King Louis lay prostrate on the floor of the Sainte Chapelle, his face buried in his hands. Simon, impatient to speak to Louis about his mission to Italy, knelt on the stone a few paces away from the king's long, black-draped form. The two of them were the entire congregation this morning, far outnumbered by the twelve canons and fourteen chaplains chanting the royal mass.
Unable to keep his mind on the mass, Simon kept gazing up at the stained glass windows. Since the age of eight, when he had become part of the king's household, he had spent hundreds of mornings here in the chapel attached to the royal palace, but the building still amazed him. The walls seemed to be all glass, filled with light, glowing with colors bright as precious stones. What held the chapel up? Pierre de Montreuil, the king's master builder, had patiently explained the principles of the new architecture to Simon, but though Simon understood the logic of it, the Sainte Chapelle, most beautiful of the twenty-three churches of the Île de la Cité, still looked miraculous to him.
The mass ended and the celebrants proceeded down the nave of the chapel two by two, dividing when they came to King Louis as the Seine divides to flow around the Cité, each canon and chaplain bowing as he passed the prone figure.
When they were all gone, King Louis slowly began to push himself to his feet. Simon hurried to help him, gripping his right arm with both hands. The king's arm was thin, but Simon felt muscles like hard ropes moving under his hands. Though almost fifty, the king still, Simon knew, practiced with his huge two-handed sword in his garden. Age had not weakened him, though a mysterious lifelong ailment sometimes forced him to take to his bed.
Louis looked pained. "This is not one of my good days for walking. Let me lean on you."
Simon was grateful for the chance to help King Louis. The vest of coarse horsehair that Louis wore next to his body to torment his flesh—as penance for what faults, Simon could not imagine—creaked as he straightened up. He put his arm over Simon's shoulder, and Simon passed an arm around his narrow waist. He looked down at Simon with round, sad eyes. His nose was large, but blade-thin, his cheeks sunken in.
"Let us visit the Crown of Thorns," he said, pointing to the front of the chapel, the apse.
Louis was leaning all his weight on Simon as they walked slowly up to the wooden gallery behind the altar where the Crown of Thorns reposed. Even so, the king felt light. How could a man be at once so strong and so fragile, Simon wondered.
There was barely room on the circular wooden stairway for them to climb side by side. As they stood before the sandalwood chest containing the reliquary, Louis took his arm from Simon's shoulders. He took two keys from the purse at his plain black belt and used one to open the doors of the chest. Inner doors of gold set with jewels blazed in the light from the stained glass windows.
Louis opened the second set of doors with the other key and, with Simon's help, knelt. Simon saw within the chest, lined with white satin, a gold reliquary that contained the Crown of Thorns. It was shaped like a king's crown and set with pearls and rubies and stood on a gold stem and base, like a chalice. Simon was icy-cold with awe, almost terror, at the sight of it. To think that what lay within this gold case had been worn by Jesus Christ Himself, twelve centuries ago, at the supreme moment of His life—His death.