VI

My journey to Verneuil, the first stop on my itinerary, was comparatively uneventful, though nothing is completely uneventful for a young man on a fine spring day. The may blossom was out early, my horse was healthy and I was going to see the beautiful Comtesse Juliana. Along the track the trees were putting out leaves of astonishing, almost impudent, greenness, and larks were singing high overhead. Sometimes I would pass a shepherd leading sheep towards the pasture or a serf taking cows out to a water meadow. Once, near the village of St Anne, a pretty milkmaid crossed the road, carrying her pails from the farmyard to the dairy, and I gave her good day. I was tempted to stop and ask her for a bowl of milk, and tell her how beautiful she was, but I remembered my Comtesse who was waiting for me, and I kept myself from straying, though it pained me to feel the girl’s eyes following me down the road.

There is nothing wrong with admiring a pretty girl, just in case you think I was being disloyal. According to Plato, beauty in all its forms composes the spirit. And there is something fascinating about girls. Not just what you are thinking I’m thinking, but their entire otherness. You’d think the same if you’d been a mewed-up lad in a monastery from the age of fourteen to twenty-one.

I had to keep going because Verneuil was sixteen miles away, and I did not want to be late into town. I had been given the name of an inn there where I could pass the night, but I wanted to locate it by daylight and see the place. Everything was new that spring in 1118 anno Domini.

The road entered a forest, but it was fine and open, neither witches’ wood nor robbers’. There were other travellers on the road. It was a little early for the Duke’s campaigning season, but already there were signs of activities to come: supplies being moved and soldiers deployed to mount sieges on tactical castles. Occasionally I passed groups of men plodding along behind mounted knights bearing the colours of the Duke’s allies, although there was one band of crossbowmen – a better class of soldier, so it was said – who sported the crest of Bellême and who stopped me and asked me my business.

‘I am a Latiner,’ I told them.

This was the briefing I had had from Brother Paul when I questioned him about life on the road.

‘When in doubt, say you’re a Latiner. People respect that. It means you are more or less a priest.’

It seemed to work now, though they asked me to say something in Latin.

‘Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes,’ I said, falling back on good old Virgil.

‘What does that mean?’ asked a burly archer who seemed to be their leader.

‘I fear the Greeks even when they bring gifts,’ I said.

The monks had been mad about Virgil. They needed some alternative excitement in their lives – more than an occasional visit of the bishop could provide. They secretly loved Ovid and his Amores too but always said they preferred Virgil.

‘I don’t know about Greeks, but I do know about gifts. Got any?’

I was all at once very conscious of the purse which lay hidden under the sack containing my clothes and paltry possessions.

‘I certainly have,’ I told him, ‘the gift of benediction and God’s grace. Bless you, my sons. Deus vobiscum.’

I made the sign of the Cross at him. I would have made a good monk.

‘Hm,’ he said, not totally convinced. ‘Let’s see what’s in that sack of yours, Latiner.’

‘Look,’ I shouted, pointing back down the road, ‘My lord Perche’s soldiers!’

They all turned to look, and I spurred Blackberry in the opposite direction. She sprang forward like a trebuchet stone. I half expected a volley of arrows up our backsides, but I was told later by one of the castle guard at Breteuil that archers never shoot unless it is to kill. They do not waste arrows, nor do they like to waste time having to retrieve them – which they must do since arrows cost money and are made with skill and craft. Breteuil and Bellême were not officially enemies. They might have had some explaining to do to William Talvas (Bellême’s son and, like his father, a thorn in the Duke’s side) if they had killed a Latiner belonging to his neighbour. Besides, the road was a little too public for a daylight murder. You never knew who might come round the corner.

I was lucky. These were funny times: soldiers on the road and no one quite knew who was on which side.

I reached Verneuil as the church bell was tolling Vespers. I was sure I had been told to take the left fork of the road as I neared Verneuil but, as it turned out, that was the road to L’Aigle and I wasted half an hour before I discovered my mistake. I have a tendency to muddle left and right at moments of decision. Anyway, I still had an hour or so to spare before dark.

It seemed a prosperous little place as I rode into the square, larger than Mortagne, with a big church. The usual after-Easter fair was going on with stalls, swings, jugglers, fire-eaters, feats of strength and so forth. The place smelt clean, and was without much rubbish in the gutters considering the fair was on. It was good air with a tang of woodsmoke and baking and, yes, bacon as we neared the inn, which we found without great difficulty since the smell drew us there – or drew me at any rate.

