Iacobus Read Free Page B

follow; and lastly, a third from His Holiness Pope John XXII, whom the Almighty protects and who is to blame for this web of letters.”
    I could only murmur a sad ‘Good God!’ before falling in a heap on top of my poor surgical instruments.
    The letters were exhaustive. The one from the seneschal said that I must present myself before the Grand Commander of France before the end of May; the one from the Grand Commander of France said that I must present myself at the papal headquarters in Avignon before the 1st of June; and the one from His Holiness John XXII contained my appointment as papal legate with all the rights and honors that this represented especially, as explicitly stated, that of using the fastest horses that I myself would chose from the stables of any monastery, parish, or Christian house from Ponç de Riba to Avignon … Or what amounted to the same thing. Briefly summarizing, that I had to get to Avignon in under two weeks … Admirable.
    I personally took charge of settling my brothers into the cells in the pilgrim’s house, and then, with the afternoon drawing in, I locked myself in the church to meditate. It’s never a good idea to do things without having first anticipated all of the likely moves of the game, without having calculated all the possibilities — the most plausible, at least —, without having carefully thought about the gains and the losses, the eventual consequences and the repercussions on one’s life and on the life of those who depend on you … even if they don’t know it, as in the case of Jonas. That’s how I spent the rest of the evening and night, alone in the middle of the church, wrapping the white habit around myself for the last time, a habit I would leave behind as soon as the sun rose to definitively retrieve my own attire, the attire that would bring back the Galceran who disembarked in Barcelona seventeen months before.
    I prayed the morning prayers with the monks in the chapter house, and asked if the prior would meet with me for a moment in his cell to inform him of my hasty departure from the monastery. I would never have given him any details about the reasons for my departure had it not have been due to the fact that I was looking to obtain something much more valuable in return, and so I laid out the epistle from the Pope before him, leaving him speechless, and made him believe that I was sharing my worries with him, as if he were a friend, by confessing how unhappy this appointment made me and how upset I was about my departure from Ponç de Riba, especially now that he was going to be chosen as the Abbott.
    Before he could open his mouth, while he was still dazed and bewildered, I requested his permission to take Garcia, my novice, with me so as not to interrupt his preparation and I assured him that I would return him to the monastery without fail, matured and trained, ready to take his vows. I swore that the boy would always live in the closest Mauricense monastery to wherever I was based, and that he would perform all of the obligations and practices pertaining to his Order.
    Needless to say that I conscientiously committed perjury and everything I said was a pack of lies but I had to get the prior to give me custody of Jonas and take him away from the confines of those walls, to which, of course, he would never return.
    The retinue, formed by three Hospitaller knights, two squires, known as armigeri, also from the Hospital of St. John, a Mauricense novice about to turn fourteen, and two mules loaded with the baggage, left the convent at midday under a blazing sun and headed north towards Barcelona.

CHAPTER II
    The constant fighting between the Roman families, Caetani and Colonna, had turned Rome into a bloody battlefield, forcing Pope Benedict XI to look for safety outside of Italy. In view of the situation of the Papal States at that time, his successor, Clement V, who held the office of Archbishop of Bordeaux after being elected by the conclave, had