert stared at him in wonder. Was that pleasure in the abbot’s face? ‘You are old enough now to accompany me and be of service.’

‘Yes, Père Abbé,’ Robert murmured, subduing his excitement until he was out of the abbot’s sight and scurrying to the kitchen to confide in Brother Puck and Brother Peter. He had seen nothing of the world but a small church in a small town and the confines of a large but quiet abbey. Now he was to see Paris. The cooks were gratifyingly impressed; they too had never travelled farther than the few miles of the journey from their home village to the abbey.

Robert’s journey was one of great disappointment and then great satisfaction. As they approached the gates of the city, the carriage driver pulled to the side unexpectedly and stepped down to inform the abbot that a messenger had signalled him to halt and wished to speak with the abbot. The message was that the distinguished judge was ill and there was suspicion that the sickness from which he suffered might be no ordinary ague, but the plague. Until further notice, the abbot was advised not to approach him for fear of infection.

Robert felt tears of disappointment filling his eyes. He blinked rapidly to get rid of them.

Coldly, the abbot ordered the messenger to wait, in case his services were needed, and retreated into silence while he calculated his next move. The setback was a terrible pity. He had spent many sleepless hours practising about what he should say in the coming meeting. Rumours he had heard led him to believe that he would be invited to join the standing council as an advisory assistant to King Philippe Auguste’s ecclesiastical courts, a prospect that was much to his taste. He had reached the position of abbot at an unusually young age and after a decade at Blois he was eager to move into a position that would offer him more
 . . .
intellectual stimulation was the way he would phrase it, a position that would afford him more power and influence than he could hope to wield in an abbey in the countryside.

In the past year, during those sleepless nights, an original idea to increase his ranking among equals, a way to stand out in the minds of his superiors, had taken hold and he was eager to begin. The idea had grown from his rigidly concealed pride in the extraordinary intelligence of his protégé, pupil and young companion, the slight boy sitting opposite him, whose eyes were blinking furiously to hold back tears, an effort the bishop fully expected him to make. The curiosity that had led him to take on the freakishly clever orphan had expanded into a calculating ownership. If he could show off, in one or two significant chambers of the great beehive of the church, his discernment in adopting this particular orphan rather than any other street urchin and the dramatic results of his disciplined system of education, then his unusual achievement, with its obvious emotional appeal, might bring his name more vividly to mind for advancement than those of competitors. He lay awake choreographing subtle ways to display the boy’s prowess. When the invitation to a meeting with an esteemed jurist in Paris had arrived, he was ready.

Now, at fever pitch, although none would have recognised it from watching him, he felt extremely reluctant to return to the abbey and wait for a repeat invitation. And what if the judge did not recover, and another judge lost no time putting forward a different name, for reasons easy to imagine? No, the abbot should waste no time in pursuing a new opportunity to display his unique young asset.

After a period of reflection, his face cleared and he summoned the messenger to the window of the carriage.

‘Carry my compliments to the rector of l’université de Paris,’ he instructed, his voice perfectly controlled. ‘Inform him of the circumstances that have forced me to change my plans for this visit to Paris, and request that I may take advantage of his past invitations to stay as his guest and witness the great learning taking place there. Return quickly with a reply.’

The messenger bowed his thanks for the coins dropped into his hands and galloped off towards the city gates.

‘Close the shutters,’ the abbot ordered to the carriage driver. ‘If there is indeed plague in the city, we should not be exposed to the ill air.’

Robert swallowed as the shutters slammed shut like the door of a jail. How he had looked forward eagerly to the sights of great Paris. And now he was sealed in a stuffy box waiting with the preoccupied abbot.

Neither of them noticed the other’s sigh of relief when the sweating messenger returned with a courteous invitation from the rector. The world brightened, although the shutters stayed closed and Robert saw nothing until the carriage drew to a halt.

Springing out to assist his master, Robert found himself in a large walled courtyard surrounded by handsome buildings with Latin mottoes carved over their entrance doors. Young men in long black gowns of a cut he had never seen before were walking from building to building or sitting on stone benches, talking intently, laughing easily.