The tavern was well frequented. Men sitting on the benches outside the inn drinking cider gazed at us curiously as I took Blackberry round to the stables at the back. I found an ostler who gave her a stall and some hay. He had a full stable, he said, for there were many in town for the fair. I went back to the front of the inn, and a red-headed, buxom girl in a smock shook her head when I asked for lodging, but finally showed me upstairs to a room with a large bed in it.

‘You’ll have to share,’ she told me. ‘Lucky we have a room at all.’

‘Share with you?’ I asked.

‘Go on,’ she said. ‘You can buy me a drink later if you like. No, your room-mate is Eliphas. He’s a player. In town for the fair.’

They had an Easter fair too in Mortagne when people, especially farming folk, let their hair down and look forward to May Day. I had been sorry to miss it.

‘Eliphas?’

‘Yes. You know. A jongleur.’

There was a bellow from downstairs. The girl made a sort of shooing motion in its direction.

‘Can’t stand here gossiping all day. Some people have work to do. There’s a fair on, you know.’

She made off down the stairs. Obviously this fair was a big event in the life of Verneuil. I learned later that they held a fair twice a year, spring and autumn, most important at the season when they celebrated the Feast of St George. The town’s name was supposed to have come from Ver meaning worm or dragon, and St George was the man, of course, who had slain the dragon. Any excuse for a feast! The priests latch onto it and the people grab it.

You will have observed by now that, though I spent some years as a novice in the abbey, my views of God and his Church are not always favourable. I preferred God to his Church because it seemed to me that, left alone, he had done an estimable job in creating the world (although there are areas of question, like the problem of pain which you might like to put to him if you met him at the inn). But the Church was always muddying the waters. The Kingdom of God was not of this earth, but the Church was very happy to stake its claim here and jump all over you. There was always a priest waiting round the corner, spying on you, checking that you had or had not been to the castle chapel at least twice a day and sometimes more, hearing your confession and then whispering to my lady about your tendencies whatever they might be, and that bastards were not to be trusted. The Church was everywhere and made its presence felt. My own view was that the God of the New Testament – in other words Jesus – was everywhere, but he was much more discreet. He didn’t condemn my sloth or my envy or my greed or my wrath, or even my lust which was considerable and at times insupportable. Sometimes he would give a little cough which I could almost hear, and I would know that I had failed him, and I would be sorry. Call me a bastard, but that was the kind of God I thought I could get on with, though I keep this kind of thought to myself. There are spies everywhere.

But enough of that. Back to the little room under the eaves of the inn, a great ramshackle bed, an ewer on a table, a broken chair, and a smell of old beer and piss coming all the way up from the bar. I lingered awhile, looking at the bed and deciding which side I was going to sleep on. I hoped that Eliphas, whatever he did, didn’t have brotherly inclinations like some of my previous monastic colleagues.

By now I was both thirsty and considerably hungry, and I went downstairs again, clutching my bag close to my side, in search of cider and a stew of some kind. It was a long while since I had stopped by a grassy bank in the sun and eaten my cold pie washed down with a draught of water from my bottle. I found my red-head friend, serving ale and cider in a long, low room where twenty or so people sat drinking and shouting at each other. Some were already eating; bowls of some kind of bacon and lentil stew were appearing and it smelt good to me. I asked her – for she came over and gave me a smile – if she would bring a flagon of ale and bowl of stew, whatever it was, with some bread.

‘Whatever stew it is, it’s not just bacon,’ I said. ‘There’s something more in there.’

‘It’s bacon with a bit of venison, but don’t tell the Comte.’

I knew that poaching deer was punishable by death; better not to ask questions. It was a sign of the times, though, that barons and their followers and servants had other things – like fighting and pillaging – to take them away from strictly guarding their forests.

‘You all right upstairs?’

‘Fine, thank you. Is my room-mate here?’

‘He’ll be in later. He’s getting ready for the show.’

‘I’ll go and see him after supper.’

