The Dream of Scipio

PART TWO

CLAUDE BRONSEN was trapped in France when the invasion of May 1940 came because, like most people, he did not believe that disaster could hit so completely. He had taken precautions, as his confidence in the French military was far from total, and had transferred money out of the country in case of necessity, but underestimated how quickly he would need to move. And he could not bring himself to leave; his businesses, swiftly converting to war production, needed him, and he did not trust anyone else to run them properly. He was patriotic, more French than those who had been born in France, though born in Germany himself, and had a strong sense of duty. For years there had been sniping and criticism about people like him—businessmen, financiers, Jews—and to run away at such a time, he felt, would merely have provided more ammunition. Besides, the war came and nothing happened; a sense of calm descended after the initial panic. A perverse faith in the ability of diplomats to fend off catastrophe grew, people began to laugh again and think they had panicked for no reason. Their enemy was more timid than they feared; their own defenses as strong as they had hoped.

When catastrophe did strike, the shock was all the greater, and even a man like Bronsen, normally so canny and prepared, was caught by surprise. He delayed, not able to accept that the defeat was as total as all his intelligence told him. Besides, Julia was not there, and he would not leave without her. She was in the south, somewhere in the Camargue in the little house close to the coast she rented every summer she was in France, as reassured as everyone else. As usual, she had gone off without saying where she was; she guarded her solitude and privacy jealously on such occasions. So, rather than leaving himself, taking one of the last cross-channel ferries before they were cut off, he stayed behind, hoping that she would turn up, and having nightmare visions about what would happen if she arrived and found him already gone.

When it was clear that disaster was looming, his reaction was typically defiant and indeed perverse: He went to the restaurant, the Grand Véfour, with half a dozen friends whom he managed to round up, and had a valedictory meal. One of these friends was Julien Barneuve.

A grand and fine meal it was, although the service was patchy; the waiters’ minds were distracted. Fortunately, the chef’s professionalism held out and supplies of food had not yet run low. Bronsen made a short speech at the end; the mood was immensely, almost hysterically, good-humored.

“All around you, my friends, on this table, you see the best of what two thousand years of civilization has to offer. We have the finest damask cloth, its origins in the Middle East, amongst the Semitic nations but actually, I believe, made in Lyon. This rests on a table cut from a mahogany tree, hewn in the Americas, transported on a ship manned by a crew such as those who have been carrying the goods of the world for millennia. The table rests on an Aubusson carpet, worn and dirty perhaps, but in a design which dates back to the reign of Louis the Fourteenth and which has been produced by craftsmen in the same factory ever since.

“And all this to support, to bring close to us, the food, which we eat with our knives and forks in a fashion we learned from the Ottomans, served, course by course, in a style we used to call the Russian manner.

“Here we approach the foothills of civilization; I chose everything carefully for this reason. We began, did we not, with foie gras from the Dordogne, perfectly produced in some farmer’s basse-cour, fatted on cream and corn, taken to the railway station, and transported on a train line paid for by the British. I pay tribute to them. Whatever one may think of our allies, no one can deny that they make fine railways.

“Then a fish, a fine fish, a glorious fish, a Dover sole. Caught in the Atlantic by sailors who can in a day sweep in enough to feed the five thousand. You see that, despite my own origins, I am not averse to using Christian imagery to make a point. It is brought to us, lightly sautéed and served in a delicate sauce that was first tasted by the great Cardinal Mazarin himself.

“Then we had a tour of France, the very heart of France. Lamb raised on the salt flats of the Vendée, with potatoes in the manner of the Dauphiné, and a great platter of beans grown in a kitchen garden near Paris and cooked, Provençal style, in olive oil from the Lubéron. A simple meal, with little enough finery, for we must say goodbye to the extravagances of our past.

“We have then the cheese, brought to us from all the corners of the country, perfected over the decades to remind us what the greatest civilizations can do when they turn their minds, wholeheartedly, to the arts of peace. Think of those shepherds, herding their goats and sheep and cows; the farmers milking them day after day. Think of their wives and sons and daughters, carrying the pails and separating and curdling and setting. Think of the good women of Normandy preparing this fine Camembert; pay tribute to those people whose cheese went moldy in a cave near Roquefort but had the sense to realize that the delicate blue stains which resulted were a miracle, not a disaster. Then consider the ribbon-like trails of the carters, their routes like veins across the entire country, coming to collect the result on behalf of the merchant, who has already used his elaborate network of contacts, his financial tentacles, to find a price and a buyer. All so that we can eat it, here, as the armies march upon us.

“And all along, gentlemen, we have had the wine. The Gewürztraminer, which we drink here as our own for the last time. I hope the vintners who produced it will forgive me if I say it will not taste as good tomorrow, when we must drink it—or not—as a German wine. The champagne, a product unique in civilized history, dependent on mixing the very best techniques of fermentation with the creation of the glass bottle and cork, and mixing these with a dash of divine inspiration. The Burgundy, that hearty, earthy, refined wine which has a trace of our soul in each bottle, so that when we drink it we become, all unknowing, more French than before.

“And now, as we begin our cigars—brought from Havana, docked at Le Havre, and stocked in a shop which prosperity has allowed to become so specialized it sells nothing but cigars—now, gentlemen, we begin on our cognac.

“Here words fail me. Nothing in the annals of literature can capture the essence of cognac, drunk amongst like-minded friends, after a fine meal. You know this, all of you; I am telling you nothing you do not know. Did Racine ever succeed? Did Hugo capture its essence? Did Voltaire or Diderot pin it down? They did not. They were too aware of their limitations even to try, and who am I, businessman that I am, to presume where men of genius have failed?

“I will merely point out to you that all of this—food, wine, and even cognac—are nothing in comparison to what they permit, which is the easy and unrestrained exercise of friendship manifested through conversation. We have been sitting here now for near three hours in perfect amity, as we have known each other for many years—many decades in a few cases. We have managed, I am glad to say, not to talk of the war, as this last supper—my imagery again, I apologize—is to celebrate civilization, not to mourn its passing. We have talked here of literature, I believe. Some of you I heard discussing the performance of Tosca canceled last week, taking consolation in having seen Furtwängler conduct it in Milan three years ago. One person I heard complaining about the way Cézanne is now considered to be a good painter. My friend Julien, who owns a Cézanne, was polite and restrained; it is as well my daughter is not here, as she would have been more forceful in her reply.

“Such refinement, gentlemen! Such delicacy of address, such sophistication of tastes. But not, for me, the essence of civilization. No; instead I heard the goddess brush her soft lips over my ear when I heard my friend over there lean across the table and ask whether it was true that a mutual acquaintance had separated from his wife.

“Gossip? you say. Idle chitchat? Yes, gentlemen. Men in trenches, men starving, men in chains, do not have the leisure to gossip. Gossip is the product of spare time, of surplus and of comfort. Gossip is the creation of civilization, and the product of friendship. For when my friend here made his inquiry he passed on the information necessary to keep the delicate fabric of friendship together. A question about a friend known for decades but hardly seen, an acquaintanceship which would fall into the past unless its shade was sustained by the occasional offering of gossip. And think again: My friend, an Alsatian businessman, was asking a question of a half-Italian writer about the marriage of a Norman lawyer and a Parisian lady of faintly aristocratic origin. All this at a dinner given by myself, born a Jew. What better distillation of civilization is there than that? Gossip binds three people—the gossipers and the subject of their gossip—together. Repeated often enough it binds society together.

“I fear, my friends, we will not have much time to gossip in the future, and we will be too far apart to have anyone to gossip about. So, with this meal, I must declare civilization closed. It was the finest product of the mind of man, too fine, perhaps, to survive long. We must mourn its passing, and turn ourselves into beasts to survive what awaits us. Gentlemen, I bid you rise. The toast is: ‘Civilization.’ ”

Three hours later, Claude Bronsen got into his car—well stocked with petrol, cans on the backseat, for he had prepared as well as possible for emergencies—and struggled south down roads already choked with refugees. He had arranged in advance to meet Julia in Marseille, had told her to go there if something dreadful should happen. It never occurred to him that she could be safe without him, nor did it ever occur to him that he could be content without her nearby. Six weeks later, in Marseille, he was detained by the French police as an alien Jew and sent to the internment camp at Les Milles. Three months after that, in the middle of a cold winter, he died of pneumonia brought on by malnutrition. He was buried the next morning, in an unmarked grave.

JULIEN WAS TOUCHED and rather surprised by the valedictory; he had not expected a man like Bronsen to be capable of such a speech; the times, it seemed, wrought the strangest effects. He was invited to the meal because he had been summoned to Paris to examine a thesis, and had taken the opportunity to see if Julia was at her apartment. When he got no answer there, he visited Claude Bronsen’s house in Neuilly-sur-Seine and found him packing furiously and, for the first time, uncertain about what to do. Julien counseled him to leave for England while he could; he would find Julia and ensure she followed.

“If she is in the south, then she is not in immediate danger. Your position is more perilous, I think. If you stay she will worry about you and not look after herself properly. So go. Head for Normandy and you might get to a port that is still open.”

But he would not. He would not have Julia beholden to anyone but himself. It was his greatest weakness, a trait that came close to erasing all the good he had done as her father. Even in such circumstances he would not let go, would not allow anyone else to protect her; he did not want her depending on Julien, of all people.

“No. It is better that we’re together. I’ll find her, and we’ll go to Marseille. I’ve told her this already. I have a hotel booked, have contacts at a shipping company. All we need is a few visas. She’s probably waiting for me there already.” Julien renewed the offer, then gave way and accepted the invitation to lunch instead.

The very mundaneness of the task that had brought him north, the fact that it could go on at such a time, in itself testified to the confidence that was felt in the French military up until the last moment. He arrived two days before the German assault to listen to a defense of a work on the late antique city—a revision of Fustel’s work, with little originality but showing promise—as the tanks began to enter the Ardennes forest, thought impassable and left virtually undefended. By the time the candidate had been congratulated, the outflanking of the French forces, defending their country from an army that was not there, was all but complete. In an afternoon, between the time Julien donned his robes to the time he shook the candidate’s hand, the war was effectively lost—although full realization of this would take a few more weeks. Even the German commanders were worried, unable to believe that some trap was not waiting for them, certain that the foolhardy valor that had stopped them in their tracks the last time would sooner or later inspire resistance.

When the full enormity of the debacle began to hit home, Julien did not submit to blind panic as so many others were doing, but did earnestly desire to get back to the south as quickly as possible. This was a common reaction that summer; many people fled the oncoming armies but very soon the overwhelming desire was to go home. Julien thought initially he could simply take a train, then realized this was a foolish idea; trains belonged to civilization, and that had, at least temporarily, stopped. He did not have a car, and even if he had, there was no petrol. Ultimately he escaped and managed to flee south because of Bernard. Nothing worked anymore except family and connections; it was an indicator of what was to come. Julien went to see him at the newspaper he was then working for, partly to get the latest news, but mainly because friendship at that time became so much more important. They embraced with a warmth neither had felt for the other since they played in the main square of Vaison as children. Both were relieved to feel something fixed and secure. Old friendship substituted for nationality, place, and position; it was all there was left.

Bernard, as usual, was well informed, a man who seemed as though he could understand the inexplicable. A train was being put together in a marshaling yard in the south of Paris to take junior members of the government and civil servants to Tours, he said. There was talk of a new defensive line on the Loire. And also talk of an armistice.

“Why are they going?”

It was strange; the building seemed nearly deserted. In the middle of the greatest crisis that the country had ever faced, the newspaper had all but closed down; once before, Julien had visited him here, shortly before the war broke out, and the scurry of activity, the noise of work, was intense and exhilarating. Now there was silence as though events were too stupendous for a mere newspaper to report and explain.

“If they stay they’ll be captured in days. It’s all over here. The only choice is to retreat and start again. The Germans are not prepared for a massive advance; it wasn’t part of their plans. Their lines of communication will be too stretched. They’ll have to pause to regroup, and then we can counterattack.”

He stopped, then looked at Julien, a curious half-smile on his face.

“But we won’t,” Bernard said softly. “The generals and the politicians have already given in. They had before it even began. They’re going to a place where they can surrender. They will call it an armistice. More peace with honor. How much honor do these people have? It seems they have an inexhaustible supply.”

“And what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. I thought of going to Brittany. Rumor has it that the English may try to hold it, although I can’t imagine they will do so for long. On the other hand, the government is going south. Perhaps I should go, too.” He laughed. “Extraordinary, isn’t it? Four days ago, we were convinced we could withstand anything the Germans threw at us. All the talk was of attack, the offensive. Now look. We don’t even know who is in charge of the government or what it plans to do. So we must follow our instincts, and we must do something, even if it is only with a gesture,” he continued, thinking aloud and quite oblivious to Julien’s presence. “I will go to Brittany, I think. I must be on the Germans’ list of undesirables, so I can’t stay here.” As ever, vanity had its place in determining his understanding of the world.

He turned to Julien. “Come with me?” he said. “You’ll get no thanks from anyone for it, not from the government or from the English, I suspect. But it will be a lark. You and me together against the world, just like when we broke the window of the church.”

“What good would a forty-year-old classicist be to anyone?” Julien asked.

“What good will a thirty-eight-year-old windbag journalist be?” came the reply. Bernard was, in fact, the same age as Julien, and both knew it.

Julien shook his head. “You like gestures too much,” he said. “Besides, I’ve fought my war. I can’t do it again. It accomplished nothing last time, and won’t this time either.”

“A pity more Germans are not of your opinion. And that fewer French generals are. But I can’t blame you. You are right, after all. Go home then. At least no one will bother you—assuming you get there.”

Bernard turned and took Julien’s hand. “Go to the Ministry of the Interior this afternoon; I’ll talk to contacts and make sure there is some suitable piece of paper to get you onto the convoy. But after that you’ll be on your own.”

Julien nodded, and stood watching as his friend strode off down the corridor to the newsroom, suddenly purposeful where he felt no purpose whatsoever except for the need to get home. There was something in his friend’s step, a bounce almost, that hinted that Bernard was actually enjoying all of this, that he sensed an opportunity. More than anything else that day, that made Julien uneasy.

THE OUTCOME of the chance meeting was laid out in miniature thirty years previously, during the summer of 1911, when a group of children were playing in the square of Vaison. High up, in the medieval hill town to which the townspeople had retreated long before Olivier’s day, and where they stayed until half a century before Julien’s birth, when they began to move back down to the plain that once had held the bustling city of antiquity.

Bernard, the youngest by a few months, is the most exuberant, jumping off walls recklessly, laughing loudly. Every now and then, a head appears in the window of one of the houses, and a voice—old or young, male or female, angry or amused—tells them to keep the noise down. They try, for a few minutes, until Bernard finds something else to laugh about.

Marcel, the eldest by a year, uncertain whether he is too old to be with such young children, stands aside, then is drawn into the play. They throw stones at the splashing water fountain, just below the window of the church. Their faces reflect their characters. Bernard tosses the pebbles with abandon, joyfully seeing if he can lob his missile into the water trough, but not caring whether he succeeds or not. His pleasure is in the movement of his arm, and in seeing the stone curl through the air. He tries different ways of throwing—fast, parallel to the ground. Slowly and elegantly, curving upward in a great parabola. Standing with his back to the target and closing his eyes before throwing it over his shoulder, whooping with as much pleasure when he misses as when he doesn’t. He lands his pebble in the water fairly often; he is a natural sportsman.

Julien has no such frivolity, and much less ability. He concentrates hard, trying to overcome nature. He misses, time and again, but keeps on going, methodically working the stone nearer and nearer to the target, until at last he drops one into the trough.

He laughs with pleasure, and Bernard cheers him, dancing around him and clapping.

Marcel is displeased at the attention. He throws his pebble hard, and incautiously. It smashes through a window of the church, scattering slivers of glass and noise across the little square. He runs, leaving Bernard and Julien standing alone. When the priest comes out of his house, Bernard claims ownership of the deed, knowing that if Marcel’s father—a brutal man—hears of the event, he will be savagely beaten.

Marcel never thanks him, although he is not ungrateful.

THIS WAS THE event Bernard had referred to, one of those moments of childhood from which the whole of adult life can be projected. Julien, nervous, innocent, but standing fast. The insouciant Bernard, making the grand gesture in the name both of friendship and of self-aggrandizement, his actions extravagant but generous. And Marcel, a little cowardly and frightened, afraid of authority, not wishing to take on the ownership of his deeds, content for others to be punished instead of him. The resister, the collaborator, and the vacillating intellectual. A vignette of later events, whole histories condensed into a small square of a provincial town.

Except that Julien remembered it like that only because Bernard retold the story many years later and brought it back to his mind. Imposed his narrative on what had become the faintest of recollections; created memories by his skill as raconteur. Julien did not query the account and even came to remember the look of panic on Marcel’s face, the quirky little smile of bravado as Bernard stepped forward.

But, on a few occasions, he was almost certain he remembered that it was Bernard who had thrown the stone and run away, and Marcel who had been beaten.

DESPITE THE MANY little tasks that Olivier had to perform to guard his place in Cardinal Ceccani’s household, and the position within the papal administration that guaranteed him his stipend, he still found a considerable amount of time to indulge in his passion of searching out old knowledge. The understanding with his master on this point was clear. Whenever something of particular importance turned up, Olivier was to obtain it for the cardinal’s collection if possible; if this could not be done, then he was to make a copy to be lodged in his library. Over the years, Olivier obtained some forty original manuscripts; most he purchased, either with coin or with the promise of favors or intercession. Four he stole, because they were uncared for, in danger, and because he took a dislike to their supposed guardians. As far as he could tell, he could have absconded with many more; certainly no one ever noticed the thefts.

The Dream of Scipio, Manlius’s philosophic testament, was one that he copied himself with diligence, declining to slip the original into his bag simply because the old monk who let him see it was so kind and, in a strange way, so respectful of those manuscripts he had never troubled to read for himself. A short little fellow—old, but with a wiry resilience—he had, it seemed, been put in charge of the library because he was held in some contempt by the others in the monastery. Olivier did not understand why; he was, certainly, a little vague, a bit of a dreamer, absent-minded, occasionally gruff and ill-humored, but easily placated and responsive to any show of interest. Initially, when Olivier showed up—brought by the abbot who had read Ceccani’s letter of introduction—he had been indifferent, even hostile, putting innumerable obstacles in the way. The second day, after Olivier had invested many moments in conversation, he brought manuscripts himself for Olivier to see. The third day he gave him a large key and told him to help himself to whatever took his fancy.

And, although many, perhaps most, of the old documents had never been read, he yet had some pride in his domain; all the shelves were clean and dusted, the manuscripts neat and well ordered. There was no way of telling what was there—the only works identified were the ones that were used. Olivier offered to make a list as he went through, so that all would know in future what was where, but the suggestion was turned down. Cardinal Ceccani’s servant was welcome to inspect and read whatever he wished; the monk did not anticipate anyone else being so foolish, and for his part he had no desire at all to know what he guarded and tended so diligently. He had his task and that was enough; its purpose did not concern him in the slightest.

Initially Olivier thought the manuscript was another copy of Cicero’s essay that bears the same name. As it was one of the best-known classical works in existence, finding another version was of little excitement. Perhaps it might enable him to correct a mistake or two—for Olivier hazily saw that the constant comparison of differing sources could lead to the purification of errors that had crept in in transmission, although he never proceeded very far along this route—but it would be a labor of duty, not of love, to copy it down. It was only when he read the first few pages that he realized that this was something else altogether.

Still, his excitement was limited, for his concern was above all with the golden age of Rome, the age of Catullus, of Vergil, of Horace and Ovid, and, above all, of Cicero. Even this period was perceived only dimly, but everybody knew that it was the most valuable. The dying songs of the Roman world were secondary, interesting only insofar as they cast a light back still further to the glorious days of Augustus and Athens. This is why Olivier copied, and why, perched unsteadily on his horse the next day, he found his mind wandering back to what the manuscript had said. He knew little enough of ancient philosophy, and these words he had been reading were scarcely comprehensible to him.

“A man worthy of God would be a god himself, and can achieve this state through death alone; the man dies when the soul leaves the body, yet the soul dies a sort of death when it leaves its source and falls to earth. Man’s striving for virtue is the soul’s desire to return whence it came. Until the soul achieves virtue, it must remain below the moon. Pure love is a reminiscence of the beautiful and a striving to return to it. Only through its accomplishment is the soul freed.”

In word, clear enough perhaps, but there were many things Olivier found disturbing. A man becoming a god himself; souls dying when they are born; love a reminiscence; all these were turns of the mind he found baffling to the point of being nonsensical. Perhaps indeed they were ravings, but there was a lyricism to the writing and a sureness to the prose that made him hesitate to dismiss the manuscript so readily. He said as much to his cardinal when he handed the work, and seven others, over to him. They were the payment, at last, for his shoes.

“And who wrote this?” the cardinal asked.

They were sitting together in Ceccani’s summer study halfway up the great tower, a room dark and dank in winter, but perfectly refreshing in the fierce brilliance of June, a blissful refuge from the overpowering heat of the day. Ceccani had a jug of fresh water on his desk, kept cool by being collected as ice from the hills in winter, brought by cart to his palace, and stored deep underground, far below the cellars, until it was needed. This precious, delicious liquid he poured by himself; he enjoyed his conversations with Olivier and wanted no interruptions to them. Every time his wayward protégé came back from his travels, Ceccani cleared at least an hour or two from his busy schedule and looked forward with the eagerness of a schoolboy to hearing about the young man’s adventures and discoveries. It was, indeed, uncertain who had infected whom with the passion for manuscripts, or indeed which of the strange couple most envied the other, for while Olivier saw the cardinal’s power and glory, Ceccani saw only Olivier’s freedom and exuberant youth.

“It begins, ‘Manlius Hippomanes, servant of philosophy, to Lady Wisdom, greetings.’ There is also a reference to deeds done in the reign of Majorian, who was, I think, one of the last emperors.”

“But not a Christian document?”

“There is not a single reference to Christianity in it. On the other hand, Saint Manlius is still revered and lived in the same period; he is a saint from the town where I was born. It is not a common name; they must be one and the same person. And if that is the case, then Lady Wisdom, Lady Sophia as he calls her, may well have some connection with the Saint Sophia you know well. That is only a guess, of course. And it makes it all the more perplexing.”

“Why?”

Olivier thought, trying to explain what were little more than feelings. “It stays in my mind, although I don’t know why,” he said eventually. “Parts of it I am sure I have heard before somewhere. Others I feel I understand but when I think more carefully, I realize I don’t understand them at all. And I do not know how to find out whether it contains sense or nonsense.”

“What is it about?”

“Partly it is a commentary on Cicero, hence its name. Partly it is a discourse on love and friendship, and the connections between those and the life of the soul and the exercise of virtue. That much I can understand. But not much more. Then there is the last section, in which the teacher takes this Manlius into the heavens and shows him all eternity. This is the most baffling part. All I know is that anyone who wrote this sort of thing down now might find themselves in grave difficulties. So I don’t know who I can talk to about it.”

“You will have to go and ask Cardinal de Deaux’s Jew,” said Ceccani with a smile. “He might know. And he will hardly denounce you. I will ask Brother de Deaux to give you an introduction. He will not deny me the favor, I think, despite the fact that we loathe each other cordially. Knowledge is neutral territory in our warfare.”

Olivier was half surprised, half excited by the prospect. He had, of course, heard of the cardinal’s Jew, but had never met him; few people had. How he had attached himself to Bertrand de Deaux no one knew, although it was known that even the pope brought him in, on occasion, for some form of advice. When he arrived in Avignon he talked to no one, and those curious who tried to engage him in conversation were met with a quizzical sort of disdain, a polite but utterly distant response that suggested that their good opinion really was not necessary to him in any way. Many, not surprisingly, found this offensive, considering that such a person should be flattered and honored by their willingness to converse with him at all, but their opinions seemed to count for little in his mind.

Olivier had always assumed that this Gersonides was, if not a money changer, then a physician; such being the most notable occupations that Jews followed, and because the law forbidding Christians to use their services was universally ignored. Certainly the curia had need of the former; not to lend money, for its revenues were titanic, but to channel that great river of gold throughout Europe, so that it reached the right people with dispatch. Well-connected Jews were ideal for such purposes and, in return for protection, could be relied on to perform such services honestly and cheaply. Such people, however, were not obvious choices for the elucidation of obscure manuscripts from the evening of Rome.

“Oh, he is not a money man,” said Ceccani with a chuckle. “He is as poor as can be, and has no sense in that direction at all. I have consulted him myself on occasion but have long since stopped giving him gold; he only gives it away before he is a dozen paces outside the door. Asceticism and poverty are noble and holy things, but I confess I do find them annoying in a client.”

“So? What is he?”

“He is a man of learning, my dear Olivier, and his people value this so much that they give him money merely to make himself more learned. You, no doubt, would appreciate this habit of theirs. He is what they call a rabbi, and what we would call a philosopher, as he seems to exercise no priestly functions at all. He lives in Carpentras and rarely leaves his house. Even the pope almost has to beg him to answer his letters. You can take it as an indication of his worth that His Holiness is willing to do so. I will get you a letter of introduction and you must go and see him. He will talk to you if de Deaux insists. Do not expect to like him, however, for he tries hard to make himself disagreeable and generally succeeds very well.”

IT IS HARD to believe that so little is known about one of the greatest philosophers of the Middle Ages that no one is even sure within thirty years when he died, and yet this is the case with Levi ben Gershon, also known as Gersonides and, to those with a cryptic turn of mind, as Ralbag from the Hebrew letters of his name. Officially he died in 1344, as this is the last time his name appears in the archives and in 1352 he is referred to as being already dead. Others, however, dismiss this and point to evidence that suggests he was still alive in 1370. No one, however, has devoted much time to the mystery, as his life is such a blank page that discovering when he died would add little. Apart from the fact that he lived his entire life in Provence, and was known to the curia of Avignon, almost nothing remains of his daily existence.

Instead, there is his work, one of the most extraordinary outpourings of his, or any other, age. Gersonides was a polymath who turned his mind at various stages to astronomy, chemistry, the Talmud, ancient philosophy, medicine, and botany. Only politics, the art of statecraft, did he leave well alone, perhaps a wise decision considering his position. Few people would have thanked him for his thoughts. Instead he turned his particular situation—utterly isolated from the society around him, devoid of any influence but rather vulnerable and subject to any of its whims—into an aspect of the philosophic position that he painstakingly created over so many years. In contrast to his great predecessor Maimonides, he advanced the proposition of the superiority of the contemplative life to the active one, dismissing the notion of an ideal balance between action in this life and preparation for the one that comes after. For one of his most important works was on the existence of the soul, a matter that had also concerned Sophia but which Christian thought rather tended to take for granted as something that needed no demonstration.

He had once—with some considerable reluctance—set out his line of argument to Ceccani, who had struggled to grasp the concepts that the Jew had brought to bear on the problem, and it was because of this conversation that the cardinal, a few years later, dispatched Olivier to see him. It should not be thought that Ceccani had befriended him in any way; both were much too proper for any such connection, and in any case, Gersonides belonged to Cardinal de Deaux. Ceccani would no more have broken the law by breaking bread with Gersonides than Gersonides would have accepted any such invitation. Ceccani, equally, did not hurry to let anyone know of his occasional contact, even though he consulted him on matters such as medicines and astrological forecasts—another area in which the Jew had a more profound knowledge than anyone except, perhaps, a professor in Paris fully in the pay of the king of France and hence somewhat unreliable.

Nor did Ceccani like him much, although he was intrigued by the man’s demeanor, a sense of his own worth that was haughty and unflinching. Other Jews he had met—not that there had been many, and even these had always been purely business meetings—had been well mannered, excessively so. Ceccani knew that it was insubstantial, this persistent politeness, a mask to disguise their nervousness at dealing with one as powerful as he, but did nothing to discourage it or set them at greater ease. With the rabbi there was no such uncertainty.

“Why,” he said to himself after one of their earlier meetings, “I do believe the man feels sorry for me! He talks to me like a backward pupil.” It was a measure of the cardinal’s qualities—one which Gersonides also sensed—that he was faintly amused, rather than outraged, by the realization.

As for Gersonides himself, he found the assorted prelates who badgered him a distraction, not quite an irritant but certainly an honor he was quite ready to do without. He did not wish to be consulted by princes of the church, and took no satisfaction from their attentions. It was a service that might, perhaps, do some good one day. He did not wish to turn away anyone with a genuine desire to know, and both cardinals de Deaux and Ceccani—though no philosophers, and too much men of power to cultivate any true passion—perhaps had some spark within them.

So, every time he was summoned, he sighed wearily, put on his cloak, and made his way to Avignon, a monument to greed and excess he detested. And there he gave answers and opinions as best he could. His reward in 1347, three years after we are told he died but in fact a year that saw him still in rude good health, was a knock on the door and a visit from Olivier de Noyen. It was a fateful meeting for reasons even more important than the explication of an obscure text in the tradition of late Neoplatonism. In Olivier, Gersonides felt the flame burning brightly, the same one that Sophia had felt in Manlius when he, too, had come to her door. Like her, he could not resist. Unlike her, however, he cursed his ill fortune.

The phrase of Manlius that led Olivier to the rabbi was at least a considered one, and one of the greatest importance. Indeed, it was at the summation of nearly eight hundred years of thought on the relationship that must exist between the physical and the metaphysical. “The soul dies when it falls to earth.” More Christian heresies were contained in this statement than in almost anything else in the entire document. It contradicted the idea that the soul is created ex nihilo—at birth, at quickening, or at conception, a question never precisely answered. It contradicted the idea that man is born and dies once only; it contradicted the idea that salvation lies through God alone; indeed it suggests that man is responsible for his own salvation, but through knowledge, not through deeds or faith. The idea that birth is death and death is life again hardly sat easily with contemporary Christian doctrine, although it echoed all too readily with the heresies of the Cathars.

More important, it did not accord at all with the ideas that Olivier had learned so far from his readings of Cicero and Aristotle, containing a mystical, magical element entirely absent in their works.

In truth, they were ideas all but dead in the West when Manlius put them on paper, although they survived in ever more feeble form in the East until the emperor Justinian closed the Academy of Athens and ended nearly a millennium of teaching that began with Socrates. It was a long time since anything of the sort had been taught in Gaul, and Manlius and his circle only came into contact with it when they encountered Sophia, the intellectual legatee of Alexandria.

It was a duty, not a labor of love, that made her teach, for she could not but be aware that each newcomer to her door, however curious, knew less than the one he replaced. The ability to argue diminished; the grasp of basic concepts weakened; and the knowledge that comes from study grew perpetually less. Christianity, which spread over men’s minds like a blanket, put faith above reason; increasingly those brought up under its influence scorned knowledge and thought. Even those with a spark given to them by the gods wanted to be told, rather than wanted to think. Getting them to accept that the goal was thought itself, not any conclusion at the end of thought, was hard indeed. They came to her for answers; all they got instead were questions.

But she continued, because every now and then, just often enough, someone like Manlius came to her door and she tasted the joy of guiding someone whose curiosity was boundless, whose desire to approach truth inexhaustible. As Manlius grew into manhood he came to disguise this under the sneering façade of gentlemanly idleness, but it was only ever buried, not extinguished. And she felt an urgency that slowly changed their relationship from teacher and pupil into something more complex and dangerous. For after a while it was not simply that he wanted to learn from her; she also felt the desperate need to teach him, to pass on to him something so that at least it would be preserved awhile longer. For the first and only time in her life she put aside all doubts, and almost willfully refused to see him whole. She knew that Manlius had his weaknesses, knew that the regime of contemplation she offered could subdue but not quell his pride and his desire for renown. She suspected that the Manlius who retired to his estates and the Manlius who emerged to impose himself on the province were in opposition to each other, not two facets of a harmonious soul. But she ignored this, because she needed to.

There were some illusions she could not hold on to; she saw clearly that whatever he took from her would not be philosophy in any pure form. Yet through him, something might survive, and Sophia desperately wanted it to do so. She spent her life in thought, and held that thought was its own end; yet she was still sufficiently of this world to wish that something would outlast her. She scorned the body, rejected marriage, and was past the age of children; the ideas and concepts that she deposited in the mind of Manlius would be her only legacy, her only memorial. Without realizing it, she came to depend on him more than she ever dreamed possible, and this need, which rose from the depths of her soul, often showed itself in a hectoring, lecturing, critical harshness that revealed little but her desire. She loved him because he was all she had; and worried about him for the same reason.

“The soul dies when it falls to earth.” It was not a literal belief; nothing she taught was to be held literally; this was one of the most difficult concepts that her poor pupils had to grasp. For Christians had taken from Greece the idea of the logos, the word, simplified it, stripped it of its meaning, and then identified it with the God they worshiped. Sophia taught that the divine was not only beyond words but beyond meaning; only the process of thought could give an approximation of it. The phrase was a metaphor, an illustrative myth to show the magnitude of the thought journey the individual had to travel to grasp the essence of the divine and approach God in the mind. After many months’ study, much reading from Sophia’s library of texts, and detailed discussion, Manlius began to understand, and when he did, the fatuousness of Christianity was borne in on him all the more.

Olivier, however, had no such advantages; the context had vanished, the associated texts were destroyed or buried in monasteries scattered around the Mediterranean. All he had was this one text, without the means of decipherment.

And so, with great trepidation, he knocked on the door of Rabbi Levi ben Gershon. The door was opened by his servant, Rebecca, whom Pisano wanted as his model for Saint Sophia, and whom Olivier had first glimpsed two years previously hurrying along the street in her brown cloak, as the Christian stood on the steps of the church, thinking about love.

HE DID NOT make a good first impression; only the clipped recommendations of cardinals de Deaux and Ceccani persuaded Gersonides to allow the young man to return, for Olivier was so flustered after his unexpected encounter on the doorstep that he could scarcely speak. And being in the presence of the learned Jew made him distinctly uncomfortable. He had never talked to such a person before, only spied them in the street; Gersonides’s manner also was intimidating: gruff and ill-humored, rude and excessively critical in his remarks, but only partly managing to disguise a humanity that showed through in flashes of dazzling insight. Olivier was both admiring and repelled and did not know how to react or behave. All he did know was that after the meeting he could remember every word the old man had said, and had in his mind dozens of other questions he needed answered. And knew, also, that only Gersonides could help him find those answers.

Only toward the end of their initial meeting, when he began to talk of the things he had discovered, of the manuscripts he had read, did his speech become animated and his face light up. Even so, the old man remained in a bad mood, for he was feeling his age that day, and was crotchety about being interrupted from his work. Olivier’s youth reminded him of how little time he had left to study.

“You talk too much about the language, and not at all of the content,” he said with annoyance at one stage. “Is that all you think matters? You think ignoble thoughts become less so if they are phrased beautifully?”

“I assume ugly things cannot be disguised.”

“Then you think wrongly. Indeed, you are scarcely thinking at all. I have spent my life in study and have witnessed all too often the words of the devil coming from the mouths of angels. You bring me this manuscript—which I must confess I have never seen before. I am grateful for that. It is, as you would no doubt say, written beautifully. Elegant. Charming. Even witty. But is what he says beautiful? And what do you know of the author? Is he therefore elegant and charming? You suggest only good people can write beautiful things.”

“You do not agree?”

Gersonides levered himself up from his chair with a groan, then leaned on the table in front of him as he felt his head spinning. Olivier jumped up to support him. “Sit down, sir, please. I do apologize. I never realized you were ill. I’ll go away and come back when you are better.”

“Stop fussing over me,” said Gersonides more sharply than the young man’s consideration deserved. “I cannot stand it. I am an old man. This is what happens when we grow old. It is neither unexpected nor unwelcome. Go and get me that book you see on the shelf over there.”

It took some time to pinpoint which one he meant, but eventually Olivier found it and brought it to him. Gersonides flicked through it.

“Aha,” he said. “Here we are. At least my memory still serves me. Now, then. Manlius Hippomanes. Your philosopher-bishop. Do you know how he seems to Jews?”

Olivier was not meant to answer, so he kept silent while Gersonides read: “I will spare you the preamble,” he began. “The essence of the matter is this. ‘Manlius sent a letter to the leader of the Jews in that town and said, “I wish to live in peace with you, but your deceit and stubbornness has been the cause of violence. My patience is thus at an end. If you are prepared to believe what I believe, then become one in my flock. If not, then depart. And if you will do neither, then you must look to yourselves.” Most did embrace the truth, although some fled. The rest were killed by the mob, to avenge the stain on their bishop’s honor caused by this stubborn refusal.’ ”

Gersonides looked up. “Remember, young man, when you wax lyrical over his beauteous prose, that this man also killed my people. Not only that, he set an example for others to emulate or surpass. In this lies his sanctity. Do not expect me to admire the elegance of his thought without reservation.”

Olivier could hardly say he found it no great shame to have done so, that no one had even suggested that such a deed was to be condemned, but he could not let the matter pass silently. “Caesar was a general who killed far more people, but he is praised for his style.”

