The air in the inn was close and hot, but the talk that ebbed and flowed in the room was at least the good talk of men of ideas. Yet a restlessness sat upon me, not alone because of what might come of my comments on Bernard of Clairvaux, but because of my realization that by coming here I had stepped back in time from Córdoba.
The ideas that excited these young men with their good minds were ideas of the dead past. The ideas of Plato are also of the past, but they are fresh with each new generation. Many of the ideas here were ideas already passed by in Cdrdoba and elsewhere. They were going up the blind alleys of man’s thinking, bickering about ideas from the dusty corners of philosophy where old debris had been swept to be forgotten. It was depressing to see such eager young men, restless for change, obsessed with ideas, many of which had never possessed validity and would never have occured to Plato, Avicenna, Aristotle, or Rhazes. What this generation needed was another Abelard, or a dozen such. In Moorish Spain, in Baghdad, Damascus, Hind, and Cathay, even in Sicily, the thinking was two hundred years in advance of this.
The merchants of the caravans, while they kept their thoughts to themselves for safety’s sake, were generations ahead of these students, for they had traveled and they had listened. Yet the spirit of inquiry was alive here, and where it has a free existence, ignorance cannot last. There was fresh air entering the dark halls of ignorance and superstition.
Such men as Robert of Chester, Adelard of Bath, and Walcher of Malvern were making astronomical observations, or translating Arabic books into Latin. This was the beginning of something, yet I had ventured back into a world from which I had come and found it an alien world of which I was no longer a part.
In a sense I had always been alien. My Druidic training had taken me deep into a past that held more than the present, and along with it had been my father’s accounts, returning home after voyages, of a world beyond our shores. I had mingled with the men of his crews, almost half of which had come from other lands, other cultures, until I had become a stranger in my own land.
“Fill up, soldier!” Julot clapped my shoulder. “Fill up and tell us more!”
How much could I tell them? How much dared I tell them? What was the point at which acceptance would begin to yield to doubt? For the mind must be prepared for knowledge as one prepares a field for planting, and a discovery made too soon is no better than a discovery not made at all.
Had I been a Christian, I would undoubtedly have been considered a heretic, for what the world has always needed is more heretics and less authority. There can be no order or progress without discipline, but authority can be quite different. Authority, in this world in which I moved, implied belief in and acceptance of a dogma, and dogma is invariably wrong, as knowledge is always in a state of transition. The radical ideas of today are often the conservative policies of tomorrow, and dogma is left protesting by the wayside.
Each generation has a group that wishes to impose a static pattern on events, a static pattern that would hold society forever immobile in a position favorable to the group in question.
Much of the conflict in the minds and arguments of those about me was due to a basic conflict between religious doctrines based primarily upon faith, and Greek philosophy, which was an attempt to interpret experience by reason. Or so it seemed to me, a man with much to learn.
The coins in my pocket were few, the hour late. “It is time to go, Julot. I shall leave you to Fat Claire and The Cat and your friends.”
“But you have just come!” Julot showed his dismay. “Soldier, we would learn. You have knowledge we need.”
“You are your own best teacher. My advice is to question all things. Seek for answers, and when you find what seems to be an answer, question that, too.”
“It is very hard,” The Cat said.
“Listen to him,” Fat Claire said, “what he says makes sense.”
“Ask her,” I suggested, “the value of experimental science.”
“Soldier,” one of the girls interrupted, “you told us of the poetry spoken in Spain, poetry often made upon the moment. Make us a poem for Fat Claire!”
She was an elegant wench, this one who spoke, a buxom lass whose best features were quite outstanding. She was a bold hussy with a swish to her hips, red gold hair, and lips … !
“A rhyme, soldier! Give us a rhyme? Give us a song!”
“It was their ability, not mine. I would make a sorry poet.”
“Your father was not so hesitant,” Fat Claire said, “but the poetry he made was of a different kind.” Her eyes sparkled with humor. “Of course, I was many pounds younger then!”
“My father was a seagoing man,” I admitted, “and no doubt he laid the keel of many a pretty craft. It is the way of seafaring men and has no doubt contributed much to the spread of knowledge. It is possible that the Greek approach to Trojan women inspired an appreciation for their philosophy.”
It was in my mind to give them a poem, however, and I stood in my place, putting a foot on a bench, and was about to speak when the door opened.
There stood the teacher, pointing a finger at me. Behind him were a dozen soldiers.
“Take him!” he said. “That is the man!”
32
“Quick!” Julot caught my arm. “Out!” We sprang through a sudden opening in the crowd as a brawl exploded near the door, blocking the path of the soldiers. A glance over my shoulder let me see The Cat struggling along with two other of my attentive listeners.
Ducking around the chimney, we escaped through an almost hidden door in the chimney corner and out through the kitchen.
The stable showed darkly under the trees, yet even as we approached it, two soldiers with pikes intervened. One held his pike leveled at my stomach while the other stepped forward to disarm me.
As the pikeman reached for my sword, I grabbed him by the upper arm and spun him into the man holding the pike, throwing both off-balance. Julot was already moving to the stable. Whipping out my blade, I parried a thrust of the pikeman, and stepping past the pike, I put the point of my blade through his thigh.
As the second man started toward me I said, “My friend, if you wish to see another sun, step back. I have no quarrel with you and want none, but if you step closer, I shall spit you like a duck.”
“Why, I have no quarrel with you, either, so away with you. I shall see to my friend.”
“Thanks,” I said, “and Godspeed.”
Julot appeared with the horses, and I sprang to the saddle, breaking away down the lane between rows of poplars. There was a shading of lemon light in the sky where the sun would be an hour from now.
“Julot,” I said, “this is no quarrel of yours, so be off for Paris and lose yourself there. I’ve a fast horse and can play hare to their hounds as long as it amuses me.”
“You ask me to leave a friend?”
“I do so ask,” I said, “for I have a place to go.”
“Fat Claire would skin me alive. She had a feeling for you, and you have no idea what you missed.”
“There are other women, but I have but one neck. Be off with you now.”
“You take this too lightly, my friend. Talk such as yours is not tolerated. There has been too much free-thinking, and even we of the schools must bridle our tongues. If you are found, you will burn as a heretic.”
“But I am a pagan!”
“Who is to say? They’ll burn you, soldier, for there are those about who have a liking for the odor of burning flesh—and no taste at all for the teaching of Peter Abelard.”
The fields were white with frost, and we kept our horses to a brisk trot, saving them for swifter flight if need be. An immediate return to the caravan might involve my friends, for which I had no desire. Yet escape I must, and once with them, they would hide me. It had been done before, with others.
“There’s a small village this side of Melun. Fat Claire told me of it. If we are separated, go there and ask for a man named Persigny.”
“Is it far from the road to Provins?”
“The direction is right.”
If I could meet the caravan at Provins, at a fair to be held there, it was unlikely I would be found. Search in such an unlikely place was almost out of the question, for I had not the look of a merchant.