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smackenzieAnd so the days continue for Brother Peire on more or less the same schedule - work, prayer, study. Visiting Sers Aelinor with Brother Gueri, visiting the prison to talk to Rainaut. Brother Hernaudin convinces him to come talk to the boys in the friary school, because he's spent time with a heretic and they seem to think he has something interesting to share with them. They ask him questions about Rainaut - what does he look like? Can you see his apostasy on his face? Is the inquisitor torturing him very badly? Is he going to recant? Did he give the inquisitor the names of his heretic friends? - which he tries to answer as best he can, without admitting anything suspicious about himself or his growing friendship and affection for a man whose company he enjoys even though he knows he probably shouldn't.
He can confess his worry about the state of Rainaut's soul, and the fact that he doesn't think Rainaut is going to recant, and that he still doesn't understand how someone who has otherwise demonstrated compassion and intelligence can deny the teachings of the Mother Church and the proper way to serve God.
But Brother Peire can't confess that he wishes Rainaut would recant just so that the inquisitor will let him go and they can continue to meet and talk and just visit with each other the way friends do.
He changes his schedule so that he can visit the prison later in the day, after he and Brother Gueri leave Sers Aelinor's house, so the inquisitor can do his work without interruption. Once he misses the beginning of dinner, but the abbot takes him aside after the dusk service and suggests that he time his prison ministry a little better tomorrow, because a friar should never be late to services or to meals, or in fact to anything. Brother Peire swallows the impulse to tell the abbot that it’s because the prison guards came late to tell him his time was up, and it's not his fault. He'll remind them tomorrow to pay closer attention to the time, because once they shut the door of Rainaut's cell behind him, he can't tell how much time is passing, and they don't want him to be late to his dinner, do they? God doesn't look favorably on men who don't help His faithful servants keep their schedules.
He shares this story with Rainaut, and Rainaut laughs.
"They didn't seem very impressed," Brother Peire adds. "They might make me late again just because they feel like it."
They don't make him late, much to his relief. He doesn't know if the mayor spoke to them, or if the abbot did, or even if it was the inquisitor, but they leave him and Rainaut alone.
This goes on for another week, and in that time Brother Peire and Rainaut discuss not only their differing beliefs and different ways of following what they believe to be the laws of God and nature, but also more mundane, earthly things - life in the friary, life in the heretic's community, what Rainaut's life was like before he took up with heretics, what Brother Peire's life might have been like if he hadn't become Father Ancelmetz's acolyte and hadn't come to Montagui to join the Gray Friars. They talk about their families and friends, they talk about women, they talk about parts of the country that neither of them have seen, they talk in general terms about the Mother Church and the Holy Father and has Brother Peire ever seen the White Friars' house in Ravene?
"I've never been anywhere besides the village of my birth and here," he says.
"I saw it once," Rainaut says. "My mother's sister was a nun in a convent outside the city, and when she got sick the abbess wrote to us and suggested we come visit. It was a lot to ask - Ravene is far and my family was comfortable but never wealthy - but she was my mother's favorite sister, so we went. My mother wanted to hear the White Friars singing the dusk service." His expression becomes distant. "I thought I'd never heard anything so beautiful in my life. They're really something, the White Friars in Ravene."
"What were they like?" Brother Peire asks. He's met Black Friars, of course, and sometimes a Brown Friar or two will pass through Montagui in their wanderings, but the White Friars have never been to the city in his time here. He’s heard about them, of course, and their angelic voices, but he has no personal experience to go by. So he wants to know.
"Very... distant, might be the best word. They sang as if they didn't belong on earth. They didn't seem like men. We couldn't talk to them, of course, and they didn't talk to us - they don't look at the congregation during the service, as if we're not even there - so after the service was concluded we went back to the convent. The nuns put us up in their guest quarters. I think my mother was disappointed that we couldn't get an audience with any of the friars." He shrugs. "My younger brother was more interested in the convent, anyway - an entire community composed entirely of women!" He grins, widening his eyes in imitation of his little brother realizing just how exciting a life surrounded by girls could be.