A grunt. “Caesar writes of battles and of armies, not of virtue and beauty. There is a difference. Not that we have time to talk anymore. Go away and think of this. Think of what sort of virtue this Manlius might have had in mind when he wrote about the need to embody virtue in activity. And consider also that what seems untrammeled virtue to one person may seem total iniquity to another. The task of the philosopher—your task if you so desire—is to see beyond such subluminary deceits and grasp the comprehension of virtue entire.” Gersonides waved his hand. “Now, go away. Leave me in peace. And shut the door when you leave.”

“Can I come back tomorrow, sir?”

Gersonides peered up at him. “You want to?”

Olivier nodded.

“Very well, then,” he said reluctantly. “If you must.”

HE WAITED in the street afterward, the main thorough-fare of the Jewish quarter—neat, tidy, well tended though far from prosperous, noticeably cleaner than the streets all around, for fewer people used it, and the women swept outside their doors nearly every day and washed away the mud and filth. He was conscious of the fact that everyone who passed him—an obvious Christian—stared. Some suspiciously, some with mere curiosity, all a little warily. He waited because he had heard Rebecca go out during his discussion with her master, and what goes out must, he decided, sooner or later come back in again.

He didn’t know what he was doing; he did not want to see her, he told himself. Now he knew for certain who she was and what she was—a servant, a Jew—he did not want anything to do with her. He was furious with her, indeed. For near two years now he had held this woman in his imagining, written her poetry, turned her into his muse. Every day in his mind he laid flowers at her feet, kissed her hand, more than that. And then he discovers her. And she is a Jew, a servant. He hated her, never wanted to see her again, of course not. The feelings she had aroused in him disgusted him, the poetry he had written, in praise of a Jewish servant, would make him mocked by all who learned of it.

Yet he stood waiting, pacing up and down the street as these thoughts went through his mind. He should not even talk to her. He would treat her with the utmost disdain, not even notice her next time he went to see Gersonides. It would be good for him, even a mortification of the soul, to be confronted with his error. The moment he went back to Avignon, he would burn all his silly verses, and thank God that he had read them to only a few.

And still he stood there, looking up and down the street, telling himself he would move on in a minute and go back to his lodging. But a part of him rebelled already. Those lines he had written were good, he knew, even though he could hardly bear to think of them. No matter. They would be destroyed. He would write an epic instead, celebrating noble deeds. The death of Cicero, he thought; that would be a topic worthy of the times. Not foolish love poetry deserving only scorn and derision.

Then she was there, walking down the street, and his heart stopped and his hands began to tremble. It was a mild evening, but he felt burning hot, then an icy chill crept over him. He would not talk to her; would walk straight past her.

But she would see him, might smile at him. He could not have that. Quickly, he pressed himself against the wall, hoping she would pass by without seeing him, and hoping as well that she would not.

“Sir, are you sick? Are you not well?”

Oh, that voice, so gentle and delicate, reassuring and caressing, so inviting and so soft. Of course she spoke like that; he had had dozens, thousands of conversations with her already and knew her voice better than he knew his own, long before he ever heard it. It had its own music, and he had borrowed it for some of his songs, written down by his hand, in her voice. They could only be read by her, and sometimes, when he read them back to himself late at night, he heard her so sweetly speaking his words.

“Sir? Is something not right?”

Of course it isn’t, he wanted to say. I am in love with a Jew. How can anything be right?

He shook his head.

“You must come in. Sit down by the oven. I will give you some food.” The concern was real. She reached out and took him by the hand to gain his attention and the touch burned through his skin like flame.

“No,” he said, and snatched his hand away, looking at her as though he had seen a devil.

She paused and frowned. “Then I will leave you. If you do not require any assistance.”

And she turned, and Olivier’s fine resolution crumbled. “Please don’t go.”

She turned back again, very patiently.

“Who are you?” he said.

She looked puzzled. “My name is Rebecca. I am the rabbi’s servant. You know that already.”

“Yes, but . . .”

“What?”

“I’ve seen you before,” he said in a rush. “I’ve seen you twice. Once, two years, three months, and twelve days ago. You were walking past the church of Saint Agricole in Avignon. The second time was five weeks and three days ago, in the market. You bought some herbs.”

He said it with such intensity, such seriousness, that she looked slightly frightened, then smiled. “Possibly,” she replied.

“Definitely. On the first occasion, you were dressed in an old brown cloak, which you had up over your head. You were not carrying anything, and you seemed in something of a hurry. You were alone. You only slowed to walk around a puddle on the ground. I don’t know how it got there, it hadn’t been raining at all. You were not wearing a star. The next time, you were wearing a blue cloak, with a patch by the right shoulder. No one talked to you. You bought the herbs and paid for them with coins that you took from a little purse you carried in your right hand.”

“You remember a remarkable amount.”

“I remember very little, usually. Whole days go by and they are blotted from my memory. I cannot recall anything that I was doing yesterday. For daily events I have a terrible memory. These were not daily events. My life has not been the same since. I have had nights without any sleep, when my head has pounded. I could not concentrate on anything. My friends and my master have criticized me for my rudeness, all because of you.”

“I don’t see—”

“I never want to see you again,” he said, growing angry as he thought of it. “How dare you.”

Had she grown angry in response, or been frightened, or turned away saying no more, then all would have been well. Olivier was sure of it. Instead she smiled at him, not mockingly, but with such sympathy and understanding. I wish I could help you, but I cannot, she seemed to be saying. And was there something in her glance that was a response, or a reflection of what he felt? Olivier recoiled from that smile, turned and stumbled, then ran away, oblivious to the strange looks the few other people in the street gave him.

He ran through the town and out through the gates, past the scattered houses and workshops outside and into the open country, then walked steadily and purposefully but without a destination. After an hour or so the effort calmed him, his feet slowed and his breathing returned to normal. He was not free of her; if anything, he had made his situation even worse. But slowly his mood lightened. He did not become happy, but a sort of peace came on him, and his mind began to wander, trying to think of everything and anything except for the way she had smiled at him. He mingled his lesson with Gersonides with the encounter in the street, blending what he had heard with what he had felt, the one turning into a metaphor for the other. “Woman of darkness, wisdom touching the light.” The line came to him, and he was pleased with it. The next one followed, then the next; soon the whole poem—short but so tightly packed—was in his mind dancing over his thoughts.

He shivered, though it was not cold. He walked back into Carpentras as quickly as he could, found a quiet spot in his lodgings, and, by the flickering light of a tallow candle, wrote the poem down. Then he slept, better than he had for months.

REBECCA DID NOT sleep well; she lay on the straw pallet beside the cold grate, wrapped in her blanket, her mind turning over what had happened that evening. But what had happened? A deranged, bizarre young man had spoken to her in a way that was hardly understandable, then had run away. That was all. Nothing to be concerned about.

But she was frightened nonetheless. Not of the young man—that would be ridiculous—but because of the reaction he had caused within her. For two years now, she had secluded herself in the rabbi’s household. No man had even looked at her or spoken to her. She had felt safe for the first time since she had become an orphan, forced to wander the world looking after herself. She had made herself forget that time; the loneliness of it all had been banished from her mind. Anything outside the cocoon she had built around herself was dangerous, and reminded her of fear and hunger. She knew far too much of the cruelty that lay just beyond Gersonides’s hearth, and away from his quiet, unquestioning protection.

For the old man had found her wandering the streets bedraggled and bruised from the evening she had been attacked—by whom she knew not, nor for what reason. She had asked him for money, as the Jews had often been generous to her, and they didn’t frighten her. He had looked carefully at her and seen her despair.

“I have no money with me,” he said sadly.

She had shrugged. It didn’t matter.

“But I believe I have some at home. Walk with me, and I will see if I can find it.”

She got up and walked by his side. He said nothing, but did not seem embarrassed by her company, did not want her to walk behind him to guard his reputation. And when they got to his house—this house, the first she had been in since she had left the empty place her parents had occupied—he ladled a bowl of vegetable soup onto a plate for her and made her sit and eat. Then gave her some bread and water. Then some more soup. And some more.

“The woman who looked after me has decided she can stand my habits no longer,” he said when she’d finished. “I am too messy for her, and always shouting when she tidies my papers away for me. She could not grasp that what seemed mere chaos to an unlearned eye was in fact carefully arranged and designed. Just like the world, no doubt, seems to men who cannot understand the complexity of God’s creation.”

She smiled at him. His face was wrinkled and severe, and would have been forbidding had it not been for the vivacity of his eyes, the slightly amused way he had looked on as she had (no doubt) eaten up both his dinner and his breakfast for the following morning.

“So I am a desperate man, you see. Abandoned, and alone in the world. Do you know how that feels? I see you know all too well. Will you help an old man in his hour of distress? That is the question.”

“Help you, sir? How?”

“Stay here awhile. Cook me some more soup. Do all those mysterious tasks which women do so easily, and which send me into a panic. My people bring me food, which is kind of them, but they are forever bothering me. They expect to be paid in conversation. You could not only keep body and soul together, but you could defend my sanity from their constant chattering. Be warned though; I am a dreadful man. I shout and grumble almost without ceasing. My habits are considered all but impossible. I sleep little and often talk to myself in the middle of the night. I am, as you see all too well, horribly untidy, and become quite ill-humored if I am disturbed while I am working or thinking. You will no doubt come to hate me cordially.”

She had scarcely left his side since, and loved him like mother and father combined. Despite his warning, his ill temper consisted of little more than a tendency to complain about lost papers or a bad back. He had no violence in his soul whatever, only gentleness and immense patience, for to begin with she made many mistakes. But bit by bit, they became indispensable to each other. The dark little house settled down to a reasonable level of organized chaos that satisfied them both; she worked all day—preparing food, cleaning and tidying, chopping wood—and it was not hard work, as the house was scarcely more than one room on top of the other, and the upper room was reserved for his papers. Occasionally, as a special treat, he would let her up there to sweep the floor under his supervision, clucking over her anxiously lest she tip over a pile of papers or disrupt his personal universe of manuscripts. And once a week she would prepare a special meal, get out the candles, and sit quietly with him, and they would talk; wonderful, fascinating talks, for he was a magician with words and could do anything with them. She learned much from him and through careful, discreet questioning, he learned much about her. She knew this, and saw that he did not mind what he knew.

And then Olivier arrived, made his incoherent profession to her in the street, and immediately this life she had built herself began to crumble and shake. He had said little, but she read into his words much that he had not intended. This will not last forever; the old man will die and you will be on the streets again. You are living in a dream, and dreams all end sooner or later. You are young and he is old; do you not want more?

For the first time, she did want more. She did not know what she wanted, knew that it was dangerous and that she should rest content with what she had, but she knew an emptiness deep inside her, which began to ache.

OLIVIER WENT BACK the next day, and the day after; the week’s absence from Avignon stretched into a fortnight and then a month. It was only when Gersonides could stand him no more that he was dispatched back to face the wrath of Ceccani and make a groveling apology for, once again, having disappeared without notice. In that time he changed irrevocably. He became a poet, a true poet, rather than a youth penning verses for his amusement or to explore the classical forms of the long-dead heroes he so admired. He went beyond his models and created something new in that month, at the same time that he wrestled with Gersonides’s elusive answers and tried to pin down Rebecca’s irresistible appeal. He did not know, at the end, which of the two was the more important for him; both complemented the other, for eventually the old man abandoned his caution and reserve and allowed himself to be seduced by Olivier’s boundless curiosity and desperate desire to understand.

He was unlucky, he knew it, even cursed. Why, after all, should he have found himself in this predicament? He had fallen in love with an idea of a woman, then had that idea made flesh. Had her voice, her face, and her character been different—had she been any other person in the world—the disease might not have taken hold in such a way. More than this cannot be said; there is no reason to explain why someone like Olivier may love someone less beautiful, less agreeable, less fortunate than those more favored but who left him utterly indifferent. He tried not to speak to Rebecca; she tried to avoid him. It would have been easy to do so had each truly wished it. But on almost every occasion he came, she was there, preparing food or sitting on the step outside the house. And on nearly every occasion he stopped, and found some reason to talk to her and become engaged in a conversation neither thought they wanted. Both then went their own ways, determined that it should not be repeated, and then Olivier spent the rest of the evening seeing her dark hair and hearing her soft voice, and as she chopped vegetables or swept the floor, she thought about his awkward, endearing grin, or the way he spoke to her more gently each time they met.

Gersonides saw it all, and worried for her.

IT TOOK FOUR weeks to get back home, and by the time the trip was over, Julien was, if not exactly a changed man, then at least profoundly affected. Like most of his generation, he had experienced war before, directly and brutally. But he had never experienced defeat, nor tasted the chaotic panic of blind flight. Even at Verdun, order had held, just, and he had maintained the illusion at least that the outcome depended in some minuscule manner on his own contribution. Such a thought had given him solace as he froze during nighttime watches, as he shivered with fever in the caverns below the fortress, and as he had bayoneted the one enemy soldier he had killed with his own hands. But the memory of his flight home did haunt him; it was far worse, in his mind, than anything he had experienced twenty years previously. He traveled through a collapse; everywhere he went he could see an entire society, a civilization, even, coming apart. It gave him much to consider as he traveled—first on the train that inched forward then stopped for hours, heading for a destination that was supposedly Bordeaux. He abandoned it at Clermont-Ferrand to let it go west while he began to walk east, uncertain whether the blistering summer heat would be worse than the cold of winter for such a trip. The train was still immobilized long after he was out of sight of the station.

What was he flying from? The chaos and panic in Paris were obvious, the emotions on the faces of those who got on the train, and those roughly ejected from it, were clear. And yet neither he, nor anyone else, had even seen a German soldier, nor had a single enemy plane yet flown over Paris. No newsreels reporting the debacle had come in from the front. They were all flying from an idea, nothing more concrete than that, and as they fled, the delicate tissue of society came apart. There was no one to ask for information, as no one knew anything. No one to ask for help, as few could even help themselves. Nowhere to buy food; there was none to be had and no one wanted money anymore. A millionaire was poor compared to a peasant with half a loaf of bread. In the space of a few days, the citizens of one of the most sophisticated nations on earth, which ruled a good part of that earth, which had a history of continuous growth stretching back to Clovis the Frank, had suddenly been propelled into a state of nature, knowing no rules except survival and no law except self-protection.

Men reacted as they always did; some with an extreme of generosity, giving what little they could spare to strangers; others behaved with an equal and opposite extreme of harshness, demanding outrageous things in exchange. Honest men became thieves, honest women prostitutes, criminals became saints, all driven onward by an idea of what they were leaving behind. Home was the only certainty left, and Paris, the great city of immigrants, disgorged all those who realized that they had never belonged there, that it had never given them a sense of place. Hundreds of thousands were on the move, walking down the roads carrying suitcases, abandoning cars that had run out of petrol, scavenging in fields for food.

The train at least allowed Julien to leapfrog over the great wave of people who were not fortunate enough to get such transport; from Clermont onward he was in the vanguard, a pioneer taking the plague of panic and despair with him, communicating it to all he encountered through his ever dirtier, scruffier clothes, the increasingly gaunt expression as he walked twenty miles a day on little food. But he at least found compensation in it all. He saw his France through fresh eyes, and marveled once more at its extraordinary, overwhelming beauty and variety. He tasted, for the first time, what it must have been like for someone like Olivier de Noyen, traveling so slowly and registering every minute change in landscape and vegetation. Being without a map and having to take directions from passersby. Doing without any assurance that there was a bed or a meal to be found at the end of the day. Sleeping under trees in a forest, wrapped up in an old blanket he had found by a stream, picking fruits and mushrooms and making a fire to roast some potatoes he stole from a field. The parching heat of a shadeless road along a valley that he walked along after Issoire, the sudden torrential downpour that made him sit and shiver in a cave a few kilometers before Allegre.

And in the deepest valleys, farthest away from the towns, the less people were interested in the war, and the less they wanted to know. They or their children had been taken last time, many never came back; every village had its monument with the names on it. All Julien saw was relief that it was already over, that more names were not to be added to the roll call. Quick defeat was better than lengthy victory. The Germans would come, drink champagne, then go home again. That’s what they did. Perhaps the old woman who told him that was even right. Julien did not know, and after nearly two weeks without any news or any reliable information he found that he didn’t even care. The war was to the north, the concern of others. It did not touch those who ploughed their fields and tended their goats. He was more concerned with the way the soles of his shoes were giving way.

He arrived home, at his mother’s home, strangely rested. Montpellier had been in chaos; the university closed, every building, it seemed, crammed with refugees, food running short. Avignon was worse. He stayed there for only a day, then packed a bag, wheeled out his bicycle—now the fastest means of transport available—and pedaled slowly to Roaix, feeling safety wrap itself around him the farther he left the big city behind. He had learned much and was fitter than he had ever been, burned dark by the sun, with the walk—near three hundred kilometers, more or less—having triumphed over the effects of years in libraries. He had a beard, which he kept for a week before shaving it off, burned his clothes and bathed, then waited to see what he should do next.

The little house in the country had scarcely changed in the past thirty years; he had not bothered to put in electricity or any of the other conveniences of modern life. Its whole purpose, after all, was to escape from it; now it served its purpose better than any well-equipped house. He had water in the well outside, a good supply of candles for night, an endless store of wood, which he chopped himself, and had spent so many years playing with the farmers’ children, now the farmers themselves, that there was never any chance that he would be denied food. There was one comfortable chair, a stout oak table, and all the books he might need. In a cupboard there was an old shotgun, which he oiled carefully and regularly, hiding it when possessing such things became illegal, and cartridges so that he could shoot birds or rabbits. How to skin and gut an animal was something he had learned as a child from the local farmers.

He stayed for nearly five months, moving between bursts of anxiety, during which he would pedal into Vaison and try to telephone Paris, or send off letters to find out what, if anything, he should do, and an indolence that permitted him to shut out the world and live the simple country life. He had enough money, and his needs, he discovered, were minimal; he could pass almost a week at a time without spending any at all. In the countryside he lived as he always did, rising at dawn and going to bed at dusk to conserve his dwindling stock of candles, and managed to behave as if nothing had happened. And he wanted to hold on to that feeling for as long as possible.

Of the outside world he had little, and only sporadic, information. The humiliating armistice filled him with despair, as did the exile of the government to Vichy. The treacherous way the English suddenly attacked and sank the best of the French fleet outraged him, and made him think of England’s own imminent, inevitable defeat with greater equanimity. The reestablishment of the government under the firm, reassuring guidance of Marshal Pétain was the only thing that gave him hope, but so far it made little difference to him. He watched from afar, and distinguished little of detail. So he missed most of the vast influx of refugees into the south, was unaware of how slowly they flowed out again like a human tide when a sort of calm returned. He did not hear of the resentments caused by these people, the shortages and the confusion. He saw nothing of the bedraggled, miserable army struggling south then breaking up in hopelessness; heard only a little of the much vaunted new moral order that was to rebuild France, restore its pride in itself, and begin the titanic task of cleaning out the decades of corruption and decay that were responsible for defeat. For France had brought this calamity on itself; that was the feeling, and now France must rise from the pyre of its own making.

Like most people, he was overwhelmed by the magnitude of events, the way the world had fallen to pieces so easily and the obvious difficulties of making sure it did not get even worse. And he consoled himself with reading, and doing little tasks, and by reawakening his long-dormant friendship with Elizabeth, his partner in catechism of near thirty years before. Her presence recalled easier and simpler moments, when all that was to be feared was the wrath of his father, or the disapproval of the priest when they broke out in a fit of giggles in church. She was long since married, but unhappily, to the local blacksmith, a man of almost legendary dullness whose sense of duty just managed to hide a streak of cruelty that, every now and then, would come peeping to the surface. What happened was almost inevitable; Julien certainly should have seen the danger. They began talking in the lane one day as old friends, she came in for a glass of water, and they reached out for each other at the same moment. She stayed for several hours, and returned on many occasions over the next three months. It was a foolishness brought on by the times.

She was not beautiful, not educated, not refined in any way, but had a coarse sensuality that Julien had rarely experienced, and they were drawn to each other because warmth and affection became so priceless in those days. Both of them were starved of it, and both managed briefly to forget everything else in each other’s company. But the world called him back to reality, and her dreams of escape vanished as he explained to her that he had to go, leaving her no alternative but to return to her rough, unsympathetic husband.

“But we can still see each other, when you come back here?” she said.

“I think it’s better not to,” he replied, as gently as he could but with a growing discomfort. “I don’t know when I’ll be back. It’s better if you just forget all about me. It was a dream; a lovely dream, but nothing more than that. Besides, sooner or later your husband will find out, and then everyone around will know about it. What will happen then?”

“Maybe he’ll throw me out,” she said with a smile. “Maybe I’ll have to come and live here.”

It was the look of alarm on his face, a slight disgust at the idea that came through the carefully constructed regret and understanding, that did all the damage. Elizabeth’s face turned stony, and she stood up from the little table in his kitchen.

“I see,” she said.

“Please,” he began, but she waved him away.

“Don’t say any more. There is no need to. I don’t intend to embarrass you, or make your life difficult. As you say, it would be best to forget it ever happened. I’m only sorry I misunderstood.”

“So am I,” he said, but could make no contact with her. She left a few moments later, and Julien breathed a heartfelt sigh of relief. The next day he packed a little bag and pedaled to Avignon, for all other forms of transport had vanished as if they had never existed.

Someone knew where he was; one of his letters had been received somewhere and had been passed on, in that mysterious way of organizations, into other hands, for in late February 1941 a letter was delivered to the post office at Vaison and was held there until he came in one day to see, again, if there was any soap; one of his neighbors had said there was some, and though he found the country life suited his temperament, he did like to wash properly.

He bought his soap, one precious bar of it, then called in at the post office and was given his letter. Marcel wanted him, needed him. The idyll was over; it was time to return to life. He was being asked to work for the new government. As he told Elizabeth when he announced he was going, he did not know when he would be back, or what he was wanted for.

A QUESTION OF civilized values, he told himself. A question of whether or not one is to take a stand and insist that, despite the times, barbarism must not hold sway. How do we justify calling ourselves civilized, after all? Is it the books we read? The delicacy of our tastes? Our place in continuing a line of belief and of common values that stretch back a thousand years and more? All this, indeed, but what does it mean? How does it show itself? Are you civilized if you read the right books, yet stand by while your neighbors are massacred, your lands laid waste, your cities brought to ruin?

Do we use the barbarians to control barbarism? Can we exploit them so that they preserve civilized values rather than destroy them? Was the old Athenian right, that taking any side is better than taking no side?

THE QUESTION CAME to Manlius’s mind as he sat on his horse and looked at the devastation all around. His farm, one of the outlying dependencies to the north of his villa, had been attacked two days before. A band of brigands had come, murdered some of the tenants, and carried off the rest.

So he told himself, for he clung to some hope. But he soon learned it was worse than that, much worse. As he sat and looked, he saw a movement in the copse to the left; he sent off some of his bodyguards to investigate and they swiftly returned, leading a young boy with a rope around his neck. He was about seven, and he was crying in terror.

“Stop that noise,” Manlius ordered. “Give him some food if he needs it, if it will shut him up. Then bring him back to me when he is quiet.”

He turned away, got off his horse, and continued to walk around the burned-out buildings. Already he was beginning to suspect the truth. The damage was too neat, too orderly. Too little had been destroyed.

The boy was still crying. Manlius became itchy with his impatience to have confirmed what he already knew. He took his whip off the saddle and prepared it.

It took a long time to get even the basics out of the whining, blubbering child. But eventually he confirmed the bishop’s suspicions. This had been no raid. His tenants had simply walked out, taking everything of use and value—his property, all of it—and marched off to the north, where softer conditions and better land had been promised them amongst the barbarians. They had had over a day’s start and would be hurrying. They’d taken oxen and carts and donkeys and goats, all the supplies and tools he had lavished on them.

The worst of it all was that he had, as always, most earnestly asked their leader at the last tax collection whether they had any complaint or wish. He had professed utter contentment; desired no better master.

He had not said, however, that he desired no master at all.

“This cannot continue,” the bishop said to himself. “It cannot go on.”

He was about to gallop off, when one of his bodyguards called him. “Sir, the boy . . .”

Manlius looked at him kneeling on the ground, quiet now.

“Cut off his hands and give them to him in a bag. Then let him follow his family. Let him be a burden to them from now on, not a help.”

He turned his horse, then hesitated. “No,” he said. “We cannot waste anything these days, however justly. Bring him with you and put him to work in the granary. There’s more than enough to be done there.”

PISANO HAD MADE progress, but his vision of the Magdalen was lacking, as empty and as vacuous as something concocted by Matteo. It infuriated him to be so delayed, as in all other respects his work was coming along well. He had been painting for nine months now, and was pleased with himself in all respects except for this one element. He had completed three frescoes, Sophia Cures the Blind Man, Sophia Converting the Elders, and Sophia Turns Back the Invaders, using the face that he had glimpsed once in the market in Avignon. Once only, a few seconds, but it was enough; the woman who so unsettled Olivier was so obviously Saint Sophia that her face was impressed forever in his mind. He did not need to see her again. And now he was hard at work on Sophia in the House of Mary Magdalen, and it was this that was causing him such grief. He journeyed to and fro, sometimes spending weeks at a time at work, often returning to Avignon and passing days or weeks in idleness, summoning the resources to go back once more. The work made him irritable, so did the idleness. Olivier began to find him tiresome, and longed for the day when he would once more pack his bags, load up his donkey, and head off, grim and determined, to do battle once more.

The Magdalen would not come. What he had, he had done from memory, and a strange forgetfulness came over him as he tried to recall her features. So he gave up once more and returned to Avignon. He was often to be seen wandering the streets. Pausing and making sketches of faces flitting past. Only once did anyone remark on this and draw attention to his strange behavior. It was in the open space near the ramparts, marked down for building but not yet filled up with new houses, the fruit trees still there, the little stalls where merchants sold bread and fruits to women of delicacy who were wont to parade in the evening with their maids and mothers even in winter, for the evenings were not so very cold. Isabelle de Fréjus was there, walking up and down, and there also was Pisano, sitting on the ground, pretending not to look, sketching away to get her face just so, pitched at an angle he had seen once before and which, he knew, would be perfect for the representation of the Magdalen descending from her boat with her entourage. It was not her face that he wanted, merely its expression, but he studied her carefully nonetheless, staring at her in a way that, sooner or later, was bound to attract attention.

By instinct he took the pose of his old master Lorenzetti, leaning against a wall, sheets of precious, expensive paper on a plank of wood, charcoals in his pocket where they could be found quickly if one broke. He did his best to be discreet, but it was impossible to remain there for long without being noticed. Too many young women and their chaperones passed by, sneaking a little look at the paper as they passed, then whispering to their friends. It was an event now; Avignon was a huge city, its streets normally full of entertainments, jugglers and dancers and penitents and musicians, vendors of all sorts of goods, beggars and mendicants, but the imminent threat of the plague had closed down most diversions. The smallest novelty was now seized on and subjected to ceaseless comment, and a young, handsome painter directing his attentions at Isabelle de Fréjus was too much of a curiosity to pass unnoticed.

In due course, Isabelle marched straight over and, with a boldness that often marked her, demanded to see what he was doing, together with an explanation. It was an encounter witnessed by everyone, who gathered around quite openly to hear what they hoped would provide much diversion. Pisano had his speech ready; he had prepared it for use many months before when he began his furtive thefts of other people’s faces, but had never before had occasion to use it.

“Dearest lady,” he began, “I must beg your pardon for acting in such a way. I am a painter, engaged in a work of the greatest importance, decorating a church with the lives of a saint and of the Magdalen. I wish to depict the Magdalen as she was, famed for her beauty, kindness, and sanctity, and yet have no model in my mind of how to do so. Then one day, a friend whose name I will not—need not—mention, told me of a lady he knew whose loveliness was such that heaven itself could scarcely contain anything of greater merit. I scoffed at him for a fool, and he led me into the street one day when you were passing.

“Once I had seen you, I fell on my knees before him, in the mud though it was, and begged his forgiveness for having doubted his word, rebuking him only for his restraint in his descriptions of you. For I saw in your beauty my Magdalen, and ever since, I have been unable to work. Your face appears in my mind whenever I try, and in my dreams I know that this lady must have had something of your charms.

“And so I have sneaked around like a beggar these last few days, with my paper and charcoal, snatching a little sketch here and a likeness there. It is unforgivable in me, I know, but a heavenly command cannot be ignored so easily.”

A little round of applause greeted these words, limited only by the fact that Pisano’s accent was so execrable that some of his phrasing was lost. It didn’t matter; he was playing with her, enjoying the attentions of a beautiful woman. It was meaningless; he would have said the same to any pretty girl he was caught sketching; someone whose face was worth sketching deserved such compliments, and would be forgotten the moment the next presented itself for study.

But Isabelle frowned, and tried to disguise her pleasure. “I would have thought, sir, that if my face was so much in your mind then you might have been able to remember what I looked like without following me around like a puppy dog. Or perhaps your mind is so weak it cannot hold an idea for very long?”

Pisano grinned at her. “This friend of mine tells me that the apprehension of true beauty is hard. We may approach it, and feel it, but we are too corrupted to keep it within us for long. This is my great tragedy, for however much I look, and however much I sketch, all I can take with me when I leave your presence is the palest reflection, as inferior to your beauty as man himself is below the beauty of the angels.”

An easy reply, for Olivier had once talked to him of his manuscript, and used such an example to try to explain what it meant—or what Gersonides thought it meant. From then on, however, Pisano was on his own and had to do the best he could. He disguised the sudden drop in the quality of his eloquence by deciding it was high time that he was overcome with remorse and shame at his impertinence. This allowed him to give ever shorter replies and pack up his paper.

“May I see this sketch you have done of me?”

He was ready for that, as well. He had worked up a little miniature in colors, a few inches square, and a fine thing; it was oval, and around the bottom he had carefully written her name. It ended up in the Musée des Beaux Arts in Lyon, eventually, after passing through many hands before it was acquired at a sale in Paris in 1885. Isabelle gasped as she saw it.

“Keep it, my lady, if you wish. For now I have seen the original close up, I realize how feeble my hand is and cannot bear even to look at it.”

Can anyone really resist the flattery of image-taking? Can, in particular, a young girl of scarcely eighteen, conscious of her appeal and disenchanted with her husband, remain cold when given a portrait that—despite Pisano’s false modesty—was remarkably good considering the primitive nature of portaiture at the time, complimenting at the same time it remained true to the original? She ran home and put the little picture in a missal, where it remained until long after her death, and every time she prayed she opened it at that page and gazed again.

Was it in any way surprising that, as she prayed and looked and remembered, all at the same time, imagining that this was how she existed in the young Italian’s heart, she was certain that at last she had fallen in love?

THE PLAGUE REACHED Avignon the following month, at the beginning of March 1348, when even near the Mediterranean there is little enough to be cheerful about, and when months of winds have already sapped the vitality of all those exposed to them, wearying their bodies and enervating their souls. The most likely direction was from Marseille, a sailor or a priest or a trader on a boat carrying the infection with him, then traveling inland, up the river to present a petition at the curia or hawk his wares around the market or merely return to his family. Had it not been this unknown person, it would certainly have been another the next day or the next week, for no place was immune; everywhere was touched sooner or later.

The records for the city are slim, but it is certain that almost everyone knew that the pestilence was coming. Travelers’ tales from the Levant, from Sicily, and from Genoa or Florence had traveled a little bit faster than the plague itself, just fast enough to frighten or alarm, but not fast enough to allow anyone to do anything. And there were many who felt that nothing should be done, in Avignon of all places. Such a visitation was manifestly the will of God, his chastisement to a worldly city, a sinful church, and a corrupt population. Some felt almost a satisfaction at the prospect of punishment, as confirmation of their condemnation; others even prayed for such an event to sweep away the foul stench of worldliness and bring men back to God and their senses. Every cataclysm is welcomed by somebody; there is always someone to rejoice at disaster and see in it the prospect of a new beginning and a better world. Equally, however much an act of God, there is always someone ready to take responsibility for any event or, failing that, to have blame thrust upon them.

As the plague first broke out in the rue des Lices in one of the poorest parts of town—a grim street of leaky hovels that the nearby monastery wished to demolish if it could evict the occupants—and the first victim was an ordinary day laborer, the arrival of the death initially passed largely unnoticed. Not until twenty were already dead did the first priest come to the scene, and it is to his credit that, though his flesh crept and he was stricken with terror, and even though he had to leave for twenty minutes to throw up in the street outside, nonetheless he returned to the bedsides of those within and did his duty. What he saw was so revolting he could not believe he was truly looking at a human being. The body was so covered with eruptions and pustules all its form had been lost, the face had disappeared, leaving only a gaping mouth streaming with pus and blood, that still managed to cry out in agony. The stench of corruption and decay was unlike anything he had ever smelled before, gripping his guts and making him retch. His name was Rufinus, and even though he was a man of no other virtue and, indeed, was generally hated in his parish for his idleness and greed, this one act should be recorded of him. It was a noble deed, and the better for being performed in abject terror rather than in tranquil confidence. For Rufinus conquered fear, and the example he set was not so often emulated in the weeks to come. Moreover, his courage would have been tarnished had it come from confidence in divine mercy, for such magnitude was denied him; within fifteen hours he felt the first hideous pain that announced imminent death to its victim. Twelve hours after that he was dead, having suffered such agonies that his final release was, at last, a true manifestation of mercy.

Those few hours were more than enough to turn Avignon from a thriving mercantile city, full of self-confidence and bustle, of goldsmiths and jewelers, cloth merchants and sellers of food and wine, bankers and lawyers, into a mass of terrified humanity, each individual with no thought but of their own impending end. Twenty people died the first day; sixty the second, one hundred the day after that. At its peak, five hundred a day were dying, more than could be buried, and the rotting corpses piled up and became a source of disease on their own. Within a week, travelers could tell where the corpses were being taken from the thick black cloud of flies hovering overhead, the noise of the buzzing audible long before the smell could be detected. After that, the fires lit to consume the corpses threw up a thick column of smoke and deposited a thin layer of ash over the nearby streets.

The city collapsed; trade stopped, no food came in, the merchants packed their bags, the streets remained unswept and rapidly became filthy. All those little services that enable huge numbers of people to live crammed together in a small space vanished overnight. Fresh water, bread, all the basics of daily existence became scarce until the pope himself intervened to order men back to their jobs. The rich fled, many priests and cardinals amongst them, but accomplished little except to take the infection farther afield before they, too, died. Others stayed, from lassitude or defiance, and died in their turn. The lucky ones were those who were already outside the city before the plague hit, and who had the good sense to remain there. But it was luck that decided who lived and who died; men were like soldiers ambushed in the night, not knowing who their assailant was, where it came from, how it might be fended off.

Ceccani was one of the few who was not afraid; his iron will and belief in divine favor rather led him to see the onslaught as an opportunity. What he wished to accomplish was perfectly clear in his mind; how to do it was less certain. He wanted to make sure the papacy went back to Rome, and had become the discreet leader of the faction in the curia that held that every day that the pope remained in corrupt, venal, greedy Avignon was an extra offense to God. As long as the papacy was there, it was subject to France, that barbarian nation from the north. The pope was French, as was his predecessor, and so would his successor be, in all probability. The cardinalate dare not even cast a vote without gaining the king of France’s approval. Not that this implied disdain for the current incumbent, whose only sin, in Ceccani’s eyes, was his country of origin. He admired Clement greatly, considered him a true prince, a man of stature who filled the throne well. Nonetheless, that throne was in the wrong place.

The plague itself was a sign of divine disapproval, a punishment meted out against the whole of mankind for this error. It was also the opportunity to restore the situation, and Ceccani realized this immediately. The theological and the political blended so perfectly it was impossible to tell them apart; there was, in fact, no distinction to him at all. It was the destiny, the right, the obligation of the papacy to reign supreme over all temporal rulers. This could not happen in Avignon, and so the pope must leave. It was God’s will, and God had now provided the means to ensure His will was obeyed.

However, Clement VI did not want to leave; he had committed himself to vast building projects—his palace, churches, walls—that underscored in stone and gold an ever more likely permanency. So he would have to be persuaded and, failing that, forced to return. The Comte de Fréjus in his way became part of God’s plan.

Necessarily so; for Ceccani was aware that his desires were in a distinct minority in the palace. The influence of France had been exerted for so long that far too many of the cardinals were French; the life was settled, prosperous, and more satisfying than that of Rome, that decrepit, violence-ridden, bug-infested ruin of a city. Such people, led by Cardinal de Deaux, held that the days of Rome were done and, just as the church had once thrown off the empire and emerged the stronger for it, so now it could discard Rome itself. Tradition said the leader of the church must be Bishop of Rome; it did not say he should live there, and as a man possessed of four bishoprics he had never visited, Ceccani might have looked more sympathetically on this argument than, in fact, he did.

