The Inquisitor’s Tale

The cart continues through Paris, passing Notre Dame and ending up at the King’s own palace. The King welcomes the children in as his guests, to the surprise of all his people.

Left alone in their new quarters, the children and Michelangelo discuss their strategy. They plan to casually bring up the issue of the book burning over dinner. Michelangelo asks Jeanne to pretend she’s having a prophetic fit and say that she sees the book-burning as the fires of Hell. Jeanne is uneasy about faking one of her fits, saying, “I don’t want to pretend God is speaking to me when He isn’t” (234). Michelangelo argues that God is indeed speaking to her through the bad feeling she has when she imagines the books burning, and that good or bad feeling is often a reasonable basis for making choices. Jacob, skeptical, asks about how this idea plays out when one is dealing with prejudice and hatred, like the King’s for the Jews. Michelangelo replies that the King isn’t hearing God, then, but the voices of other people, and that it’s hard work to distinguish between the two sometimes.

Persuaded, Jeanne agrees to fake a fit. Michelangelo warns that if their first plan doesn’t work, they might have to take “rasher action” (236).

The storytellers—all except for the still-placid nun—take a break to have a pee.

The children prepare to go to their fateful dinner. Jeanne is worried about her impending performance, and Jacob is lost in thought about hatred and ethics. William, meanwhile, is distracted by a new excitement: in the corridor outside the dining hall, he meets Robert de Sorbonne, the founder of a great university, and William surprises him with his deep knowledge of theology, potentially earning himself a place as a student.

The children also encounter Blanche de Castile, the King’s mother. Gwenforte takes an immediate dislike to her, snapping and snarling until William has to carry the dog away. Blanche proves Gwenforte right over dinner, goading and insulting the children until Jacob snaps and insults her over the intended book-burning. Blanche reveals that they’ll be burning thousands of Jewish holy texts the very next day. The King chimes in, saying that it’ll be worthwhile if even one soul is saved by this bonfire.

Jeanne can’t bring herself to fake a fit, and Michelangelo mutters, “Tomorrow” (250).

The nun pauses here, and the assembled crowd urges her to go on.

The children and Michelangelo discuss the failure of their plan and prepare for a dramatic next day; Michelangelo advises the children to be ready for martyrdom. Over breakfast the next morning, Jeanne muses that she wants to save the books but not to die for them. Michelangelo agrees that a human life is worth more than a book, but he also warns that martyrdom has a way of creeping up on you.

Michelangelo reveals that his plan is for the kids to grab a few books each from the pyre and run away. They can carry the books to a monk Michelangelo knows, who will copy and distribute them. The children are disappointed, wishing to save more, but they agree they don’t really have a better plan.

The children and Michelangelo go to the bridge where the burning will happen. They watch as countless beautiful Talmuds are piled up, noticing especially the well-worn copies that some poor village must have treasured.

The King begins the burning by offering to pay Jews to convert to Christianity. No one takes his offer up. Then, Michelangelo shouts for the burning to stop. The children, seeing this as their signal, rush in and begin trying to rescue books. But in the fray, they can’t salvage any. At last, they’re forced to flee, leaving Michelangelo behind them. True to his prediction, martyrdom has crept up on him, and he dies on the pyre of books.

It turns out that this all happened the day before the nun’s telling. The crowd of listeners is so shocked that they disperse, getting ready to go to bed so they can go see the King march through town in pursuit of the children the next day—all but the narrator, who stays behind to hear the last of what the nun has to say.

Having escaped from Paris, the children mourn Michelangelo, regret the failure of their plan, and try to figure out what they should do next. They can’t agree, at first; Jeanne wants to go back to her village, Jacob wants to go to Saint-Denis, and William is annoyed with them both for not understanding how difficult it will be for him to go anywhere.

In the course of their discussion, Jeanne realizes that they never found the inn where they left William’s donkey, and that the donkey was laden with books—books that William was meant to take to Saint-Denis. A Talmud might just be among them. The children all agree to head back to the inn.

Just then, the nun and the narrator hear voices in the yard. It’s the children. The narrator rushes to watch as the children reunite with their donkey and their saddlebags—which do have copies of the Talmud in them. 

The children sit in the inn, rejoicing over the books and mourning Michelangelo at once. Jacob wonders how God could let such a thing happen. A drunken Franciscan friar, Master Bacon, overhears them and wants to talk theology with them. He drags a bench over to their table and starts to tell them about Job, the beleaguered Biblical figure who questioned God’s plan. The answer God gave, Master Bacon says, was that God’s plan is too big and too deep for humans to fully understand, but humans must still try to understand what they can.

The drunk monk falls asleep, and another speaker pipes up: a troubadour called Chrétien. He says he has a different answer to Jacob’s question, and (heckled by a bucktoothed friend) sings a song about two warriors called Hadubrand and Hildebrand; when these fighters face off, Hildebrand realizes that Hadubrand is his long-lost son, but Hadubrand refuses to believe him, and Hildebrand can’t call off the fight for the sake of his knights. So, they go through with their bloody and tragic battle. Jacob hates this story, but Jeanne loves it, saying that it feels true; Chrétien replies that God makes bad things happen because God is a troubadour. One can choose to listen to his song or not, but it’s harder to listen when you’re in the song.

The children decide it’s time for bed, and they plan to head to Mont-Saint-Michel, where Michelangelo’s copyist monk friend can help to replicate their Talmuds. The narrator seizes this chance and offers to guide them there. It seems as if the narrator has a hidden motive, possibly a sinister one: he describes the children as rabbits guided by God into a fox’s path.

