Fist Of The Faith - A Tale Of Medieval Avignon

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Book excerpt

Chapter One

Cuenca town, Kingdom of Spain — La Mancha, Spring 1318 

“What was that for?” wailed Albornoz, who by full title was Gil Álvarez Carrillo de Albornoz. His head was spinning from the vicious blow inflicted by his elder brother, Fernan.

“You cheated! I told you to count to twenty before opening your eyes, but you must have cheated to find us as quickly as you did,” Fernan answered, rubbing his sore hand.

“I’m sorry, Fernan, but — ”

“Right! And this time wait until you get to twenty. Understand?”

“I do.”

Fernan and the other brother, Alvar, scampered off through the trees. Hide and seek was their favourite game.

“One, two, three…” Albornoz counted. "I must do it correctly this time." The boy sniffled. Eight years old, but he already understood punishment, whether meted out by Fernan or his father. He was determined to improve his behaviour, to gain their praise, not retribution.

As far back as young Albornoz’s memory reached, he only recalled his friends running faster, throwing farther and hitting harder than he could. They won races, skimmed stones way across the lake and held him down until he yielded in wrestling contests. He had become accustomed to second place, and it did not sit comfortably with his inner character.

Not until he uttered ‘twenty’ did he dare remove his hands from his eyes.

“Coming, ready or not!” he called out and began searching for Fernan and Alvar, but without success.

“I give up! Where are you?”

The brothers lowered themselves from a tree branch high enough for its foliage to conceal them.

“We’ve won again!” Fernan announced in a mocking tone. "But at least you kept to the rule, so you’re safe for today, my little brother.”

“Thank goodness for that,” Albornoz muttered, relieved at avoiding another cuff. “My turn to hide now,” he announced.

Fernan and Alvar closed their eyes, and the latter counted, “one, two, three” while the youngest boy ran away.

The three brothers were not alone. For the young people of Cuenca, this place was their own to laugh, argue, cry and cheer to their hearts' content, and all this away from the meddlesome gaze of their parents in the town perched atop a rocky outcrop. The Júcar and Huécar rivers meandered sharply through a steep-sided, narrow gorge. A sumptuous, green valley contrasted with the arid Castilian Meseta to the north and south that enabled pines, junipers, elders and holm-oaks to grow side by side. Lining the rivers, bulrushes swayed gently in time with the flow of the waters and gnarled, old weeping willows afforded native creatures shade from the summer sun. This latter tree’s graceful, elegant form, with its long, light green, pendulous boughs reflected in the current, created safe harbour for the beaver’s lodge and the vole’s hideaway. Both rivers flooded regularly to irrigate the thirsty greenery of the valley.

To a certain height up the limestone slopes of the gorge grew woods and shrubs. At a level where vegetation ceased, birds of prey made their homes in the nooks and fissures of the rock. Kestrels and kites hovered in ascending thermals, waiting patiently for an unsuspecting mouse or shrew to catch their eye and prompt a deadly dive. Fledgling chicks squawking from the nests anticipated their parents’ return, a tasty meal in their claws.

A solitary, imperious golden eagle swooped into the ravine as if from nowhere, its mere presence sufficient to disperse the other birds amid terrified screams: they knew better than attempt to overrule this master of the heavens. It boasted golden-brown plumage and broad, long wings, its bill, dark at the tip, fading to a lighter horn colour. With talons, hooked and sharp, it possessed the power to snatch up hares, rabbits, marmots, even ground squirrels. In its majesty, it glided high above inferior birds and even Cuenca town, eclipsing the scene below. From its zenithal place in the sky, it surveyed the lands beneath it: silent, swift, supreme.

As light began to fade, it was time for the children to come together for the day’s final amusement — a wrestling contest.

“Who is it today then?” came a call.

“I think it should be Albornoz’s turn,” came another.

“But he’s only seven years old — "

“Eight!” corrected the children’s choice. “And I’ll take on anybody, see if I don’t!”

One boy, who by his size and booming voice was evidently the leader, stepped into the middle of the crowd, waving his arms to silence the spectators.

“Back! Get back and make space!” The order was at once obeyed. He continued —

“So, who will fight Albornoz — and no girls, either, don’t want him to go down too soon!”

At this mockery, they all erupted into guffaws and jeering.

“Hush! I’m the oldest, so I’ll choose…ah…yes!” He pointed to someone who, although about the same age as Albornoz, stood tall against him, like a giant, with missing teeth and scars on his forehead.

“Yes, you! Come forward, Ramon.”

A circle of expectant youngsters formed, and in the centre the two combatants stood proudly upright, shoulders back. They exchanged opening blows but avoided any holds until they had each decided how to best tackle the other. Shortly, and to the encouraging yells from the onlookers, they came into a clinch to then fall to the ground. The stronger boy pinned down Albornoz and, as the shouting grew ever louder, rained punch after punch until the leader moved in to halt the one-sided contest

“Enough! I declare Luc the winner!”

Ramon raised his fists skyward in a triumphant salute, leaving Albornoz prostrate, his nose bleeding, mouth swollen and a cut over one eye.

The bell for Vespers in the cathedral rang out, and they all knew they had better make for home. A procession weaved its way up the steps cut into the rock that led to the town above. Despite the fight having finished, they continued ridiculing Albornoz, who walked unsteadily behind, struggling to keep up with his brothers.

