A monk emerged from the semicircular atrium of the church. He greeted the magistrianos with the sign of the cross, which Argyros returned. “Christ’s blessing upon you,” the monk said. “I am Villem, the porter. Tell me your name and station, so I may know where to lodge you.”
Argyros repeated the story he had given the sentry. Villem rubbed his chin. “What shall we do with you?” he said with a thin chuckle. “You are neither noble nor pilgrim nor pauper. Would you mind the pilgrims’ hospice?” He waved southeast. “It’s just on the other side of the passageway to St. Gabriel’s tower.”
“Whatever you suggest. I’m grateful for the charity.”
Villem bowed. “As best I can follow you, you’re well spoken.” Latin was plainly not his birth-speech; he had a harsh Saxon accent. He shouted back into the atrium, “Get out here, Michel, you lazy good-for-nothing! See to the gentleman’s horse.”
“Coming, Brother Villem!” Michel was a freckled-faced novice with curly red hair and a look of barely suppressed mischief. Under Villem’s glowering supervision, though, he greeted Argyros politely and took the horse’s reins from the magistrianos.
“This way, sir, if you please.” He led Argyros south, past the tower of St. Gabriel and kitchen and brewery for the hospice on his left and the lodgings for sheep and shepherds and goats and goatherds on his right.
Several monks were busy overturning the dungheaps in both animal pens and going through the compacted dung at the bottom of each heap. Trying not to breathe, Argyros looked a question at Michel. The novice guffawed. ‘They’re after the breath of the Holy Spirit,” he said. Seeing Argyros did not understand, he explained: “Saltpeter.”
“ ‘The breath of the Holy Spirit,’ eh?” the magistrianos said. He also smiled. Monks were men too, and saltpeter was said to quench lust. “A breeze that keeps the brothers cooled?”
“Huh?” Michel stared, then laughed again. “That too, of course.” He shouted the joke to one of the monks working at the midden. The monk gave back a rude gesture.
The stableman and his assistant were obviously capable, so Argyros left them his horse and let Michel take him back around the corner of the stable to the hospice. “They’ll feed you after vespers, when they light the hearth,” he said. The magistrianos nodded agreeably. Michel gave a half-shy bob of his head and hurried away.
An eight-bed dormitory lay on either side of the hospice’s main hall. The interior walls were only waist-high, to let heat from the hearth reach the sleeping-rooms. Argyros tossed his saddlebags on an empty bed, then thought better of it and put them on the floor. He stretched out on the bed himself. Several men were already in the hospice, some on their way to religious shrines and the rest beggars. About half spoke one Latin dialect or another. Argyros made idle conversation with them. Fortunately, none was from Narbomart to give him away: he did not know his pretended hometown well. As dusk descended, he listened to the monks chanting the vespers service in the basilica. A few minutes later, as Michel had said, two came in to light the central fireplace. One bore a torch, the other a bucket of rags soaked in pitch. That perplexed the magistrianos until he noticed the hearth was full of charcoal, not wood; charcoal fires were always hard to start. But then he was puzzled all over again. None of the monasteries modeled after St. Gall had used charcoal, though they tolerated few discrepancies from one to the next.
The fire finally took light. The monks looked at each other, pleased with themselves. “Coals from the fire of the Father,” intoned the one who had carried the rags—not in prayer, Argyros judged, but as a comment he was used to making. Nodding, the other monk went around the hall lighting tapers. A charcoal fire burned hotter than wood, but gave off no more light than glowing embers. Novices brought in a tray of large loaves, one for each man in the hospice, and several crocks of beer. The bread was coarse and dark. It was half wheat flour and half rye, the latter a grain Argyros had not known before this journey and one he did not much care for. He did not think highly of beer, either. A lifetime of drinking wine made it seem weak and bitter by comparison. As he ate, the magistrianos paid desultory attention to the chatter around him. Had it not been for his theological arguments with Hilda, he might not have noticed, but these monks of St. Gall had a curious way of relating homely things to the Persons of the Trinity. His eyes narrowed in thought. Eastern or western, monks had a taste for allegory—and if St. Gall was what he suspected, what better subject for allegory than its fearsome secret?
Emptying his mug, he turned to the man beside him on the long bench, a tall thin fellow with the pinched cheeks and racking cough of a consumptive. He glanced around. No clerics were anywhere close. “So,” he said casually, “if charcoal’s the Father and saltpeter the Holy Spirit, what’s the Son?”
He had all he could do to keep from shouting when the fellow promptly answered, “Must be that yellow stuff—what do you call it?—sulfur, that’s it. The healer burned some t’other day to try and clear my lungs. Didn’t help much, far as I could see—just made a stink. But old Karloman called it the Son’s own kindling.” The beggar let out a bubbling laugh; a fleck of spittle at the corner of his mouth was tinged with pink. He said, “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, eh? Funny I never thought of that myself.”
“Crazy sort of Trinity,” Argyros agreed. Wits racing, he did not hear when the man said something else to him. Maurice was right, he reflected; these blond barbarians still knew nothing of security. Why, the Empire had kept the makeup of its liquid fire a mystery for centuries, but St. Gall’s secret was out after hardly more than a year. Charcoal, sulfur, saltpeter—there could be no other ingredients, or the monks would not have drawn the analogy with the three Persons of the Godhead. No demons, either, the magistrianos thought with relief.
It also occurred to him that here was a trinity where the spirit might indeed proceed from both the other two elements, for he was certain that charcoal and sulfur by themselves were harmless. In a sense, then, Hilda had been right—not, of course, that the products of this world were truly relevant to theology and its perfection.
He was on the point of springing from his seat and running for his horse when he realized he had not yet won the whole battle. He still needed to know what proportion of the constituents went into the mix. One part of wine in five of water was safe for two-year-olds, but five of wine to one of water would put a grown man under the table in short order. He dared not assume it was different here. He would have to stay a while longer.
Pilgrims, so long as they left with reasonable quickness, did not have to work for their meals; paupers did. Argyros worked before he was asked to. He spent a dreary half-day cleaning the monastery henhouse and goosepen before the fowlkeeper found out he was good with horses and sent him to the stables.
He walked west, the monastery granary on his left hand and on his right a square wooden building whose ripe aroma proclaimed it to be the monks’ privy. Just beyond it was a similar but slightly smaller structure. A couple of monks crossed his path, carrying wicker baskets full of robes, tunics and bed linens.
They went into the building next to the privy: the laundry, Argyros realized. His head snapped around to follow them—what would red cloth be doing in a monastery’s washing? He was sure he had spied some, nearly buried though it was under drabber shades. He remembered the tales of scarlet devils who touched off the Franco-Saxon hellfire and grinned to himself. A perfect disguise, he thought, and one that ought to settle Wighard for good.
The monks came out, their baskets empty. Argyros ambled lazily toward the laundry, wanting to get a better look at the devil-suits, if that was what they were.