Warlord(80)
Her words struck a chord: I was young and foolish and in love – have you never made a mistake in these circumstances? Yes, I thought. I have made mistakes in love: poor mutilated Nur sprang into my mind; and a lovely Jewish girl who was killed in York a few years ago. Yes, I had made mistakes in love, who has not?
Adèle’s exquisite tear-stained face and beguiling bright green eyes were beseeching me – and I knew that I would not be able to refuse her request of forgiveness if I stayed under such a powerful enchantment for long. But she had destroyed my father – her shameless lust, her selfish urges, her wanton actions had spurred him towards his untimely death. And so I merely muttered, ‘I must go, my lady; I have an appointment to dine with a Templar: I will think long and hard on what you have told me. God be with you.’
And I turned my back and hurried away before her green eyes and bewitching beauty could break my resolve.
The dinner with Sir Aymeric de St Maur was a private affair: just we two knights at the board, and served by half a dozen silent servants – but, as the Templar had promised, the food was lavish and the wine excellent. I had been shown to his guest hall in the north of the Paris Temple compound shortly before noon, and Hanno and Thomas had been led away to the servants’ quarters to be fed separately – which gave me a moment’s pause – but Sir Aymeric’s affability reassured me, and there were several trustworthy people in Paris who knew that I was being entertained by this Poor Fellow-Soldier, and so I felt reasonably secure. I gave my sword to Thomas for safekeeping – but I kept my misericorde at my waist, and I had a stout eating knife at my belt, too. But, in truth, I did not seriously fear that I would be murdered over the many different, and quite astoundingly delicious, dishes that the English Templar had ordered to be served.
Sir Aymeric and I sat close together and, after an interminably long prayer of thanksgiving, we ate from the same bowls, my host serving me with the choicer cuts of venison and beef, and urging me to try the sauces that his cooks had prepared to accompany the roasted meats. If the food was good, and I could not deny that it was, the wine was truly exceptional, pale yellow, tart and refreshing, coming Sir Aymeric told me from vineyards that the Order cultivated in the region of Champagne. Once again I was impressed with the reach and power of this organization, and reminded of its wealth. We spoke of inconsequential things, platitudes and gossip, for the first part of the meal. I praised the food and the wine, and my host told me how impressed he was with my growing reputation as a knight. Harmless stuff. I mentioned how thunderstruck I had been by the cathedral of Notre-Dame, its beauty, the majestic scale of the project, and my host concurred. But then he said: ‘Do you think, Sir Alan, that God wants us to expend so much treasure and time on these great edifices? Surely they serve to aggrandize Man and not Our Lord – surely the whole world is God’s masterpiece and anything Man builds can only be a pale, imperfect imitation of the wonders of Nature that Almighty God has already made.’
I choked on a large piece of peppery roast beef. I had never thought of it that way before. But how could building churches be wrong? And this was coming from a Templar, a warrior dedicated to the service of Christ.
Sir Aymeric took a frugal sip of wine and continued: ‘Consider a tall tree in a wood; see how glorious it is, soaring, magnificent and yet alive, providing shade for mankind and a place of shelter for all God’s creatures – birds, squirrels, spiders and tiny insects. Can one of de Sully’s big stone columns, most cleverly carved in the image of a tree, whose purpose is merely to prevent an absurdly high roof from falling on our heads, ever truly compete with a mighty hundred-year-old oak? And de Sully is, in fact, felling trees by the thousand on his lands to use in building his cathedral. Is de Sully not destroying something truly beautiful, which reminds us of the perfection of God, to create something artificial that is but a monument to Mankind’s ambition – and a rich source of revenue for the Church from the swarms of pilgrims who come to gawp at it?’
For an instant, Robin leapt into my mind: he too preferred trees to churches, the clean wildwood to the venal priest-ridden city. And then I remembered the Templar clerks exchanging my three pounds in hard silver for a piece of parchment worth only two, and I said: ‘And does Notre-Dame truly bring in rich revenues for the Church?’
‘Ah, you have me there,’ said Sir Aymeric, chuckling. ‘I see some of the disputative air of the University of Paris has sharpened your wits. I must confess that no, it does not: Notre-Dame’s pilgrims bring in a small amount, and in future years they will undoubtedly bring in more, but the costs of building the cathedral must be almost beyond computation. Indeed, many people wonder how Bishop de Sully can afford such a vast expenditure of treasure. No one knows how he manages it – except the good Bishop himself! And God, of course.’ The Templar laughed to show that he did not mean his words to be taken seriously.