"You mentioned the house?"
"Oh, the White Friary. They call it the House of St Esmond. You'd never know from looking at it that the friars have taken a vow of poverty." He snorts, disgusted. "It's made entirely of white stone and marble and it's beautiful, of course, and I highly doubt the friars paid for it themselves, but it's not a humble house and you can't look at it and imagine poor, humble men of God live in it."
"The Black Friars' house here is very nice."
"It is, for a friars' residence. The Gray Friars have some nice buildings too, as I recall, although to be honest I didn't get to see them for very long." He grins, and Brother Peire grins back. "Your cellar was very weathertight, though. Always a good thing."
"But the White Friars' chapter in Ravene is the most important chapter. St Esmond founded the order there. They should have a nicer house than other chapters."
"Where's the main chapter of the Gray Friars?"
"Botenon. It's where God appeared to St Austor, and where he first established the order."
"Is it a beautiful house?"
"I don't know. I've never seen it. Gray Friars don't tend to have very imposing houses, though. It's in St Austor's Charter, that our dormitories and chapels and other buildings be comfortable and airtight, but not showy. If possible, we're supposed to move into existing buildings when we establish a charter somewhere, rather than construct new ones. We don't want to excessively burden the people we live among."
"I don't think the White Friars would agree with that. They're not a very humble order, for all that friars are supposed to be."
"What was the convent like?" Brother Peire asks, to change the subject. Discussing the spending habits of other friar orders makes him uncomfortable. Besides, the White Friars in the city where their founder started their order should have a beautiful house. It shows the lay community that they have God's favor. He wouldn't have made it possible for them to live in such nice surroundings if He didn't think they deserved it.
But all the same, it sits wrongly with him that a friar order, composed of men who took vows of poverty and humility, should have such a showy physical presence and should apparently live in such luxury.
"It was very busy, as I remember it," Rainaut says. "But the nuns were kind to us. They liked my mother's sister - she wasn't very bright, but she was a hard worker and a faithful woman, and she was kind and generous to pretty much everyone she met. And she was very sick, and they wanted my mother to know that her sister was in good hands."
"She... she passed on, didn’t she."
Rainaut nods. "While we were there, in fact. The abbess gave us permission to take her body home with us, in case we wanted to bury her near her family, but my mother said no, it was fine, her sister loved the convent and thought of the nuns as her family and would want to be buried there."
"They sound like very good people."
"The nuns? They were. That's my only experience with religious women, outside of my heretic community, but I don't often hear negative things said about them."
They sit in companionable silence for a few minutes. Brother Peire's candle flickers in the draft from the cell door - it's shut as usual, but drafty - and Rainaut stretches. Brother Peire wants to ask what the inquisitor did this time, but he has learned to hold his tongue. The first time he asked, Rainaut told him, and he had terrible dreams that night about the various tortures that the inquisitor might think up. Not just cold water and beating the prisoner's palms with a switch, but wet ropes and thumbscrews and racks and straw inserted under the fingernails and hot coals applied to the soles of the feet and stretching devices that involve suspending a person from a beam and tying rocks to their ankles, or pulling their arms behind them and up until their shoulders pop out.
Fortunately Rainaut doesn't seem to want to talk about it either. But he's always tired, and sore, and stiff, and he moves very carefully when he sits or stands in his tiny cell. Brother Peire wants to beg him to recant, to end the torment, but he knows Rainaut would only shake his head and say no, he can't recant, he won't.
So they talk about other things, and Rainaut teases the friar, and sometimes Brother Peire teases back.
And he tells no one how he feels, or that he's coming to believe that even though he thinks Rainaut is wrong, and that as a heretic he won't go to Heaven and will never know the glory of God's love, he still finds comfort in his beliefs, and how can that be such a bad thing? How can something that gives a person such pleasure, and such a sense of belonging - how can that be poison? Why is that an illness that must be cured?
