Read Brother Cadfael 16: The Heretic's Apprentice for Free Online Page B

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 him."
    Elave spoke up as if to himself, but loudly enough to carry to all ears, and with a brilliance of eye and a jut of jaw that spoke more loudly still. "Yet by very definition a thing cannot be its opposite; therefore one judgment or the other must be error. It could as well be the former as the latter."
    Who was it claimed, Cadfael reflected, startled and pleased, that he could not understand the arguments of the philosophers? This lad had kept his ears open and his mind alert all those miles to Jerusalem and back, and learned more than he's telling. At least he's turned Gerbert purple and closed his mouth for a moment.
    A moment was enough for the abbot. This dangerous line of talk was getting out of hand. He cut it short with decision.
    "The Holy Father has authority both to bind and to loose, and the same infallible will that can condemn can also with equal right absolve. There is here, it seems to me, no contradiction at all. Whatever views he may have held seven years ago,