The Inquisitor’s Tale

“I’m in the midst of taking a quaff of my ale and I nearly spit it all over the table. ‘What?! That’s it? They took her away? Why?’ I sputter. ‘Who were they? And what about the dog? How did it come back to life?!” 

The narrator’s lively voice helps to set the scene and predicts some of the questions readers might have. We’re not just hearing a story, we’re being told stories, sitting in a crowded inn with the tellers. There’s a sense of fun and playfulness in the way the author frames the book’s tales.

“I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a greyhound run. If you have, you know that it is a mystical experience. They are so swift, so exactly proportioned and balanced. It is one of the few perfect things in this world.” 

The nun’s appreciation of the beauty of Gwenforte’s running gives us a sense of one of the book’s big underlying themes: pleasure in the beauty of the world. Set against the brutishness of the knights who attack Jeanne, this image of the running dog gives us a sense that the world is full of loveliness that not everyone is able to see or appreciate.

“Saracen is a word that William does not approve of. William likes precision. He likes clarity. He likes to understand things. The word Saracen, as you all know, means two completely different things. On the one hand, we use it to mean Muslim, a follower of Mohammed. On the other hand, we use it whenever we talk about someone who looks foreign. The Mongols are “Saracens,” the pagan nomads of Arabia are “Saracens,” the Muslims of Spain are “Saracens.” So is William a Saracen? He has devoted every waking moment to living a Christian life. and yet his brown skin and black hair have always set him apart.” 

Here, the author teaches us a little bit of medieval history while also bringing modern objections to bear against the old human problems of racism and prejudice. William’s objection to the imprecision of the word “Saracen” gives us one way to think about a fundamental problem with prejudice: it’s simply wrong in the sense of incorrect, besides being wrong morally.