For Ceccani, power-hungry and ruthless though he was, had a soul touched by the sublime; it was what led him to patronize Olivier, to collect manuscripts, to accumulate one of the first collections of Roman coins and antiquities. He was fascinated by Rome; he believed—and held that others should so believe as well—that the church in Rome was a greater thing than the church in Avignon. That only in Rome could it play out its allotted role as the true heir of the empire, and re-create that empire in a new form. He aimed high, higher than any man alive, and was prepared to stoop low to achieve his dreams. He would open Aigues-Mortes to the English, strip the king of France of his only Mediterranean port, strike a blow against him that could never be forgiven. And in so doing would set the French against the Countess of Provence, the owner of Avignon. She would cancel the lease the papacy held on the city, and the whole curia would have to leave. Where would it go then? Where could it go, but back to the place it should never have left?

IT IS A MATTER of record that Marcel had a good war. When the lightning strike of the German military hit France, he was a sous-préfet west of Burgundy, and took upon himself the task of organizing relief for the tens of thousands of refugees flowing through his département like a human river. He instructed the officials he did not need that they should fly, and took over the whole area when his superior disappeared as well.

On the evening of 21 June, four hundred soldiers took up a defensive position by the river Loire, another fifty mined and defended the main bridge into the town. From a hurried visit, he learned that these men—mainly Senegalese—had been instructed to hold the river crossing as long as possible, then blow it up. The captain in charge had not slept for days, and already looked like a man defeated.

“The Germans are about a day behind us. The division needs a couple of days to regroup so it can counterattack. We have to delay them. There are two crossings, and if both are held, the Germans can be stopped.”

“They’ll shell the town.”

The captain shrugged without interest. “Yes,” he said. “More than likely.”

By the time he got back to his office, a delegation from the town council was waiting for him. The mayor had fled, and they knew nothing of what was going on. Marcel explained, and as he did so he saw the panic spread across their faces.

“They’ll destroy the town,” one said. “There will be nothing left.”

Marcel nodded.

“Is there nothing you can do, sir?” another asked.

He made up his mind. “Leave it in my hands,” he said. “Go into the country for a few days. Head south, not north. I will see what I can manage.”

He went back to the soldiers. “You are not to stay here,” he said. “Your task is hopeless, and all you will accomplish is the destruction of my town. The army is disintegrating. The war is lost.”

The captain was not interested. “I follow orders,” he said. “If I am told to stay here, here I stay. Win or lose.”

Marcel left. Half an hour later, he took a step for which he was roundly congratulated by the whole town later on, although some also considered that it was as near to treason as was possible.

What exactly he did in the next six hours is unknown. He shut himself in his office and saw no one. All that is certain is that at five that evening—a beautiful, soft summer’s evening—he went back to the captain and told him the Germans had been in contact and demanded their surrender or withdrawal.

“They say they are already across the river upstream, so your task is pointless anyway. If you withdraw now, you can rejoin your battalion and continue to fight. If you don’t you will be surrounded and captured within hours.”

The captain heard him out, then hurled the glass he was carrying against the wall in blind fury. “They said they would hold that bridge,” he shouted at Marcel. “Come what may, they would hold it. They promised me. At least they promised me that.”

He turned away, not wishing the civilian official to see him in his moment of shame and humiliation, but not doubting the truth of what he was told either.

Then he straightened himself up and called his junior officer. “It’s all over. The bridge upriver has gone. We’ve got to get out of here.”

The news traveled fast. The soldiers abandoned their positions as they had apparently been abandoned by their comrades. They knew, as soldiers do by instinct, that there would be no more fighting. Many left their weapons, some already were changing out of their uniforms, wanting only to go home. Only the Senegalese troops stayed armed and uniformed. They had nowhere to go.

Only they, also, were pursued by the Germans when they swept into the town four hours later. There was a brief fight. They were all killed.

After the war, when Marcel’s career was being examined to see whether he should remain in public office, he said that the initial contact came from a phone call from the German forces, which were under orders to cause as little destruction as possible. During the six hours in his office, he was negotiating terms to save as much as he could from the wreckage of the country.

For this he received his exoneration, and was allowed to continue in the civil service. Long before that he had also received an official vote of thanks from the town council when they returned, and a tearful farewell from the townspeople when he was transferred south three months later.

The fact remains that no note of any phone call or other contact has ever been found in the archives of the German army, nor could any of its officers remember such a thing when questioned after the war. It is also a matter of record that the bridge upstream held out for another two days, until its defenders heard that the troops in Marcel’s town had surrendered.

SHORTLY BEFORE the plague arrived, Olivier traveled to the west, into France. He often made such trips, voyaging on behalf of a master who sent him to sort out some quarrel between recalcitrant priests, reorganize the tax gathering, represent his master in a dispute with the secular authorities; all these things he did with care and some success, as his obvious desire to resolve problems rather than merely end them made him a popular and welcome figure.

This time, however, he was to be merely a messenger.

“A little below you, my boy,” said Ceccani with a smile. “But I can trust no one else. Do your job well, and you will be rewarded.”

“I need no reward, sir.”

“This time you will get one, whether you like it or not. Because this time I forbid you absolutely to tarry. Not even if you come across the manuscript of the Republic in Plato’s own hand will you delay for so much as a moment. Do you understand?”

Olivier nodded. The cardinal seemed unduly preoccupied, as though he was carrying an enormous weight on his shoulders. He had been like this for some weeks; short-tempered, refusing to respond to questions, drifting off in the middle of conversations to dwell on his thoughts. Olivier knew nothing of what was going on, of course; even gossip was for once carrying no tales or rumors. But something was worrying the cardinal greatly; of that he was certain.

“I will do exactly as you say, my lord,” he said gently. “To whom am I to deliver this letter?”

“You will take this to the Bishop of Winchester, who you will find in Bordeaux. You will bring me the reply as swiftly as possible.”

Olivier was not that surprised; the Bishop of Winchester was one of the most important people in England, known for the way he had sought to weave a tapestry of alliances to entrap the king of France and further his master’s aims in the war. Ceccani, he thought, must be taking a hand in the business of trying to find a peace between the two sides. Certainly it was needed.

He bowed deeply and left.

He accomplished his task, traveled to Bordeaux and discharged his commission; and also controlled himself in the matter of manuscripts. Not that this is so important; rather, the one event that is of significance amid the tumult of war and diplomacy, overshadowing the march of armies, the letters of the great, and the march of pestilence, is that on his return, about two days’ ride from Avignon, he met a traveling peddler.

Olivier was traveling simply, as was his wont, alone and on a horse, carrying with him a little food and water, a bag with the papers he needed to discharge his tasks, a thick woollen cloak to keep off the cold, and a wide-brimmed hat on his head to protect him from the rain. He had taken off the gold ring that was his one sign of position lest it tempt another into avarice and violence, and had slung his shoes around his neck so that his feet could be kept fresh by the air as he plodded along. He was happy; the weather was fine enough though chilly, the road good and empty; he was lost in thought and careless of the world—perhaps the state that gave rise to the couplet on forgetfulness in one of his surviving poems, for Olivier had an unprecedented ability to seize a passing moment and fix it in words, rendering the transient timeless.

As he rounded a corner obscured by a clump of trees, he came across an upturned wagon, a donkey lying on the ground and struggling to get up, and a man, not young, trying to loose it from its harness. He was cursing quietly; all around were the impedimenta of the traveling craftsman heading from village to market—his own stock, which turned out to be three pairs of beautifully made shoes, some uncut leather freshly tanned, and some baskets made by his family. The food grown by others in his village and surplus to their needs, and some small rolls of cloth, gray and ragged, for sale to whomever wished to buy such rough material.

Olivier stopped his horse and watched a moment, then leaped down and went to help. His assistance was needed, as the donkey was thrashing around and risking breaking one of its legs or snapping some vital part of the cart. The owner scarcely acknowledged him to begin with, but concentrated on the task of saving his livelihood, breathing a huge sigh of relief when, eventually, the beast was freed, rolled away, got up, and went carelessly off to the nearest patch of grass for a feed. Then he turned to Olivier and grunted his thanks.

He was, perhaps, twice Olivier’s age, strong but not big, with the precise movements of the craftsman and a gaze quite unlike anything Olivier had ever noted in one of his rank. It was open and inquiring, seeing and assessing Olivier in one glance, and yet he sensed something cautious and watchful as well.

He left it to his savior to speak first. “Come, let us turn your wagon the right way up. It seems undamaged, and it will not take long if both of us are at the job. Some of your goods are a little muddy, I’m afraid, but most seem fine.”

The man nodded, and they moved around the wagon, working out the easiest place to attack the problem. Then, under the craftsman’s direction and taking care not to get his clothes dirty, Olivier and he lifted, pushed, and pulled until at last the wagon balanced precariously on one wheel, then crashed down onto the ground the right way up. His new companion inspected it carefully, then sniffed with satisfaction.

“Thank you,” he said, speaking for the first time. “Grateful.”

As if to make up for his lack of words, and not wishing to seem churlish, he reached inside a large cloth bag that had fallen onto the ground and brought out a flask. This he unstoppered and offered to Olivier.

It was water, fortunately, for the day was young for wine, and Olivier drank gratefully. Not that he needed it; he had more than enough of his own, but it indicated his acknowledgment of the thanks. When he finished, he wiped his mouth on his sleeve and handed it back. “The water of the soul,” he said with a smile, unthinking, not even remembering where the phrase came from. It was simply the first thing that came into his head and he wanted to fill in the silence caused by the man’s taciturnity. Or maybe he wished to establish who he was, a person of some importance, of learning, not to be treated with familiarity even though they had just heaved over an old wagon together. Helping a traveler in trouble was one thing, a good Christian act that also broke some of the monotony of the journey. But that didn’t mean that he was encouraging presumption. Olivier was young enough and vain enough to want it known he was a man of mark.

If that was his aim, the result was quite other than the one he anticipated. The older man stared at him in surprise and suspicion, hesitated, then spoke himself. “Flows to the ocean of the divine.”

And now it was Olivier’s turn to stare, dumbstruck with astonishment. For the moment the man spoke, he remembered the source of the words. It was as well there was no one else nearby, for any casual observer would have been piqued by the sight. Two men, of clearly different ranks, standing close and eyeing each other warily. To the left a donkey, unattended, and all around the bric-a-brac of the market. All this in the middle of the countryside, several miles from the nearest habitation. It was a puzzle picture, which someone like Julia would have thought almost surrealist, the meaning there but hidden, needing an explanation that could only come from a particular vantage point. Not that she was ever tempted by such things; her aim was clarity, not games designed to obscure.

“Why did you say that?” Olivier asked. “How do you know that?”

The man now looked frightened, as though he had made a mistake and suddenly realized it. He mumbled something that Olivier didn’t catch and turned away, hurriedly throwing the rest of his goods on the back of the wagon and shouting at the donkey, dragging it away from its meal to hitch it up once more.

Olivier caught him by the arm. “Tell me at once,” he said. “Where did you hear that phrase? I mean you no harm.”

But he was not to be persuaded. “Nothing, nothing. It doesn’t matter,” he muttered, then, his task done, he got back up on the wagon once more and started to move off. Olivier ran alongside. “Stop,” he called out. “I order you to stop.”

It was no use. The man stared stolidly ahead, completely ignoring all of Olivier’s pleadings. And after he had run alongside, shouting some more, Olivier stood in the mud watching as the wagon lumbered down the road. He could have caught him easily; he had a horse, after all. He could have jumped on the wagon and wrestled the man to the ground, for although he was powerful and strong, Olivier was the younger by more than two decades.

He did neither of these things. There was something about the man’s sheer terror that made him stand there until the wagon had rolled over the next hill, giving the man time to get away, so that he wouldn’t be frightened anymore.

He waited an hour before continuing; his horse needed a rest in any case, and while it was munching the grass, continuing the meal that the donkey had so abruptly abandoned, he sat down under a tree and thought. It was wasted time, a frustrating and pointless exercise, for he knew before he started he could not work out how a cobbler could have quoted a luminous phrase written down by the Bishop of Vaison more than eight hundred years previously.

IT GNAWED AT HIM, this irritating confusion in his life. Olivier was used to a neat division between the world and the mind, between events and writing, between people and ideas. Unlike Julia, who sought consciously to bring all of these together through the fine movements of her hand, or Pisano, who did so without even being aware of it, much of the appeal of books for him was their dissociation from reality. His Cicero, his Horace, his Vergil, all of these were occult knowledge, whose existence and meaning was hidden from the world. His labors were contradictory; he wanted to recover such works, but to recover them for himself alone; he felt that at some level they would be tarnished if exposed to the generality, like silver when exposed to the air.

And yet there was this cobbler. . . . The problem exercised him all the way to his destination, which for that day was the town of Uzès, deep in French territory, but a duchy, whose overlord was of an independent frame of mind. Too lofty a business for someone like Olivier, however; he was not someone who dealt with dukes and kings. The seigneur, unaware of the poet’s visit as well, slept undisturbed in his fortress that night, and Olivier stayed in a small abbey in its shade, where the cardinal’s name ensured him hospitality, and he was surprised and delighted to discover that Althieux of Nîmes, passing through on his way to Tours, was also there, and ready to provide him with good company and conversation.

Althieux, the older man by some fifteen years, was not of Ceccani’s family; he belonged to the entourage of Cardinal de Deaux, Ceccani’s great opponent in the matter of Rome. The two friends had long since learned to negotiate the rocky shore on which one false word might cast all their hopes. Say, for example, that Olivier had let slip to Althieux that (as was the case at that particular moment) Ceccani was maneuvering with his usual skill to place his illegitimate son in the archbishopric of Dijon, a move that would have given an enemy of France access to the Duke of Burgundy—who was wobbling in the matter of England. If Althieux had spoken of this to his master, Olivier’s career would have been ruined. If he had not and it had emerged that he knew about it in advance, then Althieux’s own career would never recover.

Besides, Althieux was as devoted to his lord as Olivier was to Ceccani; both would have had to choose between friendship and obedience, creating a conundrum of irresolvable proportions. Better by far to avoid any such topics; to discuss matters of the mind alone, certain that both of those great princes were quite aware of the connection and smiled on it, as a discreet conduit for messages, should any such need to be sent from one side of the curia to the other.

All the more extraordinary, then, that Althieux should be so awkward, so strained in his company, he who was normally so easygoing. Olivier even asked him directly, but for some time was put off with a wave of the hand. “Nothing, nothing,” he said impatiently.

“Come along, my friend. ‘Nothing, nothing,’ is not true. Something is on your mind quite clearly. Tell me what it is, if you can.”

And eventually his friend began to talk. “I am doing this out of friendship, and against all common sense, but I have come to warn you to be careful as you travel the road back to Avignon.”

“I am always careful,” Olivier replied. “Anyone who has traveled more than ten leagues knows how important that is.”

“I do not mean brigands and robbers. A group of men is waiting for you somewhere. They have been told to take a letter you have on you and kill you if necessary. They will probably find it necessary.”

“Why?” said Olivier, quite astonished at the news, but not doubting it for a moment: his friend’s demeanor was far too serious for it ever to have been a joke.

Althieux shrugged. “I do not know. Do you have some letter?”

“Yes.”

“What is it?

Olivier shook his head. “How should I know? I haven’t read it. Anyway, who has sent these men? Who gives their orders?”

“From the fact that I am telling you this, you may guess. May I count on your absolute discretion? You must never say how it was you evaded these people. If, indeed, you do so. “

“Of course, of course.” Olivier fell silent, pondering what to do. Evidently the rivalry between his master and Althieux’s was reaching some sort of crisis, if de Deaux was prepared to risk a direct attack on him. Whatever the letter said, it must be even more important than he imagined. But now he had the problem of delivering it, and staying alive. Obviously, he would have to take a different road, make a diversion. That would be the best thing. He could head north, pick up the river at Orange, take a boat down to Avignon. That would be easy enough. It would add several days to his journey, but better to arrive late than not at all. In the circumstances, even Ceccani could hardly complain.

“I am deeply grateful to you for telling me this. I do not have to say so, I imagine.”

Althieux clapped him on the back. “One day perhaps you will have to do the same for me. Now, let us go and eat, and say no more of this gloomy topic. I hear this abbot keeps a fine table, and I haven’t eaten properly for days.”

FOR ONCE, rumor about monastic opulence matched the reality; both men were in a more mellow frame of mind when they retired to the special room reserved for the powerful and well-connected guests of the community, and called a servant to stoke up the fire and bring some warm drinks. Althieux was disinclined to revisit the topic of the ambush, and Olivier readily put the matter to the back of his mind. It would be easy enough to avoid them, after all. He did not pause to wonder at the coincidence of his friend being there to pass the warning on.

And Althieux tried to forget his last conversation with his master, the way he had begged for the opportunity to get this letter before the cardinal’s soldiers were let loose on his friend. Anything, even a sacrifice of his company, to avoid bloodshed.

But he knew that, if he succeeded in his promise of taking it while Olivier slept, and set off for Avignon long before his friend even awoke the next morning, then this would be the last night of their friendship, and he wished to revel in the conversation, the comfort, of a true amity, about to be sacrificed for the sake of that very friendship. Why would he even consider doing such a thing to Olivier if he did not love him? For the number of people who could talk of the things in which both men were interested was small; to lose such a friend would be a dreadful hurt.

So they talked, and in due course, Olivier mentioned his encounter on the road that afternoon, and the way the man had echoed the words of his manuscript. His friend listened with fascination, savoring every drop of the tale: the way the manuscript was found, the time Olivier had taken to transcribe it, his inability to understand it, his meetings with the fearsome Gersonides, and the manner in which it was brought back to his mind that afternoon.

“When I get back, I shall reread it more carefully,” Olivier said. “And I will have a copy made for you, if you like. Then we can write to each other and examine what your cardinal’s Jew says about it. He is a fascinating man; I learned more from him in a few weeks than I did from the most skilled doctors in Avignon in the course of several years. I hope to continue the acquaintanceship. I have scarcely scratched the surface of what he knows.”

“I can think of nothing better than such a project with such a friend,” came the reply. “My one concern, however, is that we might be led onto dangerous areas of inquiry. You must have suspected yourself that this cobbler was a heretic.”

“I considered the idea. It is another area of the rabbi’s expertise. How he became conversant with the details of the heresy I do not know. I thought they’d all long been destroyed.”

Althieux laughed. “Oh, no. It was the usual thing. The soldiers and the priests and the magistrates all came. They attacked, and captured and tried and burned. Hundreds of villages, whole towns burned to the ground, tens of thousands massacred. And many good Christians among them, I think. Then they declared complete victory over the forces of schism and heresy, and went home. I am not saying that most heretics were not killed or forced to change their views; they were. But many were quite untouched, hiding out in the mountains to the north. They have learned greater discretion, that is all.”

“I suppose I should have known,” said Olivier simply. “But there seemed nothing especially dangerous about this man.”

“I don’t doubt it. They are perfectly ordinary people, for the most part. But dangerous nonetheless, every bit as much as the Jews. More so, I should say, as the Jews are plainly visible and use no subterfuge. Nor do they seek converts. These are quite the reverse. Your duty, as I am sure you know, is to report the matter to the magistrate. This man has undoubtedly come to market here. If he can be found and his village identified, then the entire settlement can be destroyed.”

Olivier thought, and once more in a small way Sophia spread out her protective cloak from the past; the man who carried her words, the anonymous messenger in the same way that Olivier was on occasion for Ceccani, was saved by his message.

Olivier shrugged. “I doubt we’d find him,” he said. “And besides, I am in something of a hurry. I think the cardinal would not be best pleased to hear that his business was delayed because I chose to go a-hunting with some friends. I must be off tomorrow. I have a long journey; thanks to you it will be longer than I anticipated.”

Althieux grunted; then the shadow over the conversation passed.

“You can, if you like, tell me why you are so sure this man is a heretic.”

Althieux stretched, lazily, in front of the fire. “Something I heard. Have I ever told you of my earliest meeting with Pope Clement? My brush with greatness?”

“You told me that you had encountered him once. But not the circumstances.”

“Ah, the circumstances. Indeed. I must say that when he rose to his current position I had high hopes for a moment. Not everybody can claim to have assisted a pope in the days before he became so. And he remembered me, as well. But chose not to advance me any further. He considered I was quite well enough placed with Cardinal de Deaux, and needed no assistance from him. Besides, it may be that I brought back unpleasant memories, which he wished to shrug off once he exchanged the name of Pierre Roger for Clement the Sixth.”

They lay on the floor together beside the fire, as it was cold in the evenings. There were no candles, no other light except for the logs sputtering in the large grate, and this gave off a fitful dancing light that made Althieux’s words seem the more resonant as he spoke.

“It was when I was very young, and a novice at the house of Saint-Baudil near Nîmes. We had a new and dynamic young abbot, called Pierre Roger, known as a favorite of the king, an advisor to the powerful, a magnificent preacher, and as a man learned and effective in disputation. He turned out to be all of these; indeed, I have never met his equal before or since. He only stayed a short while; it was obvious he was destined for greater things, although we could scarcely guess how great they would be.

“The lay courts often used to hand over cases, or at least ask for our advice, when there might be a religious complication, and the monastery had habitually gone along with this, not least because all concerned wished to avoid the return of the inquisitors, who were always looking for an opportunity to intervene. One day, such a case came up, and as the abbot’s secretary was ill, I was brought in to help and take notes for his personal record.

“There were six of them, three men and three women, although (they hastened to assure us) only two were man and wife; the others had never had any sort of union. They came from a village nearby and had been accused of fraud. This turned out to be a falsity, a charge brought up by a jealous neighbor who wanted their land, but it became clear as the hearing progressed that there was much more to it than that. These people were heretics, and up until then had kept themselves well hidden. Only the false accusation brought them into the light of day. They would not swear, or take an oath, and when the abbot asked them why not, they told him.”

“As simple as that?” Olivier asked.

“As simple as that. They cannot lie. Anyway, they were quite unashamed of their beliefs and seemed to enjoy the chance to tell them to the court. I think they had accepted that their end was coming, but were completely unperturbed by it. They were asked why this was the case, and said that as their bodies were the prison in which they had been confined, the prospect of escape and return to their status as gods, alongside the Great God, could do nothing but please them. If they died well, then their next return to the material world would be the shorter.”

“At which point,” Olivier commented dryly, “our future pope leaned over and set light to them.”

“On the contrary; he found it all fascinating and questioned them closely for a long time, so much so that the others began to become impatient with him. Also he hates that sort of thing, and tried desperately to get them to say something, anything, which would allow him to recommend leniency. He is a legist and a theologian, well used (dare I say it) to spinning strong arguments from insubstantial threads. Had they said anything at all with even the breath of orthodoxy or repentence about it, he would have jumped on it and let them go. And the rest of the court would not have protested, for they had little stomach for the task either.

“Nothing could be done. The more they said, the more everybody’s jaws hung open. I have never heard anyone, not even a Jew, contradict so many fundamental doctrines quite so quickly or quite so willingly. They claimed to be gods themselves, they denied the resurrection of the body, they claimed the world was evil and man a prison rather than something created in God’s own image. That God Himself, the god of the Bible, was but a meddling demon and had nothing to do with the true deity from which we all come. There was, of course, no mention of Our Lord, and they plainly believed in reincarnation. And, of course, no judgment, no hell—except for this world—no purgatory, no heaven.”

Althieux smiled as he remembered. “And they were so serious, and so earnest; they spoke to us so intensely, as if they expected us to understand and even be converted by the sense of their words. On the other hand, they didn’t seem that surprised either by the verdict. The abbot even gave them a stern talking to; said one last time that all they had to do was say something orthodox and they would be saved. But they wouldn’t. Even then he would not give the order; he left the court to give them more time and went back to his monastery. But while he was there the local magistrates intervened. They all burned a couple of days later as thieves, for fear that the inquisitors would hear about it and come back. They didn’t want another massacre in their area. It put Clement into a fearful mood for a week; he was sure he could have talked them round eventually, he said. He had been looking forward to the next meeting.

“It stayed with me; they turned to each other and smiled when they talked, so sweetly, and gave a warm embrace. Nothing ostentatious, you understand. Simple satisfaction and pleasure, quietly appreciated. You know, when I read the lives of the saints, sometimes I think they seem less graceful.”

He paused, then shook himself and remembered that he had strayed far off his subject. “The point is, they referred to their soul as a river, flowing to the sea. Not individual, but coming from God and going back to God on death. That’s why I am sure your man today was the same.”

“Extraordinary,” Olivier said. “But there is one problem.”

“And what is that?”

“The person who wrote the words that I quoted to this man was no heretic.”

“No?”

“No. He was a bishop and is still revered as a saint.”

Althieux grinned. “Better not tell his parishioners, then. They’d be most disappointed.”

THE NEXT DAY, Olivier rose early and breakfasted in the common hall. Althieux was not there, but Olivier thought nothing of it until he noticed a brother scurrying in, white-faced with terror, and whispered in the abbot’s ear. He also looked frightened, and they both glanced sideways at Olivier, as though he was suddenly unwelcome.

“What is it? Is there something which concerns me?”

“It is the plague. Your friend has brought it here.”

Olivier’s blood turned cold, both for Althieux and for himself. No details or explanations were necessary. Everybody knew the moment they heard the words what it meant. Some of those in the hall began looking around them, as though they expected death to walk through the door at any moment; others left the table and began to pray on their knees; most, though, sat still, looking at their abbot, silently begging him to do something, send it away and save them.

The abbot did nothing. He offered no words of consolation, provided no lead for the others to follow. Instead, he got up abruptly from the table and hurried out; Olivier thought he must be going to his friend to offer him the last rites—perhaps too late, but at least to do his job.

He stopped being frightened, for some reason that he did not understand. He should have been; this he knew all too well. He had no more idea than anyone else what the sickness was, but was sure that the air was infected around the sick man. As he had spent the evening with him, his chances of succumbing himself seemed great. But he would not leave. He knew he would not. The idea never crossed his mind. The plague happened to others, not to him. He was not destined to die of it. Even the realization that others had this naïve opinion and died nonetheless did nothing to shake his confidence in his invulnerability. He kept on eating, watching the hall empty, the monks break up into little groups. Some walked out sobbing in the direction of their cells, the chapel, or the gardens, then he got up himself and went to Althieux’s room.

His friend was dead, and when he saw him Olivier realized for the first time why the world was so terrified of the plague. For what he saw was no longer a human being, just a mass of all-consuming sickness, his face wreathed in agony, his clothes stained dark with pus and sweat and vomit. He was lying on the floor, doubled over on himself, his fingertips bloody, the nails having come away from being dragged across the stone floor in agony.

And there was the smell. Not that of death, which he had often come across before, nor of sickness, which he knew still better. None of these had any terrors for him, or for any of his time. It was the sour sweetness of the odor that shocked him, a tantalizing, seductive smell, almost, beckoning the passerby, wheedling and reassuring. The smell of the devil, in fact, clever, powerful, ruthless, and truly frightening.

Olivier crossed himself and went outside into the morning sunlight to recover. He knelt on the ground and pushed his face close to it, to smell the fresh clean smell of the dew-soaked soil as it dried in the warmth.

“You, brother, I need help,” he said as one of the monks hurried by. The man didn’t even pause. Olivier hailed another and another; they all ignored him. As he stood, he heard the sound of a horse, looked up and saw the abbot leaving through the main gate. Hurriedly, not looking back, urging the beast into a gallop the moment it was clear of the doors.

The order and discipline of the monastery collapsed in minutes; three hundred years of contemplation and prayer and blind obedience wiped out by terror. Nor did it ever recover; three of the forty-five brothers survived, but they went elsewhere, and the building was abandoned for years before it was finally taken over by the duke and used as stabling. In the eighteenth century a fire in a pile of hay burned down most of it, and the depredations of builders removed much of the stone for new houses. What remained was incorporated, in 1882, into a school, a fine monument to the meritocratic ideals of Republicanism. The spot where Olivier stood in the sunlight, and where Althieux died, is now a favorite haunt of adolescent boys, who come here to smoke when their lessons are over for the morning. Wildflowers grow where Olivier buried his friend, tipping him into the grave he dug himself, saying a brief prayer in farewell, and promising to have a mass said for him when he could find a priest to say it. They are picked, every year, and the boys give them to their girlfriends of the moment.

OLIVIER COLLECTED HIS bag and left as soon as he could. The speed of what had happened had shocked him, not only the plague itself but also the reaction to it. It was clear that the news had spread to the town; the silence, perhaps the most alarming of all the symptoms, had descended. People talked softly, looked frightened, moved as though they might be attacked at any minute. Only a few people were in the streets, doors and windows were being barred, and horses were whinnying as they were loaded with essentials.

Even the market had few people in it as Olivier walked through, only a handful of traders remained in their places, still hoping that someone would come and buy to reward their efforts in coming. As Olivier looked around him he saw, quite plainly, his heretic of the previous day.

The man noticed him as well. His eyes met Olivier’s.

You know what I am, the glance said. What will you do?

The faintest ghost of a smile crossed Olivier’s face. A half, even a quarter, of a wink. Then the meeting was broken. The man bent his head and saw to his pile of cloth. Olivier passed on his way, the bags bouncing against the side of his horse as he walked it toward the gate leading back to Avignon.

Even though he was mindful of Althieux’s warning, and circuited so that he came into Avignon from the north, nonetheless the precautions were insufficient. As he stopped one night at a rough hostel for travelers on the far side of the Rhône, already back in Provençal territory, he heard two merchants talking.

“Don’t know who they’re looking for, but they must want him badly.”

“What’s this?” he said. “Trouble on the roads?”

“Soldiers,” replied one of the men. “Don’t know whose they are, but they’re stopping everyone heading for Avignon. I’m told every way into the city has got blocks on it.”

“Maybe they’re after brigands,” Olivier suggested.

“No, there’s only a few of them. Enough to stop one man,” he said, looking at Olivier carefully, “but not much use for anything else.”

He thought as he lay scratching on his flea-ridden straw pallet that night. If they were searching everybody, then they could not know what he looked like. It must be that they anticipated the letter giving him away. Therefore, the solution was simple.

The next morning, after he’d had some bread and wine, he started off again, but instead of heading south to Avignon, he turned east inland and toward the hills that rose on the far side. Again, it added time onto his journey; in all, the detours took him a total of ten days, but as he did not want his throat cut, and as Ceccani would not have thanked him for losing the letter, he had no real choice. He headed straight for the chapel of Saint Sophia, thinking that by far the most sensible thing would be to consign it into his friend’s hands. Ceccani could then send some of his own bodyguards to bring the Italian, and the letter, into the city. His friend would like that; indeed, the prospect of being escorted into the town surrounded by an armed retinue in full regalia like some visiting potentate might well be the high point of his life, for he always had a grand sense of occasion.

It began to rain the day before he arrived, and kept up a steady downpour for nearly thirty-six hours. He was soaked to the skin and shivering by the time he finally made it to the top of the hill, hoping desperately that he would soon see his friend, huddling over a fire in the makeshift encampment he had once proudly described. But Pisano was not there, of course; he rarely was when he was needed. The chapel was deserted; only the mess all around—the poles for the scaffolding, the scorched patches on the grass where he had built his fires at night, the splotches of bright red and blue on the earth where he had washed his brushes after his work—suggested that anyone had ever been there. It was bleak, and desolate, half finished and with the air of something that never would be finished. Olivier stood uncertainly, gazing out over the thick woodlands that surrounded the hill, listening to the rain pattering down on tens of thousands of leaves so that the whole of creation seemed to be drumming with the noise. In the distance he could just see the smoke rising from the chimneys of Vaison, which he had not visited for years. He shook the rain out of his eyes, then turned miserably to the chapel, which offered the only dryness within reach. Once inside, in the gloom, for the darkness of the sky meant little light came through the windows, he shivered; he knew a fever was coming and that if he didn’t get dry he would be in great danger. Even as the shivering grew worse and he had trouble standing, he still never considered the possibility that he, too, might have the plague. Instead he was as practical as he could be, knowing that he had little time before he would be too weak to stand. He took the warm blanket from his pack, his flask of water, took off his wet clothes, and, teeth chattering from the cold, wrapped himself up and huddled on the floor.

He had no idea how long he slept, possibly a day or more, and half the time he did not know whether he was asleep or not. Rather, he kept passing in and out of dreams, sometimes thinking clearly, sometimes only aware that he could hardly think at all, and luxuriating in the strange thoughts that passed through his mind without his bidding. At some stage the rains stopped; he noticed the sudden silence, then the skies cleared for the chapel grew light once more, and a shaft of sunlight streamed in through the windows to illuminate Pisano’s unfinished work.

Olivier lay there and looked; for as much as half a day he looked at what his friend had accomplished, sometimes aware he was looking at artifice, sometimes thinking he was looking at real events. He was entranced and knew that all of the Italian’s boasting, all his claim to be doing something the world had never seen before, were perfectly justified. He had created real people and endowed the story with life. Olivier saw how he used Isabelle de Fréjus to make his Magdalen, and wondered how anyone had ever considered that the blessed saint could have looked like anyone else. Even though it was unfinished, the panel of the saints arriving on dry land in their miraculous boat made him wonder at the glory of God who could protect such a frail craft on such violent seas. He even noticed that Pisano had given the blind man his face, and saw that Sophia was Rebecca. That darkness, with the radiance shining from her, the kindness of her gestures, the sometimes rough way she spoke, the twist of her head and the fall of her hair. Who would not wish to see such a person? Who could not love her?

He dozed again, and heard her words as she addressed the sinner who came to her. “You will see when you understand what love is,” and she passed her hand over his face—an imperious, commanding gesture, not something mannered as some fairground charlatan would do—and the sunlight streamed into his eyes and woke him with a start.

The fever had gone, but still Olivier lay there, trembling in the memory of the dream, rather than from the illness. Eventually he got up, his bones creaking, his stomach protesting from hunger, his mouth dry and foul-tasting from the lack of water. His head hurt abominably, and he cried out in pain as he stood up, then knelt down again to stop the dizziness.

And then he remembered why he was there. He checked his clothes to make sure they were wearable—they were still damp and clammy, but would dry swiftly enough once he got moving. He drank thirstily and forced himself to eat some of the bread, now green and moldy, that was in his pack. Then he reached in and took out the cardinal’s letter. After hesitating for a moment, he slipped his finger under the grand seal of the bishopric of Winchester and opened it up, still unsure whether he was doing the right thing or making the biggest mistake of his life. He began to read. He read it six times, concentrating as much as his weakened state allowed. When he was sure he had got it, he put it down and recited it to himself, finally picking it up once more and correcting his errors in recollection. In an hour he had it entire, not a word out of place, the message hidden in the one place soldiers could not pry.

As for the letter itself, there were few enough places to put it; eventually he decided that the rough stone altar would have to do. He put his shoulder against it and heaved until it leaned over just far enough to create a gap at its base. He slipped the letter underneath and let it down, then sat down himself once more to steady his head.

Ceccani could send some soldiers, or Pisano could bring it next time he came out here. It and its contents were safe from discovery, at any rate. He had done his best.

Still sniffing, still unsteady, he went out into the daylight and was dazzled by the sun. The rain had long gone, leaving only the smell of sweetness behind it. A heat haze was already forming in the far distance, and the birds, grateful for the rain and happy also it was over, were singing their songs with a vehemence Olivier thought he had never heard before. Perhaps because of Pisano, he noticed the colors of the landscape properly for the first time, the extravagant purples and browns and yellows and greens covering the hills and the valleys as far as the eye could see. He looked the other way, across the broad plain of the river valley toward the Rhône, dotted with tiny settlements and fields. He relaxed in the warmth and the peace, and went down on his knees to give thanks merely for being alive, and for being allowed to see such sights and smell such perfumes.

WHEN MARCEL ARRIVED to take up his duties as préfet in Avignon at the start of 1941, he came as something of a hero. The way he had put on his full dress uniform to give the Germans a cold but unimpeachably correct welcome. The way he had himself lowered the tricolor and insisted that no German hands touch it. The way he had protected the town from destruction and prevailed upon the German authorities to punish any looting. The way he had even gone in person to the general in charge to demand that German vehicles be used to bring food into the town. All these had won him a reputation as a humane man who kept his head in a crisis. Such men are rare in the best of circumstances; in late 1940 they were beyond value; he swiftly had his reward. He was needed badly.

There was much to do, a whole society to rebuild, an entire regime to establish. Simple things, normally taken for granted, required immense effort and labor. All his tasks he accomplished with efficiency and dispatch. He never complained, never made excuses, seemed to sleep in the Préfecture, was an inspiration to all around. He was the perfect product of the system, almost its justification.

It was some time before he turned his mind to the minor matters and, on the recommendation of the Minister of Education, wrote the letter that summoned Julien Barneuve from his exile to see him.

“People have been making inquiries about you, my friend,” he said, and was gratified to see Julien look slightly alarmed. A little joke, which was also a small exercise of power. “I have had two memos about you.”

