His brow furrowed. “Dan Brown?”
“He wrote The Da Vinci Code.”
“Ah, oui.” He snorted. “The book that says Jesus and Mary Magdalene made a baby, and the Templars guard their descendants. Crazy bool-shit. The Templars were destroyed by the king and the pope seven hundred years ago. King Philip owed them a lot of money. Instead of paying back the money, he accused them of heresy, locked them up, and took all their money and property. He made Pope Clement his accomplice.”
“Clement? The Magnificent? I hate to hear that. I was starting to like the Magnificent.”
“Non, non, not that Clement. The previous one — Clement the Fifth. Clement the Fifth was the first French pope, the first Avignon pope. He was the marionette — the puppet, I think you say — of King Philip. The king forced Clement to abolish the order and excommunicate the Templars, even though they had done nothing wrong. Shameful.”
“Too bad,” I said. “Clement the Magnificent sounds like a better guy than Clement the Puppet. No wonder he got a better nickname.” Stefan walked to the heavy wooden door of the chapel and began tugging at the handle. “Stefan! What are you doing?”
“It’s okay,” he said. “I have a key. The owner is a friend of mine.” He opened the door and stepped inside. “Come on, don’t you want to see?”
I followed him through the doorway, expecting an empty, ruined shell. But in the opposite wall, three of the soaring leaded-glass windows remained intact; moonlight poured through them, illuminating an astonishing sight. The chapel’s high, vaulted interior was filled with tiers of modern, auditorium-style seats on elevated risers. The seats faced what had once been the altar; in its place now was a small stage. Over the stage and directly over our heads as well, gleaming metal trusses held clusters of high-intensity spotlights.
Stefan laughed at my obvious confusion. “Not what you thought, huh? It’s a theater and conference center now. It’s all set up now for the festival. The Avignon Theater Festival starts in two weeks. There are theaters all over the city — fifty, maybe even a hundred small theaters. There will be a thousand performances in Avignon during the three weeks of the festival. Performances all day, all evening, sometimes even all night. One year, in the courtyard at the Palace of the Popes, I watched a ballet that started at sunset and finished at sunrise the next morning. Crazy. Exhausting. Also magnifique.” He gestured at the stage in the chapel. “Someone should write a special drama for this place,” he went on. “Something about religion and money and power. A deadly combination, don’t you think?”
“Certainly for the Templars,” I agreed.
We left the chapel; he locked the door behind us, and we returned through the narrow passageway to Rue Saint-Agricol. He pointed me toward Lumani and stood at the opening. When I looked back from the corner, he was still there, watching and waving good night as I turned down another corner of the maze.
When I reached the inn and crawled into bed, my mind finally spiraling toward sleep, I thought about Stefan’s account of the Templars; about the dangers of mixing religion with money and power; about Avignon’s long history of drama. The modern theater festival surely paled in comparison to the real-life pageants and power plays enacted here centuries earlier by popes and peasants, kings and cardinals, painters and poets. And a man who appeared to have been nailed to a cross seven centuries ago. Or was it twenty centuries ago?
All the world’s a stage, I thought drowsily. All of Avignon’s a stage.
The tune of Miranda’s childhood lullaby entered my sleepy head. Sur le pont d’Avignon. How did it go? I couldn’t recall the words so I substituted new ones, the only words I could think of that fit the half-remembered tune carrying me down, down, deep into sleep.
Avignon, Avignon. All roads lead to Avignon. Avignon, Avignon…
CHAPTER 9
Avignon, Avignon. Why did he come to Avignon?
For the old man who is groaning on the rack, the road has led inexorably to Avignon, and to this agonizing moment, but why? Because, he reminds himself, it is God’s will. There is no moment but this moment; no reality but this pain; no will but God’s will.
He gasps as the lever swings again, the taut ropes creak under the added strain, and the ratchet clicks into the next cog in the gear. He has been on the rack for an hour now, and each quiet, metallic click of the ratchet, as the jailer lifts the lever that turns the gear, brings the excruciating certainty that this time, surely, his limbs will be torn from their sockets.
A rotund figure, cloaked in white, stands beside the jailer and leans over the old man. The robe is topped by a conical white hood; within its dark interior, the eyes burn like coals. “I put you to the question once more. Tell me the truth. Where did you learn these errors?”
“What errors?” gasps the old man. “Tell me, Fournier.”
The hooded figure draws an angry breath. “There are no names here. Only you, heretic, and I, Inquisitor.”
“You want the truth? Here is the truth: You are Jacques Fournier, a shoemaker’s son turned cardinal, and you are afraid, or you would not be hiding beneath that hood. But does the hood change your voice, alter your fears and your weaknesses? Does your beloved white robe hide the belt of fat that your gluttony has fastened around your belly? Will these ropes sunder the name Eckhart when they tear apart my body?”
“Insolence will not save you. Insolence to this holy office only confirms that you are indeed a heretic. You have preached that God is not an intelligent being. Who taught you that heresy?”
“God taught me that, Fournier. God is not a being; God is more than a being. God is everything.”
“You understand nothing of God.”
“Of course not. If I could understand God, he would not be truly God. God is as far above my intelligence, Fournier, as you are below it.”
The Inquisitor pushes the jailer away from the lever and seizes it himself, then leans into it with his considerable weight. It is an action Fournier has imagined performing a thousand times or more these past fourteen years — ever since the day the two Templar heretics were burned on the Isle of the Jews. Ever since the day Eckhart dared to criticize inquisitors, prompting young Fournier to fume God is not pleased. The ratchet clicks once, clicks twice, as the older, heavier Fournier forces the lever and turns the gear. The body of the aged man on the rack reaches a breaking point; tendons tear, and he screams before losing consciousness.
When he comes to, he is crumpled on the cold stone floor of a low-vaulted cell, which is tucked into the foundations of a building that is formidable on the outside, palatial on the inside.
Two floors above the crumpled old man, the Inquisitor sits in a carved chair in a marbled audience hall. Atop the white robe he has draped a red shawl, and he has exchanged the Inquisitor’s hood for the broad-brimmed red hat that marks him as a cardinal, a Prince of the Church. Facing him, on a throne, slumps His Holiness, Pope John XXII, who croaks out a question. “Are you sure of this, Jacques?”
“Quite sure, Holy Father. I have put him to the question several times.”
“You mean…?”
“Yes, Your Holiness. Today I nearly tore him apart, yet he clung defiantly to his heresies. You’ve read his defense; he accuses his critics of ‘ignorance and stupidity.’ He is as arrogant and proud as Lucifer himself.”