Read Chapter 4: The Bishop's Summons

The summons came at dusk, carried by a boy in episcopal livery who found Roland patching his arm in a cheap inn room above a cooper’s shop. The boy stood in the doorway, trying not to stare at the gash Roland had bound with a strip of his own shirt, and delivered his message with the careful neutrality of a trained herald.

“His Excellency Jean de Chevrier, Bishop of Narbonne, bids you attend him at his palace this evening. You will be granted safe conduct, and you will not be harmed. He wishes only to speak.”

Roland laughed, then winced as the motion pulled at his wound. “He sent men to kill me yesterday. Now he wants wine and conversation?”

The boy did not smile. “I know nothing of that, sir. My instructions are to await your answer.”

Roland studied the boy’s face—too young for the cynicism of the court, too well-coached for the honesty of the street. He could refuse. He could slip out the back and be on the road within the hour, leaving the bishop’s demands unanswered. But that would solve nothing. Enguerrand’s betrayal had taught him one hard lesson: this box had made him a target, and he was tired of running blind into the dark.

He could also use coin. His purse was nearly empty, and the wound needed proper care if he meant to survive the road north.

“Tell your master I’ll come,” Roland said. “But if this is a trap, I’ll take a few of his men with me before I go down.”

The boy’s expression did not change. “I will relay your acceptance, sir. An escort will await you at the cathedral steps in one hour.”

Roland dressed with care for a man who owned nothing but what he carried. He wore his leather jack, the one from the siege that had seen better days and been stitched back together more times than he could count. He wore his sword openly, breaking no law in a city where the bishop’s writ ran stronger than the king’s. The box stayed with him, wrapped in oilcloth and strapped to his back beneath his cloak. Whatever game the bishop was playing, Roland would not walk into it unarmed.

The escort was a dozen soldiers in the bishop’s livery, none of the ones who had come for him the night before, or at least none he recognized. They marched him through the winding streets to the palace, past the great cathedral whose bells tolled the evening offices, and into a reception hall that smelled of wax and incense and old stone.

The Bishop of Narbonne waited at a long table set with two cups and a silver ewer of wine. He was an old man, thin as a winter branch, with pale eyes that seemed to have been drained of all warmth decades ago. His fingers, ringed with heavy episcopal gold, drummed lightly on the table when Roland entered.

“Monsieur de Vienne,” he said, without rising. “You have been difficult to reach.”

“I’ve been busy,” Roland said, staying on his feet. “Men keep trying to kill me.”

The bishop’s lips twitched. “An occupational hazard, I imagine, for a man of your profession.”

“They come in pairs. Sometimes more. And they always seem to know where I’m going before I do.”

The bishop poured wine into both cups but did not offer one to Roland. He simply let the silence stretch until it carried its own accusation.

“I understand you encountered one of my chaplains in Carcassonne,” the bishop said. “Brother Maurice. A zealous man. Perhaps overzealous.”

Roland’s hand drifted toward his sword hilt, a gesture he knew was theatrical but allowed himself anyway. “Your chaplain tried to buy what your men failed to take.”

“Did he?” The bishop’s eyebrows rose a fraction of an inch. “I confess, the church has many servants, and they do not always consult me before pursuing their own… interpretations of my wishes.”

“Then the box isn’t yours.”

“The box is not yours either, monsieur. It belongs to the rightful heir of House de Clermont. You carry it on behalf of a dead Templar who had no authority to pass it on, and you intend to deliver it to an English agent who has been waiting thirteen years for something he was never meant to receive.”

Roland went still.

The bishop let the claim settle, then smiled—a thin, bloodless expression that did not reach his eyes. “Yes, I know more than you think. I know Lucien de Valcourt died in Avignon after twenty years in hiding. I know he passed the box to you in a tavern while the city watched through its many windows. And I know what men of the English king would pay for its contents.”

“If you know so much,” Roland said, “tell me what’s inside.”

The bishop’s smile did not waver. He reached for his cup, took a sip, set it down with precision. “A pleasure to have you ask directly,” he said. “The box contains a treasury record. A ledger of the debts and expenditures of House de Clermont, compiled over forty years by stewards who served the family faithfully. It records loans taken and payments deferred, obligations that have passed from one generation to the next.”

“A ledger,” Roland repeated. “People kill for treasure records?”