Julien looked puzzled. “I cannot think why,” he said.

“We have been drawing up lists of people who might be pressed into service. You wrote an article a year ago, it seems. About a bishop. It has been noticed by people who think it has the right attitude. Which shows how thorough they are being. Combined with personal recommendations . . .”

“I published it a year ago,” he interrupted. “I wrote it several years back.”

“Yes, yes. The point is that it is just the sort of thing we need at the moment. The context. A model, if you like, of how relations with our—what shall we call them?—new friends—may develop. That’s why your name has come forward. It is a small consequence of having a classicist as Minister of Education.”

Julien looked thoroughly puzzled. “What are you talking about?”

“The Germans, Julien, the Germans. Remember them? Those people who have occupied half our country? You argued that although the barbarians conquered Gaul, the Gauls civilized them. A greater victory and in the end beneficial all round.”

“I did nothing of the sort,” Julien replied. “And I can see no parallels between then and now at all.”

Marcel looked slightly irritated. “That’s how it seems to people in Vichy. Goths and Germans, rebellious serfs and communists. Very neat. Don’t expect politicians to pick up subtleties. The point is, they want you to help. Do your bit to steady things. Your duty, really.”

“I’m really not with you.”

“Give lectures. Write articles. Check the newspapers aren’t being unhelpful. That sort of thing. Radio, now. We could organize a few talks on the radio as well. Immensely popular, those are.”

“I don’t think that’s something I’d be very good at. Or inclined to do. Peddling vulgarized half-truths is not something that would appeal much.”

Marcel paused and sat down at his desk. “Listen, Julien my friend. Let me give you a little lecture. You, after all, have given me enough of them over the years. Do you know what the situation is here? In this country? Probably not. We have been beaten. This you may have noticed. Even you. Definitively and completely, this time. We are in a new world, one which has changed forever. The Germans have won, so comprehensively they cannot now be defeated. There is no one left to fight them. They have complete control over Europe. England is hanging on by its fingertips and will inevitably be destroyed sooner or later. Eventually, no doubt, there will be a war on Russia and it will suffer the same fate. Our government, meanwhile, is in the grip of an old general surrounded by men of often doubtful motives. The people are dazed, confused, and prey to any convincing charlatan who might come along. They have to be protected from false hope and expectation. . . .”

“People like Bernard, you mean?”

“Exactly like Bernard. I hear he has fled the country. That was the best news I have heard for a long time. Think what he would be writing now. Sniping criticism from the sidelines, assaults on those who lost the war—all justified, no doubt. Worthy articles on democracy and freedom. Constant bickering about every piece of legislation. Character assassinations of ministers and politicians. A never-ending stream inciting hatred against those people who have just driven their tanks all over our country and divided it in two. Again, justified no doubt. But that is not the point. We cannot look back. We dare not. The people have to be consoled and encouraged and protected. We cannot afford a people divided, or a government hampered by internal bickering. Not at the moment.

“And there is another point. I need help. Me, your friend. Another thing you do not know, I imagine. Have you heard of the Legion of Combattants?”

Julien shrugged. “Of course. What of them?”

“A group supposedly of old soldiers. Very virtuous. Heroes of the last war, although how many actually took part in it is doubtful. They have attached themselves to the president, got close to him. Do you know what they are doing? ‘The bureaucracy will not carry out your orders,’ they whisper in his ear. ‘You cannot rely on them. Let us help. Let us be your eyes and ears, tell you what is going on, do those jobs which otherwise will not get done.’ They are dangerous people, Julien. If they are not stopped, they will bypass people like me, all the usual balances of administration will collapse, and it will fall into the hands of old street fighters. Do you remember we were both in Paris in 1928? When there were the riots, when the right battled the communists on the streets? You said you couldn’t decide which was worse, you were merely terrified either would ever come to power?”

Marcel paused. “They are nearly there, Julien. Marshal Pétain is a fine man, a hero. But he is easily influenced. And these are the people who are influencing him. And unless I can surround myself with people I trust, then they will take more and more of the administration here into their hands. And that is why I need you, a decorated soldier, a renowned scholar, a respected figure, by my side. I need my friends, now more than ever. And, as I say, you cannot sit on the sidelines talking about your inclinations. If there was a war on, you could go off and fight, if you wanted. Very noble. Very simple. But the war is over. Now the really dangerous part begins. You have to see, Julien, what a chance we have. To renew and rebuild this country, give it good government, get rid of all those people who do nothing but criticize and weaken us. All those people who lost us the war. Look at the Germans; look at how they run things, and look at the shambles that we became. I don’t like them, but we must learn from them if we are ever going to get off our knees. But we must keep it out of the hands of the thugs as well. A balancing act. If you do not help me, you are helping them. Here ends my lecture.”

Julien gazed at him, saw that he had considered this speech, written it in his head for this moment, and was absolutely convinced that what he was saying was correct. Nor could Julien disagree with him. His friend was talking little more than common sense. But he was still reluctant to take the step Marcel seemed so desperately to want.

“I just don’t see how giving lectures will help,” he said.

“Oh, that. Useful. Keeps spirits up, explains what we’re doing. Keeping an eye on the newspapers and publishers is the more important part. Making sure no defeatist, critical nonsense is spread about. We can’t afford it. The government, no doubt, is not perfect. But it’s all we’ve got at the moment, and it has to be given a chance. And at the same time you must fend off criticism of me from within. Do a good job, use all that intelligence of yours.”

“What do you mean by keeping an eye on things?”

“Which journals and papers get allocations of paper? Which books should get priority for printing? All that sort of thing.”

“I am completely unqualified.”

“Who isn’t? You are an academic with a good reputation. Aren’t you?”

“I think so.”

“There you are. Trustworthy, to me and to the people who will be benefiting from your fatherly advice. It’s for the general good, you know. We have to keep things calm. If you don’t do it, someone else will. And, frankly, you have no choice. You’ve been sitting on your backside for years talking about the need to defend civilization from the barbarians, and now’s your chance. The barbarians are here.”

Marcel stood up and brushed his lank hair back across his head. His face—now slightly pudgy from age, scored with lines from work and worry—was flushed from the intensity of his speech.

“Go away and think about it,” he said. “And when you’ve thought about it, go to the Hotel Continental. I’ve requisitioned a floor for the new censor’s office. You start work on Monday.”

AS HE APPROACHED Avignon once more from the east, Olivier passed unmolested through the two small groups of papal soldiers who stopped everyone they saw and searched them. He watched them for an hour before plucking up courage and marching down the road.

“What’s this?” he asked as they grabbed him and made him stand while they searched his clothes and bag.

“Orders,” said one. “Nothing there. Thank you.”

“Come on, tell me. What’s this about?”

“Sorry.”

And then he was through, and went safely on his way. Just outside the city, on the approach to the great bridge that led over the river to its gates, he came across a sight that initially made him laugh out loud, and he rushed to Ceccani to recite his letter and tell him of what he had seen.

“Fifty men and women,” he said later, “all roped together, beating the hell out of each other with rods and ropes, singing psalms while they did it. Not very well, I must say, as they weren’t hitting each other for show. They were really hurting. What is going on that we have so many mad-men on the road?”

Ceccani did not smile. “They call themselves flagellants, for reasons that are obvious. They believe they can fend off the plague through self-mortification.”

“Judging by the state of this town, they are not succeeding. Is it as bad as it seems?”

“Worse,” Ceccani said grimly. “And by all accounts there is still worse to come. Do not laugh at these people, Olivier. Much has changed in your absence, and you will not find anything so amusing when you see what is happening.”

“I saw some things on the way across town, my lord.” And he had; never would he have thought it possible that a city could change so quickly and so drastically. Not the buildings, of course; the town looked exactly as before, every house and church and palace was as it had been. But the streets, denuded of their people, the stalls, the noise, the movement, were like ghosts. Olivier had never thought about it before; only now did he realize how much he had come to like, even to love, this greedy, corrupt, sinful, excessive town, a byword throughout the world for its extravagance. To live in Avignon, survive amid the cruelty and venality, mingle with Italians and French and Germans and Flemings, was to encounter the whole world at once. And now, it seemed, it was gone forever; all that was left of the pageantry were the bells of the body collectors, and the harsh rumbling of their carts as they pulled another load of corpses to the river; it was difficult to imagine it would ever come back. No city, he thought, could recover from such a blow.

“How many are dead?”

“So far? About seven thousand, maybe ten. We thought that perhaps it was abating, that the miasma was heading elsewhere, but it seems not. There will be many more deaths yet. There is nothing to be done, Olivier. No human assistance has had any effect. Nonetheless, I wish you to do me a service, when you are rested.”

“Willingly, my lord.”

“Go to these people you find so amusing, they must have a leader, and bring him to me. I do not know whether they are dangerous or not, and we must find out what sort of men they are.”

He had already told Ceccani about his voyage, and apologized profusely for having taken such a long time. Ceccani listened, silently, nodding as he spoke.

“And he’s dead, this Althieux?”

“Yes, my lord. I buried him myself.”

He grunted. “You tell me you read the letter?”

“Yes, sir,” he replied a little nervously. “I did not intend to or want to. But I decided the only way of bringing it to you safely was in my head.”

Ceccani thought of this, then smiled. “You did well. Very well indeed. I am pleased with you. So tell me.”

And like a schoolboy before a master, Olivier recited, calling up every word from his prodigious memory. How the proposal was acceptable to the king. How it would take some time to get troops into position. How the English needed eight weeks before any action could be taken, but that they would be ready outside the walls of Aigues-Mortes by the end of May. And how they undertook to provide any and all assistance to Cardinal Ceccani when the time was right.

Ceccani nodded. “Do you understand this letter?”

“I believe so, my lord.”

“And?”

“I believe the English wish to wrest control of Aigues-Mortes from the king of France, to take from him his only port on the Mediterranean Sea. And that you intend to help them do so.”

“Go on.”

Olivier looked perplexed. “That is all, sir.”

“Your opinion?”

“I have none, sir.”

“Do you not find it shocking? Fascinating?”

“No, sir.”

“Why not?”

“Because I am your servant, my lord, indebted to you for everything I have. And because the doings of princes are not my affair. Whether Aigues-Mortes is French, or whether it is English, or whether it belongs to the emperor of China is of no matter to me. I serve you to the best of my ability. What else should concern me?”

Ceccani rose and gave him a warm embrace, the first time he had ever done such a thing. “By God, I choose my servants well,” he said. “Now go to my chancellor and get the money to buy yourself some new clothes. Get enough for expensive ones. And go and see if there are any clothes merchants left in this town. If you choose to buy modest attire and spend the rest on a manuscript or two for yourself, then—then I’ll bless you anew.”

THE FOLLOWING DAY, Olivier did as he was told, although with some foreboding. The group of penitents were not hard to find; a considerable crowd had gathered around them and the noise of screaming could be heard from some distance. Olivier indeed had to push his way through to reach the front.

What he saw revolted him once more. There were about fifty of them, stripped to the waist, dirty, filthy men and women all drawn from the dregs of society, uncouth, loud, and vulgar, standing in a circle. Time and again one would step into the center to be set upon by the others, all of whom carried weighted scourges. Evidently Olivier had missed much of the spectacle, for the ground was as red with blood as the sand after a bear baiting. Several had collapsed, and when they did so, the others rejoiced and ignored them, turning their attention to the next. Olivier could barely contain his disgust, then slowly realized that he was alone in the crowd in feeling this antipathy. Many of the others were on their knees, singing. Others prayed with tears in their eyes, others ran up with handkerchiefs to wipe the blood, which they carried away reverently. He saw one woman grab one of the men and lick his wounds before collapsing in a heap on the ground. A tall man with a thin, wispy beard, his face covered in scabs, walked over to her, picked her up, and gave her a blessing.

Olivier called out to him. He had to repeat himself several times before he was noticed. “Are you the leader of these people?”

“I am their captain,” he replied. Alone of the group he did not seem taken with a madness. Alone, Olivier noticed, he did not submit himself to a beating either.

“I have a message for you. Cardinal Ceccani orders you to attend him.”

“I take no orders from a priest,” the man replied with a sneer.

Olivier turned and indicated the ten guards he had brought from Ceccani’s palace. “Then perhaps a polite request would be honored with a reply?”

The man eyed the troops, who looked nervous and unready to do their duty, but decided not to risk it. “You may tell the priest,” he said, “that I am desirous of saving all souls, even his. I will come to him this evening.”

And he terminated the interview, walking back to the center of the circle, and continued. Olivier retreated; he heard the snigger of the crowd as he did so.

STRANGELY, Ceccani was not offended by the response when he reported it. He laughed, merely. “But, my lord, these people are shocking,” Olivier hastened to tell him. “And they are dangerous. They do not acknowledge the church; they wrap the people round their thumbs and could make them do anything. Believe me, I am not joking. I saw the effect they were having.”

“I’m sure the same was said of Saint Francis and his followers,” Ceccani said evenly. “And who knows, perhaps these people have been touched by divine grace. Let us see, when this man arrives. Did you get his name, by the way?”

“He calls himself Peter.”

“Peter? Well, well.”

“You are taking a great deal of interest in a few lunatics, my lord.”

“A few?” Ceccani replied. “Dear me no. If there were only a few I would ignore them. A few would be no danger, and no use either. But we have had reports in from all over Provence, into Italy and France, of bands of people like these. I need to know whether they are truly dangerous or not. As you have seen for yourself, they capture the minds of the populace. But what will they do with those minds? That is what we must discover. Please go and wait for this Peter, and bring him to me the moment he arrives.”

So Olivier retired to the gatehouse and passed the next three hours working hard, reading the manuscripts that Gersonides had lent him, rereading his own ever more confusing document by Manlius Hippomanes. The contrast appealed to him: the limpid, clear thought of Manlius and the confused, noisy outpourings of the flagellants told him much, suggested to him why the old Roman had written these words. For the first time he picked up and truly understood the tone of regret, the fear in the text, how Manlius must have intended this work to be a bastion against the darkness of ignorance, and a valedictory to an age he knew was dying all around him. But he remembered also Gersonides’s words at the meeting when he had tentatively suggested that his assault on the Jews of Vaison might have been motivated by faith. “Oh, but this man was no Christian when he wrote this. And he was a bishop, as you say. So go and think yet again; what sort of man can persecute others in the name of a faith he clearly does not profess?”

He read, then reread, the section on friendship in the light of the death of Althieux, and there at least found much to comfort him. The bishop had understood about friends, loved his friends, advocated forgiving them if they erred. “For nature gives a man two eyes, two hands, two ears. If one eye weakens, the other becomes stronger in its aid; if an arm is injured, we do not cut it off; rather, the other does its work as well as its own until it is whole once more. So it is if a friend falls from virtue.”

He was thinking on this passage when Peter arrived. Olivier had to intervene, for the guards on the gate wished to deny him entrance. Then, walking ahead of him, being careful not to talk to him, Olivier led him across the vast hall and up the stairs to Ceccani’s chamber.

“I did not give you permission to sit,” the cardinal remarked as Peter placed himself on a chair, carrying it over from the wall where it stood.

“And I did not ask it,” Peter replied, sitting down anyway. “You wished to see me, not I you.”

Olivier smiled, and waited for Ceccani to erupt. His anger was a terrible sight, and he felt a small tingle of anticipatory glee at the thought of what must come next.

But it didn’t. Ceccani did not react, merely nodded and thought. “You addressed the crowd this afternoon, I gather. I heard reports of it, but not enough to make sense of it. Would you care to repeat it to me?”

Even Peter found this mild-mannered response surprising, but was not a man to turn down an opportunity to talk. “I told them that the plague is a punishment from God for the sins of the world. It is only through repentance that His vengeance can be deflected. We are penitents. We urge others to repent as well. So doing may show we are sorry for our sins, and may assuage divine wrath.”

“You are not a priest, I think.”

Peter snorted. “I come from Marseille. When the plague arrived there, the priests were the first out of the gates on their donkeys. I spent a week going round houses no one else would enter, giving comfort to the dying. They asked me for blessings, thinking I must be a priest. At first I refused, but then I knew that I had been ordained by God, if not by men. I was sent by Him, to comfort the sick and save the healthy. Who is the greater sinner? A man who gives the sacrament though not ordained, or a man who is ordained yet refuses it through his cowardice?”

Even Olivier knew the answer to that one. Many a man had been hanged for less. But again, Ceccani smiled, almost as if encouraging him to continue.

“And while this continues, what do priests do? They sit in their castles, blockaded in their towers, and give themselves over to debauchery and lust. That is why God has struck, because of the evil of the church itself, which dissipates itself in this town.”

Ceccani nodded cautiously. “You feel that the plague would abate if the pope returned to Rome?”

“The church must mend its ways and repent, and it must take action,” Peter said, looking at Ceccani with level, steady eyes. “All the world knows how this plague is being spread. Everyone knows that it is the doing of the Jews, and that as long as they exist we are all in danger of our souls. And what does the church do? Nothing. What does the pope do? Builds himself great buildings and seduces women in them. Go back to Rome? Yes. But in a spirit of repentance, vowed to sin no more. And that would be only a start. This is God’s warning, and we must do as we are told.”

Olivier almost broke in to point out that either the plague was God’s punishment or the Jews’ evil, but could hardly be both, but kept silent. It was all too incoherent to be taken seriously. And the remarks about the pope . . . many men thought such things. Few were foolish or rash enough to speak them out loud.

The interview went on for some time, Ceccani using all the formidable power of his character, skills normally reserved for princes and cardinals, to win over this filthy beggar. And when it finally came to an end he stood up and embraced him, then offered him his ring to kiss. “You have been touched by God, my friend. There are many who think as you do, but do not have the courage to act. You must be strong, and faithful. You have great work to do. I offer you my protection, and do not think you will not need it in days to come. There are many who fear you, and who hate to hear the truth.”

Peter bowed, and kissed the ring, tamed at last. “Thank you, my lord.”

“It would be as well if you were prepared to take advice, on occasion. I will send messages to you, giving you my opinion, making suggestions. Consider it well, when you receive it, for we have the same aims in mind, and together, who knows, perhaps we can bring mankind and his church to his senses before it is too late.”

He nodded that Olivier was to show him out. As they left the room Peter said, “You are lucky, friend.”

“How so?”

“To have such a man as a master.”

Olivier said nothing. He thought Ceccani had taken leave of his senses.

IN APRIL 475, the day after his encounter with the abandoned urchin on his estates, Manlius Hippomanes traveled to Arles and summoned a meeting of all the bishops from areas threatened by the barbarian armies. His insolence in doing so was extreme; the most junior of them all, and a priest who had never yet given communion, did not even know how the service was conducted; he should have spent the next decade in humble supplication before his superiors.

And yet this was why old Faustus had chosen him, and why Faustus wrote, quite independently, a covering letter to his fellow bishops instructing them to obey Manlius’s summons. So, over the next month, they assembled, some twenty-four of them in all, finding lodgings of assorted quality in the town—some severe and austere, others aristocratic and opulent. Manlius himself stayed as a guest in the house belonging to a relation, and it was in this still impressive residence that the meeting—or rather the series of meetings—took place.

For although they were leaders of their flocks, they were desperate to be led themselves through the maze of this dark and troubled world. They were now well used to raising and spending charitable donations, to looking after the poor, to getting hold of corn in times of hardness, to raising work duties to repair roads and water supplies; all the things that the civil government had once done and could do no longer. They maintained, on the whole, good relations with their brother priests and bishops both nearby and far away. But dealing with the secular powers, with generals and armies—with politics and diplomacy at a high level—was something of which few had any experience, and they were worldly enough to know that skill and dexterity in such matters was now vitally required. They were Romans and they were Catholics; the barbarians—Euric to the west, the Burgundians to the north—were neither.

So they turned to Manlius, who had been to Rome, who had even accompanied a member of his family to the court of Euric’s father at Toulouse, and who, as a result, was considered to have an unrivaled insight into the barbarian mind. Such was the poverty of the empire at this final sputtering moment that this judgment was correct.

To Manlius, looking around the table, it seemed like a sad parody of the great days of the past, when the emperor would summon ministers and councillors to give advice and take orders. Such meetings, glorious and full of pomp, perhaps still took place in Constantinople, although no one was certain anymore; no one he knew had ever been there, not even Sophia. Here, instead of emperors in their purple, senators, generals, and councillors, there was a group of dowdy and anxious men, most of them old, whose main remedy for any political problem was prayer. So let them pray, he thought; it might do some good. It would give him more freedom of action.

Despite their trust, the look of happy confidence in him, he found it hard to keep the brusqueness out of his voice, to remember that he was supposed to be taking orders, not giving them. “Remember,” Faustus had told him, “you are their servant, selected to do their bidding, to translate their wishes into action. They are good and holy people, for the most part, but have a sense of their dignity, which it is unwise to offend. You will not insult them; it cannot be done. But you can so easily insult their office, and the church itself, and they will not easily forgive you for it.”

A wise old man, this Faustus; someone who would have made a place for himself in whatever world he was born into. Even half a century before, he might have advised emperors, perhaps even become one himself, for he had a quick and active mind coupled with membership of a powerful family. Such were the times, however, that he had turned his back on the world that so desperately needed his talents, and crossed the sea to the island of Lérins, there to spend near twenty years as a virtual hermit. He had come back to the world quite against his will, for Riez had appealed to the abbot for a bishop, and he had seen that Faustus had the skills to manage such a disputatious bunch of people. It was the first and only time he had rebelled and disobeyed, refusing for a whole week to accept the order, begging that it be withdrawn, praying to God for a deliverance that the Almighty, in His wisdom, had no intention of permitting. God needed Faustus for more than contemplative prayer, and eventually he had accepted his fate, leaving the island monastery at the age of forty-five for the first time in nineteen years.

His sanctity—news of which arrived before he did—made him a resounding success; his very shadow, it was said, could make the infirm whole once more should it fall on them. Such holiness was held in awe, and few dared to question the authority of such a man. On top of this, he was wise, not just in matters of theology, but also in the ways of the world; he had no need to think that all men were naturally good to believe in the goodness of his Lord. Thus, he knew the efficacy of prayer but also when God required men to help themselves. It was his decision to push Manlius forward. The church had many good men already, he reasoned; it could afford to have a few effective ones as well.

In his quiet and efficient manner, it was Faustus who managed the meeting, just as he had managed the diocesan assembly that elevated Manlius to the chair. He said little; just a look now and then, a quiet murmur, a raised eyebrow, and a suggestion or two. Only Manlius saw the skill, and he was grateful for it, as he knew he had no understanding whatsoever of such people and could easily make a mistake. Indeed, Manlius had a better understanding of the minds of barbarian chieftains than of these people. He knew already what was necessary, but had no idea how to persuade them of it.

“Perhaps,” Faustus said after a while, “we should see in what direction the Spirit has moved this meeting so far; then its wishes might be all the more clear. We are agreed on the need to restore order in the region . . .”

Here at least was general assent; all of the bishops controlled lands, given by the pious, whose output was declining month by month and year by year as slaves absconded, making their way to lands outside their control. And that was the best that could be hoped for; some stayed and went to the uplands, banding together into marauders and sweeping down to take what they wanted. Bagaudae, they were called in the far north where they first appeared, and the name had become commonplace.

“. . . and that we should proceed to raise the siege of Clermont. For both these ends, it is desired that the Bishop of Vaison should travel to the emperor to request an army . . .”

A murmur of assent.

“This army to be dispatched immediately, and without delay. We accept the full burden of payment, on condition that a general of suitable merit is put in command. Funds to come out of church resources, donations, and taxation. Should this fail, our brother will investigate any other means to salvage the situation.”

Manlius sighed; he knew the purpose of this was to give him as much freedom of action as possible, but the woolliness of it all made him despair. The bishops seemed to think that all you had to do was tap the emperor on the shoulder, point out that an army was needed, and it would suddenly arrive. At least when you negotiated with the Goths or the Burgundians, you knew who was in control, and that any agreement would be kept. And that thought, which had been with him for some time, niggled at him still.

“You must bear in mind,” said Manlius with as much restraint as he could manage, “that any army is likely to cause more damage and chaos than it prevents. I do not know much yet about the finances of the church, but I know something of the tax revenues, and I can tell you that this whole region will be strained to pay for one campaign. Any more than that and there would be precious little left worth defending.”

“Nevertheless, something must be done,” said the Bishop of Orange. “The situation is intolerable. I have lost two hundred slaves in the past six months, and another three hundred serfs have run away as well. Last season two farms were raided just after the harvest and all the corn taken, as well as animals. This cannot go on.”

Everyone nodded, and Manlius could hardly dissent. He was uncertain himself which was worse, the abstract prospect of Euric’s troops—who certainly would be terrible enough if they ever arrived—or the steady wasting away of civil society that the slow attrition of labor meant. Both, certainly, had to be dealt with.

“I must point out,” he said, “that gold can only be spent once. It can bribe Euric, pay for troops, or be spent on supplies for Clermont. But not all three.”

“Which is why you must find the emperor . . .”

Manlius shook his head slowly.

“I really do not think that is the right course,” he said. “Not only because the emperor is little more than a puppet. Even if he were truly in command of himself, I doubt I could prevail on Rome—or Ravenna, or wherever he is—to help.”

“Why is that, brother?”

Manlius winced. He hated being addressed as brother by anyone, and certainly resented the implication of fraternal equality with the lowborn, ignorant Bishop of Aix.

“The suggestions are all noble and good,” he continued, “but they omit one detail. Time. There is little of it. We do not know why Euric and his army have decided to move no farther until Clermont falls, but it is a mistake on his part. The town is no threat to his army. He could sweep past it to the sea at any moment he chooses, and there is a risk he will do so. How long will it take to raise an army in Italy, even if it can be done? Many months at least, as I am sure you realize. By which time there is every possibility that Clermont will have fallen and Aix and Arles and Marseille as well.

“If we are going to get help, we need it now. Within weeks. And, in my opinion, the only people who might assist are the Burgundians. Before anything else, I propose to go to them at Lyon and persuade King Gundobad to block Euric’s advance to the East. He was brought up in Rome; his aunt was married to Ricimer and is a Catholic; he may be persuaded to help.”

A feint; deceive the enemy that your main advance was merely a skirmish. Lull them into the feeling that the battle was not yet joined, so it might be over before they even realized. This, in essence, was Manlius’s tactic at the meeting, which ended in unanimous agreement that he should first buy time, and then buy an army.

Thus it was that the end of Roman Gaul was decided by the enthusiastic nods of those who most wanted to keep it in existence.

HE GAVE a banquet that evening to end the meeting, and to impress on his fellows the extent of his power. There was no delicacy on this occasion; Manlius found the best musicians and cooks available, brought in his own servants and borrowed those of his family in the town. And toward the end he told them a story. It was nearly a parable, almost the first sermon he gave, for he was keen to educate them and prepare them for what he thought was inevitable.

“Let me tell you of my trip to Rome,” he told them when they had eaten well and the last dishes were cleared, the musicians finished and dispatched. And when they had settled and he had their attention, he began.

“I was in the entourage of Lord Majorian, traveling there to cement his grip on the throne, going with a large portion of his army. My father provided a substantial number of troops for his cause from our estate, and I was taken to honor his contribution while he remained behind to keep control of the province. Remember this: I was with an army, and in the company of the only decent emperor to have held the throne for forty years. Did the Romans welcome us? No. Did they honor us? No again. Did the prospect of an emperor able to reassert the glory of Rome fill them with gratitude? No, for a third time. The first delegation which came out to meet us asked for money for games. The second presented a bill for quartering the troops. Even the senate, when he wished to address it, had to be bribed heavily before they would present themselves.

“That is by the by, perhaps. Rome has long been legendary for its rapacity, and I tell you nothing you do not know already. What I wish to recount is a conversation I had with Lord Ricimer, who had been master of the empire for years, though always in the background, and who eventually struck Majorian down. And, through his agents, my father also.

“He was barbarian by breeding, and barbarian by nature; utterly unlike those who see the glory of Rome and wish to emulate it. Not one piece of its civilization did he wish for himself. His manners, bearing, and deportment were almost painful to behold. The first time I caught sight of him—a short, bowed, scarcely shaven man, dressed in a rough tunic, with a truculent scowl—I took him to be a gamekeeper or some other servant. The person I was with laughed out loud when I asked how such a person could wander freely about the powerful senator’s house in which we were at the time, and snapped his fingers at the man.

“ ‘You, sir,’ he called out. ‘Yes, sir. You. Come here. This fine young man here’—he gestured to me—‘wishes to know how a dirty gamekeeper like yourself comes to be wandering freely in this fine house.’

“He thought for a second, then replied, with a voice which sounded remarkably cultivated coming from such a source. The thing which struck me then, and continued to strike me thereafter, was its softness; he spoke so quietly you could barely hear him. Others have remarked on this as well. ‘It may be because of one of two reasons,’ he said. ‘The first being that I own both the house and the senator. The second being that not so long ago another great man of this town did deny me entrance. But that is an old story; and he is long since dead.’

“And then he smiled, a smile of such dazzling beauty that I almost gasped for breath. We are told that we see the soul in such little details and if so, then this man’s reputation must be wrong, for he had the smile of an angel, with beautiful white, even-spaced teeth lighting up eyes which were of a most remarkable blue—a legacy of his Visigothic mother, no doubt.

“ ‘Your name, sir?’ he asked of me. I told him immediately, with something of a stammer. I was scarcely twenty at this time and, although my training was complete, it had not yet encompassed situations such as this.

“ ‘You are one of Majorian’s Gallic entourage, then. What did he bring you for? Are you a cleric? A soldier? A diplomatist?’

“ ‘None of these. If anything, I can lay some claim to being a poet,’ I said.

“Ricimer laughed out loud. ‘A poet? How useful! I am glad to see the savior of the Western empire has his priorities straight. So, sir poet, make me a poem.’

“I thought, in all my foolishness, that my chance had come. A vision of myself standing before the senate delivering a panegyric danced before my eyes.

“ ‘Oh, willingly, sir. With the greatest of pleasure. The honor you do me . . .’

“But this was not what he meant at all. He wished to ridicule me, not honor me. My speech of gratitude was cut short.

“ ‘Yes, yes. Come along then. Begin.’

“ ‘But I need to prepare.’

“ ‘A poet is full of song, I am told. Preparation is not necessary. Generals do not fight battles when they are ready; a good commander can turn any situation to advantage. The same with a politician and a statesman. Are poets different? Make me a song.’

“The tone of his words was playful, yet there was an edge to them. He was prepared to impose his will even in this little matter. The more I protested, the more would he push, until I gave way. I did not want an unseemly fight which I would inevitably lose, but I did not wish to make a fool of myself either. A difficult situation, as you can imagine. So, red-faced and covered with embarrassment, I began. Fortunately, I had that very morning been perusing Horace, which I had brought with me for the pleasure of rereading it on the very sites where the master had composed his immortal lines. I hope I offend no one if I say I am convinced his shade hovered over me at that moment, and gave me inspiration that I should not disgrace the name of poet.

“A two-line epigram only did I give him, two of the worst I have ever composed in technique, borrowing from but not imitating Horace as truly as he deserved. But they served their turn.

“The lines had a crude charm, I suppose, but could scarcely delight the heart of a connoisseur. Lord Ricimer, however, was struck by them and, if I had made myself absurd by inventing the doggerel, he made himself the more so by commenting, in all seriousness, upon it.

“ ‘Perhaps the poet does have his uses after all,’ he said. ‘For you seem to see more clearly than others superior to you in experience. They think Rome is still all-powerful; you in your poem state the truth, that it is crumbling, a mere illusion of what it once was.’

“He nodded thoughtfully, rapt with admiration, so I hoped, then heaved a heavy sigh. ‘You surprise me, poet. Truly you do. We will talk some more. Come to my palace this evening. After dinner, if you please. I do not entertain, and you would not be flattered by any food I might offer you.’

“He turned on his heel and left the room, and also left me in a daze. My companion—whose attempt to show me up had collapsed so badly—at least had the grace to congratulate me on my good fortune. ‘He has no companions, few advisors. No one knows his mind. If you can extract even a hint of what he intends, you will be able to trade it for whatever you want. But be careful. It is said that being Ricimer’s friend is far more dangerous than being his enemy.’ ”

Manlius paused and looked around. No one had said a word, scarcely a cup had been touched since he had begun talking. He was telling them of princes and cities, of legendary figures in distant lands. Sophisticated theologians, men of God though they were, he had them enthralled. “I see from your faces that you are less interested in the progress of a young Gaul like myself, and more in the traveler’s tale I have to offer,” he said with a smile. “Perhaps you are right, for I have seen Rome. Once every Gaul of senatorial rank would have been there; now I know of only half a dozen people who have even traveled out of their own province. But I am one of them. I have seen Rome, I tell you. We hear differing reports, do we not, of this great city. The most beautiful, glorious city in the entire world, glistening with gold and marble. Or is it now a shattered ruin, ransacked and raped time and again after all its troubles, denuded of its wealth, stripped of its population?

“The answer is both; Rome has fallen from its glory, yet in its decrepitude is still more magnificent than the mind of man can easily imagine. I might even say that the barbarian armies might ransack it again and again and come back a third time, and what remained would even then outstrip all other cities on this earth. Stand on the Capitoline Hill, that sacred spot, turn right around and the city stretches before you, so vast you cannot see its end. The great Colosseum itself is bigger than most cities in Gaul, the shops still burst with the perfumes and spices and cloths of all the world. The libraries groan with precious works; at every street corner there is a statue or a monument to some hero of the past. It still boasts men of exquisite learning and women of extraordinary beauty. And ruling it all and all it owned, though always in the background, was Count Ricimer.

“I had expected Eastern pomp, as barbarians can rarely resist the sweets of luxury when they are ready to hand, and the palace he inhabited was grand enough—certainly the biggest such place I have ever been in. And yet he nested in it like a squirrel in an oak tree; most of the halls, all the dining rooms, baths, were disused even though beautifully maintained. Not a sound, not a person did I see in the entire place, even though I knew that guards must be all around. The entire building was in total darkness except for the light thrown by the torch of the two soldiers who escorted me to him. Outside, I was searched—efficiently but not brusquely—and then asked to remove my shoes. Then one soldier knocked on the door, opened it, and gestured me inside.

“Ricimer lay on a couch reading, but made no pretense of business. He got up—there was no one else in the room—and put the papers down on a little desk the moment I walked in, then turned to greet me.

“I was nonplussed by it all, so different was it to my expectations. I was not so naïve as to imagine that I had been invited because of my poetry—even had it been better, Ricimer was not one to have noticed the fact. Careful questioning had indicated that his lusts—if he had any—did not extend to young men such as myself. I did not consider it likely that I had been asked to give wise words on the state of the empire, although I allowed myself a few moments of fantastic imagination in that direction. In fact, I did not know what I was doing there. It never occurred to me then that the most powerful man in Rome had no one to talk to.

“He bade me sit on the couch—in this he was traditional—and asked me to pour him some wine, which I did, though I noticed that, although he put the cup to his lips, he never actually tasted it. He kept company with me, but did not join me. Then he asked me about my journey to Rome, and how our delegation was being treated. I answered frankly and honestly, for I considered that to do otherwise would be considered more insulting than to dissimulate. He did not wish to hear empty praise of a city for which he was known to feel little but disdain.

“ ‘We are treated as you might expect, Excellency,’ I said. ‘As provincials scarcely worth talking to. Although since news of your invitation this evening circulated somehow, I find myself suddenly popular.’

“He smiled. ‘They still fear me, I think. And will do so until they kill me. They hate me, but cannot do without me. How is my fame in Gaul? Am I thought of as the barbarian, destroying Rome simply to keep hold of power for himself?’

“ ‘As you say yourself, sir; it is thought shameful that Rome should be under the sway of a man like yourself who is no Roman.’

“ ‘But what does it say of Rome that it submits to me so easily? I am powerful despite being hated. Yet no one lifts a finger to curb my authority. Do you know why?’

“ ‘A man with a powerful army is hard to curb.’

“ ‘Oh, no. A knife thrust will do the trick. As many people have discovered in the past. No; it is because Romans no longer care to resist. They want an easy, trouble-free life, living on their past, going through their ancient ceremonies, reading and rereading books written half a thousand years ago. The present is of little interest to them. They leave it to me; and as long as their lives are not troubled, will continue to do so. You think of me as scarcely lettered, no doubt. So I am, but I have read some of the histories. I know of the republic and of the old virtues. Such people as the Romans were then would never have tolerated a man like myself except as a servant. Never as a master.’

“ ‘But if you give them what they want, then you are their servant.’

“He considered this, then shook his head. ‘Perhaps. But not a true servant. I am the servant who encourages his master to be drunk every evening so he cannot see to the honest running of the household, does not realize I am sleeping with his daughter. I am that sort of servant. I did not choose this role. I wished to do otherwise, to serve Rome, but it is no longer worth serving well.’

