The Devil's Crossing Read online

  THE DEVIL’S CROSSING

  Hana Cole

  © Hana Cole 2020

  Hana Cole has asserted her rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published 2020 by Sharpe Books.

  Table of Contents

  Part One - The Age of the Father

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  PART TWO - The Banners of Hell’s Monarch

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Ninteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  PART THREE – Consolamentium

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Author’s note

  Part One - The Age of the Father

  Prologue

  Chartres, 1201

  Gui did not mean to look up. The previous day he had transcribed the interrogations without laying eyes on the souls condemned to burn. Far better the dull scratch of his nib on the parchment than an indelible portrait of the damned. But at that moment, a beam of early morning sunlight danced over his desk. He raised his head.

  A girl stood in the flood of light from the open door. She was wearing a yellow dress, embroidered with flourishes at the hem, and Gui could see the outline of her body beneath the gown. Eyes the soft blue of winter light, she surveyed the room earnestly, as though despite her fear, she expected to find reason among the venerable. Gui’s heart hammered as Inquisitor Bernard de Nogent asked her name. His whole body burned but he could not look away.

  ‘Sir, I am Agnes. Daughter of Estève Le Coudray, the salt merchant.’

  ‘Cleric!’ The inquisitor’s voice was sharp. Gui’s attention flew from the girl to the scroll before him. He scratched at the parchment although he had forgotten to ink the nib of his quill.

  De Nogent continued, ‘The same Estève Le Coudray condemned here as a recalcitrant heretic.’

  ‘Sir, please. He is no heretic.’

  ‘You question the authority of this investigation?’ The black, avian eyes blinked.

  Agnes clapped her hand over her mouth. Stammering an apology she searched the faces of the court for clemency. Before Gui could avert his gaze, she found him. Sweat pricked his lip. He dropped his head. The power to help her was not his. Reaching forward, he re-arranged the flayed skin on the table before him.

  Master Bernard began. ‘Tell us, Mademoiselle Agnes, is God in all things?’

  Gui held his breath. God is in no evil thing.

  ‘Only in good things, sir.’

  ‘Only in good things? You have been taught this?’ A pause, then the inquisitor said, ‘Good. This is good. There are some people who believe that God is in all things. Have you heard this?’

  Her eyes widened. ‘I do not believe that, sir.’

  ‘That is not what I asked.’

  ‘No, sir. I cannot think I have heard anyone speak such a thing…Not in those words. Sir.’

  ‘Not in those words.’ The inquisitor tapped sharply on the desk, summoning Gui’s attention. ‘The deposition.’ He thrust forward an impatient hand. Face puckered, he opened the scroll.

  ‘Omnia Deus sunt et omnia unum.’ Another pause; a test of her nerves. The court room filled with the pressure of silence.

  Agnes Le Coudray hesitated. Inwardly Gui urged her to keep her counsel - to debate with the inquisitor was as good as signing your own death warrant.

  ‘God is in everything,’ she muttered eventually.

  ‘God is all and thus all things are one.’ Master Bernard’s words boomed around the vaulted room. ‘So you have heard those words.’

  Agnes shook her head vigorously. ‘That’s not what I meant. I mean I have heard something of that sort. But I don’t remember where exactly.’

  De Nogent raised an imperious brow. ‘You don’t remember where.’

  ‘Tis a commonly known phrase, sir.’

  With a controlled, heavy sigh, the inquisitor dipped his eyes to the parchment. ‘“That’s what I heard Le Coudray say. God is in everything, even the Devil. I swear it by the Virgin, God bless, he said them very words”,’ de Nogent read, the testimony sounding absurd in his scholarly Parisian.

  ‘No, sir, it’s a lie! My father never said such a thing,’ cried Agnes. ‘Who are these witnesses, my lord?’

  He slammed the document down. ‘You may not question the proceedings of this court!’ The a surge of violence in de Nogent’s voice made Agnes flinch.

  Shame crawled in Gui’s belly. The witnesses claimed to have been Le Coudray’s housemaids. ‘Pay them for their courage and service’, de Nogent had instructed him. From the sly smiles and quick fingers that pocketed his coin, Gui’s knew they were lying.

  ‘Please sir, with your permission. May I ask a question?’ Agnes asked.

  A spiteful grin played on the inquisitor’s lips. ‘It would seem the grounds are greater for me to ask further questions of you.’

  The girl’s face crumpled. Now she understands, thought Gui. Closing his eyes he reached for his inkwell, and prayed the interrogation would be counted in hours not days. With careful method, the inquisitor lead Agnes into confusion, contradiction and inevitably, falsehood. Grim-faced de Nogent pronounced his verdict, offering her the chance to avoid the fire if only she would repent.

  A furrow dented her brow. ‘How can I repent of something that I do not believe?’

  The inquisitor, sitting on the corner of Gui’s desk, pressed the tips of his fingers together.

  ‘I am no heretic, sir. Tell me, please, what must I say?’