‘Those are the students who study at this great school,’ the abbot told him.

‘But are they not too old for school, Père Abbé?’ Robert asked in puzzlement.

The abbot’s lips lengthened in what passed for a smile. ‘They have learned all that a children’s school can teach them, Robert. This is a school for advanced students, where the brightest young minds of Europe can study theology, law, medicine.’

‘And then
 . . .
?’ breathed Robert.

‘Why, they may become Masters of Theology or perhaps Masters of Law
 . . .
but hush, a messenger approaches.’

A student led them to the rector of the university, who welcomed them courteously and ordered refreshments for the travellers. Robert sniffed unobtrusively at the aromas that wafted from the goblet he was handed. Back at the monastery, the abbot’s drink of choice, offered only when he was feeling especially satisfied with some advancement of his career goals, was a non-alcoholic brew of green apples and blackberries, sour and austere as the abbot himself. This sweet liquid boasted of grapes and sunshine and honey. Sipping slowly, Robert sat on a bench slightly behind the abbot and listened attentively as the two men discussed church business. It seemed to him there was a subtle element of competition in the conversation. Each professed the greatest respect for the other, but went on smoothly to mention an influential connection or recent accomplishment of his own. It was like the dances at court that a travelling minstrel had once described to the young boy: the apparent coming together followed by a drawing away, the show of modesty before the showing off.

Musing, he was startled when the abbot indicated him, Robert, with a gesture of his head and said, ‘For example, my protégé here, young Robert, was an illiterate foundling whom I adopted and have educated in the strictest tradition. I have made no concession to the modern prattle about permitting students to question and challenge. At the tender age of twelve, he is now fluent enough with canon law to serve as my secretary in drafting an initial response to vexing issues that come to my attention – drafts I improve upon, of course. Many a time I have been gratified by the results of my didactic methods, for this is my first experience educating one so young, you know.’

The rector turned to Robert, observed the shy youngster with the long ragged scar marking his face, and spoke to him in a deliberately simplified Latin, ‘Are you familiar with some of our great scholars, child?’

Robert did not need the abbot’s meaningful look to rise to the occasion.

In the Latin of Ovid and Virgil, he murmured that he was greatly in the debt of the abbot for introducing him to the admirable clarity of Gratian’s code of canon law and the classic theological discussions in Lombard’s S
entences
. He even added his regret that the Paris council’s ban on the study of Aristotle’s
Metaphysics
would prevent him from humbly begging to know the opinion of the rector on the controversial work of the great ancient.

‘Impressive,’ the rector acknowledged. ‘Perhaps we shall see your young protégé at our university in the future, Abbot Benedict.’

‘That would be an honour to us both, Rector,’ the abbot feinted. ‘Although I believe he could join the class of second- or even third-year students, perhaps, as his grounding is excellent.’

‘We shall see, shall we not, Abbot Benedict?’ the rector parried.

The two men fell into a theological discussion, and Robert listened intently. Then, without warning, the rector turned to the boy.

‘Young Robert of Blois, behind that tapestry is a private passage leading directly to our university library. Hasten and bring me the book with Abelard’s views on this matter.’

Then he turned smoothly to the abbot and resumed their conversation. It would have been humiliating for Robert to interrupt and ask more precisely which of Abelard’s books the rector required. The abbot cast a worried glance in his direction. But Robert murmured his assent and slipped behind the tapestry. A winding stone passageway, with slits near the top of the wall that let in a little light, led him to a small door. There was a key in the keyhole and it turned easily. In a moment, Robert was in the great hall, lined with wide armaria. Their doors had been removed for convenience, and the manuscripts and scrolls on the shelves were displayed in an orderly fashion. There were also chests of different sizes and styles, standing on their sides with the lids open like doors to reveal more manuscripts. Rows of sloping lecterns at chest height bore heavy codices, which were invitingly open for study but were chained to the lecterns for fear of theft. Robert inhaled the aroma of parchment, cured leather and dust; to him this was Heaven.