Marcel wheeled away, and Thomas straightened his robe and followed him.
“I—”Thomas began.
“Wait,” Marcel said. “There is a place we can talk.”
And he led a silently fuming Thomas into the glittering guildhall.
MARCEL SHOWED Thomas into a quiet room off the main public space of the guildhall. The room was well furnished, and richly appointed, and Marcel noted Thomas’ disapproval.
“What I advocate,” Marcel said, “and what I have fought for here in Paris, is a leveling out of the social order.”
“The social order was established by God,” Thomas said, refusing the chair that Marcel indicated, and folding his hands inside the black sleeves of his outer robe.
Marcel shrugged and sat down, meeting Thomas’ eyes easily as the brother continued to stand over him.
“And yet you have just witnessed how unfair that is,” Marcel said. “The majority
of people slave for the nobles and the priests in conditions that are beyond the pitiful. They are taxed beyond reason, and yet they are told that they must be grateful. Nevertheless, the priests tell us that most of us will enjoy an eternity in hell for our repulsive sins, and the nobles fight ambitious wars among themselves instead of providing protection to the good folk they promised it to. And always … the taxes, the taxes. I have had enough, and many among the ordinary ranks of people have had enough. We have minds and souls of our own, and we demand the rights that are due to us as individuals.”
“Individuals mean nothing!” Thomas said, fighting to keep his voice even.
“Everyone exists for the good of the whole, and everyone—”
“Everyone exists to keep the nobles and the clerics well fed and housed,” Marcel said. “Nothing else. For too many centuries you have fed off our toil for nothing but misery in return.”
“What you suggest will bring order crashing down about our ears. There will be no society—nothing but chaos! But that is what you want, isn’t it? Chaos would suit your plans perfectly.”
“I plan for the betterment of society, yes. I plan to give every man and woman a larger say in their own lives, yes. I plan to hand dignity out on street corners, yes. I plan to give all men the right to determine their own paths in life, yes. Do you call that ‘chaos’?”
“I call that evil.”
“I think, Thomas,” Marcel said, his expression bland, “that you and I differ on what our perception of evil is.”
Thomas took a step back, his face pale. “On my way to Paris I passed through a small village. The lord and his wife had been slaughtered, the lord roasted alive, his wife violated by many men as they forced her husband’s flesh down her throat.”
Marcel’s expression did not alter.
“Worse,” Thomas continued, his voice lower now, and harsh, “their three daughters had also been violated. Even their youngest, a girl of only two or three years, had been raped. Is that what you call justice?”
“There have been many regrettable—”
“Regrettable? You claim to want to create a ‘better’ life in ‘this beautiful world,’ but instead you have spread such horror as can hardly be contemplated. That little girl—”
“What happened to that little girl is but a reflection of the indignities and violations heaped on the peasants! I do not condone their actions, but I understand their cause.
Your innocent little girl is but one victim of thousands among the poor city folk and rural peasants who die from starvation each year because the Church has taxed the flesh from their bones and their lords have forgotten to protect them and their fields from the damned, cursed English.”
Now Marcel was standing, shouting so violently that his cheeks flushed and his eyes started from his face. He raised a hand and waved a shaking finger in Thomas’
face. “How can you even pretend to know of the struggles and horrors of the poor in society? You have been of the elite and the privileged all your life, whether nobleman or priest! You know nothing of misery, Thomas! Nothing!”
“The Church—”
“Is but an engorged instrument of privilege, dispensing fear and terror in order to keep people in their place. Damn you, Thomas. You protect an institution that says to the starving carpenter and his wife groveling amid the wood shavings, ‘Rejoice, for surely your current hunger increases your chances of salvation in the next life’!”
Thomas fought back his fury, and tried to speak in a level voice. “I know what you are, Marcel, and I know what you plan! You and your kind plan to make this earth yours, destroying God in the process. You—”
“Do I want to destroy God? If he gets in the way, yes. Do I and my kind want to make the earth ours? Yes. But, Tom, haven’t you ever paused to consider what a wondrous life it might be if we did manage to oust God and make the earth ours?”
“Who are the ‘demons,’ priest, when you and yours preach that it is better to suffer misery than to yearn for a better and more just life?”
“You will fail,” Thomas said. “You must. Righteousness will prevail and mankind will beat back the evil that afflicts it.”
“I pity you,” Marcel said softly, moving to a chest set by a wall. He lifted the lid, and took a rolled parchment from the chest. Then he straightened and regarded Thomas again.
“But, yes, you are right,” he said. ” I will undoubtedly fail, but my cause? Justness and fairness? I think it will not.” He walked over to a table, undoing the thong binding the parchment.
Thomas smiled, his face cold and full of his own self-righteousness. “Philip has betrayed you, hasn’t he?”
Marcel glanced at him, then unrolled the parchment across the top of the table with a flick of his wrist. He stabbed a finger down. “See here?”
Thomas hesitated, then walked over. Marcel had unrolled a map of Paris and its immediate environs, and his finger now indicated a spot just beyond the eastern wall and above the Seine, where it flowed into the city.
“Three days ago the Dauphin encamped a force in these fields.”
Thomas looked to Marcel’s face, and smiled slowly, knowingly. Catherine had done well. “How large?”
“Roughly fifteen thousand—knights as well as foot soldiers and archers.”
Thomas’ smile broadened, although it did not warm his cold eyes. “Philip?”
Marcel did not look at him. Instead he moved his finger to a point just beyond the western wall of Paris, and slightly south of where the Seine exited the city on its journey toward the coast.
“And here is poor Marcel,” said Thomas softly, tapping the city itself. “Caught in between.”
“I need you to act as an emissary,” Marcel said. “To Philip. You and he have been well acquainted since childhood, and he will allow you an audience.”
“And what would you have me say to him?”
Now Marcel straightened and looked Thomas in the eye. “I would have you remind him of our agreement. He helps the people of Paris, allowing us a representative assembly and a say in the governing and taxing of this realm, and we
help him to the throne.”
“You would displace the true king, and his heir to the throne?”
“If it aids our cause, yes.”
“You justify everything, every misery, for personal gain, don’t you?”
“For the gain of my people, for whom I speak, yes,” Marcel said quietly. “Will you go?”
“Oh, aye,” Thomas said. “I will go.”
“Do I have your word that you will say to him what I have asked?”
Thomas hesitated, only slightly. “Yes.”
Marcel nodded, and his face was very sad and very tired as he turned away.
WHEN THOMAS had gone, Marcel fetched ink, quill and parchment, and scribbled a hasty letter:
Beloved lady and sister, greetings. This will, I believe, be the last time I can write you. Events have moved swiftly. The friar has been and has now left to consult with Philip. Philip will doubtless send him south with an offer to the Black Prince.. . I do not expect either the friar or Philip to come to my aid. Ifmd it hard to use words to describe my feelings. Gladness that it is, as we all knew it would soon be, finally over. Sadness that I have not achieved the greatest of victories—
some measure of freedom for my fellow citizens of Paris. Nevertheless, I believe I have sowed in this fairest of cities a seed that will, one day, ripen into such wondrous fruit that all Europe— all mankind! — will stop and admire its beauty.
But that day is far into the future, andfor now there is only myself, and my two brothers and sister. Lady, know that, as I cannot use your name in this letter, lest it fall into the wrong hands, I cannot write to either of our cherished brothers. If circumstances permit, pass this letter into their hands and make sure they know of my news concerning the friar. Oh, how proud I am of all of you! And how greatly I love you all! You shall have wondrous futures. I hope and pray they will be the best possible.