The Inquisitor's Tale Read online

  And then the monk did something very frightening indeed.

  He laughed.

  He laughed at little Jeanne.

  Then he dragged Old Theresa away.

  And we never saw her again.

  • • •

  Jeanne ran home, her tears flying behind her. She threw open the thin wooden door of her house, collapsed on her bed, and cried.

  Her mother came in just after her. Her footsteps were soft and reassuring on the dirt floor. She lowered herself onto the hay beside Jeanne and began to stroke her hair. “What’s wrong, my girl?” she asked. “Are you scared for Theresa?” She ran her fingers through Jeanne’s tangled locks.

  Jeanne turned over and looked through tears up at her mother. Her mother had a skin-colored mole just to the left of her mouth and mousy, messy hair like her daughter’s. After a moment, Jeanne said, “I don’t want to be burned alive.”

  Her mother’s face changed. “Why would you be burned alive, Jeanne?”

  Jeanne stared up at her mother. Her vision had come true. Wasn’t that witchcraft?

  Her mother’s face came into focus. It wasn’t comforting anymore. It looked . . . angry. “Why would you be burned, Jeanne? Tell me!”

  Jeanne hesitated. “I don’t know,” she mumbled. And she buried her face in the hay again.

  “Why, Jeanne? Jeanne, answer me!”

  But Jeanne was too afraid to speak.

  • • •

  From that day on, Jeanne was different. She still had her fits, a-course, but she never opened her mouth about what she saw. Not once. More than that, she weren’t the happy little girl anymore. No more poking her head in our huts or chasing Marc son-of-Marc son-of-Marc around. She got seriouser. More watchful. Almost like she were scared. Not of other people, though.

  Like she were scared of herself.

  And then, about a week ago, some men came to our village, and they took Jeanne away.

  “And that’s the end of my story.”

  I’m in the midst of taking a quaff of my ale and I nearly spit it all over the table.

  “What?! That’s it? They took her away? Why?” I sputter. “Who were they? And what about the dog? How did it come back to life?!”

  “I can tell you.”

  This isn’t Marie’s voice. It’s a nun at the next table. She’s been listening to the story, obviously, and now she’s leaning back on her little stool. “I know about Gwenforte and about the men who took little Jeanne.” She’s a tiny old woman, with silvery hair and bright blue eyes. And her accent is strange. It’s as proper as any I’ve ever heard. But it’s a little . . . off. I can’t quite say why.

  “How would you know about Gwenforte and Jeanne?” Marie says. “You ain’t never even been in our village!”

  “But I do know,” answers the nun.

  “Then please,” I say, “tell us.”

  HAPTER 2

  The Nun’s Tale

  Eight days ago, Jeanne lay in her bed of straw, staring through the smoke hole in her thatched roof. Her eyes followed the shifting stars as they twinkled in the early morning sky. She thought of her tasks for the next day—first collecting the eggs from the chickens, then walking out to the wide, cold fields to clear stones so her father could begin to break the land ahead of the planting. She wondered—

  “Hey now!” Marie barks. “You don’t know what she was thinking and wondering! You’re just making that up!”

  But the nun replies, “Maybe I’m making it up. Or perhaps I have my ways.”

  And she gives us a smile that makes the hair on my neck stand up.

  “Shall I continue?”

  I don’t say a word. I think I’m frightened of her.

  • • •

  Jeanne wondered whether she’d be clearing her family’s fields or the lord’s—when her body went stiff, her muscles began to twitch and spasm, her teeth ground in her head, and her eyes saw things beyond the veil of this life. She saw:

  The Holy Grove, where Gwenforte was buried.

  Men, with axes and torches, coming to burn the grove to the ground.

  And a white greyhound, standing on Gwenforte’s grave.

  When the fit was over, Jeanne lay in the dark. She was breathing hard.

  Her fits always scared her. But this fit scared her more.

  She lay in the darkness, waiting for the strength to return to her limbs. At last, when she felt she could move, she threw her woolen blanket to the floor, climbed from her straw bed, tiptoed through the single dark room where she, her parents, and the cow slept, and slipped out the door.

