The Heretic's Apprentice (31 page)

When they entered the great court, the brothers had just come out from Compline. Abbot Radulfus emerged from the cloister to cross to his own lodging, with his distinguished guests one on either side. They came at the right moment to see a brother of the house leading in, on one of the abbey's ponies, the prisoner accused of heresy, and released on his parole some three hours earlier. The rider was soiled and blackened by smoke, his hands and his hair at the temples somewhat scorched by fire, a circumstance he had not so far noticed, but which rendered the whole small procession a degree more outrageous in Canon Gerbert's eyes. Brother Cadfael's calm acceptance of this unseemly spectacle only redoubled the offence. He helped Elave to dismount, patted him encouragingly on the back, and ambled off to the stables with the pony, leaving the prisoner to return to his cell of his own volition, even gladly, as if he were indeed coming home. This was no way to hold an alleged heretic. Everything about the procedures here in the abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul scandalised Canon Gerbert.

‘Well, well!' said the bishop, unshaken, even appreciative. ‘Whatever else the young man may be, he's a man of his word.'

‘I marvel,' said Gerbert coldly, ‘that your lordship should ever have taken such a risk. If you had lost him it would have been a grave dereliction, and a great injury to the Church.'

‘If I had lost him,' said the bishop, unmoved, ‘he would have lost more and worse. But he comes back as he went, intact!'

Brother Cadfael asked audience with the abbot early next morning, to recount all that had happened, and was glad to meet Hugh arriving just as he himself was leaving. Hugh's session with Abbot Radulfus lasted longer. There was much to tell, and still much to do, for nothing had yet been seen of Jevan of Lythwood, dead or alive, since he had leaped into the Severn a lighted torch, his hair erected and ablaze. For Radulfus, too, the day's business was of grave importance. Roger de Clinton abhorred time wasted, and was needed in Coventry, and it was his intention to make an end, one way or another, at this morning's chapter, and be off back to his restless and vulnerable city.

‘Oh, yes, and I have brought and delivered to Canon Gerbert,' said Hugh, rising to take his leave, ‘the latest report from Owain's borders. Earl Ranulf has come to terms for the time being, it suits Owain to keep the peace with him for a while. The earl will be back in Chester by tonight No doubt the canon will be relieved to be able to continue his journey.'

‘No doubt,' said the abbot. He did not smile, but even in two bare syllables there was a tone of satisfaction in his voice.

Elave came to his trial shaven, washed clean of his smoky disfigurement, and provided, by Brother Denis' good offices, with a clean shirt and a decent coat in exchange for his scorched and unsightly one. It was almost as if the community had grown so accustomed to him during his few day's stay, and so completely lost all inclination to regard him as in any way perilous or to be condemned, that they were united in wishing him to present the most acceptable appearance possible, and make the most favourable impression, in a benevolent conspiracy which had come into being quite spontaneously.

‘I have been taking advice,' said the bishop briskly, opening the assembly, ‘concerning the ordinary human record of this young man, from some who know him well and have had dealings with him, as well as what I have observed with my own eyes in this short while. And let no man present feel that the probity or otherwise of a man's common behaviour has nothing to do with such a charge as heresy. There is authority in scripture: By their fruits you may know them. A good tree cannot bring forth bad fruit, nor a bad tree good fruit. So far as anyone has been able to inform me, this man's fruits would seem to bear comparison with what most of us can show. I have heard of none that could be called rotten. Bear that in mind. It is relevant. As to the exact charges brought against him, that he has said certain things which go directly against the teachings of the Church... Let someone now rehearse them to me.'

Prior Robert had written them down, and delivered them with a neutral voice and impartial countenance, as if even he had felt how the very atmosphere within the enclave had changed towards the accused.