Three weeks after Rainaut appeared in the Gray Friars' cellar, and two weeks after the inquisitor started in on him, he's suddenly released from the prison. Brother Peire shows up with his bread and water and candle, and a small onion pie for the guards, and they tell him that the prisoner was released.
"Did he recant?" Brother Peire asks, baffled. "Was he... was he still alive?" Because he's come to realize that "the prisoner was released" could very well mean "the prisoner's body was released to his family", and not "the prisoner walked out of his cell and was allowed to go home".
It doesn't make any sense, but all the guards can tell him is that they were told to let the heretic go and that someone came to claim him, and thanks for the pie, by the way.
Brother Peire goes back to the friary, completely confused but strangely excited, only to be met by Brother Gueri who tells him, a little worriedly, that the abbot wants to see him.
"I assume you have been to the prison," the abbot says, when Brother Peire finds him in his office.
"I have, Brother Abbot. They let the heretic go."
The abbot doesn't look especially pleased by this. "It was Ser Mayor's decision. We will pray for him, that it was the right one." He stands, and now he looks disappointed. "Word has come to me of your conversations with the heretic. I am concerned, Brother Peire. You show him compassion, as you should, but I've been told you also show understanding."
A chill crawls up Brother Peire's spine. "But I don’t understand, Brother Abbot. That's the problem. His... his heresy gives him comfort, but I still don't know why he can't find that comfort in the arms of the Mother Church. I don't know why he's let himself stray."
"I am concerned you might want to follow him."
"No, Brother Abbot, of course not. I still think he's wrong. He's happy, but he's wrong."
"He can't be happy with that poison coursing through him. I have been told that you haven't made any efforts to convince him to recant, or to bring him back to the light."
"I tried, but he won't recant. He doesn't have to, now."
"Our prayers have been for nothing." The abbot heads towards the door, beckoning for Brother Peire to follow him. "Come with me. I have called a meeting."
Brother Peire follows the abbot to the chapter house, where friars are still filtering in and sitting down. There’s a low hum of conversation, as there sometimes is between arriving at the chapter house and starting a meeting. The abbot gestures for Brother Peire to follow him to the front. Brother Gueri is sitting in one of the front pews, and he gives Brother Peire a questioning look, as if to ask "What's going on?" Brother Peire wants to shrug in answer - I don't know - but restrains himself. He has a bad feeling.
"My brothers," the abbot begins, loud enough to quiet everyone, "I have called this special meeting due to a matter of great importance. The heretic who was brought here three weeks ago has been released from prison, unrepentant." The hum starts up again. The abbot raises his hands for silence. "Brothers, please. You may know that Brother Peire has been visiting the heretic, to talk to him and try to convince him to recant ahead of the inquisitor’s tortures. He did not succeed."
Brother Peire flushes, embarrassed by this public announcement of his ecclesiastical failure.
"I have reason to believe that Brother Peire has been swayed by the heretic, and infected with the poison of heterodoxy."
"What?" someone cries in disbelief. Whoever it is, is immediately hushed by the friars sitting around him.
A chill washes over Brother Peire. He can feel goosepimples rising on his arms, even though his friar's robe is warm enough and it's not particularly cold in the chapter house. He folds his hands together to keep them from shaking.
"Brother Peire," the abbot says, turning to him, "do you admit that you spoke to the heretic with kindness and compassion?"
"I do admit it," Brother Peire says. The fact that he's telling the truth, and that anyone would have spoken to a man in prison with kindness and compassion, is the only thing that keeps his voice from shaking.
"Do you admit that you let him tell you of his heretical beliefs?"
"He did. I listened."
"Do you admit a friendship with the heretic?"
"I. Yes. I do."
"Do you admit that you failed in your attempts to bring him back to the rightful path of God's love? Do you admit that you did not even try?"
"I did try, Brother Abbot. I wanted him to recant. He wouldn’t be convinced."