  “You sleep with your cows?” I say to Marie.

  “Only in winter,” she replies.

  “Oh,” I say. “Obviously.”

  Jeanne walked out into the starry night, down the road through her village, and then into the forest that lay beyond. She found the path to the Holy Grove, for the moon was rising and it glowed a ghostly white.

  She hurried down the path. The branches scratched her face. She came to a stream and took it in one leap. And then she was in the grove. The moonlight filtered through the trees.

  Standing in the center of the clearing was a figure as white and shining as a ghost.

  But it was not a ghost.

  It was a dog.

  A white greyhound, with a copper blaze on her forehead.

  Jeanne could scarcely breathe.

  She took a step into the clearing.

  She whispered, “Gwenforte?”

  The dog came closer.

  “Saint Gwenforte?”

  The dog sat down before her. Jeanne ran her hand over the dog’s white coat.

  She didn’t remember the white greyhound that her parents had killed. But she had heard countless stories about her. She and her family often came to this very spot to send prayers of thanks for her life to the holy greyhound.

  Could this be Gwenforte?

  The dog’s big black eyes gazed up at Jeanne, as if awaiting a decision.

  Just then, there came the sounds of branches breaking and voices in the distance. Jeanne peered into the trees.

  Men.

  With torches.

  And axes.

  Marching through the forest like an advancing army.

  The first man Jeanne saw was thin, with long, dirty yellow hair, a patchy yellow beard, and a face like a weasel. Behind him trudged a short, bald man. Others were scattered through the trees.

  The first man emerged into the clearing. “All right, you lady’s maids! Hurry up and burn—”

  He stopped. He had noticed Jeanne and Gwenforte, kneeling together in the center of the grove.

  His men emerged from the wood behind him. They were knights. Jeanne could see that now. Swords in scabbards hung from their belts. Their tunics were leather. But everything about them was tattered and crusted in dust. And they had no horses. Perhaps they had left them somewhere. Jeanne hoped so. For a knight without a horse was a pathetic sight indeed. And a pathetic knight is a dangerous knight

  The bald, squat one was fighting through a tangle of brambles. “Sir Fabian, do you want—”

  “Will you shut up and use your piggy eyes?”

  The bald one stopped struggling with the brambles. “Jesus’s boots . . . ,” he swore.

  A tall knight exclaimed, “Hey! It’s a doggy!”

  “I thought the dog was supposed to be dead,” said the bald knight.

  “That’s what I was told,” answered Sir Fabian.

  “So what’s it doing alive?”

  Sir Fabian’s thin hand drifted to the pommel of his sword. “I don’t know,” Fabian said. “But we can make it dead.” He took a step toward Jeanne and pulled the sword from its leather sheath. Its long blade carved a semicircle in the air.

  “Good doggy,” he
said. “Good peasant.” He used the same voice for them both.

  He stepped forward.

  “Stay, doggy . . . stay, peasant . . .”

  He stepped again.

  Run, Jeanne thought. But her legs seemed to have grown roots into the forest floor.

  The knight stepped forward once more.

  Jeanne could not move.

  He stepped forward one last time.

  He raised his sword.

  “NOW!” Jeanne screamed.

  The dog ran.

  I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a greyhound run. If you have, you know that it is a mystical experience. They are so swift, so exactly proportioned and balanced. It is one of the few perfect things in this world.

  Her legs extended, recoiled, extended again as she crossed the small green clearing. Then she disappeared into the forest.

  For an instant Jeanne stood, mesmerized, and stared.

  Then she took off in the opposite direction.

  “Who should we go after?” asked the bald knight.

  “For the love of God, both of them!” Fabian shouted. “Go!”

  All of the knights started after the greyhound.

  “Some of you go after the girl!” Sir Fabian cried.

  And so the knights, with torches raised and swords drawn, charged into the wood after Jeanne and her dog, Gwenforte.