She was a cheerful girl, and I would have liked to have given her a cuddle, but she was busy and I was curious to see Eliphas at work, so when I had demolished the steaming bowl of stew, the rough bread, and the beaker of goat’s piss she called ale, I went out into the town square to see the show. Eliphas turned out to be a long, thin man with an amused, mobile countenance, a face on which expressions came and went like clouds on a windy day. He was sitting at the back of his covered wagon, his legs dangling over the side, addressing a small crowd of townees and visitors. I added myself to their number.

‘Why are you all here tonight?’ he asked us. ‘Not because of the fair, not because of the food, not because of the drink, but because of me. You have never seen anything like the things I am going to show you. And because we are celebrating a holy day today, I am going to show you something which concerns us all – the Fall of Adam.’

‘We have enough of all that in church,’ grumbled one swarthy bystander.

‘But it is not going to be all that,’ retorted Eliphas. ‘Here you are going to see the hero and the villain. The most beautiful woman in the world, and the vilest creature ever created. It is a story that concerns us all. But if you feel you have seen it all, I won’t show it to you.’

‘No, no,’ the crowd protested. ‘We want to see it. Show it to us.’

‘Very well,’ the man continued smoothly, ‘but you have to do some of the work. Imagine that this, where I am standing now, is Paradise. Look up at it. Isn’t it wonderful? Strange trees and groves, delicious woods and copses, sweet odours of flowers and ripening fruit. Look at me, now! That’s more like it. You are with me now in Paradise. You are surrounded by sweet-smelling flowers, and twined with leaves and soft tendrils. You are sitting on a grassy bank, and little creatures – hares and voles and little birds – are with you watching …’

The man seemed to have the people in a sort of trance. They were feeling Paradise inside themselves. They were there.

‘I am Adam,’ he continued, ‘and in here…’ He gestured towards the wagon’s canvas opening, just ajar, beside him. ‘This is my wife Eve. Isn’t she the most beautiful woman you ever saw in your life?’

We waited for this vision of loveliness to emerge, but nothing happened.

‘Come on, then,’ shouted someone in the crowd. ‘Show us your fucking wife.’

‘She’s shy,’ said Eliphas, reprovingly. ‘Do you think Eve, our mother, wants to show herself to a crowd of pot-swillers and pissheads like you, who can’t be patient for one minute without cackling like geese and shouting filth? No. She wants you to think of her. Your mother Eve … Yes, it is hard to think some of you had a beautiful mother, but you did. Be nice to her. Think of her. Imagine her when she was young and lovely, graceful, slender, nubile, coming out of a grove, adorned for her husband. There, yes, you can see her now. “Adam,” she says, “husband, how shall we spend the day? Shall we walk? Shall we feast on fruit? Shall we drink the sweet liquors of the flowers and the trees? Shall we talk to the birds and the beasts and converse with the fishes …? Shall we …?” and she shows herself to me in all her glorious, innocent nakedness, rejoicing in her body, “Shall we make love?”’

‘Oh yes,’ shouted the crowd, swollen now to a considerable size like Adam’s original member.

‘But it isn’t enough for you, is it? The loveliness of Eve, the perfect pleasures of Paradise? Oh no. Now I want you to imagine something unutterably loathsome, something so vile that you are going to have nightmares about it. What is it? Ssssssssssss. Long, sinuous, scaly, oozing, corrupt, with a vile stench coming out of its mouth and its eyes weeping foetor, like a grotesque and interminable penis, it has taken the opportunity provided by Adam’s exertions – he has fallen asleep – to address his wife and wind himself grossly about her, filling her with a strange and unfamiliar sense of … What? Excitement and … could it be curiosity? What is that foul thing saying to her? Listen. Can you hear it? “What are you doing, Eve?” “I am living here with great pleasure.” “Is all well with you?” “I know of nothing that troubles me.” “You could be even better.” “I don’t know how.” “Do you want to know?” “Yes. But I don’t think I should.” “Why not? You are the most beautiful creature in the garden, more beautiful than your husband, and cleverer too. Why does the Creator always speak to him first? You should have precedence, everyone thinks so …” “Everyone?” “I was speaking to the tiger only yesterday and he was saying exactly that.” “What should I do?” “Well now, my dear…”

And so Eliphas went on, with the audience hanging on his lips and the old familiar tale rendered completely new in his telling of it. He performed the parts of the Devil and Eve with a wonderful dexterity of voices: the Devil deep and foul and insidious; Eve so voluptuously, so gladsomely innocent, and yet slightly silly, but very human; and Adam mulish, stuffy, worthy but uxorious and biddable. All these, he performed, and more: a parrot for instance, which repeated the serpent’s sly reasonableness, and an owl, which urged Adam to refuse.

