'The Bishop had a right-hand man, a crusader knight returned from Outremer who was a little headstrong but willing and able to do whatever the Bishop needed doing, in return for money and, better, power over others. The Bishop enlisted this man in his quest for a great relic. This had to be small but important – an apostle's finger, a tooth of the Baptist – or less important but big: enough to fill a coffin, enough to parade through the streets.
'All familiar enough so far? Good. Now, the problem with relics is that entire saints are hard to come by – most of them are in little bits and pieces these days. There are holy corpses by the bushel in the East, but here in the Holy See, those schismatic Greek saints aren't worth more than the price of their winding cloths, and then only to the oakum man. The really big prizes went centuries ago – you'll know all about Saint Mark.
'But then all of a sudden, a scholar in Germany – a pupil of Albert of Cologne, in fact, Albertus Magnus, a charming fellow I had the good fortune to meet a few weeks ago… your pardon, Petroc. This scholar – who happened to be an Englishman studying abroad – while working on the life of Saint Ursula, discovered a clue buried far down in the archives of a monastery outside Cologne – that the body of Cordula had been carried away from the place of execution by a mercenary of the Huns, a Greek soldier who saw the martyrdom and saved the remains from the barbarians, who seem to have disposed very efficiently of most of the other eleven virgins – or perhaps the eleven thousand. This soldier made his way back to his home on an island in Greece, where he set up a church in Cordula's honour. As I'm sure you know, the Greeks have always done things very differently to us, and in their Schismatic way they made Cordula a Greek saint. I would imagine that, on a small island, the local folk forgot her origins very quickly and made her a daughter of the village. Her name was lost in a foreign tongue, and so she disappeared for perhaps a thousand years.'
'But she is not very important, is she, Adric? A very minor saint, surely?' 'Ah – there you have it – the small, simple thing at the centre of it alclass="underline" a long-dead girl. You would seem to be right. But Ursula's cult is not minor in the least. It brings a great deal of gold to Cologne – virgins come from all over Christendom to seek her protection. She has her own order of nuns. And around a century ago someone conveniently turned up a great cache of bones – apparently those of the virgin army – which Cologne has been busily selling off ever since. No, a complete virgin of Ursula would be a find indeed. There are always virgins in need of protection, dear boy…' And he shot me a look. 'So I've heard,' I answered carefully.
'Quite.' He coughed discreetly into his fist. And then this fellow found Cordula, or at least picked up her trail. Our world – the scholarly world – is very, very small, Petroc, and word gets around. It reached the Bishop of Cologne, and very soon your very own Bishop of Balecester was hatching schemes. With all those scholars at his beck and call, he started some research himself, and dug up some facts, so called, of his own. Most people know that Ursula came from Britain, and so did her virgins. But imagine his surprised delight – so very surprised he was, Petroc, and delighted – when his scholars uncovered the name of Cordula in the Balecester city records! Imagine… Pure serendipity. Ours is a tale of serendipity, is it not?
'Now the Bishop must have Cordula for himself. But he doesn't know exactly where she is. The Cologne trail goes cold in the Ionian Islands – a small enough area, but a lot of islands, and many, many churches and saints. For in Greece, so I've been told, a village may have a church to Saint John, but it won't necessarily honour the Baptist. More likely it is some local man, a holy Yanni who performed some small miracle or renounced the world and lived in an olive tree or some such. It doesn't take an army of virgins to impress a Greek peasant.
'There is one man in the world who can find a lost saint, and the Bishop needs him. The legendary dealer in holy relics, known to some as Jean de Sol, to many as the Frenchman, and to a very few as Captain de Montalhac. The problem is that this man is almost as mythical as the relics he procures – did I say mythical? I meant elusive. He appears when needed, and is invisible otherwise. The princes and church-lords who are his customers never question his integrity – they need his wares too badly. He has the gratitude of kings and popes and, it is whispered, the ear of the Stupor Mundi, wonder of the world, the Emperor Frederick. The Bishop is no fool. He knows that Cordula will be in demand, and that the Frenchman is most probably on her trail on someone else's – without a doubt, the Bishop of Cologne's – behalf. But Sir Hugh believes he can find him and by fair means or foul, lay hands on Cordula for Balecester cathedral.'
'But what did this have to do with Deacon Jean? You said Kervezey meant to kill him.'
'The Deacon was recently returned from Cologne, where he had been studying under the great Albert, whom I believe I've mentioned. Yes. And…' '… He was the scholar who found Cordula. Oh, God.'
'Exactly. Sought out for special advancement by his lordship the Bishop to keep him close. But Balecester found that the Deacon had promised the relic to Cologne, and decided to get rid of him. Now, I think I'm allowed to tell you – this is going to sound rather alarming – that a little while before you became involved, the Captain was approached, through his system of intermediaries, by the Bishop. Only a very few of his most powerful clients, and by that I mean emperors and even popes, ever meet him in person. The intermediaries ensure that his identity remains a secret from all lesser mortals, and the Bishop of Balecester certainly counts as one of those. Anyway…'
Wait, wait! The Captain is working for the Bishop? How can that possibly be?' 'Dear boy, the Bishop is exactly the kind of person who requires the Captain's services: someone whose dignity and importance are in inverse proportion to their wealth and self-regard. In any case, he is hardly working for him. He has agreed to provide him with something.' 'Cordula.'
'In fact he had quite a shopping list. Cordula was at the top, of course, together with a certain Saint Exuperius, one of the Theban Legion,' and he gave me his teacher's look.
'Saint Maurice and the martyred Roman soldiers. Victor, etcetera. They didn't exist either, did they?'
'Well, probably not. But a rumour is going around that Exuperius is – I was going to say alive and well! No, that he is available, or at least somewhere for the finding. Balecester is almost as excited about Exuperius as he is about Cordula.'
'But if there is already a business arrangement, why…' and I waved my arm helplessly.
'Greed, pure and simple greed. Balecester hatched a plan with his lieutenant, Sir Hugh de Kervezey, to cheat the Captain. They want him to find Cordula, and then they will… kill him and take Cordula gratis, and everything else in the Captain's very considerable horde. They would then be in a position to control the greater part of the entire trade in holy relics, and I don't need to tell you what that means.'
'And so Kervezey – well, I know the rest of it. So I was merely to be set up as the Deacon's killer, but instead I became the bait to catch de Montalhac, just because I took the hand? So the hand had nothing to do with it.'
'Oh, no. Sir Hugh wanted the hand – he sent you to get it. He was going to use it himself, of course, but you saved him the bother. I suppose he was going to offer it on the clandestine market and see who bit. And he was going to use you -your apostasy, really – as a way to gain power over me -threaten me, as your teacher, with an enquiry or some such – if I refused to betray the Captain. Quite a tangle, eh? Anyway, it half-worked: in fact it worked so much better than he could ever have dreamed. You actually joined the Captain's company, and I had to leave the abbey in a hurry. You were there to see how he lorded it over us. Well, he finally roused the Abbot – it was the day you left. He mustered the brothers with bow and arrow and we greeted the bugger with drawn strings. I don't think he believed that monks could be so angry. So he left, calling down fire and brimstone and the wrath of mother Church on our heads. Alas, he had made the abbey a little too hot for me. The Abbot regretfully suggested I take an indefinite sabbatical abroad – he was kind enough to write me some nice references – and here I am.' And this isn't serendipity either, is it, Adric?'