Heretic by Bernard Cornwell Page A

the girl’s heresy. Perhaps he is ill? He did send me a letter explaining how the fire was to be made.”
    Friar Thomas looked scornful. “All that’s needed,” he said dismissively, “is a heap of wood, a stake, some kindling and a heretic. What more can you want?”
    “Father Roubert insisted that we use small faggots and that they stand upright.” The priest illustrated this requirement by bunching his fingers like sticks of asparagus. “Bundles of sticks, he wrote to me, and all pointing to heaven. They must not lay flat. He was emphatic about that.”
    Friar Thomas smiled as he understood. “So the fire will burn bright, but not fierce, eh? She will die slowly.”
    “It is God’s will,” Father Medous said.
    “Slowly and in great agony,” the friar said, relishing the words, “that is indeed God’s will for heretics.”
    “And I have made the fire as he instructed,” Father Medous added weakly.
    “Good. The girl deserves nothing better.” The friar mopped his dish with a piece of dark bread. “I shall watch her death with joy and then walk on.” He made the sign of the cross. “I thank you for this food.”
    Father Medous gestured at his hearth where he had piled some blankets. “You are welcome to sleep here.”
    “I shall, father,” the friar said, “but first I shall pray to St. Sardos. I have not heard of him, though. Can you tell me who he is?”
    “A goatherd,” Father Medous said. He was not entirely sure that Sardos had ever existed, but the local people insisted he had and had always venerated him. “He saw the lamb of God on the hill where the town now stands. It was being threatened by a wolf and he rescued it and God rewarded him with a shower of gold.”
    “As is right and proper,” the friar said, then stood. “You will come and pray to the blessed Sardos with me?”
    Father Medous stifled a yawn. “I would like to,” he said without any enthusiasm.
    “I shall not insist,” the friar said generously. “Will you leave your door unbarred?”
    “My door is always open,” the priest said, and felt a pang of relief as his uncomfortable guest stooped under the door’s lintel and went into the night.
    Father Medous’s housekeeper smiled from the kitchen door. “He’s a good-looking one for a friar. Is he staying tonight?”
    “He is, yes.”
    “Then I’d better sleep in the kitchen,” the housekeeper said, “because you wouldn’t want a Dominican to find you between my legs at midnight. He’ll put us both on the fire with the beghard.” She laughed and came to clear the table.
    The friar did not go to the church, but instead went the few paces down the hill to the nearest tavern and pushed open the door. The noise inside slowly subsided as the crowded room stared back at the friar’s unsmiling face. When there was silence the friar shuddered as though he was horrified at the revelry, then he stepped back into the street and closed the door. There was a heartbeat of silence inside the tavern, then men laughed. Some reckoned the young priest had been looking for a whore, others merely supposed he had opened the wrong door, but in a moment or two they all forgot about him.
    The friar limped back up the hill to St. Sardos’s church where, instead of going into the goatherd’s sanctuary, he stopped in the black shadows of a buttress. He waited there, invisible and silent, noting the few sounds of Castillon d’Arbizon’s night. Singing and laughter came from the tavern, but he was more interested in the footsteps of the watchman pacing the town wall that joined the castle’s stronger rampart just behind the church. Those steps came towards him, stopped a few paces down the wall and then retreated. The friar counted to a thousand and still the watchman did not return and so the friar counted to a thousand again, this time in Latin, and when there was still nothing but silence above him he moved to the wooden steps that gave access to the wall. The steps creaked