“ ‘But with your power, your authority, and your skill, you could insist on this. I do not flatter you, I hope; your expertise in generalship is well known and often proven. But did not Julius Caesar, then Augustus, then Diocletian, then Constantine all take a somnolent empire and force it awake, make it defend itself, renew its institutions?’

“Again a shake of the head. ‘Do not tempt me. Those days are gone, and will never come back. All the people you mention merely had to take control of Rome. They did not have to fight against Rome itself. It took Domitian all the resources of the entire empire to fight back the challenges he faced. Do you think a man such as myself could do the same with less than half of one, when the more powerful part is hostile?’

“ ‘I do not understand you. Why do you say that?’

“He looked at me with an ironic smile on his face. ‘You are indeed provincial, young man. You see nothing except your own concerns, only what is right in front of your face. You complain about the encroachments of Visigoths and Burgundians. You come here asking for troops, and are confused and upset when no one provides them, worried that the empire is so paralyzed it cannot even defend itself anymore. Let me tell you a secret. It does not wish to defend itself.’

“ ‘I know there are many demands on the armies. . . .’

“ ‘No,’ he interrupted me. ‘You misunderstand what I am saying. Let me put it differently. The emperor in Constantinople will do whatever he can to ensure that peace does not come to the Western provinces, that the barbarians do win more and more territory, and that all of Gaul falls to barbarian tribes as Britain and Spain have already fallen. This has been their policy for half a century.’

“ ‘That is ridiculous.’

“ ‘Sixty years ago, Rome was sacked. Thirty years ago the Burgundians attacked in Gaul. On both occasions, the barbarians were hurled back and yet on both occasions they were offered huge tracts of land within the empire. It is these lands and peoples which now threaten the rest of Gaul and Italy. They were utterly defeated and could have been expelled, as had happened before. Yet they were settled instead, given land and revenue. Why?’

“ ‘A mistaken policy, hoping they would prove controllable.’

“ ‘You have a lower opinion of imperial wisdom than I have. No. The empire does not make mistakes. Not consistently over half a century, and on a matter like this. It was no mistake. It was deliberate, and successful. The policy was to weaken the Western empire fatally, in order to strengthen the Eastern part dramatically. It has worked well.’

“ ‘You make no sense.’

“ ‘Let me explain again. How many usurpers of the throne, rebellions, pretenders, uprisings, and mutinies have there been in the last century?’

“ ‘I don’t know. More than I can count.’

“ ‘Yes. Some have succeeded, some not, all have been expensive, some hugely so, resulting in years of civil war. Nearly all have come from the West—Constantine himself from Britain, most of the others from the army of the Rhine, Spain, or Gaul. Until the barbarians were settled, and the Western provinces so weakened they could no longer field pretenders. The armies were too weak, the barbarians were more interested in squabbling amongst themselves. How many Visigoths or Burgundians have set their eyes on Constantinople? None at all. And the East has been calm, and prosperous and rich; the imperial crown has passed from one man to the next with no bloodshed—or no more than is usual.

“ ‘And the cost has been merely the dismemberment of troublesome provinces which, in any case, never provided much revenue; it was always gobbled up in Rome long before it got to the Golden Horn. Gaul has cost huge sums of money, and provided little in return except trouble. Much better to fragment it into pieces so small it can harm no one but itself.’

“ ‘You are saying we are abandoned. Rome itself is abandoned?’

“ ‘Look at it from the point of view of, say, a citizen of Antioch, or Alexandria. Older and more glorious than Rome in some cases, richer by far. Why would anyone shed a tear if those upstart Romans, so arrogant, so condescending, suffered a little?’

“He paused and looked at me seriously. ‘All the world will be shocked should Rome ever fall. But preventing the perpetual civil wars was the main priority of all rulers for more than a century. You cannot say this has not been achieved. And what has been lost? What will be lost?’

“ ‘We would be no longer Roman.’

“ ‘Why not?’

“ ‘We could not take office in the state. My father was consul, my uncle magister milites. What would remain for me?’

“ ‘Empty titles, for the most part. Which cost the possessor a fortune in entertainments and charity.’

“ ‘And yet we have an emperor in the West now determined to challenge the threat in Gaul.’

“ ‘Ah, yes. Majorian. And how long do you think he will last?’ ”

Manlius paused and looked around him. All his dinner guests had sat quietly, listening to this tale. When Manlius had left Ricimer’s presence he had gone home, thinking quietly of what he had heard. He had thought of Majorian, the emperor he had accompanied to Rome. And what a difference there was! Majorian was a good man, one striving to do his best, but an ordinary man nonetheless. Ricimer was different, altogether exceptional, the sort you encounter, perhaps, once in a lifetime. Maybe not even then.

“For all that,” he continued, “you know the result. Majorian was killed, his successor was murdered, and his successor was also killed, all probably on Ricimer’s order. Every emperor who wished to raise an army or move against the Goths went to an early grave. Was it because he was bribed by Constantinople, or because he believed any such move was doomed to fail and would dissipate resources on a fruitless task? I do not know.

“He is dead, anyway. But I remember his last words as I left. ‘The empire is not disintegrating because of the barbarians, but because of itself. One part will not fight, the other half cannot. The next time you have a barbarian army on your frontier, remember that well.’

“You want me to go to the emperor, if you can find one, and persuade him to send an army, so we might save Clermont and restore the writ of Rome. Let this story give you some hint of how much success I expect, and why I counsel approaching the Burgundians first. For any success with the emperor will not come swiftly if at all. And, I say again, we have little time.”

He almost stretched out his cup of wine to spill the dregs in libation, but held back at the last moment; it would cause offense, and spoil the effect.

BECAUSE OF MARCEL’S fervent appeal, and because his need, and the need of his country, was so apparent, Julien Barneuve accepted the invitation to become a lecturer, a writer of articles, and an examiner of the works of others. A censor and a propagandist, to those few who disapproved; his own ambivalence was such that he used these terms himself. He was given leave from the university where he worked, and his colleagues happily allowed him to go, pleased at the prospect of someone so eminently sensible taking on such a position. Curiously, he enjoyed the work, and found the sensation of doing something worthwhile a pleasing one. For France needed reassurance, needed to know that chaos was controllable and that government was still firmly in the hands of the French. He needed such reassurance as well. Every time he managed to find an allocation of paper for a journal that might have been forced to close down, he felt a small tinge of pleasure, just as he felt a sense of achievement every time he gave a talk on the radio or at a public lecture in Orange, or Avignon or, once, in Vaison itself. Every time he persuaded an editor to hone a critical point so that it was less offensive, he felt he had been useful. Marcel was under siege from within, but at no stage did those seeking to undermine him have an opportunity to use Julien’s department to level accusations of incompetence or laxity at his administration. Julien became skilled at making little things seem grand, at constructive delay, at semi-mendacious reports that gave the impression of great activity. But he also did his job, telling himself it was necessary to do so. And, as he traveled through the south of France, in the zone unoccupied by Germans, and gave talks to a variety of meetings, he could feel the stirrings of pride in the audience, and knew that, in his small way, he was helping his country heal something of its wounds, keeping the fragile tissue together.

He never talked about politics, for which he had a disgust that remained and, if anything, grew. Rather, he talked about what he knew; about history, and the way France had grown. He talked about the vicissitudes of the past and how they had been overcome; reminded them of the dark days of other invaders and how, in the end, they had been thrown out. He talked about how the country had grown until it filled its natural frontiers, breeding to produce the French out of the Bretons, Normans, Provençals, Basques, and all the other races who had occupied or passed through in the past. He talked about liberty, and the Revolution and the Rights of Man. None of these did he ever subject to the sort of scrutiny he might have deployed with a scholarly audience; rather, he portrayed their mutual history with an eloquent fervor, discovering reservoirs of patriotic pride he never knew he possessed and which swept over his listeners like a calming, inspiring flood.

He once even talked elliptically about Jews, by delivering a talk on the Avignon papacy in which he mentioned Pope Clement and his act of mercy during the plague, protecting the Jews against those who thought them responsible for the infection. Would he have done such a thing had he not been French? For reason and mercy was bred in the soil of France, breathed in the air. It was part of the national spirit.

Julien gave this talk in Orange, because the topic was very much on his mind. His daily work was not onerous and, indeed, proved a lighter burden than the teaching to which he was accustomed. In the gaps, he had time to go back to his notes and papers and found that the past provided a welcome refuge from the gloom of the everyday. There was much he had accumulated over the years, and much he had never looked at. It was because of the war that he turned his attention to Olivier de Noyen properly; this young man who had such a role in the regeneration of learning in a dark age carried a special appeal for him at that time.

The matter of the Jews also came to his mind for the same reason; even so strict a historian, so determined to exclude the present, could not help but be struck by the contrast between the sudden shaft of magnanimity lighting the dark days of the Black Death and the vindictiveness of the present. For in the most perilous hour of Europe’s history, at a moment when more than a third of the entire population was dying in the most hideous agony for reasons no one then understood, the pope extended his protection over the people popularly assumed to be responsible. It accomplished only a little; across the continent, ghettos were destroyed, synagogues razed, and people killed. But on French soil—or soil that became French—a man born and brought up in France stood up and offered an alternative. “They shall not be compelled, because obedience without faith is worthless; they shall not be punished, because punishment without understanding is pointless.” Thus the great bull that he issued; the Jews were not wiped out; indeed many came into Provence, into what became Southern France, and their descendants remained, to cause many of Marcel’s present headaches.

“Please don’t go mentioning Jews again,” Marcel said wearily when they met a week or so after his talk. “I’m sure you were making some general historical point of no great relevance, but it doesn’t sit well at the moment. Not the way you did it, anyway. I have had six letters of protest, and the policeman sitting in on the meeting was highly critical. I don’t need it at the moment.”

HIS ROLE GAVE him some small influence and knowledge, and he used it to try to find out what had happened to Julia and her father. He had not been particularly worried about her, as it never occurred to him that her father’s will in this, of all things, would be denied. He assumed, rather, that Claude Bronsen had gone to Marseille, found his daughter, and got on the first boat to North Africa. The fact that he had heard nothing from her—no letter, no message—was itself reassuring. She always turned to him; that was his role, and it was one from which he had never shrunk, and she knew it. Had she been in any serious trouble he would have heard.

It was only when he received news from a list distributed around the Préfecture—an unremarkable, routine document, mainly intended to alert bureaucrats of housing in the region no longer occupied and now available for requisitioning—that Bronsen had been interned and had died in the camp that he began to panic.

“What is Les Milles?” he demanded of Marcel one morning. He met him as the préfet was walking across the Place de l’Horloge on his way to the office. A sunny morning, with the first breath of spring in it. Julien had taken to eating his breakfast in a café nearby, though the experience—once full of so many different little pleasures—gave him little joy now. Even though the tide of refugees was ebbing, and the air of desperation was fading, the city that he knew so well seemed changed by the experience. There was a bleakness, even a hardness about it he had not noticed before. The buildings themselves seemed more grim, more evocative of a harsh and cruel past, as though the recent miseries had reminded the stones of what they had seen take place before them in the course of so many centuries.

He almost didn’t notice Marcel as he marched across the square. Still determined in his gait, his slight figure just fending off a hint of the ridiculous, the pompous in his stride. Only someone who knew him well, like Julien, could see how he stooped a little more each month. Only at the last minute did Julien finish his coffee—although its bitter, unpleasant taste reminded him of no coffee he had ever drunk before the war—throw down a few coins, and hurry to catch up with him. Marcel stopped and looked at Julien as he approached, and put the question without any ceremony. “Good morning Julien,” he replied. “Have you been lying in wait for me?”

“No. I just saw you. What is Les Milles?”

“It’s a processing camp. For illegal aliens. Nothing to worry about,” he replied. “A routine sort of thing for foreigners wanting exit visas. Got to put them somewhere so they don’t vanish. Why do you ask?”

“I have just heard that Julia Bronsen’s father has died in it.”

Marcel grunted. “The Jewish financier? What do you expect me to say?”

“He was French, and he died there.”

“Evidently he wasn’t French, or he wouldn’t have been there.”

“He was a citizen. He had a passport.”

“Not the same thing anymore. And as for dying, that’s a shame. But people die. There’s a lot of it about at the moment. He must have been—what? Sixty? Seventy? It happens.”

“So why lock up old men?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Julien. Those people in these camps are lucky. They get housed and fed free of charge, all their wants and desires looked after. And they’re hardly under arrest. It’s for their own safety, you know. Feelings are running pretty high about people like that. As far as I’m concerned, the sooner people like him leave the country the better.”

“He won’t be leaving now, will he?”

“Evidently not. And as I say, I’m sorry. But it is not in my area, and I didn’t know he’d been taken in. So don’t get angry with me. He was your friend, I know. And if I can do anything practical to help, just ask. But don’t ask me to mourn someone I didn’t know and probably wouldn’t have liked even if I had.”

“In that case can you find out what happened to Julia? She was meant to be meeting him in Marseille. They were going to leave together.”

Marcel’s eyes narrowed as he thought. Favors were currency, to be hoarded and used with care. Julien, for the first time, felt like a petitioner.

Eventually he nodded. “I’ll make inquiries. All right? Can I go to work now?”

BUT AT LEAST when he made a promise, he delivered. A week later news came through. Julia was living in a pension near the docks in Marseille, trying to get all the exit visas she needed to leave the country. She had been there for four months and was likely to remain there, for it was daily getting more difficult to get out.

Julien could not work out whether he was more hurt or angry that she had not contacted him; in any case both emotions were overwhelmed by worry for her. It was getting difficult to travel, but the trains still ran sporadically; as soon as he could he went to Marseille himself to get her.

The reality was much less bad than his imaginings of squalid hotels, prostitutes, and the poverty of hunger; she was living in a tiny little hotel hard up by the docks, along with a dozen others in a similar situation. The owner was irrepressibly cheerful, remarkably so as it seemed that the chances of anyone paying her the full amount they owed was small. “That is war,” she said philosophically as she took Julien up to her room. “But what can I do? If I throw them out then I get others who cannot pay either.”

Julien knocked and walked in. She was lying on the bed, smoking a cigarette, disheveled and with dark shadows under her eyes. She leaned forward onto herself when she saw who it was. She looked dreadful; tired and very frightened. He went to comfort her, but she waved him away. “Get out, Julien,” she said.

“What?”

“Five minutes. Come back in five minutes.”

He shook his head in surprise, but did as he was told. Stood outside on the narrow landing underneath a hissing gas light, until she opened the door once more and let him in. She’d put on a clean dress, combed her hair, tidied the room. The effort distressed him far more than the first sight of her; for the first time in her life she had been reduced to the conventional. His fury at her bubbled over because of it.

“Why didn’t you write to me? What are you doing here? Have you taken leave of your senses? What were you thinking about?”

She opened the window to let in some fresh air, even though it was cold outside. “I like the noise of sea gulls,” she said. “I think I’d like to live by the sea. I always enjoyed my stays in the Camargue.”

“Julia . . .”

“Sorry. But if you ask rhetorical questions you can hardly expect an answer. If you must know, I didn’t write because I couldn’t manage it, because I didn’t know where you were, and because I haven’t exactly been thinking straight since my father died. Did you know about that?”

“I heard. I’m sorry.”

“Yes, of course. So am I.”

She shut the window and sat down once more on the bed.

“But I am not as destroyed by it as I thought I would be. Strange, don’t you think? I think it is, anyway; I have a sense of liberation. I am penniless, bereaved, hiding in this horrid little room. The man who looked after me selflessly all his life, who comforted me, protected me, helped me, loved me without reserve is dead, killed in a dank little prison for no reason. The world, the worthwhile part of it at least, seems to be coming to an end. And my main reaction is to feel more free than ever in my life. And at the same time I sit here transfixed like a frightened rabbit, and sooner or later someone will come and take me away as well.

“I’m a Jew, you know,” she added seriously, looking at him with an almost childlike intensity.

“I thought you might be,” he said with a faint smile.

“Well, I didn’t,” she replied. “Not really. My father always pretended we weren’t; I know nothing about it at all, but now the government says I am one, so I suppose I must be.”

“I don’t see why you’re so worried. You’re French; they’re only arresting foreigners.”

“Only foreigners,” she echoed. “That’s all right, then. Except I’m a foreigner as well. Another piece of news. I always thought I was French. I was convinced of it, in fact, but no: My mother was German, and I was born in Germany. My parents were traveling there at the time; my mother was ill, it seems, and they went to take the waters. I was born in Baden-Baden. Do you understand what that means?”

Julien nodded. “It means the sooner you get out the better.”

“It does. But I can’t get an exit permit without showing my identity card, and the moment I show that, I have my citizenship taken away and the police come round. So, I sit here thinking about my new liberty as an orphan. And, I must say, I have been drinking somewhat too much. Do you know, I’ve been drawing, after a fashion? I got some children’s crayons. Do you know what I’ve been drawing? Flowers. Vases of flowers. The world is falling to bits, people are locked in camps, I’m stuck in this place, and I have been drawing flowers.”

It was not her situation that shook Julien but her response to it, the overly dramatic way she spoke, the ill-considered gestures, the way in which she had forgotten so completely the way she was that she seemed almost a different person.

“You must get out, and you must let me help you,” he said. “I’ve come with money and the names of people who might help. Will you let me?”

She looked at him blankly, and nodded.

JULIEN WAS NOT certain how many laws he broke over the next five days; certainly there were quite a few. He derived no pleasure from it, but had no fear either. No alternative ever crossed his mind. Her safety was the only thing of concern. It was a strange transformation in him as well; up to that point he had scarcely even walked on the grass in a park before; throughout that period most people who were arrested and sent to camps were caught because they could not bring themselves to break laws that they knew to be cruel, even though they knew obeying would lead to disaster. The habit of order was not easily broken; once it was, it was not easily repaired either.

By this stage he was no longer wealthy, as one effect of the war had been to destroy much of the value of investments and savings. Even the money he nominally possessed was hard to obtain; when he heard of Julia’s whereabouts, he had reverted to old habits last employed in Rome. He went to a dealer in Avignon and sold him his precious Cézanne. Not for very much, but he knew enough to realize that he was given as much as the dealer was likely to get for it himself. Again a favor, he knew the man well, had taught his son. Such things kept civilization going.

The money he received was just enough for the bribes, the tickets, the payments required to get all the bits of paper Julia needed in the time available. There were those who could help, those who would do so if prodded with a little gift, and those who could be persuaded to turn a blind eye by overstressing his connections to people of importance. He took risks, got everything she required except for the precious exit visa. This she provided for herself.

She was brought back to life by his activity on her behalf, and disappeared one morning at dawn, coming back only as dusk fell once more. Julien spent a day in terror, convinced she had been arrested; he made inquiries but no one had seen her. So he sat waiting; there was nothing else he could do, his fear growing at every moment. When he heard the handle turn and saw the door swing open, he felt sure it was the police, come to search the room.

It was Julia, who walked in calmly and greeted him as if nothing had happened. She threw an envelope on the bed. “Look,” she said. “What do you think?”

She was exultant, smiling, herself again. Her hair was loose and the way she moved had returned to its normal ease; for the past few days she had seemed like a creature in a cage, constantly fearful of brushing against the bars and being reminded of its imprisonment. Now she walked like one newly made free. He looked in the envelope. It was the exit visa. “How on earth did you get that?”

She laughed, a delicate, musical peal of laughter. “I didn’t. I made it. I didn’t spend six months at the École studying etching for nothing, you know. I went to a specialist printer—don’t look like that, he’s quite safe. He’s a Jew as well, and we Jews stick together, it seems—and he lent me his press and a couple of plates. I borrowed our next door neighbor’s visa for an hour last night and copied it, then etched it and ran off a copy. The stamps I did by hand. What do you think? They’re the best bits of work I’ve done in a year. Julien?”

Her insouciance, combined with the worry of the day, was too much. He rocked backward and forward on the bed, crying like he had never cried since his mother died so many years before. She knelt down in front of him, stroked him gently, and comforted him, then took him in her arms.

They were both entirely defenseless, and made love for the first time; in many ways for the first time in their lives, and they had both waited a long time.

EVEN BEFORE THE plague bacillus had reached Avignon, Ceccani’s great adversary Cardinal de Deaux had floated the idea that the Countess of Provence might consider selling the city and some surrounding territory to the church for a large and much-needed sum, for it was undignified for the heir of Peter to live, in effect, in rented accommodation, and firm possession would make permanent residency more likely. For years now he had been encouraging the pope in every possible building project, and when the idea was suggested that Clement should leave the city to escape the plague, he argued forcibly against the notion.

“A shepherd does not abandon his flock,” he said when his opinion was asked, although what he meant was that, once he had left, he might never come back. “Your people need you,” he added, meaning that if he earned the gratitude of the population, the contrast with turbulent, disobedient Rome would be ever greater.

A strange man, this de Deaux, someone who never would have gotten on well with Ceccani even if the practicalities of great power had not forced them into mutual opposition. For he was a born politician, who acted on his instincts rather than from any easily grasped principle. He had no interest in the sort of thing that so fascinated Ceccani; Olivier would have found no patron in him; abstract knowledge was important only if it served to advance the church. Even in appearance they were different, the Italian short and stout, exuding a chilly affability, the Frenchman tall and gaunt, with a permanent cold even in the full warmth of a Provençal summer.

The Frenchman won the argument about the plague, for Clement was disinclined to leave the city in any case, as he felt safer behind the thick stone walls of his palace. There he did little, but merely remaining became an act of leadership and courage. De Deaux also won on the matter of the purchase, and was sent to open negotiations with the Countess of Provence—who guarded her independence from France jealously, and needed money to make sure it continued. Ceccani noted the move and knew it was de Deaux’s attempt to end forever the possibility that the pope would return to Rome, where he should be.

Clearly, de Deaux had put in a great deal of advance work before suggesting the idea; permission must have been won from the king of France, who must have concluded that a richer, more secure Provence was a small price to pay for the possibility of permanent French domination of the papacy. It made his own plans the more urgent; he needed to ensure that the negotiations failed, that France would reject the very idea of giving the countess money, that the countess would cancel any sale. He needed to set them at each other’s throats. Time was short. He needed to move swiftly; and he needed to cast a shadow over de Deaux, and weaken him.

While Ceccani watched and Clement retired to the top of a great tower in the palace to escape the plague, de Deaux put himself in charge of daily activities, acting in the pope’s name. Thus, through him Clement consecrated the Rhône itself as a burial ground, so that corpses could be thrown in to be washed downriver to the sea, rather than rotting in the houses and the streets. He emptied the prisons and put the dregs they contained to work dragging the bodies to the water’s edge. And he was doing his best to discover the source of the illness—if there was one—so that something might be done. Or, failing that, so that something might be seen to be done, however ineffective it was.

He also brought his Jew to Avignon to see if he could discover the source of the infection. Ceccani noted all the maneuverings, saw the purpose hidden beneath them. For Cardinal de Deaux was steering the papacy into earning the love of the population, cementing its presence there in their hearts as it had already done in their wallets, fixing it ever more permanently into the very ground of Provence. He was staking his claim to the succession at the same time that he was creating the atmosphere in which the negotiations to buy the city outright were getting under way. Time was very short. Ceccani knew that if he did not move soon, he would never move at all.

Gersonides was brought to Avignon not quite in chains, but as good as. Certainly he would have been shackled and tied to the back of a horse had he persisted in his initial reluctance to come. The two armed soldiers outside his door would brook no refusal. The rabbi had, with the greatest irritation, packed bag and books and accompanied them.

“I do not know when I will see you again,” he said to Rebecca at the door. “The plague is not here yet, and I will not come back until it has extinguished itself in Avignon. I do not know if it travels with people, but it seems very possible. I do not wish to bring it to my own home because of a selfish desire to see your face.”

To this woman he was as gentle as he was gruff and offensive to men like Ceccani, even though she was every bit as stubborn and self-willed as he was. What was admirable in a man was unseemly in a woman, however, and she had not found a husband, nor was likely to do so. Who, after all, would seek out a penniless servant, with no family, no history? He doubted if even the young Christian, befuddled by her though he was, would be so rash. Gersonides had accepted that the young man was truly besotted, had seen the war rage in him with interest, noted the appalled disgust on his face as the emotion swept over him each time he came. To fall in love with a Jew; so strong was the reaction, so real the complications, he even felt a little sorry for him. And then he saw that same face—a handsome face, he noted, well formed, ringed by curly fair hair that was rarely combed but generally clean—ease as the soul within accepted its fate. And Gersonides also relaxed, for he saw that the young man would not trifle with her, although he knew that there was, for the first time, a possibility that she would now leave him. But what would she do? How would she react? How would it end? He was fearful, for his desire not to leave her mingled with his wish for her happiness and his consciousness of the dangers she faced.

For Gersonides, she was, quite simply, the center point of his life since the death of his wife and six children, all of whom, one by one, had died—three at birth, two when they, in turn, had come to give birth, and one of sickness. For them he grieved, fully and without reservation, although with the stoicism that was his natural character. Rebecca, however, was different, for had she died, he would have died as well. She had come to him by chance, lost and bedraggled, and he had taken her in, fed her, and warmed her. She worked for him selflessly and with absolute honesty, listened to him when he wished to talk, kept quiet when he did not. In the two and a half years since she had come to his door she had replaced wife, daughters, sons, and family. To lose her was the one thing he feared, which was why, on one of the few occasions some hint of a suitor had been mentioned, he had always found reasons to reject the approach. He knew it was selfish, that he should give her up and encourage her to leave. But he could not do so, and he reassured himself with the thought that she evidently had no wish to venture into the world either. Until now, perhaps.

When he left that day, surrounded by papal soldiers, he was alarmed and Rebecca was terrified lest some charge—of necromancy, conjuring, or whatever—had been dreamed up against him. Only a few days previously, news had reached Vaison that near Geneva six Jews had been burned alive in their synagogue. Others in their own town had been spat on and kicked. It required little insight to realize that the atmosphere was becoming dangerous. So far no serious violence had been offered in Provence, but the stories circulated freely and if—or rather when—the plague itself took hold in the towns east of the Rhône, more than blows would be hurled at the handful of Jews who lived there.

A small group had come to Gersonides’s house the previous evening for guidance, as he was known to be the wisest man in the region. He was not, alas, the most practical, nor even the most comforting. As there were no moneylenders in the town, he pointed out, they could hardly do anything of significance, like cancel debts until the plague was gone. If the Christians considered that a philosopher, a tailor, a doctor, and a cloth merchant constituted a serious conspiracy against Christendom, there was little they could do to disabuse them of the notion. All they could do was go about their business in their usual fashion, wear the stars that identified them, offer no remark or action that might be misconstrued.

“And one other thing,” he said to conclude. “Should the plague arrive, it would be well if some of you died, preferably in great pain and in public.”

He gave a watery smile but met no response; the Jews of the town respected the rabbi, listened carefully to his words even when they did not understand them, but never once came close to grasping his sense of humor.

And the following day, the troops came and took him away. There were not that many of them, they were not brutal, even though they had not been told the reason for the deed, but no one would have even thought of offering resistance in any case. Everyone knew full well that, if you resist two soldiers, ten are sent; if you resist ten, a hundred arrive. Best always to do as you are told and offer no provocation. Others might suffer if you do otherwise.

So Rabbi Levi ben Gerson took a few moments to pack what he needed—little enough, to be sure—and presented himself to the soldiers outside his door a few moments later. He got on a horse—a good sign that, for horses are an expensive means of transport, unheard of for prisoners—and went off with the soldiers. They said nothing at all on the journey, although one looked curiously at him and, he felt, would have talked if he had the opportunity; neither looked hostile.

Gersonides did not speak either; idle chatter was not something for which he had ever developed a taste or a skill. Had one of his companions tried to draw him into conversation he would have replied, and would have listened with interest to what was said, but he did not feel inclined to initiate any such discourse. He had quite enough to think about in any case, for he had trained his mind over the years not to waste time on journeys. He was compiling a text on the soul with which he was so far greatly pleased. But it was unfinished and parts were, he thought, ill considered. It was a problem that had sprung into his mind after one of the first meetings—lessons rather—with the young Christian who came to plague him so often.

“You see, Rabbi,” the young man had said, “it does not make sense to me. The man who wrote this was a bishop, after all. And yet he says quite plainly that the soul is eternal. That is, it is godlike and is not created by God. In addition he talks about our lives, how we must ascend back to God, but stay on earth as mortal beings if we do not purify ourselves here. I don’t, of course, want instruction in Christianity from you, yet I was hoping you might be able to explain it to me.”

That had been the opening remark—Gersonides’s mind was wandering a little as his horse clopped along the muddy road—a request put politely but an order nonetheless. Explain this to me. Give me an answer. The young man was nervous, perhaps, or simply had the rudeness of all his type. But it had not stayed like that. Gersonides had replied with a question himself:

“Perhaps the two are irreconcilable. Would you then be able to consider the alternative account with an open mind, or would it merely confirm its worthlessness in your eyes?”

Then another question:

“You must explain something of your theology. Why is it so important that the soul is created by God rather than deriving from him?”

And a third:

“And the resurrection of the body. Is that what it is called? Yes; why the insistence of that, when the superiority of the soul is so clearly acknowledged? Why do Christians need their bodies so much?”

And so on; he knew the answers perfectly well, for the most part, for he had spent long years reading Christian texts—and Moslem ones and classical ones as well as the Torah and the Talmud, seeking out those flashes of light, those God-sent insights that, he had concluded, illuminate the minds of all men who are capable of recognizing them for what they are.

Considering he was neither priest nor scholar, the young man gave sensible, thoughtful replies—the more so, perhaps, for being untrained, for he had not learned what he should believe or should not believe. Present a statement to him in flagrant contradiction to all Christian doctrine and he could be persuaded to agree on its good sense, unless he remembered it was the sort of thing of which pyres are made for the incautious.

“And now you must go,” he had said after two hours had passed and the sun was setting. “I have my prayers to attend to.”

“But you haven’t told me anything again,” Olivier had protested. “All you’ve done is ask me questions.”

“Just so. And if you want to answer more of my questions, then you are welcome to come again. Preferably a little earlier in the day, and, for courtesy, not unannounced next time.”

“I came to you for answers. Very specific answers.”

“So you keep telling me. And I will repeat the only answer I know. I have none. Not that I haven’t spent the last forty years looking, but I find answers are as rare as golden eggs or unicorns. All I can do is help you look for yourself. Think of what Manlius says and apply it to yourself: ‘A good act without understanding is not virtue; nor is an ill act; because understanding and virtue are the same.’ That is what you are seeking. Understanding, not answers. They are different things.”

He peered at Olivier, his face obviously hovering undecided between irritation and perplexity, then went to a box and took out a booklet.

“In your search, you might care to examine this. It is a manuscript I copied out myself, so be careful with it. It came to me via some friends in Seville, who had it from a great Arab scholar. I cannot vouch for its accuracy, for it is a Latin translation of an Arabic translation of a Greek original.”

His heart sank a little when Olivier took the book in his hands, for that eagerness, that glint in the eye, that way he all but tore it from his hands was quite unmistakable. He would not be able to deny him entry the next time he came, would not be able to send him away or dissuade him. For while most of his other pupils—and he had been sent many over the years—had been prepared, willing, ready to learn, had been diligent, with Olivier it was different. He needed to learn; it was why he existed, and he would wither unless he could satisfy that need.

Could a man such as himself ever turn away a fellow soul, he who had also ached with that consuming need? Even if there was a long delay between leaving his room and the door onto the street shutting? Even if he heard the sound of voices below, the animated tones of Olivier, the soft replies of Rebecca that always drifted up to his room after he left, and seemed to get longer on each occasion?

SUCH WERE HIS thoughts on the journey, not about the abstract complexities of the soul; for once his self-discipline abandoned him. He was not especially perturbed, however. The likes of him would hardly be singled out for any real reason. He had no money, no power, and no influence; moreover, all his work—such as it was—had been written in Hebrew. So, the pope had taken lessons in Hebrew, it was said, although when it turned out that these lessons consisted of little more than having the alphabet copied out, the learned Jew, proficient in six languages, none of which had been acquired easily, was less impressed. But, whatever the reason for his being taken to Avignon now, it was unlikely to be because of his philosophy.

In this the old man thought correctly, although even his equanimity was disturbed when he noticed that the little entourage was heading straight for the papal palace, still being extended and rebuilt despite the times. For Avignon in the grip of the plague was truly frightening; scarcely a soul to be seen, in the marketplace only a few traders, miserably trying to sell their wares to no customers. An air of foreboding and of panic all around, the blank expressions on the faces of those few people in the streets saying all that was needed about their terror. Was this in store for his own town? If it was, then dangerous days were ahead of them all. One little spark and their world would be ablaze. Somebody would pay heavily for this catastrophe. Even he could not help considering the possibility that his own journey deep into the palace might be the first installment.

He had been there before, when making one of his reluctant visits to see de Deaux, but the contrast between then and now could hardly have been greater. Whereas before the great courtyard where they all dismounted was full of people—clerics, petitioners, merchants, even a few pilgrims—now it was deserted. The air of authority had dissipated in the face of a far greater power. Even the mighty church was now no more than a feeble collection of mortal, frightened men.

At least, he thought as he was led up a grand staircase, then through a series of rooms, then up a narrower staircase, climbing high into one of the towers; at least the dungeons are underground. We are ascending to the skies, not descending to the depths. Every step upward is one of hope. Unless, of course, they plan to throw me from the battlements.

They came to a small door near the top of the tower; a soldier knocked, opened the door, and stood back to let him past. He stepped in and was almost overcome by the heat, which came blasting over him like a wave from a furnace. He took a step backward, and had to take a deep breath; instantly, little prickles of sweat broke out all over his body, and his thick winter cloak began to feel uncomfortable.

“Take it off, if you find it too warm,” came a voice from the corner, near the huge fire. “Do you wish to speak in Provençal, French, or Latin? They are all I can manage, I’m afraid.”

“Any will do,” the rabbi replied in Provençal.

“Splendid. Latin it is,” said Pope Clement. “Do you wish to kiss my ring?”

He held out his hand, on which was a vast ruby ring, shining brilliantly in the firelight. Gersonides stood absolutely still, not assenting, not refusing. The pope smiled cherubically and withdrew his hand.

“What do you think of these rumors that malefactors have been poisoning wells?” he began. “Please, by the way, do not stand too close to me. I have not been up here sweating myself into an early grave for the last ten days just to succumb to some miasma attached to your body.”

Not only, Gersonides noted, was the pope sitting as close to the fire as was possible without his clothes catching alight, he was also swaddled like a monstrous newborn in clothes, thick piles of cloaks and blankets and scarves, making him look appallingly bloated. His feet were laced up tight in fur slippers and on his head was a fur hat, expensive, possibly brought all the way from Russia. His face, what could be seen of it, was beetroot red, covered in sweat that rolled freely down his forehead and heavy jowls into his clothes. All around, making it even more oppressive, were candles and incense burners, thickening the air with smoke and contrasting, conflicting aromas.

Gersonides had a headache already, and was beginning to feel faint. His replies were not as subtle and considered as they might have been.

“They are nonsense, Excellence. As any sensible man knows, they are nonsense.”

“Cardinal Ceccani today made a strong case that you Jews are behind it all. We have people in the streets saying so as well. Holy men, good men, he tells me. He also says that we must make an example of you. Are you saying, then, that I surround myself with fools, and bestow my patronage on idiots?”

“If you are indeed surrounded by people saying such things, then it is a proposition that deserves consideration, Excellence.”

The pope’s face turned blank with shock at the impudence, and he peered through the smoke at Gersonides’s face. Then he leaned back in his tall oak chair and let out a peal of laughter, his thick, pink jowls shaking from the noise. Gersonides stood as impassively as before.

“By heavens, I am glad we are alone here. You are rude, sir. Very rude, and considering the situation, very unwise. Are you always so?”

“I consider it the best way I know to honor my Creator. He wishes us to strive after the truth, does He not?”

“He wishes us to believe in Him.”

“The one does not exclude the other.”

“It does in the case of Jews, who refuse to believe the truth of their own Messiah. So much so that they murdered Him rather than honoring Him.”

“You know, Excellence, that is a false step in your argument. You can only make such a statement to advance your proposition if the substance of it is accepted by the other side. Only then may you argue for the consequence of that proposition.”

The pope wagged his fat, ringed finger. “So you believe in tempering truth with at least a little cunning. I am not dealing with the Jewish equivalent of a holy fool at least. I am glad of it. You are said to be skilled in medicine, astronomy, philosophy, logic, languages, conversant with all forms of ancient knowledge, your own and that of others, familiar with mathematics and optics as well as theology. Is all this true? Or is it just a story put around by a man as vain as he is foolish?”

“I must confess to being both vain and foolish,” said Gersonides. “But also to having a little knowledge of all the matters you mention.”

“Good. I wish to consult you on a matter of the most vital importance. Will you serve me honestly and truthfully?”