"So you admit that you failed."
"Yes. I, I did."
The back of Brother Peire's neck starts to prickle. His brother friars are so quiet he can hear the creak of a pew as one of them shifts on the hard seats.
"Brother Peire." The abbot's voice is serious and a little sad. "Do you admit to entertaining irreligious thoughts of the heretic, such that you saw him as a spiritually healthy man, a friend, an equal, and a man who should not be imprisoned?"
Yes, Brother Peire thinks. God forgive me, but yes
"Brother Peire," the abbot repeats, "do you admit to believing that the heretic's beliefs give him comfort, and as such, that he should be allowed to keep them?"
The only answer to that is also "Yes", but Brother Peire knows that the second he opens his mouth, he will doom himself.
But he can't lie.
"Brother Peire."
"Yes," he whispers.
"Do you admit to entertaining thoughts of the heretic's heterodoxy, such that you might stray from the path of rightness as set down by the Mother Church and St Austor's Charter?"
"No, Brother Abbot, of course not."
"Do you admit that you care about the heretic, as a man might care for his spiritual brothers?"
More than that, Brother Peire thinks, but all he says is "Yes".
"And do you admit that you consider seriously all that he has to say?"
"Yes."
"I have evidence from witnesses as to what you and the heretic talked about in prison." The guards, no doubt, listening on the other side of Rainaut's cell door. "I have no reason to believe that they would lie. I have the inquisitor's reports, as well, and transcripts of interviews with the heretic. Brother Peire." The abbot turns to face him, as if they're back in his office, just the two of them behind a closed door. "It pains me to do this, but I have prayed long and hard for God to reveal the correct thing for me to do, and this is what He has shown me."
Sweat breaks out on Brother Peire's skin, on his forehead and the back of his neck.
"For your weak will, and your consideration of apostasy, and by your own admission of friendship with a heretic, I release you from your vows to the Order of St Austor, and command you to forsake your brothers and this house, and depart."
There is such a silence in the chapter house that Brother Peire wonders abstractly if every single friar and acolyte has been struck dumb.
Then he realizes what the abbot has just said to him, and what it means - and how wrong it is - and he can't breathe.
"Brother Abbot," he whispers. "No. Please. I'll submit to any punishment, any... I'll serve any penance, just... not this, please, not this. I've always been faithful and obedient and - " He runs out of words. He's never been more frightened in his life.
"Brother Peire," the abbot says, not unkindly, "the other option was submitting to the inquisitor so he could extract a confession of practicing heresy. This is the kinder choice."
The chapter house fills with noise, but Brother Peire doesn't notice it as two friars appear and lead him outside and into the small room where the friars distribute alms to the poor. They strip him of his gray friar's robe and hand him a new one, the sandy color of the robes that the friars provide to the needy. The two friars give him a small loaf of bread and a handful of dried olives, as if he were a poor man come to the gate for food. They lead him unresisting out of the friary gates and to the gates of Montagui, where the sentries standing guard escort him out.
He wants to cry. He wants to throw up. He doesn't know what he wants to do. His order, his brothers, kicked him out, and for no real reason. He has never been anything other than obedient to his order and his abbot and the Mother Church. He has never broken his vows of poverty and chastity and obedience. He has always been humble before God. His only sin was to befriend a heretic, and to look forward to his company, and to beg God to let him live.
Brother Peire just stands there on the road, the city gate half-open behind him. He knows without turning around that the two friars have gone back to their work.
"I thought that might happen," someone says, a sudden voice breaking into the silence in his head. He turns and sees Rainaut, dressed in the same clothes he was wearing when guards brought him to the friary three weeks ago, although they're slightly more tattered and much dirtier than they were then. The heretic is himself dirty and pale and thin, and the smile on his face is rueful. "I'm sorry."
"They - Brother Abbot - he thought I was, I was.... He thought you'd converted me."
Rainaut shakes his head.