When they set out the next morning, the children ask what the narrator does. The narrator answers that he’s a collector and teller of tales—like a chronicler, but not quite. And, at last, we get a hint at the narrator’s identity when he calls himself “Étienne.” We also see into his developing conflict: as he affectionately watches the children sitting down to read, he thinks to himself, “I’d rather not kill them” (292). And indeed, he has a knife under his cloak.

Meanwhile, unaware, the children discuss the Talmudic story of Rabbi Hillel, who told a pestering student that the whole of the Torah can be summed up, “What you would hate to have done to you—do not do to other people. That is the whole of the Torah. The rest is commentary” (295). Jeanne remarks that this is very like one of the sayings of Jesus, and the narrator agrees, getting increasingly heated: he’s never understood how Jesus could tell people to love their neighbors the way they love God, for people are so deeply flawed. The children, noticing the narrator’s agitation, ask him to be honest about who he really is. He finds he can’t resist and begins his own story.

The narrator tells his history. He was the disregarded youngest son of a big family, but he distinguished himself at school as particularly intelligent, and became an inquisitor: A Papal spy whose job is to root out heretical beliefs. During his work, he disgraced himself by falling in love, a thing forbidden to inquisitors. He hoped to redeem himself but was disappointed to be assigned the seemingly minor task of destroying the supposed pagan cult around Gwenforte.

Still, he tracked the children and the dog down. As he heard more of their stories and began to truly believe that they were saints, he kept up his murderous plan, hoping to martyr the children and take their bones home as relics. Through hearing the children’s story and spending time with them, he has come to see that he’s been deeply wrong. He throws his knife into the dirt and weeps. The children comfort him.

The children and the inquisitor, reconciled, continue their journey. The inquisitor is thoughtful and touched, loving the presence of these children he had planned to kill. The children discuss more stories from the Talmud: for instance, the story of the brothers Cain and Abel, and how God tells the murderous Cain, “The bloods of your brother call out to me.” The Talmudic reasoning goes that the plural “bloods” is because of all the family that Abel might have had are dead with him. Another Talmudic saying, that destroying or saving a single life destroys or saves the whole world, makes the children reflect that a book, like a person, may contain whole worlds—and that the books they saved are thus deeply important.

The travelers find Mont-Saint-Michel: a gorgeous mountain rising out of the sea. As the road there is covered and uncovered every night by the tides, they must wait at an inn and cross the next day. They’re surprised and delighted to find their old friend Marmeluc the knight waiting for them. He tells them that a troubadour—not Chrétien, but his bucktoothed friend—has betrayed them, and the King knows where they are. Nevertheless, the children settle down to rest in an inn run by a surly innkeeper named Clotho and prepare to make their crossing the next day.

In the night as the children sleep, a rattling sound comes from Jeanne’s bed; it seems she must have had another vision. But they don’t have time to ask her what it is, for they’re awakened by thunderous hoofbeats. The king is coming.

Clotho the innkeeper dithers about what to do, but at last his heart wins out, and he offers to lead them on the perilous path across the sands to Mont-Saint-Michel. As they flee, knights appear and begin to pursue them, but they’re all swallowed up by quicksand. Clotho knows the right path, and the children, Marmeluc, and the inquisitor stay safe.

Back on the shore, the King beats the retreat. His mother, Blanche, is also there, and unsatisfied, she rides out across the sand herself. When she begins to sink, the children as one turn to rescue her. They, too, begin to sink. Deeply moved, the inquisitor makes a big decision: he’ll either be martyred with the children, or save them, but he doesn’t want to live in a world without them. So, he helps to form a human chain, and the travelers all work together to pull themselves and Blanche out of the mud.

When they’re safe, William gives the satchel of books to Marmeluc and tells him to take them to the abbey on Mont-Saint-Michel. Jeanne says that Michelangelo will be there waiting for them. Her vision revealed to her that he was not dead: he is, in fact, the Archangel Michael, and the mountain named for him is just where he’ll be.

The children return Blanche to the shore, where, her dignity wounded, she sets out for home. The King and his companion kneel to the children and ask for their blessing. The King also reveals that he always knew that Jacob was Jewish and turns a blind eye to the children’s plan to copy and redistribute the Talmud.

Reunited with Michelangelo, the travelers ask him some final questions. He explains that he is indeed an angel—and that he took his bodily appearance from the city of Bologna, which is proverbially described as “red, fat, and learned.”

Michelangelo congratulates the inquisitor on his new understandings, greets Gwenforte affectionately (saying they had some good times together before she was resurrected), and welcomes the children with love.

Jacob asks him why they had to go through so much suffering, and he replies, so that you’d see what you saw and do what you did: “God does not work like poof!” (333), he says. He also hints at the mysterious nun’s identity, saying: “‘There are only two beings in Creation that I fear...One above, and one below. Strangely, when they walk the earth, they both take the same form. Of a little old woman, with silvery hair, sparkling eyes, and a knowing smile’” (334).

Michelangelo suggests that Jeanne should return to her parents, Jacob should go to Yehuda and Miriam, and William should take up scholarship at the university in Paris. But, he adds, this is all up to them.

Together, the friends think about the meaning of “martyrdom.” William translates it as meaning “witness” in Latin. Michelangelo says that the children are therefore already martyrs and will continue to be wherever they go, they will witness against cruelty and on behalf of what is good. The book ends in a shared embrace, which Michelangelo calls “Another miracle” (337).