“If I accept the commission, I will perform it to the best of my ability.”

“Another cautious response. Do you know what is happening in the world?”

“I know there is a plague.”

“But do you know how terrible it is?”

“I have heard some reports. And seen that this city is in a state of terror.”

Clement looked dismissive. “This city,” he said scornfully. “They don’t have the slightest inkling of it. So far there have been a few thousand deaths. That is all. And they are already panicking. I have priests, cardinals, and bishops running for their fat little lives when they are most needed. And it has scarcely started yet. Do you know what will happen here, and throughout the rest of the world?”

Gersonides made no answer. The pope picked up a sheet of paper and began reeling off numbers.

“Syracuse: ninety thousand dead out of a population of a hundred thousand. Genoa: sixty thousand out of seventy-five thousand. Florence, less than ten thousand souls left. Aleppo, wiped out entirely. Not a single man, woman, or child still alive. Alexandria a ghost town. And it goes on and on. The whole world is being consumed, and in a matter of months. Do you see what I mean?”

The rabbi was shocked. That the head of the church had better, more precise information than he possessed he did not doubt for a second. That it should be so terrible he had not suspected for a moment. For a few seconds he could think of nothing to say.

“I read also,” the pope continued, “several reports that Jews die as frequently as Christians—and, I might say, as Moslems. God is being very evenhanded, and it seems possible—so many think already—that He intends to wipe out His creation in its entirety. We are in the middle of another flood, except this time He is sparing the animals. Only men and women and children fall to this sickness.”

“If that is His intention, then there is nothing we can do about it, except pray for a reprieve.”

“And if it is not, then we should see what we can do. You as well. Or do you prefer to sit in contemplation while all of creation is destroyed?”

“What do you want of me?”

“You know about astronomy. See if you can find the source of this in the heavens, and try to discover from whence it comes. You know something of medicine, as do many Jews. Consult with others and see if some way of preventing this monstrous sickness can be found. There was, if I am right, a great plague in Athens during the Great War.”

Gersonides nodded. “It is described in Xenophon, of which I have one of the few copies.”

“And another in Constantinople in the time of Justinian.”

Gersonides nodded again.

“Study them. See how they brought it to an end then. They knew more than us; we might learn from them.”

“In that case I must return home.”

“No. I do not permit it.”

“I have to consult my books and my charts. I can do nothing here.”

“They will be brought. My entire library and the resources of the curia will be placed at your disposal. You may have anything you want.”

“I want to return to my home.”

“Except for that,” Clement said with a wintry smile. “Do not force the issue. I have been kind, and will reward you well. Do not make me angry and never challenge an order you receive from me.”

It was a revealing moment. The affable pontiff, willing to speak politely with a man such as Gersonides, showing real signs of learning and concern, yet a Christian prince nonetheless. Their positions were clear; the nature of the courtesy clear also. Gersonides bowed his head.

“I will make a list,” he said. “But I insist that a message be sent to my servant immediately, lest she be afraid for my health.”

“The messenger who collects your papers will tell her.”

A nod. “Please make sure he reassures her.”

And the rabbi was dismissed. The shock of what had happened, and the impact of the fresh, cold night air when he left that room was so intense that he fainted on the staircase and had to be carried to his lodgings by soldiers, ordered to do so by their captain, for they thought he, too, had succumbed to the plague, and their first instinct was to throw him into the moat.

THE HISTORICAL RECORD is silent on the nature of diplomatic missions in the late antique period; unless they were exceptionally grand, little remains to tell how they were organized. Nonetheless, it can be assumed safely that Manlius Hippomanes, when he began the journey north to the court of the Burgundians, made his entourage appear as impressive as possible. He knew, certainly, that King Gundobad was known for being cunning, and violent, but knew also that he had been in contact with the Roman world for long enough to appreciate the fruits of civilization. Gold and silver and jewels and fine cloth he did not take; these the king had in abundance, more than Manlius could assemble. To have taken such presents would merely have underscored his weakness, shown how little he had to offer. Changed days indeed from the time of his forebears, the sheer magnitude of whose embassies could in themselves awe a barbarian princeling into submission by the easy demonstration of excess. Worship me and all this shall be yours. Rome had survived and prospered for centuries by using the devil’s words.

But no longer; now greater subtlety was required. Manlius could not project force, or wealth; there was little left of either. So he decided to strike at the king’s weakest spot, his lack of cultivation. Instead of jewels he took books; instead of soldiers he took musicians; instead of a discourse to strike fear and generate submission, he prepared one of gross flattery, drawing parallels between the king and Augustus, noting the emperor’s love of learning, and how his fame grew through the praise of men of letters. Let us agree, and I will do the same for you; that was the message, and hardly a subtle one. It was the balance that was important; Manlius needed a style that would awe through its complexity and sophistication but that could still be understood.

It would be an abuse of learning, a disgusting display, a shameful exercise. To praise an emperor and receive a reward, as he had done years ago during Majorian’s brief and hopeful reign, that was one thing. Wheedling a barbarian chieftain was very different. Manlius took few of his lettered friends with him; he also took few priests, for the king was an Arian, and the last thing he wanted was some self-righteous cleric, burning with zeal to do God’s work, trying to convert him, then denouncing him when he failed. The man’s wife adhered to Rome; if she could not bring him around, a clerical harangue was unlikely to succeed either. But it could make him angry.

All this he did on Sophia’s advice; he had talked the matter over with her. “To throw away the world to preserve the purity of literary style seems foolish,” she had said severely. “You say this man has ruled with justice and firmness. That he was educated at Rome. That he is a man of moderate desires and tastes. To be cunning is no great failing in a ruler, I think. So why should he not be praised? You and your predecessors often delivered panegyrics to emperors who were distinguished only by their lusts, their violence, and their greed.”

“Those were delivered to praise the office, and encourage the man to live up to it,” Manlius said. “There is surely little comparison.”

“There is every comparison. To praise an unjust man and refrain from lauding a just one is foolish. When, also, you desire something from the just man it is doubly so. Give him his due.”

Manlius saw the wisdom of her advice, she who had always been so wise, and took his leave.

“I wish you the best of fortune, my dear,” she said with a smile. “Do not forget that in everything you do, you must stand above faction and petty interest, and tread the road of virtue.”

“Diplomacy and virtue do not make easy companions,” he commented.

“No. But that is why you were chosen. Remember all you have learned. You know what is the right, and what is not.”

He took his leave of her, and as he left, she picked up a book and began to read it. He caught one last glimpse of her through the window, sitting quietly in the courtyard, bathed in soft morning sun, her head nodding, already absorbed by the work she was studying.

ONE MORNING in early 1942, Julien insisted on a meeting with Marcel, whom in fact he saw only rarely at work, although they still met on occasion for a meal. He was a menial functionary, Marcel was in charge of the whole département. This time he insisted; went to the Préfecture first thing in the morning and waited, pacing up and down until he appeared, stumping along the corridor, battered briefcase in his hand.

“I need to talk to you,” he said as Marcel nodded to him in surprise. “It’s very important.”

“It must be,” the préfet commented as he showed him into his office. A grand room, though badly needing a new coat of paint. That would have to wait until after the war. “What is it that gets you so agitated?”

“Have you seen this?” Julien said, waving a folder in front of him.

“I don’t know. What is it?”

“A list of books. To be taken out of libraries and destroyed. ‘Degenerate literature,’ it says. Marcel, they cannot be serious about this.”

Marcel took the paper, fished his round, horn-rimmed spectacles from the top pocket of his jacket, and peered at the first page. “Hmm,” he said without much interest.

“Did you know of this?”

“Of course I did. I also remember that a similar order came through some six months ago and you did nothing about it whatsoever. Nor, it seems, did anyone else anywhere in France. So now they’ve lost patience. That’s what happens if you’re obstructive. If you’d cooperated then and put all those books in store, they would have forgotten about it. Now they want more books, and they want them pulped.”

“But look at the list!”

“Marx, Engels, Lenin, Bakunin. . . . A predictable choice, surely?”

“Keep going.”

Marcel shrugged, so Julien read for him.

“Zola. Gide. Walter Scott. Walter Scott? What in God’s name is degenerate about Walter Scott? Boring, I agree. But hardly a danger to national morale.”

“That’s committees for you,” Marcel said wearily. “If you must know, I find it completely stupid as well, though don’t quote me. But they will keep on going until it’s done, and the list will get longer and longer. So go and do it. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

Julien was dismissed and went marching down the corridor in a rage. He could not, would not do this. This was an outrage. He remembered how he had felt, the scorn and disgust when he heard of book burnings in Germany. Such a thing could never happen in France, he had consoled himself. And now that was exactly what was happening. By direct orders of a French government.

Again, he thought of resigning, registering his protest, but then, once more, he thought of the cold, cruel man who was likely to take over his job; it was Marcel’s subtle form of blackmail to keep him in place. For he had told him several times how only his protection stopped a rabid zealot, a crusader for moral and racial purity, from occupying his position. If that was what he wanted, then go ahead and resign. Look and see what would happen. . . .

Julien again sat on the memorandum, pretended it wasn’t there, but no matter what he did he could find little comfort. A few weeks later he had to hold a meeting with the editor of a newspaper in Carpentras. It was a difficult meeting, and tried his patience. The editor was a venerable old man who had owned and run his paper for nearly forty years. Of the reporters who worked for him, two were known communists and one was a Jew. Of late, the paper had published a series of articles that were implicitly critical of the government, and that reported on the shortages of food and clothing. Julien, under strict instruction, had sent a letter warning of this, but he had paid no attention. Now he was under instruction to close the paper down.

“We cannot have this,” Marcel had said to him. “Don’t these people realize? Don’t they see that whipping up resentment and criticism does nothing at all? If the marshal cannot talk to the Germans as the leader of a unified France, he can achieve nothing.”

“Everything the paper said was true,” Julien pointed out. It was a cold day; there was no heating in Marcel’s office except for a small iron brazier that smoked badly. Julien felt asphyxiated by the fumes, and chilly in his ever more worn clothes. Even Marcel, he noted, was now badly shaved through lack of a good razor.

“It doesn’t matter if it was true or not,” Marcel snapped. “These people are making trouble unnecessarily. Sort it out.”

And Julien had summoned the editor.

“You are going to close the paper?” the man said in astonishment. “Because we pointed out what everybody knows?”

Julien looked sad. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You were warned.”

“I do not accept it. There must be something we can do. I will give an undertaking—”

“You already have. Much good did it do.”

The man thought. “The newspaper must stay in print,” he said. “Fifty people work for it, and they won’t find another job at the moment. There are the reporters, the printers, their families. . . .”

He looked down at the floor, staring at ruin and disaster. “Tell me,” he said reluctantly, speaking slowly as if hating every word that came out of his mouth. “If I got rid of the reporter who wrote the article . . .”

“Who is he?”

“Malkowitz.”

“I will inquire.”

Julien went back to Marcel and made the proposition.

“This Malkowitz character. Is he the Jew?”

“I believe so.”

“Excellent,” he said. “A fine piece of work. The paper continues, we exert our authority, and we get rid of a Jew who should have lost his job six months ago if you had been doing yours. Come to think of it, take a look at all the papers. See how many Jews there are. Suggest to the editors that their supplies of paper would be more sure if they thought more carefully about the makeup of their reporting staff. Then maybe the Bureau of Jewish Affairs will leave me alone for a bit.”

“Why? I really don’t think—”

“Just do it, Julien.”

“But, Marcel, apart from anything else it is quite unfair.”

And Marcel exploded. The first time Julien had ever seen his friend display such a lack of control. “Julien, do not question me and do not waste my time with your quibbles. I have a département to keep running. I am faced with having to tell the good people of Avignon that two thousand young men are going to be rounded up and sent to work in German factories. I have acts of petty criminality and sabotage to deal with. I have Vichy and the Germans breathing down my neck all the time. I have Marshal Pétain coming to visit in three weeks’ time. And if getting rid of a few Jews who probably shouldn’t be in the country in the first place will get me a bit of peace and quiet, then the sooner they are dealt with the better. Now, see to it. Or I’ll get someone else to do it. Understood?”

Julien retreated, taken aback by the outburst. He took the point. It was a question of priorities, and he could hardly criticize Marcel’s reasoning. What, after all, were a few jobs in comparison to the utter collapse of an entire country? Nonetheless, he found the task distasteful and delayed doing anything about it for several days until Marcel prodded him again. And again. And eventually he talked to a few editors. Four Jews were fired. Three papers dismissed another five without even being asked. More would have done so had he insisted.

In return he went back to Marcel over the matter of the books. And won a compromise; Walter Scott would be put into storage, to be consulted only with special permission. Ten people had paid for his successful defense of learning. There was no connection; they were separate matters; it was a price worth paying. Eventually, it stopped going through his mind, trying to think of some other way he might have treated the problem.

AND THREE WEEK SLATER, in October 1942, Marshal Pétain came to Avignon and was greeted on the steps of the Préfecture by his loyal servant, Marcel Laplace. Throughout that short intervening period, Julien’s disquiet grew as Marcel worked himself into a frenzy of worry. The police seemed to be in every café, every restaurant; soldiers were brought in to patrol the streets, suspected dissidents rounded up. Orders went out forbidding housewives to hang out their washing on the day of the great event. All flowerpots were to be taken off window ledges. Even so, leaflets mocking the marshal were distributed on the streets, and Marcel went wild with anxiety.

But, in Marcel’s view at least, it was all worth it. The marshal arrived and expressed himself satisfied. A grand reception followed, and Julien was invited; he shook the marshal’s hand, had those steady, deep eyes on him, and heard the speech that followed. He praised his préfet and hoped all would obey his orders; he criticized the legion, the bane of Marcel’s existence, for having admitted undesirables, for being more concerned with power than ensuring good government. And gave a warning that their behavior would be watched in the future.

And when he left, Marcel was exultant. “Julien my friend, you see? Did you hear that? We’ve won. They’ve been beaten back. It’s all been worth it. Now I can look after this place without being second-guessed and criticized all the time. Thank you, my dear friend. Thank you.”

He drank glass after glass of a champagne carefully hoarded for a special moment; for Marcel had only one enemy in those days, the people who sought to weaken his authority. And his victory seemed complete; he had strengthened his position immeasurably, was finally master in his own house. He had won his war.

Exactly twenty-nine days later, on November 8, 1942, the German army swept south, out of the occupied zone, and extinguished what remained of Free France. They found the work Marcel had done in the course of the battle against his rivals—the lists of Jews and communists, foreigners and undesirables, the reorganized police force, the vast files on the subversive, the dangerous, and the discontented—immensely useful. And Marcel’s life became complicated once more.

IN THIS PERIOD of darkness and uncertainty, Julien consoled himself by finally writing his article on Olivier de Noyen. It remained unfinished at his death, as he was never satisfied with it and did not really wish to end it, for it became a refuge he would have lost through its completion. The subject became in his hands a disquisition on loyalty, for he sketched out what he considered the truth of the poet’s end, using for the first time the evidence about the Comte de Fréjus sent to him some years before. He wrote in the evenings and at weekends, after he had gone back to his apartment on the rue de la Petite Fusterie, and drowned himself in the past, staying in it until the next day came and he was forced back into a situation he found ever more difficult.

Beneath the scholarly proprieties, the article alternated between lyricism and bitterness, an exploration through history of the idea of loyalty to individuals and to political ideas, a reflection of his own situation and an attempt to come to terms with it. For he had established, he believed, the truth behind Olivier de Noyen’s fate; the attack on him had nothing to do with Isabelle de Fréjus.

Rather it was because Olivier turned traitor and brought about the fall of Ceccani from the highest power. Olivier sold the secret of the cardinal’s machinations to his greatest enemy, and if he had not done so, then Ceccani might well have been the next pope. Why did he do this? Surely not the desire for money; there was no evidence of that. Perhaps, though, for an ideal? Perhaps he felt that the papacy should stay in Avignon? But that was not convincing either.

Nonetheless, what he had done was there for all to see. The letter from de Fréjus to the seneschal of Aigues-Mortes, stating that he was to open the gates to the English troops when they arrived by ship, was in the Archives Nationales in Paris. The guarantee of money from Ceccani was in the ledgers of the banking house of the Frescobaldi in Florence. And the note in the daybook of the pope clearly indicated that details of the plot had been provided by the cardinal’s “segretarius” who, at that time, was Olivier de Noyen. The plot failed; this was clearly known; Aigues-Mortes did not fall to the English; the papacy succeeded in buying Avignon and stayed there. It was easy and indeed inevitable to conclude that the failure of the scheme was because the pope intervened to make sure of it. Ceccani fell from papal favor, all his hopes of succeeding his master doomed. He was isolated and powerless, living out the remaining few years of his life visiting his dioceses. And as a final irony, on his death his great palace was bought by Cardinal de Deaux, his most bitter enemy.

Julien went back to the poems, those last lines written before Olivier was silenced, and in particular the one that contains the line “and I sink in heart-ache, like a ship in a storm.” Not, says Julien, a reference to his love; this is not a love poem. For Olivier surely had cast off the safety of Ceccani’s patronage, which had given him everything. And having thrown away the security of so great a master, there was nothing to protect him. The poem alludes to his betrayal and his consciousness of it. By implication it also suggests that Olivier was aware that retribution was close when he wrote, and that it was not unjustified. Loyalty has always been one of the highest human attributes. By the standards of his day and age, Olivier’s sin could not have been greater. He may have been a poet of considerable ability; in human terms he could not be judged lightly. The Comte de Fréjus was let loose on him in revenge. He was lucky to escape with his life; had Ceccani demanded more, who could have denied him?

And so Julien judged Olivier de Noyen harshly and without pity. He even referred back to Manlius and the example he set, using the text of The Dream of Scipio as the link; for Olivier knew Manlius’s words, but had utterly failed to comprehend them, it seemed. “No one can possess wisdom if consumed by intemperance,” says Manlius, quoting the Protagoras, yet Olivier’s actions were surely intemperate. Another statement, this time derived from Cicero, also gave him comfort, for the wisest of all Romans stated that “you cannot act rightly by taking up arms against your father or your fatherland.” Was that not what Olivier had done? For in that age without countries, Cardinal Ceccani was both father and fatherland to Olivier, and he had turned against both. Julien’s own position was the more clear, surely?

It is significant, however, that Julien did not ponder the next passage from Manlius’s manuscript until much later, for it might have brought with it further reflection. He had noted it years before in the Vatican library, correctly ascribed its origins to Theophrastus, then filed it away. “An amount of disgrace or infamy can be incurred,” Manlius quoted, “if it is in the cause of virtue.”

Had Julien been less influenced by his own predicament, then he might have looked harder and guessed the poet’s motivations earlier than he did. He might also have considered the possibility that Manlius, in writing these words, was passing a verdict on his own acts, rather than providing a philosophical basis for them.

AFTER JULIA LEFT, Julien had thought about her almost unendingly. He had worried, grown angry, imagined her with others, seeing her always in his mind, bathed in sun, in the open air, painting on a hilltop. Almost every day he went to the post-box in the dark entranceway to his apartment building, hoping to see a letter with a strange stamp.

The concierge stopped saying anything to him after a while. Initially she had said, “Nothing today, Monsieur Barneuve,” when he came down, but now she stopped and merely shook her head when he appeared every morning.

He had given up hoping for news by the time it arrived, quite unexpectedly, about two weeks after the German invasion of the south. He had finished his day’s work, walked out into the ever quieter, dirtier streets, dark already with the streetlights unlit for fear of bombers—although the muttering of the cynical said this was a convenient excuse to cover the fact that there was not enough power to provide lighting anymore. The streets were deserted; the arrival of the German army had extinguished what little life there was left. Although people were getting used to it surprisingly quickly, few went out when darkness fell; only the occasional military truck was on the roads, and few people on foot except for patrols of either soldiers or policemen. There was an air of foreboding that hung over the entire city like a thick fog.

It was raining lightly and he hurried, crossing the road and putting his foot in a deep puddle that had opened up in the pavement the previous winter and had never been repaired. He stopped and looked down at his soaking foot and sodden shoe, his only decent pair of winter shoes, which he had taken out that morning and checked carefully to make sure their soles were still good. With luck they would last. This would not help them, and he cursed the war, the Germans, Marcel, the city, and the weather equally, for bringing their final disintegration that much closer. Then, more slowly and carefully, looking down at the ground, he walked the last couple of hundred meters to his home, standing in the entrance, shaking himself and brushing as much water as possible out of his hair and off his clothes.

He went up the stairs, into his chilly apartment, and even before he switched on the lights he fetched a towel. He stood by the window drying his hair, staring down at the steps of the church of Saint Agricole opposite. It was nearly eight; the doors were open and the last people at evening mass were coming out, each one pausing at the door, looking up at the rain as though they could see where it was all coming from, then hunching down and hurrying away.

Only one person there was not in a rush, standing close by the entrance, faintly illuminated by the light coming out of the open doorway. Julien stiffened. That turn of the head, set of the shoulders, that manner of standing. The patience of the way the woman let the rain run down her body rather than trying to find cover. He could see little, but he would have recognized her in any light or in any weather.

He ran down the stairs, forgetting his soaking shoe, not taking a coat or umbrella, and ran as quickly as he could across the street, bounding up the steps two at a time.

“Julia!” he called out.

She turned and smiled, and held out her arms to him. When he finally let her go he was soaked to the skin once more.

HE USED UP nearly a month’s allowance of coal to get her dry, and rather than talking, spent the first few hours they were together fussing like an old hen over her. Taking off her clothes and arranging them around the fire to dry, making hot water for her bath, sorting out an old dressing gown for her to wear, then running out again to the shops to find something—anything—to buy for her to eat. They ended up having a feast around the fire of boiled rice, tomatoes, a little bread, and some grapes. Not grand, perhaps, but in the circumstances, a triumph.

And eventually, when she was warm and dry and clean, they began to talk. The room was in near darkness, and even though it was no longer cold they huddled close together, touching all the time. He could not bear not to be touching her, constantly reassuring himself that she was truly there.

“Why on earth are you here? Are you mad?”

In the intervening year her hair had become even more flecked with gray; she had lost weight and had acquired the gaunt, furtive look of the persecuted and the hunted. Her fingers fiddled constantly, and he realized that the calm and poise that had once been so much a part of her had gone. The clothes now hissing by the fire were a size or so too big, and threadbare; Julien realized for the first time how artful her previous simplicity had been. Only her eyes remained the same.

She was drinking as well; her third glass of homemade brandy—given to him by a farmer at Roaix, made in the man’s own still—sat in front of her, already empty.

“I remembered how much you shouted at me for not coming to you last time I got into a mess,” she said. “And I didn’t want to risk that again. I hadn’t anticipated that you’d be out so late.” She had a faint, ironic smile on her face—which highlighted the lines growing around her mouth and in her cheeks. “On the other hand, if you mean what am I doing in France, it’s a long story. But basically I discovered that going to America and being let into America are different things.”

“So where have you been for the last year?”

“On a boat, and in various ports. I seem to have spent months in waiting rooms, waiting to plead my case. Which was listened to sympathetically until a decision had to be made. Then it was short and simple. No. I was in Havana, much of the time. Nice place. The boat docked there and the American authorities intervened. They were determined to stop us getting to the United States. Quite simple really: the politicians have promised that all refugees who ask for asylum in America will be given it, so they stop as many people as possible from getting close enough to pop the question.”

She poured some more brandy. “Then back to Lisbon, and was thrown out of there, then into Spain, which was also too dangerous. So I thought that if I was going to be arrested, I would like it to happen at home. I missed you,” she concluded simply.

“Being arrested will happen very soon,” Julien said. “Nearly all Jews have been already.”

She smiled, reached into her handbag, and tossed an identity card at him.

“Where did you get this?”

“Another one of my artistic creations. I forged my way out of the country, I forged my way back in again. I find I have quite a skill at these things. Identity cards are quite easy. I have a friend in Lisbon who is an artist, and he let me use his press. I’m quite proud of it.”

“Madame Juliette de Valois?” he queried with a smile on his face. “Unnecessarily grand, isn’t it?”

“Someone I knew when I was young. She died of tuberculosis when she was eight. Her father was a member of the Action Française and a great anti-Semite. It made me smile when I thought of becoming her. So, if necessary I can call on a birth certificate, you see. I also made myself a passport, showing I have been in Vietnam for the past eight years, hence no records of me in France. Residence permits for Hanoi, entry visa for Lisbon, and from then on everything is stamped and sealed quite legitimately. She had no siblings, her parents are dead. Very hard to prove I am not her. My only concern is that all these papers are too much in order.”

“What about the death certificate?”

“She died in Saint Quentin, and the town hall was destroyed in the last war. I mean, she’s perfect, don’t you think? On the other hand, I am penniless, homeless, with only one change of clothes, nowhere to live, and have given away any possible source of income with my old identity. I can hardly sell paintings. Not that anyone would want to buy them, I imagine.”

“And I am not the only person in Avignon who could recognize you.”

“No. I wasn’t sure it was the best idea. But—here I am, well fed, warm, and unmolested. Besides, when I look in the mirror I scarcely recognize myself. I’m surprised you did. It must be love. But I suppose I must go somewhere else.”

“You will go to Roaix. You’ll be safe there. And I will be able to keep an eye on you and make sure you don’t get into any more trouble. As for the question of money . . .”

“Ah, yes.”

“Do you have any at all?”

“No,” she said in a curiously light way, as if acknowledging the irony of it all. “God only knows what I would have done if I hadn’t found you. It’s a strange feeling, being penniless. I suppose I should feel liberated from the material things of this world. In fact, it’s very annoying. I do not like poverty. I do not see its appeal.”

“I can let you have a little. But I don’t earn much and my father’s assets are largely useless and you can’t sell anything anymore. So I am also without much in the way of resources.”

“Come and live with me, then,” she said lightly. “We can starve together and lead a life of Rousseauian simplicity. You can shoot rabbits, I will cook them for you. You can sit and read in the evening while I darn your socks.”

“You can’t darn socks, can you?”

There was just enough of a hint of suppressed desire for Julia to burst out laughing. Everybody in France, probably, had holes in their socks. It was one of the small humiliations of subjection.

“No,” she said with a giggle. “I have never darned a sock in my life. But it can’t be so difficult, can it?”

“And I know you can’t cook.”

“Julien, are you refusing me?”

And now he laughed. He felt the life surging back through him, like a house being occupied after a long absence.

“Officially, I suppose, you’re not even married anymore.”

“No. An odd situation to be in, I must say. But I can live with it.”

“So marry me then. Now you have the chance.”

The good humor and merriment were suspended the moment the words came out of his mouth. She put down her glass, then gazed at him carefully. “You’re not even saying this because you feel sorry for me, are you?”

“You know perfectly well I’m not.”

“That’s good. I would have hated that.”

“Well?”

“I will, kind sir. I will marry you,” she said with a faint smile. “And do so with the greatest pleasure. But properly. Not under a pseudonym. When I can marry you as me, then I will do so.”

Julien grinned in a way he had not managed, he thought, since the war broke out. “War is a strange thing,” he said. “It makes people cut corners. Can we, perhaps, skip the marriage and get straight onto the honeymoon?” He went and got blankets and pillows from the bed, and they slept by the fire, Julien waking up periodically through the night to put on some more of the rapidly diminished bucket of coal. By the time morning had come there was none left. He would be living in the cold until the next supplies came through. And who knew when that might be?

The next morning Julien went to the railway station and collected her battered old case, brought it back, and strapped it to his bicycle. Then they began the long trek out to Roaix—pleasant enough in summer, much less so in winter, above all with the suitcase. Once, about two hours on the road to Carpentras, they got themselves all tangled up and both fell over, the bike crashing to the ground and the suitcase bursting open. Julien hurried to pick up all the bits, the bedraggled pieces of clothing, a hairbrush. “It’s hardly worth it,” he said, then looked up and saw her lip was trembling as she fought back the tears. It was all she had in the world.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” he said vehemently when he realized. “Don’t cry. I was stupid. Don’t cry.” And he reassured her like he would a child, with all the tenderness he had, comforting, gentle, and loving.

“Leave it,” she said. “You’re right. It’s not worth it.”

“Absolutely not. It’s coming.”

They started arguing, a healthy, restorative dispute, were still fighting about it when there was a rumble behind them. It was a German truck, lumbering along the road. “I thought you said they didn’t come over this side of the river?” Julia said. “Isn’t this meant to be an Italian zone?”

“In theory,” he replied shortly. “Not in practice.”

The truck slowed, then halted beside them. A fair head poked out of the window and looked at them somberly. A young man, so far untouched by the war or any hardship. He smiled. “Where are you going?” Heavily accented but good French.

“Vaison.”

He thought, then shrugged. “I’ll take you to Camaret, if you can tell me how to get there.”

Julia was nervous, but Julien accepted and bundled the bicycle into the back, among all the ammunition the man was transporting. Then they got in. The young man talked all the way and fortunately didn’t require much in reply. No, he shouldn’t have picked them up, but don’t tell anyone, eh? A couple arguing over a bike didn’t seem much of a threat to him. It was their own fault for sending him off without a map. How was he expected to find his way . . .

A nice boy, eager to oblige, keen that the kindness be appreciated. When he dropped them off on the outskirts of Camaret, leaving them only twenty kilometers to walk, Julia said quietly, “Don’t ever do that to me again.” Julien looked at her. She was not joking.

THE NEXT DAY, after they had arrived in Roaix, he settled her in, showed her where all the wood was for the fire and the kitchen, the well, introduced her to the farmers living nearby as his fiancée, and asked them to look after her until he returned. This they promised to do, and they kept their word faithfully.

Then, when he left, Julia began to find her way around. About a week later, she went on a walk and discovered the shrine of Saint Sophia.

Even for the atheist and the rationalist, there are places in the world that are special, for no reason that can be easily explained. The footsteps slow, the voice lowers and speaks more softly, an air of peace works its way into the soul. Each individual has his own place, it is true; what is holy to one will not be so necessarily to another, although the reverberations of some are all but universal. And the chapel was Julia’s place, every bit as much as Julien Barneuve’s was the phoenix villa; she realized this long before she reached the top of the hill, walking up on his advice. “Pretty place,” he told her. “Good view.” She felt the air of anticipation well up in her, the peculiar mixture of calm excitement of one who knows their life is about to change forever. She sensed the chapel long before she rounded the last bend in the track and saw it surrounded by a clump of trees with weeds and wildflowers growing around its crumbling walls. She had never seen it before, but it felt comfortingly familiar. This sentiment she put down to the sense of safety she had been wallowing in ever since she had found Julien again and come to this place.

The door was not locked; there was nothing to protect. Inside it was clear that sheep and goats were perhaps the most frequent visitors. A small altar remained, placed there in the nineteenth century, an ugly reject from another church, bulbous and inappropriate, but better than nothing. And it was dark, as well; the windows were tiny and high up on the walls and were so dirty they let in little light, just enough to see the dozen or so bits of paper on the altar. Julia picked up a few, took them to the door, and looked at them.

“Dear Lady, should I leave my parents and live on my own?” read one. “Blessed Saint Sophia, should I go and work in Avignon?” was a second. “Thank you for your warning,” a third. She was almost moved to smile, but there was something about the tidy peasant lettering, the way each missive had been folded carefully and neatly on good paper, the way each woman—for the writing suggested they were all women—must have toiled all the way up here, which made her refold each one carefully and put them all back in their place.

As she did so, she looked up and caught her breath as she saw what remained of Luca Pisano’s work. The paintings were dreadfully damaged, blistering off in places through the effects of long neglect, scrawled on lower down by what she later realized must have been the hatreds of the Revolution, darkened by the soot of half a millennium’s worth of candles, but still discernible; a saint reaching out to a man in a strange gesture, her hand over his eyes, something she had never seen before.

Instantly she was captivated; this was why she had come to this place, to see these pictures. This was the answer to her problem. She was ill equipped to study them closely; in her pocket she had only a box of matches, and even though she opened the door as wide as possible to let the thin winter sun stream in, she managed to see only part of the whole. But it was enough; the next day she returned, and set to work.

THE DISCOVERY PERSUADED her to take up etching in a more orthodox fashion; the war helped as well. Just as Julien fretted from the lack of soap, so Julia chafed under the absence of paint. She tried making her own, but the range of materials was insufficient. Even in the fourteenth century, pigments had been brought from far afield. The war meant trade shrank to levels not seen since the days of Manlius Hippomanes.

She became obsessive about paper, learning its feel and different properties. She bought up old books for the blank pages at the beginning and end, and eventually tried her hand at grinding up old cloths to try to make the sort of rag paper preferred in the sixteenth century. Her fingers were permanently stained black with ink she also made herself from a recipe Julien found in a book in the library—the municipal library, now happily ensconced in Cardinal Ceccani’s grand palace. She cut back her nails almost into the flesh, and soaked her hands in lemon juice for hours to clean them. The printing press she made herself—or rather she had the local blacksmith construct it for her out of an old mangle and a heavy iron frame that originally came from a bed.

She was proud of her creation; it produced results as good as any she had seen at the specialist printers in Paris, and the whole business delighted her artisanal inclinations. The unknown artist of the chapel, the master of Saint Sophia, as she called him, would have been proud of her, she thought. She had no money, but a good deal of time, and this she spent liberally, making meticulous drawings and drinking prodigious amounts of cheap red wine with the blacksmith, going over the design and the practicalities of construction. She began as supervisor to his work, and ended as his most menial assistant, filing off shards of metal, holding thick beams of iron as he beat and welded. And as he made the fine adjustments, she sat in his workshop with a plate of copper she had waxed herself and swiftly scratched out a study of Pierre Duveau at work, a serious man, slight for a blacksmith, with dark eyes and an intense stare.

He ended up with a respect for this overprivileged woman fallen on hard times, dressed in a man’s shirt, her sleeves rolled up, her thick dark hair flecked with gray held back out of her face with a piece of string. A beautiful woman, he thought as he hammered, and a noble name, though she looked like a Jew to him. Not that he cared, as he mentioned to his wife. But what was she doing living in Julien Barneuve’s house, turning up late one night and settling in to stay? His fiancée, didn’t he say? Not, as his wife commented, that it was any business of his.

Pierre was not a man to give affection easily. Her willingness to assist and watch and learn did not entirely win him over, however, for he thought her interest unwomanly; her obvious intelligence and penetrating questions about the practicalities of slippage and downward pressure alarmed him, especially as she would not be put off by easy answers. Her perfectionism irritated, as she returned time and again with minor modifications and insisted that they be done precisely. And yet he was proud of the result, as others gathered around to stare in awe at the bizarre contraption. Julia bought the entire village a round of drinks to celebrate the final completion of the project, and made a joking speech of thanks for building the most useless mangle in France.

He was, however, touched and even a little flattered by the first work to be drawn from his device, though not nearly as pleased as Julia herself, as she inscribed, and presented it to him. “To Pierre, blacksmith extraordinaire, with thanks.” It was the sketch she had done while she watched him work, which she etched in the acid that Julien had found in a chemist’s shop in Avignon and brought to her one weekend, and then engraved with a dry-point to add fine detail to the face and arms. Not one of her most experimental works, almost traditional in honor of his calling. But still too abstracted and free for his wife, Elizabeth. “All that effort for such a thing,” she said sourly as they looked at it on the kitchen table.

He laughed. “I like it,” he replied. “I’ve even started to like her. A strange woman. Special, if you know what I mean. Educated. Intelligent. Accomplished. All the sort of things a woman would need if she was to keep Julien Barneuve. Permanently, that is.”

This said with an edge to his voice, a hardness as he put the print down. He had it framed and hung on the wall to act as a constant reminder to his wife of the difference between an ordinary woman and a special one. She tried to take it down, or move it, but every time he put it back again, and would comment on how much he was growing to like it. He said it many times.

A sought-after work, now, for those who collect French prints. Only six were ever drawn off the plate before Julia erased it for more dangerous work later on. And few of those found buyers. She sold little; the dealer who had previously taken her paintings was in Paris, and inaccessible. And initially no one else would stock her work. She was now unknown, after all. Most were too considerate, or too dishonest, to say why they refused her. It was only when one looked closely at her, studied her face, then stared at the ceiling and said, “I just don’t think I can sell cosmopolitan art at the moment, you see,” that she understood. For some reason, she never thought it would touch her; not there, not in her painting. She almost said, “But I’m not Jewish,” when she stopped, sensing that she had said those words too often already.

MANLIUS SET OUT the day after his discussion with Sophia and went north. He knew there was little time. Somewhere in Italy was Felix, spending money he did not have to raise an army that would never come; it would, in his imagination, march in an ordered fashion along the coast, then strike north, hurling itself against Euric’s army, raising the siege of Clermont. Felix would establish his family’s dominion over the whole of the province, the gentle balm of Roman life would return, and a peace of Augustan dimensions would fall over a contented land.