"I don't know what to do," Brother Peire confesses. "All my life, all I wanted was to serve God. And now I, I can't." He's afraid he might cry. "What do I do now?"
"You'll come home with me."
Rainaut walks over and takes the friar's arm. Brother Peire walks with him down the road and away from Montagui and the Gray Friars because what other choice does he have? His whole life has just been taken away from him, and for better or ill, Rainaut is the only friend he has.
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He can confess his worry about the state of Rainaut's soul, and the fact that he doesn't think Rainaut is going to recant, and that he still doesn't understand how someone who has otherwise demonstrated compassion and intelligence can deny the teachings of the Mother Church and the proper way to serve God.
But Brother Peire can't confess that he wishes Rainaut would recant just so that the inquisitor will let him go and they can continue to meet and talk and just visit with each other the way friends do.
He changes his schedule so that he can visit the prison later in the day, after he and Brother Gueri leave Sers Aelinor's house, so the inquisitor can do his work without interruption. Once he misses the beginning of dinner, but the abbot takes him aside after the dusk service and suggests that he time his prison ministry a little better tomorrow, because a friar should never be late to services or to meals, or in fact to anything. Brother Peire swallows the impulse to tell the abbot that it’s because the prison guards came late to tell him his time was up, and it's not his fault. He'll remind them tomorrow to pay closer attention to the time, because once they shut the door of Rainaut's cell behind him, he can't tell how much time is passing, and they don't want him to be late to his dinner, do they? God doesn't look favorably on men who don't help His faithful servants keep their schedules.
He shares this story with Rainaut, and Rainaut laughs.
"They didn't seem very impressed," Brother Peire adds. "They might make me late again just because they feel like it."
They don't make him late, much to his relief. He doesn't know if the mayor spoke to them, or if the abbot did, or even if it was the inquisitor, but they leave him and Rainaut alone.
This goes on for another week, and in that time Brother Peire and Rainaut discuss not only their differing beliefs and different ways of following what they believe to be the laws of God and nature, but also more mundane, earthly things - life in the friary, life in the heretic's community, what Rainaut's life was like before he took up with heretics, what Brother Peire's life might have been like if he hadn't become Father Ancelmetz's acolyte and hadn't come to Montagui to join the Gray Friars. They talk about their families and friends, they talk about women, they talk about parts of the country that neither of them have seen, they talk in general terms about the Mother Church and the Holy Father and has Brother Peire ever seen the White Friars' house in Ravene?
"I've never been anywhere besides the village of my birth and here," he says.
"I saw it once," Rainaut says. "My mother's sister was a nun in a convent outside the city, and when she got sick the abbess wrote to us and suggested we come visit. It was a lot to ask - Ravene is far and my family was comfortable but never wealthy - but she was my mother's favorite sister, so we went. My mother wanted to hear the White Friars singing the dusk service." His expression becomes distant. "I thought I'd never heard anything so beautiful in my life. They're really something, the White Friars in Ravene."
"What were they like?" Brother Peire asks. He's met Black Friars, of course, and sometimes a Brown Friar or two will pass through Montagui in their wanderings, but the White Friars have never been to the city in his time here. He’s heard about them, of course, and their angelic voices, but he has no personal experience to go by. So he wants to know.
"Very... distant, might be the best word. They sang as if they didn't belong on earth. They didn't seem like men. We couldn't talk to them, of course, and they didn't talk to us - they don't look at the congregation during the service, as if we're not even there - so after the service was concluded we went back to the convent. The nuns put us up in their guest quarters. I think my mother was disappointed that we couldn't get an audience with any of the friars." He shrugs. "My younger brother was more interested in the convent, anyway - an entire community composed entirely of women!" He grins, widening his eyes in imitation of his little brother realizing just how exciting a life surrounded by girls could be.
"You mentioned the house?"
"Oh, the White Friary. They call it the House of St Esmond. You'd never know from looking at it that the friars have taken a vow of poverty." He snorts, disgusted. "It's made entirely of white stone and marble and it's beautiful, of course, and I highly doubt the friars paid for it themselves, but it's not a humble house and you can't look at it and imagine poor, humble men of God live in it."