‘My lord, in sum, there are four heads: first, that he does not believe that children who die unbaptised are doomed to reprobation. Second, as a reason for that, he does not believe in original sin, but holds that the state of newborn children is the state of Adam before his fall, a state of innocence. Third, that he holds that a man can, by his own acts, make his own way towards salvation, which is held by the Church to be a denial of divine grace. Fourth, that he rejects what Saint Augustine wrote of predestination, that the number of the elect is already chosen and cannot be changed, and all others are doomed to reprobation. For he said rather that he held with Origen, who wrote that in the end all men would be saved, since all things came from God, and to God they must return.'

‘And those four heads are all the matter?' said the bishop thoughtfully.

‘They are, my lord.'

‘And how do you say, Elave? Have you been misreported in any of these counts?'

‘No, my lord,' said Elave firmly. ‘I hold by all of those. Though I never named this Origen, for I did not then know the name of the elder who wrote what I accepted and still believe.'

‘Very well! Let us consider the first head, your defence of those infants who die unbaptised. You are not alone in having difficulty in accepting their damnation. In doubt, go back to Holy Writ. That cannot be wrong. Our Lord,' said the bishop, ‘ordered that children should be allowed to come to him freely, for of such, he said, is the kingdom of heaven. To the best of my reading, he never asked first whether they were baptised or not before he took them up in his arms. Heaven he certainly allotted to them. But tell me, then, Elave, what value
do
you see in infant baptism, if it is not the sole way to salvation?'

‘It is a welcome into the Church and into life, surely,' said Elave, uncertain as yet of his ground and of his judge, but hopeful. ‘We come innocent, but such a membership and such a blessing is to help us keep our innocence.'

‘To speak of innocence at birth is to bring us to the second count. It is part of the same thinking. You do not believe that we come into the world already rotten with the sin of Adam?'

Pale, obstinate and unrelenting, Elave said: ‘No, I do not believe it. It would be unjust. How can God be unjust? By the time we are grown we have enough to bear with our own sins.'

‘Of all men,' agreed the bishop with a rueful smile, ‘that is certainly true. Saint Augustine, who has been mentioned here, regarded the sin of Adam as perpetuated in all his heirs. It might be well to give a thought to what the sin of Adam truly was. Augustine held it to be the fleshly act between man and woman, and considered it the root and origin of all sin. There is here another disputable point. If this in every case is sin, how comes it that God instructed his first-made creatures to be fruitful and multiply and people the earth?'

‘It is nevertheless a more blessed course to refrain,' said Canon Gerbert coldly but carefully, for Roger de Clinton was on his own ground, noble, and highly regarded.

‘Neither the act nor abstention from the act is of itself either good or bad,' said the bishop amiably, ‘but only in respect of its purpose, and the spirit in which it is undertaken. What was your third head, Father Prior?'

‘The question of free will and divine grace,' said Robert. ‘And namely, whether a man can of his free will choose right instead of wrong, and whether by so doing he can proceed one step towards his own salvation. Or whether nothing can avail of all he does, however virtuous, but only by divine grace.'

‘As to that, Elave,' said the bishop, looking at the resolute face that fronted him with such intent and sombre eyes, ‘you may speak your mind. I am not trying to trap you, I desire to know.'

‘My lord,' said Elave, picking his way with deliberation, ‘I do believe we have been given free will, and can and must use it to choose between right and wrong, if we are men and not beasts. Surely it is the least of what we owe, to try and make our way towards salvation by right action. I never denied divine grace. Surely it is the greatest grace that we are given this power to choose, and the strength to make right use of it. And see, my lord, if there is a last judgement, it will not and cannot be of God's grace, but of what every man has done with it, whether he buried his talent or turned it to good profit. It is for our own actions we shall answer, when the day comes.'

‘So thinking,' said the bishop, eyeing him with interest. ‘I see that you can hardly accept that the roll of the elect is already made up, and the rest of us are eternally lost. If that were true, why strive? And strive we do. It is native to man to have an aim, and labour towards it. And God he knows, better than any, that grace and truth and uprightness are as good aims as any. What else is salvation? It is no bad thing to feel obliged to earn it, and not wait to be given it as alms to a beggar, unearned.'