  Gui’s chest was drum-tight with the effort of his silence. Only a truly repentant soul could be forgiven, and only the inquisitor could judge the truly repentant. Bernard de Nogent nodded to the guards.

  ‘Please. What must I say?’ She drew back as the guards approached, cradling her arms across her body. ‘For the love of God.’

  Two guards strong-armed her to the door. Twisting under their grip she craned over her shoulder, casting around until her eyes fell on Gui. She did not look away until the guards had dragged her out of sight. And neither did he.

  That evening, drawn by the noise from the streets below, Gui laid aside his manuscript and peered over the balcony. Three men shuffled in irons behind a plough horse. The prisoners had been sentenced to suffer for their own good. The purifying flame would cleanse their souls, and bestow a last chance of salvation before the fires of Hell. Although he had been clerk to the inquisitor for weeks now, this was the first time that he had witnessed a blood punishment and seen the faces of the convicts; faces just like any other. Among them, he knew, was Estève Le Coudray. A salt merchant from the Languedoc with a kind face and a hea
rty laugh who had been condemned by a testimony the Inquisition had paid for.

  As the procession drew level with the balcony, someone in the crowd threw a chunk of masonry. It struck Le Coudray with such force that Gui heard the man’s jaw crack. Large crimson gobs spilled from his mouth. Gui felt his legs yield beneath him. A fist squeezed inside his stomach, releasing a wave of nausea - I did this. Staggering backwards onto his bench, he sat, heart racing, as the jeers of the crowd built to a crescendo. Any moment now he would smell the smoke.

  Transcription scattered at his feet, Gui ran his fingers through his hair, trying to chase out the images from the morning’s trial. But all he could think of was the girl as they took her away, eyes locked onto his as though there were no other living soul in the world. He jumped up and closed the window. The noise of the crowd dulled. Gui paced the cell. The day after next Agnes Le Coudray would be in shackles, stumbling along the cobbles below to her final agony. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin. The words of St James had his heart pumping hard against his better judgement.

  The wooden shutters muffled the din, but they did not impede the vapours of oak moss, garlanded by spectators to veil the stench of burning flesh. It was the same perfume that his mother used on her deathbed to disguise her decay. Gui felt his gorge rise. He reached for the rosary attached to his belt. It was his mother’s gift to him just months before he entered the Cathedral. On his twelfth birthday he had sat at her bedside, her icy hand in his, as death made its mask of her face.

  ‘Deliver the weak and needy from the hands of the wicked.’ She pressed the rosary into his palm. ‘For the love of God, may you never falter in your devotion to His mercy.’

  Her last words told him of her pride at his calling. He wondered now, as he recalled that beautiful girl blinking back her tears, if his mother would still be proud.

  Outside the crowd exalted. Plumes of smoke curled over the rooftops. Blood thrummed urgently in his ears. He pressed his palms together and drew a deep breath. Deliver the weak and needy. Fist clenched tight over the coral beads, he fled the room before the screams began. Sandals slapping on the stone, he hurried to the chapel and he prayed. First, for those poor souls who burned for denying Rome, then, head lifted to the Heavens, he remembered his mother.

  Gui crossed the courtyard hooded in the cloak of a cathedral canon. He knew the corridors well enough to walk them blind. Palms slick with sweat, he stole into the scriptorium, a jumble of standing desks, loose parchments, and ribbon-bound ledgers. He tugged at a locked drawer of the Abbot’s desk until it yielded, rummaging through the seals and scrolls to find the key to the Cathedral’s prison. Then, fingers moving light, he thumbed through his documents until he found the pages he had transcribed from Agnes Le Coudray’s interrogation. The urgency of his endeavour pressed the air from his chest. Still, he paused to tear them up before stuffing them into his cloak. He peered out into the empty hallway. Quickening his pace, he glided over the cold quarry tiles to the courtroom and the cell that lay below.

  There was an hour to go before the canons roused for Lauds - the noose of time was tightening around his neck. In a matter of hours her bones would be ash. He tasted bile at the thought. Before him, narrow steps spiralled down to blackness. Rust from the stolen key scratched at his damp palm. Barely breathing, he placed one foot on the stone, as though he were testing its solidity. Then he squeezed his eyes shut in prayer to a merciful God, and, heart in free fall, stepped down into the abyss.

  Gui squinted through the door’s grille. Agnes was hugged into the corner of the cell, a shadowy outline in the near dark. She started at his presence, inching back further against the wall, as though there were succour to be found against the damp stone. A word of reassurance pressed at the base of his throat, but it would not come. Not in this place, with the Devil at his back.

  One hand steadying the other, Gui weaved the crudely-cut key into the keyhole and hunted for the lock. Voices from outside echoed above. A moment of panic: if I fail we will both die here. It summoned brute force and, clunk, the door yielded. Agnes inched forward until she was close enough for him to hear her breath. In a moment that seemed to stall the world, he felt her searching his intention. Then, bobbing her head, she pushed at the door. He reached for her hand.