"The Black Friars' house here is very nice."
"It is, for a friars' residence. The Gray Friars have some nice buildings too, as I recall, although to be honest I didn't get to see them for very long." He grins, and Brother Peire grins back. "Your cellar was very weathertight, though. Always a good thing."
"But the White Friars' chapter in Ravene is the most important chapter. St Esmond founded the order there. They should have a nicer house than other chapters."
"Where's the main chapter of the Gray Friars?"
"Botenon. It's where God appeared to St Austor, and where he first established the order."
"Is it a beautiful house?"
"I don't know. I've never seen it. Gray Friars don't tend to have very imposing houses, though. It's in St Austor's Charter, that our dormitories and chapels and other buildings be comfortable and airtight, but not showy. If possible, we're supposed to move into existing buildings when we establish a charter somewhere, rather than construct new ones. We don't want to excessively burden the people we live among."
"I don't think the White Friars would agree with that. They're not a very humble order, for all that friars are supposed to be."
"What was the convent like?" Brother Peire asks, to change the subject. Discussing the spending habits of other friar orders makes him uncomfortable. Besides, the White Friars in the city where their founder started their order should have a beautiful house. It shows the lay community that they have God's favor. He wouldn't have made it possible for them to live in such nice surroundings if He didn't think they deserved it.
But all the same, it sits wrongly with him that a friar order, composed of men who took vows of poverty and humility, should have such a showy physical presence and should apparently live in such luxury.
"It was very busy, as I remember it," Rainaut says. "But the nuns were kind to us. They liked my mother's sister - she wasn't very bright, but she was a hard worker and a faithful woman, and she was kind and generous to pretty much everyone she met. And she was very sick, and they wanted my mother to know that her sister was in good hands."
"She... she passed on, didn’t she."
Rainaut nods. "While we were there, in fact. The abbess gave us permission to take her body home with us, in case we wanted to bury her near her family, but my mother said no, it was fine, her sister loved the convent and thought of the nuns as her family and would want to be buried there."
"They sound like very good people."
"The nuns? They were. That's my only experience with religious women, outside of my heretic community, but I don't often hear negative things said about them."
They sit in companionable silence for a few minutes. Brother Peire's candle flickers in the draft from the cell door - it's shut as usual, but drafty - and Rainaut stretches. Brother Peire wants to ask what the inquisitor did this time, but he has learned to hold his tongue. The first time he asked, Rainaut told him, and he had terrible dreams that night about the various tortures that the inquisitor might think up. Not just cold water and beating the prisoner's palms with a switch, but wet ropes and thumbscrews and racks and straw inserted under the fingernails and hot coals applied to the soles of the feet and stretching devices that involve suspending a person from a beam and tying rocks to their ankles, or pulling their arms behind them and up until their shoulders pop out.
Fortunately Rainaut doesn't seem to want to talk about it either. But he's always tired, and sore, and stiff, and he moves very carefully when he sits or stands in his tiny cell. Brother Peire wants to beg him to recant, to end the torment, but he knows Rainaut would only shake his head and say no, he can't recant, he won't.
So they talk about other things, and Rainaut teases the friar, and sometimes Brother Peire teases back.
And he tells no one how he feels, or that he's coming to believe that even though he thinks Rainaut is wrong, and that as a heretic he won't go to Heaven and will never know the glory of God's love, he still finds comfort in his beliefs, and how can that be such a bad thing? How can something that gives a person such pleasure, and such a sense of belonging - how can that be poison? Why is that an illness that must be cured?
Three weeks after Rainaut appeared in the Gray Friars' cellar, and two weeks after the inquisitor started in on him, he's suddenly released from the prison. Brother Peire shows up with his bread and water and candle, and a small onion pie for the guards, and they tell him that the prisoner was released.
