Brother Cadfael 16: The Heretic's Apprentice

intervention.
    "Very seldom, my lord, and I did not well understand such deep matters. I cannot answer for another man's mind, only for his conduct, which I knew to be virtuous." Elave's face had set into contained and guarded calm. He did not look like a man who would fall short in understanding of deep matters, or lack the interest to consider them.
    "And in his last illness," Radulfus pursued mildly, "he asked for a priest?"
    "He did, Father, and made his confession and received absolution without question. He died with all the due rites of the Church. Wherever there was place and time along the way he made his confession, especially after he first fell ill, and we were forced to stay a whole month in the monastery at Saint Marcel before he was fit to continue the journey home. And there he often spoke with the brothers, and all these matters of faith and doubt were understood and tolerated among them. I know he spoke openly of things that troubled him, and they found no fault there with debating all manner of questions concerning holy things."
    Canon Gerbert stared cold suspicion. "And where was this place, this Saint Marcel? And when was it you spent a month there? How recently?"
    "It was in the spring of last year. We left early in the May, and made the pilgrimage from there to Saint James at Compostela with a party from Cluny, to give thanks that my master was restored to health. Or so we thought then, but he was never in real health again, and we had many halts thereafter. Saint Marcel is close by Chalon on the Sa� It is a daughter house of Cluny."
    Gerbert sniffed loudly and turned up his masterful nose at the mention of Cluny. That great house had taken seriously to the pilgrim traffic and had given aid and support, protection along the roads, and shelter in their houses to many hundreds not only from France, but of recent years from England, too. But for the close dependents of Archbishop Theobald it was first and foremost the mother house of that difficult colleague and ambitious and arrogant rival, Bishop Henry of Winchester.
    "There was one of the brothers died there," said Elave, standing up sturdily for the sanctity and wisdom of Cluny, "who had written on all these things, and taught in his young days, and he was revered beyond any other among the brothers, and had the most saintly name among them. He saw no wrong in pondering all these difficult matters by the test of reason, and neither did his abbot, who had sent him there from Cluny for his health. I heard him read once from Saint John's Gospel, and speak on what he read. It was wonderful to hear. And that was but a short time before he died."
    "It is presumption to play human reason like a false light upon divine mysteries," warned Gerbert sourly. "Faith is to be received, not taken apart by the wit of a mere man. Who was this brother?"
    "He was called Pierre Abelard, a Breton. He died in the April, before we set out for Compostela in the May."
    The name had meant nothing to Elave beyond what he had seen and heard for himself, and kept wonderingly in his mind ever since. But it meant a great deal to Gerbert. He stiffened in his stall, flaring up half a head taller, as a candle suddenly rears pale and lofty when the wick flares.
    "That man? Foolish, gullible soul, do you not know the man himself was twice charged and convicted of heresy? Long ago his writings on the Trinity were burned, and the writer imprisoned. And only three years ago at the Council of Sens he was again convicted of heretical writings, and condemned to have his works destroyed and end his life in perpetual imprisonment."
    It seemed that Abbot Radulfus, though less exclamatory, was equally well informed, if not better.
    "A sentence which was very quickly revoked," he remarked dryly, "and the author allowed to retire peacefully into Cluny at the request of the abbot."
    Unwarily Gerbert was provoked into snapping back without due thought. "In my view no such revocation should have been granted. It was not deserved. The sentence should have stood."
    "It was issued by the Holy Father," said the abbot gently, "who cannot err." Whether his tongue was in his cheek at that moment Cadfael could not be sure, but the tone, though soft and reverent, stung, and was meant to sting.
    "So was the sentence!" Gerbert snapped back even more unwisely. "His Holiness surely had misleading information when he withdrew it. Doubtless he made a right judgment upon such truth as was presented to