‘These are mysteries for the wise to ponder, if anyone dare,' said Gerbert in chill disapproval, but somewhat abstractedly, too, for a part of his mind was already preoccupied with the journey on to Chester, and the subtle diplomacy he must have at his finger-ends when he got there. ‘From one obscure even among the laity it is presumptuous.'

‘It was presumptuous of Our Lord to argue with the doctors in the temple,' said the bishop, ‘seeing he was human boy as well as God, and in both kinds true to that nature. But he did it. We doctors in the temple nowadays do well to recall how vulnerable we are.' And he sat back in his stall, and regarded Elave very earnestly for some minutes. ‘My son,' he said then, ‘I find no fault with you for venturing to use wits which, I'm sure you would say, are also the gift of God, and meant for use, not to be buried profitless. Only take care to remember that you are also subject to error, and vulnerable after your own kind as I after mine.'

‘My lord,' said Elave, ‘I have learned it all too well.'

‘Not so well, I hope, as to bury your talent now. It is better to cut too deep a course than to stagnate and grow foul. One test only I require, and that is enough for me. If you believe, in all good faith, the words of the creed, in the sight of this assembly and of God, recite it for me now.'

Elave had begun to glow as brightly as the sun slanting across the floor of the chapter-house. Without further invitation, without an instant's thought, he began in a voice loud, clear and joyful: ‘I believe in one God, the Father, the ruler of all men, the maker of all things visible and invisible...'

For this belonged in the back of his mind untouched since childhood, learned from his first priestly patron, whom he loved and who could do no wrong for him, and with whom he had chanted it regularly and happily for years without ever questioning what it meant, only feeling what it meant to the gentle teacher he adored and imitated. This was his faith for once not chiselled out for himself, but received, rather an incantation than a declaration of belief. After all his doubts and probings and rebellions, it was his innocence and orthodoxy that set the seal on his deliverance.

He was just ending, in triumph, knowing himself free and vindicated, when Hugh Beringar came quietly into the chapter-house, with a bundle wrapped in thick swathes of waxed cloth under his arm.

*

‘We found him,' said Hugh, ‘lodged under the bridge, caught up by the chain that used to moor a boat mill there, years ago. We have taken his body home. Girard knows everything we could tell him. With Jevan's end this whole matter can end. He owned to murder before he died. There is no need to publish to the world what would further injure and distress his kin.'

‘None,' said Radulfus.

There were seven of them gathered together in Brother Anselm's corner of the north walk, but Canon Gerbert was not among them. he had already shaken off the dust of this questionably orthodox abbey from his riding-boots, mounted a horse fully recovered from his lameness and eager for exercise, and set off for Chester, with his body servant and his grooms, and no doubt was already rehearsing what he would have to say to Earl Ranulf, and how much he could get from him without promising anything of substance in return. But the bishop, once having heard of what Hugh carried, and the vicissitudes through which it had passed, had the human curiosity to wait and see for himself the final outcome. Here with him were Anselm, Cadfael, Hugh, Abbot Radulfus, and Elave and Fortunata, silent, hand in hand though they dissembled the clasp reticently between their bodies in this august company. They were still a little dazed with too sudden and too harsh experience, and not yet fully awake to this equally abrupt and bewildering release from tension.

Hugh had delivered his report in few words. The less said now of that death, the better. Jevan of Lythwood was gone, taken from the Severn under the same arch of the same bridge where he had hidden his own dead man until nightfall. In time Fortunata would remember him as she had always known him, an ordinary uncle, kind if not demonstrative. Some day it would cease to matter that she still could not be certain whether he would indeed have killed her, as he had killed one witness already, rather than give up what in the end he had valued more than life. It was the last irony that Aldwin, according to Conan, had never managed to see what was within the box. Jevan had killed to no purpose.

‘And this,' said Hugh, ‘was still in his arms, lodged fast against the stone of the pier.' It lay now upon Anselm's work-table, still shedding a few drops of water as the wrappings were stripped away. ‘It belongs, as you know, to this lady, and she has asked that it be opened here, before you, my lords, as witnesses knowledgeable in such works as may be found within.'