"Did he recant?" Brother Peire asks, baffled. "Was he... was he still alive?" Because he's come to realize that "the prisoner was released" could very well mean "the prisoner's body was released to his family", and not "the prisoner walked out of his cell and was allowed to go home".
It doesn't make any sense, but all the guards can tell him is that they were told to let the heretic go and that someone came to claim him, and thanks for the pie, by the way.
Brother Peire goes back to the friary, completely confused but strangely excited, only to be met by Brother Gueri who tells him, a little worriedly, that the abbot wants to see him.
"I assume you have been to the prison," the abbot says, when Brother Peire finds him in his office.
"I have, Brother Abbot. They let the heretic go."
The abbot doesn't look especially pleased by this. "It was Ser Mayor's decision. We will pray for him, that it was the right one." He stands, and now he looks disappointed. "Word has come to me of your conversations with the heretic. I am concerned, Brother Peire. You show him compassion, as you should, but I've been told you also show understanding."
A chill crawls up Brother Peire's spine. "But I don’t understand, Brother Abbot. That's the problem. His... his heresy gives him comfort, but I still don't know why he can't find that comfort in the arms of the Mother Church. I don't know why he's let himself stray."
"I am concerned you might want to follow him."
"No, Brother Abbot, of course not. I still think he's wrong. He's happy, but he's wrong."
"He can't be happy with that poison coursing through him. I have been told that you haven't made any efforts to convince him to recant, or to bring him back to the light."
"I tried, but he won't recant. He doesn't have to, now."
"Our prayers have been for nothing." The abbot heads towards the door, beckoning for Brother Peire to follow him. "Come with me. I have called a meeting."
Brother Peire follows the abbot to the chapter house, where friars are still filtering in and sitting down. There’s a low hum of conversation, as there sometimes is between arriving at the chapter house and starting a meeting. The abbot gestures for Brother Peire to follow him to the front. Brother Gueri is sitting in one of the front pews, and he gives Brother Peire a questioning look, as if to ask "What's going on?" Brother Peire wants to shrug in answer - I don't know - but restrains himself. He has a bad feeling.
"My brothers," the abbot begins, loud enough to quiet everyone, "I have called this special meeting due to a matter of great importance. The heretic who was brought here three weeks ago has been released from prison, unrepentant." The hum starts up again. The abbot raises his hands for silence. "Brothers, please. You may know that Brother Peire has been visiting the heretic, to talk to him and try to convince him to recant ahead of the inquisitor’s tortures. He did not succeed."
Brother Peire flushes, embarrassed by this public announcement of his ecclesiastical failure.
"I have reason to believe that Brother Peire has been swayed by the heretic, and infected with the poison of heterodoxy."
"What?" someone cries in disbelief. Whoever it is, is immediately hushed by the friars sitting around him.
A chill washes over Brother Peire. He can feel goosepimples rising on his arms, even though his friar's robe is warm enough and it's not particularly cold in the chapter house. He folds his hands together to keep them from shaking.
"Brother Peire," the abbot says, turning to him, "do you admit that you spoke to the heretic with kindness and compassion?"
"I do admit it," Brother Peire says. The fact that he's telling the truth, and that anyone would have spoken to a man in prison with kindness and compassion, is the only thing that keeps his voice from shaking.
"Do you admit that you let him tell you of his heretical beliefs?"
"He did. I listened."
"Do you admit a friendship with the heretic?"
"I. Yes. I do."
"Do you admit that you failed in your attempts to bring him back to the rightful path of God's love? Do you admit that you did not even try?"
"I did try, Brother Abbot. I wanted him to recant. He wouldn’t be convinced."
"So you admit that you failed."
"Yes. I, I did."
The back of Brother Peire's neck starts to prickle. His brother friars are so quiet he can hear the creak of a pew as one of them shifts on the hard seats.
"Brother Peire." The abbot's voice is serious and a little sad. "Do you admit to entertaining irreligious thoughts of the heretic, such that you saw him as a spiritually healthy man, a friend, an equal, and a man who should not be imprisoned?"