It was not to counter his friend and rival’s ambition that Manlius left. It was because he knew, as his friend should have known, that Felix had gone to live in a lotus land of his imagination. Where what is desired is dreamed of as already happened, where obstacles dissolve under the weight of desire, and where reality has vanished entirely. For any army of barbarians marching under the Roman standard would accomplish nothing except looting, and the wrath of Euric would be the greater for the attempt to block him. In trying to save everything, everything would be lost.

So Manlius reasoned, and in order to accomplish his aims he made haste, as much as the roads and baggage would allow. He rode on a donkey—or rather, he took a donkey with him so that he could transfer to it when they neared the Burgundian encampment. A little detail, but an important one nonetheless. He was going as a bishop, not as a politician or a landowner, and needed to make this clear.

For the first time he gave a task to his adopted son when he left; it was time that his family assisted him, he considered. “Go into Vaison, Syagrius. Keep watch on the mood of the people there,” he said. “Do nothing but listen; find out who is the most afraid, who is most on my side. I will need this information when I return.”

Syagrius nodded eagerly; he had been waiting for such a commission, was desperate to show his worth. But Manlius took no leave of him as a father should of a son. Instead, he turned, mounted his horse, and began talking to the estate manager. Then he wheeled the beast around and rode off.

He talked little on the way; there was no one he wished to talk to. Of the thirty people traveling with him, not one had enough to say to tempt him out of his silence. Going through a valley toward the end of a day, after a hard drive that lasted ten hours, he saw the sunset, framed between the body of the hill and a decayed fruit orchard, long abandoned. The noise of wasps and bees gorging themselves on the fruit that had fallen unwanted to the ground was so loud they could hear it a full half hour before they passed by.

A bittersweet reference to Hesiod would have begun an exchange with more cultivated travelers, the theme developing into a discussion of the idea of descent, from the age of gold into the brute age of iron. Could the process be reversed? Could the age of iron be made to give way to a new age of peace and prosperity? What a pleasure to have such a discussion, to swim in the comfort of shared ideas and shared memories, to prepare for the encounter to come. Manlius instead had to have the conversation in his head, and later wrote it down (in edited form) as what became ff23-25 of Olivier’s copy of The Dream of Scipio. He dwelt there on the divine and inevitability, a subtle (if inevitably sketchy) discussion of free will, pleased with himself for avoiding any reference whatsoever to the ponderous Christian contributions on the topic.

Are we fated or not? Can we individually alter what is to come? Are civilizations as a whole, mankind as a race, doomed to rise, then decline, from gold to silver to the brutality of iron? Was he—for this was the essence of the conversation he never had—fighting against the gods in trying to fend off disaster?

No, says Sophia. Polite but sure in her correctness, deriving the logic from Plato, but refined by near eight centuries of consideration into a form he would scarcely have recognized. You cannot change fate; even the gods (a reference here to Lucian, unspotted by Gersonides but picked up by Julien) are subject to the whim of Lachesis. She and her sister fates alone know what is to be, but they do not care.

The question is a false one, for the concern of man is not his future but his present, not the world but his soul. We must be just, we must strive, we must engage ourselves with the business of the world for our own sake, because through that, and through contemplation in equal measure, our soul is purified and brought closer to the divine. There is no reward for good behavior, as the Christians suppose, no judge to decide. The more nearly our soul resembles the divine, the closer it is able to approach the model from which it was formed and which it ceased resembling when it became tainted by the material on falling to earth. Thought and deed conjoined are crucial. Faith means nothing, for we are too corrupted to apprehend the truth.

Rephrase the question, then: Can Manlius Hippomanes, trudging northward with his small entourage, reverse the decline and restore tranquillity to the land? Possibly not, nor does it matter. The attempt must be made; the outcome is irrelevant. Right action is a pale material reflection of the divine, but reflection it is, nonetheless. Define your goal and exert reason to accomplish it by virtuous action; success or failure is secondary. The good man, the philosopher—the terms to Manlius were the same—would strive to act rightly and discount the opinion of the world. Only other philosophers could judge a philosopher, for only they can grasp what lies beyond the world.

DID MANLIUS DISPLAY a sense of humor in the Dream, of a sort utterly undetectable in any of his other writings? Certainly, there was a touch of the whimsical about it that added to the difficulty of its comprehension. For his Scipio was modeled in form but not in nature on the more famous work written nearly half a millennium previously by Cicero; the modifications look backward and forward simultaneously, bringing the past of Rome’s golden age into association with a future that was dark and uncertain.

Cicero’s great work—much commented on for nearly two millennia—was a part of his Republica, a final survey of the problem of civic virtue conducted through the mouth of Scipio Africanus, the most noble Roman of them all. In it the younger Scipio dreams he meets the older one and is shown the marvels of the universe, and has explained to him the way in which the actions of great men in society are part of the universal harmony, required by the divine.

Manlius re-angled the work and gave it a more melancholic, less optimistic twist. This time it is Manlius who is in reverie: The title refers to a dream about Scipio, not a dream by him, and it is occasioned by the prologue in which he discusses philosophy with Sophia. She mentions the famous remarks by Scipio when he sees Carthage ruined, and weeps lest the same fate befall Rome in its turn.

A pregnant moment; the sentence also inspired Saint Augustine to write The City of God after the sack of 410 brought Scipio’s terrible vision to pass. Internal evidence suggests that Manlius must have read Augustine’s great work; his treatise was the last pagan response to it, before the unstoppable momentum of Christianity extinguished all dissent. In his hands the sack of Rome by Alaric becomes the symbol of the end of civilization, the final extinction of anything of value. Manlius begins his journey of exploration in darkness, and is only slowly led by Sophia to a new light. Not the light of Christianity, that barbarian religion; civilization cannot be destroyed so easily.

Sophia takes him to the Capitoline and shows him Rome, burning and destroyed, and reassures him when he begins to weep: “Rome has fallen from its glory, yet in its decrepitude is still more magnificent than the mind of man can easily imagine. Stand on this sacred spot and turn around; see the city stretch before you, so vast you cannot see its end.” And suddenly, from his vantage point, Manlius can see the whole world in the finest detail, can see men of goodwill rebuilding, stone by stone. He sees libraries reconstructed, and men discussing philosophy once more, and walking in fine gardens. “Philosophy cannot be extinguished, though men will try,” she tells him. “The spirit seeks the light, that is its nature. It wishes to return to its origin, and must try forever to reach enlightenment.”

“Most are unaware of the need,” Manlius objects. “They prefer the foolish belief and the passions of the earth. They believe the absurd and shrink from the truth.”

“No, they do not. They are afraid, that is all. And they must remain on earth until they come to the way of leaving it.”

“And how do they leave? How is the ascent made? Must one learn virtue?”

Here she laughs. “You have read too much, and learned too little. Virtue is a road, not a destination. Man cannot be virtuous. Understanding is the goal. When that is achieved, the soul can take wing.”

And so on; at every level, the Bishop of Vaison, Saint Manlius, launches attack after attack on Christianity, contradicting it at every turn. The soul is general, not individual; eternal, not specific in time. The body is a prison, not something meriting resurrection. Faith is corruption, Hope is deception, Charity illusion; all must be surpassed.

“But how must we live?” Manlius asks. “If man cannot be virtuous, can there be no good man?”

“Action is the activity of the rational soul, which abhors irrationality and must combat it or be corrupted by it. When it sees the irrationality of others, it must seek to correct it, and can do this either by teaching or engaging in public affairs itself, correcting through its practice. And the purpose of action is to enable philosophy to continue, for if men are reduced to the material alone, they become no more than beasts.”

A remarkable sentence, which struck Julien when he read it, for Manlius completely overturns orthodoxy, whether Platonic or Christian. The point of civilization is to be civilized; the purpose of action is to perpetuate society, for only in society can philosophy truly take place. Only a man who realized civilization might not continue could have reformulated classical ideas in such a way; only a man contemplating drastic action could have penned such a self-justification. Only with such an aim could the pagan pretend to be a Christian, the friend abandon his friends.

As a piece of philosophy, it was not of the highest order; Manlius abandoned the syllogistic form and scarcely argues at all. Through the mouth of Sophia, he instructs merely. His style was as elliptical as usual, perhaps because it was hastily written. References and allusions peppered the pages but appeared to have been inserted unconsciously; Julien had to summon all his knowledge to track down the quotations from Aristotle, Plato, Plutarch, Alcinous, Proclus, references from lost works to which he could give only tentative attributions; then he had to analyze the mistakes and decide whether they were deliberate or accidental. And finally, he had to come to some conclusion—had Manlius made a genuine contribution to later Neoplatonism, or was it a semi-digested rehash of old ideas? Was the manuscript more use as philosophy or as a historical document?

It was so much easier for Gersonides, and easier still for Olivier, for the rabbi was largely, the Christian totally, innocent of the scholarly apparatus that revealed the complexity of the document.

THROUGHOUT THE SPRING and summer of 1943, Julia spent much of her time studying the chapel—often taking blankets and food with her so she could sleep outside on the broad mossy steps without losing any time. That, at least, was her reasoning; in fact she lived this life because it made her perfectly at peace with the world, and she could not bear any greater engagement with reality. The worse the news became, the more all around her were convinced that, sooner or later, war would erupt physically into their lives, the more she sought to separate herself from what she could not control or face. The idea, always in the back of her mind, that the tranquillity she enjoyed might soon come to an end made every breath of warm air, every scent of wildflowers, and every buzz of an insect many times more pleasurable and intense. Her senses were more alive than at any time she could remember, and she felt that she was, in her way, doing a service. For that sort of peacefulness was valuable; it was rare and endangered. She wished to store it up in her mind so that she might remember when the darkness fell.

Occasionally, when the solitude began to overwhelm even her, she would pack her bag and walk down the crumbly, slippery track to the village, to buy food or water, or sketch in the sun of the little square. She became, indeed, a figure of curiosity and some small suspicion; many were concerned at an outsider interfering with the shrine, and were fearful of her intentions. Within the first week of her discovery of it, she had numerous visitors—old women, young girls, shepherds—who just happened to find themselves nearby and came to investigate. Initially she was irritated by the waste of time, put off by the blank, dumb way they stood behind her as she worked, never asking questions, never showing any real interest that she could meet, never giving her a chance to explain herself.

But slowly the power of place settled over her; she no more resented them than she resented the goats whose bells clanged noisily outside as they fed, or the occasional sheep that wandered in out of idle curiosity. And eventually she discovered that they were proud of this saint, eager to answer questions about her. She began to jot down the stories they told her in a notebook before the setting sun made it too dark to read anymore, and as the weeks passed, she also jotted down variants in the stories, grouping them into themes and categories, trying to distinguish the few kernels of truly old legend from recent accretions or borrowings. The saint’s reputation for curing poor sight was one constant theme, as was her prowess at giving good advice, but she also, it seemed, had other powers, particularly in curing all sorts of maladies. The affectionate way her limitations were recognized was also notable, and Julia first paid attention to this when the blacksmith’s wife, Elizabeth Duveau, came up to the chapel one day.

She was working hard and didn’t notice that anyone had come in behind her. Eventually a slight rustling sound made her stop her work and turn round. Elizabeth was standing a few feet away from her, staring stonily at her back.

“Oh, hello,” Julia said. Elizabeth nodded and continued to look at her. Eventually, Julia realized she was looking at her left hand; she followed the gaze to try to work out what she found so interesting.

“No,” she said when she thought she’d worked it out. “No ring.”

“You won’t be having children,” she commented.

“I doubt it.”

“You left it too late.”

“Probably.”

“Why was that?” came the question with that alarming directness she was slowly becoming used to.

She put down her paper with a sigh, her concentration gone. “I don’t know. I’ve never met anyone I needed to live with until now.”

Elizabeth wiped a bead of sweat from her nose. “Nor have I. But I’ve been married to Pierre for fifteen years. Her fault.”

Julia looked perplexed. “Whose fault?”

She gestured in the general direction of the altar. “Pierre proposed to me in 1925. September, it was. I didn’t love him, and I knew already he drank too much, but I was past twenty and laughed at as an old maid. I dreamed someone else might ask, but he didn’t and no one else was likely to come along. So what could I do? I could go to the town and work as a servant or stay where I was and marry Pierre, who had good money as a blacksmith. A catch, he was. So I asked Sophia. She’d given good advice when I’d asked before.

“But not this time. She is not reliable in this area. Of course, she was never married herself, so perhaps that explains it. But she said I most certainly should marry him, and I took her advice.”

At least it got the conversation off Julia’s own life. “How did she tell you this?”

“The usual way. I dreamed that I was cold and hungry, living on the streets of Marseille, that no one would talk to me or give me work or food. So I took the warning, and stayed where I was, in the village, and married Pierre. And I have spent the last fifteen years wondering whether she was really trying hard enough.”

“Why?”

She shrugged. “How long have you known Julien?”

“Oh. Years. Fifteen years. Something like that.”

Julia felt the dark, inquisitive eyes studying her. “I’ve known him since he was eight.” She said it in almost a proprietorial fashion, as though it gave her a superior claim of some sort.

“Does everyone know she is not very good at this sort of advice?”

She was thinking of something else, and Julia had to repeat the question before she came back. “Heavens, yes,” she said eventually. “Even children know it. When they see a girl walking out with an unsuitable boy, they say she must have been talking to Sophia.”

“How do you know she wasn’t married?”

Elizabeth paused to consider a question she found strange. “Why would she have spent her life up here if she’d had a man and a hearth to tend?” The practicality of the response was unanswerable. “No; she was alone, and came up here to live in prayer. And was a good person, which is why people came to ask her advice even before they knew she was a saint. There were many miracles after she died, which is a sign. Of course, there are old stories.”

“Which ones?”

She looked sheepish. “Old wives’ tales,” she said. “My mother used to tell me. But even she didn’t believe them.”

“Please tell me.”

“Oh, it’s about the blind man she cured. It is said that the first thing he saw when he began to see was Sophia’s face, and he cried out in delight and said that he had seen her face in his dreams many a time, and that he had loved her all his life. And that he asked her to marry him, but she refused because she was virginal and pure. And he pined away with sorrow until she talked to him and brought him to God. But he always loved her, and swore that he would wait for all eternity until he could be united with her, and have her acknowledge his love. And she said she would wait until he understood what love was. It’s something old women say to daughters to make them go to sleep. That’s all.”

She turned away to the altar, and Julia walked outside to leave her in peace. She sat on the steps in the sunshine, basking in the heat like one of the lizards that sat motionless all around her, looking down across the valley to the lavender fields beyond the woods. She fell asleep; must have done, for when she opened her eyes once more, the blacksmith’s wife was already far in the distance, slowly picking her way through the stones and weeds.

Julia waved, but got no acknowledgment, then sat down for one of the best meals she had ever eaten, of bread and wine and salami. She felt entirely safe, and utterly happy.

FOR THE NEXT eight months Julien lived a strange double life; supposedly he was still an employee of the state, doing the tasks he had taken on in the autumn of 1940. But he allowed the lassitude that grew from his discomfort and increasing unease to take him over. He even went to his colleagues back at the university and described what he was doing. Should he resign? No, they said, one after another. You have a duty, and we are glad you are doing it. Think of who might take the position. He described the compromises he made, and again they replied, Stay where you are. He even once went to Marcel and appealed to him, but met no help from that quarter either.

“Don’t you see, Julien, that there is no room here for your delicacies?” Marcel replied with a sigh. “That your fastidiousness is out of place? Selfish? We have to keep government going. Have to keep it in the hands of men of moderation. Don’t you see that?”

Julien continued to look uneasy, unconvinced. “And you are a man of moderation?” he felt like asking, but he knew the answer. Yes, Marcel was indeed, in comparison to those others snapping at his heels.

ONLY JULIA SUGGESTED a different course of action when he went back to what he now considered his real home to be with her. “You are doing things you dislike so that others won’t be able to do worse. Are you sure that is not the case for everyone? Isn’t that what your friend Marcel is doing? The policeman who arrests people in the night? The prime minister? Even Pétain himself? They are all doing things they would prefer not to in order to prevent worse. The evil committed by good men is the worst of all, because they know better and do it anyway. Isn’t that what that manuscript of yours says?”

Her opinion contradicted those of so many others, but then she would not be affected by his resignation; all the librarians and journalists and newspaper owners and academics and teachers would be. He thought about it some more, anguishing in his indecision. And as he writhed, he came in late, if at all; memoranda and orders lay on his desk for weeks before anything was done with them, and then any work was bungled and performed incompetently. He read more, found himself obsessed with the minutiae of the life of Olivier de Noyen, to the exclusion of all else. His idleness was his refuge, and in this he was like many others in France in that period; laziness became political.

More and more, he left Avignon altogether and went east to Julia, traveling however he could. Sometimes there were buses, sometimes he managed to get a ride with a farmer on a horse and cart; most of the time he rode on his bicycle, the tires now long worn away and replaced with cloth, which he bound tightly to the rim of the wheels with wire. Once there, he would stay often for ten days at a time, finding excuse after excuse not to leave. When he did return to Avignon, he hoped to find he had been dismissed in his absence; no such good fortune ever awaited him.

When he came, he brought gifts for her, all sorts of things he would never have considered before the war. He spent time going around book-stalls finding old books with blank end pages that she could use for her printing, cutting them out in a way that previously would have appalled him. He knew every pharmacist in the city who would set aside the acid she needed for biting her plates. Ironmongers and scrap merchants received constant visits also, and would collect plates of copper for him, beating them flat into a usable shape once more. Once he discovered some oranges, and bore them to her in triumph; they ate them together on the flat grass outside the chapel door, getting themselves sticky as the juice ran down their faces and clothes. The wasps came, and Julia ran away screaming in fright; Julien ran after her, pounding at them with his hat to drive them away before they both scuttled into the chapel and shut the door, sitting in the darkness and laughing themselves silly.

Both of them were happy in a way neither had ever imagined. Often they scarcely even talked for days on end, but were merely in each other’s company. She did her work, outside when possible, inside if not, and he did likewise. They would take such food as they could find with them up to the chapel and spend the day there, often sleeping there at night, waking up at dawn and eating a crust of bread together before washing each other down with the water Julien brought up from the river in an old metal bucket. Or she would go on her own and Julien would busy himself in the garden. He grew potatoes and tomatoes; there was an olive tree and a fig tree, and he carefully tended four tobacco plants, whose leaves he would pluck and press and dry and shred. They smoked the result with a couple of old clay pipes when cigarettes were unobtainable.

Julia returned to herself, and to her work, in his company and with the stimulus of the chapel. She slept, for the first time in two years, she said, and slept so hard Julien could scarcely wake her in the morning. Then she would bustle about making tisane, for there was no coffee, and went to see if the hen she’d acquired had laid any eggs. Generally it hadn’t, but occasionally she would return from the henhouse she’d built, bearing the egg with the most immense pride in the bird’s achievement. And she would boil Julien the egg, and serve it with all the ceremony of Escoffier himself, concocting one of his fragrant masterpieces in an age now long forgotten.

They were playacting, they knew, and the realization made it the more precious. They were living out the pages of a child’s book, pursuing the life of bucolic simplicity to fend off the ever grimmer news that came through from the outside; the shortages, the arrests, the Allied landings, the bombings, and the murders that became daily events. There was nothing they could do about it except survive, and celebrate their survival and the love that grew stronger with every glance and every shared moment.

It was Julia who pointed out, when she read some of the late poetry of Olivier de Noyen, tossed onto the floor as Julien worked, that whomever he might have loved, this “woman of darkness, wisdom touching the light” (to quote one of his latest poems) surely could not have been Isabelle de Fréjus, at least not if her supposed portrait was truly her.

“Look,” she said impatiently one evening, brushing her hair out of her eyes in the way Julien had first noticed on his Mediterranean cruise, and which he had loved ever since. A competent, businesslike gesture of someone whose profession was seeing, done with a slight toss of the head and which always left her face and neck and hair arranged in a perfect harmony. “Look at the damned woman.”

Julien had finished his article for perhaps the fourth time, but was still not pleased with it. It had lain now for several months on his desk, and every time he had gone back to it, he had a feeling of impatience welling up inside him; he could not settle down and work on it again. It was true; everything he said about the poet was right. About the betrayal of Ceccani, the casting off of all accepted obligations. Yet he knew he did not have the whole picture, for although he could reinterpret some of the poems, others were stubbornly intransigent. They were love poems, and however much he might reconsider Olivier as a man, as a poet he could not persuade himself that his last words were anything but remarkable.

He mentioned this and she read both the poems—struggling through in the Provençal—and listened to his argument. Then she looked at the portrait of Isabelle reproduced in a guide to the Musée des Beaux Arts in Lyon. It came from a book of hours, and the attribution was venerable enough to be believable; Pisano had given it to her. Then she stated the obvious.

“I’m a mere painter,” she said. “But were I a poet, I would never dream of describing someone with fair hair as a woman of darkness, whatever I might mean. It would be lazy, not to say incompetent. I think I would make myself work a little harder to make the metaphor match the physical appearance.”

Julien grunted, then chewed his lip. “Well,” he said reluctantly. “You’re right, I suppose.”

“Of course I’m right,” she replied cheerfully. “Sorry.”

Afterward, he let the remarks brew on their own in his mind. Of course she was right; of course this woman of darkness could not have had fair hair. Could not have been Isabelle de Fréjus. But the fact remained that Olivier had loved someone. Did it matter whom he had loved?

His mind turned the question upside down and presented him with a different solution many months later. From the notion of Wisdom he thought of Sophia, then of the chapel that Olivier had written about. This came to him in Avignon, and the next time he visited—in winter this time, when even Julia had stopped going up the hill because of the lack of light and warmth—he asked her about how the painter had portrayed Saint Sophia. She rummaged in the large folder she had made to protect her precious paper.

“I did some watercolors,” she said, handing one over. “They’re not so good. But she does have dark hair.”

“And these?” he asked, picking up a pile of papers wrapped up in the same bundle.

“Ah, well,” she said, settling down on her haunches, an air of anticipation, pleasure, about her.

So Julien looked, and instantly understood the self-satisfaction in her tone. He looked for a long time, picking up one, then the next, then the next. Eventually he looked up. “Congratulations.”

It was deserved. She had finally overcome the barriers that he had so harshly pointed out to her some ten years before and attained a simplicity and originality that was breathtaking. Pisano had set her free; Julien never considered that he might have had a hand in it as well. She had taken his work and allowed herself to range over it; sketching parts of it time and again, renewing and revisiting, bending and breaking, stripping the image down and building it back up again. She gave the faces depth, then flattened them to abstraction, reduced them to a mere line, stressing first one feature then another, until she came to her goal, which was an almost perfectly harmonious blending of herself with his pictures. She now neither broke with the past nor imitated it; rather she grew out of it, extended it in unimagined directions.

She was leaning back against a chair by the fire and lit a cigarette; it was an important moment for her, she had three to get to the end of the month. “What do you think?” Still a little anxious, wanting compliments, but sure of getting them.

“These I would buy. Alas, now I don’t have any money. You just don’t have any luck, do you?”

She laughed. “I was going to give them to you anyway. They’re my wedding present to you.”

She picked up a pencil, and inscribed each one. “To Julien, with love from Lady Wisdom. January 1943.” And she signed it with her own name. Next time he went back to Avignon, to his other life, he took them with him; he could not be without them.

THEY STARTED FROM opposite ends. Pisano is a master of form and is striving toward reality; Julia aches to throw off the tyranny of reality and reach the essential that lies somewhere underneath. In the quiet of the chapel they meet, briefly and only once. In the panel of Sophia curing the blind man, the toss of her head, the expression on the face, derived from Byzantium, coming through Rome and a hundred years of Siennese mastery but infused with the spirit of Olivier when the Italian caught him once looking at Rebecca, Pisano comes close to his goal.

And Julia begins with his painting, releasing what has been locked up in it for nearly six centuries. When she finished—the hour late and the light long since faded—she knew that she had found something she had been looking for for years.

Just as she had prodded Julien, so he had pushed her. He had made the connection between the Sophia of the Dream and the saint of the chapel, hinted they were one and the same, or at least derived from a common model. So she had used this; the blind man is not the recipient of a Christian miracle; rather he comes to knowledge; Sophia is not some evangelical saint but the vessel conveying that wisdom.

It was Marcel, of all people, who pointed out the obvious. Julien hung them in his apartment, removing some prints then on the wall to reuse the frames. Marcel saw them on one of his visits, rare now but all the more valuable to him for that, a reminder of the normality of friendship that Julien, despite everything, was still able to offer. Julien found his company ever more uncomfortable, but his need was so obvious he could not deny him.

On this occasion, Marcel looked at one of the pictures carefully, he who had no serious interest in painting beyond a conventional contempt for the modern.

“If you are going to have your portrait done, you really should get someone who can paint, you know,” he said with a smirk. “I can tell it’s you. But many people would miss it entirely. And don’t think I don’t recognize the woman, either. She left, didn’t she? She did go?”

Julien nodded, cautiously.

“Good. If she’d stayed here she’d be in danger. If she was found, they’d take her. You do know that, don’t you?”

He nodded again.

“Good,” he said. “I’m hearing bad things. Very bad things.”

Julien didn’t ask him to elaborate. Marcel turned back to the pictures and grimaced. Then, abruptly, he picked up his hat and left.

Julien mentioned his comments about the pictures the next time he saw her. Julia turned deathly pale.

OLIVIER WAS TOLD that he was, once more, to play the cardinal’s errand boy. Go to the Jew’s house, collect his servant and papers, and bring them back as soon as possible. He was given two horses and a mule for the journey and set off, his heart beating hard at the prospect of seeing Rebecca again, and alone.

It was a day’s ride, and he arrived in the evening and went straight to Gersonides’s house. This was a kindness, for he knew that no one had yet told Rebecca that her master was safe and well, and he knew also that she would be frantic with worry lest he had come to some harm. So he knocked just as the rain, which had been falling in a light drizzle for the past hour, turned into a downpour, and stood there with water dripping from his hat and cloak and face as she opened the thick wooden door.

She thought he had come with bad news; the look on his face, made pale by the journey and the cold, suggested so, and she cried out with alarm to see the apparition on the doorstep.

“Oh, no,” she cried, holding her hands to her face. “Oh, no.”

Her grief was so real, and so wrong, that Olivier felt a similar hurt at having caused it, and stepped into the door and embraced her to give reassurance.

“No, no,” he said softly, stroking her cheek, “you must not be afraid. I have not come to upset you. He is perfectly well. And is perfectly free.”

These words, designed to calm her, seemed to have the opposite effect. Rebecca sank to her knees, sobbing loudly and with the tears rolling down her cheeks. Olivier let her go and suddenly became aware that the water dripping off his cloak was making her almost as wet as he was; also that a large puddle of water was forming on the floor and that the winds blowing through the door were about to blow out the candle. So he shut the door quickly then knelt down beside her.

“He has been commissioned by His Holiness to search for the cause of the plague,” he said. “And I may say will be well rewarded for his assistance. He has agreed to help, and is staying in a fine apartment in the palace. He needs his papers, and he needs you. So I have come to get both. He sends his greetings. And that is quite all.”

He put his hand under her chin and lifted it toward him, and when he saw her disheveled, tear-stained face, his heart melted in a way he had never dreamed possible. He had read the poetry and heard the songs since his youth. For more than two years he had willed his love into being, fixing on the abstraction he had glimpsed in the street and determining that he would feel the truth behind these songs. Then when it was in his grasp he had recoiled from it, wished it away and almost come to hate the reality that spoiled the simplicity of his vision. He had believed he was ill, gripped by a sickness as virulent as the plague, and he ardently desired a cure. And when he looked into her face that rainy night, he gave way, and wished to be sick forever.

When he touched her cheek he was at last rid of all artifice. He did not know whether she was beautiful or not, although some thought her so, a robust, rugged beauty that was a great distance from the soft, slightly pampered attractions of a woman like Isabelle de Fréjus. Her skin was too dark, her frame too strong, her hair too thick, her features too pronounced for her to excite any other poet than Olivier. But he knew at that moment that all the poems he had written had been for this woman, not for some ideal, and that he had loved her since before he was born, and would love her long after he had died.

Even though he had been brought up with the feelings of the troubadours, Olivier’s reactions went far beyond any of the extreme but stylized emotions sanctioned in their songs, and the poem he wrote a few days later, just before the catastrophe struck him, was so excessive that even after the passage of centuries it has the ability to cause shock or, in the less sensitive, derision. But it was a real song, stripped of all mannerism and conceit, pouring out, however ineptly and inaccurately, something of what was within him.

As for Rebecca, she, too, felt winded by the intensity of his gaze and the surfeit of emotions that he caused deep within her. The way he dissipated her anxiety, the gentleness of his touch, and the reassurance of his presence stirred her in a fashion that was as irresistible as it was unwelcome. She had not spent much of her youth listening to songs of love and the forgiveness that awaits those who follow love’s dictates. Rather, her sense of obligation and fear had deep roots and could not be torn out so easily.

She pulled back—gently, though, and with no anger, encouraging him even as she snapped the strong link that so briefly bound them together.

“You are welcome, for your kindness and your news,” she said, and she could not disguise the tremor in her voice, nor its cause. “My thanks. Please sit by the fire and dry yourself.”

“It is good of you to think of my comfort.”

“You are dripping on my floor.”

They looked at each other once more, and then both began to laugh without restraint. Every few moments one tried to stop, then looked at the other and erupted again. Olivier knew that he should take her in his arms then and there, and she knew he should do so, but the rules of life prevented him. The fact that he did not, that there was an absence where there should have been movement, made the stillness even more potent, lasting until both, finally, managed to wipe their eyes and stop.

Both knew full well what would happen sooner or later; the inevitable, fate, God’s will—none of these can be denied or avoided or even postponed for long. But Rebecca tried her best, becoming the guardian of household purity in her master’s honor even though he was absent. But the times were as extreme as their emotions, otherwise she would not have dreamed of allowing him to stay; would not have allowed him to eat with her, and would not have allowed him to help collect her master’s papers—not that he was much help as he could not read the writing on most of them. Olivier noted that she, too, had trouble; indeed that she could barely read.

“I have heard it said that Jewish women are often well taught,” he mentioned.

She hesitated for a moment and looked at him carefully. “Indeed,” she said. “Some are. But all the education in the world would not help with handwriting like this.”

She put down the papers. “I cannot do this now,” she said, “not while I cannot see properly.” They had a few good wax candles in the house, jealously saved for high days, and she had recklessly gotten two from the kitchen and lit them, only to find that the yellow sputtering light they gave off was little better than darkness. Gersonides’s handwriting was as illegible in Greek and Latin as it was in Hebrew, so bad, indeed, that only he could even tell which alphabet his terrible scrawl was using. To make out in the darkness which manuscript was which was almost impossible.

“Come and sit by the fire,” she said. “I will get some food while you warm yourself, and then you can tell me news.”

“I thought you did not encourage Christians to eat in your houses? Or am I wrong?”

“We will not eat in yours, because your food is unclean. You may eat as much of ours as you wish. It is just that we do not like Christians in our houses. In fact, we do not like Christians, on the whole. But you may sit down. Unless you are uncomfortable being in a Jew’s house.”

“I am not at all uncomfortable,” he said. “The fire is as warm as a Christian fire, the roof as strong, and the food will be welcome whether it is clean or unclean. I am merely confused, that is all. You are serving me with food, even though it is Friday and darkness has fallen.”

“Rules can be broken under necessity.”

“A Jewess who can barely read, who serves me with food and lights me candles and brings me wood for the fire on a Sabbath?” He smiled softly.

She sucked in her breath for a moment and looked at him in the firelight, but saw no anger in his eyes and heard no criticism in his voice.

“Why do you pretend to be a Jew?” he asked, eventually.

She hung her head. “Because I am even more unfortunate than one,” she replied. “Because it is only among them that I have found safety.”

He looked at her curiously. He could think of almost nothing more unfortunate than that.

She looked at him seriously. “My parents died when I was fifteen, and I went wandering; there was no one who would take me in, not to give me safety. I traveled around France but found no help, then crossed into Provence. I came to Avignon but that frightened me; I could find no one who wouldn’t question me. Eventually I came here; the old man found me and said he needed a servant. He also wanted someone who was not Jewish to look after him on the Sabbath as well. But it is illegal for a Jew to employ a Christian. So for the outside world I pretended to be a Jew. He got his servant, I got my protection.”

“And you like this life?”

“I love him. He has been as kind and as good to me as any father. He never criticizes, never hectors me, and would die rather than betray his trust to me. What more could I want?”

“You are one of those heretics, aren’t you?”

She nodded. “If you wish.”

“I didn’t know there were any of you left.”

“More than you think. A hundred years ago, the church murdered as many as they could find, but they did not find all. We learned discretion, and learned to hide ourselves. Now, if we are discovered we are almost safe, because we do not exist anymore, and the churchmen cannot admit they left the job undone. My parents were hanged for theft, which they did not commit, not for their beliefs, which they openly admitted.”

“I heard a phrase recently. It begins ‘The water of life ...’ ” Olivier said, and looked at her expectantly.

“Yes?”

“What does it mean?”

“It means that we are all part of the divine, and that our desire is to return to the ocean from whence we came. We must purify ourselves on earth, and put aside our taste for material things, for the world is our prison, even though we don’t realize it. We are in hell now; but we can escape it.”

“And if we don’t?”

“Then we are reborn, and must live again. This interests you?”

“I read it in an old manuscript. And heard it on the road when I was traveling.”

The genealogy of ideas did not interest her, the similarities between Neoplatonic thought and her beliefs prompted her to no amazement or questioning. She nodded merely and fell silent.

“And us?” he asked after a while. “Is it evil what I feel for you? How can it be?”

“The flesh is the creation of evil. But the love is God’s touch; it is our wish to become complete. It is our memory of God, and our sense of what we might become.”

“Do you believe all this?” he asked suddenly.

“Do you believe that God took on material form and washed away the sins that his own wishes imposed on us in the first place? That our bones will come together out of the earth when a trumpet blows? That Heaven is to be locked into our bodies for all eternity?”

“I do,” replied Olivier stoutly.

She shrugged. “Then we would say you are still in the darkness, that you understand nothing of yourself or creation. That when you do good, you cannot know it, and when you do evil you cannot stop it. You are ready for nothing, and will get what you wish, which is to stay in your prison.”

“And you?”

“I know when I do evil. I think that makes me worse than you.”

“What do you mean?”

She thought carefully. “When they came for my parents I was outside, picking berries. I heard what was going on, but did nothing. I hid, and watched them being taken away. Then I ran, and kept running. I never came to them in their prison, never brought them food. I abandoned them and left them to die knowing their daughter’s faith was so feeble she would not admit who she was or what she was. And I am still hiding and pretending.”

“Being burned alive is virtuous? What would it achieve?”

“You don’t understand. I have condemned myself to spend the rest of my life in hatred, for those who did this to my mother and father. I cannot escape it. I wished to live quietly until I died, and could at least hope that death would come soon. But then you came along, and made me want to live. Do you see?”

Olivier shook his head in bewilderment. He didn’t see at all. She stood up abruptly, took one of the candles, blew out the other, and walked away from the fire out into the small room with thick stone walls where food was kept cool. The house was small; one room downstairs and another upstairs, serving all the purposes they needed as bedroom, study, with a place to eat and sit and read and pray. There had once been a great crush, when Gersonides’s wife was alive and all his children were there, but now it was almost empty. It was warm, though, and the food was wholesome and plain. Olivier ate it eagerly and in silence. Neither was able to talk.

When he had finished, she finally asked, “What news is there of the plague? People have begun to sicken here. Some have died already. How long will it last?”

“That is for your master to discover, I think,” Olivier said. “But if the stories are true, then it is only just beginning. I heard someone say yesterday that in Marseille there is scarcely a man left alive. The same stories come from other places as well. Some people think it will be the end of the world. The second coming.”

“Or perhaps the first. Is no one safe?”

“No. Everyone dies. Young and old, rich and poor.” He stared briefly into the fire. “You and me. And at any time. In half an hour we might sicken. Or next week, or next month. There is nothing we can do.”

“Except pray.”

“We are abandoned. There is a tale that in Nice a priest went to his church to pray for deliverance for the town, and many people came out of their houses to go with him. No one had yet died there, but when the priest turned his back on the congregation and raised the host, he uttered a groan and fell down, and black pus began to run from his mouth. Half an hour later he was dead, and the congregation left him there, lying in front of the altar. Within five days they were all dead as well, every single one of them. There is no help in prayer; it merely seems to make God the more angry. That is why I am here. Your master needs his papers if he is to discover anything of use.”

She smiled wanly. “In that case we must sleep. Your cloak will soon be dry, and you may sleep by the fire. If you wish you can get some more logs to keep it blazing all night.”

