Our room was spacious and comfortable, with a cool black-and-white tiled floor, a set of green velvet curtains, finely embroidered with red and gold silk, drawn around the walls of the room to keep out the draughts, and a large bed of intricately carved wood in the centre of the room with a huge wool-stuffed mattress, which seemed to me luxurious after months of hard campaigning. A shuttered window opened out on to the street below, and as I poked my head out, I could see a groom leading our horses away to the stables at the rear of the building. Hanno and Thomas had simple straw pallets made up for them on the floor of the chamber, which could be stored under the big bed in the daytime. The room contained a strong carved oak chest with an iron lock, a chair, a table, two stools and a long pole suspended from the ceiling from which we could hang our clothing; the ceiling itself was painted with weird and delicate depictions of the signs of the Zodiac. I must admit it was one of the most elegant chambers I have ever occupied: I felt more like a visiting prince than a man seeking vengeance on a murderer.
Although I never got to know her well, the Widow Barbette seemed a respectable woman, round, neat and always busy, and she was certainly an accomplished cook. She occupied the kitchen and storerooms on the ground floor, and for a modest payment provided a meal for all of us twice a day: dinner shortly before noon, and supper in the early evening. On that first day, once we had settled the rent, she served a fine meal of roast saddle of mutton with a garlic sauce, fresh bread and a large dish of boiled peas. Her manservant León, a near idiot, was induced to go out and buy wine for us and we made a convivial meal with the five students in the salle – before taking a short nap, as Matthew assured me was the custom in Paris, and then rising again and setting out to see some of the city in the late afternoon.
We accompanied the students to the Petit-Pont, where they were planning to meet up with their new teacher, Master Fulk. I did not like the look of him, at first. He was a big, hulking man, hairy as a wolfhound on his body, with a head that was nearly bald as an egg, with only a few grey wisps to indicate his tonsure. He was not at all how I had imagined one of Christendom’s great minds, a celebrated teacher at the University of Paris, to look. He wore a dirty black robe, his nose had clearly been broken in a long-ago brawl, and when I came close to him I found that he had a rancid odour of old sweat about his person that almost made me gag.
The Petit-Pont itself had been a surprise, too, when we crossed it that morning. It was nothing like the crowded, endlessly moving thoroughfare of the Grand-Pont to the north of the Île de la Cité. It was quiet, for a start, with only a few houses belonging to the members of the university set upon it, and large open spaces between these lodgings where one could sit on stone benches and look out over the slow rolling Seine. It was in these spaces that Master Fulk conducted his lessons. I whispered to Hanno that I could well understand why Fulk’s students preferred to meet him outside: how could anyone stand to be in an enclosed space with that stench? But Hanno did not find my jest in the least amusing, and frowned at me, clicking his tongue at my disrespect of a man of learning.
We bade farewell to the students on the Petit-Pont, leaving Matthew and his friends clustering around the brawny form of Fulk the Scholar, and already beginning to argue in Latin. Hanno, Thomas and I made our way north over the bridge on foot back on to the Île de la Cité and headed towards the great cathedral of Notre-Dame.
I was allowed, this time, to indulge my eyes on that wondrous sight to my heart’s content. I spent more than an hour just gazing at its exterior before entering that vast and holy space and lighting a candle for St Michael at a little shrine in the apse. I prayed once again that the archangel would help me find out the answers to the mystery surrounding my father, and sat for a while looking upwards at the majestic, soaring ceiling, and thinking of the happy times I had spent in the rude cottage in Nottinghamshire that my family had called home. Thus comforted by my communion with the saint and with the spirit of my father, I led my two men to the episcopal palace, the residence of the venerable Bishop of Paris, Maurice de Sully, a mere stone’s throw to the south of the cathedral.
The sky was darkening as we entered the palace by a door opposite the south transept of Notre-Dame; it was perhaps a mere hour before Vespers and I realized that I had spent far longer in the cathedral than I had realized. We were greeted at the door of the palace by a young monk, who asked our business and then conducted us into a chamber off the main hall. While we waited, a servant brought us cups of green wine and delicate sweet pastries, a Parisian speciality, and I ran over in my mind what I would ask the prelate, if he should be good enough to grant me an audience that very day.