Heretic by Bernard Cornwell Read Free Book Online Page A

where she was drying her washing on a long pole, a woman screamed insults at a neighbor. The western gate crashed shut at the foot of the street and the locking bar dropped into place with a thud.
    The friar ignored it all. He just climbed to where the church of St. Sardos crouched beneath the pale bastion of the castle and, once inside the church, he knelt at the altar steps, made the sign of the cross and then prostrated himself. A black-dressed woman praying at the side altar of St. Agnes, disturbed by the friar’s baleful presence, made the sign of the cross too and hurried from the church. The friar, lying flat on the top step, just waited.
    A town sergeant, dressed in Castillon d’Arbizon’s livery of gray and red, had watched the friar climb the hill. He had noticed that the Dominican’s robe was old and patched and that the friar himself was young and strong, and so the sergeant went to find one of the town’s consuls and that official, cramming his fur-trimmed hat onto his gray hair, ordered the sergeant to bring two more armed men while he fetched Father Medous and one of the priest’s two books. The group assembled outside the church and the consul ordered the curious folk who had gathered to watch the excitement to stand back. “There is nothing to see,” he said officiously.
    But there was. A stranger had come to Castillon d’Arbizon and all strangers were cause for suspicion, and so the crowd stayed and watched as the consul pulled on his official robe of gray and red cloth trimmed with hare fur, then ordered the three sergeants to open the church door.
    What did the people expect? A devil to erupt from St. Sardos’s? Did they think to see a great charred beast with crackling black wings and a trail of smoke behind his forked tail? Instead the priest and the consul and two of the sergeants went inside, while the third sergeant, his stave of office showing the badge of Castillon d’Arbizon, which was a hawk carrying a sheaf of rye, guarded the door. The crowd waited. The woman who had fled the church said that the friar was praying. “But he looks evil,” she added, “he looks like the devil,” and she hurriedly made the sign of the cross once more.
    When the priest, the consul and the two guards went into the church the friar was still lying flat before the altar with his arms spread wide so that his body made the shape of the cross. He must have heard the nailed boots on the nave’s uneven flagstones, but he did not move, nor did he speak.
    “Paire?” Castillon d’Arbizon’s priest asked nervously. He spoke in Occitan and the friar did not respond. “Father?” The priest tried French.
    “You are a Dominican?” The consul was too impatient to wait for any response to Father Medous’s tentative approach. “Answer me!” He also spoke in French, and sternly too, as befitted Castillon d’Arbizon’s leading citizen. “Are you a Dominican?”
    The friar prayed a moment longer, brought his hands together above his head, paused for a heartbeat, then stood and faced the four men.
    “I have come a long way,” he said imperiously, “and need a bed, food and wine.”
    The consul repeated his question. “You are a Dominican?”
    “I follow the blessed St. Dominic’s way,” the friar confirmed. “The wine need not be good, the food merely what your poorest folk eat, and the bed can be of straw.”
    The consul hesitated, for the friar was tall, evidently strong and just a bit frightening, but then the consul, who was a wealthy man and properly respected in Castillon d’Arbizon, drew himself up to his full height. “You are young,” he said accusingly, “to be a friar.”
    “It is to the glory of God,” the Dominican said dismissively, “that young men follow the cross instead of the sword. I can sleep in a stable.”
    “Your name?” the consul demanded.
    “Thomas.”
    “An English name!” There was alarm in the consul’s voice and the two sergeants responded by hefting their