This was a Cistercian monastery; the monks wore white robes of plain cloth. The austerity of the Cistercian order stood as a deliberate reproach to the more corrupt orders of Benedictines and Dominicans. Cistercian monks were expected to keep rigid discipline, in an atmosphere of severe asceticism. For centuries, the Cistercians did not permit any carved decoration on their plain buildings, nor any decorative illustrations to their manuscripts. Their diet consisted of vegetables, bread and water, with no meats or sauces. Cots were hard; rooms were bare and cold. Every aspect of their monastic life was determinedly Spartan. But, in fact, this quality of rigid discipline had—
Thwock!
Marek turned toward the sound. They were coming into a cloister — an open court within the monastery, surrounded by arched passages on three sides, intended as a place of reading and contemplation.
Thwock!
Now they heard laughter. Noisy shouts of men.
Thwock! Thwock!
As they came into the cloister, Marek saw that the fountain and garden in the center had been removed. The ground was bare, hard-packed dirt. Four men, sweating in linen smocks, were standing in the dirt, playing a kind of handball.
Thwock!
The ball rolled on the ground, and the men pushed and shoved each other, letting it roll. When it stopped, one man picked it up, cried, “Tenez!” and served the ball overhand, smacking it with his flat palm. The ball bounced off the side wall of the cloisters. The men yelled and jostled one another for position. Beneath the arches, monks and nobles shouted encouragement, clinking bags of gambling money in their hands.
There was a long wooden board attached to one wall, and every time a ball hit that board — making a loud bonk! — there were extra shouts of encouragement from the gamblers in the galleries.
It took Marek a moment to realize what he was looking at: the earliest form of tennis.
Tenez — from the server’s shout, meaning, “Receive it!” — was a new game, invented just twenty-five years earlier, and it had become the instant rage of the period. Racquets and nets would come centuries later; for now, the game was a variety of handball, played by all classes of society. Children played in the streets. Among the nobility, the game was so popular that it provoked a trend to build new monasteries — which were abandoned unfinished, once the cloisters had been constructed. Royal families worried that princes neglected their instruction as knights in favor of long hours on the tennis court, often playing by torchlight far into the night. Gambling was ubiquitous. King John II of France, now captive in England, had, over the years, spent a small fortune to pay his tennis debts. (King John was known as John the Good, but it was said that whatever John was good at, it was certainly not tennis.)
Marek said, “Do you play here often?”
“Exercise invigorates the body and sharpens the mind,” the monk replied immediately. “We play in two cloisters here.”
As they passed through the cloister, Marek noticed that several of the gamblers wore robes of green, trimmed in black. They were rough, grizzled men with the manner of bandits.
Then they left the cloister behind, and went up a flight of stairs. Marek said to the monk, “It appears the order makes welcome the men of Arnaut de Cervole.”
“That is sooth,” the monk said, “for they shall do us a boon and return the mill to us.”
“Was it taken?” Marek asked.
“In a manner of speaking.” The monk walked to the window, which overlooked the Dordogne, and the mill bridge, a quarter mile upstream.
“With their own hands, the monks of Sainte-Mère have built the mill, at the bidding of our revered architect, Brother Marcel. Marcel is much venerated in the monastery. As you know, he was architect for the former Abbot, Bishop Laon. So the mill that he designed, and we built, is the property of this monastery, as are its fees.
“Yet Sir Oliver demands a mill tax to himself, though he has no just cause for it, except that his army controls this territory. Therefore my Lord Abbot is well pleased that Arnaut should vow to return the mill to the monastery, and end the tax. And thus are we friendly to the men of Arnaut.”
Chris listened to all this, thinking, My thesis! It was all exactly as his research had shown. Although some people still thought of the Middle Ages as a backward time, Chris knew it had actually been a period of intense technological development, and in that sense, not so different from our own. In fact, the industrial mechanization that became a characteristic feature of the West first began in the Middle Ages. The greatest source of power available at the time — water power — was aggressively developed, and employed to do ever more kinds of work: not only grinding grain but fulling cloth, blacksmithing, beer mashing, woodworking, mixing mortar and cement, papermaking, rope making, oil pressing, preparing dyes for cloth, and powering bellows to heat blast furnaces for steel. All over Europe, rivers were dammed, and dammed again half a mile downstream; mill boats were tethered beneath every bridge. In some places, cascades of mills, one after another, successively used the energy of flowing water.
Mills were generally operated as a monopoly, and they provided a major source of income — and of conflict. Lawsuits, murders and battles were the constant accompaniment of mill activity. And here was an example that showed—
“And yet,” Marek was saying, “I see the mill is still in the hands of Lord Oliver, for his pennant flies from the towers and his archers man the battlements.”
“Oliver holds the mill bridge,” the monk said, “because the bridge is close to the road to La Roque, and whoever controls the mill controls the road. But Arnaut will soon take the mill from them.”
“And return it to you.”
“Indeed.”
“And what will the monastery do for Arnaut in return?”
“We will bless him, of course,” the monk said. And after a moment, he added, “And we will pay him handsomely, too.”
:
They passed through a scriptorium, where monks sat in rows at their easels, silently copying manuscripts. But to Marek, it looked all wrong; instead of a meditative chant, their work was accompanied by the shouts and banging of the game in the cloister. And despite the old Cistercian proscription against illustration, many monks were painting illustrations in the corners and along the margins of manuscripts. The painters sat with an array of brushes and stone dishes of different colors. Some of the illustrations were brilliantly ornate.
“This way,” the monk said, and led them down a staircase and into a small sunlit courtyard. To one side, Marek saw eight soldiers in the colors of Arnaut, standing in the sun. He noticed that they wore their swords.
The monk led them toward a small house at the edge of the courtyard, and then through a door. They heard the trickle of running water and saw a fountain with a large basin. They heard chanted prayers, in Latin. In the center of the room, two robed monks washed a naked, pale body lying on a table.
“Frater Marcellus,” the monk whispered, giving a slight bow.
Marek stared. It took him a moment to realize what he was seeing.
Brother Marcel was dead.
* * *
14:52:07
Their reaction gave them away. The monk could clearly see that they had not known Marcel was dead. Frowning, he took Marek by the arm, and said, “Why are you here?”
“We had hoped to speak with Brother Marcel.”
“He died last night.”
“How did he die?” Marek said.
“We do not know. But as you can see, he was old.”
“Our request of him was urgent,” Marek said. “Perhaps if I could see his private effects—”
“He had no private effects.”
“But surely some personal articles—”
“He lived very simply.”
Marek said, “May I see his room?”
“I am sorry, that is not possible.”
“But I would greatly appreciate it if—”
“Brother Marcel lived in the mill. His room has been there for many years.”
“Ah.” The mill was now under control of Oliver’s troops. They could not go there, at least not at the moment.
“But perhaps I can help you. Tell me, what was your urgent request?” the monk asked. He spoke casually, but Marek was immediately cautious.
“It was a private matter,” Marek said. “I cannot speak of it.”
“There is nothing private here,” the monk said. He was edging toward the door. Marek had the distinct feeling that he was going to raise an alarm.
“It was a request from Magister Edwardus.”
“Magister Edwardus!” The monk’s manner completely changed. “Why did you not say so? And what are you to Magister Edwardus?”
“Faith, we are his assistants.”
“Certes?”
“In deed, it is so.”
“Why did you not say it? Magister Edwardus is welcome here, for he was performing a service for the Abbot when he was taken by Oliver.”