The Nameless Day by Sara Douglass

“Would you not be happier, at home with your father and brother?”

“My father was poor, and could hardly feed both my elder brother and myself.

The friary took me in. There is nowhere else for me.”

To that Thomas did not immediately reply. One part of him wanted to comment that a man should only enter orders for reasons of piety, not for food, but then he remembered his own privileged upbringing, how easy his life had been, and he found he could not castigate Daniel.

“Why did you join?” asked Daniel, the question bursting out of him as if he had been bottling it up for months (which, in truth, he had). “You were a knight! And such a good one, I hear … I cannot imagine why you would want to give up such an adventurous life for orders.”

Thomas couldn’t imagine for the life of him where Daniel might have heard reports that Thomas had been a “such a good knight”—he could hardly believe Prior Bertrand had been entertaining the young novice with stories of his most troublesome friar’s youthful adventures.

“Military adventure is not always glory, Daniel. It is a hard thing to kill a man, and to watch your own comrades struck down. More than anything else it predisposes a man to consider his own mortality, and the life hereafter.” There, a pious and bland enough response, but for a moment faces flashed before Thomas: his old friends and comrades, and the closeness they had shared both on and off the battlefield.

Where were they now, those friends? Did they ever think of him?

“So warfare drove you to take orders?”

Thomas suddenly wished Daniel would leave it alone. “No,” he said, a little too shortly. “Not warfare alone.”

“I am sorry that I pried, Brother Thomas,” Daniel said, back to his stuttering, and Thomas saw that the boy had hunched up, almost as if he thought Thomas might strike him for his presumption.

He sighed. Daniel was at the age when he was full of questions. “A woman I loved died,” Thomas said. And her three children. “I felt responsible.” I had denied her when most she needed me.

“Oh,” said Daniel, now looking at Thomas with huge round eyes. “You loved a woman?”

Thomas nodded, reflecting that if anyone other than this artless youth had asked him about Alice then he would have reacted with fury.

“And she you?” Daniel said.

Thomas hesitated, but finally answered. “Aye.”

“Oh,” said Daniel again, and Thomas could see that he had struck a deep romantic chord in the boy. Dear God, if only the boy knew that love could be nothing but a cauldron of pain.

There was a long silence, and Thomas gave up all pretense of gardening. He could see that questions were tumbling over and over in Daniel’s head, and so he set his pots to one side, leaned back against the potting bench, folded his arms, and raised an eyebrow.

It was the best opening the youth was ever going to get, and, to his credit, he took it.

“What is it like to love a woman?” Daniel said, his cheeks now burning.

Ah, thought Thomas, what indeed…

“It depends on the woman,” he said.

Daniel likewise had set aside his pots, and was now staring at Thomas with such expectation that Thomas almost smiled. He could remember asking his uncle this same question when he was Daniel’s age, as also, in one magnificently courageous moment, the great Duke of Lancaster himself. His uncle, Baron Raby, had been embarrassed, and side-stepped the question, but Lancaster had smiled, and told Thomas what he had needed to know.

“There are some women,” Thomas continued, “who are so worthy that it is an honor to love them. Others who sell themselves for a few coins on street corners, and these women do not deserve love nor respect nor honor of any kind.”

Daniel nodded soberly, as if he was at lesson in the chapel. “And the woman you loved?”

Alice? What could he say to that? St. Michael had told him she was a sinner, but even so, Thomas found it difficult to so condemn her before this young boy. Both he and Alice had sinned.

“I am the wrong person to ask these questions, Daniel. I am no master in matters of love.”

“But…” Daniel said, his complexion now almost dusky with embarrassment. “But, what is it like …” he lowered his voice to a whisper, “to actually love a woman?”

“What is it like to lie with a woman?”

Daniel nodded, his eyes lowered.

“If she is worthy, and you love her, then it is a grace,” Thomas finally said. Unlike Lancaster, he didn’t feel like expanding on the detailed delights.

“And if she is not worthy, and you do not love her?”

“Then it becomes a bestial act with no true satisfaction.” From which I must he strong, as St. Michael has told me.

“Brother,” Daniel said, his voice lower than ever, “I must confess to carnal thoughts …”

“I am not the one to give such a confession to, Daniel,” Thomas said, adding more gently, “You are young. Do not judge yourself too harshly.”

You are young, and you have yet to learn the trap that is named love.

OUTSIDE THE friary, the Romans continued to rejoice in the presence of the pope.

Gregory showed no sign of wanting to remove the papal court and curia back to Avignon, and people again were able to attend papal mass within St. Peter’s Basilica.

Every Sunday and Holy Day citizens packed the great nave of the Basilica, their eyes shining with devotion, their hands clutching precious relics and charms. On ordinary days the same citizens packed the atrium of St. Peter’s, as they did the streets leading to the Basilica, selling badges and holy keepsakes to the pilgrims who flooded Rome. The presense of the pope not only sated the Romans’ deep piety, it also filled their purses. Gregory was in his mid-fifties, but appeared hale, and could be expected to live another decade or more. The Romans were ecstatic.

The papacy appeared to be once again safely ensconced in Rome, and many a Roman street worker, walker or sweeper could be seen making the occasional obscene gesture in the general direction of France. At night, the Roman people filled their taverns with triumphant talk about the French King John’s dilemma. When Gregory had removed himself and his retinue from Avignon, John had lost his influence over the most powerful institution in Europe. Rumor said John was rabid with fury, and plotted constantly to regain his influence over the papacy. Everyone in Rome was aware Gregory had “escaped” back to Rome at a critical juncture in John’s war with the English king, Edward III; the French king needed every diplomatic tool in his possession to raise the funds and manpower to repel Edward’s inevitable re-invasion of France.

The Roman mob didn’t give a whore’s tit about the French king’s plight—nor the English king’s, for that matter. They had their pope back, Rome was once more the heart of Christendom (with all the financial benefits that carried), and they damn well weren’t going to let any French prick steal their pope again.

Most of the French cardinals—and they were the vast majority within the College of Cardinals—were vastly irritated by Gregory’s apparent desire to remain in Rome (just as they were vastly irritated by, and terrified of, the Roman mob). Beneath the pope, the cardinals were the most powerful men in the Church, and thus in Christendom. They lived and acted as princes, but to ensure their continuing power they had to remain within the papal court at the side of the pope. Thus they were effectively trapped in Rome, although most of them tried to spend as many months of each year back in the civilized pleasures of Avignon as they could.

When in Rome, the cardinals spent hours carefully watching the pope. Was his face tinged just with the merest touch of gray at yesterday’s mass? Did his fingers tremble, just slightly, when he carved his meat at the banquet held in honor of the Holy Roman Emperor’s son? And how much of his food did he eat, anyway? They bribed the papal physician to learn details of the papal bowel movements and the particular stink of his urine. They frightened the papal chamberlain with threats of eternal damnation to learn if the pope’s sheets were stained with effluent in the mornings and, if so, what kind of effluent?

They spent their hours watching the pope’s health most carefully … and most carefully plotting. When the pope succumbed to his inevitable mortality (and, praise

be to God, let it be soon!), the cardinals would elect his successor from among their number.

And when that came to pass, they swore on Christ’s holy foreskin, they would elect a man who would return them to Avignon and the comforts of glorious French civilization.