So they talked, and in due course, Olivier mentioned his encounter on the road that afternoon, and the way the man had echoed the words of his manuscript. His friend listened with fascination, savoring every drop of the tale: the way the manuscript was found, the time Olivier had taken to transcribe it, his inability to understand it, his meetings with the fearsome Gersonides, and the manner in which it was brought back to his mind that afternoon.
“When I get back, I shall reread it more carefully,” Olivier said. “And I will have a copy made for you, if you like. Then we can write to each other and examine what your cardinal’s Jew says about it. He is a fascinating man; I learned more from him in a few weeks than I did from the most skilled doctors in Avignon in the course of several years. I hope to continue the acquaintanceship. I have scarcely scratched the surface of what he knows.”
“I can think of nothing better than such a project with such a friend,” came the reply. “My one concern, however, is that we might be led onto dangerous areas of inquiry. You must have suspected yourself that this cobbler was a heretic.”
“I considered the idea. It is another area of the rabbi’s expertise. How he became conversant with the details of the heresy I do not know. I thought they’d all long been destroyed.”
Althieux laughed. “Oh, no. It was the usual thing. The soldiers and the priests and the magistrates all came. They attacked, and captured and tried and burned. Hundreds of villages, whole towns burned to the ground, tens of thousands massacred. And many good Christians among them, I think. Then they declared complete victory over the forces of schism and heresy, and went home. I am not saying that most heretics were not killed or forced to change their views; they were. But many were quite untouched, hiding out in the mountains to the north. They have learned greater discretion, that is all.”
“I suppose I should have known,” said Olivier simply. “But there seemed nothing especially dangerous about this man.”
“I don’t doubt it. They are perfectly ordinary people, for the most part. But dangerous nonetheless, every bit as much as the Jews. More so, I should say, as the Jews are plainly visible and use no subterfuge. Nor do they seek converts. These are quite the reverse. Your duty, as I am sure you know, is to report the matter to the magistrate. This man has undoubtedly come to market here. If he can be found and his village identified, then the entire settlement can be destroyed.”
Olivier thought, and once more in a small way Sophia spread out her protective cloak from the past; the man who carried her words, the anonymous messenger in the same way that Olivier was on occasion for Ceccani, was saved by his message.
Olivier shrugged. “I doubt we’d find him,” he said. “And besides, I am in something of a hurry. I think the cardinal would not be best pleased to hear that his business was delayed because I chose to go a-hunting with some friends. I must be off tomorrow. I have a long journey; thanks to you it will be longer than I anticipated.”
Althieux grunted; then the shadow over the conversation passed.
“You can, if you like, tell me why you are so sure this man is a heretic.”
Althieux stretched, lazily, in front of the fire. “Something I heard. Have I ever told you of my earliest meeting with Pope Clement? My brush with greatness?”
“You told me that you had encountered him once. But not the circumstances.”
“Ah, the circumstances. Indeed. I must say that when he rose to his current position I had high hopes for a moment. Not everybody can claim to have assisted a pope in the days before he became so. And he remembered me, as well. But chose not to advance me any further. He considered I was quite well enough placed with Cardinal de Deaux, and needed no assistance from him. Besides, it may be that I brought back unpleasant memories, which he wished to shrug off once he exchanged the name of Pierre Roger for Clement the Sixth.”
They lay on the floor together beside the fire, as it was cold in the evenings. There were no candles, no other light except for the logs sputtering in the large grate, and this gave off a fitful dancing light that made Althieux’s words seem the more resonant as he spoke.
“It was when I was very young, and a novice at the house of Saint-Baudil near Nîmes. We had a new and dynamic young abbot, called Pierre Roger, known as a favorite of the king, an advisor to the powerful, a magnificent preacher, and as a man learned and effective in disputation. He turned out to be all of these; indeed, I have never met his equal before or since. He only stayed a short while; it was obvious he was destined for greater things, although we could scarcely guess how great they would be.
“The lay courts often used to hand over cases, or at least ask for our advice, when there might be a religious complication, and the monastery had habitually gone along with this, not least because all concerned wished to avoid the return of the inquisitors, who were always looking for an opportunity to intervene. One day, such a case came up, and as the abbot’s secretary was ill, I was brought in to help and take notes for his personal record.
“There were six of them, three men and three women, although (they hastened to assure us) only two were man and wife; the others had never had any sort of union. They came from a village nearby and had been accused of fraud. This turned out to be a falsity, a charge brought up by a jealous neighbor who wanted their land, but it became clear as the hearing progressed that there was much more to it than that. These people were heretics, and up until then had kept themselves well hidden. Only the false accusation brought them into the light of day. They would not swear, or take an oath, and when the abbot asked them why not, they told him.”
“As simple as that?” Olivier asked.
“As simple as that. They cannot lie. Anyway, they were quite unashamed of their beliefs and seemed to enjoy the chance to tell them to the court. I think they had accepted that their end was coming, but were completely unperturbed by it. They were asked why this was the case, and said that as their bodies were the prison in which they had been confined, the prospect of escape and return to their status as gods, alongside the Great God, could do nothing but please them. If they died well, then their next return to the material world would be the shorter.”
“At which point,” Olivier commented dryly, “our future pope leaned over and set light to them.”
“On the contrary; he found it all fascinating and questioned them closely for a long time, so much so that the others began to become impatient with him. Also he hates that sort of thing, and tried desperately to get them to say something, anything, which would allow him to recommend leniency. He is a legist and a theologian, well used (dare I say it) to spinning strong arguments from insubstantial threads. Had they said anything at all with even the breath of orthodoxy or repentence about it, he would have jumped on it and let them go. And the rest of the court would not have protested, for they had little stomach for the task either.
“Nothing could be done. The more they said, the more everybody’s jaws hung open. I have never heard anyone, not even a Jew, contradict so many fundamental doctrines quite so quickly or quite so willingly. They claimed to be gods themselves, they denied the resurrection of the body, they claimed the world was evil and man a prison rather than something created in God’s own image. That God Himself, the god of the Bible, was but a meddling demon and had nothing to do with the true deity from which we all come. There was, of course, no mention of Our Lord, and they plainly believed in reincarnation. And, of course, no judgment, no hell—except for this world—no purgatory, no heaven.”