‘I — that was not exactly what I meant.’ Josse tried to think how to explain himself. ‘I suppose I just thought that, since you are neither priest, monk nor cleric of any description, you would not be bound by any vow and you would make up your own mind.’
‘How perceptive,’ de Gifford said softly. ‘I am honoured by your judgement of me. Indeed I do make up my own mind, sometimes in matters where such independence of spirit is not altogether wise.’ He was studying Josse as he spoke and, when he had finished, went on staring at him in silence, as if thinking how to go on.
‘I will, I think, repay your confidence with one of my own,’ he said eventually. ‘You are aware of whom I serve?’
‘Aye. Richard FitzRoger of the de Clares.’
‘And you are also aware of the family’s close connections with the Crown?’
‘Aye. I know something of the Norman line. My father’s lands are in France and I grew up with tales of Duke Robert of Normandy and Arletta his woman. In my country we call him le Diable.’
‘The Devil.’ De Gifford nodded.
‘Arletta wed the Count of Brionne, and they founded the de Clare dynasty,’ Josse went on. ‘I know they have had their differences with the Crown, but, as I understand it, the blood tie always seems to manage to overcome them.’
‘Yes. It does.’ Now de Gifford was staring down at his booted foot, making patterns in the dirt of the path. ‘Richard FitzRoger’s great-grandfather once saved William Rufus from an assassination plot. And he was at the King’s side in the New Forest when the Rufus fell.’ Suddenly the bright, intelligent eyes were on Josse’s again. ‘No doubt you, who know of the reputation of the one they call le Diable, are also aware of what they say of his descendants who sat on the English throne?’
‘In what way?’ Josse asked cagily.
De Gifford gave a small sound of impatience. ‘Please, Sir Josse, do not be coy. We speak in the open, with no witnesses. If I subsequently claim that you spoke of matters of which it is best not to speak, then it is but my word against yours. What they say of the Conqueror’s family is that they honour the old gods.’
‘I know of the rumours, aye,’ Josse said. ‘I’ve never placed very much credence in them. The Crown has been a major patron of the Church and-’
De Gifford sighed. ‘You cannot deny that William Rufus was loathed and mistrusted by the clergy. Why do you think that was?’
‘Because-’
But before he could get an answer out, de Gifford had forestalled him. ‘Because he did not bend the knee before their altars!’ he said fiercely. ‘Oh yes, he went through the ceremonies for the sake of form. But they knew full well where his heart lay.’
‘And you’re going to tell me that his close friend Gilbert de Clare shared his beliefs?’ Josse asked shrewdly. ‘That, even now, the shadow of the old ways lies on the family?’
De Gifford studied him. ‘No. I would not tell you that.’ He grinned. ‘I might, however, plant the seed of suspicion in your mind.’
But Josse had remembered something and was hardly listening. ‘You told the Abbess Helewise that you had not come for the heretic woman!’ he exclaimed. ‘You said you’d have brought her to the nuns’ care yourself, had you known where to find her!’
‘Yes, I would have done.’ De Gifford’s expression was indulgent.
Josse shook his head in puzzlement. ‘But she has broken the law. All of them have.’
‘They have broken the Church’s law,’ de Gifford corrected. ‘They dare to worship God in a different guise from that ordained by the men of the Church. Yet these clerics are but men, no better qualified than any other men to say that the deity is this, or that, and no other. These matters are for each man’s conscience, are they not?’
‘I–I don’t know. No priest would agree with that, for sure.’
De Gifford shrugged. ‘So? How speaks your conscience, Sir Josse? Do you follow without question when your priest orders you? Would you betray a fellow man to the Church for punishment because he had another faith?’
After a moment Josse said, ‘No. I would not. I have not, indeed, for I am well aware that a heretic woman lies even now in Hawkenlye Abbey.’
‘Yes. There is no need for you to prove yourself to me. I would not do so, either. Sir Josse, when I began my investigation into the death of Father Micah, I already knew about the band of heretics and I suspected that his death might in some way be linked to them. I do not believe necessarily that they killed him but, even were that so, I should keep an open mind over whether it was murder or self-defence.’
‘Self-defence?’
‘Father Micah threatened to kill them. If a man tries to kill you, Sir Josse, do you not hit back and try to prevent him?’
‘But he is — he was a priest!’
‘A vicious and over-zealous priest who belonged to a faith in which the heretics did not believe.’
Josse thought about it. ‘Aye,’ he said, ‘I understand. Take away the religious context and it’s just a man threatening to kill another and the victim hitting back.’
With a calm smile de Gifford said, ‘Precisely.’
Josse sat in thought for some moments. It was, he was discovering, one thing to suspect that an urbane and worldly man of the law might be less than totally committed to the faith of his homeland. It was quite another matter to have had that suspicion confirmed.
After a while, he looked up at de Gifford and said, ‘Where do you think they are?’
‘The heretics?’ De Gifford shrugged. ‘I have no idea. There are many places out in the forest and the wild where they might be hiding, although I doubt if they would have survived the bitter weather unless they found some sort of shelter and were able to build themselves a fire. And it is unlikely that any household has taken them in for, were they to be discovered, the house would be destroyed. That particular clause of the Assize of Clarendon is, I believe, quite widely known.’
‘Might they not have left England and returned to wherever it was they came from?’
‘I have asked myself that question. But I do not think that they would leave Aurelia behind. Somebody obviously cares deeply for her, to have taken the risk of formulating the plan to bring her to Hawkenlye. Had the big man who carried her there stayed after delivering her to the nuns, no doubt someone within the Abbey would have insisted he be put under guard until the matter could be investigated.’
‘Aye, someone did,’ Josse said grimly.
De Gifford gave him a sympathetic glance. ‘I see.’
There was something Josse wanted to return to, something that de Gifford had said earlier. ‘When you looked at the manuscript you said it was written in the langue d’oc and was a — what was the word you used?’
‘Cather. Yes, I said that I believed it is a Cathar tract.’
‘And the Cathars are heretics?’
‘Oh, yes. They are probably the biggest thorns in the Church’s side that all those great spiritual lords have ever experienced.’
‘I know nothing about them,’ Josse confessed. ‘Will you tell me?’
‘Of course,’ de Gifford replied. ‘Catharism is a dualist faith, and its followers believe that we are here in our earthly existence under sufferance, having been torn away from our spiritual entities in the heavens against our will. The most fervent wish of a Cathar is to be reunited with his or her spirit, which is why they view their life on earth with such indifference and why they go so willingly to the stake. It is also, incidentally, why they do not recognise marriage, since to procreate means that they have separated yet another soul from its spirit and brought it down to endure life on earth.’
‘If they do not marry and bear children,’ Josse asked, ‘how can the sect hope to continue?’
De Gifford smiled. ‘I do not think that continuance on earth concerns them much. But in fact quite a lot of them have been married and had children before they become Parfaits.’