  • • •

  Not long after, Jeanne was crouching in the underbrush, at the edge of the little yard behind her house. The family hens were attacking the earth, searching for worms and insects, clucking and muttering to one another like proud, fat little abbesses.

  Gwenforte nuzzled Jeanne’s neck. They had found each other in the wood, and she had been content to walk by Jeanne’s side all the way back to her village. As if she had known Jeanne for years. As if the village were her home.

  Jeanne had no idea what to make of it.

  Now they crouched together at the edge of her parents’ yard. Jeanne suppressed a smile. What would her parents think?

  Marc’s old rooster cried his fifth cry of the night, and the village started to wake. Doors began to open down the road. Jeanne’s neighbors were spilling into the sunlight, adjusting their brown woolen tunics, stretching, scratching their oily heads.

  Jeanne heard the door of her own house open. She grabbed Gwenforte and whispered in her ear, “Lie down, and don’t move.” The greyhound lay down in the underbrush.

  Jeanne stepped out into the yard just as her father appeared around the corner of the house, yawning and wiping his face, his hairy belly peeking out from under his shirt. He saw his daughter, exclaimed, “Jeanne!” and opened his arms. She ran to him and buried herself in his warmth and the tangy smell of his breath. He rubbed her back. “Cold?” he asked. “Hélène slept with us again last night.”

  “She always sleeps with you,” Jeanne replied, pulling away and looking up at her father’s scratchy chin.

  He grinned. “It’s because she likes me best.”

  Hélène was the cow.

  Jeanne’s mother’s voice came from the front of the house. “Well? Is it back there?”

  “Oh!” her father exclaimed. “My hoe! Today’s my day on the demesne. Can’t find my hoe.”

  This was not surprising. Jeanne’s father could rarely find anything. The family owned no more than ten objects—two pots, three bowls, a hoe, a cow, some chickens—and a good five of them were regularly lost, thanks to her father.

  Jeanne’s mother appeared around the corner of the house. Jeanne stole a glance back at the greyhound. The dog lay hidden in the deep shade of the new spring leaves. Jeanne’s mother’s green eyes were narrow, and her brown hair was all a-tangle. Her hands were planted on her hips, and her elbows stuck out sharply. “Well?”

  Jeanne ran to her mother and hugged her, too. She smelled different from Jeanne’s dad. Softer. Not so rough. Her mother kissed Jeanne’s head. “You were up early. Where did you go off to?”

  Jeanne looked from her mother to her father and then off to the woods. She couldn’t help grinning. What would they think? Would they believe it was Gwenforte?

  But before she had gone three steps, someone called her back. “Jeanne! Hey, Jeanne!” She turned. It was Marc son-of-Marc son-of-Marc, standing at the edge of their yard.

  “Someone’s looking for ya,” he said.

  “Who?” Jeanne asked.

  “Men. With swords.”

  Jeanne’s parents looked at her sharply. Without taking her eyes from her daughter, Jeanne’s mother said to Marc, “Do the men know where she is?”

  “I think so. Bailiff Charles is with them.”

  Jeanne’s father swore: “God’s hat!”

  “Who are they?” her mother demanded. Marc shrugged. Her green gaze turned on her daughter.

  “I saw them in the forest. I was at the Holy Grove. They were there with axes.” Jeanne hesitated, unsure how much more to say. So she skipped to the end: “They chased me!”

  Jeanne’s mother’s gaze lingered on her daughter another moment, like an innkeeper waiting for the last drop of ale from the barrel tap. But Jeanne said no more.

  So Jeanne’s mother said, “Marc, run back to your father. Do not go to Bailiff Charles or the men. They are not our friends.” Marc turned and ran.

  “Into the woods with you,” Jeanne’s mother hissed. “Stay nearby, but hidden.”

  Jeanne’s father rubbed her head and winked at her. Then Jeanne returned to the forest and the greyhound—no time to show the dog to her parents now—and knelt down in the thick foliage, pushing ragwort away from her bare arms.