I swear the man was a magician or necromancer for he seemed to me to turn before my eyes into the most delectable naked woman you ever saw. Then he materialised again into the most revoltingly attractive and colossal serpent; before he appeared as Adam, muscular, honest and simple; and at last – huge, mighty, omnipotent and omnipresent – in the person of God.

I was hooked to that stage from beginning to end, but as he finished, admonishing us to attend tomorrow evening (for the fair was a two-day matter) when he would perform the mystery of St George and the Turkish Knight, I was overwhelmed with fatigue and could barely make my way to the inn. I had to brush off the red-haired girl who was waiting for the drink of ale I had promised her. I gave her a penny or two to buy it for herself – yes, it was ungracious, but I only just managed to clamber up to my chamber and throw myself on the bed where I expired (well, not literally, I am glad to say) into the sleep of the dead, and slept so soundly I might as well have been a corpse. I was woken, almost as into another dream, by an angel singing, very softly, ‘Come hither to me, my pretty dove’ in a high melodious voice.

‘You must have been in a monastery to sing like that,’ I said as I woke, expecting heaven.

But it wasn’t heaven at all, it was a small shuttered bedroom with a huge rank bed which took up almost the whole space, a bed into which I now perceived the man who played God as well as the Devil was proposing to introduce himself. I realized that at some point in my torpor, my legs must have strayed across the invisible dividing line, and they were now in his portion.

He picked up my legs and put them back where they belonged. I was suddenly wide awake.

‘By your leave,’ he said.

‘I am sorry my legs have strayed – like Mother Eve. They crossed the line,’ I told him.

‘So you have been in a monastery, my fine bedfellow,’ said the man.

‘Yes, for eight years, learning Latin and the meaning of cold,’ I said. ‘And other things.’

‘I too have been in a monastery … and other things,’ he said. ‘It is one of those necessary stages one has to go through, like circumcision.’

‘Circumcision? You are a Jew?’ I asked.

‘No, I was just using it as an example. There is much to be learnt from the Jews, as they have learnt from the Arabs. They both love a good story, for instance.’

‘Where did you learn to make a performance like that?’

‘Oh, here and there. The south. Italy. Spain. Moving around, keeping my eyes wide and my ears open.’

He was some kind of foreigner but he spoke French very well, almost faultlessly but with a slight accent that made his speech particularly attractive. He seemed indeed like a vital spark. There are a few people we meet who seem for some reason to be intrinsic to our life and whom we remember for ever.

‘I am Bertold FitzRotrou,’ I said.

I had never called myself that before. It sounded good. He reached over and grasped my hand.

‘So you are a bastard’

I was not offended. It seemed the most natural thing in the world.

‘Yes.’

‘I bet your parents had a better time making you than they’d have done if they’d been married.’

‘I hadn’t thought of that.’

‘And tomorrow you are on the road again?’

‘Yes. To Breteuil. The Comtesse is my father’s sister-in-law.’

‘I have been there. It is a new castle with a fine moat. I did a Christmas show there. She is a beautiful woman, the Duke’s daughter, I hear. But Monsieur le Comte is a boor, a dangerous oaf. You want to watch out for him.’

‘Ah.’

I didn’t want to say too much to this magic man who could transform himself like Proteus, for fear I would tell him everything about me, and there would be nothing left.

‘And now we must sleep,’ he said. ‘Enough for one night. We shall speak again tomorrow if we are spared.’

‘If we are spared?’

‘Death is just a hair’s breadth away. I am always surprised to find I am still here in the morning. Good night,’ he said.

‘Good luck.’

‘To you too. And here’s a thought to go to sleep with.’

He sang in a soft, sweet high voice a song in Latin which I translate loosely:

Snake in the grass

She looked quite harmless

Virtually charmless

Until I made a pass

Doing her a favour –

Slinky little raver

Bit me on the arse.

He gave a little laugh, and in a minute he was gently, almost companionably, snoring.