“You didn’t do much for the family name, did you?” Fernan barked, showing neither concern nor compassion for his sibling.

Chapter Two

Limoges (Limousin), Kingdom of Arles, 1310 

The same time, the same year, but in a kingdom far from Cuenca, Edmond Nerval married a local peasant girl, Jamette. Unlike Albornoz, Edmond came from a poor family for whom religion played little part. On the contrary, the boy’s father set greater store by myths and fables, recounted by travellers and soothsayers in a language he understood, than by men dressed in long black robes, waving a shiny cross and mumbling that ‘Father did this’ or ‘Father says the other.’

They lived in a one-room wooden cabin with a turf roof in a forest to the north of Limoges, down a winding track hardly wide enough to take a cart. Few people called on them, and Edmond preferred it that way. He was by nature a solitary soul and suspicious of strangers who might leap out from behind a tree and rob him of his money — not that he had any. He had been physically and emotionally abused when young by his own father and mother. And so, it was no surprise that he espoused the family gene. In his own life, he had no-one but Jamette to bully and blame for their wretched existences: but she accepted it with an indomitable fortitude. She knew no different and was relieved when he had eaten the evening meal she placed before him without deriding the food as being unfit for swine and had drunk sufficient hooch from the iron-hooped vat in the corner of the room to render him comatose for the night. Without money to buy wine or ale, he had turned to the common practice of distilling a potent liquor from potatoes.

He moved from one lowly paid job to another — swilling out pigsties, chopping wood and picking grapes on the estates in the region. If on a farm he was instructed to feed the pigs, he saw no wrong in helping himself to potatoes from their feeding trough. Equally, walking home through the fields, the farmers would never miss those he pulled up that went into his sack. An old gypsy woman had given him a recipe, and he set up the flasks, bottles, pans and muslin filters for distillation in an outhouse behind their cabin. The woman also told him how to make wine, but although the area abounded in vineyards, and he regularly worked on them, he drew a line at pilfering grapes. There were legendary tales of pickers in Limoges who took to stealing fruit off the vine. When caught, brought before the bench and found guilty, the punishment was often the public amputation of the offending hand. Few men dared ape this crime: the difference between right and wrong was unambiguous in the eyes of the judiciary for such a matter. Yet it was not as clear when the priesthood became embroiled in homosexual games or diverted well-intentioned donations from church to priest.

The weekly market held along the length of Rue de la Tour, in the heart of Limoges, bustled with activity. All manner of produce and hardware was displayed on closely positioned stalls set up by the richer traders who paid a tax for the privilege of their pitch. Poorer dealers arranged their goods on the ground around them. Cries in the local patois or foreign tongues rent the air, inviting passers-by to draw near, inspect, touch, or taste whatever they had to sell. Vegetables, fruits, spices, wine, cloths, yarns, silks, cheeses, pots, pans and knives, all for sale or barter.

In another part, a pig speared through with an iron spit pole from head to tail rotated slowly, suspended over a white-hot charcoal fire with a toothless old man turning the handle of the mechanism. He basted the beast with its own melted fat, most of which he caught in a ladle as it dripped down, but sparks flew sizzling out of the fire when stray grease globules ignited. As the flesh cooked, a woman with a fork in one hand and long carving knife in the other sliced off pieces of meat to place it on chunks of bread and sell to hungry strollers attracted by the woman’s cries and the aroma that wafted over the market. Those who had no appetite simply stopped to warm their hands by the fire.

For the citizens of Limoges and beyond, the market was a place of entertainment, a day of relief from their usual toil. Rich and poor people mingled, afforded a chance to watch each other and even converse — a rare coming together of opposite social classes.

In booths draped with colourful striped hangings, wizened old hags sat behind cloth-covered tables, their cards arranged, promising to foretell the fate of curious, credulous customers who would put a coin into their hands for the benefit. Weaving in and out of the crowd, stilt-walkers amazed men, women and children alike. Acrobats attempted to tumble faster or leap higher than their competitors; jugglers kept wooden clubs whirling and spinning in the air; sword-swallowers leaned backwards to open their throats and thrust a sword down their gullets. A band of minstrels, one playing a lute, another a fiddle, a third tapping out the rhythm on a tabor. Each sang, at times in harmony, occasionally in discord. A boy in a bright red tunic skipped along at the front, waving a basket at the audience to collect money for their efforts.

“Get here, right now!” a mother screamed, grabbing her young son by his arm and pulling him close. “I warned you not to wander off — there be bogey-men who will carry you off, never to be seen again!” With that, she clipped his ear so hard that tears rolled down his cheeks.

“Buy! Buy! Buy now! Not many left…buy now!" said a man as water in his barrel swirled with the violent contortions of live eels.

“Who will wager on the black one, then? See its fine red comb and sharp talons…it will dispatch that white cockerel, sure as I’m an honest man,” called out the master of the cockfight. Within a fenced enclosure, the birds, held round the neck by two grinning assistants, scratched the straw-strewn ground, roused to a frenzy and straining to attack. The onlookers and punters had no idea that the black cockerel was blind, its eyes gauged out earlier, giving it no chance of victory. The cunning master raked in the money laid by his false exhortations on the sightless bird that lost — pure profit, easy takings.