  ‘Quick,’ he managed. ‘Come with me.’

  Chapter One

  Montoire-sur-le-Loir, 10 years later.

  Gui rode through the village before sunrise. Most of the houses on the square were stone, set around a fountain with his church in the far corner, its pink façade still grey at this pale hour. None of the shutters on the square were open, but Gui knew that when they were, there would be tattle on the tongues of those who poked out their heads to shake their coverlets at the new day. And they would be right.

  Priest of their modest parish for ten years this spring, he did not delude himself that no one speculated on his circumstances. He had been exiled to this backwater under suspicion of freeing a heretic. With the trouble he had made for himself he was lucky to get that. His only regret was that it was not his burden alone to wonder if the day would come when idle chatter would harness malicious intent. Then the sacrament he administered would be worthless, and everything would fall. His stomach shrank at the thought. Even from behind closed doors he felt as though eyes were upon his every step. Just one careless regard or fond smile was all it would take. The very comfort her presence kindled could betray him in a way he knew his words never would.

  He followed the bank of the river Loir out of the village for a mile or so before crossing. The morning mist dissolved under the mantle of dawn light, and he stopped his mule on the bridge to look across the plain, savouring this rare moment of solitude. For the next few hours he was free from his duties as intercessor between the living and the dead, negotiator between man and the angels. On this road he was just a man, with all his flaws, grateful for the few breaths granted him where he might dare to imagine a life free of the obligation to hide his love.

  There were some early bluebells on the floor of the copse. He dismounted and walked through the trees, the bracken and leaves of forest floor a welcome change from the muddy road. Although she usually arrived before he did, today Agnes was not there. Gui took a seat on a fallen branch while his mule drank from the stream and cast around for a distraction. Soon enough he was fingering his rosary, mind lurching from anticipation to concern and finally irritation. He was at the mercy of some force of the heart beyond his control.

  The same force that had turned the key to her cell so many years ago and kept that autumn night as vivid as ever it had been - the smell of burned char cloth and dampened hearths, their breath hot and fast on the air as they fled through the city streets to the sanctuary of her godmother’s house. He could still recall the heat of his body at the sight of her standing by the water wheel of the little dyer’s cottage. How long it had taken him to separate desire from shame. Seasons passed, realisation dawned; he hadn’t freed her because he could not stand to see her burn, he had freed her because she was meant to be his. And so it was.

  Where was she? Gui rubbed his face vigorously and exhaled. The long, familiar sigh that he knew as companion to affairs of the heart. From the day he left for Montoire and realised he could leave every thing else behind except her, to the day she stood before him, eyes brimming with hope and fear, trying to find the right words. He had known straight away that she was with child. That he was soon to learn the true meaning of the word responsibility. Obligare, to bind. Also religare. Religion.

  Gui kept his family under his own roof by the well-worn feint of many a parish priest, with Agnes playing the role of housekeeper. Still, for all the weight in his heart caused by the deception, Gui knew their son had to remain ignorant of his father’s true identity, and of his parents’ intimacy. To spare him the shame of illegitimacy, yes, but also to seal the truth from those villagers who, necks craning, tried to bring their woes across the thr
eshold of Gui’s home. Was it their desire to claim familiarity with God’s representative, or the human bent for power over another that drew them in, seeking a confidence from his hearth? He did not know and he would not risk finding out. Thus it was that he and Agnes made love in fern-concealed copses, upon the moss and grasses of the forest floor - the thickets of woodland groves their covenant, a certainty they would never be discovered.

  When the foliage crunched behind him, he swung round. Agnes gave a yelp of surprise. Arms folded in front of him, Gui was laughing. ‘Were you trying to creep up on me?’

  ‘Don’t,’ said Agnes, the light of self-mockery dancing in her eyes.

  Gui drew her into his body. She rested her head against his chest.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘That Claire was by the washing brook again. She had no laundry with her, so I stopped now and then in case she was following me.’

  ‘The furrier’s wife?’ Gui snorted as though someone were asking him if he knew the Lord’ prayer. The haughty wife of an artisan, Claire was one of the habitual gossips who congregated on the square after mass, chin jutting back and forth as she exchanged tattle.

  ‘Agnes, a woman like that would never venture beyond the boundary of the village unaccompanied, let alone hazard the forest.’

  For a moment they stood in silence. Gui closed his eyes and lowered his lips to the crown of her head. They inhaled as one, the shrill of the spring birds, the twitch of a rabbit in the undergrowth, and the deep, low breath of the forest around them. Thumb and forefinger under her chin, he gently raised her head. Her eyes did not quite fix onto his. She was still listening. He stroked his thumbs along the plaits that ran from her temples, holding the loose hair from her face. She shook her head. There was no one there. Face hardening in defiance, she dismissed the air with the back of her hand. Her eyes were a deeper water now, flint-edged. ‘You’re right. She would never dare.’