Yes, Brother Peire thinks. God forgive me, but yes
"Brother Peire," the abbot repeats, "do you admit to believing that the heretic's beliefs give him comfort, and as such, that he should be allowed to keep them?"
The only answer to that is also "Yes", but Brother Peire knows that the second he opens his mouth, he will doom himself.
But he can't lie.
"Brother Peire."
"Yes," he whispers.
"Do you admit to entertaining thoughts of the heretic's heterodoxy, such that you might stray from the path of rightness as set down by the Mother Church and St Austor's Charter?"
"No, Brother Abbot, of course not."
"Do you admit that you care about the heretic, as a man might care for his spiritual brothers?"
More than that, Brother Peire thinks, but all he says is "Yes".
"And do you admit that you consider seriously all that he has to say?"
"Yes."
"I have evidence from witnesses as to what you and the heretic talked about in prison." The guards, no doubt, listening on the other side of Rainaut's cell door. "I have no reason to believe that they would lie. I have the inquisitor's reports, as well, and transcripts of interviews with the heretic. Brother Peire." The abbot turns to face him, as if they're back in his office, just the two of them behind a closed door. "It pains me to do this, but I have prayed long and hard for God to reveal the correct thing for me to do, and this is what He has shown me."
Sweat breaks out on Brother Peire's skin, on his forehead and the back of his neck.
"For your weak will, and your consideration of apostasy, and by your own admission of friendship with a heretic, I release you from your vows to the Order of St Austor, and command you to forsake your brothers and this house, and depart."
There is such a silence in the chapter house that Brother Peire wonders abstractly if every single friar and acolyte has been struck dumb.
Then he realizes what the abbot has just said to him, and what it means - and how wrong it is - and he can't breathe.
"Brother Abbot," he whispers. "No. Please. I'll submit to any punishment, any... I'll serve any penance, just... not this, please, not this. I've always been faithful and obedient and - " He runs out of words. He's never been more frightened in his life.
"Brother Peire," the abbot says, not unkindly, "the other option was submitting to the inquisitor so he could extract a confession of practicing heresy. This is the kinder choice."
The chapter house fills with noise, but Brother Peire doesn't notice it as two friars appear and lead him outside and into the small room where the friars distribute alms to the poor. They strip him of his gray friar's robe and hand him a new one, the sandy color of the robes that the friars provide to the needy. The two friars give him a small loaf of bread and a handful of dried olives, as if he were a poor man come to the gate for food. They lead him unresisting out of the friary gates and to the gates of Montagui, where the sentries standing guard escort him out.
He wants to cry. He wants to throw up. He doesn't know what he wants to do. His order, his brothers, kicked him out, and for no real reason. He has never been anything other than obedient to his order and his abbot and the Mother Church. He has never broken his vows of poverty and chastity and obedience. He has always been humble before God. His only sin was to befriend a heretic, and to look forward to his company, and to beg God to let him live.
Brother Peire just stands there on the road, the city gate half-open behind him. He knows without turning around that the two friars have gone back to their work.
"I thought that might happen," someone says, a sudden voice breaking into the silence in his head. He turns and sees Rainaut, dressed in the same clothes he was wearing when guards brought him to the friary three weeks ago, although they're slightly more tattered and much dirtier than they were then. The heretic is himself dirty and pale and thin, and the smile on his face is rueful. "I'm sorry."
"They - Brother Abbot - he thought I was, I was.... He thought you'd converted me."
Rainaut shakes his head.
"I don't know what to do," Brother Peire confesses. "All my life, all I wanted was to serve God. And now I, I can't." He's afraid he might cry. "What do I do now?"
"You'll come home with me."
Rainaut walks over and takes the friar's arm. Brother Peire walks with him down the road and away from Montagui and the Gray Friars because what other choice does he have? His whole life has just been taken away from him, and for better or ill, Rainaut is the only friend he has.
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