Count of Berat
Chapter One
The Count of Berat was old, pious and learned. He had lived sixty-five
years and liked to boast that he had not left his fiefdom for the last forty
of them. His stronghold was the great castle of Berat. It stood on a
limestone hill above the town of Berat, which was almost surrounded by the
River Berat that made the county of Berat so fertile. There were olives,
grapes, pears, plums, barley and women. The Count liked them all. He had
married five times, each new wife younger than the last, but none had
provided him with a child. He had not even spawned a bastard on a milkmaid
though, God knew, it was not for lack of trying.
That absence of children had persuaded the Count that God had cursed
him and so in his old age he had surrounded himself with priests. The town
had a cathedral and eighteen churches, with a bishop, canons and priests to
fill them, and there was a house of Dominican friars by the east gate. The
Count blessed the town with two new churches and built a convent high on the
western hill across the river and beyond the vineyards. He employed a
chaplain and, at great expense, he purchased a handful of the straw that had
lined the manger in which the baby Jesus had been laid at his birth. The
Count encased the straw in crystal, gold and gems, and placed the reliquary
on the altar of the castle's chapel and prayed to it each day, but even that
sacred talisman did not help. His fifth wife was seventeen and plump and
healthy and, like the others, barren.
At first the Count suspected that he had been cheated in his purchase
of the holy straw, but his chaplain assured him that the relic had come from
the papal palace at Avignon and produced a letter signed by the Holy Father
himself guaranteeing that the straw was indeed the Christ-child's bedding.
Then the Count had his new wife examined by four eminent doctors and those
worthies decreed that her urine was clear, her parts whole and her appetites
healthy, and so the Count employed his own learning in search of an heir.
Hippocrates had written of the effect of pictures on conception and so the
Count ordered a painter to decorate the walls of his wife's bedchamber with
pictures of the Virgin and child; he ate red beans and kept his rooms warm.
Nothing worked. It was not the Count's fault, he knew that. He had planted
barley seeds in two pots and watered one with his new wife's urine and one
with his own, and both pots had sprouted seedlings and that, the doctors
said, proved that both the Count and Countess were fertile.
Which meant, the Count had decided, that he was cursed. So he turned
more avidly to religion because he knew he did not have much time left.
Aristotle had written that the age of seventy was the limit of a man's
ability, and so the Count had just five years to work his miracle. Then, one
autumn morning, though he did not realize it at the time, his prayers were
answered.
Churchmen came from Paris. Three priests and a monk arrived at Berat
and they brought a letter from Louis Bessieres, Cardinal and Archbishop of
Livorno, Papal Legate to the Court of France, and the letter was humble,
respectful and threatening. It requested that Brother Jerome, a young monk
of formidable learning, be allowed to examine the records of Berat. "It is
well known to us," the Cardinal Archbishop had written in elegant Latin,
"that you possess a great love of all manuscripts, both pagan and Christian,
and so entreat you, for the love of Christ and for the furtherance of His
kingdom, to allow our Brother Jerome to examine your muniments." Which was
fine, so far as it went, for the Count of Berat did indeed possess a library
and a manuscript collection that was probably the most extensive in all
Gascony, if not in all southern Christendom, but what the letter did not
make clear was why the Cardinal Archbishop was so interested in the castle's
muniments. As for the reference to pagan works, that was a threat. Refuse
this request, the Cardinal Archbishop was saying, and I shall set the holy
dogs of the Dominicans and the Inquisitors onto your county and they will
find that the pagan works encourage heresy. Then the trials and the burnings
would begin, neither of which would affect the Count directly, but there
would be indulgences to buy if his soul was not to be damned. The Church had
a glutton's appetite for money and everyone knew the Count of Berat was
rich. So the Count did not want to offend the Cardinal Archbishop, but he
did want to know why His Eminence had suddenly become interested in Berat.
Which was why the Count had summoned Father Roubert, the chief
Dominican in the town of Berat, to the great hall of the castle, which had
long ceased to be a place of feasting, but instead was lined with shelves on
which old documents moldered and precious handwritten books were wrapped in
oiled leather.
Father Roubert was just thirty-two years old. He was the son of a
tanner in the town and had risen in the Church thanks to the Count's
patronage. He was very tall, very stern, with black hair cut so short that
it reminded the Count of the stiff-bristled brushes the armorers used to
burnish the coats of mail. Father Roubert was also, this fine morning,
angry. "I have business in Castillon d'Arbizon tomorrow," he said, "and will
need to leave within the hour if I am to reach the town in daylight."
The Count ignored the rudeness in Father Roubert's tone. The Dominican
liked to treat the Count as an equal, an impudence the Count tolerated
because it amused him ...
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