She stood; he stood as well and came close once more to reaching out for her, but something in her eyes told him it would not be welcome yet. Then she took the candle and went up the rickety stairs to the bedchamber, where Olivier could see the faint light and shadow playing through the gaps in the floorboards. He heard also her say her prayers, a strange sound, almost music but not quite, so alien to his ears that he almost shivered. He crossed himself and prayed as well, then wrapped himself up in his cloak—still wet despite having spent so much time in front of the fire—and lay down to watch the flames in the grate. She came down to him half an hour later; when they were finished, she cried herself to sleep in his arms. Olivier did not know the cause, but as he comforted her he grew certain it was not because of him.

CARDINAL CECCANI DIED in Italy in 1352, some rumors suggested by poison, and was buried in Naples. A hasty, careless internment befitting a man who had—no one knew why—fallen utterly from favor. He was placed in a vacant grave in the cathedral of Naples, which was then covered with a slab of marble. His name was eventually carved on it. That was all; unlike other more fortunate cardinals, he had no grand tomb with a carved representation of his appearance in life. The only reminder of what he looked like came from the painting by Luca Pisano, high up on the wall by the entrance to the cathedral.

But thanks to the Italian’s skill, his face remains, and is known. No such fortune attended either Manlius Hippomanes or Sophia, or Olivier or Rebecca. Their faces exist still, but only Julien ever half suspected who they were. Many times he had thought of what they might look like, and imagined Manlius to be like his prose: stiff, formal, somewhat severe yet with a hint of his wit about him—in the eyes, or the mouth, perhaps. He dressed him in his mind in traditional Roman clothes, even though by his day no one had worn the toga with any regularity for nearly three hundred years. He was influenced, perhaps, by the fanciful imaginings of André Thevet, cosmographer to the king of France, who published a set of idealized engravings of great Frenchmen and Gauls in 1584. Certainly, he tended to imagine a face that fitted in with his supposed character.

Ceccani’s portrait was a perfect reminder of the foolishness of the mind, for what Pisano painted bore no relation whatever to what Julien knew of his character. There he stands, half obliterated by peeling paint, wearing a huge hat that makes his head seem childlike and innocent as he contemplates the Virgin and her child. The shoulders are rounded, almost with a stoop, the gorgeous robes he wears look as though they are suffocating; perhaps Pisano caught something of the way high office and great power bore down on him. Only in his eyes is there a sign of calculation, or of cunning. That, of course, might have been a trick of the light. But why should people appear like their character? Who in Julien’s knowledge did? And whose character was fixed in any case? Did Julia look as she was, for example? And if they did, then Marcel Laplace should have had an entirely different face, not the chubby, childlike, innocent one he in fact possessed.

It was Bernard who pointed this out to him. A strange thing to discuss at that moment, perhaps, but then it was a strange meeting, organized hurriedly and in shock after Julien met him one Friday morning in February 1943, two months after the Germans had invaded the south and extinguished the pretense that France still existed in anything but name and memory.

It was just outside the café where he often had lunch; he came out, nodded to the owner, crossed the rue de la République, and began to walk back to his office; and as he strolled along trying to remember the last time he had tasted meat that was truly worth eating, a man came up, slipped his arm through his, and said quietly, “Good afternoon, my friend. I trust you ate well? Keep walking. Don’t slow down, and please don’t look surprised.”

So he did as instructed; it never occurred to him to do otherwise. “I want to talk to you,” Bernard said as he guided him down a narrow, empty alleyway. “Tomorrow would be best. Where do you suggest?”

And Julien had suggested the cathedral. High above the esplanade, next to the papal palace, dominated by a gigantic gilt Virgin, it was out of the way, rarely visited these days for there were few casual voyagers anymore, and it was too isolated to attract any but the determined worshiper. It was always dark and ill lit, offering a refuge for those who wished to sit without being noticed. Bernard nodded and slipped away; Julien kept on walking. It took him under a minute longer than usual to get back to his office.

It never occurred to him either not to keep the appointment; he went there exactly on time, stood on the forecourt overlooking the huge and deserted place and across to the river, then went inside to walk around as he waited. He ended up by the entranceway, staring up in thought at Cardinal Ceccani’s face, paying homage to the one power indisputably greater than his own.

Bernard was late. Bernard was always late, one of those who could never understand the irritation such a habit could produce in others. He wandered in fifteen minutes after the appointed time, walking with a strolling gait that suggested a man without a care in the world. He peered up at Cardinal Ceccani.

“Not a man to be trusted,” he said. “Who is he?”

“The patron of Olivier de Noyen,” Julien replied impatiently. “Bernard, what are you doing here? Did you change your mind?”

“Not exactly. You like de Noyen, don’t you? Why is that?”

“Bernard . . .”

“Tell me. You made me read him once. I found him a dreadful bore. Hysterical, out of control.”

“I am finding things out about him. He is more interesting than you think.”

He grunted. “Good to see the war is making you concentrate on the important things in life, then. Anyway, to answer your question, I didn’t change my mind. I went to England, and now I’m back, to be part of the Resistance. My name is not Bernard Marchand, you understand. Shall we walk? Will you hear my confession?”

So they walked down the cathedral until they found a side chapel neglected by the faithful with no candles burning, only a small baroque altar to Saint Agatha, and a few pews. Bernard led the way in, and half-closed the iron grill to discourage any sudden outburst of devotion, and they sat down in the gloom of the dim light filtering through the dirty stained glass.

“To resist in what way?” Julien asked.

Bernard said nothing; instead he stared up at the painting of the saint and cocked his head to one side.

“Five weeks ago, I hear, in Tours, a German soldier was shot by people calling themselves resisters,” Julien commented to fill the silence. “Fifteen people were taken hostage. Six were executed. Two weeks ago, just outside Avignon, more resisters wanted to blow up a member of the Milice. They killed four other people in the blast. Is that the sort of resistance you have in mind, Bernard?”

“It’s a war, Julien.”

“Not for us, it isn’t. We are not fighting. The Geneva Convention, remember? Noncombatants sit tight. Leave the fighting to soldiers. Do that and we are safe; we have the law on our side.”

“And the Germans are great respecters of that, I know,” Bernard said quietly.

“It has limited them a little. Break it, have civilians take up arms, and there will be no restraints on them at all. Our job is to watch history take its course, and survive it. Or people will die pointlessly. Does that not bother you?”

“It makes the Germans watch their backs. It makes them realize there are French people who will fight. It builds morale among the Resistance. It is not pointless.”

“The Germans take only part of the blame, you know. Your heroic fighters are not winning so many hearts.”

He snorted. “I don’t care about people’s hearts. They’ll celebrate in the streets soon enough when the Germans are beaten. What is important is that we take a part in that defeat. Nothing more. Otherwise we will either have anarchy when the war is over, or a settlement dictated by the Allies. This is not a time when responsibility matters. Responsibility means not doing anything.”

“Like me, you mean?”

“Dear me, no. You have chosen your side. All those articles, those speeches, your job. We know all about that. What do you think you’re doing, Julien? I know you, or at least I thought I did. I knew you weren’t a raving communist, of course, but what are you doing working for Vichy? For that moron Marcel, of all people. And now for the Germans?”

“I’m not working for the Germans,” he answered stiffly. “I was asked by Marcel to write some things for the newspapers. Give talks, that is all. And then I was asked to be in charge of paper allocation. Which means I decide who gets published, which journals and magazines survive, and which close down because they have no paper to print on. Do you know how hard I have to work to keep some papers going? How often I turn a blind eye to things?”

“But how often do you not turn a blind eye? How often do you say no?”

“Sometimes. But not as often as those who would do my job with more zeal.”

Bernard remained silent, his point made. He found it all so easy.

“Look, Bernard, while the Germans are here life must go on. Not as we would want, not as it was, but it must continue. Not everybody can scuttle off to London and take a high moral tone. And by living with them, cooperating, we can change them, humanize them. Civilize them.”

“I see.”

Bernard stood up, finding the sanctity of the chapel overpowering. He led the way out into the nave, then headed for the fresh air outside. There he stood, all disguise and caution thrown to the winds. It had always been his great weakness, that impatience, Julien thought. It will kill him one day.

“You are being unusually vain, if I may say so,” Bernard said quietly. “You, on your own, are civilizing the Germans and the reptiles they have brought to power here. Are you sure it goes only one way? What if they corrupt you, rather than you civilizing them? Are you ready to risk that possibility? Two years ago, would you have denied anybody the right to publish their magazines, print their books? Even thought of it? And now you do it every day and say you are doing it to protect civilization. And they have lost; you know it as well as I do. They lost the moment they attacked Russia and declared war on the Americans. It is only a matter of time now.”

“And when they are defeated,” Julien replied, “it won’t be because of your efforts. It will be because of the English and Russian and American armies. An act of sabotage here or there will make no difference. It will just make things worse for those who live here. And you will be caught and shot.”

He nodded. “I know. Someone was sent here before me. We think he survived six weeks before he was captured. He accomplished nothing, as you say.”

“So now you come. Why?”

He smiled. “Because I was ordered to. Because these people are in my country and they shouldn’t be, and because the government has been stolen by mediocre gangsters. Someone has to fight them; you’re not going to.”

“Very noble, but I don’t believe you. When did you ever do something because it was right? You do things because you get pleasure out of them.”

“At some stage, probably within three months, I shall be captured, possibly tortured, certainly shot. You think the prospect gives me pleasure?”

“Yes.”

Bernard paused, then laughed. “You’re right, of course. Partly, anyway. It’s the challenge of survival, of doing something. Do you know, I intend to beat the odds? I intend to be there to watch the Americans or whoever march in. And when that’s done, there will be accounts to settle, you know.”

“Is that a threat?”

“No. It’s a fact. If I’m lucky, I’ll be able to moderate the rage of those less forgiving than I am.”

“Another threat?”

“A warning, this time.”

“You’ll be doing the same as I am now, then.”

“In a sense. But I shall be on the winning side. And, I might add, on the right one.”

They were walking down the steps and across the place and out toward the walls, then on again down to the river’s edge.

“How is little Marcel?”

“Older. More lined. More short-tempered.”

“As are we all. Are you still on good terms with him? Still friends?”

“Yes. I think so.”

“Sooner or later,” he said, “I will need to sound him out. He may be contemptible, but he is not stupid, and he is supposed to control what administration is left around here. An empty title, to be sure, but better than nothing. I would like you to be the conduit between us.”

“Your messenger boy?”

Bernard considered this. “Basically, yes. I trust you, he trusts you. Neither of us trusts each other. He might listen to you even if he refuses to listen to me.”

“Are you serious?”

“I thought it would appeal to you. You have always tried to keep the peace between us; now you can do it on a grand scale. If I can reach some sort of understanding with him, then there will be a greater chance of holding things together when the Germans withdraw.”

“If.”

“When. It may take three years, it may take ten, but sooner or later they will be destroyed. My task is to make sure we do not destroy ourselves in the process. So at long last Marcel and I will have a common purpose. I would prefer to have him shot; and he would no doubt be happy to do the same to me. But we will need each other, and eventually he will realize it. I want him to know what to do when he does come to that conclusion.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes,” he said. “Nothing else. Well . . .”

“What?”

“I’m working on my cover story, something which means I can travel often, and without attracting notice. I cannot have a job, as that would mean too many people being involved and having to conceal my journeys. I have to be my own employer, doing something which will account for my income at the same time. So, my dear, I’m going to be an art dealer.”

He bowed solemnly. It was so unexpected, said with such panache, that Julien burst out laughing in surprise. “You?” he said incredulously. “An art dealer? Never say this war doesn’t have its comic side, then.”

Bernard grinned back. “I know. It’s not something which will come naturally. But apart from my incapacity, it’s a perfect occupation, although I have to do it properly to be convincing. I need artists to provide me with pictures, put on a little exhibition or two, invite people, make a show. I also need the names and addresses of painters scattered throughout Provence so I can always say I am visiting them when I am on my travels. They will be in no danger. To them I really will be Paul Masson, dealer in art, struggling to make a living in times of trouble. When I am arrested and they discover who I am they will be as surprised as anybody. Will you help? I’ll need names of painters, that sort of thing. Anything will do. Good, bad, or indifferent. It makes no difference.”

“I’ll give you some names. And I’ll ask Julia. She’ll know some others.”

“She’s still here?”

Julien nodded. “She’s safe.”

“No, she’s not. She’s not safe at all. There are rumors coming through to London about what the Germans are doing.”

“What rumors?”

“That they are killing as many Jews as they can. I don’t know whether it’s true, and I imagine it must be exaggerated, but certainly if she is caught she’ll be sent to a camp in the east.”

“I’ve tried. But it’s not so easy, you know. You couldn’t help, could you? Get her out?”

He shook his head. “I’ve my own people to look after.”

Julien shrugged. “She probably wouldn’t go anyway now. She’s convinced herself she’s safe. She’s in the Italian zone, after all, and the papers she made herself are better than the real ones.”

“Made her own papers? How?”

“She forged them. She is remarkably good at it.”

Bernard thought about that for a moment. “So in theory she could produce dozens of them?”

“Why do you ask?”

He paused, and looked carefully at Julien. “A deal. If she will make false identity papers for, say, a couple of dozen people, then I will get her out of the country when they’re delivered.”

“That’s friendship, is it?”

“It is these days.”

“I’ll ask.” Julien turned on his heel and walked away.

THE ARRIVAL AT the barbarian court was well prepared. Three days before the main part of the delegation arrived, Manlius sent ahead couriers to alert King Gundobad and ensure a dignified reception. A lengthy message and a portion of the gifts—the books and the manuscripts pillaged mainly from Manlius’s own library—went as well, to emphasize that this was no mere favor seeker who was arriving. They halted for the night a few hours away, set up camp, and sent more messengers, so the king’s emissaries could come out to prepare the final arrival, check who was coming and the magnitude of the delegation, and make all the final arrangements so that no one was unnecessarily offended in the early stages.

Manlius did not receive the king’s messengers when they arrived at his camp, preferring to hold his own appearance in reserve to create a greater effect. He also kept himself out of the initial encounters by saying he was at prayer; all around his tent, guards ensured silence, and a reverent hush was maintained. The bishop was communing with God, a useful reminder of his position and a hint that the king would be negotiating with the supernatural as well as the earthly. He continued to use this technique in years to come, leaving negotiations that were locked in obduracy as if to pray, and finding when he returned—often many hours, and in one case two days, later—that the combination of his godliness and their being imprisoned in a room for so long had resolved the conflicts in his favor.

After all the preparations were made, he approached the king’s court. Manlius changed into a simple white tunic and cloak, unadorned with any jewelry save for his ring, and mounted the donkey. The carefully considered artlessness, the lack of magnificence as he plodded in—being careful to be some way ahead of the rest of his party, to suggest he came alone, needing no help but God’s, mindless of the things of this world—created a wonderful effect on the Burgundians, by now used to delegations from all over Gaul striving for grandeur and instead appearing pathetic.

The king responded in kind; this had been arranged in advance. He stood with half a dozen courtiers, and came forward to help Manlius off the donkey himself in a gesture of respect, then kissed the ring on Manlius’s outstretched hand. A murmur of approval went up from Manlius’s party, all of whom could be relied on to spread details of the scene around the province on their return.

The king was respectful of the church; he was humble before God, even more, he gave his support to the offices of Rome. All this from a schismatic Arian, all this in stark contrast to Euric of the Visigoths, who humiliated the ministers of the church, all this to indicate the degree to which he had absorbed civilization during his years as a hostage in Italy.

Half the work was done in this single gesture, indeed Gundobad’s standing was the higher because he was a heretic and was still so respectful. The other half, perhaps, had already been done. It may be surmised that chance was an absent deity at the meeting; that the warm welcome, the deference, and even the conclusion of the meeting had been hammered out in the shade, through countless letters of varying precision, and innumerable meetings between the envoys of Manlius and the representatives of the king.

It was little more than theater that the multitude witnessed that bright morning—the encounter canceled from the previous day, supposedly because of a slight indisposition on Manlius’s part but in fact because the weather was dull and overcast, a bad omen for the superstitious, an altogether too gloomy atmosphere for the more practical, not conducive to optimism. The clear skies, the warm sunshine that enveloped the actual encounter instead was a sign of the light and safety to come, a new morning, the dawn of tranquillity after the storms and threats of the all too recent past.

Then the king and Manlius went into the basilica, which had been roughly converted into the royal palace, its sound roof the main reason for its choice, and retired to a suite of rooms in the back, once part of the law courts, for the private discussion. Again a symbol; Manlius was received as an equal, not as a supplicant; the books and manuscripts, the small statues and the holy relics he presented were to mark a man of justice and cultivation, not a bribe to assuage the violence of the barbarian. Once more, the fine details were noted with approval. The diplomatic work was already completed; Manlius’s battle for the hearts and minds of his flock was under way. Manlius even allowed himself a small burst of confidence; what he desired was within reach. He, not Felix, would conjure up the armies to march to Clermont and block Euric’s designs.

SHE TOLD JULIA about his encounter with Bernard when he again made his pilgrimage to the little house in Roaix, and they talked about the offer.

“In fact, I’d be quite prepared to do a little light forging in any case,” she said. “If he can get me out of the country, then all the better.”

“You’re prepared to go?”

“Probably. Although I’m not sure it might not draw more attention to myself, make it more likely that I get noticed. You look doubtful.”

“It’s an extra risk,” he said simply. “That’s all.”

“And it would be doing something. With the added bonus of getting out of here to somewhere truly safe. Will he keep his word about it?”

Julien thought. “I’ve never known him not to. On the other hand, I do know I’ve never put myself in the position of having to rely on him for anything important. And this is important.”

“I would like to do it, though. There are times when merely surviving is not enough.”

“There are times when merely surviving is a major achievement,” he said.

“Two different outlooks on life, there,” she commented ironically. “But I will do it, in any case. Depending on what he wants, of course. How do we get hold of him?”

“Through a postman in Carpentras, apparently. He always had a sense of melodrama, I’m afraid. That is how I am meant to get a message to him about Marcel, if he ever decides he wants to discuss things.”

“And this will be your contribution, will it? A go-between?”

He nodded. “When needed. Unless those two are brought together, they—or rather the people they represent—will fight each other. Marcel’s police, Bernard’s resisters. The Germans will go, and civil war will result. Bernard needs Marcel to counter the communists, and Marcel needs Bernard.”

“Why?”

“Because otherwise someone will shoot him.”

And then he got on his bike once more and pedaled to Carpentras, leaving a message that Julia would prepare the plates and do the work; Bernard should supply the names and photographs, and also lay plans for getting her across the border into Switzerland or Spain. Then he went to see the préfet and talked to him.

Marcel gave a dismissive wave. “The Resistance?” he said with a sneer. “What do I think of them? What are they? Communists? Gaullists? Monarchists even, so I understand. Their ranks swelling every day with opportunists willing to risk the lives of others so they can pose as heroes when other people have won the war for them. They care about France and are willing to sacrifice French people in its name. But I do not pursue them anymore, if that’s what you’re asking me. The Germans have occupied us, they can do it. I am happy to leave it to them. Why do you ask?”

“I was wondering if it might be a good idea to talk to them.”

“Talk to them? To a bunch of criminals? You must be joking.”

“One day it might be wise.”

“One day it might be. I am not a politician, nor a turncoat, Julien.”

“No. You are an administrator. And it is your job to see that good governance continues. That’s what you told me in 1940. You have the same task now, surely.”

“Why do you ask all this, Julien?”

Julien hesitated. “Because I have been given a message to pass on to you. That when you wish to talk, or make any sort of contact, then there will be people ready to listen.”

Marcel gazed at him. “I could have you arrested merely for saying that, you know.”

“I know. But it would not serve any purpose. I am not in the Resistance, Marcel. You know me well enough for that, I think. My opinion of these people is not so very different from your own. But I was given this message—which I did not seek out—and I promised to pass it on. Now I have done so. And if ever you want a message passed back, then let me know, and I will discharge that duty as well. For friendship’s sake.”

“For friendship’s sake . . .” Marcel said thoughtfully. “I see. Now, whose friend are you, Julien?”

He shrugged. “That is all I will do. I did not volunteer, but you can trust me.”

“I see.”

Marcel changed the subject. They never spoke of it again. Not in those terms, at least.

IN MANY WAYS, Manlius’s task was simple; settling the price was the only complex part. He wanted Gundobad to move into Provence; Gundobad was perfectly happy to do so, up to a point. The price was high; higher even than Manlius had dreamed: He had imagined that the king would ask to assume all the rights, titles, and revenues of a Roman governor. It would preserve the form, if not the reality of romanitas, and give Manlius enough space to persuade his fellow landowners to accept the offer. They would get, after all, a firm hand capable of ending the constant bleeding away of the population, able to put down—with whatever savagery was necessary—the incursions of the landless.

The annexation, of course, had to be dressed up and presented properly in the hearing of the court and for the sake of Manlius’s entourage, and it is a pity that the formal speeches of both sides—given in the basilica, after the private negotiations had taken place—did not survive in identifiable form. Faint echoes only survived, fragments in the Burgundian code, in Fortunatus and in Gregory.

“Excellency, son of Rome, we are here to demand that you live up to your responsibilities as her trusted friend. You know how Rome’s enemies press her from within and without; you know how her armies have been sent off to fight her enemies overseas, and you know how men of ill will seek to exploit certain circumstances for their own ends. Serfs run away, the grass grows in field and streets, bandits roam the roads, and all because they think that the province from which I come is weak and defenseless. All because, I should say, you do not see your duty, your obligations clearly. Why was it that Rome took you to her bosom for so many years, educated you, covered you in honors and dignities? Was it so you could live out your life amongst your own people alone, remembering the glories you have seen? Or did she have a purpose in her generosity? Did she, the all-seeing, know even then that when that little boy of six arrived that he would one day rise to great importance and power, take up his God-given role as a high official in the empire?

“It is time, Excellency, for you to accept the responsibilities for which you were so carefully trained. Time for you to take on the position of magistrate and commander of Gaul. The people in the streets, even, begin to laugh and doubt at your idleness, wonder whether you do not care for Rome, think that perhaps foolish voices have dissuaded you from your clear duty. You must still those doubters, accept the offices which are clearly yours, and take on the burdens for which you will receive only gratitude.”

There was much more besides, flowery phrases and ornate compliments carefully dressed up as threats and warnings. Meanings within meanings that only the long practiced could devise and understand. In speaking thus, Manlius addressed the king as a fellow citizen; the proposed annexation was to be dressed up in Roman clothes still. And the king replied in kind:

“Good Bishop, I stand here with tears of remorse in my eyes as I hear your justifiable reproaches. My idleness cannot be excused, except by a determination to give recompense through my devotion to duty henceforth. You have shamed me into seeing my negligence, and with God’s help, I will take up the burdens of office you so rightly say must be mine alone. I had wished someone else would assume these onerous tasks, for which I am scarcely fitted, but I see now there can be no escape. I will assume the offices both civil and military which are currently empty. I will restore order within and without the land, return it to prosperity and a respect for the laws which have been in place for generations. I will defend the church, and guard its rights. You were right to come here, and I thank you for your cruelty. I criticize you only for your delay.”

The king’s court applauded; more important, Manlius’s entourage noted all the points he made. Maintaining Roman law rather than imposing barbarian custom; reviving old offices; defending the province against the much harsher Euric; respecting the rights of the church; and, most important, protecting property and taking a firm line on runaway serfs. If he was as good as he promised, it was agreed, then Manlius had pulled off a master stroke.

The real discussions took place that evening, with the king and the bishop alone. And it was at this moment that Manlius was confronted with the choice that he had hoped to avoid, for he was too intelligent a man not to realize that it was a possibility. All his skills, all his wisdom were brought to bear, probing the king, finding out his strengths and weaknesses, seeing how far he could be controlled and where he must be left alone.

Gundobad did not want to rule in the name of Rome. Did not want to continue with the pretense of being a servant of something that was a mere phantom in the mind. His sense of pride, of his own importance, matched his full awareness of Manlius’s need. He had made the calculations carefully: He would lose some standing amongst the landowners, but would gain mightily amongst his own people and his personal reputation would rise hugely. He would rule as king of the Burgundians, beholden to no one, acknowledging no one greater than himself.

Manlius then had the choice: He could have stability, safety, the freedom to live in peace without Rome. Or he could have a short while—perhaps only months—to be a Roman still.

He accepted Gundobad’s demand, had decided to do so well in advance of the need to do so. To sacrifice a name was a small thing. The deal was as good as any man could achieve and better than most could dream of. Gundobad was no fool and was endowed with more of the human virtues than many an emperor. He was also aware that, for all the acting, Manlius had few other options. He admired the bishop for the consummate skill by which he made best use of his resources; realized he would make a fine and useful ally, was impressed by the open-eyed way in which he grasped at an outcome that would have been anathema to most of his contemporaries, but still had no intention of going beyond the bounds of common sense.

And he would not, he said almost as an afterthought, move much farther south than Vaison itself. The rest of the province would have to fend for itself. Nor would he march to relieve Clermont.

By this stage, all artifice had been laid aside; windy words and compliments were abandoned. Rather two men of power were sounding each other out, each grappling with the will of the other, wishing to avoid failure.

“Clermont is vital; it must be saved,” Manlius said icily. “Relieve it, block Euric there, and the entire region will greet you as a savior.”

The king nodded. “I realize this, My Lord Bishop. But I also know full well that Euric is not a man to challenge lightly. I could, as you say, relieve Clermont. At the moment this is no great problem. He has committed a fraction of his men to the siege. But what then? He commands incomparably greater resources than I do. In order to ensure success, I would have to send every man I have there. And that would leave much more open to him. Let me put it plainly: I can save Clermont for a while or I can save your territories permanently. Not both.”

“I was sent here to find a guardian for the whole of Provence. Am I to go back and say that I have saved my own part of it, and am abandoning the rest to Euric?”

“I am afraid that is the choice you must make.”

The meeting ended there; Manlius needed to think. For the first time he wished he could pray as well. Later, as he lay on the bed in the accommodation the king had provided, he was scornful of his hesitation. Prayer, indeed. Even he, it seemed, was being corrupted by the weakness of the Christians. This was not a matter for God; this was a matter for himself. This was why he existed, to take decisions, to make choices.

It is hard to describe his mood as he lay there for so many hours. If not prayer, it was a form of contemplation, although of a fiercely active variety. He did not glory in his power to affect the destiny of so many people, that he held their fate in his hands, that his decision would mean so much. Nor did he fret about what others would think of him, wonder whether he would be considered a traitor if he did this, or weak if he did that. He considered what would be the best decision, and as he understood all too well, the choice was simple. Either part of Provence would be saved, consigned to the hands of a man who, although barbarian, had been educated at Rome, was tolerant of its religion, would respect its laws and enforce them justly, or none of it would be.

So he formulated the problem, simplifying his options by not considering alternatives. He could have raced back, thrown his all behind Felix, and taken the risk. His friend’s military skills were formidable; if he stripped all his estates and handed over every man to him, then perhaps he could win a victory that would reverberate through the world.

But that would mean exposing his own lands to depredation; it would mean there would be no one to prevent his labor abandoning their tasks and walking away. It would mean admitting the error of his own strategy, and undermining his own authority, which was desperately needed to maintain order. All for a possibility. Perhaps Felix could win a victory that had eluded emperors for half a century. But it was more likely he would fail, and achieve nothing but to bring the wrath of King Euric down on the whole region. He had said that, if all else failed, he would stand by his friend and they would die together. He had meant it. But all else had not yet failed. The choice was not so stark.

HE RETURNED to Gundobad the next morning and accepted the terms. “Can you guarantee there will be no opposition to my troops? I will not weaken myself in civil disturbance or opposition.”

“No. But if you move quickly there will not be much. You must arrive with sufficient troops within a month. Otherwise opposition may coalesce.”

“And who might be the leader of it?”

Manlius thought for a moment, staring into the dead, empty grate. “A man called Felix,” he said eventually. “He is wedded to the Roman solution, and is liable to oppose this arrangement. He is popular, and holds large properties. He could mobilize a small army if you give him enough time.”

“We had better not do so, then,” said the king with a smile. “And it would be as well to make sure that he presents no danger afterwards either.”

“Handled properly he would be a valuable ally, and a good advisor. You have virtues enough to win his support, in time.”

Gundobad grunted. “I will be the judge of that,” he said. “And I will not take risks for your sake. Euric will take Clermont and will move east, as you say, and I must be impregnable by the time he does. I cannot afford to be distracted by internal opposition. The matter must be solved before I move, otherwise you will get no help from me.”

Manlius said no more. He left the king’s presence and went back to his quarters to reflect some more. He left for home the following morning.

IT WAS ONE of the little ironies that, for many months, the only real outcome of the encounter in the cathedral was that Julia once more began to sell her work. It was a bizarre arrangement, but Bernard needed pictures of all sorts to carry off the illusion of being a dealer, and she, stripped of her identity in all other respects, wished to have some existence in a world in which she was otherwise invisible. Besides, money was short, and the prospect of earning anything by selling her work was irresistible. Periodically, Julien would meet a go-between in Avignon, and would give him a bundle of paper—sketches, watercolors, and etchings, the chronicles of her life and her encounter with Saint Sophia. She even signed them in her own name, but carefully dated each one 1938, to give the impression they were coming from some long-stored stock of work. Inside the packages were some freshly made, newly aged identity cards of different varieties.

Julien was not at all happy about turning into a courier for the Resistance; all his arguments against their activities were unanswered. But if he had not delivered them, then either Julia would have done so or the opportunity to get her out of the country would have been lost. And every time he handed over his package, he also delivered a message: When will she leave the country? Are you nearly ready? Each time the same reply came back: Soon. With a list of more names to go on more false papers. Each time he suppressed the feeling that nothing would ever get done. Bernard was his friend.

The paintings and prints were Bernard’s passport, which he carried with him to show to soldiers, militia, and police who might stop him, wondering why he was in a particular place at a particular time. Look, he would say, I am taking these to a potential client. Times are hard, but even so some people remain interested in art. What he did on these peregrinations no one truly knew; his biographer, who published a book on him in 1958, failed to discover much about his activities. The book alluded to events of importance without ever managing to pin down much, and thus perpetuated the air of mystery that had always been his style. His role was shadowy, using the aura of London’s approval to impose himself on the disparate groups who would have as cheerfully killed each other as the Germans. Persuading them to work together, pursue a common policy, giving neither too much nor too little to all the factions that sprouted up. Ensuring that none became too big or powerful, a need that required him, on occasion, to sow dissent and mistrust. He was not liked but, despite the fact that he had nothing except his own personality and a fitful advance knowledge of gold and guns dropped by aircraft on dark nights, he was feared and respected, in his element.

He settled in Nîmes, where he was unknown, and rented a small shop, which he opened as an art gallery. He did the job properly, and even began to enjoy it. He assembled enough paintings to put on little exhibitions, and invited members of the German army to private views. He gave speeches of welcome at parties, talking about the ability of art to overcome differences in politics. Clichés about the contrast between arts of peace and war dropped from his lips. It was cheeky of him; the paintings were not of the sort to appeal to the military mind, but he found the reputation he acquired more than useful. In public he was considered at best an apolitical merchant, solely interested in making money. At worst he was detestable as a collaborator on the make, going out of his way to make the occupiers feel at home. In between these opinions lay the space he needed to get on with his work.

Sometimes, though, he even sold something. One afternoon, a captain from the intelligence bureau in Nîmes, a man from Hamburg, a linguist who had heard only ten days previously that his wife and two children, his father and mother, had been killed in a bombing raid, came into the gallery. He had not been able to do his work analyzing signals picked up from the constant chatter of radios to the south, uncoded, terse remarks that, sometimes, could be made to reveal a glint of gold. He no longer thought it mattered; he knew the war was lost and suspected, for the first time, that he didn’t care much.

He’d been wandering the streets for more than an hour by the time he passed by the rue de la République, and came into Bernard’s little gallery because he wanted a distraction from his own mind, constantly churning over the same memories and thoughts.

He spent nearly an hour staring at the etchings, thoroughly worrying Bernard, who had never been detained by any image for more than a minute. He thought initially the Gestapo was about to swoop down on him and knew there was nothing he could do about it: He was not so foolish that he kept a gun anywhere near him. Then he noticed the tears coming down the officer’s cheek, and took reassurance from the spark of light reflecting in the liquid as it ran through the stubble on his pallid face.

“Who are these by?” the officer asked eventually. “Who is he?”

“She,” he corrected. “An artist called Julia Bronsen.”

“They are magnificent.”

Bernard looked at them. Truth to tell, he had never really looked at them before, and saw nothing special now. But he knew his job. “Ah, yes. They are special, indeed.”

“I will buy them all. How much are they?”

Bernard gave an outrageous figure. The man looked disappointed, so Bernard lowered it, a little. He bought all eight.

“I would like to meet this woman,” he said as Bernard wrapped them up—in newspaper, it was all he had.

“Not possible,” Bernard said. “She lives a long way from here. Besides—”

“She would not want to meet me?”

“She is Jewish.”

The captain nodded. “Then at the least please convey to her my profound admiration for what she has achieved here.”

He bowed, with a little inclination of his head, and walked out of the shop. Julia was absurdly pleased when she heard the story.

THE ACCUSATIONS against Gersonides and his servant came just before the first soldier guarding the pope fell sick and died. Until then, all in the papal palace, its new but unfinished walls rapidly reinforced and barred to the world, had dared to believe that what could keep out men could keep out death itself. They had, after all, nothing else to put their faith in, and they could do little except hope and patrol the walls. The hope was misplaced, although the newness of the building—much of it not even complete or decorated—seems to have offered some protection; by the time the soldier fell, many thousands had already died in Avignon itself.

The charge was not leveled by Ceccani himself, of course; that would have been far too obvious. He merely indicated at the correct moment that he had believed the report the moment he had heard of it, and gained praise for his efficiency and vigilance. Rather, one of his palace creatures, a priest from a good family who hoped for advancement, leveled the charge, going to the palace seneschal. Again, the paper lay in the cardinal’s archive, and was read by Julien in Rome.

“I saw the Jewess pouring liquid from a phial into the well last night,” he said. “It is the well which provides water for His Holiness.”

It says much for the seneschal that, although a shiver of terror ran down his spine at the words, he still kept calm and tried to ensure that the correct procedure was followed. Even in such times, even for a Jew. He was not so much a good man, but he was a good soldier, and believed in order, correctly followed. This was fortunate, and for Cardinal de Deaux it was vital. Had the seneschal barked out orders then and there, the soldiers would have run to Gersonides’s chamber and killed him and Rebecca within minutes.

THE ARRESTS WERE the opportunity Ceccani had been praying for; almost daily he heard more of the way that morality and order were crumbling as men recoiled from what they saw all around them. License and lust spread their tentacles throughout the world, men turned from priests and the church and cursed God; unless they could be given some hope, then all authority would crumble.

He sought an audience with Clement, to try once more to make him realize the size of the disaster sweeping the world. Not the numbers dead, but the effect it was having on the living.

“Daily, I get more and more reports; I hear of men and women, complete strangers, coupling in the streets, in full view of passersby. Husbands and wives abandoned, even sold to others. I hear of children thrown into the streets to starve, of men killed for no reason, of priests insulted and spat upon, of churches spurned. All authority and all law is crumbling, Holiness, and rather than bring men back to God, making them see their sins and repent, the church is thrusting them further away. It is a matter of urgency that order be restored and that a lead be given. All they are crying out for is direction. And you must give it; you must stamp your authority on this situation now.”

The pope wiped his brow of the sweat that prickled down it; he must, Ceccani thought, have lost a third of his weight by sweating in the past few weeks, sitting up in his tower and roasting himself like that. He looked warily at his cardinal; he did not like him, suspected him of constant intrigue, but knew also of his intelligence and diligence. Cardinal Ceccani wanted power, and perhaps even wanted to succeed him, of that there was no doubt. But it was also true that few others so deserved the office, or had such an elevated concern for its defense.

“And what am I to do, Ceccani? Offer a cure? Bring back the dead? Hold up my hand and bid this plague be gone? Prayers are fruitless, intercession has achieved nothing.”

“You must give hope, and understanding. And above all you must move swiftly to counter those who are using this situation to undermine the church. The friars, the mendicants, these people calling themselves the flagellants. They offer scourging and penance and the people flock to them, abandoning the church as they go. And they offer an explanation, the only one: that God has sent this plague as a punishment for the evils of mankind and of his church, which has led men astray.”

“Do they, by God! We will see about that.”

“No, Holiness. You cannot defeat these people. If you move against them, then the people will hate you the more; they care for the sick and offer them hope; the church at the moment is doing neither. You must not attack them, you must place yourself at their head.”

Clement looked at him impassively. “Go on. Tell me what you have in mind.”

And Ceccani sketched out the way the church could let them loose against the Jews and destroy them in the same way that it had devoured the heretical Cathars, and thrown back the Muslims from Jerusalem. Give the people a purpose, an opportunity to destroy their enemies, those who wished them ill. He saw the temptation of glory dancing in Clement’s eyes, reflected in the firelight, and knew he was halfway to his goal.