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‘My thanks,’ the leader of the riders said, and rode on into the city.
    Roland de Verrec had come to Montpellier.

Five
     
    ‘The proposition,’ Doctor Lucius bellowed loud enough for his words to be heard by the fish in the Mediterranean six miles to the south of Montpellier, ‘is that a child who dies unbaptised is thereby condemned to the endless torments of hell, to the eternal fires of perdition, and to separation from God for ever with all the pain, agony, remorse, regret and tribulation that this doom entails. My question: is this proposition true?’
    No one answered.
    Doctor Lucius, who wore an ink-stained white gown of the Dominican order, glared at his cowed students. Thomas had been told that the Dominican was the cleverest man in all Montpellier’s university and so had come with Brother Michael to the doctor’s lecture hall, which, to Thomas’s eyes, appeared to be a hastily constructed chamber made by roofing over a small cloister of the Monastery of Saint Simeon. The good weather had vanished overnight to be replaced by low angry clouds from which the rain fell to drip through the ill-laid tiles of the lecture hall’s roof. Doctor Lucius was sitting on a platform, behind a dais, while facing him were three rows of benches on which a score of dull-faced students slumped in robes of black or dark blue.
    Doctor Lucius stroked his beard. It was a massive beard, falling to the frayed rope belted about his waist. ‘Are we dull-witted?’ he demanded of his students. ‘Are we asleep? Did we drink too much of the grape last night? Some of you, God help His holy church, will become priests. You will have a flock to care for, and among that flock will be women whose infants will die before they receive the sacrament of baptism. The mother, tearful and eager for your comfort, will ask whether her infant has been received into the company of the saints, and what will your answer be?’ Doctor Lucius waited for a response, but none came. ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ the doctor snarled, ‘one of you must have an answer.’
    ‘Yes,’ a young man with a scruffy black student’s cap from which long black hair fell half over his face answered.
    ‘Ah! Master Keane is awake!’ Doctor Lucius cried. ‘He has not travelled all this way from Ireland to no purpose, God be thanked. Why, Master Keane, will you tell the grieving mother that her dead infant is in paradise?’
    ‘Because if I tell her it’s in hell, doctor, she’ll go on bawling and crying and there’s few things worse than a wailing woman. Best just to get rid of her by telling the poor creature what she wishes to hear.’
    Doctor Lucius’s mouth twitched, perhaps in amusement. ‘So you do not care, Master Keane, about the truth of the proposition, only that you will be spared the sound of a woman weeping? You would not think it a priest’s duty to comfort the woman?’
    ‘By telling the poor thing that her wee babe has gone to hell? Jesus, no! And if she was comely I’d certainly be wanting to offer her comfort.’
    ‘Your charity knows no bounds,’ Doctor Lucius said sourly, ‘but let us return to the proposition. Is it, or is it not, true? Anyone?’
    A pale young man whose cap and gown were spotless cleared his throat, and most of the other students groaned. The pale boy, skinny as a starved rat, was plainly the assiduous student whose achievements belittled the efforts of the rest of the class. ‘Saint Augustine,’ he said, ‘teaches us that God will not remit the sins of any but the baptised.’
    ‘
Ergo
?’ Doctor Lucius asked.
    ‘Therefore,’ the young man said in a precise voice, ‘the child is condemned to hell because it was born containing sin.’
    ‘So we have our answer?’ Doctor Lucius enquired. ‘Upon the authority of Master de Beaufort,’ the pale boy smiled and tried to look modest, ‘and of the blessed Saint Augustine. Do we all agree? Can we now move on to discuss the cardinal virtues?’
    ‘How can a baby go to hell?’ Master Keane asked, disgusted. ‘What has it done to deserve that?’
    ‘It was born of a woman,’ the student called de Beaufort answered sternly, ‘and lacking the sacrament of baptism the child is doomed to suffer for the guilt of the sin it thereby contains.’
    ‘Master de Beaufort cuts to the quick of the argument, does he not?’ Doctor Lucius suggested to the Irish student.
    ‘God is not commanded by the sacraments,’ Thomas interjected, speaking, like everyone else,