“People kill for information, monsieur. The contents of that box represent a burden that several powerful houses have been quietly struggling to escape. If it were to fall into the wrong hands—or rather, into the hands of certain parties—a great deal of old money would suddenly be called due, and those who owe it would find themselves very uncomfortable.”

Roland watched the bishop’s face. The old man’s eyes were calm, but his fingers had stopped drumming. That was the tell. He wanted Roland to believe the ledger was merely financial. He wanted the box to seem heavy with debt and not with anything more dangerous.

“Why tell me all this?” Roland asked.

“Because I am offering you a generous sum—more than you’ve ever been paid—and safe passage anywhere in France. All I require is that you deliver the box to me, here, tonight. I will take it, seal it, and see that its contents never disturb the peace of the kingdom again.”

Roland didn’t move. He felt the weight of the box between his shoulder blades—Lucien’s box, Lucien’s dying wish, delivered with a warning that seeing what lay inside would strip away any chance of walking away clean.

“And if I refuse?”

The bishop’s expression hardened. He reached into his robe and drew out a folded document, which he slid across the table toward Roland.

“Then perhaps you will reconsider after reading this.”

Roland didn’t touch it. “What is it?”

“A debt ledger,” the bishop said. “A copy I have kept for my own records. It shows that in the year of our Lord 1302, the House of Peruzzi lent the diocese of Narbonne a substantial sum—one hundred thousand livres—to finance the construction of our new cathedral. The loan was guaranteed by Jean de Chevrier, Bishop of Narbonne. With interest over seven years, the debt has grown to nearly two hundred thousand livres.”

At first Roland did not understand what the bishop found so threatening. Then he did. Bishop de Chevrier was in debt to the Peruzzi bank. Deeply, ruinously in debt, to Italians who had learned patience from the Church itself and interest from the Jews they counted as rivals.

“Two hundred thousand livres,” Roland said slowly. “That’s a figure your own bishopric could never repay without scandal.”

“Precisely.” The old man leaned forward, and the candlelight carved deep hollows into his cheeks. “Two hundred thousand livres that would be immediately called due if certain records fell into the hands of certain persons. The Peruzzi have agents everywhere. When they hear that the true treasury record of an old house like de Clermont has surfaced, and when they read the names of every churchman and nobleman who borrowed from their coffers under false pretenses, they will descend like wolves on a wounded deer.”

Roland looked at the bishop, and for the first time, he understood. This wasn’t about House de Clermont. It wasn’t about a relic or a treasury record. It was about everyone who had ever taken money they couldn’t repay and offered a lie as collateral.

“You’re in the ledger,” Roland said.

The bishop’s jaw tightened. “So are many others, monsieur, far more powerful than I. That is why the box is dangerous—not because of what it protects, but because of what it exposes.”

Roland picked up the folded document, turned it once in his hand, and set it back down. “Lucien carried this box for twenty years,” he said. “He died trusting me to take it to Paris. Whatever is in there, it goes where he sent it.”

“You would refuse a bishop’s offer of salvation?”

“I’d refuse the offer of a man who owed me nothing but had already cost me a horse and a good night’s sleep.”

Roland stepped back toward the door, and the bishop rose for the first time, his thin frame unsteady as he gripped the table edge.

“You will not leave this city alive, monsieur.”

Roland paused. “If that were true, Your Excellency, you’d have had your men take me in the street instead of inviting me to your table. You want me to give it willingly. That means you can’t take it by force.”

He walked through the door, past the startled guards, and into the night without looking back.

The inn was quiet when he returned. The cooper downstairs had banked his fire, and the smell of sawdust and pitch hung heavy in the air. Roland climbed to his room, locked the door, and lay on his pallet with the box beside him. He kept his hand on his sword.

He must have slept, because the next thing he knew was heat—light and flames licking up the outer wall, smoke curling beneath the door, the crack of timber surrendering to fire.

Roland seized the box, found his boots, and kicked the window open. The drop was ten feet into a narrow alley, and he hit the ground badly, rolled, and came up scrambling as burning thatch began to fall around him.

Behind him, the stable let out a scream of terrified horses.

Roland didn’t stay to watch. He ran north through the dark, one hand clamped over the box, the embers of the bishop’s final mercy still smoldering at his back.