  Then, around the corner of the house, came Bailiff Charles, leading five dirty, angry men. Jeanne’s stomach turned over hard, and sweat began to bead up on her lip.

  The bald knight bellowed, “Peasants!” And now Jeanne could see the rest of the retinue. Following the bald knight was a knight with blond curly hair and a lazy eye. Beside him was a chubbier knight, with similar golden curls. Behind them stood two large, strong, stupid-looking men—one with a black unibrow running over his dull eyes, the other with a face like an anvil. Jeanne’s neighbors had begun to gather around the edge of the yard or loiter in the road nearby.

  “Peasants!” the bald knight repeated. “Have you a daughter?”

  Jeanne’s father hesitated. Then, without any warning, he spat—right on the bald knight’s leather boots.

  The world stood still. The peasants stared. Bailiff Charles gasped. The bald knight’s eyebrows crawled up onto his shiny head.

  He pulled his hand back to strike Jeanne’s father.

  But before he could make contact, Jeanne’s mother pushed her husband backward. She began shouting.

  At her husband.

  “Oh, you wicked man!” she howled, in a voice just a little shriller than normal. “How dare you affront his lordship?! His worshipful lordship?!”

  The knights looked surprised. She spun on them. “Oh, we do have a daughter, and a wicked one she is! Wicked like her father! She ran away this morning, the wicked devil!”

  Jeanne stared, perplexed, from the cool green brush.

  The bald knight squinted at the peasant woman. The tall one with the curly hair leaned forward and whispered, very loudly, “Ask her if she knows where the girl’s got to.”

  The bald knight appraised Jeanne’s mother and then nodded. “Where’s your daughter got to?”

  “Oh, she’s here!” Jeanne’s mother shrieked. “She came back home after seeing you in the wood!”

  Jeanne nearly fell over.

  Jeanne’s father nearly fell over, too. “Yvette, be quiet!” he barked.

  “Oh, stow it! These men are knights and lords! We can’t lie to the gentle! We, but lowly peasants!”

  The knights looked gratified. “She’s right,
you know,” the bald one nodded. “Best not lie to the gentry. We can tell, can’t we?”

  “Oh, you can, you can! I always say so! No use lying to the gentle!”

  “So?” the bald knight asked. “Where is she?”

  Jeanne, her mouth hanging open in horror, watched her mother lean in and whisper into the knight’s ear. She could not believe what she was seeing.

  She made ready to run.

  Jeanne’s mother whispered so loudly everyone could hear it: “She likes to hide in the dung heap!”

  “The dung heap?”

  “Indeed!”

  The bald knight looked at the other knights. The one with the lazy eye shrugged. “Peasants do like filth, don’t they?”

  The bald one scratched his neck. “I suppose they do.”

  “Oh, we do! We love it!” Jeanne’s mother agreed. Her husband, and all the other villagers, watched her uncertainly. Jeanne’s mother appealed to her neighbors. “The dung heap is where our little Jeanne is always hiding. Isn’t that so?”

  A few of them slowly nodded. Marc son-of-Marc son-of-Marc angled his head in confusion.

  “All right,” said the bald knight. “Where’s the dung heap?”

  “Oh, this way, sir! This way!” Jeanne’s mother led them around the house and to the main road. She walked east, to where the refuse sat by the river. The knights followed her, and the peasants followed them. Some villagers, already out in the fields, stopped their hoeing and gazed at the strange procession as it passed.

  Jeanne quietly rose to her feet, collected the greyhound from where she lay, and led the dog gingerly along the shaded edge of the wood, keeping the knights in view.

  After a few minutes’ walk, the group arrived at the small river and, beside it, a hill—brown, fly infested, half solid and half liquid—reeking with the fetid smell of feces.

  The bald knight approached it, covering his face with a thick, hairy hand. “Well?” he demanded. “Where is she?”

  Jeanne’s mother looked at him, so earnest and helpful. “Why, she’s inside it! That’s where she’s hiding! Right in the middle!” She appealed to her neighbors: “She’s always just taking that dung and piling it up on top of her, isn’t she?”