Four: Of the Monastery, and of the Best Wine Had in Seven Years

Thomas and the girl march toward Paris, hungry and wary. Their guarded banter gives way to discovery of a small Cistercian monastery while foraging. Inside, Thomas finds the buttery stripped and the dormitory and nave filled with signs of plague and four dead monks. The girl vows silence on the grounds and guides Thomas through the herb garden, preventing him from picking monkshood; they dine on edible greens and flowers before sleeping in the cloisters beneath saints’ statues, waking covered in flowers.

On the road again, they meet a Bruges cloth merchant with guards; both parties keep distance and exchange grim news before parting. Near St. Martin-le-Preux, a crude warning reads “GO BACK,” but they proceed, and a priest emerges, masked by a lantern, to halt them. He confirms the town burned its bridge, yet plague struck both banks. Starvation spreads and bodies were dumped into the river.

The priest recounts a new terror: a vast, serpentine, froglike-mouthed creature in the shallows that drags men from boats, devours fishers, and even took a mule and cart; failed would-be crossers’ remains litter the banks. Townsmen, briefly emboldened, lost courage at the grisly scene. Meanwhile the seigneur barricades himself in his tower with hoarded grain, issuing ignored proclamations.

The priest hosts Thomas with the last cask of excellent Beaune wine sourced via his brother in Avignon, and tries to draw out a knightly pledge. Thomas admits he was dispossessed by a Norman lord and turned outlaw with worse men, declining confession. The priest argues that slaying the river abomination would restore Thomas’s honor. Stung and moved, Thomas quells his despair and vows to kill the creature.